takutomaruki | HOME/LAB [maruki family thread tracker]

"I can imagine. You're all in on cognitive psience, right? I was able to pay my way around easily by selling code and getting a few programming gigs during school," Ichinose chuckled. Between that, selling EMMA and her inheritance... she's been pretty comfortable for most of her life.

"Are you also too proud to let your partner take care of you?" she asked after chewing on a clam, giving Maruki an amused grin.

"I opened up a counselling clinic back home along with being a part-time counsellor at Shujin Academy. I occasionally visit those places here, too. My Palace gives me more patients though," he explains. "It's easier to tackle the limitations of my previous profession with cognitive pscience."

Are you also too proud to let your partner take care of you?

His expression sobered a little at the mention of it. A partner.

"I wouldn't...call it proud...?" He tries as an answer, glancing back at Ichinose with an eye pinched playfully. "You would have to ask my former girlfriend that question for an unbiased opinion."

"Ohh? Was she a doting type of girlfriend, or did she butt heads with you over wanting to help out?" Ichinose snickered in amusement, curling up on the couch with the miso bowl in her hands like a cup. Warm...

"My ex would raise a fuss about me being the bread-winner. So sensitive about it, I never understood why - I tried to listen, but it just never made sense to me."

Maruki couldn't really answer her question right away- not with the way he seemed to be so utterly focused on the soup before him.

Butting heads...in a way he had always opened his heart to her in time of need. She doted on him with ideas, and he did everything in his power to spoil her too.

"Sounds like there's a reason why he's your ex," he remarked easily as he crossed one leg over the other. "Perhaps he was a little insecure. When the roles shift, even if it's for the better, sometimes people might feel... lost, or even ashamed. Defensive even." Rumi earned more than him back before everything so when her company laid her off, when she ended up in that comatose state, things felt so much more hopeless. With him saving money for her treatment to working on his research...

"...she was more of the reassuring kind. She had the ideas, and I used to do whatever I could to make them come true."

Hmm... the topic of his girlfriend seemed to really dampen his mood. That sort of reaction means he might still care for her, doesn't it? Ichinose tilted her head in thought, for a moment, watching Maruki's expression.

...Did she still pine for her ex boyfriend? ...Not really... she didn't think about him much. Even now, reflecting on him and his little quirks, even reflecting on how defensive he would get or the other things he said... it didn't feel like much of anything. That was a while ago.

"You're the most cold, heartless woman I've ever met. You don't even care about me."

He probably wasn't wrong, if even now the thought of him dumping her didn't stir her much. It didn't make her make a face like what Maruki was making.

"She sounds nice," Ichinose offered instead of vocalizing any of that, pausing to sip her soup. "It's too bad. It seems like that loss is painful."

"Painful?" He whips his head back at her, confused for a moment. Was there something on his face that made her come to that conclusion?

"Well, obviously. Getting dumped is painful, right?" She tilted her head. Wasn't that obvious? Of course that was supposed to hurt a normal person.

Oh.

He thought she meant it some other way. "Sorry, I misread that, I guess," he looks away. "She didn't dump me...would you be surprised if I said I was engaged? We were together for most of our lives, with a small break-up in between before picking things up again."

Edited 2025-05-16 15:37 (UTC)

Ah-- then the other unfortunate fate. Engaged, dating for a long time...

"My sympathies for your loss. ...But I can see you engaged, at least - you're very enjoyable. I imagine there are plenty of women that would confide in you once you're past mourning."

Oh wow, he was really blowing this out of proportion. The compliment aside, which made him sputter and stutter out of pure confusion. "No, I am not- see that's the thing. People confide in me cause I am trained in it again- I am not mourning her."

"It was all my fault in the end." He offers her a weak smile as he finishes the last of his soup. "For being a bit of a coward. It's been a good few years since then, and she's much happier now! Much happier than back then...there's nothing more I am grateful for."

...? What in the world is he talking about? Ichinose's brows furrowed in thought as she examined him, turning the words over in her head...

"...A coward... oh! Did you run from the altar?"

Maruki began sipping away on the soup, hoping that she would drop the topic. It's a thing of the past and he has much bigger things to worry about and work on so-

Did you run from the altar?

"...!"

"Bwfah-" Maruki chokes on his soup, some of the enoki gladly making their way to his windpipe as he coughs and sets the bowl on his lap. "Wha- okay."

He ended up laughing- not expecting that speculation at all. Most people didn't ask beyond that but Ichinose-? She did.

"I wish it was like that. Honestly."

Well, she was terribly off the mark - but at least he was laughing about it instead of looking offended. Lucky her!

"Well, then, what happened?"

She was insistent. Maruki tilted his head at her, trying to grasp her intentions. The look in his eyes held as much lethargy as the night before, even with the smile persistent on his face.

"..."

"It's a thing in the past now," he starts as he finally places his bowl on the table. "Our relationship was tested by things beyond our control. Things she wouldn't have recovered from if I hadn't pulled away."

