Tanabata Log

[beautifuldreamermods]

YUMEMIGAOKA

As it is every year, Yumemigaoka's annual Tanabata festival is held at the street just outside of the Hikawa Shrine. The street and the shrine itself have been closed off during the day beforehand and despite the absolute rancid weather, the community has come together to get the festival space set up and ready for everyone to enjoy. And somehow, as they usually do, things just seem to come together somehow.

Come seven in the evening, the street opens to pedestrians and the festival finally kicks off. A steady, misty drizzle of rain persists through the entire evening but somehow, it just adds to the dreamy atmosphere. Hanging lanterns twinkle with raindrops and cast a warm glow over the street, paper stars are fluttering gently down from strings strung between lampposts and stalls line the full length of the street with food offerings, festival games and just about everything in between. In the wake of all the chaos over the last few months, isn't it nice that some things are still simple, quiet and unchanged?

For folks looking for games, they can enjoy:


⧖ The most popular stalls, the shooting games! Using a gun loaded with paper bullets (so, you know, mostly harmless) the aim of the game is to get a clean hit on one of the prizes along the back of the booth and knock it down! The prizes are mostly candy, snacks or kids' toys but they're deceptively hard to get a good shot at...
⧖ Goldfish scooping, a summertime classic! Using a scooper with a thin sheet of paper for the net, try your best to catch as many goldfish swimming around the water below. Do well enough and you'll win a prize and you might even be able to take your goldfish home - make sure to take good care of it!
⧖ Senbonbiki is basically pure luck - bundles of prizes, usually candies and small toys, are strung up along the top of the stall and you just have to give the corresponding other end of the string a tug. Whichever bundle of snacks comes down is yours! Of course, if you're particularly unlucky then you might get a dud or penalty prize... but surely nobody's luck is THAT bad, right?
⧖ Ring toss! Throw rings onto targets marked "1" through "10", each worth different amounts depending on where they land. Beat the high score and you'll win a prize! Though do you really want to walk around the whole festival with a giant plushie under your arm all night...?

There's also a ton of options for Japanese street food; some traditional, others more modern takes. There's fried stuff, grilled skewers, rice balls, all manner of delicious noodle dishes and mountains of sweets too; taiyaki, chocolate covered bananas, shaved ice, cotton candy, and just about everything and anything else you'd want to spend an evening stuffing your belly with. And naturally there are plenty of drinks available including freshly squeezed fruit juice and tea and some booze for those who feel like playing with fire.

Aside from the rest of the festivities, the main event is really the hanging of wishes - it is Tanabata, after all. A few tables at the top of bottom of the street have been set up to carefully shelter them from the rain and have a whole rainbow of tanzaku for people to write and hang their wishes on the bamboo trees both in the street and in the shrine down below. You can hang as many wishes as you like, if you're feeling particularly greedy, but...

The festival doesn't really reach its peak until darkness falls and, undeterred by the continued drizzle, the Hikawa Shrine lights up the sky with its famous annual fireworks show - it's always pretty spectacular but perhaps out of spite for the nasty weather, it looks even more fantastic than usual this year.

With the fireworks done, the festival begins wrapping up and it's time to head home. But just as with last year, the night's festivities seem to have only just begun and as you drift off to sleep that night, you feel a gentle unmooring as you're carried off to somewhere new...

THE DREAM SPHERE

Most people in Yumemigaoka seem to have known what was coming tonight and sure enough, it's happened again - a week's worth of dreams of a strangely vivid image, an enormous bamboo tree with a wide canopy of leaves under a dazzling night sky, just like last year. And, just like last year, when you fall asleep on Tanabata evening, you find yourself arriving Somewhere Else.

The dream unfolds as an expansive open field, drenched in the silvery light of a magnificently star-spangled sky above and cut through with a river of flowing water that reflects the sky so clearly, it looks to be filled with stars of its own. Just like the real festival, there's a fine rain drizzling down from the sky, filling the air with mist and the sweet fragrance of the hundreds of tiny, bell-shaped flowers swaying lazily in the grass. And at the center of the field, just as it was last time, is the bamboo tree from your dreams. In the year since last Tanabata, it seems to have somehow gotten even taller and even though it's so huge, though, it doesn't seem like a threatening presence at all. Its branches are spread out even wider than before, hanging low enough for you to reach out and touch and this time, they're not just weighed down by tanzaku strips but glass wind chimes, too, that tinkle and sing whenever the breeze rustles the trees.

