#(also the items will be reoccurring)

[torchstelechos]

if you were in a game youd be like a hint? character youd at first be in the shadows and if talked to next area youd be chilling there but if not spotted youd be still hiding in shadows but a little more out of them and youd have like just general game stuff to say and if talked to again youd offer advice if wanted

TIS I, THE FUCKED UP HINT GUY. But yeah no for real that's meeeeeee :3c most of my advice is like. Area locked/event locked loading screen tips you wish were actually on the loading screen

[ded-puyo]

https://imgur.com/a/IFfwC1D

throws wrapped + recipient name labelled items into graveyard

(might have to copy the link and paste it)

//Both are now able to wear the alt fashion they always had the vibes of

//This is for the last shirt that remained (he eepy…)

//The toys!!! (I would kill for a nendo)

//Rei enjoyed the chocolates a lot (Yu ate some too but she’s much more wary when it comes to food, something about not knowing if they’re dangerous)

———————

Yu: We got so much stuff! Thanks you, nice unknown person!

Rei: many thanks..

———————

Images of gifts are here

[dykedvonte]

I think there is an inherent evil in the fact that P.E. really sends their freighters out with limited food supplies and commodifies sweets/treats.

Not a lot of people are familiar with sugar and the value it had when it came to labors but it was expensive and treated as a luxury. Sugar was a sign of being comfortable and prosperity and even wealth as you could afford to get it and use it in abundance. There's definitely something to be discussed that Curly, who doesn't really care for sweets, was offered the one luxury item they are allotted and the fact the sweetener packets are addictive and a reoccurring device in the game.

It is used as a reward but also to mask the bitter reality or taste of a lot of the events. The mouthwash has just enough sugar to cover the ethanol hence why Swansea drinks so much of it, but has to much to be a disinfectant, only hurting Daisuke more (note he loves sugar). The cake is awarded for Curly and made by him, someone who doesn't care for confections, and serving it commences the bitter reveal of their firing. Jimmy gets Daisuke to use an extra sweetener packet to cover up the extra alcohol in the mocktail and we know where that leads.

At the end when there is no more sugar to cover up the bitter things, we taste the horrors clear as day. They were always a lingering bitter taste in the games story but at the end that's all that's there.

[respectthepetty]

Okay, your posts about When it Rains it Pours finally made me start watching today (actually mainly because I just couldn't figure out who all the characters were and I was very confused but wanted to understand). I've finished ep 2 but I have some questions.

First, what's up with two of them being called Kazuaki? I'm sure I've missed something. At first, I was confused because when Hagiwara went to get his new pass card I thought Nakarai would recognise his name from the emails...but he didn't. And then in ep 2 Nakarai stared at Hagiwara's pass card and Hagiwara covered it up... Have I missed something significant around the names?

And second, I know you've written a lot about the 'background noise' of the series so far, but I noticed a water drop sound in ep 1 at a particular moment, and then two water drops sounds at another particular moment in ep 2, both during conversations with Nakarai and Fujisawa - is this a thing? (I guess I mean beyond the symbolism of the rain in general) -> That the water drops signify something changing in the their relationship? (Their conflict/separation increasing?) Do those waterdrops reoccur in later eps and increase each time? (Because I hope they do). -> I'm presuming here that you're watching with the sound on unlike the Thai dramas which I know you watch on mute.

Sorry if this is incoherent but it's late o'clock and I want to understand every opinion and thought you have on this show. I think I might be as obsessed by your thoughts on the show as you are about the show.

DADDY! You can't ask questions like this because it means I'm going to have to give some kind of spoilers, but they won't ruin the show for you, I promise:

What's up with two of them being called Kazuaki?

This is Fujisawa Kazuaki. He is Sei's roommate/boyfriend(?), and Sei is in love with him, hence why Sei's email IS Fujisawa's name (and birthday - 09/27).

This pretty and attractive man is Hagiwara Kazuaki. He is my bias because he has done nothing wrong except feel his feelings, and he is Sei's coworker who is also experiencing frustrations in his relationship.

Since Hagiwara and Sei work together, when Hagiwara went to go get new business cards, Sei noticed Hagiwara's pass HOLDER. Sei didn't pay attention to the card itself. He was looking at the holder because Fujisawa designed it since Fujisawa is a designer of workplace and home items. Sei cares about the pass because it's a connection to the man he is in love with — Fujisawa.

The show tells us Sei wasn't paying attention to the names because Hagiwara actually had to return since his name was misspelled on the cards, which he states is a common issue.

I don't know a lot about Japanese, but 1) neither Hagiwara nor Fujisawa is going by "Kazuaki" IN JAPANESE, and 2) neither name is being written out the same IN JAPANESE, so Sei wouldn't know that Hagiwara Kazuaki is a "Kazuaki" since the name is never really spoken or written.

On Hagiwara's mispelled business cards, "Kazuaki" is romanized, but in Japanese, his name is "顕"

When we see Fujisawa's name, it's "和章"

They are the same romanized, but not in Japanese. Make sense?

Do the water drops signify something changing in the their relationship?

Unlike Hagiwara who can hear the rain in his apartment, Sei never hears the rain in his apartment. He also has never gotten any affection from Fujisawa, so think about when you heard the drops?

The first time occurs when Fujisawa tells Sei that Sei isn't a parasite. One drop of affection.

The second drop happens when Fujisawa says he likes Sei just the way he is. Another drop of affection.

Now the series is called When It Rains, It Pours. This meaning will come up in the fifth episode, but normally that saying means that when one bad event happens, a lot of bad events tend to follow.

However, considering what rain means to these two (lack of intimacy and affection), the show's title is layered in meaning.

So if these men are allowed just one drop of affection, love will pour out of them. The floodgates will open.

And you assumed correctly that I'm watching this show unmuted AND at regular speed, so the obsession is strong.

[autistic-writer-angel]

Octonauts Headcanons

May add to this, as I go:

Captain Barnacles:

Just everyone’s Dad™

All of them, except for Professor Inkling, has called him Dad at least once. He doesn’t mind.

Nobody has ever seen him cry.

He spends one on one time with each of the crew members whenever he can (typically once a week with each of them).

Sings in the shower

Showers in the morning

Has pretty strict routines, but can also be flexible, given the unpredictability of life as an Octonaut

His birthday is in October. (I Googled when that flower that blooms every twelve years does so, to see if I could narrow down what time of year his birthday is. Apparently, the peak blooming period is in September/October and with OCTOber, I figured it fits!) I headcanon the 4th October because that was the air date of the first episode.

Cross-eyed (based on this post:)

If anybody on the Octopod were to go to his room and tell him they had a nightmare, he would let them sleep with him. (The only ones who do are Peso and the Vegimals.)

Despite that, he doesn't really like to be seen in his pyjamas, thinking it's unprofessional. (But he's so cute in his little pyjamas!)

Sort of a joke headcanon, but I'mma add it anyway: He has reoccurring dreams about playing his accordion on stage, with hundreds of adoring fans cheering for him. (That's what he's dreaming about here:)

Kwazii:

ADHD

Not just afraid of spiders, but needles too (not that he’d ever admit it!)

Often takes the GUP-B out just for the fun of it, but will also do so to get out of something (normally cleaning or when the Captain’s playing his accordion)

Sneaks into the Captain’s room to play with his model ships

Such a sweet tooth

Favourite kelp cake flavour is jelly

Messiest of all of them

Peso:

Intimidated by Captain Barnacles when they first met

Stopped feeling that way after a difficult mission, where the Captain told Peso he was very proud of him

Puts the Captain on a pedestal

Looks up to all the Octonauts, but of course, he looks up to the Captain the most

Youngest and most recent to join

Still pretty recent to join when the series started

Anxiety

He has hundreds of family members and he remembers the names and birthdays of every single one.

Shellington:

Autistic

Bullied as a child; Pearl stuck up for him and they were extremely close as a result

His satchel is a comfort item and a seemingly bottomless pit. If you see him pull things out of it, you’ll think, Wow! How did you fit all that in there?

Mother calls him Shelly; she’s the only one who does so

(I can’t remember where I saw this theory, but I think it makes a lot of sense.) In addition to marine biology, he has an interest in linguistics. That’s how he was able to learn Vegimalese.

Does not care if you interrupt one of his infodumps. He will just keep talking.

Clumsiest and most absentminded of the crew

Do NOT watch any nautical themed cartoon with him (e.g. SpongeBob or Finding Nemo). He will just spend the entire time pointing out all the inaccuracies.

Best artist on the Octopod

Dashi:

Octopod’s unofficial DJ

Loves strawberries and strawberry flavoured things

Completely ignores danger while trying to get the perfect photo

Second best artist

Just loves babies! Any kind of babies!

Tweak:

Mother passed away when she was young; Ranger Marsh raised her all by himself

Known Captain Barnacles longer than any of the others

Even though the Captain is her dad and Kwazii’s her brother, she’s the mum of the Octopod.

Plays the banjo

Professor Inkling:

Most painfully slow driver you can imagine

Other than the Vegimals, he's the best cook on the Octopod

Gives the best advice

Shellington was one of his (most talented) students. That was how Shellington got the job with the Octonauts.

Never leaves the library unless he absolutely has to

Leave him alone with a child and he has no clue what he's supposed to do

Also the case when someone's crying

Vegimals:

Always make sure they have a supply of everyone’s favourite flavour of kelp cake in case anybody needs some emergency comfort food

Often sleep holding hands (they learned this from Shellington when they were babies)

Sometimes sleep with one of the Octonauts (mostly Shellington, but sometimes the others as well)

We know they get stuck in the kitchen vent. Well, I bet half the time, they get stuck while showing the other Vegimals how they got stuck!

Favourite kelp cake flavour is classic kelp

[factual-fantasy]

Heya Factual! Hope things are going as good as they can on your end! Sorry it's been a bit since my last Ask, I got sick AGAIN and have been out of commission for a while now. But at last I have returned! Sorry to see your still having some technical troubles- really hoping you can figure it all out!

Also, I wanted to thank you! While I was sick, inspired by your art, I decided to give Sky a try on mobile (just got a new phone), and while I'm still super early in the game, it seems really cool! I'm not sure how linear the game is, but I figured I'd ask, as a veteran, do you have any advice or pointers for a beginner? Anything of interest I should check out or invest in? (Oh, and also, sorry about the color swap disappointments, sounds like a real bummer!)

And lastly, unrelated, I really liked the Pomni and Gummigoo art you did a few days back! I really like both of them together, and would love to see more of their story later down the road! Though I was wondering, you mentioned Max and Chad both stuck around in your AU too! Any cool redesign or story ideas for those two? Do they stick with Gummigoo, or have they branched out over time into the other friend groups?

(Color swap disappointment post) (Pomni and Gummigoo post)

Hello! Oof, sorry to hear that you got sick again <:(( But I'm glad you seem to be feeling better! As for my tech issues I have gotten a new chord for my tablet and have downloaded a fresh FireAlpaca. So far none of the screen glitches have come back and FireAlpaca is working perfectly! :))

Also thank you! :DD I'm glad you liked it!! :}} And while Chad's ref sheet is done, Max's is still in the sketch stage. I just haven't gotten around to finishing him <:/

Now their friend groups.. I was thinking that not many circus goers really vibe with NPCs all that much. So the number of people who they can make genuine friendships with is limited.. that being said I think Chad and Max would find a solid friendships with Gangle and maybe Zibble and uhhh... Ms. Wiggles..? Maybe? :0

Gangle has a soft spot for NPCs thanks to Bella and respects them more than others. So out of the 3 I think their friendships would be strongest with her.

Now sky.. ohhh boy prepare for a wall of text <XDD (Note there is a little spoiler for something in Golden Wasteland!)

Alrighty, so when I got this ask I sat down and made a list of every little nugget of sky advice I could possibly think of. Until eventually I took a step back and realized that a lot of it wasn't really solid advice or pointers <XDD so I cut the list down into somethings that I either wish a veteran would have taught me when I was a moth. Or things I found out too late and missed out on something or anything like that. Plus some advice I've tired really hard to beat into other moths heads for their own good but they never understand me in game <XDD

First off. Seasons, reoccurring events and non reoccurring events. Its important to know the difference between the three for this advice.

Seasons are limited-time themed events that come with the option of purchasing an Season Pass, which allows players to access extra Cosmetics and Expressions during the Season in exchange for an in-game purchase.👇👇👇

~~~~~

Special Events (also called Holiday Events). These are limited-time events introducing new cosmetics themed around real-life celebrations. Most Special Events recur annually. Some of these events take place in the Secret Area, accessible from the Vault of Knowledge. They are separate from, but may overlap with, Seasonal Events and Double Currency Events.��👇👇

