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[mermaidkin]

Content warning for brainwa—honestly it was a DARK round don’t get me started.

Prelude

Hiyori is removed from the plane only for Rachel to dump him and Link in front of IT. After a concentrated initial salvo of excruciating mental pain that culminates in IT directly connecting to his mind, Hiyori accepts a few premises. He has been kidnapped. He is regularly being tortured. He will remain enslaved. All these offenses have been perpetrated by an organization that has power throughout every remotely accessible part of reality, as evidenced by the fact that IT’s connection itself shows him all of this reality, including the part where it’s getting wrecked by Noise at IT’s whim. There is not a single person, anywhere, who will rescue him. The only comfort he will ever receive is whatever type comes from the hand that feeds him.

(This is not even easy to deny in the home universe that Hiyori poetically calls “the world of mermaids” – his parents’ lack of honest love left him unsure how to meet others, until Ikuya Kirishima became his reason to live but also the object of unspeakable feelings, and distanced himself from Hiyori more and more until dismissing him altogether.)

Because Hiyori still very much craves comfort and recoils from pain. His capacity for emotions, complicated reasoning, underneath the obedience, is essential to his usefulness. Even as his home life is designated completely worthless, he must remember those 24 hours on the plane in vivid detail, the emotions he felt and the emotions he empathetically suspected were elicited in others. Without understanding what made those strangers strong, he cannot understand what made them weak. They must know he is capable of individual hope, to despair at the sight of his compliance now.

Link had always rubbed Hiyori the wrong way on the plane, slow on the uptake and calling Tsukishima a potential murderer for being upset that Vita expected him and Amamiya to know about powers. But Hiyori doesn’t even get to choose who he hangs out with, or who he doesn’t hang out with. All that’s left to do is accentuate the positive.

Week 1

The Hosts are sent into the city on the first day, Sunday of Week 1. Caleb starts strong labelling Hiyori “Arschloch”. Karma engages him in fairly laid-back banter. Even more casually, McBurn pulls a sword – and Hiyori replies with the ice and fire rods. Eric is concerned for the Host, Lala for Estelle – who takes advantage of these distractions to cut in with her quarterstaff. Jonathan is the only one who remembers Hiyori as a friend and asks how he became such a combative company man. After expositing a bit more to “Prince Eric”, Hiyori and Link bid the Strangers good night.

They return to their current assigned quarters: A two-bedroom apartment with a shared bathroom and an LDK. The kitchen has a cabinet full of pills and a refrigerator with the ingredients for Link’s sandwiches; the television blares in the sitting area. Each bedroom contains a wailing radio. Hiyori likes to tell people he listens to the radio from 8 PM to 9 PM. It’s not exactly false. He spends most of the rest of his time at the desk, composing reports by direct connection. After being imprisoned for so long that the soothing numbness IT provides is his main balm, he is frustrated to watch Caleb and Eric decondition the cats who are still trapped on Camazotz.

Week 2

On Monday, Hiyori and Link venture out into the city. Their first order of business is retraining one cat each for starters; Hiyori happens to pick out the seventh to be deconditioned, a white cat from the Mystic Messenger universe (https://rfa-mystic.tumblr.com/image/160887315027), who is therefore designated “#7”. Eric glimpses this and asks for permission to remove the cats from the café entirely. In the library, King gets on Hiyori’s case for chatting with Link and insults him repeatedly. They go to the kitchens for pills, unsettling Kurama. After Hiyori finds a gray golf shirt to match Link, Karma calls out his lack of color, and Hiyori ends up making strong statements about the Noise he and Kurama fight as espers. Vita comes along a bit later and Hiyori despairs of ever understanding witches who remain confident even when they have no idea where Crow actually is.

Clearly needing to work off steam after all that, Hiyori heads to spar with Link in the weapons storage. Akira asks him about the project in precise detail, so this is as good a place as any to mention that most threads involve a request to watch the TV at 9:04 AM the following day, Tuesday. Facing this tempting motive or collective submission are their choices, Hiyori explains to Jonathan with a sword in his face. When McBurn shows up, Hiyori is eager to develop in a one-on-one empty-hand fight with him.

They get dinner in the dining room: Lala with Kyuu-lun first. Alluding to the truth of Kyuubey and Snachel being his two bosses, Hiyori suggests to Lala that Kyuu-lun has a higher clearance. Osomatsu shows up to have a deep discussion with Hiyori and Link about the true meaning of happiness, after which they consume their pills and wind down.

