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peace-coast-island · 2 years ago

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Diary of a Junebug

Don't let certain people convince you into believing you don't deserve to be alive

I think spring has finally arrived and is here to stay. As much as I enjoy being a homebody, the rain and light snow was starting to get to me. The rain I don’t mind so much, it’s the cold and unpredictable weather that’s the problem. Weather’s looking clear for the next week so hopefully it’ll stay that way.

Yesterday and today have been good, tomorrow looks the same. Had it been raining and too cold, collecting gyroids wouldn’t be fun. And it would be a bummer too, especially since Raiden and Qingmei got Kayo, Maki, and Ari out here to spend some time getting lost in nature.

Kayo and Maki have been following Raiden and Qingmei’s footsteps by becoming an adventuring duo, taking on the world by storm. Maki travels a lot for missions so Kayo tags along whenever she can, especially when Kamo isn’t available. Every once in a while both groups meet up - Raiden claims it’s a coincidence and while she might be right, I have a feeling that she isn’t quite ready to leave her two protégées alone for too long even though they’re grown now.

Maki hasn’t had a chance to check back up on Kanna, but so far there’s little to no change last she heard. Because of the fog there’s no predicting when it’ll be safe to travel. Although she and Kamo successfully dealt with some of the dangers, they said it’ll take a long time before they see any real change, if any. The biggest threat was the fog, which was a result of cursed energy, so at least that matter has been addressed. There’s still a lot of mysteries about Kanna that have yet to be uncovered - whether or not we find answers remains to be seen.

Kayo spent a couple days visiting Atsushi and Himeko at Summersands before tagging along with Maki for a mission in Waterfall, where they stayed overnight. Then they went back to Taimani to meet up with Raiden, Qingmei, and Ari and go to the camp.

The invitation was for the Skylight Dusk Agency as Raiden felt that they were long overdue for a retreat but seeing that they’re short-handed, the timing just isn’t right. At least Ari was able to tag along, mainly because she’s on extended medical leave, and she’s regained her strength enough to travel. She’s not 100% yet - and will not be for a long while - but she says she’s getting better and taking it slow.

Raiden and Kayo introduced me to the agency when I visited Tangwei last year. Not much has changed, except that things are even tighter now that Ari’s out of commission. They’re already a small team to begin with and it’s not like they can go out and recruit people. After all, the agency pretty much came together because they were all lost and had nowhere to turn to after being exploited for their powers. The last time they had a new recruit was Lucy - an ability user who wanted to start over after her previous living arrangements fell through - and she was killed in the Great Calamity along with Amane and Kun. Since then those vacancies have remained empty.

Ari suspects that part of the reason why there hasn’t been any new recruits is probably one of those self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing. As in the agency - specifically the President - never really got over the losses so they never really tried to find anyone. To be fair, they have some pretty big shoes to fill, so I can’t blame them for being hesitant.

Out of the three, Ari was the closest to Amane, who she considered her big brother. After all, he was the one who saved her life multiple times when she was at her lowest. In return, she got his back and saved him an equal number of times - well, almost. She said that she’d be lying if she said that time’s made things easier. It’s not like she’s stuck in the past or anything, she’s been through enough losses in her life to understand that some things will leave scars and she’s accepted that.

Ari - like everyone else at the agency - had it pretty rough growing up. She initially had an ordinary childhood, that is, for someone whose parents were allegedly assassins. After they were murdered, she was taken in by some mafia group that took advantage of the fact that she wields a timepiece and is highly skilled with a blade. Considering that the city’s by the ocean, someone with the ability to control the tides would be seen as a valuable weapon. So they trained her to be an assassin and that does wonders for a young kid’s mental health.

In a short time, Ari became known as an angel of death and she quickly lost track of the number of lives she was forced to take. Then she was tasked to blow up a train station, where she met Amane and Sayo. At the time Amane had just been taken in by the agency so he was struggling to get the situation under control.

