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TL;CR MEME
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.
Rufus
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For all that Rufus pushed back, this was probably the most conversational CR of his for the first few weeks. Hansa was relentless when it came to chatting and striving for two-way communication. When Rufus voiced that it was safer to have no expectations, Hansa insisted there were benefits to having them and listed all the best things that come for free. Of the list, family and love were what sparked Rufus' irritation, because it wasn't that he thought they didn't existâbut that he had had them, lost them, and was now still living with the trauma of those losses.
Hansa was one of the participants who defended him valiantly at trial when Rufus was on the verge of being scapegoated. It bothered him how much Hansa was sticking his neck out for him: They were still strangers, and recent canon had reminded him that people will typically take advantage of those at a disadvantage. Hansa insisted, yet again, that his was a genuine act of kindness and that he didn't expect anything in return, which Rufus had a difficult time believing.
There was a lot of insisting on Hansa's end. More importantly, he never pushed to the point that he became irritating. Rufus did not mind Hansa's company! In fact, Hansa got more of Rufus' natural banter than mostâif not allâof his CR.
Part of that was because Rufus felt a little guilty the first time Hansa voiced his dissatisfaction over their current arrangement. In Rufus' mind, there was nothing wrong with selling himself in the sense that his body was the tool to carry out his services. He also thought that Hansa was wrong for saying that he was "not a bad guy to be around": By this time, he had already attempted to use him for the secret task and knew that he was the one committing the wrongs.
That didn't stop him from attempting to use Hansa again. The breakdown of his shared emotions was like this: he hesitated on and had doubts about using Hansa again, but wanted to attempt it for the sake of the role, which drudged up some self-reproach for being the bad person he was, while all of that did nothing to erase his wariness of people as a whole. In the end, he seized the opportunity and was pettily annoyed when Hansa misinterpreted his emotions. But he did manage to share a memory like the task demanded.
What he didn't foresee was how Hansa would latch onto the factoid he shared about sitting in the dark. There was a lot of focus on his happiness and fairnessâtwo facets of his life Rufus had ignored for most of his yearsâbut he always resisted Hansa's offers of help for similar reasons as the above. He believed that their relationship was artificial, because he had feigned opening up for the sake of his role.
Emet-Selch's trial and execution rubbed him the wrong way, and the covering put him off of Hansa for a while. At the end of the day it wasn't personal, though, and he separated Hansa from Emet-Selch easily enough. Things made more sense after he heard about the child. He felt for Hansa then, but chose not to get too emotionally close.
There weren't so many opportunities to use Hansa after that, so Rufus cruised with him and indulged him with the occasional lore. Between the child and their discussion of different kinds of wildernesses, he came to understand Hansa betterâbut not enough for him to feel they were closer for it. Hansa had his loved ones while Rufus, ever distrustful, was there for his personal benefit as the Pawn, which was why he felt guilty again when there was another moment of dissatisfaction during sandwich time.
Keeping Hansa at an arm's distance so as not to deepen this relationship was Rufus' way of being responsible for his deception. He was deliberately cold anytime there was insistence of there being a friendship, though he truthfully would not have minded Hansa's feral episodes.
He received Hansa's security report from the computer, by the way. Nice chainsaw.
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They floundered at first, because Rufus was only interested in business, but for what it's worth he didn't find their mutual cynicism to be a waste of time. She was instrumental in his learning about other powers at work, and he found her quite reasonable for how easily she would answer his questions. He never approached her for the obviously bad weeks she was having, because she had others and that wasn't why he was here. While she was shouldering a lot, he didn't think she was weak insofar that she would crumble beneath that weight.
She was emotional, but he didn't find that troublesome more than her habit of lashing out abruptly in frustration when exchanging information. She was clearly devoted to clearing the requirements and, most of all, that temper meant she was being honest with him in a game overflowing with lies. He considered her dependable on that front, particularly when she focused on getting through the search for Glimmer after her memories were shared without her consent.
She's still a kid, but she wasn't prone to needless moral debates nor posturing, so she never really said anything that rubbed him the wrong way. She waited for him to leave the first aid station and then set aside unnecessary questions of concern to get answers about the Realm; that and their following encounters put her in a favorable light in spite of Team Fox's struggles to clear.
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Thankfully, Rupe was there! The weekly effect also helped. He was often the bearer of bad memory news, but he felt that she should know rather than remain ignorant. He wouldn't have offered a supportive touch without the effect, but he did want to address the consequences of her hearing about the memory loss from him and that was why he stuck around a while longer.
