97 lines
21 KiB
JSON
Executable File
97 lines
21 KiB
JSON
Executable File
{
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"delegation_walk": {
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"start": "one",
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"nodes": {
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"one": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "curious", "text": "Before the council turns you into a visiting title with polished shoes, walk with me. The courtyard makes more sense from its edges. Those blue banners were dyed by a family near the eastern canal; the gold ones came with your delegation. I wanted the colours to meet without pretending they had always been the same.", "next": "two"},
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"two": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "At home, people sometimes speak of hospitality as though it means erasing the seam. My mother says a good host lets you see where the cloth was joined, because that is where the work and affection live. I think she would approve of your banners—and ask who climbed the ladder to hang them.", "next": "three"},
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"three": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "playful", "text": "I climbed the first ladder. Ishan discovered me, delivered a speech about royal ankles, and assigned three guards to the remaining banners. Being a princess is frequently the art of doing something useful before protocol notices. Being a scholar, I assume, is doing something reckless and adding footnotes afterward.", "next": "four"},
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"four": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "wry", "text": "Only the finest footnotes. Mine would record that the curator had excellent balance, questionable respect for ceremonial ladders, and a smile capable of making a witness forget the relevant safety regulation.", "choices": [
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{"id": "flirt", "text": "Admit that the smile is distracting.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 4}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "humour", "amount": 2}], "next": "five"},
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{"id": "candour", "text": "Say you admire how she credits the makers.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "respect", "amount": 4}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "trust", "amount": 2}], "next": "five"},
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{"id": "adventure", "text": "Offer to hold the next ladder.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "adventure", "amount": 4}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "comfort", "amount": 2}], "next": "five"}
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]},
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"five": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "warm", "text": "That answer may earn you a second circuit of the courtyard. Look there: cooks testing clay ovens, gardeners threading garlands, copyists checking name cards. The court calls this a royal festival because the palace pays for the pavilion. I call it a city festival because the city supplies every reason anyone comes.", "next": "six"},
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"six": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "Then the exhibition should name hands, not only patrons. In Lahore I studied a travel album praised for a governor’s taste. The margins named the paper maker, the binder, and the woman who repaired it after a flood. Those small names changed the whole object. Suddenly history had a crowded room behind it.", "next": "seven"},
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"seven": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "vulnerable", "text": "That is what I am trying to build here, though some relatives prefer an uncluttered family legend. I can argue with them in committee. What frightens me is becoming fluent in their language and forgetting why I began. If you see me polishing away a difficult truth, will you tell me before I become impossible?", "next": "eight"},
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"eight": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "tender", "text": "I will tell you privately, with evidence, tea, and an escape route from the committee. In return, if I start treating people like an interesting archive instead of people, you may confiscate my notebook. Temporarily. I have grown attached to it.", "next": "nine"},
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"nine": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "playful", "text": "Agreed. Though I reserve the right to ransom the notebook for another dangerously flattering footnote. Come—the library bell is about to sound. Whatever waits inside, I am glad the delegation sent the scholar who notices seams.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "comfort", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "trust", "amount": 3}, {"type": "flag", "id": "delegation_understanding"}]}
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}
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},
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"library_search": {
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"start": "one",
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"nodes": {
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"one": {"speaker": "anwara", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "Search as conservators, not hunters. A hunter asks what was taken. A conservator asks what changed around the absence. The velvet beneath the folio is uncreased, the cabinet lock is unmarked, and the humidity paper was replaced at dawn by someone who understood why it mattered.", "next": "two"},
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"two": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "determined", "text": "So the person had access, knowledge, and enough patience to move the folio without bruising the binding. That narrows the suspects to an uncomfortable number of people I trust. I dislike mysteries that begin by making suspicion feel intelligent.", "next": "three"},
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"three": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "Suspicion is only one tool. The cabinet smells faintly of vetiver and rain, but the room is dry. The folio may have been wrapped in a cooling cloth before it moved. Whoever did this was protecting it even while disobeying you.", "next": "four"},