Something about seeing him, a guy not that much older than her cracking under pressure and trying frantically to stop her - that was when she realized that she had enough. So she told him who she was and that she didn’t want to kill any more people. And then she jumped off the train with the bomb attached to her, bracing herself for the end. Except it never came. Amane jumped in after her, tore off the explosives just as they went off, and managed to get her to safety. Next thing she knew, she woke up with Amane and Sayo by her bedside.

Although the agency took her in, it took Ari a while for her to truly feel like she belonged. Obviously the others were initially wary of her and in return she closed herself off because she didn’t want to be a burden on them. Amane was the one who managed to get her out of her shell, probably because he saw a lot of himself in her. It wasn’t until he took Ari in when he slowly became more confident and self assured about himself.

Raiden once said that Amane was full of untapped potential. He had it rough, being raised in an orphanage where he was emotionally abused by his caretakers. When his dragon powers fully emerged, he was forced to live in the streets where he almost died if he hadn’t run into Tai. Amane was initially reluctant about letting the agency take him in because he didn’t think he deserved to be there, so Tai managed to convince him in his own way that he belonged there.

Over time, Amane became a hero to the city, putting him the same rank as the other agency members. After taking Ari under his wing, he helped Lucy get back on her feet after the Association fell, which was something he played a major role in. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that he was the same guy who was down on his luck whose life seems to scream woe is me. To think what kind of a person he would’ve grown into today if he was still here - it’s hard to believe that it’s almost at the point where he’s been dead longer than he was part of the agency.

As much as Raiden hates to say it, if it weren’t for the agency, no one would’ve taken Amane in. You can’t blame him for looking down on himself so much that he’s too afraid to do anything. Sakura had been the one who wasn’t afraid to give him a good shake when he spiraled. She wasn’t just being firm, she was also speaking from experience.

It can’t have been easy trying to get through the day when most people in your life are constantly trying to hammer it in that you don’t deserve to be alive. No matter what you say or do, you can’t seem to win because they’ll always find something to criticize. And for people like Sakura, Amane, and Ari, their unusual life circumstances make it a living hell.

Although her mafia days are long behind her, Ari admits that her past still haunts her from time to time. Part of it’s due to survivor’s guilt considering that out of the three she’s the only one still alive and kicking. She’s not exaggerating when she says that only Sakura and Amane truly understood her struggles, an ongoing battle they’ll have to live with for the rest of their lives.

Like everyone else who survived, Ari didn’t really make it out of the disaster in one piece. Along with the mental trauma, she also lost both of her legs, barely surviving if it wasn’t for Sayo. As soon as she got her prosthetics, she jumped back up, probably a bit too soon in retrospect. While she wasn’t wallowing in sorrow, she didn’t really give herself time to process things, and maybe that’s why she ended up crashing a couple years later.

Right now Ari’s in the process of recovering after a long illness. For the past year she had been really feeling the burnout, but being stubborn, she thought she could push through it. Qingmei once said Ari’s tenacity can either be her greatest asset or worst enemy. Sometimes it sneaks up on you when you least expect it. One minute you think you’re fine, then it all comes crashing down and you wonder, where did it go wrong?

Not too long after my visit to Tangwei, Ari took on a case outside the city that didn’t go so well. The President strongly advised her not to take the job after a quick background check showed some questionable stuff, which was why no one would accept it in the first place. For whatever reason she went out and instantly regretted it.

Long story short, everything went wrong in the worst possible way. To make matters worse, a couple months later Ari came down with what she thought was a cold. A few weeks passed and not only she was still sick, she was getting worse. As it turns out she contracted tuberculosis as there apparently was an epidemic going on. Luckily, her case was easily treatable and no one else got sick, which was what she was worried about the most.

Although there are meds and she has a pretty high chance of being completely cured, treatment’s a long process because it takes months. Also there’s a lot of pills Ari has to take so Sayo helped her make sure that she took all her meds on time. It’s been almost a month since she finished treatment and everything seems to be good. Now all she needs to do is take it slow and recover her strength.