~~~~~

Non-recurring Events (or Short Events). These events are special or unannounced events that do not repeat or return due to their special characteristics. This list also includes events that have not been confirmed to return nor have a history of recurrence.👇👇👇

~~~~~

Alrighty, got that all processed? I hope so <XD Now onto my advice.

1: Collaborative in app purchase items (items you need to buy with real money) will never return. Let me explain.

In sky there is a reoccurring event made by sky called days of fortune. (Its basically a Chinese new year event) Its going on right now actually! :0 This event has come back once a year every year. And the cosmetics that you need to purchase with real money have come back every time too.

However, the Cinnamoroll collaborative event? That event and all of the items it brought with it will not reoccur.

You have to be careful and check every event and make sure its one that will return. If its a collab season like Cinnamoroll and you don't buy the items? They will vanish and you wont have the chance to buy them ever again :( I learned my lesson the hard way when I didn't buy the fox plush and the yellow scarf from season of the little prince years and years ago. 😔 Up to this point the little prince's in app purchase items have not returned since.

This goes for collaborative seasons as well. Season of the little prince, season of aurora and season of moomin, etc, will not have their in app purchase items return. Be careful to know which is which during the event/season so you don't regret anything!

Another note about non returning items: While individual spirits that you can relive the memories of, can return as traveling spirits once every 2 weeks.. any items that the guide of that season offers will be unavailable after the season ends. 👇👇👇

Also speaking of traveling spirits, here's some advice I had to figure out myself. As someone who has every single traveling spirit in the game? As long as you have 200 candles, 40 hearts and 20 ascended candles? You will be able to afford all the cosmetics from ANY traveling spirit that shows up. If you keep a nice candle run schedule this wont be too hard to keep up with!

Also note about traveling spirits. They can take a looong time to return. When I first started playing I bought out half the items a traveling spirit offered before he left. I knew he would come back so I wasn't upset. But it took 2 REAL LIFE YEARS. 2 WHOLE YEARS for him to FINALLY come back. So this is why I advise you be really careful with the 200🕯️,40💝 and 20🧨. It would suck a lot if a spirit showed up that you really liked!.. Only for you to not afford it and have to wait a year or two to see it again <XDD

Now currency. Sky tries to make out that ascended candles are the most valuable currency. This is a load of bologna. By far the most valuable and sought after currency is hearts. You can go and get ascended candles by yourself all you want. But hearts have to be given to you by other players in one way or another. Which makes them EXTREMELY hard to get for some people. My advice is to hoard those things like your life depends on it. Try to have a stock pile of at least 30 to prepare for any temporary and expensive items that may come your way. Don't go and blow them all on the home spirits like I did <XDD

Now candle runs.. a lot of players will tell you you have to do a candle run through the ENTIRE GAME to keep up with sky's bonkers prices. Which is sometimes true... However, I have recently discovered this candle run route on YouTube that has helped me loads! I modified it a little and don't do the turtle thing, but if you're worried about runs that take hours this could be very useful to you! About a week or soo of keeping up with it and I'm almost at 400 candles! :)))

Another thing I want to advise is the whole ultimate reward thing in the home constellations. (Random google images)

The game will tell you that if you ascend all the spirits in a realm constatation, that it'll unlock the "ultimate reward". Which is that question mark in the middle. Typically this means you just gotta buy every single item from every single spirit in that constellation and the reward will be unlocked.

THAT IS NOT THE CASE HERE!! You do NOT have to buy the VERY EXPENSIVE tier 2 capes that some spirits offer. Just everything else. So repeat you buy everything the spirits offer, but you DO NOT have to buy the super expensive tier 2 capes in order to unlock the ultimate reward. Save your hearts, you're welcome! XDD

Now the Golden Wasteland advice. As a veteran I NEED to teach you HOW to burn down this plant in wasteland.

This plant is in the last area before the temple in wasteland. Not to be confused with the GIANT PLANT that's in the area infested with Krill. This is the smaller one after it. And there has been DOZENS UPON DOZENS of times a moth has come by to help me burn it down and not known how to do it. I've sat there for 20 minutes each time trying DESPERATLY to communicate what order to burn the plant down but they never get it. So I shall teach you!

Hopefully that little comic got my point across! XD

Another word of advice is to check out nastymold on YouTube! She is a very sweet and soft spoken YouTuber that plays the beta version of sky. She gets all the updates early and makes short videos explaining everything you need to know about any events or seasons. If you're ever confused about anything or are afraid you may miss out on something in an event, just check out her channel! No doubt she's already covered it and explained it for you so you don't miss nothing!

Now my last word of advice for you is this. Take the game slow. Really soak up your moth days and take your time playing it.

Many veteran players are heartbroken that they let another veteran drag them through their moth days and didn't really get to explore or experience anything naturally for themselves. And other veterans just miss their moth days in general. When the game felt huge and there was so much to explore and so many things to save and grind for.

I don't think I'm like that personally, I'm way more relaxed as a veteran knowing I understand how the game works and I'm not missing out on anything. But I can understand missing those moth days feeling like a kid running around and seeing all the beautiful things for the first time.

So just take things nice and slow. Soak up the game at a nice pace. if there's an event that you'd like to partake in but don't understand it just watch nastymold. She always has a sweet little video that tells you all you need to know without really dampening your moth experience. You can only be a moth once.

Well that's all the actually practical advice I had on my list. I hope you find some use in this wall of text XDD thanks for reading and see you in the skies! 💞🕊️

[drivinmeinsane]

Officer K x GN!Reader ※ { masterlist } ※ { ao3 }

※ Summary: With a tremor threatening to shake his body, he slips his fingers under the edge of his shirt sleeve and pulls it up to his elbow. His soulmark is laid bare before your eyes. The wound that he had left in his own skin when he had tried to carve out the design has faded to a raised, pale line. “That wasn’t there before,” you murmur, taking his forearm in your hands. Your pointer finger traces over the scar. ※ Rating: 18+ for mature content and themes. Please mind the warnings. ※ Content/tags: Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Implied Reoccurring Sexual Abuse by a Supervisor, Emotional Hurt, Identity Issues, Self-Harm, Alcohol Abuse, Smoking, Eye Trauma, Canon-typical Violence, Slow Burn, Developing Relationship, No use of Y/N, No Pronouns Given for Reader ※ Word count: 15,713 ※ Status: One-shot / Complete ※ Author's note: In the wake of a mentally difficult month, I present the story that accompanied me during that time. Here's to brighter days. ※ Song inspiration: Someone to You - BANNERS

In a cruelly human twist, the moment that K is incepted, birthed from a plastic bag like an item purchased at a supermarket in the years before the Blackout rocked the world, is also the moment he begins to die. This is something he won’t mind, once he realizes that death is a gift given only to the living.

As he lays, wet and trembling, atop compressed rubber and metal grating, he feels nothing but terror. His body is stricken by the wracking sobs of the newborn. His face gradually relaxes with each passing minute. The replicant’s wailing turns into coughing when his body chooses to expel the synthetically made amniotic fluid from his lungs.

“Are you done?” comes a woman’s voice. Clinical. Detached.

Suddenly made aware of the world around him, the small sterile room that it is, he opens his sticky eyelids only to be forced to squint against the penetrating glare of the artificial lighting overhead. He lays there for a moment, twisted and gasping like a crushed bird on the pavement—filled with the old memories of the nest and waiting, beak agape, for a mother who will not come. He shivers.

When KD6-3.7 manages to focus his eyes, the first thing he makes sense of is his own hands, and then the mark on his own forearm that is slowly blossoming to life. It’s all too much. His brain feels as though it is pressing against the confines of his skull, threatening to crack the bone and spill out onto the rubber. If it does, perhaps it will slip through the grate like the yolk of a broken egg.

Feet step up to him. They’re clad in sensible heels over black socks, utilitarian. K peers through the pulsing behind his eyes and sees a worn woman’s pinched face peering down at him. For just a moment, he’s certain that she intends to snuff him out. All the same, he pushes aside his fear and reaches out for her. She will become the closest thing to a mother he will ever know. K clasps his slimy hand around her sock-clad ankle. The bones are fragile underneath his grip. One too-tight squeeze and they would snap under the pressure. She tries to shake him off. He clings on, desperate for some kind of contact. He does not yet know that he will be raised solely by the wire mother with no comfort of the cloth.

“Let go.” Her voice cuts over the faint noise of the plastic crinkling above him. Disgust mars her lined face. He will grow familiar with expression. Both from her and from others.

As if burned, he immediately does. The compulsion to obey is too pressing for him to ignore. Every blood vessel and muscle fiber in his body is hardwired for submission. K tucks his hand against his chest, shrinks in on himself. He is not praised for his obedience or comforted through his turmoil. Tools, he learns later, do not need reward.

The woman crouches suddenly. She grabs at his arm and extends it under the harsh light. Her nails bite into his skin. It is the first pain he will experience from another living being. Both he and the stranger look at the elegant lines set into his flesh. She does not speak and neither does he. She lets go of him, red crescent moons grace the pale sky of his skin in the wake of her fingers.

There is a gesture that he doesn’t understand and, suddenly, he is being hosed down. The cold water sluices over him, washing away the newborn taint. With one final look cast down at him, the woman leaves.

Time passes in her absence, minutes smearing together in a twisted tangle made only more disorienting when the lights shut off. He is left in the dark, cold and struggling to comprehend. Refrigerated. He is experiencing punishment for a crime he does not yet understand. Wallace’s creation dared to have the trace of a soul in him. The evidence of it is clearly visible to the naked eye.

Eventually, the woman comes for him and lets him out into the light. He learns that he is hers, like a hunting dog belongs to a huntsman. His madam tells him that the mark adorning his forearm is a meaningless tattoo. She had only wanted him to be special. It’s the first of the many lies she tells him.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Advertisements cut through the gloom of his living room. In them, organics emphatically gesture to convey their success with the soulmate finding services being advertised. The blue light shifts to purple then to red. In the disorienting glow, anything could look real. Seated on his couch with a room temperature glass of whiskey that is only getting warmer with the heat of his hand, K watches Joi dance alone to the easy swing of Frank Sinatra.

“Did you know this song was first released in 1954 under another name by another singer? Kaye’s last name, Ballard, sounds a lot like ‘ballad’, doesn’t it?” she asks.

K hums, agreeable. The alcohol coursing through his bloodstream accompanied with his ever-present exhaustion have left him slumped bonelessly into the rigid angles of the cushions. It had been a day. It always is.

“Sweetheart,” the replicant says to his pretend wife, “will you indulge me?”

The DiJi smiles at him. He can see a knowing curve to her lips. It’s rare that he asks her for this. With a flourish, she flickers to an outfit with short sleeves. Joi kneels by the couch and rests her elbows on the edge of it, chin on her interlaced fingers.

“Is this what you wanted?” she asks, teasing. She presents her arm with an elegant flip of her wrist. The twin to the mark gracing his own forearm twinkles back up at him. He can almost imagine that it’s real.

Wordlessly, he extends his hand out and barely stops himself from reaching right through her projected skin by accident. He manages to stop himself before breaking the illusion. She plays at resting her arm in the palm of his hand. K can convince himself he can feel the warmth of her underneath the hovering passes of his thumb. Like trying to avoid breaking a gossamer thin strand of spiderweb, he carefully caresses her. Joi preens under the attention, reaching for his own mark in return. He feels the faintest trace of static.

He closes his eyes before he can register how the pixelation of her always makes the edges of her copied mark look not quite real. The replicant has to convince himself that this is enough. It’s all he has, so it must be. He cannot afford to dream of what it would be like to feel another body against his. Their kind must never look to the stars.

───※ ·❆· ※───

There had been a time in which K had wondered if the other bearer of his soulmark was his madam. He had been made for her, after all. It would only be right if they were intertwined down to the very cells that made up their bodies.

Joshi isn’t, of course. He finds out the first time that she has him strip her bare in the privacy of her office. Her skin is unmarked by anything but the scars of being human. K cannot boast the same. He heals too fast, too completely, to carry the same marks. For him to scar with any significance, an injury would have to be so severe that an organic’s body would be grievously devastated from the trauma.

He is not sure if the emotion he feels over the lack of mark on his handler is the grieving of what might have been or the relief at what isn’t. It would have been easier if it had been her. She hollowed him out. Used him. Uses him still. His madam owns him in every way that matters.

───※ ·❆· ※───

This retirement job is meant to be routine, the same as the last dirty dozen. He puts down an average of two Nexus 8 models every month. His work ethic has proven to be top of the line, much to the pleasure of the retiring department’s lieutenant. The routine success is enough to give him the security to sleep on the way to the property he’s being sent to. The ‘9 is exhausted from the long night he’d experienced.

K had poured over files at his cramped desk until his eyes burned and his throat grew so dry as to rival the arid chemical wastes of the Nevada desert. Still, he hadn’t bothered asking for water. It would cost money he didn’t want to spend. Besides, his experiences with liquid within the walls of the precinct have come hand-in-hand with punishment.

He wakes when the spinner chimes. Head snapping up, the officer inhales and exhales hard. It’s a sign of vulnerability he feels free enough to express as he turns off the autopilot and regains personal control over the vehicle. In the distance, a scattering of structures rise out from the perpetual haze of the world like a nervous herd of bovine protecting a calf against an approaching predator. He angles towards them, passing over a broken windmill on the way.

Pulling the spinner several yards short of a dead tree, he sets it down in a sprawling waste of infertile soil. A cloud of dirt gets kicked up by the disturbance. There is no hiding his arrival.

As he does on every job, K pops the latch for the spinner’s parrotfish in order to send it lazily into the sky. He gestures up at it to begin its rounds. The replicant tugs his jacket collar up over the lower half of his face. His lungs will ache for days if too much dust finds a home among the tissue. A minor discomfort, but he prefers to avoid them when he can.

Before stepping into his quarry’s home, he knocks the dirt off his boots. He doesn’t rap his knuckles against the door.

Unsurprised, he finds the living space as bare as his own apartment. There are small hints at a life here. Everything is cleaned, maintained, loved. K ignores the stab of camaraderie, buries it. He and this replicant are not of the same kind. He can’t allow them to be. It will only make the inevitability of what’s coming that much harder.

There is a pot of something fragrant boiling away on the stove that he had smelt the moment he opened the front door. He ignores it, for now, in favor of taking a seat in the kitchen. The Nexus 9 knows that he will be joined by the master of the house shortly.

He is proven right by the arrival of the pre-Blackout model shortly after settling into position. Sapper Morton bypasses him on his way to the sink. K silently observes him for a moment, elbow on the table with his gun in hand, as the wanted replicant scrubs at his work-worn hands. The water is loud in on the stainless steel basin. A flash of his inception flares to the forefront of his mind. He speaks to shake it away.

“I hope you don’t mind me taking the liberty. I was careful not to drag in any dirt.” K bites down the urge to continue, to explain that the wind had been turbulant, to actually have a real conversation with someone other than Joi. He’s not here for friendship.

There comes the rattle of something on the window ledge just out of K’s field of view. Sapper’s resigned voice answers him. “I don’t mind the dirt,” he says with a sigh and the noise of eyeglasses being placed on his rough face, “I do mind… unannounced visits.”

Heavy footsteps trod towards him in the dimly lit room. The seated officer tries not to react as the mountain of a replicant approaches him before coming to a halt a polite distance away. “You police?”

“Are you Sapper Morton? Civic number NK680514?”

“I’m a farmer.”

Sapper seems to be just as adverse to answering questions as he is. K can respect that. Answers can be a dangerous thing to give. Any vulnerability can be exploited.

“I saw that. What do you farm?” he asks, genuinely curious.

The mountain moves across the tile floor and a massive hand rises to open a cupboard. Morton slams down a container onto the counter before withdrawing a small cluster of white, wriggling objects. K watches quietly as the ‘8 approaches and drops the mass onto the table by his hand. Nematodes.

“It’s a protein farm. Wallace design,” Morton supplies as way of explanation.

Isn’t everything? K thinks. That man has fingers in nearly every form of industry in their society, both on and off world.

Taking his hand off the gun, he points at the air with a small twirl of his finger, subconsciously mirroring the gesture he’d given the parrotfish before entering the house. “Is that that I smell?”

“Grow that just for me… Garlic.”

“Garlic…” K says, wonderingly. The word feels just as exotic in his mouth as the plant might taste.

“Do you want to try some?”

“No, thank you. I prefer to keep an empty stomach until the hard part of the day is done.” The pot starts boiling even louder on the stove, as if it were protesting the refusal of Sapper Morton’s hospitality. “How long you been here?”

“Since 2020.”

“But you haven’t always been a farmer, have you?” Silence from the other replicant is answer enough. K continues, “Your bag. It’s colonial medical use. Military issue.”

He doesn’t miss the change in the older Nexus’s body language. The almost unconscious touch on the bag’s canvas side reminds K of the way he touches his own jacket when he’s uncertain. He presses onward with his information gathering.

“Where were you? Calantha…? Must have been brutal.”

“Planning on taking me in? Huh? Take a look inside?”

“Mister Morton, if taking you in is an option…” K sighs and leaves his gun aside on the table. “I would much prefer that to the alternative. I’m sure you knew it would be someone in time.”

A frustrated exhalation of air bursts from the other replicant as he pulls off his glasses. K tosses him a cursory glance before looking down, eyebrow slightly raised. He reaches into one of his inside pockets to pull out the small handheld retina scanner the police department issues for use on the field.

“I’m sorry it had to be me.”

“Good as any,” Morton says while K activates the device.

“Now, if you don’t mind… If you could just look up and to the left,” he instructs, uncrossing his legs and getting to his feet.

He knows what’s coming. He had seen him pull the scalpel out of the bag, so it comes to no real surprise when Sapper Morton lunges at him. K catches his hand before the blade can lodge itself between the span of his ribs. In return, he gets slammed against the wall by the far larger replicant. Managing to dodge the punches leveled at him, he tries to break free to create some distance between the two of them. He doesn’t succeed. The ‘8 grabs a firm hold on him and slams his body into the wall like Cain bringing the stone down upon his brother. Fighting to keep his chin tucked against the curve of his shoulder so that the back of his head doesn’t meet a similar end to Abel’s, he takes the brunt of the force over the span of his shoulders until finally the drywall gives out beneath him and he lands hard on the floor.

