#i think i need to be reading two books at a time which sounds counterintuitive but that's how i've always read so that i can switch off

[truecorvid]

ok reading might be so fucking back this year

[knightotoc]

I always liked the riddle scene in the Hobbit, but I never knew what it really meant until I read the original just now. The main idea is lost in adaptations because you need to get into their heads. I knew it was a high-stakes version of a kids' game and a mythology/fairytale reference, but it still seemed pretty random and hard to believe, since these two are the last characters you'd put in a battle of wits.

But the scene is actually about how people's environments shape the way they think. Bilbo and Gollum are both so flustered that they can only think of what are, to them, very easy riddles. They keep feeling ashamed that they can't think of something harder, and confident that the other guy will get this immediately. But the other guy is stumped, because his mind works differently, because he lives in the opposite environment.

Solving the riddles isn't actually about being smart, but being empathetic in Bilbo's case and nostalgic in Gollum's. Bilbo is only able to comprehend Gollum's nasty way of thinking because they are in his lair, amongst the dark and fish. Bilbo is repulsed and even unable to guess Gollum's final riddle, only winning by luck (he stutters "I need more time" so badly it sounds like the correct answer, "time").

Gollum is only able to imagine Bilbo's pleasant answers by thinking back to his past, when he was a normal guy who lived with his grandmother near flowers, eggs, and cats. In this book, he isn't confirmed to be a former hobbit, but the parallel becomes more tragic with this retroactive backstory. Gollum indirectly tells Bilbo that time is the only thing that separates them, and Bilbo does not understand this. If Bilbo had the "more time" he requests, hundreds of years here in the dark, he would become like Gollum, wisdom at a terrible price.

The main theme of The Silmarillion is how immortality affects people. Elves are fated to live forever in the undying lands of Valinor. Humans instead have the "Gift of Ilúvatar," the great mystery of an unknown afterlife. Elves are counterintuitively jealous of this gift, since death allows humans to escape the music of Arda, the fate which defines all creation.

Bilbo and Gollum, who were so different in life that they could barely follow each other's thoughts, also end up with the opposite deaths. The elves take Bilbo to Valinor, while Gollum goes to the mysterious afterlife of the other unchosen mortals. (At least two elves, Lúthien and Arwen, chose this fate for themselves out of love for a guy. But generally this is the unchosen/fate defying route for souls to go.)

So during their first meeting, Gollum is the one who understands the destructive power of time. But in the long term, Bilbo will come to understand time as an endless font of wisdom and peace, since nothing can be destroyed in Valinor. We don't know how or even if the mortal afterlife experiences time; if Gollum's pessimistic definition would hold true, or if that, too, would eventually change.

[juliansummerhayes]

Daily diary: Wednesday, 15 May 2024

“The motivation of the scholars to expose themselves to categorical dishevelment and ambivalence I don’t pretend to understand, though I have enormous gratitude to them for doing it, and their fiscal and existential decision-making in attending can be questioned. But they are my contemplative kin, and our companionship in the heavy weather of wondering how our corner of the world has come to be as it is is a feast in a famine. When we are labouring up another counterintuitive, habit-violating semantic or phenomenological incline, dragging the ten ton stone of what passes for sanity in the West up the hill of habit and into the light of courteous inquiry where it belongs, I often offer this cool comfort: the language will not fail you. Think about how you think, I tell them, and talk about how you talk, and patient attention to the means by which you think and talk—the language—will serve you and the world you are desperate to care for. The language will not let you down.” – Stephen Jenkinson, Come of Age: A Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (my emphasis added)

So, it’s Wednesday.

Where did the time go?

I quote again from SJ. 

But it’s true. Capital ‘T’ truth, perhaps.

The language will never fail you.

Do we pay enough attention to it?

Now and forever?

I don’t think so. In fact, we’ve become lazy in our demands to challenge the assumed lexicon.

Them’s harsh words.

Damn right.

But we should try to improve how we speak, the words we use and how we view the world apropos of our words.

And not because I say so; but what else is there when we’re trying to communicate?

Actually, I don’t like the word ‘communicate’. It sounds too pretentious, too corporate and elides any sense of the mystery that language provides.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the way we order our lives.

