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After certain things go not at all as planned, Ryoji is a little bit exhausted. That's not as emotionally and physically draining as going to the Underworld would have been, but he's certainly in no shape to try after that or he may very well get stuck down there. Which would be very, very bad.

He is actually going to look for whatever might make people more 'real,' even if he's got no clue what that actually means. He knows something's off, can feel he's forgetting something, but for the life of him he can't figure out what it is or if it's even relevant to the current issue. There's some vague wanderings to the park, and he stops by the coffee shop for a desperately needed pick-me-up, and he goes to the library to get in touch with the Twilight Network. Looks like no one has a clue what he saw, but at least some people offered to keep an eye out for him.

Wherever you find him, though, there's one constant. He looks exhausted.

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"Hey!"

She comes across him when he's wandering through the park - not surprisingly, considering that she literally put up tent in a corner of it a few days back, thanks to Tobias.

Today, the clothes that he's seen her wear before have been joined by a colourful hat. One of the food pantries that she went to also had a small section with winter clothes that were handed out, and they insisted that she get one.

Ryoji turns to greet her, managing a smile and a wave. "Hey, Ebru. Cute hat." He has no idea where she got it, and doesn't really have the fortitude to ask right now. "How are you?"

"It makes people treat me like I'm five." Which is just insulting.

She shrugs at the question and gives him a critical stare. "...You look terrible."

Ryoji chuckles weakly. "Yeah... I ran into something weird. I'm kind of tired now." Which is an understatement but he doesn't want her to worry.

"What kind of weird?"

Like. Things need a a special level of weird to stand out in this place. But the way he looks, it really must have been a weird kind of stressful weird.

"It was..." How does he even describe it? "It looked like a person, but the proportions were all off and it was frosty. Not just in appearance, the air got cold when it was around. And it didn't talk so much as make screeching gear sounds that I could still kind of understand."

"...It made gear sounds that you could understand?"

Maybe it's something like the photographer. Just ...more like the gears. But Ryoji had been unable to see the gears before, hadn't he? Unless he'd lied.

Ryoji nods. "Thanatos more than me, sometimes," he says, "But... still. I was able to communicate with it."

"...And you don't..."

She looks around, trying to see if there's any of the weird gear stuff around. Of course there's nothing in sight when you need it, but she remembers having seen a tree with gears in it some way down the path early on in her stay.

"Come. I'll try to show you something." Either he lied, or he couldn't see it then. But maybe he can see it now. "...Why could Thanatos understand more?"

Tobias doesn't normally drink coffee, but he's wandering past the coffee shop anyway. He pauses when he spots Ryoji, and waits for him to come out before falling in step next to him.

"What happened?"

"Alright..." He'll follow her, as usual not really sure what she's on about, but whatever. "I'm not sure, especially since it wasn't dead. The whole thing is very confusing, and I know not all of it was translating right."

Ryoji offers the other boy a little smile. "Hey, Tobias. Do you want any coffee?" Might as well offer if he's here. "...I ran into something really weird and it kind of tired me out. I'm alright, it was just... confusing. I'd never seen anything like it before."

"Nah, I'm good." Besides, that stuff is expensive, and he doesn't want Ryoji spending money he doesn't need on him. "... Do you want to - I can take you somewhere you can rest quietly. And we can talk about it if you want... but maybe you should just sleep."

Ryoji could just go back to his dorm, but... talking about it is probably a good idea. "That would be great, if it's not too much trouble. I don't think I need to sleep, at least not yet, maybe just... sit down for a little while."

"What did it say? And why do you think that it wasn't translating right?"

She repeats in her head what she just said and then adds: "And who or what was doing the translating?"

"It was trying to tell me I was, or had, some sort of quality... but whatever it was wasn't coming through. I asked it to rephrase it and it came through as being real, or having substance, but I have no idea what it meant by that." Ryoji sighs, shrugging. "I have no idea why I could understand it at all."

"I know somewhere nearby, come on." The area is populated, but there's still the odd store that's closed down. Not all of them are locked. He leads Ryoji towards one of them - a former cafe, now plastered with 'for sale' signs - and over to a side entrance. He fiddles with the door for a moment before opening it, revealing a storage room with a mattress shoved in the corner.

"Here. I know you won't tell people... so..."

Ryoji smiles. He knows he hasn't known the boy long enough for a lot of real trust- trust is hard, knowing what they know sometimes- but it's really nice that he's even offering this. "Thanks," he says, "I won't say anything."

He'll follow the other boy in, sitting down on the mattress. (And he will offer Tobias some of his coffee, if he wants it.) The cold has since left him, but the mental run around was hard enough, without getting hit with... whatever the thing even was. Lost. Very lost. That feeling is somewhat harder to shake.

"...You look pretty real. And," she reaches over to poke a finger in his side, "you have substance.

Maybe it's talking about a ...change of mana levels?" She scratches her neck, thinking. "Like how the world gets more mundane when they sink and more magical when they grow."

"Yeah, but it said I had more of those things then other people. If we're talking about life in general, I should probably have less." Because having a ghost attached to you makes that weird.

"...I have no idea what you'e talking about." Sorry, Ebru.

"...You said that it might have said that you had more of it. Maybe you were especially alive? ...How did it know you?"

Oh, so that's another common knowledge that they either don't know here or that isn't true. Uh. She is. No historian. Or scholar. Or, well, somone who knows anything about history past some super basics. But mana is very important to what she does, so she at least has some rudimentary theoretical knowledge. "Mana is ...the stuff that lets things be magical. It's like... the spirit of the universe." No, that doesn't sound right. "If there is a lot of mana in the air people become trolls and such and can do magic and the dragons wake up and so on. And if there is less in the air everything becomes more mundane. But you can also knock people out with mana or build barriers that spirits can't walk through. And mana storms are dangerous."

"Yeah, but I still died once and have a geist hanging out with me." That's probably a too casual way of referring to his geist. He doesn't care. "It didn't know me. Whatever it was, it could just... tell, I think." Unless it did know him and he didn't know it, which might be worse.

"I... see." He doesn't see at all. He's pretty sure her home is just... weird.

Tobias doesn't take the coffee, but rustles around until he finds a blanket - it's thin, with some holes in places, but it's at least something. "I don't have a pillow, but here." He sits down on the floor near the mattress, looking up at Ryoji. He's curious, but he doesn't want to push him.

"...What exactly did it call you?"

Okay, that tree had to have been somewhere around here. Fairly close to the campus buildings. She starts looking around while they walk to not miss it.

"Thanks. I think I'm ok, though. Coffee is helping." With that part, at least. "Maybe you'll know... it was this kind of human shaped thing, but the proportions were all wrong. And it was covered in frost, and everything around it felt cold too. It didn't really speak, it made kind... mechanical, gear sounds, I guess. But I could still understand it for some reason."

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