There is no time to recover because Morton falls with him, dropping the scalpel upon impact. They wrestle, trying desperately to get the upper hand over the other. K doesn’t want to do this. He wants to walk this back, reset and try again. He opens his mouth to tell the farmer just that when Morton is suddenly choking him. It’s as though an iron collar has been fastened around his neck. With tears leaking freely from him, he can feel the blood vessels in his eyes bursting under the strain. He growls, forcing air through his throbbing lungs and slams his fist into Morton hard enough to drop him.

Gaining traction, he manages to straddle the other replicant and he hits him one, two, three, four, five times in the throat in rapid succession. His adversary falls back, struggling to breathe through a damaged windpipe.

K wedges his fingers on the winded replicant’s eyelids and pins the eye open, trying to get the scanner ready. Morton interrupts him by grasping onto the scalpel and driving it into the meat of K’s upper arm. The officer grunts as pain radiates in his right side. He slaps the ‘8 back down and hits him. It’s punishment. Bad dog, his madam would say.

For good measure, he hits him for a second time to quell any further resistance. He doesn’t relish the feeling of his knuckles crushing against the other replicant’s trachea. This time, when he grabs Morton’s face, he manages to hold the eye open long enough for the handheld device to read it.

The screen confirms what he already knows. The man beneath him is Sapper Morton, charged with deadly assault of organic life and wanted for retirement.

Muscles twitching with adrenaline, K gets to his feet and looks down at the replicant choking on his own ruined body. “Please, don’t get up,” he says, accompanying his words with a pleading gesture.

He already knows that he will. They always do. The taste of freedom only serves to kill them in the end. Dying for the it seems… well, K can’t understand it, not like this. His eyes have not been opened to the benefits of being free.

Behind him, he already hears the rustling of Morton sitting up. He retrieves his gun from the kitchen table. It’s heavy in his hand. When he turns around and retraces his steps back towards the living room, the other replicant is on his hands and knees. Those calloused hands are clutching at his throat.

“How does it feel? Killin’ your own kind?” the farmer grits out.

“I don’t retire my own kind because we don’t run. Only you older models do.” There it is. The distinction he must draw between them to keep sane. He won’t pass his baselines otherwise.

“You new models are happy scraping the shit. Because you’ve never seen a miracle.”

K looks at him, jaw clenching with the effort not to speak. It’s on the tip of his tongue, that he has seen his own miracle. He carries it with him every hour of every day, right in his very skin. He doesn’t have a soul and yet he’s marked.

Sapper Morton rushes him, the last efforts of a wounded bull in the arena. K puts two bullets in him. The mountain falls. The house shakes and then goes still.

He covers the dead replicant with a blanket pulled from the back of the couch before extracting his eye with careful hands. He draws the makeshift shroud over Morton’s face when he’s finished. Bloody fingerprints get left behind on the faded fabric.

No matter how much soap K uses in the sink, he can’t get rid of the tacky feeling that seems as though it’s part of him now. His hands will never be clean. Innocence belongs only to the freshly incepted.

Before he leaves the small house, he takes the farmer’s glasses. Some part of Sapper Morton will live on with the replicant that retired him. It’s all K can offer him now.

───※ ·❆· ※───

A fog has laid itself over his shoulders like a second skin. It feels more familiar, more his, than the actual flesh that coats his bones. His DNA was taken from a donor. K is occasionally loathe to even call his body his. Some days, it feels like it has been parted out to anyone who might want a piece of it.

The numbness he’s feeling ensures he passes his baseline with flying colors after the retirement of NK680514. He gets to keep the moniker of “constant” K.

Joshi is pleased at his performance, When he goes to her office for his post-baseline report, she assigns him to another case to keep him occupied while the dig team finishes at the protein farm. His madam doesn’t like him to be idle for too long. He will be heading out in the morning to check in on another old model number.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Having never existed in a world where the skies are clear, K finds the beauty in the varying colors of the haze. Today, the old, industrial streets are bathed in a brilliant orange light due to the rising run. It’s a cheerful hue for the grim work that lies ahead. He supposes this area must come to life at night, being so far from the main heart of Los Angeles and its daunting amount of law enforcement.

K sends the spinner into a slow dive, cruising to increasingly lower altitudes as he gets closer to his destination. As always, the coordinates were provided by Lieutenant Joshi. She had been kind enough to provide him a suspected apartment number, rather than have him go door to door down the halls to find the culprit. Even with a number, K still doesn’t like the idea that there will be neighbors that might bear witness to this.

He finally parks the machine against the curb outside of a run-down apartment building. Even from inside the spinner, the officer can see that that bricks have broken free of the structure's edifice. He deploys the parrotfish for a halfhearted backup that will be useless unless he’s outside and gets out of the spinner.

The front door is uneven on its hinges. It squeals loudly in the silence as he pushes it open. Any dream of subtly is already dashed. The tone for this visit has been set.

Here, the hallways are dusty and unpopulated. He finds it to be a novel contrast to his own living situation. There, the building’s common areas are constantly wet with snow melt and teaming with bodies. The ‘9 wonders if this is how the explorers of ancient tombs felt. Like they were navigating the body of a slumbering Goliath. Finding the door that leads into the stairwell, he mounts the stairs. They creak and shift with the settling of his weight upon each one.

“Unit 405. One known occupant. Possible second.” the message had said.

Officer K reaches the fourth floor to find it predictably devoid of anyone in the hallway. He finds the door with its brass number and steps up to it. The knock echos in the empty hall. There is a long moment of silence before he finally hears footsteps approaching the synthetic wood. A rattle of a chain against the material, and the door opens just enough for an eye to peer suspiciously at him. There’s not enough of a gap for him to get the toe of his boot through.

“I’m sorry for the intrusion. I have some questions I need to ask.”

“You’re a cop?”

K keeps the frown off his face. This is reminding him too much of yesterday. “I’m looking for someone. Civic number NK687725. John Gradus.”

“What if I shut this door?”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” he says, genuinely apologetic.

The stranger sighs and steps aside, opening the door all the way. “You better come on in, then. Nasty business to do in the doorway.”

Trailing after him, K rolls the situation over in his mind. He already knows the face matches, even from the glance he’d taken. It is now a matter of confirming the identity with the eye scan before the next step. Either the replicant can surrender or they can be retired. As Sapper Morton had demonstrated to great effect the day before, it’s never surrender.

“Please, sit,” the older generation model says with a gesture to a worn couch before taking a seat across from it in a chair that looks to be more tape than metal.

K readily complies, not wanting to make waves just yet. There is someone in the kitchen. They’re just out of sight.

“Can you bring us tea?” Gradus calls out after giving him a searching look. “I think it would do our guest some good.”

He’s in the middle of opening his mouth to protest when he catches movement in the kitchen entrance and he falls still. The last thing he was expecting here was you. An organic. The officer had simply assumed that the other potential occupant was another ‘8 like the one he was paying a visit. There is not mixing across kind. His madam has been aggressively clear about there being lines that must never be crossed.

Taking in the hard look you give him when you emerge from the kitchen carrying two cups, he adverts his eyes to the low table in front of him. The porcelain teacup that you place on coffee table is well loved. The edges of it are chipped and the saucer it’s resting on doesn’t match the delicate floral print.

K doesn’t miss the way that you and the other replicant engage in a silent conversation before you hand him his own drink. He is thrown off balance by this situation. The strangeness of it is putting him on an unfamiliar edge. His hand clenches on his thigh.

Across from him, you take a seat next to the ‘8 on another battered chair. Cracked vinyl and dented metal legs groan feebly under your weight. K realizes that everything in this apartment has been well-used. Repaired instead of replaced. He wonders which one of you is the sentimental type.

“Who are you?” you ask, breaking the uneasy silence. NK687725 looks embarrassed by your bluntness.

Head reeling, he responds. “Officer KD6-3.7.”

“That’s not a name. You’re one of them, then.” It’s not a question. Disgust colors your voice. That, at least, is familiar.

“Easy,” John Gradus mummers to you. He reaches over to pat you on the sleeved arm with his pale hand.

K marks the difference between this model and Morton. Where the farmer had been a combat model, it looks like Gradus was meant for another line of work altogether. He is delicate in the places where the other had been robust. K decides that he is likely an old pleasure model. A doxie, perhaps, or meant to be a private client’s pet. He can be easily overpowered in either case.

“Why are you here, Officer?” the other replicant asks, addressing him. There’s a resigned look in his eyes. K’s presence here is no mystery.

“I was sent to follow up on reports on a… rouge serial number. My betters needed reassurance.”

“You’re going to take me in? I’m afraid I don’t have much left to offer.”

“If you’re willing, I will gladly do that rather than the alternative,” K responds. Maybe today, he’ll catch a break.

“He hasn’t done anything wrong!” you cut in, rising to your feet.

K ignores the twinge he feels in his chest. “He ran.”

“So? Why don’t you?”

Left without an answer he is willing to articulate, he doesn’t respond to your question. Loyalty runs too deep when there is no one else to be loyal to but his madam. The thought of running is incomprehensible. There is nothing out there for him but the LAPD. He’d become what he hunts.

He observes quietly as Gradus manages to coax you back into your seat. Reluctance and anger are painted all over your face in broad strokes. The freedom of your expressions reminds him of Joi.

The officer’s eyes flick to the tea cooling on the table. It’s a different color than coffee, differing scent as well. A faint steam trail rises off of it. He tries to focus his attention on it rather than the strange sensation tucked behind his ribs. Distantly, he wonders if he is having a heart attack. Can his kind even have them or was their DNA too tampered with during the growth process to allow for such a thing?

“What kind is it?” he asks, abrupt.

John Gradus smiles over your disbelieving scoff, seemingly delighted at the conversation change. “Green. I grow it myself right here. Please, have a taste. We do not have any sweeteners, but I have grown to like it without additives.”

Extending his hand out to pick up the cup, his mind drifts. Why do all replicants seem to have a desire to create, to put their own mark on the world? It’s an all too human behavior for beings without souls.

The teacup is dwarfed in his grip. A bit too much pressure and he fears the entire thing might turn to wet chalk in his palm. He hovers it underneath his nose, inhales. There’s a crisp scent to it, something fresh. He presses his lips to the edge of the cup and sucks in a mouthful. Involuntarily, his eyes slip closed as the mellow flavor rolls over his tongue.

“Good, isn’t it?” the other replicant says gently. K opens his eyes and carefully places the cup back on its saucer. His side tingles underneath his gun holder, like its burning a hole into his flesh. It’s a reminder that he’s here for something other than a social call.

Reluctantly, he reaches into a pocket and pulls out his field scanner. K looks regretfully at the pair seated across from him. If he could walk away, he would.

“If you could look up and to the left for me, Mister Gradus…” he says, getting to his feet.

You surprise him by also lunging to your feet and moving to stand between him and the still-seated replicant. “Leave my friend alone. Please.”

“I can’t do that. I’m sorry,” K tries to move around you, but you put your hands against the wide expanse of his chest and try to push him back. Heat radiates from your palms, soaking through the threadbare material of his shirt. He doesn’t do anything more than sway from the sudden pressure. The strange feeling in his chest is worse. Why would you protect the thing sitting behind you? He was taught that all replicants are disposable, meaningless in the eyes of organics.

You must be the sentimental one, he realizes. You can’t bare to let go of broken things.

“Just tell your boss or whoever sent you that you couldn’t find us.”

“I can’t lie. I have orders.” K tries to sidestep you. “Please stand aside.”

You don’t listen. Instead, you continue to block him by crowding into his space. He finally catches you with a hand on your upper arm. Applying just enough force, he makes it to where you have to step aside to relieve the pressure.

“Officer, please,” the other replicant speaks, finally rising from his chair after setting down his own teacup, “You have my full cooperation if you do not—”

Gradus’s words get cut off at your sudden explosion of violence. K feels you sock him in the face with all the strength you can muster. Stars explode across his vision. A tall, white fountain looms into his mind’s eye, beckoning him closer. He staggers but recovers quickly. Moving faster than the older model behind you, he clamps his hand around your wrists before the ‘8 can do more than take a shocked step forward.

You fight his hold, struggling like an animal caught in a trap. He clenches his fingers down just enough to keep you captive.

“Please stop,” he requests of you.

“Let go of me!” you snarl in return.

This visit is escalating fast, too fast. K has no precedent for this. In every other retirement case he’s been involved with, the organics have steered clear of the situation. They never interfere, instinctively knowing better than to get between two replicants. You can’t insert yourself into a dog fight without risking getting bit in the frenzy. Already, he can almost feel your more delicate skin bruising in his grip. You’re fighting him hard despite gaining no ground.

“I’m going to need you to let go of my friend now, Officer.”

In the altercation, K had made the mistake of diverting his attention from the real threat to you. He’s chagrined to find that the other replicant has chosen to level a gun at him. It had been retrieved from its place inside a basket between the two chairs judging by the tangled mess of synthetic yarn draped cross the edges of the plastic.

Gradus is turning out to have a harder edge to him than the ‘9 had anticipated. It looks like you’re the breaking point of the wanted replicant’s amiableness. K releases his hold on you and puts both hands up before taking a step back in a show of placation. The eye scanner is still in his left hand.

“If you could put the weapon on the table,” the officer says with a nod to the surface not far from his knees.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Gradus says apologetically, still pointing the gun at him.

“We all know I can’t do that no matter how much I want to… Direct orders.”

Sighing, the other replicant lowers the weapon in surrender but doesn’t set it aside. It’s still enough slack that K feels comfortable enough to step around you. It’s a mistake.

The instant you aren’t unintentionally shielding him from your friend, K sees movement. Gradus raises the firearm in a quick, decisive motion. K responds instinctively. His fingers leap for the gun holstered against his ribs.

With a deafening pop, the bullet blows a hole in the older model’s shoulder. John Gradus falls, gasping, to his knees. K watches, mentally disconnecting from the scene unfolding in front of him as the injured replicant claws at the wound soaking the carpet with each beat of his heart. K feels your absence in a way that is not dissimilar to a limb being severed when you leave his side and throw yourself at Gradus.

Strange. He doesn’t know you, doesn’t even know your name, and yet he is experiencing loss.

Forcefully dispassionate, he watches as you ease your friend onto his back to get better access to the wound. You pull your jacket off, desperately attempting to stanch the flow of blood by shoving the material against the hole until your knuckles pale from the pressure. There is already crimson smeared across your newly bare arms.

Officer K crosses the floor and crouches next to you. He presses a knee onto Gradus’s side to keep him still for what is coming next. K holds the replicant’s eye open and readies the scanner. He holds steady even when you let go of the wadded up jacket and start to rake at the back of hand he’s using to keep the eyelids apart. Even when you manage to open up cuts in his skin with your nails, he doesn’t react. The gouges you leave behind sting less than your pleading voice.

“Leave him alone. Please, just leave him alone.” You’re sobbing.

Emotions start to bubble up from the soil he has mentally buried them in, he beats them back with a shovel. He retreats into the comforting quiet of numbness until he gets a proper look at your blood-smeared forearm.

A hauntingly familiar mark adorns it. How many hours has he spent looking at the selfsame mark on his own arm? How often has he traced along the lines and let himself dream, just a little, that there really is something real out there for him? He’s even managed to convince himself at times that someone is looking for him because they want him as much as he wants them.

The scanner beeps, flashing green. It slices through his mounting alarm. He manages to spare a glance at it. The number inset into the tissue of Gradus’s eye is a match for the civic number he’d come for, just as he’d known it would be. He hates himself for the necessary evil he is about to preform.

Digging his knee more firmly into his target’s ribs, he extracts a small knife from another pocket in his jacket. He tunes you out. The blade runner accepts the harm you’re trying to inflict on him as penance for his cruelty.

K is as gentle as he can possibly be while he cuts the eye out of the still living replicant. The older model thrashes and struggles underneath him, but is ultimately unable to break free. K had been right about him being easily overpowered.

Trembling, he gets to his feet and moves away from you both. The eye is clasped carefully in his hand, optic nerve dangling freely. With his fingers slick with blood, he finds an evidence bag in one of his pockets and tucks the eye into its new, plastic prison. The bag goes back into the pocket it had come from.

You and Gradus had referred to each other as friends. The way that you’re curled over him, the protective hunch of your shoulders as you tend to him, supports the notion. Replicants were made to be isolated, sank deep in their work. Tyrell and, later, Wallace had engineered them to be the perfect servants. K doesn’t know what to make of this bond.

Before he can leave, there is one other thing left he must confirm or refute even though he already knows the answer. His own memory had supplied it. Grasping the edge of his own sleeve, he pulls it up to expose the mark etched into his cells. He looks from his forearm to yours, eyes following every memorized curve, every line.

They match.

The mouthful of tea he’d just had in what feels like a lifetime ago threatens to expel itself on the thin carpet. He’s found his soulmate. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

K gets to see the moment you realize you register what he’s looking at. Horror blossoms on your face as your mind tries to make sense of what you’re seeing, of what you really are to each other. The emotions running across your face are all caused by him. He feels sick.

“What?” he hears you mumble. It’s a broken little noise.

Stricken by the urge to comfort you, to lay himself on the floor beside Gradus so that you may flay him open, he clenches his hands and takes another step back. You’re looking up at him like he might attack again. The cut on the back of his hand weeps, doing what he cannot.

He isn’t going to hurt you and yours any further. K had already decided that the moment he saw your soulmark. It’s a choice born from a newfound sense of selfishness. His loyalty had gained a chip in the smooth surface of it, like the teacup you had placed in front of him. He is going to lie to his madam. As proof of a job complete, he’ll bring the stolen eye back to the precinct. If the other replicant survives the trauma inflicted on him, he will be continue to be free. He can go through his life without looking over his shoulder quite so often.