On Tuesday, the motive goes up, to the surprise of a couple Pikachu. At 11:60 PM, Jonathan eagerly calls about the motive. Knowing his answers about game-breaking wishes are vague, Hiyori steers the conversation to offering “both” Jonathan and Vita “support”, like the option to call him every single evening.

Even later that same night, Nanaki calls to make an “agreement” about the motive. By not resisting here, Hiyori believes he is complicit in Nanaki’s murder of Akira and concomitant death. Yet a sinner like him still gets called by Jonathan again, and again—

First Case

The bodies are discovered. After the opening announcement of the trial, Hiyori’s first major contribution is a reminder to King that there is no immediate danger to an innocent person if voting for the dead Nanaki and Akira; he tries to tell Lala that it won’t even damage their souls. Hiyori teases Eric about the imprints, and informs Kurama that all successful culprits are alive (not that all alive perpetrators are successful culprits). Jonathan initiates a discussion on the nature of the agreement the culprit could make.

The hosts make their own top encouraging pills and updating the accomplice rules; they reaffirm Lala’s accidental prosecution, that nothing happens to the executed dead’s souls, that Hiyori has to smile through tragedy like Eric, that Jonathan can only get the total number of votes for each suspect. (And they creep out King, which is what really matters.) Towards the end, they guide the Strangers’ votes. Finally, the hosts glorify their leader executing Akira and Nanaki’s corpses. Jonathan doesn’t call him, but Eric does, getting a lot more information about the humanoid (and… avian) adversaries.

Week 3

Hiyori is still largely stuck in the room he shares with Link, except for phone calls he receives from Jonathan. Hard at work, the hosts update the rules on Monday. On Tuesday, they announce the motive theatrically. That evening, Link ventures out to take photographs of the houses, inspiring Karma to deck them out with dolls of the Hosts on Wednesday, while Lala finally reaches the elevator with augmented clearance. Vita repeatedly pierces the Hiyori doll with the barbed wire power she calls so loathsome, explaining to anyone who will listen that going through discomfort herself justifies inflicting it on the designated face of the tormentor, and she can’t wait to see his reaction. Hiyori therefore resolves to not only ignore this, but ignore it so completely that Vita cannot even tell whether he noticed in the first place. As such, he does not bring it up with anyone, not even Jonathan during their long phone call while Vita is away on Thursday night at the Cards Against Humanity game.

Second Case

Link and Hiyori work hard on making gray candy hearts for each of the Strangers. Hiyori is quite sad that Lala, powerless and realistic and fiercely compassionate underneath it all, is the one whose life has been wasted. Vita meanwhile starts the trial off strong by flipping the hosts the bird. Hiyori advertises the wonderful sandwiches Link made. McBurn is disinterested, Eric frustrated, and Arthur completely done; King objects with less intellectual backing than Kurama. Jonathan asks why it is gray with a degree of passion that unnerves Hiyori, while Vita goes out of her way to put down Link for his hard work making these sandwiches.

The trial dismays Hiyori as many of the Strangers see nothing wrong with shooting the face of an evil mastermind and accidentally striking the enamored vessel instead. He supports Eric as one of the few voices affirming the rights of the emotionless, and is glad to inform Kurama that zero votes create a tie that would still be won by the culprit. When Karma finally calls this culprit out, Hiyori fiercely snaps at Karma that Kurama was always a joke of a Composer, and he draws what he takes as admissions from Kurama that his conduct in the case and trial was about himself. The execution’s only notable comment is that Hiyori has begun to consistently address the Kyuubey that interacted with Lala as “Kyuu-lun”.

Hiyori seriously considers the worst-case scenario: The surviving Strangers triumph, having accomplished at least that much in every single previous game; but IT is fundamentally right about the unwelcoming bloodthirsty nature of the world beyond Camazotz. Determined to fight back against this pervading sense of helplessness, Hiyori attends the afterparty; he engages in a game of questions with McBurn where this information is revealed, though his first move is to maintain the mask of merciless employee with Kyuubey. Eric is drinking and Hiyori strikes up a conversation about his marriage to Mira and past as the Fabricator, where Eric articulates a clear acceptance of love and rejection of violence while Hiyori has been conditioned to be passive about either. Jonathan is the last to come in, and Hiyori is briefly alarmed that he seems to be making a serious flirtation, but ultimately they have a more serious discussion: Hiyori just wants his friends to submit and play golf; Jonathan has realized that Hiyori is a mere pawn of a powerful torture empire, yet he is morally obligated to remain “stubborn” in the face of it.

