#ehh pumpkin vines sure. just split them in the hall

[twstyuna]

Uninvited

Notes/rambling below cut.

This takes place post Book 7. I am not entirely sure I grasp the specifics of Silver's UM in the identifying dreamer with a bird sense and the logics of darkness characters and dream outfits. Just assume some kind of lucid dreaming here and roll with it if I broke canon haha.

This be one of the ghost! Skullys.

He's not keeping Yuu asleep in the Malleus sense, just helping Yuu dream of something happy since they get stress dreams and Overblot nightmares a lot. Their idea of happy is apparently their friends being fellow human schoolmates in their world and never having been isekaied. (Grim is a sassy but otherwise normal cat they own at home. It functions more like high school than college because Yuu isn't sure what a normal world college experience is like). Yuu wakes up, forgets Skully's existence and their dreams, lives the day, goes to bed, and Skully helps set up their boring slice of life dreamscape again

Overall benign but Skully's vibes are still too suspicious for Silver though lol. I think Skully would have kept the schoolmate/just a dream character guise if Silver didn't immediately try to fight him. In Silver's defense, Skully did glare.

Had this thought before I read book 7 but I like to think this is validating. From Book 7 Ch 111. Ghostly Oneiromancy go brr.

Skully's relationship with Yuu is platonic.

I think Silver's stumbled in Yuu's dreams before Skully came around but they both forgot

I think the 6 panels with Silver and Yuu are fun. Either Yuu sees Silver and greets him first or they're parallel which means Silver smiles first.

Left a little longer and Yuu might realize "Oh Silver's here" means "Oh I'm dreaming" and immediately wake up.

I imagine that Skully lived a whole life then died, but looks like a student because he really wished he could have been friends and had a fun school life with the NBC event boys . So I suppose him crashing Yuu's dreams/helping Yuu dream of a normal life may not be entirely altruistic then, but I would still like to think that is secondary to giving some comfort to the kid who was your friend lifetimes ago and who has not been having an easy time since getting spirited away to twisted wonderland

Alternative possible reasons for him looking young/relatively the same:

I do not know how to draw an older version of a character

Ghosts may be kind of immortal but their memory isn't. The Ramshackle Ghosts are blobs. Skully's painting was of him still relatively young so that's the appearance he assumes.

Actively trying to monitor Yuu in their dream and the easiest way to blend in is to just look like that so he's in their classes and such. Somewhere in Yuu's subconscious, Yuu remembers Skully being a friendly presence so there being another member in the friend group doesn't stick out.