#Gobbled this up and am still reeling from the after effects

[iceunhie]

the heavy oak door swings wide open and hits the adjacent wall with a loud thud. a hooded figure makes its way in, body half-turned in an apparent inspection of the door. “a little unhinged, this one,” the figure mutters, before standing stock-still at the sight of the room’s inhabitant. 

“...you weren’t supposed to be here.” the voice, while gravelly, is strangely gentle. “be at ease, please, i’m just a feeble messenger carrying out my duty.” 

the ‘messenger’ rummages through the pockets of their cloak. “miss mhie, was it? got a letter for you,” they toss a neatly-sealed envelope through the air. 

Hello again, Miss Mhie.  Have you been well? [this part appears to be hastily scratched out] Did you… miss m(hi)e? First off, congratulations on surviving October’s EBG. I would’ve loved to send in more asks, but unfortunately I had some… rather personal matters to deal with. My sincerest apologies if you were ever looking forward to an ask from me. Now, I’d originally planned to send this earlier, but, well, better now than never, right? Alright then, here’s a little question to start us off:  What does loving the Wanderer feel like? To put it simply, I think it’s a storm of emotions. It probably gets confusing sometimes. One day you’re just madly in love with him, and the next… well, you’re questioning your decision. It’s the Wanderer, after all. You can never know what to expect. But most of the time, there’s one word I can think of to describe your love for him. It’s timeless. With everything he’s been through, you’d always been there, by his side, never once leaving. Maybe you don’t always see eye to eye, but you’d still support and love him unconditionally, regardless of what happens. Through eons.  This love is a mysterious, powerful kind. If I had to explain it with a colour? Loving the man (or should I say ‘puppet’?) of many names is midnight blue. It’s a stable kind of love, where you know that neither of you will ever betray the other.  Loving him is knowing that your heart is safe with him– he’s your sanctuary, and he always will be. So what does being loved by the Wanderer feel like? It’s a silent love. You’ll never hear him admit his affections for you. But! You’ll definitely feel it.  It’s in the way he silently leaves a plate out when he knows you’re going to be back late. No sticky note, though. It’s the way he lets you grab onto him when you awake from a nightmare– no snarky quips, no questions. Just sitting there, with you, in a comfortable silence. And if he deems it necessary to calm you down faster, you’ll feel a hesitant hand come up to pat your head softly. It’s also the way he’ll grumble and complain about how much of a nuisance you are, but then his eyes will soften and you’ll see a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. (Don’t point it out, or he’ll turn red as a tomato and bring his hat down to cover his face, all the while insisting that you’re just “seeing things”.) And maybe you don’t know this, but sometimes, at night, when you’re asleep and he isn’t, his tense shoulders will relax. He’ll run his fingers through your hair, and he’ll smile. Not the smirk people always see, but a soft, genuine smile he’ll never let anyone see. Only the moon bears witness when he leans in to press a quick kiss to your temple, and, after a couple seconds of hesitation, whisper an “I love you”. It feels good, doesn’t it? Knowing you can be as vulnerable as you want to be with him, and he’ll still accept you no matter what. Because that’s exactly what you’ve done for him. Take it from me. Loving the Wanderer, and having him love you back, is something really special. 

~‘printsessa’

dear printsessa nonnie, I've been putting off this ask because my jaw literally dropped to the floor and my heart swelled so much by this message ahhhh thank u for this amazing, amazing wanderer BRAINROT!! feeding my damn delusions and devouring so hard you probably ate EVERYTHING, including the plate.

WAUGH the silent love and.... the pun 😟

did you miss m(hi)e?

PRINTSESSA WHEN I CATCH U PRINTSESSA 💥💥💥

I love the way you write, I love the way you portray my dear wanderer so well!!! no, but seriously, bless U and ur heart. thank u sososo much for interacting w mee waugh pls i can't stop smiling like an idiot this whole time I kept reading BWKDJJDBWAJWW aughhh thank u for taking the time of ur (definitely busy) life to send me this sweet ask! (sure, there was a threat to my ebg safety there, but let's ignore that 😁)

anyways, again, im honored to be subject to ur writing and ur threats, though fragile-willed i may be for this frustratingly loveable puppet 👤 HOPE U ATE WELL AND CONTINUE SERVING THESE MASTERPIECES WAUGHHH

(and perhaps if u ever decide to reveal your mask and unveil ur true self, i look forward to being able to read ur work as a fellow writer. hopefully we become moots too eheheheheeh)

HERE'S THIS LOVELY BOUQUET FOR MY LOVELY ANON MWAHHHHHH 💖💖💖

[livehealthynewsusa]

Striking ATI Steelworkers Hold the Line for Premium-Free Health Insurance

Across the country, steelworkers at nine plants of Allegheny Technologies, Inc. have been on strike for the last 11 weeks.

