Drinks went down fast — fast enough, as it were, to try and drown the events of the day. An admirable attempt, truly; a futile one, as well.

Both parties regarded one another with that cool, faux-innocence that came inherently with possessing a gift or surprise for another person. Drinks were sipped, smalltalk was made, hearts remained guarded despite the nature of their respective relationships. Esper James remained worried, the momentary frown done away with if only so that she could keep up appearances for her distressed damsel; twin shades of want battled in her heart, the want of truth and the want of comfort.

Eventually, after the pleasant, meaningless conversation began to really circle the drain, Esper James spoke up.

"Purity... hey, Puri, boo. Uh... are you... okay?" The question hung in the air like a bomb waiting to drop, its forward-facing, innocuous nature doing little to soften the addressing of the elephant in the room. An awkward still pervaded the bedroom — Lulu looked around for a few moments before looking away; Zofia tried for a moment to put on a brave face, but faltered, and ended with that brave face cowering in Lucretia's chest; Esthrielle swallowed hard, unsure what to do but determined to support her lovers; Purity and EJ looked one another dead in the eyes, a false smile on Purity's lips and a pained half-wince on EJ's.

Purity tried anyways, God damn her; she tried anyways, even though everyone knew the jig was up. With those bright blue eyes and that medically-perfect smile she looked to Esper James, doing her best to ignore the way she could feel the smeared-then-dried mascara in the corners of her eyes as they crinkled with her smiling mask. "Ehh? Pfft, yeah, 'f course. Christmas shopping day, you know? Just... tired."

Esper James wanted to be upset. God, despite herself, she wanted to speak up and cause a scene - to remind Purity that they had agreed not to lie to one another, that they would be good girlfriends who respected one another's intelligence and right to the truth. But... the way, cutting through the lab-synthesized aphrodisiacs in the air, the scent of Purity's adrenaline came through? The way it screamed, and rushed, and howled just beneath her skin; hidden from view, but never truly hidden from a second-living? Something Purity knew? It made EJ's stomach turn itself inside-out and knot harshly, from the nausea brought on by contemplation of what could have the bubblegum beauty so fucked up.

Silence, then, for a few moments more — an elongation of the terse, icy atmosphere in the room. Then, as the three lovers looked between one another, there was a crack in the facade: a single choked, half-restrained attempt at a sob from Purity, the sort of 'khhh' one makes when they have to smile but inside they are weeping. She said nothing, but after a moment to gather herself, she gestured towards the bathroom with her head. Est and EJ understood implicitly - both stood, and entered first.

Purity came in after another second or so to bolster herself. Once she was through the doorway she closed, locked, and leaned against it, her plastered-on smile curling up at every edge as the fake face melted into her true emotions. Est put a hand out, tentatively and without surety, as Puri sunk slowly towards the tiled floor; it was Esper James, however, who rushed forward without hesitation, ghoulish strength employed for newfound purpose. EJ kept the taller woman aloft, gathered up as best as she could in her slim embrace — Purity was more than grateful for it as the tears came in earnest, the first real sob cracking her emotional dam completely.

Esthrielle hurried to join after the span of a breath, and soon the entire menage au trois was huddles together, arms and bodies nearly as entangled as their myriad emotions. Purity's tears came fast and fell hot and stinging, a burning ichor which stabbed her ducts as it welled and ran. With each expression of bottled emotion, every body-wracking expression of grief, EJ's heart felt like it was being hit by a hammer.

She had seen Purity cry enough times in her life to engrave the sound of it, and the sorrow it carried, into her own heart like an epitaph. Every time she'd seen it, it had been worse — more desperate, more hopeless, more ragged and tired and yearning for a reprieve that never came. It was awful in a way that struck her like nearly nothing else.

"Purity... Puri, hey, love... please, please, c'mere... Come on, let's... uh, get a little further away from the door, we can sit on the side of the tub, just... Please, babe..." Esper James cooed, cajoled, and did her best to comfort her lover as she led the crying woman to the bathtub; once there, she and Est worked together to lower Purity down onto the lip of it to take a seat, steadied there by two pairs of hands. Those hands' owners shared a glance between one another, silently saying what words could not right then: something was wrong wrong.

Purity cried, at length. Patiently, her beloveds waited for her to finish, holding her hands and whispering soft words of comfort and consolation all the while. Outside the bathroom, Lulu and Zofi kept quiet as the grave, neither one daring to interrupt such a storm. Finally, as the tide of tears was turned and the air settled anew, Esper James spoke.

"Purity... I—" Was all she was able to brush up, before Purity raised a hand to stop her before she went on too far. The pinkette swallowed hard, rolling her tongue around in her mouth to re-wet it after having spent such a time howling her pain to the world. Another swallow, and her eyes fixed on EJ — flicking to Est, and then between them as she spoke.

