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Log 1

Who: Maaya Inoue & Vincent Fortesque
What: Just a meet and get to know you
Where: Maaya's apartment.

It wasn't like Maaya had really been there long enough for the apartment to look lived in at all. But she'd been doing some serious poking around since she'd arrived, and that much was obvious from only half-closed drawers and doors still left cracked open in cabinets. She hadn't found really anything to complain about with her assigned living quarters, except for the whole never having asked to have them in the first place. And whoever exactly had brought her here had certainly outfitted her with everything she could have wanted, artistically. In fact, before her conversation with Vincent, she had been debating playing around with the very nice set of watercolors she'd been given - much nicer than anything she could have afforded at home. So there was a piece of watercolor paper being stretched on a board on the table, with the tubes of paint and brushes laid out in a neat row next to it. Maaya was not an overly neat person in general, except when it came to art supplies.

Since Vincent had said he was coming up, she'd not gotten started on anything, though she had put a kettle on the stove to boil. "Come in!" she said, when the knock came at her door. "It's unlocked." Because really, there were so few people here, what would have been the point?

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He'd managed to get changed very quickly before knocking on Maaya's door, mostly because arriving in a fucking tunic just wasn't something he'd be prepared to do. Especially not naked. A perverse bunch, their kidnappers.

At her voice, he entered quietly, letting the door fall shut behind him. Taking a look around, he quickly realised that she'd gone about her arrival here in a very different manner from him - he hadn't even opened a drawer yet in his so-called apartment, let alone looked at what they could offer him to fascilitate his creativity. Shit. Walking up to her, he paused next to the kitchen table, leaning against it slightly.

"You've had a good look around, huh. Do you like what you've found?"

She had changed as soon as she'd arrived - the tunics were far too thin to be proper, but she had to admit she'd liked the lines and flow of it, so she'd hung it up in the closet for possible use later as inspiration. Or something. If she ended up staying here.

The kettle started to steam so she rushed over and opened cupboard doors until she found the one with cups. She'd looked around, sure, but that didn't mean she remembered where anything was yet. At his question she also looked around and shrugged. "Well, it's certainly everything I might want. Except for the whole not being home thing." She opened a few more doors until she found the tea and tea strainers "What kind of tea do you like? They've stocked me with pretty much everything."

A light shrug.

"Earl Grey, I guess. I'm not picky."

It was a British left-over, probably, the fact that he drank tea at all. Liam never drank anything else unless he was getting improperly drunk. In any case, he wasn't very knowledable about tea in general and would probably like another sort better if he knew how to choose - alas. Watching her in silence for a moment, he thought over their short conversation from earlier. A designer; well, nothing surprising about the shit they've supplied her with, at least. Though, a costume designer…

"So, who did you say you worked for again?"

Maaya nodded and spooned the tea into a strainer and handed both to Vincent before turning to make her own tea. She stirred the strainer in the hot water almost idly as she leaned against the counter. She wasn't shy per se, but it did feel weird having a man she barely knew in her apartment. Having the tea helped. Tea usually did.

"I work for the Takarazuka Revue. I've been a costumer there for nearly ten years now, and they've only just started letting me design."

She gave him a small smile. "So what then do you do?"

The name didn't mean anything to him, not the first time she said it nor now. But he simply nodded, accepting the tea and sipping once, twice, not really tasting it. What a surreal situation, drinking tea with a stranger only hours after being… kidnapped or whatever this is. But on the other hand, what's a guy to do? People survive, don't they? He'd better.

"I'm a private consultant. PR, for the most part." Not the most artistic occupation, really. Unless you count painting lies all over the media as an art form and hey, some people probably would. Vincent wasn't that oblivious, though. "My name's Vincent Fortesque. Think I forgot to introduce myself back there, sorry."

"It's understandable. You were rather upset about the whole being here thing." She gave him another small smile and then turned her attention back to her tea. Vincent's description of his job... troubled her. Not the job itself, that made sense. But while she wasn't happy about her arrival in this place, it at least made an internal sort of sense. This place needed creators, she could create. But PR, while certainly a necessary field was all about marketing other people's creation, wasn't it?

She sipped her tea and sighed. "I think the more I find out about this place, the less sense it makes."