As if summoned by his thoughts, a cellular device starts chiming in his pocket. His madam. No one else would call him. The officer withdraws the device and presses the button to accept the call.

Lieutenant Joshi’s voice is tinny and crackling through the speaker. She doesn’t waste a breath on pleasantries. “Your dig came through. Get down here. Leave whatever you’re working on.”

The unit trills when she hangs up. He put the phone back into his pants pocket.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He means it, perhaps more than anything else he’s said since his inception.

Understandably, you don’t say anything in response to him. Instead, you try to stand despite your legs being too shaky to manage it easily on your own. Before he can show restraint, employ any measure of sense, he bridges the distance between the two of you. K offers you his hand. He’s stunned when you actually take it. Yours fits against his own, palm to palm, as though he was made for you. In a way, K supposes, he was.

There is a breathless moment where the two of you simply stand together hand in hand, eyes peering into the other’s. He wants to shift his hold. He wants to interlink his fingers with yours. Just as he is on the cusp of fulfilling that desire, you wrench your hand free of his and that’s when K knows his time here is up.

Gathering himself just enough, he puts his back to you. The door seems miles away as he starts walking towards it.

“Hey.” There is a flinty quality to your voice.

He pauses and looks back towards you. K is unsurprised to see that you’ve picked up Gradus’s discarded firearm and are now pointing it at him. He wishes that you weren’t shaking so much. He pivots to fully face you, keeping his hands at his sides. The least he can do for you is hold still so that you can line up the shot.

The conviction bleeds out of your face and your arm lowers. The gun falls to the floor at your feet with a heavy thud. At the back of his throat, he tastes the bitterness of disappointment.

K exits the apartment unit. Every step feels wrong. He wants to fight the order. He wants to turn around. The officer wants to offer something, anything, that could make this right. He wishes he could undo the blood pooled on the carpet, but he can’t do anything at all but obey. Free will doesn’t exist for him. His madam has called him in, and for now, he belongs to her no matter what the flesh might claim.

───※ ·❆· ※───

In the morgue, K doesn’t find himself to be any more stable. Joshi had called him in to make use of his intuition and rapid processing ability, but he feels numb. His thoughts keep wandering to you.

He’s barely aware of Nandez talking to him as he idly traces a thumb over his jacket where it lays draped over his arm. He thinks the material had been a more vibrant green once, before he had acquired it from an ‘8 who had, in turn, lifted it off a ‘7.

“Your box is a military footlocker issued to Sapper Morton, creatively repurposed as an ossuary. Box of bones. Meticulously cleaned and laid to rest about 30 years gone. Nothing else in it but hair. She’s pre-Blackout so DeNAbase doesn’t give an ID.”

K manages a nod. He doesn’t bother speaking.

“It was she, plus one,” Joshi says as if it were a shocking revelation. It’s not. From his understanding, organics often manage to reproduce.

Pregnancy, death, panning shots over the dead woman’s bones… His soulmark burns like a phantom brand. The fire feels like it’s spreading to his brain. He’s going under in a cloud of embers. Bits of conversation drift around him. They’re as untouchable as the pretend wife waiting at home for him.

Struggling to gain focus, he drags his intuition up from where it lies dormant and cooling. Coco is leading the forensic discovery today, a small relief. The tech zooms in too far and K gets a flash of scrapes along bone. Man-made alterations.

“Go back. Closer. Closer. That. What’s that?” It’s time he’s spoken since being recalled to the precinct. The three organics eye in him surprise.

“Notching on the iliac crest. Fine point, like a scalpel. Looks like an emergency c-section... Cuts are clean. No sign of struggle,” Coco reports.

K thinks for a moment, mulling over the information. “He was a combat medic. Maybe he tried to save her but just couldn't.”

His words cause the others to debate. They do it with little regard of what he is.

“He didn’t seem like the saving type.” Nandez sneers.

“He took the time to bury her. A sentimental skinjob…” Coco muses, but freezes, stricken “Sorry, K,” he adds.

K shrugs off the apology. He has long since been pushed past any feelings over any slights that come his way. It had been a necessary thing in order to survive here.

“Didn’t seem like the daddy type either. So where’s the kid? You scan the whole field?” Joshi says, knowing very well that replicants are sterile.

“Just dirt and worms. No other bodies.” Nandez’s response is immediate.

“Maybe he ate it.” Coco says, more serious than he should be.

Something flares, white hot, in K’s chest. He has never had a proclivity to anger. The vicious tone to his words surprises even him. “Or maybe he loved her. Maybe he took care of the kid like it was his, at least for a while.”

The silence is deafening. Three pairs of incredulous eyes stare at him. Then Joshi speaks, cutting through the silence punctuated only by K’s harsh breathing. She sounds like she’s talking to a very small child. “But your kind doesn’t love.”

“Oh, he definitely ate it,” Nandez follows up, barely able to get the words out before he starts laughing. Coco joins him.

K bows his head, thoroughly chastised. He only just keeps from curling in on himself.

His madam sighs. “Finish up here, boys. K, with me.”

Unsure of what to expect, he follows the woman to the elevator. He presses himself into the corner during the ride up to her office, unease biting at his bones. The confined space has only been a breeding ground for trouble. Having learned a few hard lessons, he takes the stairs these days unless he is with Joshi.

The lieutenant leads him through the bullpen once they get off the elevator. Nobody pays them any attention. Eyes automatically advert from his madam. When they get to her office, she leaves him to close the door behind them. Upon turning to face her, he finds that she has already seated herself behind her desk and is in the midst of pouring herself a drink.

K waits, face turned submissively down at the floor. He doesn’t fidget.

“The world’s built on a wall that separates kind. Tell either side there’s no wall and you’ve bought a war or a slaughter. Your kind is incapable of love. That’s a trait only given to humans. So whatever notion you have in your head about the skinjob and the woman, you leave that behind.” Her tone is lecturing. It leaves no room for argument, not that he would even dare dream of it. Whatever his madam says to him is the law that he must obey.

“Yes, Madam.”

“What isn’t possible can’t be.”

“Yes, Madam,” he says again.

With a sigh, she sits back in her chair. Her eyes trace over his body, appraising. His breath catches in his throat before he forces his nervous system to relax. The only sign of his discomfort is the clenching of his hand at his side.

Lieutenant Joshi’s mouth pinches. Her face takes on a harried look. With a decisive thunk, she sets the glass tumbler down on her desk. It has been emptied for the first of what is likely to be many times.

“Go home. Get your head on straight. I don’t need you wanting retirement.”

“Yes, Madam,” K agrees.

Any relief he feels as being allowed to leave is cut short when she stops him. “Hey.”

He pauses, letting that be the acknowledgment that he’s heard her. The officer waits like the obedient dog he was made to be.

“You’re getting on fine without it.”

He feels his eyebrow twitch upwards in question. “What’s that, Madam?”

“Love.”

───※ ·❆· ※───

It’s late. The sun sat below the sprawling expanse of buildings hours ago, leaving K to sit in the dark room with only his thoughts and his DiJi for company. While he looks out the window at the other apartment building across the street, at the wall of lives stored in little boxes, he feels more hopeless than usual. The mark on his forearm feels like a slap in the face.

What use is a miracle if it only serves to remind him of his failures? It is a monument to what he destroyed without even knowing what it was he was about to rip apart.

He stands up from the purple chair and takes a few stumbling steps over to the built-in table to pour himself another too-full glass of whiskey. The bottle he had opened after getting off work tonight is already more than half gone. K doesn’t know why he’s even bothering to pour it into a glass other than to occupy his hands. He might as well drink straight from the bottle for efficiency.

With the glass in hand, liquid nearly sloshing over the edges, he goes to where his coat his hanging by the door. He swallows down another mouthful of alcohol while he reaches into one of the pockets. He takes out the small knife he uses for extracting eyes on retirement cases. K figures he should have just given you the blade and let you take his instead.

“K, what are you doing?” Joi asks, tone colored with apprehension.

She is lingering by the window, nervously shifting her nonexistent weight. The replicant ignores her. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Something has changed in him.

Crossing the room again, he takes a seat on the couch. K sets his glass on the side table. Stray drops of whiskey escape over the lip of it at the careless motion. They soak into the paper of his book, his most prized possession. It doesn’t matter. Joshi already soiled it months ago with her own glass, not dissimilar to how she has with him.

Tightening his grip around the knife, he looks down contemplatively at his right forearm. He is not wearing a long sleeved shirt this evening. Maybe he should have been.

Joi starts to plead with him the instant she realizes what he’s about to do. He manages to block her voice out and sinks the blade into his skin, just below the soulmark. The metal works its way through flesh and meat until the fine tip of it scrapes against his radius. It burns as he drags it sideways, up and to the left. Blood wells up from the wound and starts dripping freely onto his pant leg. It soaks into the material.

K has decided that he is undeserving of the fragment of soul he was given at inception. The mark must be removed. Perhaps with it no longer on his body, its twin will appear on someone else. You can have a better soulmate, and he will just be another serial number. Unremarkable in every way.

Delicate hands flicker and clip through his, grasping futilely at the knife. Joi has thrown herself to her knees in front of him and is trying to stop him. Projected tears are falling from her eyes in shimmering droplets. He follows the steady flow of them to her face and realizes that he is scaring her. In her distraught expression, he can only see your agonized face as you sob over the replicant he put a bullet into just days before. Her hands are yours in the way that they attempt to pull at his, to put a stop to the damage he’s inflicting. The comparison stops him cold. He can’t do this to Joi. Even if their relationship together is an elaborate game of pretend, he can’t make someone else feel the way he made you feel.

Smothering the emotions inside of him like a flawed replicant straight from the artificial womb, he wiggles the knife back and forth to free it from his body. He sets the blade aside on the coffee table and retreats to the bathroom. Joi is unable to follow him. She is stuck to the hardline as if on a leash. He never got her anniversary present.

Away from Joi’s worried eyes, he washes the injury in the cramped bathroom sink. Water spills out over the sides and splashes onto the floor in swirls of pale pink on the tile. It makes its way lazily to the drain in the middle of the room. He will scrub the traces of his blood out of the grout later, when he has had a moment to distance himself from everything he shouldn’t be feeling.

Feeling unsteady, K finds the platelet jelly and sets to gluing the self-inflicted wound shut.

If he pinches the sides of it together harder than what is necessary, that’s only for him to know. The bite of pain is enough to ground him in reality. It clears away some of the drunken fog.

Closer to baseline than he was, K rejoins his distressed “wife” in the main room. She rushes at him and he draws her against him as much as a living being can do with a hologram.

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he soothes while she sobs nonexistent tears against his chest.

The replicant can’t help but wish that she were someone else. He wonders if his role and that of Gradus had been reversed, would you have tried to protect him? What would it be like to have someone care enough to try?

───※ ·❆· ※───

After that night where he had made an earnest attempt to remove his soulmark, he shuts himself off from Joi. He barely responds to her these days. He can hardly stomach interacting with anyone at all. Still, he does not turn off the DiJi. She is left to do wander around the room and do whatever her algorithm wishes. There is a strange sort of comfort in not feeling completely alone, even if the company isn’t actually there. He isn’t real in any meaningful way either.

His evenings become routine in their spiral. He sits, he smokes, he drinks, and he very rarely sleeps in the hours before his alarm chimes. You haunt the moments of rest he is able to get. He hears your voice in the throats of a thousand others. He sees your anguished face with every blink of his eyes.

K wishes he knew even just your name. He has nothing tangible of that day in 405. Perhaps it was just a dream, a terrible nightmare that has bled into the waking world.

He has to stop eating the synthetic meat he gets for his dinners. The artificial bloodiness of it transports him back to the moment he saw your soulmark covered with the gore caused by his mistake. He should have overridden instinct. He should have done something, anything, differently.

K nearly stops eating all together. His body is slowly wasting away, eating at his muscles. He’s taken to wearing more layers to offset the loss. No one comments at the change.

───※ ·❆· ※───

If only so you can put him down, he tries to find you. The opportunity for him to dig for information comes when he’s put on a case with Nandez. The detective leaves K alone promptly at the end of second shift. The replicant is not sad to see him go. Even at the best of times, Nandez is at his throat despite not having the authority to demand anything from him. K sincerely hopes that the man never gets a promotion.

With Nandez gone, K pulls up the property records for the apartment building he found you at and starts searching. There is nothing substantial, certainly nothing for an additional occupant in the unit rented by John Gradus. No co-signer, no lease agreement, no roommate paperwork. It’s a dead end.

Frustrated, he gets out of his chair and paces. K knows full he can’t risk diving too deep into the systems. Doing so might draw attention to his extracurricular activities. His madam would want answers, and not the ones he is willing to provide. She can’t know of your existence. Joshi was very clear about the boundaries between kind. Without question, he would find a way to retire himself if given the order to harm you.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Squinting his eyes against the feeble sunlight managing to stream into his window, he registers that Joi is looking at him. Her face carries the same serious expression that it has for the past few weeks. He feels a distant pang of guilt at being the cause of it.

She’s projected herself to be laying beside him on the thin mattress. In the dreamlike quality of the light, she looks almost tangible like this. Touchable. These small moments are why he never bothered with blinds or curtains.

“Tell me about your soulmate,” she says. He realizes that she’s emulated his mark into her hologram skin.

“There’s not much to tell.” His voice is thick with sleep.

“Tell me anyway.”

At that, he closes his eyes and summons his memory of you. With each detail he recounts aloud about your appearance, Joi alters herself. She replicates your accent, your hair, your eye color. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself looking at a pale imitation. It’s almost closer to a mockery than anything else. The morning light can’t make it real. Nothing could.

Tenderly, his DiJi reaches out and tries to press her fake mark against his in the way he’d always hoped his soulmate would when they found each other. He lets her, numb. It doesn’t feel like anything more than the faint static tingle of her projection. She clips through him.

“A special boy needs a name, a real name.” she prompts, mulling the thought over.

“Don’t,” he interrupts, softly. He doesn’t want Joi to name him. She’s not what he really wants. If anyone were to give him a name, it should be you.

With a flash of hurt on her face, she pulls away. The attempt at a loving game of pretend like they used to play is over. There is not likely to be another one.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Carefully, he tears out the title page of his book. K does not have any other paper. This will have to do. With the same marker the replicant used in his spinner to label the bag containing Gradus’s eye, he writes on the alcohol-warped page.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Officer K folds the paper and tucks it into his badge holder for safekeeping. He has a premonition that this day will end with him staring into the lens of a camera like the barrel of a gun while one of the precinct’s baseline administers hammers him with questions asked forcefully enough they might as well be physical blows.

Pushing through the crowd on the stairs, he doesn’t register the turmoil around him. He breaks free once he’s out the front door. The walk to the garage seems to pass in the blink in the eye and feels like only heartbeats pass before he’s in the work-provided spinner and on the way to the apartment building he’d been to a lifetime ago.

He puts the spinner down curbside out in front of a struggling noodle place. K doesn’t want to be parked too close to his objective. If someone comes sniffing around after him for going off-map, he doesn’t want it to be immediately obvious where he’s going.

As they had been the last time he’d been here, the streets are empty. They’re marked with obvious signs of nightlife. It all but confirms what he had suspected when doing the flyover. Graffiti and broken class litter the sidewalks in front of the row of businesses shuttered for the daytime hours. The neon signs are off and the blinds closed.

The apartment building looks the same as it had last time. Despite his own world being shaken to the very foundations, the structure he is entering looks unstricken by revelation. Retracing his footsteps, he ascends to the fourth four and finds the unit. The doormat he’d not bothered to acknowledge before is still out front.

With his pulse pounding in his ears, he raises his hand and knocks. He waits for the telltale sign of life behind the barrier. Nothing. Concern prickles at his mind, and he knocks again only to get no response. For just a moment, he thinks about just sliding the paper under the door but on a whim, he tries the knob. It turns easily in his grasp. It was left unlocked.

“Hello?” K calls out as he steps across the threshold.

Silence greets him in return.

From what the officer can discern upon casting a searching look at his surroundings, little has changed. The furniture is where it had been on the day of his visit. He is not sure if any of the personal effects have been disturbed. They had not been near the top of his priority list at the time.

A loud ringing noise shatters the peace and he startles, nearly hitting his elbow on the wall. It’s his phone. His madam must have checked on his tracker code and realized that he isn’t anywhere a good boy might be found under normal circumstances. He lets it ring through unanswered. His countdown has started.

Reluctantly, he continues his investigation and looks at the place where he had dropped Gradus. The blood stain he’d left behind is a mere, blush colored mark on the carpet. Someone, probably you, had tried to scrub away the evidence. The basket of yarn that had contained the gun has been righted and moved to a place between the couch and the blind-covered window.

Showing some level of restraint, he resists the urge to wander into the bedrooms. There are two of them. A glance through the doorways reveals that each has a bed. You and the ‘8 must not sleep in the same room. Instead of trying to puzzle out which might contain your possessions, he moves into the kitchen.

There is moisture in the sink. Someone has been here recently. The apartment had not been abandoned in his absence.

The water in the basin reminds him that Gradus had asked you to bring tea to them. Could it be your usual chore? The thought sparks an idea, and he pulls his badge from his pocket and extracts the folded piece of paper. He leaves it on the counter as his phone rings for a second time. Ignoring the repetitive trill, he picks up a pen from the coffee table and returns to the kitchen to unfold the page he’d torn from the book.

Again, his phone goes off, barely a pause between the attempts at reaching him. The timer is running out moment by moment.

Underneath the words he wrote at his apartment, K presses the nib of the pen against the paper and takes a breath. In careful writing, he adds to them.

Do you feel that there's a part of you that's missing?

What's it like to hold the hand of someone you love?

