天神 コウ • tenjin ko. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
exaltruistic) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cultmirror2026-04-11 10:54 am
exaltruistic) wrote in cultmirror2026-04-11 10:54 am
Entry tags:
01 ✨ wk. 03.
( Across the Murmur comes a gentle voice. )
Hello, everyone. I'm Ko Tenjin. I'm from a place called Fukuoka in Japan, if it means anything to you. If it doesn't, that's fine, too.
Where I come from, I'm a psychologist. Someone who's trained to listen to your problems and help you work through them. I understand there's a need for this here, specifically.
( There's a pause, and then a vision of a small office space in Columbia University. It's been fixed up somewhat, though it seems a little barren. )
Through the help and encouragement of someone you may know, I've decided to open up 'slots' to do just that for you. My time is a bit limited, but I'd like to offer an hour or so to whoever may need it. You can try me out and if you find some value in it, we can set up something ongoing.
Payment isn't exactly necessary, but if you'd like to help me get my bearings around here a little more in terms of supplies and guidance, I wouldn't be opposed. Thank you for your time. I hope to see you soon.
Hello, everyone. I'm Ko Tenjin. I'm from a place called Fukuoka in Japan, if it means anything to you. If it doesn't, that's fine, too.
Where I come from, I'm a psychologist. Someone who's trained to listen to your problems and help you work through them. I understand there's a need for this here, specifically.
( There's a pause, and then a vision of a small office space in Columbia University. It's been fixed up somewhat, though it seems a little barren. )
Through the help and encouragement of someone you may know, I've decided to open up 'slots' to do just that for you. My time is a bit limited, but I'd like to offer an hour or so to whoever may need it. You can try me out and if you find some value in it, we can set up something ongoing.
Payment isn't exactly necessary, but if you'd like to help me get my bearings around here a little more in terms of supplies and guidance, I wouldn't be opposed. Thank you for your time. I hope to see you soon.
OOC: sign ups are here! things will be largely handwaved but i'll likely have follow up questions.
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[In his universe a lot of people are also expected to just survive and get by on their own. Tera Con Prime didn't have therapists. Therapists might have gotten in the way of everyone being cultishly devoted to a tyrant.]
So your job is to let people complain at you?
[He's not knocking it, he's just struggling to understand it. ]
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private;
Supplies. What do you need most right now?
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It can take the shape of whatever any given person needs, but its primarily based in talking with me with some input and guidance on my end.
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[Hmm. He's not sure it sounds like something he'd like. He'd spent so many years talking to the hologram simulation of his fath - of Avocato, typing out what he thought his responses back would be. But that hadn't always been helpful. It'd been an avenue of berating himself in Avocato's voice just as much as he'd used it for self-encouragement. And the whole time he'd been barely tethered to reality anyway, thanks to the decades of isolation.]
[So...is it the talking-to-someone that didn't work? Or was it the circumstances? Was it that he wasn't actually talking to a real person?]
That's, like, an actual job? That you didn't make up?
[Doubt.]
[He tries to reason out his usual attitude towards talking about his problems. Because he honestly doesn't know what's normal. His life has been far too disrupted for that by both mundane cruelty and the grand sweeping turns of a terrifyingly cruel universe. His world has its fair share of The Horrors.]
[This world is barely a revelation in how bad things can get.]
[What's normal? Was stuffing it all down and not telling the adults about it normal? Was letting himself be comforted by Ash after screaming nightmares normal? Is having screaming nightmares about being back in the time shard normal?]
But isn't it better to just deal with bad stuff by kind of...shoving it waaay down. Until it goes away? That always works for me.
[It absolutely does not work for him. He's mostly been escaping things by having a new crisis to focus every other week, on while repressing the hell out of everything.]
[He taps his chest.]
That's what you do with them, right? Pain spots. You don't - you don't touch them. And then eventually if you ignore them long enough, they go away. Which is good because otherwise you'd wind up with a whole lot of them at once.
[He's fourteen but it's almost a younger child's reasoning. He hasn't been taught how to handle pain and hardship the right way, especially because one "father" was a stoic, and the other more emotionally healthy one came into his life only recently. His social development has been interrupted, too. Multiple bouts of forced isolation will do that to you.]
So why would someone talk about them?
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[It's easy to assume that he means that he intends to keep the best for himself, and that might be true to a certain degree, but it's mostly covering his preference for earthier/muskier scented products and a good straight razor and everything he needs to take care of it.
Also he's going to go out on a limb and assume Ko has no interest in beard care.
On the topic of books, though, Johnny realizes he might already know this place a little better than he realizes.]