"Kr-Kristoff. My... fuck, you two, h-he was like my uncle, o-or my dad, or... Like... well, he was my actual dad's friend, but... Th-That piece of shit never loved me in the first place. So, aha, when, uh... Look, fuck it, fuck it! It's not fucking story time...!" Purity's face contorted into a rage-filled grimace, akin to a smile if everything about it were wrong. She tried to raise a hand in anger, to make some furious motion or action with it; however, it never got to that point, as Esper James stopped her before her hand left her lap. Purity screamed her emotions - once, like a bark — but then continued, calmer by only a measure of slivers.

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"Kristoff's b-been lying to me my entire fucking time here! And... A-And, and he... He tried to use me to get to you, EJ! Why? Why?! Why d-do things always seem to be about... A-About people fucking wanting to get their hands on you so bad?! Who are you? What the fuck are you? Why c-can't things be fucking... normal...! Anymore!"

To say she was distraught would be one of the most grave understatements of Esper James's long, uneventful second-life. A lump had quickly formed in the ghoul's throat as Purity ranted and raved, what once were tears of grief becoming tears of maddened, imprecise rage as Purity continued to spiral. The first-living gnashed her teeth, eyes bleary and unfocused from the moisture and exhaustion of it all; she waited a few seconds for an answer that they all knew would never come, before collapsing into a fresh round of sobbing. Ah, well.

Esper James wished she knew what to tell her lover. As far as it seemed, to her at least, she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time; she had just been the fly in so many people's ointments, and set the lives of at least two women she had grown to love completely astray by virtue of her presence. She had fucked everything up just by being there in the first place.

But, if that was true? If she had just been a bad-luck magnet for the three of them, then what could she really do about it? What could have been done in the first place? A rudimentary recollection of events - the rapid-fire series of dominoes that had fallen just-so —told her that the only things she could have done differently were things so inconsequential that she'd have never known not to. 'Don't go to the Jezze tonight'. 'Don't go dance with the girl with the pink hair'. 'Fuck it, just stay home tonight'. So on and so forth — all shit so basic, so utterly mundane, that there was no way she could have known to do anything differently. There was nothing any of them could have done differently — at least, nothing that would have still been logical to do.

And so, now they were stuck with this life — the consequences of actions, and circumstances, that had been decided for them. Most of said actions had been decided for them by a singular, ever-present corporate entity. In an infuriating way, one that played a sick parallel to Purity's own musings about EJ, everything always seemed to come back to Tsang. Everything fucking came back to Tsang, and their fucked-up, tyrannical oppression of Vitus. It was tiring.

God, everything was so fucking tiring.

EJ didn't fault Purity for lashing out; she had only done it as a result of her raw, salt-rubbed emotional wounds, and she... surely didn't mean the things she had said. Besides — even if she did? EJ's lips curled in a wry, grim attempt at a smile, her face hidden from Purity's view as the blonde came in to embrace her lovers one again. Even if Purity did mean those things, then Esper James would still forgive her. The ex-secretary had come to accept that she was more than a little bit of a pushover, and Purity needed support, not someone else to make things worse for her.

Thankfully for everyone involved, Purity didn't have very much else to really say — she babbled a bit, incoherent with rage, but nothing of substance or serious conviction came forth. Thus, fury reverted back into tears, which became a newly-sleepy woman nestled in the arms of her girlfriends, all three of them tired in the extreme from their long days out and their subsequent emotional traumatizing.

As Purity's final flock of tears wound down into whimpers and mewls of somber mien, Esper James spoke up once more - as the one targeted in Purity's diatribe, it only felt right that she clear the air first. As her gentle words slipped through the depressive fugue that now lingered in the bathroom, Esthrielle and Purity snapped to attention, surprised — and a bit uncomfortable - with the introduction of words in any sense to this place drenched in tears.

"...Hey. Love. Purity. I... phew, God. I know that shit's fucked up; I... I mean, haha, that's an understatement. Shit is so much worse than fucked up. And, for the part I played in all that, I'm sorry; really. We can, and should, t-talk about this later, once we've... both had some, eh, time to think about this. Can we go lay down together? All three of us? I..."

Esper James didn't get to finish that sentence — nor did she need to. Purity nodded her assent rapidly, head bobbling on her neck with great fervor at her enthusiasm; Est nodded, too, more measured but still with plenty of clarity. EJ found herself smiling, genuinely, though it was wry and mostly in teasing amusement.

"Good. Cool. We'll lay down, Lulu and Zofi can have some time to themselves, everyone wins... we just gotta get out there and do it. Ah, er... and, Purity? I've decided I..."

Ohhh, what a fool she was. Esper James had been thinking that maybe now would be an apt time to mention her conviction with meeting Khetnep; however, it had begun to feel less and less tactful to even mention, much less address directly. EJ swallowed hard, trying now to push past the stage fight and flight stage before she had a chance to act on it genuinely.

"I've decided I'm gonna ask Khetnep to fast-track me out into the field. I... hate being the one of us that does the least. I've gotta do something, you know?

Silence, from all parties. For a moment, Esper James worried she had fucked up.

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