They want raises; to stop contracting out; to secure full funding of their retirement benefits; and to beat back management’s efforts to introduce health insurance premiums and a second tier of coverage for younger workers.

The Steelworkers union (USW) accuses ATI of unfair labor practices including bad faith bargaining, and of holding retiree benefits hostage for contract concessions.

ATI, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh, makes steel used in aerospace and defense, oil and gas, chemical processes, and electrical energy generation.

Five years ago ATI locked workers out for seven months, demanding major concessions on wages, pensions, and health insurance. Workers fought off the bulk of those demands, though the company was able to shed future liability for the pension by replacing it with a 401(k) for anyone hired after 2015—a huge cost shift to workers that makes a decent retirement at age 65 unlikely for new hires.

There were 2,200 workers at 12 unionized sites back then. There are 1,300 at nine sites this time around.

Most of the shops are in areas still reeling from the deindustrialization of the ’80s and ’90s. Five are in western Pennsylvania: Canton Township, Brackenridge, Latrobe, Natrona Heights, and Vandergrift. The others are in Louisville, Ohio; Lockport, New York; East Hartford, Connecticut; and New Bedford, Massachusetts, where 60 members are on strike.

MANUFACTURING DESCENT

One of only a few remaining union manufacturers in southeast Massachusetts, ATI has long been seen as a place to earn decent pay and a respectable retirement.

As a young organizer with the United Electrical Workers (UE) in the ’80s and early ’90s I spent many mornings and afternoons leafleting at the ATI plant in New Bedford—then called Rodney Metals, before it was eventually bought out by ATI—and other shops in the area, encouraging workers to organize. (I like to think we helped lay the groundwork for the USW’s eventual success in the mid-’90s.)

Back then there were thousands and thousands of decently paid union workers in manufacturing, and those union shops drove the area rates and standards. The spillover effect was real. Non-union employers like Rodney Metals were “forced” to pay similar rates and conditions in order to compete for workers.

Those days are gone. Like many places throughout the country, southeast Massachusetts lost thousands of manufacturing jobs—union and nonunion—during the Reagan era of greed, union-busting, and moving jobs to lower-wage, nonunion locations (sometimes overseas, but not always). UE lost close to 2,000 members in southeast Massachusetts in less than a decade.

Some of the more innovative and militant strategies to fight plant closings were developed from the struggles of these workers to defend and preserve manufacturing jobs in hard-hit industrial New England.

Now, with the pension replaced by a 401(k) and after seven years of wage freezes, working at ATI—or in manufacturing generally—is not such a great deal anymore. Factory work in the area is now pretty much all nonunion, and most places pay less and provide fewer benefits than they did 20 years ago.

Plus, anyone who has worked in a factory knows the toll the work takes on your body and soul. The camaraderie can be great, but the brutal pace of work in an unhealthy environment is unrelenting. Your body slowly unravels and falls apart.

FLUSH WITH CASH

Now ATI is demanding to gut the benefits of present and future workers even further, which will further erode the living standards of the area. To sell its offers, the company points to wage increases and lump sum payments—but, as the union has pointed out, these are all based on savings generated from other concessionary proposals.

Meanwhile, the company has almost “a billion dollars in liquidity and more than half a billion dollars in the cash drawer,” according to a strike bulletin from the union. The three top executives made $22 million last year in salaries and an additional $17 million in bonuses.

The average hourly rate for production workers is only in the mid-$20s per hour, with the lowest-paying job around $22. Lots of maintenance work has been subcontracted, especially since the last contract. Presently to contract out work the company simply has to notify the union and engage in a discussion; if it doesn’t, the company pays a penalty to a local charity.

