[@Terminal] The formatting seems to have been crippled between the transition from my post in the contest entry thread and the submission list here, rather than between a text editor and RPG. (I actually wrote it here, and then pasted to local plaintext as safety measure.) It has proper chapter breaks, but paragraph breaks have lost a whitespace character each...
	I agree with most of the comments - there are a couple of slightly awkward sentences that slipped my own proofreading. I did contemplate elaborating on the why from the narrative character's perspective, and actually modified a sentence to emphasize it a bit more, but I also did not want to derail the narrative or whack the reader over the head with it. Might have made it a bit too vague, though I'd reckon readers should still be able to fill in the gaps as intended; balances are tricky like that. 
	All in all, thanks for your feedback! *salutes*