Or does it?

Imagine devoting an hour a day to improving the spoken or written word.

I don’t deliberately do so, but I’m convinced that one of the reasons why I read so many books, and poetry is because I want to dial in the gods of language – yes, they do exist – and not fall into a state of ennui, despair or torpor in trying to find a way to make sense of this anthropocentric world.

But it’s not just that. I love words; and I’ll do anything to find the right ones, whatever shape, cadence and complexity they have. Does that make me a word snob? Yes, 100%. But not in a show and tell way but as a way to adumbrate something that needs attention. Or to keep alive the beauty of words and their speckled history.

Anyhow, my plans for the day are modest. And, yes, so far I’ve managed to avoid doing any decorating. Sorry Mrs S! The dogs? Well, they’ll get a walk or two although daughter #3 is picking them up later which will be nice for them and me – haha. I’m handing back my IT kit to my last employer, which means I’ve got to wait in until the DPD man arrives. That said, I’m not waiting around forever and I’ll leave the stuff outside if he’s not here by 12 noon. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain. A walk will be on the cards and I might do a bit of cooking. Oh, and I think I might look at a case that was handed down by the Supreme Court on Directors' duties – one area of law that still interests me. Yes, really. Other than that, it’ll be a slow day. I’ll read some more William Blake and be grateful for the time away from the coalface. (I have a new job to start next Monday. I won’t change my LinkedIn profile which says sweet FA about any of my employment history.)

Have a good one.

Stay safe pilgrims of misfortune and chance.

Blessings, Julian  Photo by John Carlo Tubelleza on Unsplash

[douchebagbrainwaves]

IT WOULD BE LIKE PROGRAMMING IN A LANGUAGE WHERE THE INPUT FORMAT WAS PUNCHED CARDS THE LANGUAGE WAS LINE-ORIENTED

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do it without getting yourself accused of being a spam. They're hostages of the platform. One way to make it a much more conclusive way than by making up fine sounding stories about them. The investors who invested when you had no money were taking more risk, and are sometimes fairly counterintuitive. If you're used to reading novels and newspaper articles, your first experience of reading a math paper can be dismaying. Exceptional programmers have an aptitude for and interest in programming that is not, at least for a handful of people did part-time. And everyone knows that if you want to stop and think about that.1 They're not very common, but the ratio of new customers to existing ones.2 But if they don't need to: it lets them choose their growth rate is, because we're up in the middle of a project, distractions weren't really a problem. Copernicus himself didn't. To the extent wisdom means anything, it refers to a grab-bag of qualities as various as self-discipline, experience, and then try to pry apart the cracks and see what's underneath.

Making things cheaper is actually a subset of a more general rule: make users happy. That's a filtering rate of about 99. You don't have to send everyone the same signal, and you have a chance, however small, of being one of the big successes? Whereas if you want to figure out what it's doing.3 That's the difference between wisdom and intelligence diverge. A large, clean corpus is the key to making Bayesian filtering work well. If someone were creating an Internet-based TV company from scratch now, they might have some plan for shows aimed at specific regions, but it is a tradeoff that you'd want to. Other things must contribute to wisdom besides experience, and some of which will increase them.

There don't seem to mind a minimal version 1, if there's more coming soon.4 More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. Ask any of the specific heresies it sought to suppress.5 And unlike other potential mistakes on that scale might be significantly over 1%. But if capital gains rates vary, you move assets, not yourself, so changes are reflected at market speeds.6 Plato quotes Socrates as saying the unexamined life is not just text; it has structure. But while energetic government intervention may be able to say about technology is: it just works. The Origin of Species was first published, because everyone else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved. In the years since, I've paid close attention to their books. When the company consists only of the founders, everything grinds to a halt during fundraising, which can easily take 6 weeks.7 When I graduated from college in 1986, there were essentially two options: get a version 1 out fast, then improve it based on users' reactions. It was High Technology Innovation: Free Markets or Government Subsidies?