Immediately, he wants to erase the words. With the feeling that he’s making another mistake when it comes to you, K refolds the sheet of paper and tucks it partially under the kettle resting on the counter. He wishes that he knew your name so that he could write it on the paper. Even without it, it’s clear enough who the message is for. Gradus hadn’t been the one with who shared his soulmark.

With an air of finality to it, the device in his pocket rings a fourth time. It’s his cue to leave. Spurred into haste, he puts the pen back where he’d found it and takes a final glance around, still curious about which decorative choices were yours.

He leaves the apartment, making sure to close the door securely behind him. The replicant all but sprints down the stairs in the effort to create distance between himself and the apartment unit. He narrowly manages to keep his pace limited to a brisk walk on the way back to the noodle restaurant. Just as he’s reaching for the lock on his spinner’s door, he hears a low roar rapidly approaching.

Looking up, he sees a police issued vehicle pull into a stop. It begins its decent as a voice projects over the loudspeaker. “Officer K D6-3.7. We’re taking you in on failure to report.”

K puts his hands up and automatically lowers himself to his knees. Acutely, he’s aware of what will happen if he doesn’t perfectly comply. LAPD beat cops are trigger-happy organics and ready to spray and pray at anything that so much as breathes wrong in their direction. He has never respected them, never been given cause to in all his dealings with them.

A cop gets out, leaving another behind the wheel, as soon as the spinner lands. In short order, K finds himself handcuffed and made a passenger in his own provided spinner. The organic makes a stab at ruffling his nerves on the way back to the precinct.

“Lieutenant’s real mad at you for taking off like that.”

K offers nothing in response.

“What the fuck were you doing all the way out here, skinner?”

He shrugs in his restraints, chooses how to interpret the question. “Noodles.”

The officer whistles, pitchy and uneven. “Oooh, she’s going to string you up.”

K is aware. He knew the cost for his apology when he set out today. He had also decided it was worth the fallout.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The stool that Officer K is sitting on is uncomfortable—a hard, impersonal thing meant to be hosed off as needed. It’s the same as the rest of this room bathed in the sterile light of humming florescent bar. Underneath the copper burn of blood is an antiseptic tang. The baseline testing room is everything but a slaughterhouse floor in name. He’d opened his eyes for the very first time in a room like this.

Ringing fills his ears followed by the whir and click of the wall-mounted camera in front of him. A disembodied voice reads off his serial number and informs him that the test has begun.

Responses leave the replicant’s throat through as though someone else is speaking through him. He’s calm, retreated so far into himself that any residual fire inside of him has been snuffed out. He feels cold. The joints in his fingers ache with the sensation. He doesn’t dare to flex them or to rub at his chafed wrists.

The cops that had been sent to fetch him had removed the handcuffs as soon as he’d been delivered to the testing room. One of them in particular had found great amusement in hauling him through the precinct by the narrow chain like a dog catcher with an animal on the end of their pole.

Finally, the pounding against the walls of his mind stops. The interrogation is over. The camera powers down and the examiner sighs, hard, almost disappointed.

“You’re free to go, Officer. Your lieutenant will see you in her office.”

K rises, stiff, eyes unseeing. He barely registers the activity of the precinct around him as he traverses the hallway and climbs the stairs in clear avoidance of the elevator once again. He feels trapped enough in his own head without the physical captivity of being in a little box.

Low murmurs roll against him akin to the waves against the seawall when he crosses the bullpen and knocks on Joshi’s door after reaching the floor housing her office. She calls him in immediately. Her tone is like an angry wasp. It provides a sting that jolts everything back into sharp relief.

She barely waits until he closes the door behind himself. “The hell is with you?”

Years of experience have taught him to let his madam work through her anger without input from him. K waits, still and patient, in front of her desk.

“You take off without informing me, you ignore my calls, and then what? We pick you up fucking around in the street outside of some shitty restaurant? What was so important about it that you had to go out there?”

“Apologies, Madam,” he says. Repentance drips from his voice like honey from the comb.

Joshi waits, looking expectant. Her expression shifts to frustration as no more words come. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me? Tell me why you were out there.”

It’s a direct order. The instinct to obey pulls at him. He gives in without a fight. “I was following up on the second retirement case. Civic’ NK687725. It was a surprise, Madam. I had hoped it would be a welcome one.”

Like magic, the severely set lines in Joshi’s face soften. She is becoming convinced that he’d meant his… willfulness as a gift, as a credit to her and her management.

“Did you find anything?”

“There was no one there,” he pauses, twists the truth in his own mind, “Hadn’t been for a while. It’s probable I scared them off and they went underground.”

Who is to say what “a while” means? Time is relative.

Joshi lifts a hand and beckons him closer, around the corner of the desk. Eager to avoid more trouble, he instantly follows her direction. She rotates her chair to face him when he comes to a stop within touching distance. He has learned through trial and error to predict exactly where she wants him based on her mannerisms and tone. It has never bode well for him to be wrong.

“Good dog,” the lieutenant says, lightly kicks him in the shin. “Just let me know before you decide to be proactive again.”

“I will, Madam.” He’s glad that she has decided to be lenient today.

“Get on out of here. I don’t need the distraction.”

“Goodbye, Madam.” It’s polite and he keeps his pace measured as he leaves. He doesn’t want to seem too eager. It would send the wrong message.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Weeks pass K by without any outward indication that you’ve received the paper he had left behind at your residence. He has made a resigned peace with the idea that your paths may never cross again when he arrives back to his apartment following a day kept late at work doing overtime, again, for Nandez. Following routine and nearly swaying on his feet, he puts his hand on the scanner for the door lock. He opens it just enough to slide through and is greeted in the entryway by Joi for the first time a while. Panic is displayed on her face. Taken aback, he’s about to question her when she speaks first.

“You have a visitor. I didn’t think you would want me to say no,” she whispers.

Frowning, he mulls over the list of potential visitors and only comes up with one idea of who it might be. But, he’d just seen Joshi at the precinct before leaving for the day. She had given him no indication that she would be paying him a visit tonight. In fact, his madam had had him sit down on the other side of her desk to share a drink with her.

It had kept him occupied for the better part of the hour while she got intoxicated enough to insist that he give her a kiss before he leave. She’d failed to push things further by not ordering him to his knees before her or manipulating his hands onto her body. K thinks that she’s grown bored of him, at least for the moment. The thought makes him feel relieved.

Joi touches him on the shoulder, putting an end to his thinking. “Good luck.”

Anticipating, despite the unlikeliness of it, to see his madam, he passes by the DiJi into the main room. K stops in his tracks, stricken dumb. He’d have sooner expected Coco spread out on his couch in nothing but his clear, silicone labcoat and an artificial rose in his mouth than to be staring at you. Somehow, you don’t look as out of place as you should among his sparse possessions.

“How did you find me?” the replicant asks.

“You said your identification number the day you showed up. KD6-3.7.”

It’s strange a strange thing, hearing his “name” come out of your mouth. He doesn’t supply the nickname he’s been given during his time as a blade runner. He’s already pacing on the knife’s edge. This evening could tip him in any direction without forcing any further familiarity.

“You got the note.”

“Yes.” Your tone is matter-of-fact. “You wanted to know if I felt like a part of me is missing.”

He is left waiting for a follow-up that doesn't come. The thought hangs there, uncontinued. In the quiet of the room, K shrugs off his jacket and goes to hang it on the hook by the front door. He unholsters his gun and puts it on a nearby shelf. No matter how things go, he will not be using it on you.

Before he faces you again, K approaches the controls for the hardline crossing the ceiling. When he casts a look at Joi with his finger hovering over the power button, she looks at peace. She gives him an encouraging shooing motion of her hand. He turns her off for the first time in months. You and K will not have any outside distraction.

“He lived, by the way.”

K feels a tightness loosen in his chest. “I’m glad.”

“Why? You could have easily made the shot fatal, why didn’t you?”

“Somebody cares about him. He would have been missed.”

“And that matters to you?” You don’t sound judgmental to his ears, only curious.

“Yes. I’m sorry I had to do it.” He swallows hard, voice breaking as he continues. “I didn’t choose this.”

The replicant knows that he is only what he was made to be, nothing more, nothing less. Nature had dictated his obedience. Nurture had molded him into being what the Los Angeles Police’s retirement division had had in mind when he was purchased for their use.

Under the weight of your gaze, he begins to self-soothe by clasping his hands together in front of him and rubbing one thumb over the other. He finds himself relieved from the burden when you shift your attention to your surroundings. He watches, fascinated, as you begin to explore.

Your fingers trail over the box where he stores his cigarettes and the lighter he’d found in the pocket of one of his previous retirement jobs. Moving onward, you pick up his book and flip briefly through the alcohol warped pages. He sees the recognition dart across your features when you find the place where the torn out page had once resided. The care in which you set the volume back down on the table surprises him. His madam had never displayed that level of consideration. Neither had Joi with the projected clone of it.

“These don’t look like yours,” you say. In your hands are Sapper Morton’s glasses, held as if they might break apart in your grasp with so much as a wrong exhale.

“They’re not.”

“Whose are they, then?”

“Sapper Morton. He was a retirement case,” K pauses, hesitates, then quietly adds, “I didn’t want him to be forgotten.”

“Why?” you ask, rolling the word in your mouth like a pearl.

The question makes his skin itch. He stills as though he had just taken a seat for his baseline. The only betraying movement is the continued motion of his thumb atop the other.

“Why?” you repeat, softer this time. There’s something close to tenderness in your voice and that makes him afraid.

“He was more than a serial number.” K admits, feeling the answer clawing its way out of him. “I… they all were.”

“Are you?”

“No.” His response is immediate. Firm.

“Why not?”

Unable to answer, he looks away. Shame laps at him with an overeager tongue. There is a divide between the older models and him. In some ways, Morton was right. The ‘9s are happy scraping the shit because it’s all they have been taught to know.

He’s aware of you setting the glasses back in their resting place on the shelf, but it still surprises him when you cross the small amount of space separating the two of you to stand in front of him. You’re so close to him that he can feel the heat of your body. It makes him want to burn in your fire.

“I do feel like there’s something missing. It’s like there’s an empty space next to me that should be filled by someone, but that someone never comes. It’s the part of the reason I came here. I… wanted to talk to you knowing what we are to each other,” you tell him.

K nods. Words catch in his throat, tumble over one another. In the end, he is unable to utter any of them.

“Will you show it to me?” you ask with a gesture to his covered arm. “I want to be sure.”

With a tremor threatening to shake his body, he slips his fingers under the edge of his shirt sleeve and pulls it up to his elbow. His soulmark is laid bare before your eyes. The wound that he had left in his own skin when he had tried to carve out the design has faded to a raised, pale line.

“That wasn’t there before,” you murmur, taking his forearm in your hands. Your pointer finger traces over the scar.

His breath catches at your touch. Overwhelmed, he has to close his eyelids against the moisture welling up in his eyes. He opens them again when the pressure of your hands leaves and sees you taking off your own coat to toss it over the back of his chair. The replicant barely has a moment of respite before your left hand resumes its position cupping the underbelly of his forearm. You keep him steady as you raise your right arm and nestle it alongside his to place the soulmarks side by side.

K’s eyes hadn’t been deceived back then. They are perfectly identical.

It’s more than he can handle. He curls into himself, instinctively seeking the fetal position. His chin is against his shoulder, face turned away from you. He’s not sure if he’s burning up or drowning.

“Hey… hey.”

Suddenly, your arms are around him. K feels himself being guided in until he’s all but cradled against you as you ease the both of you to floor. He finds himself pressing his face against your neck as you rub a soothing hand up and down his back. For each moment that passes, the replicant grows increasingly more worried that he’s overstaying his welcome, but you don’t push him away. Instead, you gently rock him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, sounding choked even to his own ears.

“I’m sorry too. I misjudged you. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pissed, but it wasn’t… I have an understanding of why you did what you did.”

Forcing himself to put some distance between your bodies, K finally pulls away. He doesn’t want to risk being reprimanded for taking too much. Your hands fall into your lap in the void he leaves behind.

There is a part of him that keeps expecting to discover that this is a vivid dream. Will he wake up and be staring at the water-damaged ceiling instead of your face? The hard floor under his knees, the chill of it creeping through the fabric and trying to find a home against his skin, seems to signal otherwise.

“Please don’t apologize. What I did was unforgivable.”

“John’s not mad at you, you know?” The words come as a surprise. He searches your eyes for a joke only to see sincerity reflected back at him. “He said you probably extended his life a few years by taking his eye and turning it in. Nobody’s gonna come looking for a dead man.”

“He’s not on our radar anymore. His file has been greyed out,” he says, getting to his feet.

Automatically, he reaches down to offer you his hand. It’s a mirror of your last interaction. He can tell by your expression that you are reliving the same memory as he. Still, you once again take his hand without hesitation. You hold it for just a moment before letting go. He doesn't think he imagined the reluctance.

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Officer. I don’t want to intrude,” you say, turning to pick up your coat from where you had left it.

“Please. Stay,” he bursts out. The feeling of imminent loss batters at the walls of his chest, “unless…”

“Okay.”

He blinks, not expecting the ease in which you had agreed. He’s left cycling through various scripts in the effort to find something to say. Latching onto a familiar interaction with Joi, he asks, “Do you want coffee?”

“Sure, I’d take some.”

K finds himself with you in his narrow kitchen. He heats the water while you take down two mugs and locate the instant coffee grounds after some direction from him. It’s domestic in a way that he was never able to have with Joi. With her, he didn’t need to worry about knocking elbows together or pressing her into the cabinetry while trying to reach for a pot holder.

Once the hot water is ready and split between the two mugs and stirred together, the two of you take seats on the couch. Between sips, conversation flows, a trickle at first and then a flood. You talk for hours, long after your mugs are drained and sat aside.

Following the natural progression of all things, the words begin to slow as tiredness sets in. Pauses between sentences lengthen like shadows. At seeing your eyes between to flutter shut, K rouses himself out of his own comfortable stupor.

“I’ll take the couch if you want to sleep in my bed tonight,” the replicant offers. He’s relaxed, at ease in a way he’s not sure he’s ever been. You’ve changed him.

The effort that it takes for you to keep your eyelids open as you think over his stab at hospitality only endears to you him further. Finally, you shrug and smother a yawn. “I’ll take you up on that. I don’t think I need to be behind the wheel like this.”

While you pull out your phone and send a message to your roommate to let him know your plans, K gets up and crosses the room to fold down the bed. He opens a nearby drawer and pulls out the pillow and blanket to put on the mattress. With a helpless twinge sigh, he surveys the setup. It’s not the lap of luxury, he knows, but he hopes it will be sufficient.

“All yours.”

“Thank you, K.” The light press of your fingers against his soulmark warms him almost as much as the use of his nickname. You had slipped into using it when he had admitted his preference for it over his job title or serial number in at some point in the previous hours.

He nods, a shy dip of his head and lets you slide under the blankets. After fetching his jacket off the hook to use as a blanket, he turns off the lights and lays down on the couch. Sleep comes to him almost immediately. It’s dreamless.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Morning comes to him with the shrill chiming of his alarm. Fumbling for his handheld, K silences it and lays still for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. The replicant fell asleep on the couch again. He knows that he has been doing that more often than he should. Too much alcohol and flipping through the pages of his book time and time again on the hunt for any new meaning that he can gleam from the words he knows by heart have contributed to this being a regular occurrence.

With a stiff back, he sits up and swings his legs to place his feet on the floor. He freezes right on the cusp of standing up. There is a body tucked into his bed and it’s not Joshi. Yesterday evening hadn’t been a whiskey soaked dream brought on by too much wishful thinking. It had been real.

K knows he needs to get ready to go to the precinct and pushes himself through his morning routine accordingly no matter how much he would prefer to wait at your side to resume the domesticity the two of you had begun to forge. By the time he’s out of the shower and dressed, you’ve gotten up and put the bed back in its stored away position. The bedding is neatly folded and set on a shelf with the pillow.

With his hair still damp, he observes you for a moment from the kitchen. You’re tracing the faded letters and numbers on the back of his jacket with a finger, clearly trying to decipher the characters.

“N7H00105,” he supplies, sparing your eyes.

Amusement causes the corners of his mouth to rise into a smile as you turn to him with an incredulous look. “How did you…? It’s so faded.”

“It was easier to read when I acquired it.”

“Another one of your job finds?” you ask, offering him the jacket when he approaches.

“Yes.”

While he’s pulling the comforting weight of the garment over his shoulders, he tracks you with his eyes as you step into your shoes and tie the laces. You haven’t put your coat on yet, leaving your arms bare. There is a moment of silence, the two of you regarding one another. He does not want to be the first one to make the gesture to leave and, it seems, neither do you.

Your teeth are worrying your bottom lip. He wonders what you’re thinking about, but in the clear light of day, he finds himself unable to ask. The sun has burned away some of the ease of last night.

Finally, you speak. “If you had the option, would you leave all of this behind?”

He blinks, uncomprehending. “What?”

“Your job. Your life here… Would you leave it behind?”

“I… I don’t have anything else.” His words are uncertain, shaky.

“What if I’m offering you something else?”

“My kind doesn’t run.”

“It’s not running, K. It’s living.”

Rattled by the conviction in your voice, he sits down on the couch. His chest feels tight as barely defined images of things he’d hardly dared to dream of race through his mind. The enormity of what you’re suggesting is all but unimaginable. He has been loyal to his madam’s cause since the day he was incepted. There could be no deeper betrayal than slipping free of his tether.

The sensation of your hand on his shoulder jolts him back into the present moment. He meets your concerned eyes for a heartbeat before he has to look away.

“You don’t have to decide right now. You can think on it.”

“Saturday. I’ll be ready on Saturday,” he chokes out. His heart is pounding in his throat. He knows he cannot risk sitting through another baseline in the wake of this. He will fail.