She had given him a potential opening with what she had said before about wishes, so he tried to use her for his first task as the Pawn. He ended up paying for it by being banned from money talk, but he considered this a fair exchange when his question bore a manipulative edge. He didn't disparage her wish: Family is important, though he would have been the first to say that love wasn't worth a penny.
Then she surprised him with an offer of her own, and he took it.
Things sort of took off from there. Alex's best quality, aside from her enduring cooperation, was her lowkey presence. She had her opinions and would voice them, but she wouldn't shove them down his throat. Instead she would engage in a calm back-and-forth, then grouse about his stubbornnessâif thatâbefore moving on. She observed his boundaries despite their fairly dissimilar perspectives of most of the Realm's goings-on, and for that he never resented her company.
The fact that she gave him the option to simply say, "I don't want to talk about it," was far more than he received from most participants. His appreciation of her approach, as well as his general wariness of people and awareness that he was using her for his role, saw Rufus' being a little more careful than usual when handling their interactions.
He responded literally to many of her points on purpose to dispute them or close the topic swiftly. He always knew what she was intending to say. It was a similar tactic to how he would initiate their conversations with seemingly bland comments or questions; he was reacting to her body language whenever she was visibly distraught in order to pull her out of her musing.
Sharing memories allowed him to experience her fire. He wasn't especially impressed by the lack of consideration for the consequences of her jumping into the fray, but he did acknowledge her good intentions. She was a good person who considered the feelings of even someone like him once Fiora was removed and Dorothy was convicted, which was far more than he knew he deserved.
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The beginning was rocky. Let me tell you, Sib, I also thought their CR wouldn't go anywhere. Fiora was stubborn and idealistic in ways that clashed with Rufus' own obstinacy and realism, and he had no intention of giving her what she wanted. He had no desire to feel another sting of betrayal here, so he resisted when she wanted to be friendly and thought her blind trust in him to be extremely naĂŻve, because he knew he would betray it someday if it came down to that.
But the thing about Fiora was that she didnât leave to find somebody else. She made herself at home in his company. She didnât fade away over time or retract her faith in him. In fact, she seemed to grow more attached over the weeks, which baffled him.
The first breakthrough was when he decided to use her for his task as the Pawn. He went in with the intention of manipulating the encounter to get what he needed and left with the knowledge of her secret and team assignmentâat the cost of a deeply personal memory involving his mother. He didnât like it, but this turned out to be a good thing in the long run: Of everyone in the Realm, he connected emotionally with her the most.
And, of everyone in the Realm, he probably exercised the most patience with her. Fiora was unyielding in her values insofar that she foolishly voted for herself the one week; however, her vocal arguments made her actions that much more obvious when she would take increasingly larger steps toward doing what was necessary for the Realm. He thought she was fighting an uphill battle that couldnât be climbed when it came to what was right or wrong, but she wasnât a lost cause. Their agreement ensured that she had his loyalty as a partner, and their strange connection built on the consecrated memory of his mother gave her an edge that most other participants lackedâmore so once she confessed her belief that her team didnât trust her (combined with the fact that he had, by his reckoning, already betrayed and was continuing to betray hers as he kept mum about his role).
Fiora struggled with trust, and Rufus derived no joy in watching her go through that. It was evident to him that she was lonely. Unfortunately for her, he knew that he wasnât the ideal conversationalist for this issue. His attempts at grounding her included talking her through the nature of the competition and steering her away from soaring too high (the literal answers to her figures of speech were deliberate) or running too far ahead.
On the other hand, her circumstances were familiar enough that his heart reacted once she admitted that she was dying. Not only was she struggling here with the kind of hardship he experienced in his youthâloss of trust in the people around them, as well as doing something that went against their valuesâher story before the Realm was vaguely reminiscent of his motherâs. Between her enduring faith in him and her emotional attentiveness, he felt that she was someone he wanted to look after, which he came to acknowledge on the week he lost his cynicism.
He knew that he shouldnât. The logistics of it would be a nightmare, but he offered to take her soul, knowing that it would land him in another debt were he to approach a broker to resurrect a foreign soul. It was an offer made on impulse after she admitted to fearing the unknown that he knew well enough, and he hadnât been thinking much about life after vengeance. Because he had never envisioned a different future for himself, he told himself that he probably wouldnât mind working for Fioraâs reincarnation if that was what she wanted.
