[ For once, Joshua is broadcasting from outside. For anyone who wishes to track him down, he's not hard to find, simply sitting in the plaza. The sound of the fountain is just faintly picked up by the journal. ]

In a place like this with so much in flux, it isn't surprising, but still manages to somehow be unexpected. Like a next door neighbor who you didn't realize was moving away until there's a truck outside loaded up with boxes. It was just a part of the setting that you always expected to be there.

I suppose it's reasonable. When the last resident of a house leaves, everything that the entire group had goes with them. After all, the Malnosso don't seem fond of leaving loose ends around here. What's the difference between a room and an entire building?

Though I should probably make the announcement that it likely now falls on me to make. If you knew of a boy who called himself Beat, he appears to be no longer in Luceti.

[ And with him, the last piece of home Joshua had vanishes into thin air.

One thing that Joshua doesn't realize is that his death penalty is temporarily gone, so if anyone feels like showing up and making some music around him, it would probably freak him out quite a bit. ]

New Feather season.

[ Joshua gives a frustrated sigh, and there's the sound of sipping as he takes a drink from a cup of coffee. Dammit, Hanekoma, your nervous habits have finally worn off on him two years after the fact. ]

If any of you were wondering, I've been gone for at least a week and a half. And if anyone cares to give me a date, I can give you a more precise duration than that.

[ Not that Joshua is too terribly fond of being in the village, but at least talking to people is good for taking his mind off of things. Being held captive by his lonesome gives him a little too much time to think, and being poked and prodded is almost preferable. As long as things never get as bad as they did his first kidnapping. He'd take a month of solitary confinement over that. ]

They tend to give us an experiment right before the New Feathers come, don't they? Cause or effect, which do you think? [ He takes another sip of coffee. ] And while I'm asking, what did I miss this time?

[ The 16th. July 16th. Six months minus one day after January 17th, one year minus one day after July 17th of the previous year, and one year and six months minus one day after the day he was made to be no longer an Angel. Hanekoma and Neku are both gone. Shiki has been here even longer than he has. Rhyme and Beat are both Players, far too fragile to rely on, far too distant to trust.

Tomorrow, he will probably die.

It's strange, in a way. He's never been afraid to die before. But he's caught up now in so much more than he was any of the previous times he was faced with death. This time, if he dies, there's no telling what will happen to Shibuya back home. And that's what he's afraid of.

This entry is public. This entry isn't anonymous. Maybe it's his way of saying goodbye for now. ]

Why are you afraid of death? Or, why aren't you afraid of death? Home, here, or both.

[ A few moments later, after drawing up a filter, he adds this to the message. ]

[ Filtered to Shiki Misaki: 100% ]

I have a favor to ask.

[ While leaving out a mug of coffee, mostly-filled, might seem to be a weird thing to do in remembrance, regardless it's what Joshua does as he goes about cleaning the downstairs floor of his house, the space previously known as Kat's Kradle.

Without any real reason to keep more than the cooking area clean, he hadn't. Dust coats many of the tables and forms sometimes-impressive piles in the corners. Today, despite the rain, Joshua has the front door of House 38 wide open, and he can occasionally be seen sweeping piles of dirt outside.

It's rather cold, but Joshua doesn't seem to mind it. At least it's keeping him from working up a sweat. It's a bit late for a new year cleaning, but at least he's getting around to it at all, right?

Every so often he takes breaks to check on his journal, which he left the following question on earlier in the day: ]

How many of you learned things here that you're not looking forward to having to learn again when you go back to your own worlds? Your own death might be the obvious one, but I mean things like, say, some truth about your world, or friends, or family as well. Anything you'll need to find out again if you forget this place.

[ Sometime in the early afternoon, the following question goes out over the journals. The camera is covered, and the handwriting is disguised. ]

Let's have a thought experiment. Say you were dying, and the only possible way to save yourself is to get help from someone very close to you. However, you don't know for sure that this help will indeed save you, and whether or not it does, there's a chance that it will damage the one helping you. Trying to help you might even kill them.

Do you ask for their help anyway? Would you accept their help if they offered it?

[ Later on in the evening, Joshua makes a separate post from the previous, this one voiced and not anonymous. ]

[ Filtered to Neku, 100% ]

Hey Neku, are you busy tomorrow?

[ /Filter ]

I'm guessing most if not all of you have felt the phenomenon where time seems to move at different rates, even though you know it's all in your mind. So tell me, does being in Luceti cause time to feel different to you than it did when you were back home?

[ Two years. It's been two years, and after experiencing as much time slip by as Joshua has, feeling those two years is a less-than-welcome change.

As a distraction, he spends the day painting a side of his building that has been blank ever since a certain someone went home. It's certainly not Hanekoma's style, but it's similar to it, the color scheme the same though the designs are more fluid, less blocky and more streamlined, with harsh points instead of rounded curves.

Maybe this is his way of making peace with it. Maybe he's finally moved on.

Maybe he's just that homesick. ]

[ If you happen to be celebrating the new year with some coffee or pastries or... whatever else Hanekoma feeds people at Kat's Kradle, then you might hear the sound of someone tuning a violin coming from the second story.

It starts off quite out of tune, but within a minute or two, it sounds fine. Then, Joshua starts up a piece of music: fast-paced, somewhat frantic, somewhat chaotic, without chorus or verse, but it has an overall feel to it of life, of progress, of change.

Or maybe you just missed the whole performance.

Either way, a little later, the following goes out over the journal. ]

Why do you want to go home? [ And then, after a short pause, ]

Why do you want to stay?

[ Filtered to Hanekoma, 86% ]

So tell me, did you Erase him?

[ Joshua's voice is calm, but very cold, both disdain and disgust lacing his words. ]

With so many people suddenly dying, I was wondering: what's it like to die here, where death isn't permanent? If you've died back in your home world, what's the afterlife like where you're from?

And even if you haven't, does death seem less important, does it carry less weight here than it did back home?