Week 4

Come week 4, the Strangers gain access to the floor with the hosts’ unlocked two-bedroom apartment, where Eric leaves Hiyori and Link a tie and hat respectively made of the same fabric. Kyuubey announces the motive for them; a meeting is held on Tuesday. With Arthur’s power, Eric has a vision. As it’s starting to sink in that very few people besides Eric have even remotely considered the situation from the hosts’ point of view, Hiyori begins putting up a more aggressive mask intended to raise the Strangers’ Levels of Darkness. He demonstrates this in an edgy rendezvous with McBurn that night.

Visitants

On Wednesday, with no warning, the dead spill in. Without being explicitly briefed on their corporeality or the applicability of punishment, only confident that it will be completely and physically impossible for the ghosts to stay indefinitely, Hiyori and Link quickly grab axes and book it to the scene, to the huge amusement of McBurn. Since Eliza of the many surnames saw fit to seek revenge on Caleb, a bit after Lala’s arrival Hiyori makes a vague taunt about other characters’ misleading accounts of their past murdergames. (He mostly has Vita in mind.) Eric as the fabricator feels a moment of genuine fear, King pretends to be above it all and remains firmly snared in Hiyori’s trap, Caleb calls out “the little mermaid’s secrets” which drives Hiyori crazy because it’s an allegory for being closeted – Arthur doesn’t get it either. Karma is very determined to help and Hiyori dramatically proclaims that the real Hiyori Tono liked coffee. Despite this, Eric agrees to return this copy of The Little Mermaid to the unreasonably intimidating Hiyori at the pool tomorrow.

The ghosts manage to remain long enough (before the void pulls them) that Hiyori calling Proto Man cute for thinking it doesn’t matter that they’re still dead doesn’t really land. Still, he’s not shaken by Akira flipping them off and presenting the visit as a key gift of hope. Jonathan attempts to subdue Hiyori with the whip; Hiyori as much as says that their extended interaction has meant nothing to him.

Vita’s takeaway is that it’s appropriate to sneak into Hiyori’s room and leave glitter on his bed, and also throw darts at a picture of him and Kyuubey hugging. Finding it difficult to cope with experiencing the emotion of having an individual space he doesn’t want invaded, Hiyori sinks deeper into IT; he acquires an MP3 player to conveniently play him static while he is out and about. He also continues training #7, by now the only cat still brainwashed. On Thursday he returns to the pool, which he has no interest in swimming in, and aims to conduct his duties in there.

The Little Mermaid in the Glass Coffin

Eric keeps his appointment at “1-ish”, bringing along Karma; to make sure that Hiyori does not reject the copy of The Little Mermaid, Karma reads the Japanese book out loud. Karma’s flirtations push Hiyori to admit that he’s always loved Ikuya Kirishima. However, he reveals that instead of the Hosts helping Ikuya, they’re completely brainwashed into not even caring about him; Hiyori letting Eric believe that his motivations were similar to Eric protecting Mira as the fabricator, was a lie trying to draw him in, that he now hopes angers the man and raises his Levels of Darkness.

The damage to IT’s hold on Hiyori is already done. He cannot throw the item away; he already remembers what it is like to feel that it would be better to fade away than to kill a prince, to desperately want Ikuya to remember who he is. Yet his conditioned view of the world as a harsh place is the same; these passions must simply drive him harder to get the Strangers converted instead of killed. He turns the static up louder. Jonathan comes by the pool, and Hiyori validates Jonathan’s belief that Vita’s ruthlessness will carry the day while Jonathan’s love is “useless”. (This is valid. From IT’s perspective. Jonathan is the only Stranger to fight the red fog and win, while Vita’s Level of Darkness is about 13.)

“You... you're right about me, but damn, even like this you don't ever pull a punch, do you?”

Hiyori is shaken to the core. For the first time in this entire game, someone has actually understood him – that he is working very hard in the position he has. And this is immediately after he regained the yearning for recognition that’s gone unfulfilled for fourteen years. Yet to smile and thank Jonathan would be to betray this very nature being praised… right? His tongue is loosened; he affirms that he’s “never been waiting for you in a glass coffin”, meaning that contrary to many Strangers’ assumptions, a single gesture of affection is not going to result in a “real Hiyori” waking up screaming asking why the calendars say a year has passed. When Jonathan senses an attack on Vita, Hiyori discloses her multiple instances of bullying.

Third Case

Anyway, the next morning Vita and Jonathan show up murdered. Hiyori comes back into the apartment to discover a letter, which Jonathan took the elevator to deliver, leaving Vita alone with the killer. The letter itself describes his sense of uselessness turning into a suicide mission, and his grief over Hiyori who was “smart”, “didn’t take shit”, “could’ve been friends”. Hiyori finally realizes that IT actually values suffering for its own sake and loses his mind. Who the hell is he supposed to talk to about that?