Despite himself, he felt her absence when she was removed by Jeanne, whom he didnât resent for the deed. Something like this had been bound to happen. He knew that she would be backâhe would do everything in his power to retrieve her and everyone else they had lost. But then she sent him a letter, apologizing for leaving him, and he was frankly speechless that she would assume responsibility for something that wasnât even her fault.
He expected that anyone and everyone in the Realm would kill if push came to shove. Upon her return, Fiora admitted that she would have killed to survive so that he wouldnât have been left behind. Words could be pretty and just as false, but he found himself believing her, and the admission earned her a massive helping of his respect in spite of the disaster that could have wrought for the competition. She wasnât so tied down by her values that she would lie there, die for what was ostensibly the right thing, and leave behind the people for whom she had promised to stay.
He didn't judge anyone who did just that in the Realm. But coming from Fiora, who knew about his family situation and why he had grown up so bitter, this felt different.
She wasnât blinded by righteousness in the way that his father had hurt him and his mother when he was a child. She was naĂŻve, but at least she still had heart that he himself had cast away for the sake of doing what was necessary in his mind. While a terrible participant for the competition, she wasnât a terrible person. In the end, he gave her his trust and gratitude with the locketânot that he'll ever admit that part.
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I say that, but I think what they had was just right for them.
Rufus didn't necessarily suspect Ange of much so much as he didn't believe she was as meek as she initially appeared. Her PHS data included a quotation about running away and some unusual skills like picking locks. She had to have some kind of fire in her, even if she just stood there and took Yona's mallet to her face. In spite of his wariness, he reacted purely to what she gave him, which was why he declined to share the details of his role with her later.
He caught a glimpse of her dinosaur adventures. His suspicion continued to grow until she started asking very particular questions about his agreements in the Realm. Then she left the manor all on her own and he knew at that point that she was calculating. He chose not to say anything, because he didn't see the point in wasting time on this if she wasn't interested in working with him.
And because she wasn't making a move, he locked her out of his role when Lup sat them down. He doubted she would turn against them, but if she wanted to appear unassuming still, he wasn't going to chase her down to hand out free information.
She finally unveiled a week later and he accepted her proposal right away. He also had an emotional investment in the matter regarding Dorothy, so Ange gave him a convenient excuse to work harder. They saved a lot of time from here on out, though he didn't consider their few encounters in the past a waste when they had clearly been sizing each other up. It all worked out in the endâliterally. Pity that it didn't happen soon.
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Kano: Alright, yeah
Kano: What do you want?
Kano: Hello??
RUFUS NEVER RESPONDED AND KANO WAS SO ??? that's why he gave Rufus charades
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He had no idea what was going on with Kano during the one trial, but he voted for someone else, because he didn't think Kano was guilty and thought people were wasting time fixating on him. Kano's moody behavior afterward was less impressive, but Rufus did believe everyone, including himself, shared the blame for not finding the true culprit.
Despite his lack of understanding as to why, it was unsurprising when Kano stabbed Jeanne. On the other hand, it was surprising when Shiro delivered the message that led to the stone. This was one of the best payments Rufus received in the Realm and he approached the subject of Kano with that belief, because that stone helped bail his group out of his CYOA (Claire the NPC was unconscious and Rufus enraged her into awakening). He thought Kano had a lot to offer and that was why he wrote to him upon unlocking the messaging function.
He was very attentive when he received the charades. When asked, he could imitate the whole thing! However, he only had one hand and had to constantly borrow somebody. Actual joke letters to others notwithstanding, he always took what Kano had to tell and/or show him seriously. Kano was rather wild and out of control, but Rufus' opinion of him was fairly flattering, considering.
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He thought that Bucky receievd undue flack for suggesting that he was suspicious during the first trial. He was, in fact, suspicious! And that wasn't even a proper accusationâmerely a suggestion. Amid a sea of emotional appeals about his character when they all barely knew each other, he appreciated that Bucky was being realistic, even if he showed himself as something of a disaster over the weeks.
For Rufus, who chose to have his own arm replaced out of necessity for the job, they approached the subject of their limb loss differently. At the same time, they were able to discuss the matter casually due to their personal experiences. While the differences in their technology meant that the maintenance process was likely dissimilar, he did put out the pointer or two in the kitchen as a way of looking out for Bucky.
The time he amputated his own hand, Bucky was one of the people who took the news most gracefully. Bucky asked questions, but didn't voice judgment on Rufus' decision. There was no admonishment about not asking for healing or how poor his judgment wasâit was an adult conversation where facts were stated and Bucky went on to talk about something partly related. Fun fact: Although Rufus mimed that his left hand was dominant, the truth was that he was ambidextrous, so it wouldn't have mattered to him which hand he lost.