He took a moment to answer, watching the smoke curl off the tea almost pensively. To him, next to nothing about this place made sense. The location. The telephone ladies. The statue-like residents roaming the streets. The fact that a kidnapping of this magnitude was even possible - sure, maybe in a third world country during wartime but no matter how you thought about the current situation in the European Union or in the far East, things really weren't that bad.

"If it makes even a bit of sense to you, then you're better off than me." A short laugh as he set down the cup, glancing at the watercolour paper on the table. He nodded towards it. "Looks like high-quality supplies, though. My camera is magnificent, too."

"Well," she said after a moment's thought. "It only makes sense if you take things at face value. That what we've been told is the exact truth." She shook her head slightly. "Which I'm not saying I do, but I figure it's a good place to start."

She followed Vincent's gaze towards the supplies and nodded. "They're definitely trying to emphasize the 'gilded' part of this cage. I could never have afforded paints like that at home"

'Gilded'. Pretty much spot on, wasn't she.

"You're going to do as they say, right?"

There was no judgment behind this particular question - he'd probably do exactly as they said if it didn't piss him off so royally and truth be told, he just might end up following orders anyway. If the alternative happened to be worse. Though really, couldn't they just find someone more appropriate? Crazy-arse ladies, all of them. Whether or not they had the balls to actually follow through on their threats, however…

"For now. I mean, this situation isn't great but..." Her gaze slid back to the watercolors. "I've always wanted access to supplies like this." Which was very true. She made decent but not great money, and while her parents would have been perfectly willing to help her out, she hated the idea of having to ask them for money.

She took another sip of her tea. "And, maybe this is all just a weird dream or something." She didn't really believe that, but it sounded good.

He huffed out a laugh.

"Hey, one can hope! Don't think I've ever had a dream this pointless."

Pointless to him, that was. Clearly, it couldn't be completely pointless to someone like her, getting supplies and the chance to express herself more or less without any strings attached, aside from the obvious. Not getting to choose, for one. Not even performing for money, either. And probably not taking anything away from it, either. He'd never been an artist, no. The idea of creating something for the sake of creation…

"I keep thinking - how is it possible? Where in the world are we? There's a whole fucking city out there, you can't just…" He trailed off, frowning. Sipped his tea some more, feeling slightly agitated.

"Well," she said with some slight hesitation. "If it is a dream, anything's possible." She laughed slightly. It sounded stupid even to herself. Honestly she hadn't thought too much about the specifics of where they were. They weren't home, and really, that was the thing that mattered. Where they were was incidental to that.

For her, the most disturbing part was the amount of effort their captors had made to make this place so very, very appealing. Appealing enough that it almost made her just want to accept it. A quick glance over at Vincent let her know he didn't share that feeling however. "Does it help to get worked up over it?" she asked gently.

Does it help. Well, that was a pretty appropriate question, wasn't it, even though most answers except the obvious would be obsolete. Of course it didn't. It never did. Sighing, he gave her a long look, a moment of silence between them. He didn't marry Claude just because he loved him - he married him because he needed him and right now, he couldn't help wishing that he hadn't been brought here alone, even if wishing this shitty situation on your husband was hardly a mark of appreciation.

"You're right, darling." He fished out his Nokia, the most crappy phone he'd had in years and years. Popped up the screen, spared it a glance and put it down again. "Wish we could call home somehow. Give off a sign of life. I don't want people to worry, you know?"

"That's a good point," and one she hadn't thought much about, to her chagrin. She'd been so focused on her own reaction to this place she hadn't thought about the people who might be missing her. Oh she'd thought about the people who'd miss her professionally - that was actually the thing that worried her the most. But Vincent had a point. There were people, her parents, her friends, who would worry about where she was.

"You'd think they could have thought of that, y'know? I mean, while I'm not sure I'd ever be thrilled about this, being able to at least call home would make it better."

"Yeah." But like she said - what's the point in getting worked up over something that couldn't be changed? Hopefully, clues had been left to his whereabouts. If they'd actually stolen all his clothes in the process… Claude wouldn't assume that he'd just left, after all. No way in hell.

Cup about half-way empty, he gave into his curiosity. Maybe he weren't a journalist anymore as such but the inclination to search for facts had never left him. A personality trait, quite probably. "So, uh - Takarazuka?" Pronounced with a French accent, thus making the whole word sound incredibly weird. But hey, he tried! "I've never heard about that before."

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Log 1

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