"You know, I never had trouble telling you two apart."
"Really? Is it okay to ask how?"
"Yeah, and it's because of… your face."
"But I had her face!"
"No, it's… the way you move your face… it's different."
"Like I make different expressions?"
…
"I'm gonna take this awkward silence as a sign that you want me to explain."
"Explaining would be nice. You don't have to if you don't want to, of course!"
"No, it's okay. I'm having trouble finding words for it. It's like… you aren't as extreme?"
"I guess I can see that. Eri always opens her mouth really huge when she's shocked about something. And then she sometimes just freezes so that I notice whatever crazy face she's making. It's pretty funny."
"And I think another thing is that you smile with your mouth and not your teeth."
"'Mmmm, I never really noticed that. Weird!"
"Now the real question is if you'd notice me if I were Eri."
"Now, that's really weird!"
Writer's Woes: I wanted to write something that was all dialogue and this was what happened. I've wanted to use this idea for like ever so yeah now it's done but I feel like I still want to do stuff with it. I really like thinking of all the ways that Shiki would project her not-Eri-ness during the Game. And I seem to have this running thing of Shiki being hyper-aware of Neku's social needs. I feel like his people problem was more than just being a prickly teenager. My headcanon is that he has some sort of social anxiety which makes it harder to deal with people and he was overwhelmed by it before the Game, but he's managing it better now. He's an introvert by nature, which means sometimes he just needs to be alone.