#all that said rolin's been clear from the beginning that louis being Black was an intentional story choice / louis was not raceblind castin

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/dhampirdulac/status/1835817074662265040

look at these leaked character summaries 👀

Interesting if they're real! I wonder where they leaked from?

[driftwork]

Hotel Stories: Tokyo 2 - Literary moods Hotel, room 34, third floor...

The day passed uneventfully the safe house was 20 miles to the south, they had to follow a circuitous route along side streets and through residential areas, only crossing main roads when necessary. Only once did they accidentally cross paths with their pursuers, at three in the afternoon a black SUV containing four yak gangsters of the white syndicate came across them by chance, turned and drove towards them. She emptied half a magazine into the car probably killing or seriously injuring  the driver. It crashed. The man in the passenger seat got out of the car and tried to raise his gun. She shot him.  The remaining two stayed in the car as she waved her gun at them. She took the gun and the wallet from the man she'd just shot.Taking the magazine before throwing the gun on the ground. They ran down the street and disappeared before either of the remaining ones managed to phone for help. They were tired, still five miles from the safe house at dusk.  She did not want to approach the safe house in this state so they found a hotel with a discreet brass and neon sign. The Hotel lándes, Vam-Acta 6.

It was a rundown  boutique hotel that needed refurbishment.  The carpet in the foyer was threadbare. The paintwork and wall covering was dull and rubbed. The brass door handles on the entrance were dented and misshapen. To the right an open double door that led to the restaurant and bar associated with the hotel. It wasn't very busy. They registered for two nights using his Amex card, they reasoned that they shouldn't yet have managed to identify him. They sat at a dark table in the corner of the restaurant, the waiter came and lit a candle for them handing them menus. The restaurant had a shelf of books on the window sills, and a wall covered with book covers, dust-jackets and front covers. He would have liked to look at the wall but knew he shouldn't in this situation.  [The waitor assumed  because of the way they talked and looked at one another that they were a couple] They ordered Udon noodles with some sliced vegetables  in a miso sauce with a fillet of seabass.  They began to  talk about their lives and personal histories. In some ways trying to understand how they had ended up in this dark corner of the hotel restaurant. They failed. He talked about his separation from his girlfriend, work and books. She spoke of childhood, the training beginning at five;  taekwondo, karate, tai-chi, swords, guns. She spoke about the impossibility of having relationships, her family and a life in which most people were scared of her.  The violence and crime. He didn't care. He liked her face. The intense muscularity of her movement and gestures. He didn't know whether it was desire or something else. He spoke of his family and friends. The high levels of fear he had been living with for the last day had become normalized or  perhaps it was simply that he was sitting at a table eating with her. The waiter had a tee-shirt on which the word 'waiter' printed on it in english.  He brought more tea and suggested shaved ice for dessert. She was amused by the way the waiter was speaking to them as a couple. Over the four days they speak of this many times - but the second night. In the Hotel Landes is the most romantic and perhaps the clearest indicator of the changes that were taking place. He asked her why they were reacting like that. They are scared of me. Why? Because of who and what I am. She asks him why he didn't go when he still could. [The unspoken implication being - Though we have been careful they must be close to identifying who you are by now] I don't know. Later he would suddenly say “Ï don't want you to be on your own" In the restaurant beneath the gentle sound of Japanese electronic music he asked her why she didn't leave him. I don't know either, Perhaps because I survived the initial attack and it seemed better to be with someone. She paused. She always paused at this point in this repetitive discussion.  I think I would have died on my own, given up rather than run. Later in the hotel room whilst looking at the ceiling with her he says that "I will never be scared of you." She  thinks that this is the nicest thing anyone has said to her for years.  He doesn't know this.