There’s one person, he grimly realizes, who can understand exactly what situation he’s in: Link. Hiyori is aware that the strangers aren’t going to submit; Link frames the situation in extremely simplistic terms of force and even proposes that “You should stay back in case they try to all swarm and attack me at once. One of us needs to make sure things stay running, just in case.” Hiyori is moved that Link cares about him personally and channels this into a dark shonen determination.

At the trial, Hiyori offers Camazotz travel brochures, accepts Eric’s request to have the Incubators summon all the pets, and does little else until the execution is about to occur. Acting as the mouthpiece while Link is going nonverbal, Hiyori explains the threat of punishment. He jokes with King that Osomatsu might kill him; though he’s losing faith in the Levels of Darkness plan, Ambrosine ironically comments that she’ll wish for his eternal suffering. McBurn is looking forward to the real fight. Hiyori provides a cursory announcement that King murdered Vita and Jonathan and really doesn’t get how this works. The riot is successful, strictly speaking, and Hiyori returns to the apartment alone as Link makes his final plea at the afterparty.

Final Week

Ambrosine leaves Hiyori an apology note. At this point he has to admit the Levels of Darkness plan has no future. When McBurn visits, Hiyori challenges him to a swimming match. On Sunday, the punishments occur. On Monday, Karma returns both Hiyori and Link their swimsuits; on Tuesday, they put on a swimming show, and the match with McBurn occurs. Afterwards, Hiyori wanders into the smoking room with Osomatsu. He gets lunch with Eric, who is feeling the torture perhaps most viscerally of anyone. Arthur finds him in the library – and so does Karma, with another regain book.

On Wednesday morning, Estelle delivers the photo. Link has already received all five of his items. Hiyori proposes they use a static boombox to smuggle themselves and their possessions into the trial on Thursday. He packs his own possessions in a briefcase and folds Jonathan’s letter into his jacket pocket. #7 bites Eric when he comes in to herd the cats but accepts the situation and walks out of her own volition. The survivors discover Sho Minamimoto in a tube, victim of brainwashing nearly identical to Hiyori, and seriously consider euthanizing him but instead retrieve the young man and accept him as one of their own.

Final Trial

Eric aims a shotgun at the glass in front of the hosts when the trial commences; Hiyori winks at him. After the boombox has played, Hiyori makes a speech where he promises “one free chance to hit me right in the face”. Every single survivor cheers: Arthur, Caleb, Estelle, Osomatsu, King (with a side of nitpicking), Ambrosine, Karma, McBurn. Even Sho is excited that coefficients are getting added to the equation, and to Hiyori’s own surprise he impresses Sho by calling them “two independent variables”. Eric is the one to think about IT’s reaction to the property damage; Hiyori explains that he has decided to be smart like in Jonathan’s letter, and IT can come physically closer to be killed for all he cares.

So IT does. Hiyori takes shelter under Link’s sword, accompanied by Sho whom he urges to try reciting e. He calls to Estelle. At the revelation of the power of love, Eric freaks out because he lost his love for Mira; both Link and Hiyori comfort him. Kyuubeygrams arrive. Sho makes a charge, using e as his symbol of the power IT knows not; at his apparent success, Hiyori properly introduces himself and suggests they get ramen after all this is over. He barely has the energy to leave when the cavalry arrives.

Epilogue

At the afterparty, true to his word Hiyori gets a café drink covered in gummies from Lala and sets up a punching booth. Link promptly tries to take down the sign. McBurn reacts dryly. King gives advice that Hiyori coldy calls condescending. Akira gives him a punch in the arm, which creeps Hiyori out at first because it wasn’t scheduled, but he gets a chance to say “Vita was wrong” in all seriousness so it’s a win.

Arthur gives him a high-five. Jonathan imposes conflicted romantic and self-loathing urges, but Hiyori finally explains he wants to recommend him books. Vita is the only person to actually slap him, revealing that even on the plane she had never seen him as a “decent person”. Tsukishima shows up and Hiyori just hugs him and practically cries. Kokoro is not as interested in a warm attitude but nevertheless reassuring in presence. Kurama boops Hiyori on the nose. Seven smashes a profiterole on his face and agrees to scan him. Eric takes him out of the booth, which reminds Hiyori to talk properly with him and way more importantly track down #7. Karma finally brings him that coffee.