It seems tht once again, the magic of those two starcrossed lovers has allowed everyone in Yumemigaoka to cross the Dream Sphere tonight, Dreamer or not! The effect will only last until morning, at which point the dream will unravel, so you might as well enjoy it while you're here. Many of the mundane dreamers will find they're able to move differently in the Dream Sphere, running faster and jumping impossibly high and long distances with nary a scratch to show for it; no magic of their own yet, but at least enough to have a little fun while they're here.

There's a little bit of natural magic at play here in the environment, too. If you approach the tree with a wish in mind, there's no need to write it down; it'll appear in pretty, sparkly ink on an appropriately colored tanzaku strip, already tied to the tree. Or if you go to peer at your reflection in the river, you might see it take on a shape that reflects the wish you're carrying in your heart.

... Except...

What sort of things are you really wishing for? The things you won't admit out loud to anyone, or even to yourself? The deepest wishes right in the darkest part of your heart that you want more than anything? Unfortunately for you, this tree seems to be of a mind to grant wishes and once it's gathered enough of everybody's tanzaku, there's a bright flash of light...

And suddenly everyone's secret wishes have been made manifest... though only in the Dream Sphere, of course. These can be anything from silly wishes to something more serious - the important part is that these secret dreams and wishes have been pulled out of your head and put on display for everyone here to see! How on earth are you going to deal with this gracefully?!

Regardless of what you choose to do, the apparitions only last for an hour or so before fading away and the sky lights up with a beautiful meteor shower that seems to go on forever. You're free to stay and watch the meteor shower and enjoy your last moments in the Dream Sphere for as long as you like but eventually, as you're watching the stars streak down from the sky, the dream around you begins to gradually fade away until you find yourself stirring in your own bed. Though it was an exceptionally busy dream, you find you're well rested and... okay, maybe a little embarrassed after all that.

Nobody will be able to return to that strange field or find the dream to stabilize it but... maybe that's fine. Aren't some things all the more special for only happening once a year?

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Comments

[saynotobugs]

[1) pre-festival]

[Maki's not here in her capacity as a DU tech, but she is here for her other job at the Yumemigaoka tourism board! She's got a nice black-and-pink Yumemigaoka Tourism polo shirt like the other workers, and she's setting up canopies and running around with an umbrella.]

Of course it's raining again. You know, I'd prefer the heat on a day like this.

[2) festival - games]

[This time she's running a stall for a lot of the festivities! Ring toss is pretty simple, and the prizes on display range from balls to plushies to character face masks. Maki will greet you if you come over.]

Hey, how's the festival going? We could use the break this year.

[3) festival - tanzaku]

[Maki does make her way over to the bamboo, smiling or shaking her head at the decorations community members put up, and she hesitates for a moment before writing a wish.]

I wish for no more catastrophic Dream Sphere incidents

[It's not her true biggest wish. It just feels like a safe one.]

[4) Dream Sphere]

[The same thing happened again. She's there. She looks brighter, bolder, she's on TV and on magazine covers all over the Dream Sphere, talking heads discussing her miraculous rise to fame. Maki shuts it out as she tries to keep her head down.]

It's just like last year. I gave up, okay? It gave up on me first!

4

[darknesshotpot]

[Ango is flipping through one of the glossy celeb magazines bearing Maki's face, hoping for an exclusive Maki summer photoshoot... a guy can dream, right?]

Hey, you've already got one fan!

[saynotobugs]

Seriously, Sakaguchi? [Maki rolls her eyes.] Not the time to be looking for blackmail, or whatever it is you're doing.

[darknesshotpot]

Blackmail? I would never. I practically owe you my life! If not for the free donuts you leave in the break room, I'd probably starve to death.

[Alas, the feature photoshoot is glamorous and tasteful... this is Maki's fantasy, after all.]

But you know, if you do ever want to give it another go... I've still got a few connections in the movie business.

[saynotobugs]

...Why do you do it? You, Genbu, Hoshino. Why do you all say that stuff? I didn't have what it took the first time.

[darknesshotpot]

...You've still got the dream, right? That's gotta count for something. Maybe the only thing you were missing last time was a lucky break.