You're in luck for reading. This place fuckin' loves its libraries; know four of 'em off the top of my head. Just tell me what you're in the mood for, and I'll make some checkouts.
[Yes, this is implies he intends to bring them back when Ko is done with them. Just Little Anarchist Things.]
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( Therapist mode: engage. )
When you shove things down like that ... they don't truly go away. I've seen it time and time again where patients and even personal friends and colleagues will push down their pain to keep going, to get through another day or another week ... only for the problem to rear its head again, resulting in a crisis or similar.
( It's also coming from personal experience, but Ko's the therapist here. )
If you just ignore a physical wound, it'll likely get infected, right? It's the same with troubling thoughts and unfortunate things that happen in life. It needs to be acknowledged and cared for.
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[No, that's a lie. It does come back. The nightmares. And it's harder now, because he's already had a few of them here, only to wake up to moldy walls and things looking run down. So for just a moment, sometimes he thinks he really is back in the rusting derelict in the time shard. And it takes a much longer time for his heartbeat to stop hammering in his chest.]
[There's no Ash to reach for now, because he's scared of her, enough that some of his nightmares end with her ripping her way through a wall with her powers, grinning wildly, to come after him, instead of acting how he she used to - how he imagined a big sister would. There's no one to reach for at all. His crew isn't even there for him to lie to them about being okay.]
I only just have nightmares sometimes. [That end in crying, hyperventilating panic. Totally normal.] That's normal, right?
[He's probing at the edges of everything, trying to understand if this is something he should try. If he can even trust a stranger with it. But he'd only had one person he'd reached out to when he was hurting in the dark, worried about worrying the others, and he doesn't even have that anymore.]
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It's normal in the sense that it happens to a lot of people ... but you don't have to live with just putting up with it. You shouldn't have to.
( His voice is soft, but there's conviction there. )
Those nightmares ... they make you feel like you're still there, right? Even after you wake up? I can help you through that.
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( He feels a little silly, but he's a spoiled city boy who's not used to things like this in the slightest. )
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[He doubts he'll find anything about survival that is useful for their exact situation, but he'll try.]
When are you free?
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[And he's about to just leave the conversation right then and there, but -- a moment's hesitation. His energy changes, now that they aren't talking business anymore.]
...Ko?
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( Ko is completely content to ignore things. )
What is it?
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That would be a HIPAA violation.He probably wouldn't do this if it was being publicly broadcasted, either. It takes him a few awkward-silence moments to gather the wherewithal to actually say it, because even though talk is cheap and he can't guarantee it won't happen again...
...you gotta start turning over a new leaf somewhere.]
Wanted to say I'm sorry for the -- ...
[dialup_modem.mp3]
-- whatever the fuck that was, the other day.
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( He does feel somewhat relieved they got it out of the way ... )
I appreciate you bringing it up first. We can start with whatever you like tomorrow, though.
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Someone to trauma dump to!
Finally!
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[Okay, now he's suspicious. Usually people make him beg for it in the rare occasions he really wanted forgiveness.]
Just like that?
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( Now he's confused for a moment, but ... well. It clicks that Johnny might be from a much harsher place than his own home. )
What else would I need from you other than an apology?
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Perhaps appearing in a casual setting with a few drinks involved?
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...Proof? Assurance? Somethin' like that.
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( He's practically making notes just at this conversation alone. Picture him clicking his pen and scrawling furiously. )
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That might be good as well, honestly. I'd toyed with the idea of group therapy too ... Something more casual and less clinical in the future, depending on need and desire for such.
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cw: some mention of bad dreams/mental illness
How did you - did Ash -?
[But no, he cuts that thought off. No, even after what she did to Mooncake, even after ripping open the universe to let the nightmares in, a part of him feels like she wouldn't be sadistic enough to spout off about those terrified awakenings to strangers.]
[Cato can be afraid of her, and feel hurt, without seeing her in the same light as someone like Lord Commander.]
[No, this has to be a guess or... maybe it's a more common thing than he realized, for it to be that visceral. To have the moments after the dreams ended where he thought he still saw the same rusted walls he'd seen for decades. Maybe it's not just him.]
[His troubled reaction and confusion, like someone thinking someone else just magically read their thoughts, gives away how little he actually knows about what common reactions to trauma are. How little he knows his own reactions follow a well-documented pattern.]
It's only for a minute or two. After I wake up.
[He's been so grateful after the shard to have his right mind again, he's not aware of the strain on it. The risks of something starting. And it wasn't exactly like his time before the shard was peaceful enough to be a contrast.]
How can you help with that if it's just a thing my brain does automatically? How does talking fix it?