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𓆩༺✧༻𓆪
Thinking about college student Logico, unintentionally kicking off his memory rewrite through simple enough "what-ifs".
Merely revisiting, merely daydreaming - again and again - the day he first saw the gorgeous boy he never grew brave enough to talk to.
So many scenarios and possibilities to consider, if only he had been.
𓆩༺✧༻𓆪
Thinking about college senior Logico still reminiscing about Mystery Boy, whom he hadn't seen around campus for a long time now, and imagining the kind of person he might have been:
Mystery Boy was enigmatic, Mystery Boy was gentle, Mystery Boy had the warmest smile.
Mystery Boy was forever wearing an amazingly well-tailored black wool jacket, had the most unbelievable hair and piercing emerald eyes.
𓆩༺✧༻𓆪
Thinking about college graduate Logico, who enters the workforce and makes a living with what he knows to be his passion, yet quickly feels so inexplicably empty that his mind starts to feel the pull of something beyond itself.
Getting lost and tangled in worlds where perhaps, that secret society he had heard so many rumours about at college was - in truth - a circle of conspirators working to denounce the very concept of logic itself.
A vile idea..! Intriguing, sure, but vile.
Maybe he and Mystery Boy could have investigated the matter together.
𓆩༺✧༻𓆪
Thinking about Deductive Logico, finally meeting Inspector Irratino when, at this point, the genuine memory of Mystery Boy has been reworked and recorded over so many times that it takes Logico days, weeks, to even make the connection.
The realisation of which, he is hit by as by a ton of bricks.
𓆩༺✧༻𓆪
Thinking about Logico in his initial adventures with Irratino, subconsciously beginning to fill in more and more details about the real person into his memories:
Irratino was refreshingly mischievous, Irratino was rich, Irratino carried some heavy personal history.
...Irratino was also kind of an airhead who believed he could abstract truth from random chance and derive clarity from chaos.
(Of course, the only logical conclusion to draw about such an illogical individual was that he would have been nothing less than the very heart of the esoteric conspiracy... which college senior Logico appeared to grow increasingly amenable to with every reimagining - for no related reasons whatsoever.)
(At the same time, the Mysterious Irratino - much like his current counterpart - now sought out Logico's company, as the mental image of his smile grew warmer and brighter than it had ever been before.)
𓆩༺✧༻𓆪
Thinking about grief-stricken Logico spending the first however many days following Irratino's apparent death wrapping himself within shifting realities as within a blanket.
The wishes were desparate, the memories a bone that healed wrong each time and grew more fragile for it.
The more determined Logico was to hold on to the worlds in which he had received so much more time to spend with Irratino, the more they came apart at the seams.
"You're remembering everything wrong."
(In those moments, however, when he resented himself the very most, Logico felt in his core that his college senior self would have still made himself a traitor to even his deep affection for Irratino, merely out of unwavering loyalty to reason. No matter what it would continue to take from him.)
𓆩༺✧༻𓆪
Thinking about....
Logico sighed, his mind now shifting toward his current self.
He looked at the cards he was placing down in order to solve another murder, having begun to try his own hand at all of these unreasonable practices in Irratino's absence - perhaps, in some mildly disconcerting effort to honour the dearly departed.
And yet still Logico kept going back, still filling in details, still trying to find meaning in the kaleidoscope of his broken memories.
What if, after everything that happened, or had indeed never happened, college graduate Logico began - as he did now - to look to the stars for answers?
What if he too had, in so doing, managed to discover the greater truth behind not only the school's history, but behind the nature of truth itself... and his own emptiness?
What if the final answer to all of his lifelong searching was that the Logical and the Irrational - contradictory as they may appear - simply belonged together? What if he could have reconciled with what he had lost?
...What if he could have just mustered up the courage to ask this gorgeous, mysterious, wonderfully illogical person their name all those years ago?
What if, indeed. But he hadn't.
"You still met me eventually."
But not soon enough.