Part 6: First Playthrough - 8 PM (♃ + ♆)

[SFX: Crickets chirp softly as the evening goes darker. An ominous, rumbling wind blows against the trees. Sometimes, strange unidentifiable thuds can be heard in the distance, like an axe to a trunk.]

[MUSIC: Greenhouse]



Jupiter and Neptune won this round. Let's get this lock fixed.



♃: Oh. Cool.
♆: I mean if you're that insistent, I don't want to look like a jerk by saying no.
♃: Haha. Rad.
♃: Are you good, Venus?
♀: Yeah, I'll unpack.
♃: Holler if you need anything.

...or Venus'll work it out I guess. Let's check out some of the other shacks then.



[MUSIC: Growing Poppies]



This place looks like it was a greenhouse once. But at some point it was filled with furniture, like someone tried to live here and gave up, or died because it was a fucking greenhouse.

There is a bed that was probably very nice, but now it is growing poppies, and blue mushrooms are growing out of a lampshade by the nightstand, so we suppose the shack is now a greenhouse again.

Neptune searches a beautiful enormous dresser nurturing an ivy with white bell-shaped flowers, while Jupiter brushes leaves away to open the doors of a tasteful kitchen cabinet.



♆: This place is honestly the weirdest.
♃: Really.
♃: Here, come look.



Uh Neptune you forgot to plug in something

♆: I'm revising my opinion. Maybe the captain is a true genius.
♃: Do you think he did this?
♆: I hope not, then I'd have to like him.
♃: Ha. Oh here, you should see this one—



We pull each other out of the way. The collapse of the cabinet sounds like the wet wood yawning and screaming for a full minute.

♆: Are you okay?



♆: Okay.
♃: I'm fine, I was just...
♃: For a moment it was the funniest thing in the entire world. I mean of course, right?
♃: I just walk in here and without even trying instantly cause the biggest possible disaster to happen.
♃: It was so pretty too...
♃: And now it's just impossible to put back together ever.
♃: Maybe I'm a genius at getting things wrong too. Ahaha.
♆: It is absolutely gone forever, Jupiter.
♆: I know, but I should have—



♃: ...Ha.
♃: Thank you.
♃: I wasn't really going to. I promise.



But for a moment after it feels like we are holding each other. We can feel the hands, like they're right there in the air.



♆: I mean like, aren't you doing fine?
♆: Aren't you trying harder than literally everyone else here?
♆: You're so chill about everyone's bullshit it makes me so mad and then you won't extend even the slightest of that chill to yourself and that makes me EVEN SO MADDER.
♆: Can't you just be a little less...good?
♃: I promise...
♃: I promise to try, at least.
♃: Well...sort of.
♆: GODDDDDDDDDDD.