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"four": {"speaker": "anwara", "expression": "warm", "text": "Good. The final leaf was repaired with starch paste after the monsoon of my apprenticeship. Heat makes that repair tighten. Festival lamps, a crowded pavilion, and an hour of speeches would be a poor climate for it. Write that in your notebook before romance makes you careless, young scholar.", "next": "five"},
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"five": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "playful", "text": "Keeper, we have known each other for less than an afternoon. At least allow him time to become careless on his own merits.", "choices": [
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{"id": "professional", "text": "Promise professional concentration, mostly.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "humour", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 2}], "next": "six"},
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{"id": "honest", "text": "Say that care and attraction can coexist.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "trust", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 3}], "next": "six"},
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{"id": "folio", "text": "Return gently to the evidence.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "respect", "amount": 4}], "next": "six"}
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]},
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"six": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "determined", "text": "The replacement humidity paper is cut from a ledger page. Its watermark matches the festival accounts on the western desk. Someone wanted us to notice the paper but not immediately. There are pinpricks along one edge—five, two, seven, one—too deliberate for ordinary filing.", "next": "seven"},
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"seven": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "curious", "text": "Shelf numbers. Five is river histories, two is household accounts, seven is poetry, one is gardening. Anwara taught me that route when I was twelve. She called it the path by which a palace remembers it is fed, watered, criticised, and loved.", "next": "eight"},
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"eight": {"speaker": "anwara", "expression": "vulnerable", "text": "I taught many children many routes. Some lessons are remembered only when an emergency gives them teeth. Follow the shelves. Read the marginal names. And if the trail asks you to choose between a perfect ceremony and an honest history, understand that the choice was present long before the folio vanished.", "next": "nine"},
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"nine": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "This is not a thief’s escape path. It is a curator’s argument arranged as evidence. We will follow it without disturbing the repair, and we will keep separate notes about what we know, what we infer, and what we merely fear.", "next": "ten"},
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"ten": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "warm", "text": "Separate notes, shared tea, no accusations without proof. You are remarkably calming for a man who arrived carrying a bow case and a reputation for inconvenient questions. Stay close. The poetry shelf has a rolling ladder, and Ishan has already expressed his views on my ankles.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "respect", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "comfort", "amount": 3}, {"type": "flag", "id": "search_complete"}]}
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}
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},
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"garden_walk": {
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"start": "one",
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"nodes": {
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"one": {"speaker": "mira", "expression": "warm", "text": "The moon garden is not planted for a single country or a single season. Jasmine opens beside tuberose; bakul waits for warmer air; marigolds carry daylight into evening. A garland works because each flower keeps its own scent while accepting the same thread.", "next": "two"},
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"two": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "My grandmother used that image in speeches. She usually left out the gardeners who chose which flowers could survive beside one another. Metaphors become very tidy when the labour is removed.", "next": "three"},
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"three": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "warm", "text": "Then let us keep the labour in view. My aunt grows jasmine in pots she moves twice a day to chase shade. She would laugh at any poet who called fragrance effortless. She would also ask why I had not yet offered to carry your basket.", "next": "four"},
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"four": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "playful", "text": "Because you suspected I would make you earn the privilege. Correctly. Tell me something true while we walk—something your official biography omitted. Visiting scholars are always reduced to institutions, awards, and one respectable hobby.", "choices": [
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{"id": "failure", "text": "Describe the tournament where every arrow missed.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "trust", "amount": 4}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "humour", "amount": 2}], "next": "five"},
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{"id": "family", "text": "Talk about loud family breakfasts.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "comfort", "amount": 4}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "familyApproval", "amount": 2}], "next": "five"},
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{"id": "desire", "text": "Admit you wanted this journey to change you.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "adventure", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 3}], "next": "five"}
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]},
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"five": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "vulnerable", "text": "The polished version makes me sound certain. I am not. I came because I was tired of being praised for questions that never required me to risk an answer. I wanted to meet people who could disagree with my work and still invite me to dinner afterward.", "next": "six"},