With all the downtime Ari suddenly had while ill, she said it finally forced her to reevaluate some things. Some she’s figured out, others she needs more time to understand. A lot of her unresolved feelings had to do with the calamity. For a while she was kinda out of it and during those times she kept wishing that Sakura and Amane were at her bedside. Being sick really does things to your brain, all your thoughts kinda go out of whack.

Ari was like “Well, that fucking great,” but at the same time she was like “But if you’re gonna crash now, might as well get it out now.” Again not so much wallowing in grief, more like I can’t keep on pretending everything’s good when it’s a mess, if I don’t deal with this shit now it’s gonna bite me in the ass later kind of thing.

I get what she’s saying. You’re allowed to get upset and grieve as long as you don’t let that consume you. Amane once fell into that spiral of letting negativity and self doubt stop him from living. I can’t imagine it was easy, and he did need a good shake once in a while, but he managed to pull himself out of that unhealthy cycle. Sakura also got trapped in that spiral and she was fortunate to be around people who care for her and called her out when she was cruel to herself.

Sometimes you can get so caught up on hating yourself that you don’t always realize that what you’re doing to yourself makes those around you uncomfortable. That’s not to say that you’re not allowed to feel like that - believe me, if it were that easy, we wouldn’t be having those problems, would we? - but you also have to consider that we don’t live in a vacuum. It’s also that self-fulfilling prophecy thing - if you’re stuck in negativity, that’s all you’re gonna bring.

Yes it sucks being told that you don’t deserve to be alive, or happy, or you’re worthless and shit. And yes it does a number on your self esteem and confidence - it fucking hurts, right? I know it isn’t easy but at some point you have to stand up and say fuck it, I’m gonna live out of spite because I’m here and life won’t wait for me.

Obviously that won’t be an easy fix but sometimes you gotta push yourself or else you’ll get stuck. That’s how Sakura lived her life - that’s not to say that she had her struggles, she certainly did until the end - but she had the strength to pull herself together and get on with it. And that was how she got through to Amane - that’s not to say that Tai didn’t do much as his mentor but there were some things he didn’t have the emotional maturity to handle. If Amane hadn’t started standing up for himself, he wouldn’t have been able to help Ari, who wouldn’t be here today. If it wasn’t the bombs, Ari would’ve ended up dead another way, either disposed of or by her own hand.

Ever since that day, Ari always wondered, why did she survive and the others didn’t? It’s one of those questions where there really isn’t answer so there’s no point in trying to figure it out. Also, she mentioned that she made the mistake of googling about TB and while that didn’t exactly make her morbid, it kinda scared her to the point where she got a little paranoid. At her worst, she said for a very brief moment, she thought she’d better get her affairs in order in case of that very slight chance something goes wrong.

Maki and Kayo were surprised to hear that from her as they thought that nothing could really phase her. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’s prone to being overdramatic but again, when you’re sick your mind tends to mess with you. I mean she said that TB was just as unpleasant as it sounds so I can’t blame her. Thank you, modern medicine.

Often times it feels like we’re grasping in the dark, but then you manage to grab hold of something and you can’t seem to let go. A little kindness can go a long way, and maybe even save someone’s life. I don’t think I can be a rock, but I’ll try to reach out and hopefully not let go until we’re safe.

Heavy stuff aside, it feels nice to be under the sun again, even if for a short time. We would’ve set up a picnic but the ground’s still kinda damp so that’ll have to be put off until later. As long as it doesn’t get too cold for the next few nights, I think we’ll be able to have a picnic at Breezy Hollow. The weather app says sunny with some clouds so it better stay that way!

Kayo’s always full of energy so she’s eager to explore as much of the camp as she can, but she doesn’t feel confident enough to go off on her own. Besides, she says that she’s not really up for a hike anyway - none of us are, to tell the truth, plus Ari and Qingmei can’t do too much strenuous activity. That’s part of the reason why we’ve kinda slacked on finding gyroids, which is fine, especially since the stuff we’re crafting don’t need too many materials. Just enjoying the sun is more than enough.

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#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

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