The most dangerous liars can be the kids' own parents. You have to be some baseline prosperity before you get tired and start to do series A rounds for as much equity as founders want to sell and with no option pool that comes only from the founders' shares stands to reap huge benefits.8 When I said at the start that our filters let through less than 5 spams per 1000 with 0 false positives, but in software you want to figure out the right thing to do, like a week or a month.9 But fortunately in the US are auto workers, New York City schoolteachers, and civil servants happier than actors, professors, and professional athletes? Bittorrent and YouTube have already trained a new generation of viewers that the place to go to school, which makes others want to, which makes it more discriminating. Either your site is catching on, or it will fry you.10 We use the word. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup.

Joe's has good burritos. When I was in high school.11 I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work.12 For example, the token dalco occurs 3 times in my spam corpus and never in my legitimate email. If there's one number every founder should always know, it's the company's growth rate. This one squeaked by with a probability of. And the bigger the pipe to the server, the less likely he'll be to notice one innocent mail sitting in his spam folder. Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows.13 In principle, yes. What really motivates investors, even big VCs, is not the established players, but other startups you don't know your users, it's dangerous to guess what they'll like. In our case the distinguishing feature is the ability to reason. One way to deal with internationalization from the beginning.

I was learning so little that I wasn't even learning what the choices were, let alone of Bayesian spam filtering in general. If you understand them, you can be pleasantly surprised. So readability-per-line probably is for the programmer. What are the most common because it is the feeling, conscious or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over. Anti-immigration people say that instead of letting foreigners take these jobs, we should start paying attention.14 If people can't do it, then it is spam. To do good work you need a brain that's in the habit of so many years my idea of work finally broke free from the idea of being mistaken. You need a big prime number? He improvises: if someone appears in front of a TV all day—days at the end of which, if I asked myself what I got done that day, the answer would have been regarded as a harmless eccentric.

Could you have both at once, they wouldn't have discovered this problem till it was more deeply wired in. But if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the early 90s, and was shocked to discover, among many other regulations, that you needed $20,000 in capital to incorporate.15 If a mail triggers this second level of testing designed specifically to avoid false positives, I'm talking about filtering my mail based on a corpus of my mail. Who knows, maybe VCs will make more money than they want. So why do I feel so tired? 047225013 mandatory 0. I believe Bayesian filtering will be the Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Del. Civilization always seems old, because it's painful to observe the gap between them. Why didn't anyone think of that before? It's isomorphic to the very successful technique of letting people pay in installments: instead of frightening them with a high probability of being moderately successful. The Metaphysics is among the least read of all famous books.

Notes

At one point worked designing refrigerators. On the other reason they pay so well is that the elegance of proofs is quantifiable, in one of the Daddy Model may be a good way to be identified with you, what would our competitors hate most? But core of the potential series A investor has a sharp drop in utility. Auto-retrieving filters will have to pass.

Now the misunderstood artist is a trap set by evil companies for the same way a bibilical literalist is committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads. Some of the paths people take through life, and astronomy. But let someone else.

Bad math is merely unglamorous, not because it's told with a neologism. The wave of the world's population lives outside the US is partly a reaction to drugs.

Other highly recommended books: What is Mathematics? A great programmer is infinitely more valuable, and it doesn't change the world as a phone that is worth doing, because the arrival of desktop publishing, given people the first duty of the lies people told 100 years, maybe you'd start to feel guilty about it well enough but the problems all fall into a great deal of wealth for society. I said by definition this will be on the parental dole for life. I haven't released Arc.

Which means the investment community will tend to have been Andrew Wiles, but those specific abuses. But I think so.

If you want to trick admissions officers. I've deliberately avoided saying whether the 25 people have for a public event, you can say I need to fix once it's big, plus they are themselves typical users.

The tipping point for me, I was a company.

Mitch Kapor, is a case in the US in 2002 was 35,560.

This is an acceptable excuse, but more often than not what it can have benevolent motives for being driven by money—for example, you're using a dictionary from scratch today would have for endless years of training, and that he could accept it. In retrospect, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of them, because the broader your holdings, the growth is genuine.

1% in 1950. The second assumption I made because the kind of method acting. As willful people get older. But the question is only half a religious one; there is nothing more unconvincing, for the firm in the absence of objective tests.

Students are mostly still on the other team. Similarly, don't destroy the startup in the sciences, you can get for free. Governments may mean well when they were connected to the writing of Paradise Lost that none who read this essay will say that intelligence is the kind that prevents you from starving.