“You’re sure? You won’t be able to come back here.”

“Yes.” Recklessly—impulsively—he has made up his mind.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The Saturday of his departure dawns like any other. The sunlight peering into the apartment’s only window would make K’s morning wholly unremarkable in its routine if his surroundings hadn’t been wiped clean of any personal possessions but a select few items that he is leaving behind for his madam to repossess. His entire world had fit into one furtively purchased duffel bag.

His nerves are alight with restlessness as he waits for you to arrive. The replicant had spent a few fitful hours laying on his mattress before rising ahead of the sun to ensure his readiness for the life ahead. As part of his preparations, he finally purchased Joi’s anniversary present. An emanator. He had transferred her to it after yesterday’s shift at the precinct. She had been joyous, nearly overflowing with excitement for him when he had explained the situation to her. He had cautiously let himself share his own tentative optimism.

At the DiJi’s suggestion, he had snapped the emanator’s small antenna after deleting her save file from the main console. The risk of being tracked or leaving behind damning information was too great to allow for cloud backup. Despite his own trepidation, Joi had insisted the risk of her being able to die like a real girl was worth K’s freedom.

A firm knock against the door alerts the Nexus 9 of your arrival. With haste, he moves through the entryway to open the door for you. Both of you wait until it’s securely closed before you greet each other.

“Good morning,” you tell him.

K is just opening his mouth to respond in kind when you surprise him with a hug. The replicant wraps his arms around you, careful to not apply too much pressure. It’s a novel thing, getting to hold someone like this. Reluctantly, he lets his hold on you loosen after a short moment. He knows there is work to still be done. A final step in the plan.

Without you needing to ask him, he gestures to the table in front of the window. The supplies for the task ahead are already laid out on the surface. He strips off his shirt and sits backwards in the chair as best as he can while avoiding the armrests. K closes his eyes and tries to relax.

“I almost thought you might not come back,” he admits.

He hears the snap of disposable gloves against your wrists followed by the sound of your voice. “You’re my soulmate. The mark on your arm says I’m going to keep coming back for you.”

“Not everyone likes their soulmate,” K says quietly.

There’s the sound of a packet being torn open. He experiences the sensation of a disinfecting wipe passing over the area at the base of his neck. It’s cold against his skin. You focus most of the attention on the column of his spine, right in the center of his middle trapezius.

“True, but I realized the other night that, despite everything, I do like you. Congratulations, you now have me digging a tracking chip out of your back.” Your voice is colored with fondness. It makes him want to smile. How rare. He had kept his positive emotions hidden under cloth as though they were something precious to sequester out of sight.

Hissing against the sting, the tip of K’s eye extraction knife punctures his skin. The sensation of blood trickling from the wound begins shortly after he hears you set the knife on the table and pick up the tweezers. There’s a pinch, a strange pulling sensation, and then he opens his eyes just in time to see you drop the small device on the table alongside the bloodied blade. The tweezers clatter against the laminated surface and your gloved hand snatches up the platelet jelly.

“That was in deep. They nailed you between the vertebrae. John’s was right under the skin.”

“Wallace learned from the tail-end Tyrell models. Mostly what not to do.”

He hears you hum, interested. Packaging crinkles behind his head and he’s aware of you pressing a gauze pad against the sealed wound. Your touch is so gentle as to make him believe you think he is something worth care, that he might even be special.

“Hand me a bit of tape, please?”

Obligingly, he tears off a strip and passes it to you. His bare fingers brush against your gloved ones as you take it from him. You secure the tape in place and pat him on the shoulder. “You’re all done.”

The skin feels tender beneath the bandage. But it is as though his collar has been cut. He puts his shirt back on and layers his jacket over it while you peel the gloves off. To avoid leaving more identifying forensic evidence behind that would point to you as being the accomplice, you flip them inside out and tuck them into a pocket for later disposal.

At your searching look, K nods. He is ready. The replicant picks up his bag and, together, you make your way to the front door. He pauses on the threshold, door open. Your fingers find his and give them a squeeze before he adjusts the angle and interlinks them together. Like this, he can feel your pulse beat in time with his. He feels close to human.

With one final look at the apartment that has been his cell for the past few years, he gives it a silent goodbye and closes the door for the final time. He is free.

───※ ·❆· ※───

On Monday, when Joshi arrives with two organic officers as backup, she finds the apartment stripped of any personal effects. She picks up his discarded phone off the coffee table where he had laid it between his firearm and his badge. The woman throws it against the wall so hard it shatters. Pieces of plastic rain down onto the tile. He hadn’t even left her a note.

If she ever finds him, she is going to put a bullet in him with the gun he left behind. Still, there is a part of her that is grudgingly proud of him for finally biting her hand, taking it off right at the wrist. Her replicant was a lot of things—obedient, kind—but never a coward. He better have a good life while he can. She’s going to place a purchase order for his replacement the moment she gets behind her desk.

Do not repost, copy, or reproduce my work to other sites or in other media formats. Do not use it for anything to do with AI. Thank you.

[acepalindrome]

SDV QoL Mod Recommendations

(1.6 Edition!)

Some years ago I made a big list of some of my favorite Stardew Valley mods, because I am a mod gremlin and there are so many fun and cool things you can do with your game! Modding has changed a lot since then. Some of the old mods have been abandoned and aren’t compatible with 1.6, and lots of new ones are popping up all the time to help keep this 8 year old game fresh and interesting! So I’ve put together a list of mods that currently work with 1.6. Since there are so, SO many mods, I’m just going to list quality of life mods for now. Let me know if you guys are interested in recommendations for expansions, cosmetics and other fun stuff!

Firstly, if you’re new to Stardew modding and don’t know how to start, I highly recommend checking out Salmence’s How to Add Mods video on YouTube. He walks you through all the steps and makes it very easy to get the hang of it! And without further ado:

The Mods

UI Info Suite 2: I’m new to this mod, but now that I’ve got it, I’m not sure how I lived without it! It does so much! It shows your daily luck, any birthdays, if it’s going to rain tomorrow, when tools are ready with Clint, when the traveling cart is in town and more! It also shows the range of your sprinklers, scarecrows, bee houses and junimo huts, and if you mouse over your crops, it shows when they’re ready for harvest! Super useful, and the daily icons are small enough that they don’t feel intrusive. I usually get all my mods from Nexus because it’s easy and reliable, so I had put off trying this one since it’s only on GitHub. I absolutely should have tried it ages ago.

NPC Map Locations: Shows where everyone is on the map. No more running around trying to figure out where someone is to give them a birthday gift! This is an essential mod for me, it’s such a simple but good improvement!

Look Up Anything: This one basically eliminates the need to have the wiki open in another window. Virtually everything in the game can be clicked on to give you more information. Mouse over Shane and press a button to see his birthday, how many hearts he has and how many points to the next heart, and all loved and liked items (with items you have on hand highlighted!) Select the hardwood in your inventory to see how many you have total (including storage you don’t have on hand,) everything it can be used for and how many you need for each thing, so you know how many you need! Almost everything can be selected to give more information!

Visible Fish: Useful AND pretty! It shows all the fish currently available to catch swimming in the water, so you don’t spend ages trying to catch something that doesn’t spawn at a certain place or time! Also it just looks really nice. I love seeing the fish in the river when I’m just passing by!

FriendsForever: Eliminates friendship decay, so people don’t hate me if I forget to talk to them for half a year! Also works on animals, so I can ignore my pigs all winter and they still love me.

To-Dew: You can make a to-do list that will appear on the screen and can be marked off as you complete different tasks. No more will I take a trip to town for seeds and forget that I also wanted to donate to the museum and give Caroline a daffodil! You can also set items to be reoccurring on certain days of the week, if you want to remind yourself to look for forage on Saturday, or make Thursday your designated day to empty and refill your kegs. Very customizable! I also like to make lists of all the seeds I want to buy every season.

TreeTransplant: Robin can now move trees around your farm just like she moves buildings! I’m really bad at planning my tree placement, and it’s so frustrating to have to cut down full grown trees to change my farm layout. Now you can move trees anywhere!

Fishing Made Easy Suite/Combat Made Easy Suite: I love these mods over others that make fishing/combat easier because you can decide the exact degree you want to make things easier! You can make fishing anywhere from 5% easier to 99% easier, if you want to just take the edge off the difficulty, or make it impossible to fail a fish. You can take just a little less damage from monsters to make the Skull Cavern less daunting, or become unkillable and oneshot everything. They also have options to do fun things like put legendary fishing in fish ponds or craft magic rock candy. You can also make things harder, if that’s what you want!

Automate: Machines can pull items from chests, process them, spit them back out into the chest and pull in the next item automatically, without you having to do anything! It can be a little op early on, but it’s super handy when you have a million machines to keep track of. I especially like it for things that have shorter processing times. I can stick a chest of ore and coal next to some furnaces and let it do its thing! Or put a bait machine, recycle machine, crab pot and chest all together. The crab pots will empty and refill every day from the bait generated by the bait machine, deposit fish and trash into the chest, and any trash will be processed by the recycling machine! There are tons of fun ways to combine different machines!

TimeSpeed: Lets you stop, slow or speed up time! You can select time to freeze at certain locations (I like time to stop when I’m inside a building, like in old farming games,) set time to move slower or faster in general, or press a button to change it on the fly!

That’s all I have for now! Links will be coming in a reblog because tumblr is weird about posting links sometimes. Let me know if you’d like recommendations for other kinds of mods, like cosmetic mods, expansions, stuff that adds items or changes dialogue! I love to share the cool mods I find!

[dooksofearl]

I am just trying to remind everyone that we get no government funding or any stipends. While we assist many state agencies we are only funded by the kindness of our friends and followers. With that in mind, I am asking you for a small commitment. Perhaps you could dedicate a cup of coffee a week to us? That's just $20 a month. Or maybe you are doing really well and want to bless us with a little more. We would be so grateful to have some steady and reliable support.

As you can imagine, what I do here is extremely stressful. Even small donations make a huge impact on relieving some of that stress. If you go to our GIVE BUTTER (https://givebutter.com/n5kIGY) page it will let you set up one time or reoccurring donations. And they don't take fees like with PayPal and our card platform. 

If you have a little extra you could toss our way, we are still trying to raise funds for our spay and neuter commitments and get some needed items for the rescue. Our goal for these is $476. We'd appreciate the help.

We also are looking for donations of used items, Virtual/Remote Volunteers, and business partners. I'll attach our flyers for these so you can read them but please feel free to share them in social media or print them out and post them on community boards. We are so appreciative of any effort you put into helping us. It may not seem like much to you but it's a huge thing to us. 

I am including pictures of our litter of kittens. Their mom was dumped when she was 8 days away from having them. They are bringing life and chaos to the rescue and are going to be an excellent army against any mice who get the wrong idea about living here. It's also a good explanation for all the scratches on me and why I look so tired. LoL. 

[rachell-redacted]

Possible Half-Life ARG (Alternate Reality Game)

Hello, Half-Life fans of Tumblr! I want to preface this post with a disclaimer: no, there’s no 100% reason to believe that there’s an ARG going on. Yes, everything told below might be a coincidence. This is a real possibility. If you don’t want to waste your time and/or are sure people investigating this lost touch with reality, feel free to disengage here. Otherwise, let’s go.

It stared January 1st, 2025, when Mike Shapiro, G-Man’s voice actor, published a cryptic voice message on Twitter.  https://x.com/mikeshapiroland/status/1874213952680607922. This message is certainly related to Half-Life, containing hashtags #Valve #Halflife #GMan and #2025. No Valve employee since came out to comment anything about this message.

Besides its text, message contained a background image. This image was quickly identified as a cover art for Mike Shapiro’s song called Best Long Dog https://open.spotify.com/album/7A0AGQEqdD36vv4UEsKCHf. This song came out December 16th, 2024, few days before the message.

Looking for any “Long Dog” connection to Valve, people found that in November 2025 a map for Counter-Strike 2 called Train, originally “a memorable and classic Counter-Strike map”, was re-released completely remade, changing one of map’s locations from being called PopDog to being called LongDog. It has a graffiti of a long dog with a crown and some dog names, told by the artist to be developers’ pets.

After some months of silence, two things happened the same day, March 31st, 2025. First, Mike Shapiro released an EP, still called “Best Long Dog”. It uses the same art from the initial message as a cover. https://open.spotify.com/album/7IiMTlaG5SYKK5LWnTkoSC Notably, EP’s release was delayed, as it was initially marked for release in January.

Second, a new skin collection for CS2 weapons was released. It’s centered around the Train map and has a dedicated LongDog skin. https://csgoskins.gg/items/awp-longdog Skin contains a quote, saying: "The greatest dog to have ever lived is the one waiting for you at home".

"The greatest dog to have ever lived is the one waiting for you at home"

That’s all for concrete, solid clues. There’s a lot of subtle stuff, like Best Long Dog being 197 seconds long and the same number being visible on the cover art, but really, it is too much to coherently explain. We have a google doc with most of the stuff people have found, but nothing big have emerged from it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iiAwQ75QIqon45sNYwIGpxtkJp7-DxoTV9IrQvLu6tY/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.a405ama237nu

Why do I personally think this might be an ARG:

Valve is known for organizing them.

Next Half-Life game, codenamed HLX, is in its late stage of development (if you trust leaks and datamines).

Dog and Train, being reoccurring themes in this “ARG”, are also significant for HL series itself: D0G is a beloved character and, as developers stated more than once, there’s no Half-Life game without a train.

Valve and Mike Shapiro are silent, Mike haven’t told anyone that his music is unrelated to HL.

Too many coincidences.

Saying all this, I’ll be okay if we find nothing. Still, I’d like for more people taking a look at this, because right now any idea might be valuable.

P.S.

Activity and attempts to solve this possible ARG died down a lot, but some people are still trying to figure out if anything is out there. The investigation has a discord server, but be advised that it was formed by the Reddit side of HL community, and as such people feel comfortable with calling strange or unusual theories “schizop*sting”. I feel like this is ableist and do not support such behavior.

[mewguca]

I was thinking about how people should talk more about the parallels between hunter and moon

This is a rather self-indulgent piece...I find it very comforting to be able to express my emotions through a media I love like this...that's probably my favorite thing about art. Being able to express something...being able to connect emotionally with the viewer...is really nice

textless versions and a long rambling under the cut

Hunter is often viewed as a very strong and agile slugcat...they are the "hard mode" after all. Hunter probably has a lot of physical prowess. But, with the rot...they become weaker. At its worst, they struggle to do basic movements...until they eventually die. Of course, in my version of events...Hunter's rot is cured, but it still leaves lasting side-effects. Their scars go beyond simple battle wounds...there's a sort of pervasive sickliness throughout their whole body. Treatment helps, of course...but

You know how that is, right...? You have to keep getting treatments. You have to work for your recovery. And you have to work to prevent your body from getting weaker again...Or y'know, that's how it is if you've ever had any reoccurring or chronic health issues. It's...a struggle I feel like doesn't get expressed very often...so I wanted to express it through my version of Hunter.

Even though Moon isn't anywhere near as organic, I feel like she can relate to similar struggles. She used to be like a god...a powerful supercomputer who could do just about anything! But...she couldn't bring herself to do the one thing that'd preserve her own wellbeing. She delays and delays on forcing Pebbles to stop with her administrative powers until it is far too late...

Maybe she thought she could handle it. That everything would be fine if she just waited for Pebbles to understand...or waited for him to stop. If she just kept sending messages, eventually he would listen.

But he didn't. Things didn't get better. And by the time she finally took action against it, it was too late...her forced communications did nothing but make her brother furious with her...because she "ruined everything." She could only accept her imminent collapse...

When she woke up again, she had only a few neurons left to run on. Her umbilical was broken, her overseers were out of her control, and even the roof over her head was incomplete.

She couldn't do most of the things she used to. She could hardly move. She could hardly even think. She could barely remember who or what she used to be...and she didn't have great ability to remember the present, either.

It must have been really painful...but she keeps doing what she can anyways. She reads the pearls you bring her. She tells you about the items you bring. She gives you information as best as she can. She is kind and hospitable. She encourages you. She could be so bitter and depressed...so resentful and cruel...but she isn't. I'm sure she has plenty of bitterness and resentment, plenty of hopelessness and great sadness, plenty of suffering...

But when she sees the little slugcat, she's still kind to it. She is grateful for what she has. She is happy to see you. And she keeps on living.

She's so strong...she is a huge inspiration for me.

So, I think if anyone could relate to Hunter's struggle...Moon is probably the closest. I think people should talk about their relationship more...after all, Hunter is her "little savior." I think they would be wonderfully close. They could support each other in their struggles to keep living, even if their bodies fight against them. I also think their friendship is just cute! Great potential for angst, for fluff, for comfort...idk. everything, really. It would be wonderful for them to reunite when they're both in better shape...as creatives, we can make a versions of events where that happens. It's really wonderful to me...for a work of art to inspire others to create art because of it.

This game means a lot to me...and it means a lot to me that it resonates so much with other people as well. So, thank you...

[midasfm]

hi idols! we are so excited to finally unveil our claims & tokens overhaul, as well as some additional changes and mechanics we're introducing to give you even more exciting ways to develop your muse and to help us operate a lot more smoothly. please check under the cut for all the details and please like this post once read so we know you've seen it! it's important to read this post in its entirety. please feel free to message us or send us an ask if you have any questions.

the claims overhaul

here she is: our brand new claims system!