Rufus didn't linger for long, because he could see that Bucky was grieving in his own way. Bucky was much more emotional and personal with everyone than Rufus ever was, but that wasn't a point of contention for them. He did think that Bucky could be naive at times, what with how he attempted to cheat the execution, but his dedication to finding the culprits without being totally clouded by his emotions was a plus.
He did feel bad that Bucky died in his stead that week. (The process by which people voted for him was very bad and Rufus would have been sorely unimpressed if he hadn't gone in without expectations.) While Rufus wanted to retrieve as many of the lost as possible, he also would have accepted a partial result, because reality was seldom so kind. Bucky just happened to be one of the few participants he especially wanted to do right by.
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It helped that she was forthcoming with information and able to make reasonable decisions regarding the usage of the healing gun. The week he gave up his hand, multiple participants asked why he hadn't asked to be healed and he answered that his injury hadn't been lethal. He both respected and supported Ochako's decision, to say nothing of begging for something that hadn't been offered. In a way, it felt to him that Ochako had more sense than half the participants on this matter.
On the other hand, he did think that she was a touch naive in a way that wouldn't be good for her survival in a competition of this nature. She was someone who would die if it came down to sticking by or betraying her morality. He didn't agree on a personal level; however, she was entitled to her beliefs, so he just didn't say anything.
How she reacted to him on a couple occasions baffled him, because it would have been silly to dismiss a participant when there were only so many of them with diminishing numbers every week. While he treated her largely the same as everyone else, a part of him was able to relate to her dream when they shared memories. He, too, must have been driven to tears at some point in his desire to help his dying mother. It wasn't his business, but his advice was that she should never feel ashamed for wanting to support her family.
That was a part of her he respected. She was down-to-earth and honest about her intentions . . . if a little too nosy.
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Rufus didn't exactly bend over backwards to do his tasks as the Pawn in secrecy. The confidentiality clause was that he wouldn't let anyone know about his role; as long as he avoided that, he could be as lousy at coming up with excuses as he wanted. That he wanted secret information nobody else knew was a load of baloney, because such information would've been useless to him. It was just a reason to get her to talk, though Hikaru used this bizarre equation to arrive at the correct answer that he disliked wasting time.
Before that, though, he thought that she talked too much. Her heart wasn't in the wrong place, but she cared about fairness too much in an unfair existence. Rufus, who grew up disadvantaged all his life, didn't carry such lofty ambitions.
However, her strong values were accompanied by the desire to understand. How she approached Rufus set her apart from the masses, because she never tried to push her beliefs onto him once they got settled in their arrangement. Her desire to understand him was what really kept their relationship aloft, seeing as they interacted beyond the times he needed her for a task.
It was during their exchange of twenty questions that he came to understand her perspective better. Her memories of the Test were especially important, because he witnessed that her motivations were grounded, no matter how lofty her ideals. She fought for herself, and she condemned the way of htinking that would sacrifice those who were left behind for a cause. Rufus, who was abandoned for similar reasons as a child, was impressed by her words and the actions taken to back them. Of all the people with similar values as she, he arguably liked her the most.
Then he had to kill her! It was a job, so he didn't fight it. His main plan was to kill her as painlessly as possible. Approaching her earlier that week was strange, and he deliberately chose not to get too closeânot because he feared contracting her condition, but out of consideration for her, stemming from the fact that he was plotting to take her life during curfew. If she had a question, he answered out of the same consideration, rather than as part of their agreement.
He respected all of her requests that night, including the wish that he live. They weren't close, but he wasn't interested in causing unnecessary anguish by hacking her up and then leaving her out in the open. He didn't like the job, but he chose to do as the task demanded for the end it would promise. Even though he wasn't emotionally open nor warm, he refused to abandon her heart to a cause like an irresponsible person.
He had every intention of accepting responsibility for her actions at the time of her return, at which point he was able to confess what he'd done for the doxxing task. Even without that requirement, he would have told her everything she wanted to know. And because he took her life, he refused to accept thanks from anyone for willing to do the dirty work: Regardless of his intentions, it wasn't something to be celebrated.
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They had a respectable start where she asked what he was doing prior to their arrival at the Realm. He answered honestly, and she didn't make a big deal out of his bloodthirsty reply. Instead they struck up a deal to keep an eye on the Realm, so it was ideal as far as first meetings went for him.
