I see. A fairly long time. [But not nearly as long as other people, and yet he's still noticed. Then again, Wei Wuxian said he liked meeting the people here-- maybe that translates to following up more once people are gone.]
I actually received a dare to look into the statues! [Well, he basically gave it to himself, but semantics.] So I appreciate you letting me know, even if it's not good news to share. Is there anything else worth knowing about them? Oh, or rather-- truth or dare, I guess?
You know, I didn't think to ask. Hmm. I guess I'll find out if that's going to backfire on me, if I don't get it done quickly enough.
My question is: is there anything else worth knowing about the statues or the hotel that I should know about? Again, I'm pretty new here, so assume I don't know anything yet!
oh if you have sex with the same person a lot, you get paid more for it. it seems to reset after four times though, not sure why. but you'll get a small payment for one time, then a larger one the next, a larger one the next, the largest amount the fourth time.
also the more variety of people you have sex with, the more likely you are to receive something from home. i'm not sure how this works, it's what i've heard and i'm still trying to see if the house will give me anything too. i haven't gotten anything back yet!
same goes for changing your rank. the more sex you have, the more likely you'll get rewarded with a rank change (if you're low to high, but i've heard sometimes it goes high to low).
that's what i can think of off the top of my head!
Huh! It doesn't surprise me to hear that having sex with different people can get you rewarded, but it's interesting that you'd get something for having lots of sex with the same person too. Maybe something about increasing both the number of relations, but also making sure those relations deepen...? But if it was just that, why the reset?
[If the hotel (or the house; he's been told it's a distinction that matters but he doesn't know enough to know which applies when) is incentivizing certain activity, it has to benefit from those activities. There's nothing here that wouldn't fit into his existing theories of what's going on: whatever entity is responsible for their presence here is feeding off of the emotions generated by sex. Having sex with the same person multiple times would presumably result in stronger emotions. Maybe the reset is to encourage some form of branching out, like preventing them from putting all of their eggs in one basket? Or he just needs to look up poker hands, but that will never occur to him.]
I'm glad to hear that we can change ranks, though. I don't want to sound spoiled, but I would really like to have my own bathroom again.
my guess is that it's in order to keep the guests from finding too much safety in one another. whatever is keeping us here likes us comfortable but not too comfortable and feeds off that in turn. so! tiny things come up like the reset or, for instance, your lack of bathroom hahahaha
what rank and suit are you, gongzi? i'm a three of diamonds. i also use the communal bathrooms but that's common in my homeland as well so it doesn't bother me too much
I'm a three of spades. I guess I sound like I'm pretty out of touch, huh? But back home I have a three bedroom apartment to myself, so... this has been an adjustment.
it sounds like a large home! you must miss having the space.
[ three bedrooms, that's like... a medium sized house, right? ]
you'll really have to work hard to rank up, my friend! if you need any help with that, just say the word and i'll be happy to assist. i don't know how much work it takes for that to happen, it seems to happen to people spontaneously and without warning. but maybe you'll get lucky and wake up a king one day!
[He attaches a photo of a just. absolutely massive pile of crap, floor to ceiling in the basement hallway.]
I was very graciously given a lot of gifts from my fans here, but there actually isn't enough space to store it! What's the first rank that gets you out of the basement? I'd settle for that instead of going for king!
Below the floor for the 2s? You know, it's funny you mention that. Someone recommended that I not spend too much time down there, right before I got my dare to check out the statues. Sounds like there's something happening down there, huh?
looks like they were looking out for you. not that there's anything bad down there at the moment, but it's creepy and there's some magic there that plays tricks on you
[ just a pretty face, huh? he sounds like wei wuxian whenever he wants people to think he's a weak little baby. but he's not going to presume he's playing the same tune as wei wuxian...... for now. ]
does that mean i should pity you? give you mercy? you said you wanted a non sexy dare!
That's true, I did! So I guess it can't be helped.
[Game recognizes game. And despite his whining, Natori goes down to the basement anyway-- was frankly going to go down to the basement ever since he was explicitly told not to, just now he has an excuse.
The basement looks about how he'd expected it to look (gross and creepy, since the guests presumably aren't supposed to be there). He doesn't encounter any visible ayakashi, which also isn't a surprise; this place seemed to favor the subtle signs of spiritual presence over hoards of monsters crawling over each other in the basement. Hence the whispers.