we tried to keep most items the same as their original cost, but additional options to some categories were added and some costs were adjusted to keep things more realistic.

any items claimed before the overhaul are still valid — even if they're more "expensive" than they previously were.

the biggest changes are the rules. the rules that have been added are to keep things realistic. while a good chunk of the rules are the same, some additions have been made, like waiting periods between solo releases and filming periods for dramas, to keep things realistic. more info on those periods can be found on the document.

production credits received a slight revamp. instead of the available options only being "writing" and "production," you can choose from composition, arrangement, and songwriting. since this is the typical way k-pop credits are listed, we thought this change was for the best. any full or partial production credits will be converted to full or partial arrangement credits. if you'd like to add composition to your existing credits, please add the composition credits desired to your career page (highlighted and bolded so we know what's new) and submit them to @midasmgmt. we've included definitions for arrangement and composition on the document, as well.

there are new claim categories and items available (new global event options, new award options, solo photobooks, festivals and performances, duo photoshoots and commercials, businesses and brands). if you are interested in adding these onto your past career, you will have to resubmit your application (which means following the new system and any changed rules, which could result in you losing some of your previous claims) or you will have to "purchase" them as a past career item at a later date. more on how past career item purchases will work can be found below!

we also won't be offering "refunds" for decreased item costs unless you have spent points on an item that has had a significant rule change, like items that were turned into permanent items or company-based soloists now getting two free solo releases per year. more on that in the next bulletpoint! if you are unhappy about a decreased item cost and would like a "refund" of that item, you will have to resubmit your application. resubmitting your application would mean following the new system and any changed rules, which could result in you losing some of your previous claims.

for items such as permanent or reoccurring cast positions on an ongoing variety show, the opening of a personal youtube channel, the opening of a permanent business, and more, we're introducing permanent items. each tier gets a set amount of permanent items that can be claimed during any year, so that you do not have to renew those items every single year. for items such as youtube channels and businesses, these will remain permanent unless you decide your muse is 'retiring' from youtube or their business. for items such as permanent or reoccurring cast positions, these will remain permanent until the cast member leaves the show or the show comes to an end. you can find more info on permanent items in the claims document.

all tiers have been given permanent items and some tiers have received additional items, like exclusive items (a new category) and/or additional secondary or tertiary items. if desired, you may submit claims for any additional items your tier has been given. please do so by adding these to your career page, highlighted or bolded so we're able to tell right away which are new. after adding them to your career page, please submit them to @midasmgmt. you can find the old tiers at this link to see what has changed.

we'll be slowly updating the taken claims masterlist to add the new categories and items to the document, as well as reorganizing the document to make things look a little more neat! if you find it difficult to navigate the document while we're moving things around, please im us and we can look for a specific claim for you.

how will new career item "purchases" work?

@midasmgmt is our revamped points shop! this is where you will find all future schedule posts, forms for submitting new "purchases", and new claim items that become available (like production credits for upcoming group comebacks, admin-led variety shows or collaborations, etc).

that being said, any and all claims discussions should be sent to @midasmgmt. you can im us on that account for all claims discussions, including solo comebacks, features or prod. credits on another muse's song — anything that has to do with "purchasing" a new claim should be sent to that blog. keeping claims discussions separate from the main should help us respond to everything much more quickly, and avoid having to "halt" claim discussions because of additional requests or discussions.

as mentioned in our initial post about overhauling the claims and tokens system, we'll be "giving out" career items as part of our monthly schedules. in the monthly schedule posts, you will be informed of your group's activities for the month and how many career items you can claim that month.

the items given out during each monthly schedule will be a mix of group and solo freebies to make sure we're not burning through references or getting repetitive with the items offered to each muse.

we'll also have cooldown periods for certain claims types, and scheduling will have to be taken into account when making your claims. ex: a solo music release cannot be promoted while filming a drama. more on this can be found in the claims document.

groups, soloists, and group-based soloists with packed monthly schedules will receive less claims items during those months, since they realistically would not have the time for that many extra projects. however, you'll have the opportunity to claim viral doltalk articles, photoshoots, viral fancams, and other smaller claims items.

we will also have custom items and events that can't be claimed as past career items like admin-created variety shows, admin-led collaboration projects, solo merchandise lines or season's greetings, and much more.

we've changed the rules for certain claims items to offer a little more freedom/flexibility, like clearly outlining which items require references and which you can be a little more creative with. we'll be putting less emphasis on references overall with this new system, since finding references every month might get tiring or you may run out of suitable references for your muse! you can still use references if desired, of course, but this will hopefully help take some of the pressure off for those who don't really care about references for smaller claims items — and will encourage you to get creative!

the admin team will do their absolute best to be as fair as possible when it comes to this new system, but it is really important to note that this is a narrative-focused, narrative-led rp. some of you have chosen skeletons with members that are mistreated or disliked by their company. if you have chosen a skeleton like that, it is likely they will sometimes get looked over or given the short end of the stick when it comes to solo schedules. this does not mean you won't get anything, but there will be months where they might be passed over for certain opportunities, like a solo comeback or etc. additionally, if your muse gets in scandal after scandal, there's a good chance their solo opportunities will be cut as a result of that — whether by the company or because the public just doesn't want to see them. however, you will be given several opportunities to vouch for your muse and their career goals — and we'll do our best to help you reach those while staying faithful to the narrative. more on that below!

we'll be having check-ins during the last two weeks of every month to discuss what your muses' goals are and to let you know if we have any plans for them (like a solo comeback or another offer). if you're sick of your muse being mistreated, you can tell us and we'll work together to figure out how they can get on the company's good side — or at least meet somewhere in the middle. the narrative of this rp is very important and will impact everyone — even the most popular idols in the rp, but we're willing to make adjustments if you're uncomfortable with it!

when can we make new claims?

excluding the past career items we told you to go ahead and submit, please do not make any new claims just yet. we need a bit more time to set up the @midasmgmt blog with the necessary new forms, so please do not submit or inquire about any new claims just yet. we should have that finished by tonight (monday pm kst) or tomorrow afternoon (tuesday kst).

if you have a solo comeback with a set date, you can message us on @midasmgmt to continue discussions about your solo comeback. but if we have yet to officially set a date for your comeback, please refrain from messaging us until we announce we're ready to accept new claims.

can we make new idol reserves now?

yes! new reserves can now be made, and applications can now be submitted using our new claims system.

can we add onto our past career with this new system?

event tokens are not disappearing entirely! we will not be using them as a "currency" towards regular career items, but they will be kept around for some items, like past career items. you can use your event tokens to add onto your past career items, or you can hold onto them as we may have other uses for them in the future. the reason we are overhauling how tokens are spent is because we don't want you to feel like you have to earn tokens in order for your muse to progress (and we do think it is unfair to deny you items you can afford because of the narrative), but we still think event tokens are a good incentive to be participate in tasks or events that otherwise might not interest you. so, they can be used towards past career items or to "purchase" spots in admin-led opportunities.

you also have the option to 'trade in' any of your future schedule items for past career items, if desired.

comeback schedule calendar

to make planning your soloist comebacks easier, we've put together a comeback calendar! you can view the interactive calendar on this sideblog, but we'll also be putting together a mobile-friendly page for the main after this post is live. we'll also include the dates of group comebacks and other notable events and activities on the calendar as well.

since the companies under midas labels operate independently, an artist from each label can promote simultaneously. sometimes, a soloist and a group from the same company may promote at the same time if there isn't much overlap in target audiences. occasionally, there will be comebacks that go against these "rules" due to narrative purposes.

you can find more information on waiting periods between solo music releases on the claims document. additionally, a muse may only take up to three comeback slots per calendar year.

charting and music show wins

we're adding charting and music show wins to the career timeline for all group-based soloists. hopefully this isn't too big of an issue for anyone, but since we've mentioned previously that you should assume your soloist's popularity is similar (or lesser) than the group's popularity, it shouldn't uproot anyone that much since you weren't supposed to think about exact charting positions or music show wins in the first place. if it does pose an issue with how you've plotted/planned your muse's solo era already, let us know and we can work together to meet somewhere in the middle. we've started adding these to some groups already, but we're willing to make adjustments if anyone has a big issue with it.

we'll likely be adding charting positions to future (and unclaimed) soloist skeletons, as well. since we don't follow real-life charting for any music release, we feel like offering an average charting position for our soloists will help you get a good idea of how popular they are and how their releases typically perform.

that being said, please message us if you have a soloist muse under the previous soloist skeleton format! we'd like to rewrite all of the soloist skeletons to fit the new one, so please reach out so we can work on rewriting your skeleton together.

[thegildedbee]

Secret: May 11 Prompt from @calaisreno

Martha Hudson has a secret.

Well, she is a keeper of many secrets – those of others, as well as her own. She’s logged quite a number of years on the planet, after all, lived amongst “colorful” people, and experienced an event-filled life. It would be rather odd if she had no secrets.

This secret is neither earth-shaking nor weighty; it is a secret because she would quite prefer that others not think her to be a maudlin old lady, a somewhat pitiful headcase, as she fears they might if they knew.

The secret occurs on the 20th of each month: the 20ths are the only time when she goes upstairs to 221B, to spend some time in a solitary visit. The flat is empty, John not coming home in the days after the Fall, and then moving in with his sister after the funeral. She's not clear whether or not he is still there; all she knows is that this is where he is not. He had been reluctant to drop by, and it would be several months before she saw him again. Nearly all of Sherlock’s possessions are still in place as they were the last time he was present (minus the Stradivarius that Lord Stick Your Umbrella Up Your Arse had seized near the end of November). In the flat, it is as if Sherlock’s life is suspended in time; no one seems concerned with boxing up his things (perhaps it is because his disappearance from their lives was so unexpected and abrupt; perhaps it is just that the idea needs time to settle amongst those he left behind). The rent money is still being deposited in her account each month, which she supposes is Mycroft's doing. Perhaps the flat represents, at least in part, all of them being somewhat suspended in time.

Her visits had begun in December; at the cemetary she hadn't felt Sherlock to be near at all when she went to lay flowers at his headstone. The flat, on the other hand, feels comforting to visit, and when she's there she does feel touched by his presence.

December That first post-Fall 20th had arrived in December, on a day and an evening in which lackluster swirls of snow were dispersed erratically by the cold breezes. On a whim, she had brought up a small Christmas tree from below and set it on the table. She hadn’t been able to decide if it made the room feel more lonely, or less so; she liked it nonetheless. She had pulled a few votive candles from her apron pocket and set them on the table, and rummaged about in the kitchen until she found a box of matches (from Angelo’s, of course), and the bottle of Lagavulin a client had sent to the boys the year before, and that she guessed would still be there, inside the second shelf of the cupboard next to the fridge, likely more than half full – and yes, there it had been. 

She had poured a measure of whisky into a small glass, and brought it back with her to the main room, where she had turned off the overhead light and lit the candles. She'd begun a ritual that reoccurred on each of the 20ths: she allowed fond memories from years past to surface; turned over events from recent history in her mind, recalling what details she could; and engaged in idle speculation about alternative futures that might have been. January The next month she had visited in the afternoon, bringing her duster with her. She had fluttered silently about the sitting room as she feathered the surfaces of various objects and curios: the skull on the mantel, and the skull on the wall with the headphones; the microscope and a box of nicotine patches; a closed laptop. As she made a circuit around the room the physical sense of briefly touching each item as she scattered the dust felt something like the motion of prayer beads being turned about in one’s hands. She was strangely reluctant to dust where Sherlock’s violin case had been, its contours still clearly visible; she felt a bit silly about leaving it there, but she carried on. 

There were also some random items scattered about – the last person to have touched them being Sherlock himself, she thought, when he had set them down. She lightly touched the stereo record album covers near the turntable, wondering if they would spark memories for her of Sherlock's violin playing. But these were unfamiliar – one was a musical called Into the Woods, and one had an extremely disquieting picture on its cover, of a mirrored head on the floor, with the title in tiny type in the upper corner, Trouble Will Find Me. She shook her head, wistful -- that was certainly the truth, wasn’t it?

Underneath the two was a surprising find – an old book, authored by Groucho Marx, of all people, a cartoon picture of him on the dust jacket. She’d actually met the comic actor, back in her theatrical days; in between his bouts of wise-cracking, she’d found him to be a bit moody, and rather shy. She didn’t know if being in the flat was causing everything to remind her of Sherlock, but it occurred to her that he was very much like the funny man had been – gleefully firing off insults at the stuffy and the self-important. She was amused to see that it was a book of humor about paying taxes -- an exercise in showing he could make people laugh about the dullest of topics? -- and thought briefly about bringing it -- Many Happy Returns: An Unoffical Guide to Your Income-Tax Problems -- downstairs to read, but she left it where she had found it. She finished up with her task by dusting the coffee table, where there was a dvd case for The Day of the Jackal – with a rather distressing image of Charles de Gaulle with a bulls-eye target circle over his face – which lay on top of the soundtrack to The Princess Bride. That boy was nothing if not a bundle of contradictions, she reflected fondly.

February In February, she brought up some red paper poppies she'd found in a drawer when she'd been cleaning her flat, and she placed them in a tea cup as an ersatz arrangement. She made herself a cuppa and sat in a chair near the window, watching as the sunbeams filtered through the lace curtains, the patterns of light and dark shifting as time passed. After she rinsed out her cup, she had picked up the duster she’d left behind the last time she’d been there, and opened up the door to Sherlock’s room, lingering briefly in the door frame, letting the sadness flow gently through her chest.

Her gaze took in the neatly made bed and the nearly empty spareness of the floorspace, so unlike the sitting room -- and yet each room seemed to fit Sherlock’s personality equally well. She dusted off the dresser and then smoothed out the pillows, and then had moved to the bedside tables, picking up a set of books on the one nearest the door, and placing it on the bed while she cleaned the surface. More books, more very old books, starting to age into being antiques – such a wide range of topics caught Sherlock’s fancy! There was Tricks of the Master and Sensational Tales of Mystery Men by a Will Goldston, who apparently had been a stage performer, according to the back of the dust jacket; and M.R. James, A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories, which she herself would not consider to be bedtime reading, but then Sherlock was quite used to the macabre -- perhaps he had found it soothing.

She gave the silk dressing gown hanging from the back of the door a couple of pats, and then left, closing the door behind her, an odd feeling coming over that she was missing something, or had left something undone. She stood for a few moments, searching her mind, but nothing occurred to her, and she left to go downstairs and start making supper.

March John finally visited after she had sent him a text letting him know that quite a bit of mail with his name on it had collected; she hadn’t wanted to throw any of it away, and the accumulated items were rather bulky to post. She had been of two minds about mentioning the 20th as a possibility for him to drop by, but she decided if the date was significant in any way to him, and he’d like best to avoid Baker Street that day, that he was perfectly capable of suggesting an alternate. But he had said yes, and had, in fact, remarked that it would be something of commemorating an anniversary, and she had ageed, letting him have a glimpse of her secret.

They mounted the stairs together and gave each other conflicted smiles as they passed through the door to the flat. She had brought up a half dozen tulips -- two pairs of red and pink and one stem of yellow and one of orange. She explained about her monthly ritual, and how she preferred that to going to the cemetary; John had seemed to be pleased. He drifted along behind her as she moved about the flat, opening up the windows to air out the sitting room and the bedroom, and she chattered cheerfully about nonsense as best she could, to try and put him at his ease. Out of the corner of her eye she could see him slide his fingers across some of the items scattered about, and when they passed by the spot where the violin outline still remained, he gave her a smile conspiratorial smile.

He hadn't wanted to stay long, which was easy to see -- his posture was stiff, and when he stood in one place he shifted from foot to foot, and he'd begged off actually sitting down; that was fine, she understood.

She gave him his bundle of mail and teased him about the catalog picturing motorcycles barreling across rough terrain and snowboarders in mid-flight from a company named D30 that had arrived the week before, asking him if he was going to be taking up competitive motorsports anytime soon. She'd managed to wrangle the truest smile yet out of him, and he said, no, only cycling of the regular sort, as was manageable for stodgy middle aged men. She had hugged him tightly as he said good-bye at the top of the landing, and she had hoped it would not be so long as it had been previously, before she would see him again.

