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[ Knock knock knock on Terry's front door!! Is anybody home? If yes, great! It no, also great, because he gets a free doorknob out of this if nobody answers in the next three seconds.

It's 10 PM. ]

[ ghhhhhh

Terry can tell who it is by the smell alone and he really doesn't want to open the door, but it seems Kano is prone to doing things that Terry doesn't like, so he might as well get it over with, so he opens the door. ]

What do you want...

Hi, hi~! I came back to play! I knocked on the door and everything!! How're you feeling today??

[ He followed Terry's directions and everything! He's also very loud, but he looks fine, especially compared to yesterday. ]

... Are you a masochist or something...? Why are you even back here? Can you not take the hint and stay away?

[ What kind of person just waltzes to the front step of someone's house that nearly killed them.

???? ]

[ Kano laughs, because yeah, maybe he's a masochist? He hands Terry a ketchup packet. ]

Like I said, I came back to play! Now come on, come on, get your shoes on~

[ At least Terry feels less stressed today because the pressure from the truth mechanism is now gone. It still doesn't make him feel better about Kano's... everything though. He looks down at the ketchup packet with even more confusion and attempts to give it back to Kano by attempting to put it back into his hand. ]

Aw, don't be shy! C'mon, here, take it~

[ Rejecting a gift is rude, Terry!! Kano shoves Terry's hand back; he can put the ketchup packet in that condiments drawer if he really wants to, okay? It's just important that he takes it. ]

[ Terry has no choice but to take the ketchup packet, but he's incredibly suspicious about it. He's starting to wonder if it's somehow bugged with a recording device because outrageous things happen in 2029 and he can't rule that out, so he'll squint at it to see if he can pinpoint anything weird about it. ]

[ It's a McDonald's ketchup packet, except everything's written in French. Terry doesn't need to pinpoint to tell that about it, but Kano waits patiently while Terry scrutinizes his newly owned ketchup. ]

So? Does it pass the test??

[ Terry walks back in the house, closes the door, and then opens the door again. He did put the ketchup in the condiment drawer, but moreover, he hates how his paranoid tendencies are coming back. This sucks. ]

It's weird how you come to my house all smiling and asking to play when I nearly killed you just the other night.

[ He admits it, but he doesn't really feel as guilty about it when he should. ]

Usually, people would... you know... stay away? Plot their revenge to do it discreetly? Unless you somehow morphed your face to look like you're smiling when you're actually not.

[ Since he knows Kano can either shapeshift, make illusions, or cause Terry to hallucinate. ]

[ Haha, how silly! Kano just grins at Terry. ]

Hm? What's the "usual" matter? 'sides, you didn't kill me, right?

[ He was right, Kano thinks, when he said Terry half-asses things and was met with silence and being flung into a wall. That's basically admitting it right there. ]

You're just that sort of person~ A good kid! But one that thinks violence is the answer to everything— and that's just no good! Not in this society!! So let's go play~!!

[ ...

Terry thinks to himself whether Kano has any self-preservation at all, but then yeah. He does. In the most irritating manner that rubs Terry the wrong way. He's not as full of energy as the previous day, whether it be loud or quiet, because his body's telling him to go drink blood soon and he needs to go and kill some animal in the forest or something discreetly and probably get poisoned later. Rei is being depressed in the house and not making blood packets like in the awful light novel serialization of "I Vicariously Live With My Little Sister's Blood Inside Me" that exists inside Hirajiro's bookstore, so he's running out of time. Despite that, he feels no sense of urgency. It's just something that happened way too often that Terry doesn't panic about it anymore. he just hates how tired he feels. ]

If I say I'm busy, you're probably gonna do something stupid that'll make me want to throw you again, right?

Mmhm, yep, that's right~! So how 'bout you save us both the time and effort and put your shoes on? And a jacket! And maybe a hat.

[ Even if Terry doesn't say he's busy, or regardless of what he says or does overall, Kano is here to do something stupid and Terry wanting to throw him is just his own temper flaring up. The quickest way to end this would be to throw Kano across town here and now, but so long as he doesn't die, Kano will come back, annoying little bugger that he is; he's made that clear, standing on the front steps like he is right now. ]

[ I see Card wants to make yeeting Kano a recurring thing...