These “notification” requirements have done little to stop the company from decimating the maintenance department. But even this weak arrangement isn’t enough for ATI. It wants no accountability or discussion with the union about keeping maintenance work in-house, and it continues to propose eliminating arbitration over even the minimal requirement to give notice.

A PREMIUM ON HEALTH INSURANCE

This strike is in large measure over health insurance. In a sea of non-union workplaces with unaffordable health plans, ATI workers are striking to keep their plan affordable to members.

Presently the company pays the entire health insurance premium—workers were able to stave off ATI’s efforts to force them to pay premiums during the 2015-16 lockout. Workers have an upfront deductible that is 10 percent of first-dollar coverage up to $300 for an individual and $600 for a family per year. If you go outside the network, it is double those figures.

ATI now wants workers to pay 5 percent of the premium and increase the deductible to $500 for an individual and $1,000 for a family. What the company is really after, however, are the new hires: the company wants them to pay 10 percent of their premiums. It’s the typical and divisive two-tier system that unions know all too well.

The Kaiser Family Foundation, which researches and publishes national health insurance data and conducts annual surveys on employer-provided health insurance, says that in 1999 the average annual premium was $2,196 for single plans and $5,791 for family plans. Twenty years later those figures have skyrocketed by 240 percent and 269 percent, respectively, to $7,470 for individuals and $21,342 for families.

Employers still contribute the majority of that, but workers now pay an average of $5,588 in premiums alone for family coverage (up from $1,543 in 1999), not to mention the increased share of other medical costs they bear. Wages over that same period have increased, on average, only 77 percent.

A BENCHMARK FOR ALL

Up until the 1980s, when the health insurance industry and employers began imposing premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and other schemes to gobble up more of our paychecks, fully employer-paid health insurance was not uncommon at all.

Those union workplaces that have been able to maintain that standard help all of us—not just their members. They set a benchmark for the wages and benefits that other employers in the same industry or geographic area need to provide to stay “competitive.” They influence what workers and the local community expect a job to offer.

When a benefit is allowed to erode over time, so does the standard. Seeing these workers at ATI fighting to defend premium-free health insurance, something most unions have lost, is inspiring.

“I am proud of my fellow brothers and sisters on the line,” said Bedford ATI worker John Camarao, the grievance chair for USW Local 1357. “Members are in a great hardship right now entering the third month of the strike, but what we’re fighting for is not only for our future but for the future of new hires and our retirees’ benefits.

“Their demands are meant to divide us, but instead they have united us, and our resolve is to see this to the end.”

Peter Knowlton is the retired general president of the United Electrical Workers (UE).

source https://livehealthynews.com/striking-ati-steelworkers-hold-the-line-for-premium-free-health-insurance/

[trendyelle]

