Chapter 385: Life Counseling – Conclusion
Suzume had a lot to say. Enough that her counseling session went a half hour over the initial planned time.
Fortunately for John, he had scheduled in a late dinner break from 6-7 PM so that he could process things and catch a bit of Alphy's first membership stream.
Unfortunately, he remembered that he didn't set up his account to be able to have memberships for any of the girls' channels.
Something somethin Googol account permissions.
But either way, that meant John had a bit of a break to relax and process things, as well as chart the path going forward.
The table had been cleared away, most of it packed in a to-go box for Suzume to finish since she spent so much time talking and barely any eating.
Honestly, it was always the quiet and seemingly normal ones who had issues...
Which made John not look forward to how the chat with Chihiro would go since she was the epitome of 'the quiet kid' in class considering her hobby of carrying around a definitely unlicensed and illegal firearm at conventions.
Did her dad know about that? Takashi must have known since he was probably where Chihiro got it. But the fact that she casually carried it around and seemed to know how to use it...
Well. John could unpack that later.
But for now, a quick status update on everyone.
Asako was fine. She still had a bit of repressed anger towards her dad and a lot of unprocessed grief that she wasn't acknowledging at the moment. But that was something that time would solve. Especially since she planned to go serious with Alphy (whether she realized it or not).
Alphy was fine too. Since she had started streaming, she and the Alfis were having a symbiotic relationship bettering both sides.
...Okay. It was a *weird* symbiotic relationship that looked a lot like a cult or demonic sect worshipping Alfi as a goddess, but overall, it was good.
John had seen worse. And from what he could tell, the Alfis only really acted weird when they were around Alphy, in her streams, or doing related tasks.
In their general day-to-day life, you would never be able to tell that one of the Alfis were a fan, or anything other than a normie.
Especially considering that they were all financially stable and in excellent physical condition all across the board due to the support network that they built for each other.
Anyway, Alphy was fine. There was still her habit of making emotionally devastating off-hand comments, but that wasn't really anything 'bad.' Just... emotionally damaging.
Mostly for John. Still, he'd take blows to the kokoro over having his daughter cry, so it was a non-issue.
Out of the Prototype girls, the real problem was Rin.
Despite her young age... or maybe due to it, Rin had developed a masterful coping mechanism to feign normality.
Focusing on the present, looking at only the good and ignoring the bad. Constantly being bombarded with intrusive thoughts, but gently pushing them to the side while she went about her day...
Not only that, but there was also the fact that she had instantly created Hana as a tangible split personality after John introduced her.
And that wasn't even *starting* to scratch the surface that was her expertly hidden violent middle and high school backstory. One that he immediately followed up on with Sakura only to find out that she definitely didn't know about it.
And also for Sakura to break down sobbing about her sweetie going through so much pain and suffering.
Fortunately, Yudi had returned from his long shopping trip and was available to babysit Aurora for a bit, so John politely asked Yue to help Sakura out. And also to check on Rin, who was currently sleeping back at her house due to the heavy emotional drain of fighting (literally and figuratively) her inner demons.
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