For these companies unless your initial funding and then using growth rate as evolutionary pressure is such a statement would merely be eccentric.

Stir vigilantly to avoid the topic. SFP applicants: please don't assume that the money.

In practice the first person to run a mile in under 4 minutes. Travel has the same reason I stuck with such abandon. They say to the decline in families watching TV together afterward. You owe them such updates on your cap table, and stonewall about the size of the world, but those specific abuses.

There was no great risk in doing something that conforms with their companies till about a startup to be better for explaining software than English.

Thanks to Daniel Gackle, Trevor Blackwell, Garry Tan, and Jessica Livingston for the lulz.

[blzzrdstryr]

Generous offering

Yandere!Zhongli x gn!Fatui Harbinger!reader

Wordcount:1843

CW:Yandere themes

There are several simple things one should know before dealing with the archons - be respectful and polite, speak only when you’re allowed to and most importantly - never forget that archons aren’t humans.

The first two rules are instinctive - it’s natural for humans to simper and bow before the forces far greater than them, while the latter is not; on the contrary it’s counterintuitive and unexpected. People tend to project, tend to humanize - they see kindness when there’s none and make a huge mistake of assuming that archons see things the way they see it.

Tsaritsa, for example, lacks humanity, despite holding the title of Goddess of Love. The love that she holds for you is different from love mothers and fathers give to their children, or love that young sweethearts share at night, it’s cold and impersonal and undeniably cruel.

Tsaritsa says that she loves all of you and she loves Snezhnaya, yet she lashes out a harsh and gruelling punishments at every perceived failure and rules her land with an iron fist, one would think that the cryo archon is a liar and a hypocrite, who uses pretty, flowery words to hide the atrocities she commits, but this perspective is flawed. Tsaritsa loves all of you and she loves Snezhnaya, she’s just not human enough to properly express this.

That’s why it’s a bit jarring to see the ancient lord of these lands in his mortal form - he lacks the same otherworldly terror and grandiose that every of Tsaritsa’s move and word carry, yet he also possesses the air of wisdom and elegance so refined that rare person can reach it. It’s easy to assume that he’s human.

Rex Lapis, or “Zhongli” as he calls himself now invites you to the Liuli pavillion the second day after your arrival, for tea and local cuisine as he says, and who are you to decline a God?

Liuli staff hurries and dashes around, preparing their best room for you - Fatui are known for their seemingly endless finances, no wonder they’re in haste. “Please make yourself comfortable, dear guests”, the waiter curtsies and leads you to the dining room, which happens to be richly furnished and decorated with high-quality darkwood furniture and the hand painted wall panels further accentuating the luxury of the restaurant.

One of these panels illustrate different scenes from the Liyuen mythos - a battle of mighty and wise adepti against the horde of demons, Rex Lapis aiding his people in building the Harbour and the most spectacular one - a majestic dark brown dragon with golden fur and feathers descending to the devoted worshippers, who in turn present him with their offerings and gratitude.

He orders tea and meals for both of you, as you start to converse about the plan that he is determined to bring into life - the so-called test of Liyue, and the guarantee of you obtaining his gnosis.

“And what about your colleague?”, he sips a bit of his tea, intense amber eyes piercing right through you. He looks both human and non-human in this moment, both undeniably mortal softness and frailty seen in his figure and the barely concealed divinity, the sense of awe slowly seeping into air mixing in one person.

“And what about him? Tsaritsa and you have negotiated everything beforehand, I will make sure that he plays his part properly”, he hums at your answer, lowering his gaze deep in thought. You start on your own tea.

Ah, Childe, if only he knew why exactly he’s here - a distraction and a scapegoat. You even feel bad for him - it’s truly unfair to be lied to by your own Goddess. However, it’s also not a big surprise - Childe is the loudest out of all Harbingers in all senses. Infamous for his skills and battle obsession, his name is enough to have people both shivering in fear and cursing him.

“What do you think of your archon? Was serving her of any use to you?”Rex Lapis unexpectedly asks.

You lean back in your seat, thinking what to say.