What To Eat For Clear Skin& What Foods Will Wreak Havoc On Your Face

If youre anything like me, someone who is a grow adult treats their body like a trashcan, then you acknowledge the daily struggle that is doing whatever the fuck you miss while also wanting to have a great person and great surface. Lifes hard when you want to get fucked up at Governors Ball but likewise ogle 100 years old in your Instagram story. Not that I would know. I did not going to see Gov Ball, though I did expend the weekend going through mimosas like water and snacking enough food to get me my own TLC reality show. That being said, I want to change. I want to be a brand-new me. A better me. A me who throws actual vitamins and minerals into her method so her surface doesnt resemble the entire slice of pizza she chewed last nighttime. So heres a listing of nutrients you are able to forestall like an ex-boyfriend slithering into your DMs and foods you are able to hug because theyll cook your fucking face. Damn, Ive got bars. DONT: Gobble Canned Food/ Meats Gross. As if. Like, who even ingests canned meats anymore? Other than my ex from college who had this weird infatuation with eating vienna sausages( which, in hindsight, should have been a red fucking pennant that this girl was a sociopath. That and his Belk credit card that he was always bragging about ). Canned and/ or highly processed foods have a shit ton of sodium in them and effects your torso to hold on to ocean, which is why your appearance is always puffy or you have pocketed under your eyes that can be seen from infinite, and your acne is at World War III proportions. DO: Eat Salmon Aside from giving you a reason to pretend to be a foodie and too be objectionable on Instagram, devouring salmon is a sure room to get better gazing skin. Salmon is rich with omega-3 fatty battery-acids and healthy fattens. These paunches strengthen cell tissues and nourish the scalp to continue you gazing fresh AF. DONT: Drink Green Juice Lol merely because you often say shit like #FitLife and #CleanEating on your IG does not mean you know wtf is good for you, because SURPRISE all those juices youre boozing to purify your form are actually truly fucking bad for you. Juices are sugary as inferno, especially the green juices which are able to have up to 50 grams of sugar in them, which is actual sabotage when it is necessary to having clear surface. ^ I imagine every fitstagrammer when the catch out they’ve been shooting liquid sugar into their tabernacles bodies DO: Booze A Protein Smoothie Aside from having something to talk about with the hot manager at your gym, protein smoothies was in fact be beneficial for your surface. The more you are familiar with. Remain away from the juicer smoothies and opt for one with some protein in it. These types of smoothies are high in healthy flabs and wont leave your scalp examining more ratchet than your Snap story last weekend. DONT: Eat Ice Cream Okay, this one I accompanied coming. Nothing that savor this good can be anything but destruction on your torso. And since Im not on my period rn in control of my torso I approximate Im open to suggestions here. Ice cream is chock-full of sugar which can figure this fun circumstance called advanced glycation end products which fucks up the protein in your body. Why is that important you may ask? Because the proteins it fucks with the most are the ones that keep your skin plump and springy searching. So mostly chewing ice cream is aging you.* stairs into oncoming transaction* DO: Eat Dark Chocolate Dark chocolate aka the DUD of chocolates has a fuck ton of antioxidants in it, which is v good for your surface. So even though it flavours healthy and the whole experience youll be caring you were devouring real chocolate with real flavor at least your skin will appear good AF and protection against wrinkles and other bad shit. DONT: Drink Coffee HA HA HA HA this has to be some sort of sick pun. You want me to give up my will to live caffeine? Do you likewise want me to commit homicide the next time someone replies all to ministries and departments email chain? DO YOU? This one is tough for me to wrap my mentality around because coffee is literally one of the only reasons I get out of bed in the morning, and hence, the same reasons you get to experience this twinkling temperament. That tell me anything, coffee is a diuretic( bogus report Im sure !) which causes your form to lose liquid and your surface to get v dehydrated. Stay away from this shit if you require glowy AF skin. DO: Drink Hot Lemon Water This replacement sounds about as good as the Republicans plan for health care but thats neither here nor there. Even though future prospects of drinking red-hot lemon liquid sounds about as enticing as sleeping with Jonathan The Tickle Monster, its actually super are you all right. Its hydrating, full of antioxidants, and yields some very much support efforts to your liver. Apparently, the liver is the main organ that detoxifies their own bodies and if youre full of toxins drinking on daytimes that cease in Y, youre more likely to break out. Sighs. And this is why we cant have neat things. DONT: Eat Bagels Okay, Im starting to feel personally was well received by such lists. Like, is someone looking at my bank affirmation and be careful to ensure that I expend a great amount of my down time in coffee shop and/ or bagel stores? Because Im find actually assaulted rn. Apparently, bagels are the worst for your skin and can lead to a cascade of hormones aka acne breakouts for dates.* prays this is imitation news* DO: Eat Non-Processed Carbs or Oats Tbh Id preferably starve than eat something that resembles animal feed but I guess thats the toll we pay to look like the “after” girl in an acne commercial. Oats are the right various kinds of carbs probs because it ogles miserable to eat and likewise because its high in antioxidants which weve proven will not only give you clear/ glowy skin but likewise fightings against anti-aging. DONT: Drink Soda To utterly no ones astound except my own because I refuse to read labels written by health professionals people who are out to destroy my joy, soda are detrimental to you. And precisely because you drink diet soda doesnt mean youre safe. Because diet soda especially disrupts the necessary and healthy bacteria found in your intestine. Likewise sucking any sort of soda are actually fuck with your scalp. Like, reason rosacea, eczema, and acne fuck with your scalp. K. Just fuck me up rn then. Too, wtf am I supposed to order at the bar to go along with my vodka then? I cant only drink vodka straight-from-the-shoulder. I want to have clearer scalp , not croak. DO: Drink Kombucha Finally something that ogles good on my Instagram story and isnt going to fuck up my skin. About damn era. Basically Kombucha is good for you because its fermented, and therefore full of probiotics, which will solve all your life questions. Im paraphrasing, but still. If you miss clear skin by the time this weekend’s brunch reels around then chug some of this and pretend like its booze something you experience drinking. So, in conclusion, anything that brings you rejoice is possibly fucking up your skin and you are able to cut it from your diet ASAP. I am feeling #blessed rn that alcohol did not oblige the roll, but thats mainly because I refused to do any actual investigate that would support otherwise. Who says you cant move your own destiny? Listen, if all else neglects and you have no self see dont wishes to sacrifice your prosperity theres always Facetune. Read more: www.betches.com http://selfhelpantiagingtips.com/what-to-eat-for-clear-skin-what-foods-will-wreak-havoc-on-your-face-5/