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"six": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "tender", "text": "That sounds less like uncertainty than hunger. I know it. Everyone praises my exhibitions for balance, which sometimes means I have placed every difficult fact where no guest must look at it for long. This folio may be asking whether I want approval more than truth.", "next": "seven"},
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"seven": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "Truth without care can become another performance of power. Care without truth becomes decoration. Perhaps the work is to refuse both shortcuts. We can protect the page, credit the founders, and let the court feel the discomfort it has postponed.", "next": "eight"},
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"eight": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "warm", "text": "You say 'we' very easily. I notice that I like it. I also notice you have carried my basket for half the path without asking again, which is either considerate or a cunning strategy to stand close enough that our shoulders keep touching.", "next": "nine"},
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"nine": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "wry", "text": "A serious researcher does not discard a successful method merely because the subject has identified it. For the record, the shoulder contact appears mutually reproducible.", "next": "ten"},
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"ten": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "playful", "text": "Peer review can wait until after the archery trial. If you impress me, I may permit a larger sample. If you miss every target, I will still be impressed by the honesty of your earlier confession. Either way, the garden seems determined to keep us on the same path.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "comfort", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 3}, {"type": "flag", "id": "garden_walk_complete"}]}
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}
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},
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"market_founders": {
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"start": "one",
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"nodes": {
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"one": {"speaker": "nadia", "expression": "determined", "text": "People imagine censorship as a locked door. More often it is a filing choice. Put a cook’s letter under household accounts, a gardener’s poem under seasonal instructions, a traveller’s sketch under customs records, and soon no scholar thinks to gather them. Nothing is destroyed. Everything is made lonely.", "next": "two"},
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"two": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "The folio gathers those lonely records. Its border motifs match the letters: the cook’s copper ladle, the gardener’s five-petal seal, the boatwoman’s knotted rope. The royal dedication was added later in a different hand. The festival began below the line where official histories usually stop reading.", "next": "three"},
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"three": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "vulnerable", "text": "My family did support it eventually. That matters, but it is not the same as founding it. I can already hear the council offering a tasteful plaque to the unnamed citizens while keeping the royal story at the centre. Gratitude can be used to make theft sound gracious.", "next": "four"},
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"four": {"speaker": "rayhan", "expression": "warm", "text": "Then do not serve history as garnish. My kitchen still cooks the founders’ river rice: mustard from one bank, dried fruit brought by travellers from the west, fish or aubergine depending on the household. No single pot owns the dish. The recipe survives because people keep arguing lovingly over it.", "next": "five"},
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"five": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "warm", "text": "That argument sounds familiar. At family tables, authenticity is often whoever speaks loudest until an aunt produces a stained notebook. Perhaps the public presentation should work like that notebook: specific names, specific work, no grand claim that smooths away difference.", "choices": [
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{"id": "public", "text": "Recommend naming every known founder publicly.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "respect", "amount": 4}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "familyApproval", "amount": 1}], "next": "six"},
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{"id": "community", "text": "Invite descendants and guilds to tell the story.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "trust", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "familyApproval", "amount": 3}], "next": "six"},
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{"id": "protect", "text": "Put preservation before spectacle.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "comfort", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "respect", "amount": 3}], "next": "six"}
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]},
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"six": {"speaker": "nadia", "expression": "curious", "text": "All three can coexist if the palace gives up being the only narrator. Display a facsimile, keep the fragile page in controlled light, and place the letters beside present-day voices. Let visitors see how evidence, memory, and living practice correct one another.", "next": "seven"},
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"seven": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "determined", "text": "The council will say there is no time. I will remind them that urgency was created by announcing an unveiling before conservation approval. I signed that schedule. I can admit the mistake in the same voice I use to correct it.", "next": "eight"},
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"eight": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "tender", "text": "I will stand beside you, but I will not turn your admission into my heroic interruption. You discovered the conflict, listened to the keepers, and changed the exhibition. Partnership should make courage easier without stealing its name.", "next": "nine"},