Their circumstances frequently mashed them together and he was there for the maidenly moments that, while he could not relate, he could vaguely understand. He didn't hold being tossed in public view that one week against her, because of the extraordinary effects in play at the time, and was inwardly pleased that she didn't seem to harbor a grudge like a sensible person.
Many of their encounters went back to something Jeanne said early on: "I understand, but I disagree." They disagreed a lot. He knew this would be the case from the time she first said it: His goal was, coincidentally, the same as hers in that he wanted to help and work toward collecting nova to save everything, but they departed in that he wanted to do it with as minimal socialization as possible due to the recent revelation of Tristan's betrayal that had inflamed his trust issues.
Jeanne stressed that she wasn't so naive as to think everything would be dandy, and even mentioned that she'd crushed dreams in the past to know that helping can cause harm elsewhereâand that that wouldn't stop her from continuing to try. It was a conflicting answer for Rufus, who once was on the receiving end of such harm, because she was acknowledging the consequences of her actions in the same breath. He couldn't disavow her for that. She would say that things with which he inherently disagreed, only to follow up with more things that would turn the former halfway around, and this was rather illustrative of their overall CR throughout the weeks.
After a point, it felt like she was being contrary every time he said something, which was when he started defusing his annoyance by leaving. At the same time, she would always ask after him and encourage him to forge friendships with other participants, which he honestly could not fathom for himself amid his trauma's haunting. In a competition where stakes were high, he felt watching his faith be torn into shreds before him would be inevitable and refused to let that come to pass. One of the reasons he never walked away for good was Jeanne's demonstration of her belief in fairness by backing off after saying her piece.
He was also conscientious of all that she'd done for him, like preparing food during their curfew in the cafeteria. Were it anywhere other than the Realm, he would've helped himself to the free servings immediately. He hesitated for the aforementioned reasons, but in the end he gave into the conditioned desire not to waste food [that had been prepared for him, no less]. The contrition she felt from him was his guilt for relentlessly pushing her away, born from his inability to trust her or anyone else in the Realm for that matter.
Let's rewind for a bit, though. Jeanne could be vocal and downright aggressive in her persistence, but she wasn't the sort to bemoan the unfairness of the competition. She was one of the more level-headed participants in that respect, and he knew it by the time she became Kano's executioner. She returned to the site "to think and to ponder," and he let her have his silence in deference to her appreciable ability to do what must be done. Dirty work never feels good; in fact, it's suffocating and heavy. But she endured it, and he respected her for it.
He just wished that she would stop fixating on his happiness, on which others had previously trampled and he himself had thrown away so many years ago. She understood, but she disagreed. While the things she said were kind, some had an insidious effect in that he felt increasingly ignored, triggering his learned reaction to clam up and soldier on in order to preserve precious time and energyâa twisted coping mechanism built on the learned helplessness fostered by his mentors, who had written off his outbursts over their manipulations at every turn, all the way to present day.
Even so, the week they experienced each other's memories solidified the image of Jeanne in Rufus' mind. He, who withheld personal details and resented the attempts of others at filling in the blanks with their imagination, could empathize with the plight of the saint. He had also killed Hikaru by then, which made Jeanne's refusal to cry all the closer to his heart. He didn't think her pitiful, because he didn't think himself pitiful. They were just two people who chose to live in the reality of their decisions, and he liked that about her. He liked that she wouldn't try to justify her actions by pulling the justice or saint card. He liked that she was groundedâhow real she wasâand could then infer the depths of her hurts.
Living in that reality, he didn't begrudge Jeanne for removing Fiora. It was premeditated murder, but they were both guilty of that sin. And they both knew and bore the weight of that sin on their own. There was no reason to kick up a fuss about losing Fiora; there was only reason to work harder to ensure the retrieval of the lost, even if that wouldn't erase what they'd done.
Toward the end, he was weary. His faith had been shredded by comedy, and he poured what energy left that he could muster into stabilizing the Realm, letting Jeanne have her way with his arm at the first aid station. He was uncomfortable, but too tired to care and didn't rate his comfort to be worth the trouble. Better Jeanne than the majority of the participants. For all the essential similarities and how much he respected her, he believed what dissimilarities they had between them rendered them somewhat incompatible.
Does any of this make sense.
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He didn't pry for two reasons: 1) her story with her sister was deeply personal, and 2) he didn't need to hear more than was necessary for the task. All the same, her insistence on being fair to him, despite his comparative lack of faith in anyone, had promise in their deal to exchange information.