But if you don't wanna think about it, I'll let it go. I'm still a fan either way.

4

[thezekeinator]

[Oh. It's this again.]

[You know. You'd think a year down the line, something would have been different. Something would have changed. And yet here we are again.]

[If Zeke Genbu, Dreamer Chaosbringer, were any less himself, he'd be very depressed right about now.]

...Look, is lying to yourself about it all really the way?

[saynotobugs]

[Maki looks away. There's no retort this time. Too mush has happened. She just crosses her arms.]

If I do want it, then what? I didn't have what it took, so it doesn't matter.

[thezekeinator]

Let's be real about this, okay? A huge chunk of it is luck, and you know it. All you didn't do is get lucky yet, and the more you try, the more likely it is you will. You've got everything else it could possibly need.

[saynotobugs]

You can't say that, you know what happened. I made a mistake I paid for.

[thezekeinator]

I call that part of luck. Besides, like you said, you paid for it. [Zeke drums his fingers on his arms, somewhere between thoughtful and restless.] You know you're way too down on yourself, right? Considering how you keep everything running around here, it's jolly strange.

3

[liedol]

[ Ai's not trying to snoop - really, she's not! - it's just that Maki really doesn't strike her as the type to wish for much of anything for herself, which is a little sad, but she's hoping that she might at least think about it for Tanabata...

Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. ]

Ahaha! And there was me thinking I was asking a little much. You sure are optimistic, huh, Maki-chan?

[saynotobugs]

I don't know about optimistic. Practical? Then again, it's just Tanabata, not a workplace strategy meeting.

[She looks at the community-supplied decorations and smirks at a particularly incompetently made kuzukago.]

Looks like the kids have all gotten pretty into it, though. I mean, I assume a child made that.

[liedol]

When you're talking about the kind of trouble we're all getting into on a regular basis, I'd say it counts as optimistic.

[ She says it in good enough cheer that it's clear she's just teasing, though. ]

I'm glad, though. This year's been pretty crazy, so I think we all deserve a chance to have a little fun - the regular kids and us big kids. Don't you agree?

[saynotobugs]

Heh. It sure seems like everyone in the office is a kid, all things considered. Just kids who pay bills, and sometimes they don't even do that.

[liedol]

Do I even want to know who isn't paying their bills?

[ Y'ALL GET PAID TO WORK HERE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT MONEY ]

2

[i_peace]

Maki-san!

[and here comes a familiar face with his own umbrella, one that had a cute tanuki pattern printed on it. It stands in stark contrast with the dark blue pinstripe yukata he's wearing]

It's the first time I've been to one without nee-chan... Or, I guess, being on this side of it. [a lopsided smile] I tried to offer to help set up some of the booths but everyone told me to just enjoy the festival instead...

Has it been busy?

[saynotobugs]

Decently. It's still raining, but at least it's better than last year. Might even clear up enough for the fireworks to go ahead. So there's at least more people than I expected.

[Maki shrugs and cleans up the stray rings that missed their targets.]

How about you, festival going good?

[i_peace]

Ooh... I'll look forward to it then!

Me? [he pulls on his sleeve for a moment before turning his attention back to Maki] It's a little weird being here on my own... But it's not bad either.

... Anything here you recommend? Or do you want me to grab something for you?

[saynotobugs]

Nah, it's fine. You wanna play some ring toss? Might help pass the time.

[i_peace]

Oh- Okay. [he doesn't even try to fight her on this. Well, she said it's fine, so it's probably fine right]

Hmm... I could give it a try. Don't make fun of me if I miss too much. [he says this cheerfully though, so he's probably not going to take it personally. Does Keiwa even know how to take things personally? Stuff just seems to roll off him...]

Uh... Which set should I use? [he doesn't want to mess up anything, not when it just means there's more work for Maki!]

1

[flatcola]

I like this weather, normally. It's not too wet to make me damp and cold.

[ But... ]

Still, a day like this is supposed to be clear.

[saynotobugs]

It's a pain when it happens on a festival, huh? I just hope it clears up.

[flatcola]

My own feelings aside, others should be having lots of fun here.

[saynotobugs]

[Maki hoists a banner and stakes it into the ground beside the path.]

I just hope it clears up enough that people actually end up showing up.