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Old habits die hard, perhaps that’s the reason he continues to sleep despite having no need to anymore. Bugsters don’t sleep, they don’t eat. It’s not as if they can’t, they just… Have no need to. He supposes pretending is nice, sometimes.
Most of his greatest ideas for video games come from dreams, after all. And, even if he doesn’t need to… What’s more satisfying than going to sleep knowing you did a wonderful job, once again?
Kuroto smiles (full of himself as always), and in the commodity of the DoReMiFa Beat booth, he lays down on the couch, closes his eyes and sinks into the soft embrace of Morpheus.
He “awakens” in CR.
Everybody is there, and he finds himself utterly disappointed for dreaming about these fools, this dream has no value in his book. He cannot take ideas from them; if he could he would have done so already! He contemplates forcing himself to wake up, but oddly enough, he’s legitimately curious as to where this would lead him, he decides not to, this could be interesting.
There doesn’t seem to be anything worth of his attention going on, Emu, Hiiro, Poppy and Kiriya are sitting around the table, Taiga is close to them, standing right besides Poppy, one of his hands on the table. Parad and Nico are resting on the couch, they don’t seem to be paying attention to where the conversation is leading, they’re more focused on some game Nico has been playing lately, whenever she loses, Parad snatches the console away from her to play his turn, and it goes on for a bit, it takes a while for any of them to actually lose a live, but they seem to be content enough with just watching the other play.
They have yet to notice him, and he’s awfully mad that they don’t notice his presence within his own dream, if this is a joke, it isn’t funny!
He walks towards the table, despite being relatively close to their table he can’t exactly hear their conversation until he gets close enough to be standing right besides Emu, who suddenly starts laughing at something Poppy has said, Kiriya is on the same state, Hiiro doesn’t seem to laugh, but his expression has lessened ever so slightly, Taiga has a smirk on his face and even Parad and Nico seem to be paying attention now, he’s confused, very much so. Just what in the world are they speaking of?
“… He was rather cute, too,” Poppy begins, she closes her eyes for a couple of seconds before opening them again, her face has lit up and there’s a bright smile on her face. “His room was always very messy, paper all over the place, most of them were designs and doodles, seems like he had an active imagination even at that age.”
Just who in the world is she speaking of? He forgets he’s in a dream briefly, overcome with curiosity about this individual unknown to him.
“He never did his chores! And always got mad whenever someone moved his stuff, he behaved well despite that, a very quiet boy.” Poppy continued narrating before closing her eyes again.
“Who would’ve thought he was the quiet kind, right? Nothing like nowadays!” Kiriya joked, Emu agreed while nodding his head with a big grin, it seemed like Nico had moved closer along Parad, she was now standing by Taiga’s side, while Parad was right next to her.
“No way, that creep? A quiet and well behaved boy? I call bullshit on that!” Nico protested while pointing at Poppy, despite the fact that she knew the Bugster couldn’t exactly see her.
“It’s not very uncommon for people to change, Nico,” Retorted Emu with a smile, nodding his head towards Parad. “We’ve all changed, in one way or another, subtly or not, a change is a change.”
“But I’m very sure these memories are accurate! He was always an eccentric kid when no one was watching, he had some… Interesting collections and hobbies.” Poppy continued to speak, Kuroto had yet to butt in, despite wanting answers to all his questions, he found it difficult to control his body within this dream, odd, he usually had total control over his dreams. “We can trust this information, right?”
Almost as if she had finally noticed Kuroto’s presence, the Bugster turned to look at Kuroto, the smile never disappearing from her face.
“These are his mother’s memories, after all.”
Kuroto was stunned.
And it finally dawned up on him.
The boy she had been speaking of, was him.
“MOM!” To make things worse, he hadn’t called out Poppy’s name, but he had said /mom/. All the eyes in CR turned to look at him, and he felt the shame creeping up his back, he felt as if he had just accidentally called his teacher /mom/ in front of the class, and in return, he was met with the exaggerated laughs of everybody in the CR.
Even Hiiro was laughing at his misspell, how very humiliating!
Dan Kuroto woke up drenched in sweat, breathing heavily and with his heart beating so fast he thought he’d hit a “Game Over”, he wasn’t one to experience fear, he was one to induce fear in others!
His mind was truly terrifying, to think he’d imagine herself calling Poppy Pipopapo mom in front of them, suddenly, he felt very sick and all the shame from his dream crept to his self in the real world.