[originaldetectivesheep]

The Thirty and One Nights' Momentary Diversion - Nikushokujoshi

Tonight's story is strictly for mature audiences: those who can read through the beginning without flipping out until they see where it goes in the end, and then also those who can get through the end without being scandalized or throwing up everywhere.

Nikushokujoshi

I snapped a picture of the udon bowl and tweeted it out: noodles topped with thick, fragrant pork belly and a runny fried egg.  You really could get anything in Tokyo.  I laid my phone back down on the bar of the ticket diner and picked up my chopsticks; in three months, I'd gotten pretty good, and I could come in to little places like this and not have to worry if anyone would be able to understand when I asked for a fork.

I looked out the corners of my eyes around the place as I slurped my noodles.  There weren't any other gaijin or otaku in here; it looked just like normal Japanese people, like you'd see anywhere, despite being in Akiba.  Everyone else would probably go to a maid cafe for lunch; I'd kind of gotten over maids like two weeks after I landed, and now, since I only had the week left, I wanted to see a little more, experience a little more, than just school and anime and games and events – something more, like, maybe Japan the way Japanese people found it.  I picked up one of the pieces of pork, concentrating carefully to make sure I didn't drop it, and it must have been then that she came in, because I'm sure that I would have noticed her otherwise.

She sat in right beside me – right, right there, the outside of her leg sliding against mine, and it had to be intentional, because there weren't so many people in the diner that she couldn't've sat somewhere else – anywhere else.  She laid her ticket on the counter, pointing out the gyuudon – oomori – with a rattle of gyal slang, and then she must have noticed me, staring at her almost in shock.  "Hello," she said, reaching across with her right hand, her upper arm pressing her cleavage together, "you are American?"

"Y-yes," I stammered, laying my chopsticks down across my bowl to reach up with a hesitant hand – was this really happening?  "Amerikajin desu."

She smiled brightly, seemingly all the way across her perfect, heart-shaped face, and seized my hand with a firm, soft, grip that was half a caress.  "Oh!  Good Japanese!  Konnichiwa, Amerikajin; I am Mishima Minami – you can call me Minami."  She was leaning almost on top of me, her deep brown doe eyes staring straight into mine.

"H-hello, Minami-san," I said, very not sure of what to make of her: her fine features and her long, deep-black hair, fragrant with some kind of shampoo, were pure Japanese, but barely any Japanese girl I'd met in three months acted like this – and definitely not with me. "I'm Andy – Andy Weston.  Andy is fine."  I blinked, pushing my glasses back to be sure I was seeing her right – she had the generous curves of a gravure idol, and her tight jeans and low-cut scoop-neck blouse were showing them off to full effect.  This couldn't be real – this had to be a setup, a variety show skit in progress.  Where was the camera?

"Andy," she said back, and there was something in the way she said it that made my heart skip a beat and jump, "so, do you enjoy Japan?"

I nodded, once, then vigorously.  "Yes – very much."

"You are here for vacation?"

"No," I said, "for university exchange.  I'm a student – I was at Waseda for the last three months."

"Oh!" Minami said, her mouth falling open with admiration, "Waseda! Very smart!"