Honestly, even if it wasn't Kano, Terry doesn't feel like going outside to hang out with people. Well, maybe in this situation that would be under quotation marks, but it is clear that Kano would just do something stupid that would probably irritate Terry to no end, but you know what. Fine. This feels like a necessary evil.

So he closes the door again, gets his hoodie jacket, leaves a paper note on Kido's door that he'll be out, puts his shoes on and leaves through the door, locking the door behind him. ]

Where are we going?

[ His nickname's Cricket but he's more like a cockroach, real hard to stamp out permanently.

Kano waits patiently while Terry does what he needs to do, pulling back away from the window by the time Terry comes out again and locks the door. ]

Hmm... What's the highest point in town? Is it the school? Let's hang out on the school roof, like in the animes! Also, here—

[ He said to bring a hat! So he pulls one out of his jacket pocket to put on Terry's head; it's a plain baseball cap and smells slightly of cigarette smoke. ]

[ It may smell only slightly for normal people, but it reeks for Terry, so he immediately takes the hat off and puts it over Kano's head. This is also why he hates smokers and will never smoke anything himself. ]

It stinks like cigs. I'll just use my hood. What's the point anyway? It's already dark out and it's not even remotely cold.

[ Kano takes the hat off his head and shoves it back into his pocket; he never wears hats and the smell of smoke is distracting, so it's his hood that goes up too, leaving his eyes to shine red underneath it. ]

Alright, let's go, let's go~

[ He walks around Terry and proceeds to place two hands on Terry's back to march him towards the schoolhouse. ]

[ Terry is pushed and he walks along after putting his hood up too. Two guys with black hoods up that may obscure their faces in the dead of night. Totally not suspicious. He knows that there will be guards at the school too, since it's not Lockdown yet.

Yeah, he doesn't want to deal with the guards, so he'll hold onto Kano's arm and zoom like usual at his top speed through the town, hops onto the top of the school fence, and jumps off it and ta-da. They're at the school rooftop. Here, he'll let go of Kano so he can stand on his own two feet. ]

You like high places?

[ jfc he hates when Terry does that; it feels like his arm's going to get pulled out of his shoulder socket at any given moment, and Kano stretches his arms over his head to make sure everything's in its proper place and not about to pop out. ]

Man, you sure are impatient, aren'tcha? Nothing wrong with a little stroll, you know? You're gonna miss out on so much focusing just on point A and point B...

[ Don't expect answers to your questions, Terry... Kano walks over to the railing and sticks his arms through the bars, letting his hands hang and catch the breeze. ]

[ Maybe he'll consider not doing that if Kano stops being irritating... ]

Does it even matter? Since you keep talking like nothing does.

[ He's already considering tossing Kano to the lake from here, which he can probably do easily... but that would make the trip to the rooftop an absolute waste since he could have just done that from his house, so. He's spared... for now.

Terry also goes to the railing and leans on it. The breeze is nice. Even if Kano doesn't, Terry's the one who likes high places here, so he'll just enjoy it for the time being. ]

[ You can't stop a person's nature.

Terry's question apparently doesn't warrant a response more than one of those usual shady grins of Kano's, because that's all he does, standing there reaching his arms out through the bars and letting the faint miasma of darkness concentrate on his fingertips for a moment, before pulling his hands back through and sticking them inside his pockets. ]

"Nothing in life matters," or something like that...?

[ Kano stands back, and lifts both arms up, hands curled into fists and pointing at Terry's chest. ]

Here, here, pick one~ Left or right?

A nihilist, then.

[ Maybe, in some other world, that's how he would have lived. Terry shakes his head a little and looks down at Kano's hands. He's not sure what he did with that wispy black fog thing, but he's still curious, so... ]

Left.

[ Kano keeps his fists closed. ]

Your left or my left?

[ Terry taps Kano's left hand. ]

This one.

[ Kano opens his left hand aaaaaaaaanndd

it's empty!

After a beat, he opens his right one too, and it's also empty. Both empty hands get shoved back into his pockets, while Kano has this very expectant look on his face while he watches for what Terry's reaction would be. Come on, don't disappoint him. ]

10/1;action

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