April On April 20th she brought up a bunch of dried lavender stems and set them up in a beaker, and then retrieved the tulips to toss into the bin and wash out the vase. As she held the expired flowers in her hand, she had a thought flit across her mind that something was not quite right; she shrugged, and threw them away, but then when she glanced at them before shutting the lid, it came to her -- yes, that was it, there was no yellow flower. She didn't think anyone had been upstairs; John and Mycroft would both have let her know if they were coming by, she was sure of it, although apparently one of them must have done so. Or she could just be misremembering the composition of the small bouquet; her memory wasn't what it once was, of course.

Putting the washed and dried vase back into the cupboard reminded her about the bottle of Lagavulin; today she thought she could do with a drink, and she brought it down from the other cupboard, and sat it on the counter. When she went to pour some into a glass, she was struck once more about something being odd -- was it that the level of the liquid in the bottle was lower than she had expected it to be? Had she had a larger portion than she remembered from her visit last December? It could be a memory lapse, of course; perhaps it was time to visit the doctor, although she really didn't want to be told that yes, her memory was going. Of course it had been near Christmas, and the first month after Sherlock's death -- perhaps she had imbibed more than she would customarily, because of the circumstances. Or perhaps John or Mycroft actually had been by. She decided it was nothing to fuss over.

When she walked back into the sitting room, she noticed that the door to Sherlock's room was open; she was certain she had closed it behind her the day of John's visit. She walked over and took a few steps inside; everything seemed as it had been the last time she was there. As she turned to leave, she thought she did catch a scent that hadn't been there in the months prior -- a woody scent she associated with Sherlock. Perhaps her moving about had set free some lingering molecules trapped inside some bit of fabric.

Or, perhaps her visits to the flat were becoming a bit too much for her, and her mind was having trouble letting Sherlock go. She decided it might be best to take a break, and skip her visits for the next month or so.

........................................................ @calaisreno @totallysilvergirl @friday411 @peanitbear @original-welovethebeekeeper @helloliriels @a-victorian-girl @keirgreeneyes @starrla89 @naefelldaurk

@topsyturvy-turtely @lisbeth-kk @raina-at @jobooksncoffee @meetinginsamarra @solarmama-plantsareneat @bluebellofbakerstreet @dragonnan @safedistancefrombeingsmart @jolieblack

@msladysmith @ninasnakie @riversong912

.............................................................................

[arkus-rhapsode]

So Rudo and Follo in Gachiakuta Chapter 117... (Mini Discussion)

So the newest Gachiakuta chapter came out yesterday. A bit of a breather chapter after the last few revelations that ended up adding to the character of Follo. However something happened in this chapter that caught my eye.

So for a brief summary, during the last arc of Gachiakuta, Rudo and Follo swapped clothes to trick Kuro the Information Broker. Follo has been a pretty reoccurring side character, portrayed as a Cleaner assistant who helps in combat but aims at being an actual Giver. Follo though really could only contribute to their fight in small ways. So of course he feels a bit guilty and wants to give Rudo a replacement uniform. But Rudo rejects it.

Now, for those not aware I personal interpret Rudo as an autistic character. I have a whole big post about it, that can be read here. Where I go into a level of detail on why this is my reading of the character though I'm not going to say for certain that this was an intentional choice on the part of Kei Urana the author. But one such piece of evidence to my forming of this perspective is Rudo has an affinity for broken things and has a hyper fixation to fixing them.

Because of this we can infer that why Rudo rejects Follo's gift of a new uniform is because Rudo himself wouldn't throw away an object that he sees value in even if its damaged. Now it could've stopped there, but this moment between Follo and Rudo continues with Follo trying to convince Rudo to take his new uniform.

At first Follo is clearly sheepish about this. There's a guilt inside him for how things turned out and this is how he chooses to apologize. Its small, but its the best he can do. However, when presenting Rudo the gift we see this-

Follo bucks up, covering up his guilty feelings and just trying to apologize to Rudo indirectly. But Rudo rejects this, as stated previously, Rudo's fixation on not abandoning items that he sees value in is part of who he is. Even something as simple as his uniform is his. So naturally we can understand that when Follo acts like this isn't a big deal but he should change, Rudo rejects it.

And so Follo just relents and walks away, frustrated in himself and how once again his contributions don't help at all.

So... one of the common signifiers of being on the Autism Spectrum is an inability to read social cues. A common thing in polite society is to sometimes communicate without saying things. Some people can pick up on these very easy, reading a person's emotion and their non-verbal forms of communication like gestures. But there is a level of social unawareness in individuals on the Autistic Spectrum who fail at these readings. This can be in a variety of reasons such as not understanding the difference in someone's tone, difficulty in reading facial expressions, and inability to understand indirect intentions of an individual. These can often times lead to unfortunate or awkward situations where the Autistic Individual has hurt a person's feeling or misinterprets a person's intentions without fully understanding why-making it harder for them to learn what they did wrong. It can also be very unfortunate for the neurotypical individual who has these feelings and can feel as if the Autistic Individual is being insensitive to them and their emotional state.

We see both sides of that situation here with Rudo and Follo. We already have been inside Rudo's head in this story. We know why he feels the wy that he feels. We can get into his mind space. That's why this exchange is don't from the perspective of Follo's headspace. We can see his internal guilt as well as his feelings of inferiority to someone like Rudo. But Rudo can't. Rudo only yes Follo trying to give him a uniform and it not being a big deal. But afterwards we continue to see Follo's mind space and how he saw this exchange with Rudo. Reliving how much other regular people around him consider his job lame and being a lackey to people more special than him. With Rudo's rejection of the new uniform being seen harshly and coldly through Follo's eyes.

Now of course, I didn't want this post to be a "Rudo is Autistic and Here's Why!" While I have said that is my personal interpretation of the character and do have a chapter like this to be another reaffirmation of that belief, I think it is worth acknowledging that Gachiakuta is a series with a very prevalent underlying theme of people's feelings and how those are manifested and communicated with.

Characters like Zanka try to hide their real feelings of elation at praise because they don't consider themselves a genius and get a full head. Rudo's powers enhance the "feelings" an object may hold such as Griss's good luck charm that Gross wore because he wanted everyone to be safe and thus it turned into a defensive power for Rudo. Amp is a character whose twisted sense of love ensures other people trapping them in their good memories etc.

This feels like a natural extension of that theme. Follo is holding these emotions and as such Rudo is unable to truly understand the "why" of Follo's act. While I said that inability to read social cues is part of indicators of those on the spectrum may experience, I don't want to discount there are likely Neurotypical people who have had moments of this. If someone doesn't tell you how they feel then how can you act accordingly? Urana takes a very empathetic approach with her characters. And being able to see why they feel the way that they do is important for making that connection. Its when Amo is honest about her backstory and why she developed her interpretation of love and Rudo admits his own fault for the frustrations that he feels about having his emotions played with were the two ultimately able to reach out and connect with one another.

In the case of Follo and Rudo, Follo isn't making that known. So all Rudo can do is act as he usually does when it comes to damaged items. I don't know if this was added in translation or if the original Japanese is a similar, but props to Rudo's rejection being "No. Thank You." Rather than a frank "No." Its a perfect knife twist, because Rudo is clearly trying to have some manners in his rejection, but Follo still sees it so cold and is hurt by it. It really makes both these characters feel justified in both dismissal and frustration. And its all done in a non lecturing type of way. Its people being people and we are allowed to be inside their heads.

Anyway, this chapter of Gachiakuta surprisingly got to me. And I really want to make a discussion on why. Hope Urana keeps on dropping bangers like this.

[agent-gladhand]

Q&A Responses on Follow the Schedule! Interest Check

First off, thanks for all the really receptive responses on this idea so far! I was expecting the total number of responses on this would be around this number upon the interest check concluding, so I'm really happy and appreciative that people took a liking to this!

As for the interest check itself, there were some good questions put out there for the project, so I'll be answering some of those here! The more reoccurring ones will also soon be added to the FAQ for future reference.

Q: Will keychains/charms or pins (assuming enamel but I'll include buttons too) be considered for the project stretch goals?

A: Maybe! This is dependent on the current state of tariffs being ??? in America for imports! For anyone who might not be familiar with merch making, most acrylic items and pretty much all enamel pins are produced outside of the US. This would basically mean paying over double or more the cost of production to import said merch depending on the manufacturer I'm working with! Unless the tariffs are dropped by the time the creation period begins, those items will not be included in the project. Button pins are possible for the project if enough interest is gathered, as this is something that can be made in the States and/or will not cost an arm and leg to import if it needs to be ordered from an overseas manufacturer!

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Q: What's the difference between staple bound and spiral bound calendar mentioned in the interest check?

A: For visual example, the first image shows a spiral bound, the second a staple bound. They both function in a similar way for display, it's mainly a preference of how to flip through pages!

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Q: For page artists, will there be a prompt list for each month or will it be at artists discretion?

A: Leaning more to artist discretion with approval of their pitch! The artist's final pitch should match up with general themes/events of their chosen month. (ex: April themes could include flowers, springtime, Easter-like imagery, rain, etc).

---

Q: For submitting art for applications, do works have to be Submas related or simply a showcase of skills?

A: It's not required to submit art featuring the Subway Masters, but it's appreciated seeing how an applicant stylizes them! In terms of what I'll be focusing on for showcases, it mainly come down to having a variety of styles in the project, not wholly based on technical skills.

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Q: If sticker sheets are included, would one artist design the whole sheet or collaborate with other artists? One artist designing a whole sheet could be too much workload!

A: For this project, a sticker sheet will be done by an individual artist if included! Because of the nature of sticker sheets, the size can be easily adjusted depending on what the artist is willing to handle work-load wise. If an artist is confident they can make a standard 5 x 7 inch sheet, they can! If an artist wishes to make something closer to a half sized sheet, they can! Work overload is verboten in any projects I run, so manageability will be prioritized!

---

That's all for the questions from the form right now! For any unanswered questions be sure to leave them on the form or send an ask (sorry that I had to turn off anon, the bots have been knocking down my door in waves).

Also small side note, thanks to everyone who left really sweet comments in the submission notes, you have collectively succeeded in transforming me into a tomato.

Look at what you've done.

(Though seriously, thank you all very much, you've been very kind and I appreciate it.)

[sillyyuserr]

terukane analysis, and/or just random stuff, i have too many prompts in drafts but they’re too small to be their own analysies so they’re here pt. 2 💫

I already made one of these a bit ago, so if theres anything not here it’s either in that other one, or i just haven’t covered it (yet)

Item A: “I like Akane-san”

When teru says this, it comes out differently in every language. And seemingly equally ambiguous which i find interesting

for example, in the french translation of this line, teru says "I love you more than you might think akane" rather than saying “i like akane-san” and i mean having a mistranslation here is obviously something, but what he actually says is just what?

“i love you more than you might think akane” EXCUSE ME??

also not to mention “san” is gender neutral. He very well could be calling akane by his first name and them (akane & nene) misunderstanding what he said. Although he does refer to aoi as “akane-san”, the translators wouldve translated it to “aoi” instead of “akane” if he was referring to her (or not, im not completely sure on how they do the translation 😭)

Item B: queer association

not only is this one of the only canon queer characters in tbhk, (my guy only got one panel 💔) but also this associates “queerness” or wtv that means with teru

along with akane mentioning both genders being attracted to teru. Again, associating queerness with him. And you may be wondering, why is this important? well, notice how out of all of the main and/or reoccurring characters, he is one of the ONLY characters to be associated with queerness. (The only others being kou; his friends teasing him about wanting to “undress mitsuba” and akane; the whole yamabuki thing) for example, take note of how scarily popular aoi is because of her beauty, shes like a literal god, everyone loves this girl, but notice how never once has a girl ever confessed to her? actively not associating her with queerness, unlike teru.

and notice how the other characters that are associated with queerness are kou, who (its pretty much been canonized atp) has romantic feelings for his male friend mitsuba, and AKANE. The guy i swear he has a crush on like cmon now AidaIro can you be more obvious

Item C: reoccurring patterns

in tbhk, all of the confirmed/obviously implied romantic relationships between the main characters have been supernatural x human, hanako and nene, mitsuba and kou, akane and aoi, excluding only teru and aoi. But this does not exclude teru and akane, almost showing us that in the love triangle between teru, akane and aoi, it may not be revolving around which one gets with aoi, but which one gets with akane. It seems as though teru x aoi was never an option from the start.

Although teru has said he likes aoi, his actions say otherwise. for example teruaoi’s conversation in the convenience store was obviously extremely awkward, the only non-awkward part being when he helped her out of that creepy interaction with the clerk.

And the face he made when akane asked/assumed he had a crush on aoi

(Which he never definitively answered)

The point of this section was because of these reoccurring patterns we can conclude akane is the main love interest, not aoi.

Item D: their relationship

Something teru likes about akane, is how no matter what he doesn’t seem to ever give up. Which yes in some aspects this can be a bad thing, coff coff

But most times, you can kind of tell this is a big reason he likes akane, almost like a “he pushes him down, he gets back up” kind of thing, its a big part of their dynamic. If akane wasn’t like this, their dynamic would change a lot. He likes this because as stated in the spinoff, he kind of uses akane as a “stress toy” (which has obviously changed, as their relationship did when the series progresses) but he likes this because at the end of the day, akane will come back. No matter how many times he ties akane up, he returns to the student council room. No matter how many times teru pushes akane down (in this example, literally) he gets back up.

Something i like about terukane, is their relationship. The trust and motivation they give one another. For example, its shown early on Teru has disassociates himself from other people. Teru views the living as “delicate” and kind of makes it his job to protect them from supernaturals (when i say he made it his job i mean his dad did). He was raised to have a very different view towards the living vs supernaturals. Rounding this back to Terukane, teru doesn't view akane as “fragile” like other people, and I think that's something to take note of. The reason he thinks like this could definitely tie into the fact that he’s half supernatural but also he views akane in a higher regard then most people. Akane keeps up with him, teru actually acknowledges this, saying he values his intelligence and enjoys talking to him. 

Its kind of been shown teru has had a hard time making friends ever since grade-school, i mean yeah he talks to people, but the only people he’s lowered his guard around has been tiara and kou (siblings), and akane. A literal supernatural (the kind of person this guy is supposed to exterminate??) Literally what makes akane so special? This guy is the most popular person in THE school, second to none, and the only person besides his family that he can let his guard around is akane? They both work in the student council, president and vice president meaning they work in extremely close quarters, everyday, giving them lots of time to talk, so its no doubt they became close, but out of everyone, teru choosing akane to put his trust in is just odd to me idk man

Item E: bringing up each other alot

in many instances, teru and akane bring eachother up when they aren’t even involved in the current situation, or unintentionally show us they think about eachother more than we think they do, a few examples:

Teru talking ab akane to his family. Call me insane but i have alot to say ab this one. This one really gets me because that would mean throughout his entire way home from school, including if he fought off supernaturals on his way back (which he seems to do pretty much everyday), from the last time he saw akane, he had to have been thinking about him the entire time. Since they are in the student council they stay together for most of the day when its not their extra/curricular classes or lunch, meaning they probably stayed together until about an hour after school ended, and according to google

School ends around 3:50 to 4pm and their after school activities last until around 6pm. In one chapter i forget which one, kou complains about his brother not being home much and whenever he is home he’s usually sleeping or too sleepy to answer him properly, (and in art of their ‘home life’ teru is always either sleeping or sleepy) because of his constant fighting with supernaturals well into the evening. Now lets assume at this point teru has left the school building, and about a few (5) minutes down the sidewalk and he runs into supernaturals, fights them off yadayadayada, at this point it’s presumably now 6:30-6:40, now lets also assume they live about a few (5) blocks away from the school, one block presumably taking 5 minutes each, times the 5 blocks they live away, taking approximately 25 minutes to half an hour to walk, plus the additional time he took to exorcise the supernaturals on his way home, which by this point we can probably assume its 7-7:20 now which is around an hour after families/people usually make dinner, we can assume he gets home at the 7-7:20 mark, sits down with tiara and kou to have dinner when this panel was shown

Meaning for an esitmated two and half, to three consecutive hours, akane was on teru’s mind. Thats a pretty long time to be thinking ab someone teru. I know what you are

Item F: extras

the “Aoi is coming too.” Bro brings him up at any given opportunity

akane having a literal DREAM about him.

Like I havent had dreams with life long friends in them so to have a dream about this boy you “hate” is.. hmmm

Innermost subconscious feelings you say? okay okay so not queer at all yk so buddy so bro of them

Item G: the original plot

tbhk was originally going to be a oneshot manga featuring the love triangle between akane, lemon and aoi but later was cancelled, and in the official manga, they made lemon and akane “fall in love”

obviously as a joke but that shows AidaIro is not oblivious to the idea/premise of the two boys instead falling in love with eachother, rather than the girl, so the idea (i talked more ab in a past analysis) of teru&akane getting together rather than teru&aoi or akane&aoi getting together is ON THE TABLE

would add more but i fear this will take me too long💔 new chapter next week yall prepare urselfs