I rubbed the back of my neck with my left hand.  "At Waseda, maybe not so smart.  I passed all my classes, but it was very difficult. Going back to Cal, my college in America, will be easy after that."

She pressed her hands together in front of her; she had to know what that did to her breasts, what they were doing to me.  "You go back to America?  Just three months only?"

I nodded, trying not to stare.  "Yes; I have this week for vacation, and then another week at home to adjust, and then the new term starts in America.  But, I wish I could stay longer."

Minami nodded.  "Sou. Just one week then; need to make a good memory."  The counterman brought her order out, and she bowed a brief thanks across as she picked it up, steaming beef piled up high on the rice, and then started in on it, her tongue flicking out erotically to lift each mouthful off her chopsticks.  I tried to concentrate on my own bowl to keep losing my mind – and then felt her hand, almost in my lap, squeezing along my inner thigh.

I stopped, nearly choking on my udon, but Minami didn't seem bothered at all.  "Andy, do you like Japanese woman?"

"Y-yes," I answered, as soon as I could manage, as best as I could, staring straight down at my bowl, my face as red and as steaming as the pork in it.  Her hand was still there.

"Do you like me?"  So straight – so forward – I didn't know how to answer.  I looked up, to see how she was looking at me, saying something like that, and she wasn't, barely – she was focused on her lunch, gulping down her meat with what looked like an insatiable appetite.

"M-Minami-san, yes, you're very pretty, but – it's just – it's just so sudden – I don't know if I – I – I'm not used to this."  It had to come out; her hand was still on my thigh, and in another minute or two I might just collapse and worship at her feet.

She nodded, turning towards me, her chopsticks still in the air.  "Yes; different, probably, from other Japanese girl.  You have girlfriend?"

"No," I said, looking down again.  "Never."

"Then, it's good," she said, turning back to the remains of her beef bowl.  "I like you, so you can like me, and we can make the good memory in your time left."  She squeezed along my thigh, stroking back from my knee.

"I – Minami-san, it's just – it's – you're so beautiful, and I'm – I can't understand – why –"

"I like foreigner," she said, simply and plainly between bites, "and you are foreigner, and not have girlfriend, and it's one week only.  It's okay?"

I nodded; I could accept it, even if I wasn't sure that Beat Takeshi or someone wasn't hiding under the counter.  "Yes – it's okay." I tried to look up over my glasses.  "I – it's just – in Japan, I wasn't –" and I must have looked down at my lap, because she started, and slipped her hand quickly up on top of my leg.

"Oh! Sorry," she said.  "I think foreigner like this.  And also, I'm… niku-shoku joshi no koto tte, shiteru?"  I nodded; I'd heard the expression.  A man-eater.  "I'm sorry, if I go too fast.  I like to, eat mens.  kamu, kamu." She mimed the play-bites, then smiled, eyes sparkling.  "It's not okay?"

I shook my head.  "No, it's okay.  It was just – sudden."

Minami smiled wider, and scooted her stool tight in close to mine.  "Then, it's okay."  Her hand was on my thigh again, feeling, caressing, sliding higher up.

Somehow I got out of the ticket diner in one piece and with clean pants, and this sudden, whirlwind, windfall date with a dream idol went on. Through three arcades, the Tolim mall at the station, drinks in a back-alley yakitori bar somewhere off Ginza after a subway ride that had been mostly an excuse for her to wrap herself around me, smothering me with her body to 'give other people space', and through it all I couldn't miss it that everyone, everyone, was staring at us, staring laser-beam daggers through the nebbishy Western ginger otaku who somehow had this perfect goddess draping herself love-love all over him.  We got away from it, finally, in a karaoke place, back in Akiba, no idea about where – my head was reeling, flying high on Minami-chan, her scent, her touch, her everything.  In the karaoke box it was just the two of us, the lights low, the meaning unmistakable, and it wasn't two songs gone, our drinks barely touched, before she was in my lap, her arms twisted around me, kissing me first softly, then deeply, hungrily, like she was trying to tear me apart with her tongue and devour me with her lips.  I'd never barely kissed before, let alone like this, and it was all I could do to respond, to reply somehow to her advances, to hope not to disappoint her.

