After Azul’s overblot Ruggie empathizes, saying, “I can’t exactly blame a guy for gettin’ bent outta shape when something you’ve been building up for years gets ruined. I mean, if someone broke the coin bank I’ve been saving my money in, I’d hold a grudge for life.”
Ruggie impresses Azul while working a shift at Mostro Lounge: due to the volume of customers Azul decides to cut off the queue but Ruggie suggests that they send dining area staff to the kitchen, volunteering to compensate for the lack of manpower by himself. Azul reluctantly agrees and Ruggie fulfills his promise.
Ruggie might be a regular employee of Mostro Lounge, despite being from another dorm: in a flashback we see it was during one of his shifts that Azul discovered Ruggie’s ability to identify coins by the sound they make.
When Jack is reluctant to wake Ruggie up from his dream it is Azul who convinces him to do so, pointing out that Ruggie gains nothing from being well fed in the dream world, and while his father may have come home in the dream the family that he actually knows—his grandmother—thinks that he is missing.
“Would he really want to be the only one in his family enjoying a happy life and a full stomach?” Jack agrees that remaining asleep is not what Ruggie would want.
It is Azul who comes up with the idea for awakening Ruggie: dropping coins in larger and larger denominations. Ruggie is thrilled by the sound but confused by why he is “getting so giddy over finding a little loose change.”
Ruggie dives into a fountain to retrieve one of Azul’s thrown coins while Azul taunts him with, “As strongly as you protest, your actions tell another story altogether. You want it badly, don’t you? Be honest, Ruggie. Self-restraint isn’t healthy, you know. Just admit it…you want it more than anything!,” successfully awakening Ruggie.
Twisted Wonderland Reference Note 