Each room of the hotel was named after a literary them or genre. They had a choice between Romance (she shuddered) and Dystopia. They chose Dystopia. The dark grey door had a code pad on it,  the keycode was 1923. It opened directly into the room, facing the windows and balcony out onto the courtyard. Behind the kingsize bed was an oversized reproduction of a Soviet poster extolling the virtues of work. A bookcase along along one wall contained an array of 20th and 21st century dystopian novels,  along with a few utopian novels and related non-fiction. A short shelf on eugenics and Mendelism, a few unreadable books on economics, various translations into English and Japanese of 'We',  copies of Louis Chardenneau novels,  Rolin, Huxley and so on....   The floor had a heavily patterned carpet with a pattern of broken rocket ships. Beneath the carpet is  a wooden floor had been laid, it was floating on chipboard that is glued to the concrete floor. Each board glued along the long tongue and groove edges. Over the years of constant heat and moisture changes the wood had  expanded and contracted so that now  cracks were appearing where the boards were separating. His bare foot could feel the gap between the boards when he moved it across the line. In the dark the only light was from the led light of the radio.The ceiling had a gold  lightening bolt that decorated across it and down into a point on the wall above the door into the bathroom. The window frames were light grey. The duvet and pillows with brilliant white Egyptian cotton.  Against one wall there is a small heater ( 9 chrome plated heating elements) above it some shelves with model rocket ships, flying cars, clockwork robots and androids and a misplaced small and hideous painting of a village scene, the village reflected on a lake in the foreground of the painting. If you look out of the windows you can see the bright neon lit night, almost as bright as daylight. Over the road  there are some signs in green on white with "Hotel" written horizontally and "restaurant written vertically. Around the district are low level housing mostly two or three stories made of concrete and wood with flat roofs, lots of wood and gray with white shutters.  A few street signs in either white on blue or  red on white.  The street lamps hang off the buildings with wires strung between the lamps.  The bathroom is all white, grey and chrome, All the walls are covered in large rectangular white tiles, The  grout between the tiles is on off-white colour, verging on a pale grey. The walk-in shower has soft grey tiles, with a rain shower fixed against the wall about 2.2 metres above the floor tiles, and an adjustable hand shower attached to the  riser and the flexible pipe attach to the control unit that can be height adjusted as required. On the left  of the control unit  is the selector for either the rain shower or the adjustable hand shower.. On the other side of the unit is the flow and water temperature control. It is set at the midway point.  The wash basin is adjacent to the shower it has chrome taps, one hot (on the right) and the cold tap (on the left) both are fed from tanks.  There is a grey bobble mat on the floor before the shower entrance and the basin.  A single light  is attached to the ceiling, there is a crack in the white opaque shade. There is an extractor fan in the corner above the chrome shower unit that starts to hum when the light is on. Besides the mirror on the wall above the basin are two strips of lighting. Everything else in the bathroom is shiny and white apart from the two button controls (one large and one small) on the loo and the chrome towel rail.  Plastic bottles of shampoo, conditioner and shower gel, a pump bottle of skin lotion, stand in a wire chrome container hanging on the wall in the shower . A small unmirrored cabinet on the wall containing unused bottles of shampoo and shower gel and new throwaway Fusion razors.  A few books are resting on the clear shelves, a surrealist childrens' book in English and a copy of Spinoza's Ethics in Japanese. After they have showered, she is lying on her back in the white toweling robe decorated with what she thinks is an appropriately broken rocket ship over her left breast, looking up at the gold lightening bolt on the ceiling she thought that perhaps Romance would have been better. She feels slightly hot and sits up. He is sitting, looking a little damp, in front of the book shelves looking at a copy of Zamatyn's novel.  He looks round, telling her that he likes the Zamatyn book and how was she feeling now. They had talked their way across twenty miles or more of Tokyo, tiny gestures, facial expressions,  semiosis across the city. She looked at him seriously, "please sleep with me."  (Transference is a process of the actualization of unconscious wishes. Together in this hotel, the grouping of relating objects.)  She woke up to the sound of the socio-technical machines of the hotel  beginning the early morning work. There is sunlight edging into the room from the corner of one of the blinds. One of his arms on her back. He was still asleep, he had put on a teeshirt on during the night just as she had, the toweling robes dumped on the floor besides the bed, one on each side. She looked at him, feeling a smile appearing on her face and wondering again how they had ended up sleeping together. He traces the tattoo on her back with his fingers.  She thought the sex had been understandably unspectacular, unmemorable, already forgotten and was amused to discover that she didn't care. When he woke up and smiled at her as she came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, she thought how nice it was to be with him.

They left early in the morning, drinking tea and coffee and eating a light breakfast before following the business men and women who were staying in the hotel out on the road. They walked for half an hour before stopping at a cafe for another drink. Afterwards walking for three hours along back streets towards the safe house....