Canto VII: New Co-Op Cashier False Doppelganger Arguments
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Cloud just at that moment had begun to recapitulate, this time to the two of them - Aerith and Tifa - how it wasn’t actually the case that he’d seen the being, no, there wasn’t in fact an actual physical being in that sense of the phrase - it wasn’t like the men in the black cloaks they’d be following in Rebirth (were either of them familiar with that plotline yet?). He’d just began to explain this to the both of them, and Cloud didn’t feel any different about it necessarily - the fact that he was telling the both of them - Tifa was behind the bar and Aerith just happened to be there. It was fine. Were they familiar with Rebirth yet? Probably not, right? But no, in this case Cloud had been fucking, you know, just sitting on this carpet in Wutai at the time - he sat on the carpet cross-legged - and then he suddenly intuited a purely divine being emanating in the triangle head encapsulated in the perfectly square design that repeated endlessly throughout the entire carpet. This triangle head was what Cloud could only describe as a “laughing Allah”. That’s how it struck him. There wasn’t really a question about it in Cloud’s mind and it was actually beautiful. Yes, a “laughing Allah” was the only way he could describe the divine being, which certainly communicated with him as he sat cross-legged in Wutai in a somewhat mystical manner, albeit not quite verbally, but the being certainly communicated in a way that caused Cloud to smile. Cloud, smile?! The two women found that totally hilarious! Tifa nearly fucked up the beer she was pouring she was so surprised to hear Cloud of all people talking about himself smiling. But neither Tifa nor Aerith found this anecdote of Cloud’s to be disingenuous in any way - in fact they both fully supported Cloud’s confessions and more often than not even found them legitimately intriguing (but there were, of course, some exceptions!), albeit they generally found the anecdotes intriguing in a one-on-one setting, as opposed to this FFM arrangement. But that was clearly fine! It just so happened Aerith was around and she popped in the bar. No big deal at all! Yet, while contemplating whether or not another Moscow Mule was advisable or not, Cloud expressed quite vigorously that he wanted to relay a subsequent anecdote that he viewed apropos of the carpet encounter, if that was okay? Of course! Well, specifically it was that when he popped into his local co-op grocery store that morning, for just a few minor items, a couple hand fruits really, and the new cashier asked him - right as he shifted his headphones up off of his ears to start the formalized sales transaction - if his brother “or something” went there sometimes? - to the grocery store? Did Cloud have a brother by any chance? Because she, the new cashier, felt like she’d seen him before? Well, Cloud said to the cashier, thinking about it for a second he found it quite possible that this alleged doppelganger was actually fucking just him! - Cloud himself! - that the cashier was in that particular instance confusing Cloud for his actual self, that this cashier only believed she’d seen someone who looked just like Cloud before because she’d, in fact, seen Cloud before. He walked away just momentarily, he told Tifa and Aerith, just to toss his basket back into the stack of baskets behind the automatic doors. Yeah, he’d take one more Mule, please Tifa? The new cashier was chuckling when Cloud arrived back at the checkout counter ready to pay for his shit - she was in the process of entering the item number for his red quinoa, chuckling alone - “it could’ve been you” she repeated, chuckling, but then, Cloud relayed to Tifa and Aerith, she actually came around to Cloud’s particular hypothesis. The new cashier, after thinking about it, came to agree with Cloud, that she actually probably had seen him in the grocery store before, and that she’d just now erroneously figured he had a brother, when in fact this hypothetical brother was actually just Cloud himself. Tifa considered, after she’d ingested the full anecdote and served Cloud his refreshed Moscow Mule, that it was somewhat likely that the cashier wanted to quote-unquote suck his cock, and Cloud didn’t necessarily disagree with the notion! - he certainly considered it possible, that this cashier may have been amenable to something like that, but that wasn’t quite the point! There was a type of wisdom latent in the exchange, wasn’t there? - regardless of whether or not the cashier wanted to perform fellatio on Cloud? Aerith, by contrast, took a more philosophical angle to her analysis of the encounter, because she agreed with Cloud that the cashier exhibited a certain spiritual insight, even if it was inadvertent. Aerith, for her part, didn’t put much of any stock into the cashier’s intentions, whether or not they were sordid, benign, or simply indifferent. Upon acknowledging this Tifa noted that she recognized Aerith’s point of view as valid, that it was probably the “right way to take it in,” even if she, Tifa, wasn’t personally at the point of participating in quite that level of objectivity (if they could, in fact, call it that). Cloud noted that, at the end of the day, he couldn’t help it if a certain person felt an urge to suck his cock - that whether or not someone wanted to suck anyone’s cock is something ultimately unknowable, that he couldn’t simply toss potential spiritual encounters to the wayside purely because of a purported sordid subtext or intention. Both women agreed with this, yet perhaps Aerith just a tad more than Tifa? - not to say Tifa was somehow beside herself with jealousy in any material way - no, this distinction between Tifa and Aerith was probably rooted more so in Aerith’s basically absurd ability to remain philosophically undeterred about other women while steeped in an obvious love triangle. Did she even like Cloud, really? Because it was really quite evident that Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith were collectively entwined in a sort of love triangle, but Aerith, for her part, maintained quite the unique ability to remain essentially philosophical about it all - she didn’t seem to allow feelings of jealousy to overcome her in the least when Cloud relayed anecdotes about cashiers that, if the three were being honest, clearly wanted to whip the guy’s cock out and suck on it for an extended interval of time. Did she even really like Cloud? His individual feelings on the situation were a little ambiguous, even when he was all alone. Cloud was of course incapable of assessing his own feelings for somewhat obvious reasons.