It's unpleasant, but not a shock. He is intimately familiar with just how little is necessary to give an ayakashi a glimpse into his mind-- a fact the voices remind him of, of just how easy it was for Mitsuru to trap him in her illusion based on nothing more than a name and eye contact. For a job that was supposed to be easy for him, for a job that an untrained teenager needed to rescue him from. He remembers Natsume's face, red with tears that he shed over Mitsuru, knowing that if he'd been a little more careful, he could have spared Natsume from that. He remembers the unpleasant little secret he discovered in his uncle's walls, and considers whether it would have been better to let that sit undiscovered.
But this isn't his first rodeo. He's mildly annoyed that Wei Wuxian would send someone down here without knowing if they had any defenses against it; the last thing they need is to be helping the hotel along with chipping away at people's unguarded hearts. Then again, Natori isn't unprepared, so no harm done?
He comes back fairly soon after his last text, since he didn't specify how long he had to spend down there. Technically the dare said to report back on what he heard-- there's a chance that Wei Wuxian was maliciously trying to get the exact details of what the voices said to him, but he doesn't seem like the type. And if he was the type, that was good info to snoop out as well.]
Well, I did know that the basement was haunted before.
[ It's funny, really, he isn't inclined to send someone down there for the harm of it. Not really. But he was sent down there on a dare as well, had to spend an hour of his time there and did not like it one bit. So, he's been stuck with a curiosity over it too — if someone went down there, an average person with average experiences, what would they see? Hear? What problems would they face?
He got the sense that the basement wasn't as dangerous during normal times and more just unpleasant. Deeply unpleasant. And thus, he wanted to know. So, it's not malicious a dare, more just ... nosy. Deeply nosy.
But it's why he didn't specify how long Natori should spend down there. An hour was far too long for him and he doesn't want anyone to spend more time down there than they have to. It's also why he didn't hide anything when describing what the basement was like. It's bad, and he believed Natori should know that before he went down there himself. ]
yep! it's pretty bad. tell me, did you hear anything peculiar? when i went down, i heard the voices of people i loved who had died. it wasn't pleasant, but it made me wonder what others might hear.
Yes, there's some sort of ayakashi down there trying to unsettle people by looking into their hearts. [Which is what it comes down to; they're not pleasant, but again, it's hardly the first time that some ayakashi has tried to taunt him with his mistakes.] If it helps, it's almost certainly not actually your loved ones talking. More likely some ayakashi that can see into your memories and use what it finds to try to get you off balance. Please don't worry about it.
[none of which is wrong, but neither is it anything specific about what he'd heard.]
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paperpusher) wrote2025-06-08 09:26 am
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I see. A fairly long time. [But not nearly as long as other people, and yet he's still noticed. Then again, Wei Wuxian said he liked meeting the people here-- maybe that translates to following up more once people are gone.]
I actually received a dare to look into the statues! [Well, he basically gave it to himself, but semantics.] So I appreciate you letting me know, even if it's not good news to share. Is there anything else worth knowing about them? Oh, or rather-- truth or dare, I guess?
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that seems like a pretty involved dare! what constitutes it as being "completed"?
and truth then! i'm too lazy to go do a dare right now~
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My question is: is there anything else worth knowing about the statues or the hotel that I should know about? Again, I'm pretty new here, so assume I don't know anything yet!
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oh if you have sex with the same person a lot, you get paid more for it. it seems to reset after four times though, not sure why. but you'll get a small payment for one time, then a larger one the next, a larger one the next, the largest amount the fourth time.
also the more variety of people you have sex with, the more likely you are to receive something from home. i'm not sure how this works, it's what i've heard and i'm still trying to see if the house will give me anything too. i haven't gotten anything back yet!
same goes for changing your rank. the more sex you have, the more likely you'll get rewarded with a rank change (if you're low to high, but i've heard sometimes it goes high to low).
that's what i can think of off the top of my head!
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[If the hotel (or the house; he's been told it's a distinction that matters but he doesn't know enough to know which applies when) is incentivizing certain activity, it has to benefit from those activities. There's nothing here that wouldn't fit into his existing theories of what's going on: whatever entity is responsible for their presence here is feeding off of the emotions generated by sex. Having sex with the same person multiple times would presumably result in stronger emotions. Maybe the reset is to encourage some form of branching out, like preventing them from putting all of their eggs in one basket? Or he just needs to look up poker hands, but that will never occur to him.]