Somehow I got the idea that I should strip her, help her take her clothes off; I could do this, and Minami would like it, and I could show her that I wasn't just a chunk of meat for her to gobble up.  I pushed the hem of her shirt up, her body electric under my hands as as I slid them up, pushing her shirt up until it caught on her bra.  I stopped, almost shocked – here I was in a dark karaoke box, tongue-locked with a passionate Japanese girl straddling me, grinding her porn-star body against mine, and I had no idea how to even take her bra off.  Minami must have felt me stiffen and stop, because she stopped as well, breaking the kiss and drawing back a little.

"No," she said, stroking her hand down the side of my face.  "Not here.  We go to my room; we do it right."  She leaned in to kiss me again, pulling my upper lip back between hers, then rocked back to settle her shirt down.

"Not a hotel?" I asked as I pushed myself up, checking that I was still decent."

Minami smiled the smallest smile, her eyes almost shining in the dark. "Da-me.  No hotel.  I want all of you.  All night.  We go to my room."  She kissed me again, then slid off of me, onto the couch, towards the door, her hand lingering on my crotch; I nodded and followed after.

Minami led me by the hand through the tangle of darkened streets and blurry, half-blotted neon, the sky through the buildings over our heads crazy and foggy and distorted with a million colliding outflows of streetlights and buildings and blazing signs.  We turned around past a kebab shop – I think – and then we were in the well of her building, one of those anonymous blocks of three or five or seven stories that crowds the back streets of Akiba, a game company or a T-shirt store on the first level and then cheap apartments above.  We almost ran the stairs, Minami pulling me up higher, higher, faster, faster, and then fell through her door with barely a click of the key in the lock.

As soon as the door shut behind us she was all over me again, her tongue down my throat, her hands tugging at my shirt, yanking at my belt; in seconds we were both naked, and she was pushing me with her magnificent body – breasts soft and firm and round and perfectly balanced, her hips and her rear like the Greeks might have sculped on Isis – through the genkan and to the bathroom door.  I got barely a whisper of the sense of the rest of her apartment; dark, close, furnished in a strangely old style with long, deep chests low along all the walls – before I was inside in the light, on the tiles, Minami's kisses nibbling at my neck, my nipples, further down as she pushed me down onto a shower stool and the water hissed on warm and soft down around us.  She squeezed out a handful of shampoo or body lotion into her hand and worked up a lather, filling the room with her scent, and spread it over herself – and then onto me, scrubbing me with her body like a Yoshiwara hostess.

When she'd had her fill of soaping me up this way, running all of my parts between her breasts, through her cleft, she pushed me in closer, under the falling water of the shower head, to wash all the suds away.  The water fell all around us, but I barely noticed as she kissed me, teased me, played with me, caressed me, her breasts pressing like soft mountains into my back as her hands made sure to clean off every inch, leaving me pink and clean and bright.  I was so lost in it – her scent, her touch, her sensual voice, her taste on my lips – that I didn't barely even notice the cold shock, then the hot shock, as the blade passed through my neck from one side to the other, then slashed out the front of my throat.

It took a moment – a moment to realize that the red that was pouring over me was blood, my own blood, that the pain was that I'd been slaughter-cut, that the haze in my eyes was that I was losing blood at a rate of gallons and my brain was shutting off – that my brain was shutting off and I was lying sprawled on the floor because I no longer had the ability to sit up, that I was looking up at Minami with a bloody knife in her hand because she had slashed open my throat with no more thought than you'd cut a watermelon.  She laid the knife down on the rim of the bathtub and did something over by my feet – over where my feet must be, I couldn't see, couldn't turn my head – and then stood up with a "yoi'shiyotto" and a tug on a rope, and I found myself straightening out, upside down, the blood flowing back up over my chin, catching in the patches of my beard.  Above me, my feet were tied together, close by some kind of pulley running over what had looked like a shower curtain rod.  I was being hung up – I was being hung up to drain.

My head dropped back, and even through the haze, and being upside-down, I could see Minami, still naked, setting our her torture implements: a hatchet, a saw, long-bladed butcher's knives, freezer bags – no, not torture.  I was dying – I was dying already, I would be dead before she could make another cut in me. Freezer bags – those chests – freezer chests – and I was bleeding out – I would be butchered – nikushoku – and she – she ––– those unearthly lights in her eyes ––