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"nine": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "tender", "text": "Be careful. That is the sort of sentence a woman remembers while pretending to examine a nineteenth-century spice ledger. Stand beside me tonight and I may ask you to remain there after the speeches, when partnership has fewer witnesses and considerably less formal clothing.", "next": "ten"},
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"ten": {"speaker": "rayhan", "expression": "playful", "text": "I heard nothing. I am only a cook standing three steps away with excellent hearing. Come test the founders’ dish. Cooperation under pressure reveals character, and if the two of you keep looking at each other like that, at least the rice deserves supervision.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "trust", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 4}, {"type": "flag", "id": "founders_plan"}]}
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}
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},
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"pavilion_waiting": {
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"start": "one",
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"nodes": {
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"one": {"speaker": "ishan", "expression": "determined", "text": "The pavilion is full. Guild representatives are seated along the river side, the court delegation faces the stage, and three rival newspapers have discovered the phrase 'missing royal treasure.' I can delay the opening twelve minutes with music and perhaps five more by complimenting the ambassador’s shawl.", "next": "two"},
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"two": {"speaker": "saira", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "Use ten. We should not behave as though truth is an emergency to be hidden behind entertainment. Lima, the council is divided, but no one disputes that the original cannot endure the lamps. The remaining question is whether we name the concealment and the mistaken history ourselves.", "next": "three"},
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"three": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "determined", "text": "We do. Anwara protected the folio through an improper act prompted by our improper schedule. I will not punish her publicly to preserve my authority. We will show the conservation images, read the founders’ names, and invite the market guilds to correct the record as research continues.", "next": "four"},
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"four": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "thoughtful", "text": "The evidence supports that account. I can explain the repair, the mismatched dedication, and the letters without claiming certainty where gaps remain. The most persuasive thing we can do is let the audience see the method, including the point where our first assumptions failed.", "next": "five"},
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"five": {"speaker": "saira", "expression": "warm", "text": "You have both chosen a difficult path with unusual grace. Z, a visiting scholar can leave after making trouble and call it principle. You have stayed for the repair. That distinction matters to families, even modern ones who pretend not to conduct interviews over tea.", "choices": [
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{"id": "families", "text": "Say that staying for the repair is the point.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "familyApproval", "amount": 5}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "comfort", "amount": 2}], "next": "six"},
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{"id": "lima", "text": "Say that Lima made staying an easy choice.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 5}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "trust", "amount": 2}], "next": "six"},
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{"id": "work", "text": "Commit to the continuing research.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "respect", "amount": 5}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "adventure", "amount": 2}], "next": "six"}
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]},
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"six": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "flustered", "text": "Aunt Saira, if this is an interview, you might have warned me before allowing him to answer so well. I have a speech to deliver and would prefer not to do it while visibly imagining future tea tables.", "next": "seven"},
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"seven": {"speaker": "saira", "expression": "playful", "text": "A curator should be able to manage competing interpretations. Besides, the entire market has managed to notice what you two believe remains subtle. Do not worry—the newspapers are still occupied with the missing-treasure headline.", "next": "eight"},
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"eight": {"speaker": "z", "expression": "tender", "text": "After the speech, may I have the first dance? This is partly strategic. If I stumble publicly, the scandal may distract everyone from the archive. If I do not, I would like one memory tonight that belongs to us before it becomes an exhibition note.", "next": "nine"},
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"nine": {"speaker": "lima", "expression": "tender", "text": "You may have the first dance and the private memory. You may even have the truth: I have been saving that dance since the garden, when you called our shoulders a reproducible result. Do not make me regret rewarding such terrible scholarship.", "next": "ten"},
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"ten": {"speaker": "ishan", "expression": "warm", "text": "Your twelve minutes have become two. The river lamps are lit, the facsimile is in place, and the musicians are waiting. Whatever changes after tonight, the story will no longer belong to a single house. Take your positions—and, for all our sakes, save the kissing until after the council vote.", "effects": [{"type": "relationship", "key": "familyApproval", "amount": 3}, {"type": "relationship", "key": "romance", "amount": 3}, {"type": "flag", "id": "pavilion_ready"}]}
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}
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}
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}
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