I'm glad to hear that we can change ranks, though. I don't want to sound spoiled, but I would really like to have my own bathroom again.
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what rank and suit are you, gongzi? i'm a three of diamonds. i also use the communal bathrooms but that's common in my homeland as well so it doesn't bother me too much
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I'm a three of spades. I guess I sound like I'm pretty out of touch, huh? But back home I have a three bedroom apartment to myself, so... this has been an adjustment.
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it sounds like a large home! you must miss having the space.
[ three bedrooms, that's like... a medium sized house, right? ]
you'll really have to work hard to rank up, my friend! if you need any help with that, just say the word and i'll be happy to assist. i don't know how much work it takes for that to happen, it seems to happen to people spontaneously and without warning. but maybe you'll get lucky and wake up a king one day!
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Ha. You could say that again.
[He attaches a photo of a just. absolutely massive pile of crap, floor to ceiling in the basement hallway.]
I was very graciously given a lot of gifts from my fans here, but there actually isn't enough space to store it! What's the first rank that gets you out of the basement? I'd settle for that instead of going for king!
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but oh, that's......... ]
uh i think rank 5?
... gongzi, why do you have so many fans?
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what the hell is a movie. no, jk, he did look up what a movie was already at this point. ]
oooh so you're a charming, dashing type? no wonder you offered your autograph
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[and then maybe he can buy his way up to rank 5, or however it works?]
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[ smh ]
oh right, are we still playing the game?
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[but oh, right, the game. Chirpy helpfully reminds him that--]
It's my turn, apparently? I'll choose a dare, I guess.
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[that's the point of a dare???]
Especially when I'm just a pretty face!
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does that mean i should pity you? give you mercy? you said you wanted a non sexy dare!
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[Game recognizes game. And despite his whining, Natori goes down to the basement anyway-- was frankly going to go down to the basement ever since he was explicitly told not to, just now he has an excuse.
The basement looks about how he'd expected it to look (gross and creepy, since the guests presumably aren't supposed to be there). He doesn't encounter any visible ayakashi, which also isn't a surprise; this place seemed to favor the subtle signs of spiritual presence over hoards of monsters crawling over each other in the basement. Hence the whispers.
It's unpleasant, but not a shock. He is intimately familiar with just how little is necessary to give an ayakashi a glimpse into his mind-- a fact the voices remind him of, of just how easy it was for Mitsuru to trap him in her illusion based on nothing more than a name and eye contact. For a job that was supposed to be easy for him, for a job that an untrained teenager needed to rescue him from. He remembers Natsume's face, red with tears that he shed over Mitsuru, knowing that if he'd been a little more careful, he could have spared Natsume from that. He remembers the unpleasant little secret he discovered in his uncle's walls, and considers whether it would have been better to let that sit undiscovered.
But this isn't his first rodeo. He's mildly annoyed that Wei Wuxian would send someone down here without knowing if they had any defenses against it; the last thing they need is to be helping the hotel along with chipping away at people's unguarded hearts. Then again, Natori isn't unprepared, so no harm done?
He comes back fairly soon after his last text, since he didn't specify how long he had to spend down there. Technically the dare said to report back on what he heard-- there's a chance that Wei Wuxian was maliciously trying to get the exact details of what the voices said to him, but he doesn't seem like the type. And if he was the type, that was good info to snoop out as well.]
Well, I did know that the basement was haunted before.
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He got the sense that the basement wasn't as dangerous during normal times and more just unpleasant. Deeply unpleasant. And thus, he wanted to know. So, it's not malicious a dare, more just ... nosy. Deeply nosy.
But it's why he didn't specify how long Natori should spend down there. An hour was far too long for him and he doesn't want anyone to spend more time down there than they have to. It's also why he didn't hide anything when describing what the basement was like. It's bad, and he believed Natori should know that before he went down there himself. ]
yep! it's pretty bad. tell me, did you hear anything peculiar? when i went down, i heard the voices of people i loved who had died. it wasn't pleasant, but it made me wonder what others might hear.
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[none of which is wrong, but neither is it anything specific about what he'd heard.]
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