A dull ache overflows his senses. He leaned forward, gripping his nose to contain it when he swore he felt something pull at his mind again.

"Haha! Sorry for being a bit of a buzzkill," he caught his breath as he pulled his hand away to glance back at her.

Something strange and painful then. Miscarriage? A traumatic event? Had he somehow abused her? The latter part seemed uncharacteristic, but looks could be deceiving.

Still, Ichinose just tilted her head, looking him over.

"No, I'm sorry to bring it up. You look distressed."

"Now you sound like Shibusawa," he shook his head with a wry chuckle. "It's fine. It's been like what- 6 years now? I've been working on it..." His gaze drifted to the couch as he finally crossed his legs together. "In any case, I am not looking for a romantic relationship anytime soon."

"...here especially." Oh, he hopes that wasn't an awkward statement, but it is true.

It didn't make her feel awkward - in fact, it got a bit of a bark of a laugh from her.

"Hah! God, no, could you imagine? Falling for someone in a place like this, only to get whisked away and be literal universes apart? That's tragic."

Isn't that right? Maruki couldn't even fathom something that was unachievable. That inconceivable..

Ah, but Rumi was here, wasn't she? He even thought he could salvage a relationship with her again, even as a friend.
Until he was told that she isn't real.

"I do see the romantic appeal in it," he admits with a soft smile on his lips. "Like star-crossed lovers who only met in this one extraordinary circumstance out of the million universes."

"Wouldn't the heart crumble from something like that?" Ichinose chuckled. She wasn't being snide, at least not intentionally - that sort of heartbreak seemed extreme when most romantic couples whined about being only a city apart. How much more severe would it be to have it be literally impossible to see the person you cared for?

It's a fair question to ask, given everything. He knows a lot of things he believes in don't hold much weight when you weigh the truth- your internal world with the bitter external one- you are often left dissatisfied.

"A heart crumbles easily," he says slowly. "At the end of the day, it's all about how much you are willing to sacrifice, isn't it? For both yourself and your partner."

And he would sacrifice gladly. Time and again.

He folds his arms on his lap, growing quiet.

"If both parties would get hurt, then wouldn't it be better to not entertain those feelings at all...? Or can you just not help it, at that point?"

The latter would make sense - maybe that's the difference between herself and others. She could easily shift gears, stop wanting something she can't have and focus on the attainable, the practical...

Though, things are much more attainable than they seem, aren't they? EMMA proved as much.

"Actually, on that train of thought, I wonder if one could bridge this world and other worlds more concretely - supposedly our messaging apps continue working through time and space and the multiverse, so who's to say we couldn't come up with a way to reinforce that connection more directly?"

"Oh?" She has his attention almost too easily- leaning against the couch with one elbow angled on the cushion.

"Are we still thinking digitally or more so through cognition?" he asks. "Because I can imagine you could probably utilize slightly higher tech- like the ones I have seen the Hasegawas use so that you can, to an extent, interact with others."

"But cognitively I know Igor holds all the cards." There's a tsk like even he's annoyed by it. Which he is. "You would need to sway the entire world along with its recipients to cause a fundamental change in the system."

"That said...sorry, please continue. I am curious to hear your thoughts."

"If the data can transfer a call connection, it can transfer any kind of information - digital ought to be incredibly easy just by reverse-engineering how the connection itself works, paranormal or not. An AI could be sent to another universe, for example."

Hmm... Ichinose ponders a bit, taking a minute to eat all of the scallops in her bowl.

"Which may be pertinent information if those two from the future need last-minute adjustments to the program I'm making for them. I could potentially build them an AI - not self sufficient, mind - that could react and patch code in real time as that world's EMMA and Ichinose attempted to change their programming to defend themselves. Hmm. And then there's the matter of physical matter... or a person. Depending on exactly the magic behind the connections in the phone work, perhaps there might be some way to transfer a person's cognitive self through that connection... they may need a body or to be digitized on the other end, but it could functionally be them. Or at least a copy of them. Scanning the mind to catalogue one's personhood... now there is a thought..."

Maruki fell silent for a while, cataloguing Ichinose’s words in his head. An AI that could react and patch code in real life, he supposed that Ichinose could pull it off again- given that she made EMMA. "That EMMA and Ichinose probably have something similar to that too."

And then there’s the idea of physical matter. A person. The idea of transferring a whole person from one universe to another was absurd- especially from a scientific concept. But cognition recognized that pattern and flipped it over- instead unveiling the discrepancies in how time and space can be percieved in a more primal way. From areas that existed between dream and reality to otherwise.

"If one could possibly replicate the nueral pattern down to the T- that will essentially make a clone that holds all your memories and experiences intact." He adds after. "But to sustain that system you would need a huge power source, wouldn't you?"

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1/2

2/2 (he will mention the incident after sadhd just give him a bit)

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