She seemed distraught about their mounting losses, so he raised the subject of the graveyard to appease her by drawing from his own experiences with the Underworld. It didn't go as intended, but at least this became a point of discussion in the near future (during which he talked his way around knowing about the messaging function as a member of Wolf's team, ah).
Then the CYOA happened! They had debated before on how to absorb all the information they received, and even here their differences became apparent. Rufus wanted to do anything and everything necessary to graduate while the rest rebelled at the thought of another sacrifice. In the end it sort of worked out and he focused on discussing business once they were resting in the same area at the inn. Their ways of thinking were differentâhe even thought she was rather green at times, though that didn't diminish her ability to perform as a participantâbut she always treated him fairly and respectfully, so he treated her well by his standards.
They weren't especially close, and he was fine with that. She was a kind soul who thought the healing gun wouldn't have gone to waste on him, no matter how much he disagreed. Subconsciously, she was one of the people he didn't regard with as much suspicion as the masses: She was just so very genuine in their encounters, and wasn't the type to lather her message in pretty words.
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For their similarity in advancing forward, the dissimilarities were where they departed greatly from each other. While Soo-won ruminated on their losses, Rufus preferred to focus solely on what lay ahead, mostly because he was by then long accustomed to living for an objective as opposed to himself. He wasn't interested in taking down the professional boundaries he'd set earlier for his own protection, either. It was a combination of formed habit and refusal to bare himself to anyoneâparticularly to someone as seemingly shrewd as Soo-wonâso, as two people who would meet once in a while and later daily, there was a social disconnect.
His role was the main reason that Rufus would give Soo-won personal answers. Knowing that doing so was manipulative, the boundary between them became even clearer and he looked to Soo-won as a business partner with a mutual agreement where they both benefited from each other. There were the occasional instances where it felt as though Soo-won truly understood on a personal level where Rufus was coming from, but that just made the aforementioned boundary all the more important to maintain. He bluffed about requiring a soul in exchange for friendship, because that didn't even make the bottom of the list of things he could want from anyone.
His return from the CYOA was the moment where Soo-won stood out from the majority by providing aid as needed without dragging ego into the bloody mess. Rufus lost a chunk of what sliver of faith he had in some participants here; however, Soo-won rose where they fell in a show of genuine care. Although he chose not to act on that subtle shift of feeling, he did like Soo-won then insofar that his wariness, in spite of still lingering, was no longer accompanied by as much distrust. (And he definitely turned a blind eye to that with his tendency to trust in people subconsciously.)
But he still held the belief that Soo-won would smash betray if necessary. Such was the nature of the competition. He wouldn't have been mad, because he did say repeatedly that he had no expectations (except he did and pretended he didn't, to the detriment of his sensitive sanity).
All the same, there was that buried fondness. Rufus could see through Soo-won's thinly veiled excuses to spend time with him, and he indulged most of them, chief of which were the dressing changes and sitting down at the lobby after a hard trial; he justified the latter as returning the favor for the former. It wasn't that he felt closeâfar from it, especially once the memshare week solidified that they existed on different planes of thought and classânot to mention he himself was preventing them from making any headway on purposeâbut that, in a sense, he rather liked this dangerous client of his.
On the week of the mass poisoning, Rufus lost the vital memory of why he had become so distrustful. Trusting his previous judgment, he minded the boundaries he'd set weeks prior, but there were moments that he lapsed and gave into his kinder nature by boldly preparing tea for Soo-won. He didn't think that Soo-won was incapable of self-care so much as that Soo-won deserved some rest for all the work he was surely doing in the background . . . and Rufus still had his traumatic memories of caring futilely for his ailing mother.
Soo-won apologized fairly often to him for things that ranged from inconsequential to reluctantly meaningful. And wasn't that the biggest surprise, even bigger than those occasions of asking after him: Rufus in all his years had received next to no apologies for all manner of events he had had to endure, and certainly none where it would have mattered during his formative years, resulting in his bitter cynicism. Compared to that, Soo-won was so conscientious that Rufus didn't know what to do with the note that contained a heartfelt apology for dying and leaving him behind, so he chose not to react to the words in front of anyone.
They were unnecessary, he thought, but they still moved him, even if he didn't think of them as friends. The note did have a hand in making him far, far more lenient with Soo-won in less pressing matters once the lost were retrieved, which is frankly an impressive feat when taking into account that meeting the role group had tanked 99% of his faith in everything related to the Realm by that point. Who knew that an unprompted apology would be so meaningful?
This was all over the place. I'm gomen.