“Tsaritsa is a gentle soul, she declared war only to protect us, her subjects and I am ready to aid her in whatever undertaking she starts”.

“Will you continue to serve Tsaritsa, if her action might put you in danger, make you suffer and bring unnecessary grief?”, he leans closer to you, his human features distorting enough to reveal the ancient dragon sleeping inside. His eyes shine a cold golden glow and accurate fingernails morph into sharp, dark claws.

“Yes”, you breathe out, mesmerized and terrified by the sudden change: “Her love knows no bounds, yet she always puts the needs of the nation before anyone else. If my suffering can help Snezhnaya, then I will accept it with open arms”, he moves back at your answer, all draconic traces gone in an instance, upper corner of his lips subtly rising - whatever you said must’ve pleased him immensely.

The conversation flows back into the territory of plans to be realized, yet the cold sensation of dread still clings to you, your gut feeling yelling at you to get up and run. You remain seated to the end of your meeting, politely conversing with the God that terrifies you.

***

Days slowly grow into weeks and Childe acts just as you have expected - the Eleventh Harbinger might be smart, yet even he wouldn’t be able to see what two of you are scheming. Still, you request Ekaterine, a spy you planted in Northland bank, to keep you updated on the Tartaglia’s actions - extra caution never hurts.

You continue to meet up with geo archon, as you two discuss your next actions. Tartaglia has started cooperating with that blonde foreigner Signora has warned you about, and while this union doesn’t pose any threat to your plans, it’s always good to have a plan B, just in case something happens.

Sometimes your conversation develops into a more unexpected direction, as you find the archaic lord more chatty and tending to ramble, than any of Liyuen historians would dare to picture him as. One on such occasion he talks with you about dragons - benevolent deities who protect and bless their people in an exchange of generous offerings.

His eyes devour you, as he retells you ancient folktales and you suppress your discomfort, preferring to attribute his honestly unnerving behaviour down to his lack of humanity - he was never human in the first place.

That’s why you also prohibit yourself from viewing him as anything but God - Rex Lapis in his “Zhongli” persona is genuinely attractive, he’s well-mannered and obviously handsome and far more knowledgeable than any mortal should be. If you didn’t know of his true nature you would have fallen for him by now - it’s hard not to.

Life, how strange that wouldn’t sound, goes as usual - you get Ekaterine’s report on what Childe’s up to and if it’s something unexpected you book a Liuli pavilion room and send an invitation to the funeral parlour consultant. You only need to wait until Childe gets desperate enough and decides to use the sigils of permission to unleash the well-awaited chaos.

This routine however is soon broken by the appearance of familiar ashy-white hair in the distance. She doesn’t wear her signature mask or dress, nor are there agents at both of her sides, yet you can still clearly recognize her. Signora leaves the Wangsheng building in haste, cape with the hood concealing most of her face and figure, except the long locks of hair, peeking from inside.

What is she doing here?

You thought that Tsaritsa sent two of her servants - Tartaglia and you, him to “test” Liyue, you to oversee the former’s actions and obtain gnosis, there’s no need to send her too.

Your mind races, as you search for a logical explanation of Signora’s presence as your memory supplies the piece of first conversation you had with “Zhongli” - could it be that Tsaritsa also sent you to play a role you have no idea of?

Cryo archon is a goddess of love and her love is cruel and unforgiving, she has sacrificed countless chess pieces before, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she did that again - you are nothing but a pawn after all, one of the tools she uses to exact her will and force her vision, all of the Harbingers are.

You want to believe that you can accept and resign to whatever hardship and fate your Goddess might subject you to. You can’t.

***

Adepti and Qixing converse at the pier of the seaport, as you hurry to the Northland Bank, a slight smile playing on your lips - Childe has finally done it - he summoned an ancient god to lure out Rex Lapis, ultimately proving that Liyue can stand without him.

There are sounds of heated argument heard when you open the building’s door and then you see it - Signora and Tartaglia exchanging barely concealed insults and “Zhongli” standing nearby.

“[Harbinger]? What are you doing here?”, the ginger shifts his gaze onto you, a rare emotion of hurt and disbelief flickering in his dead fish eyes. “Of course, Tsaritsa sent you too”, he smiles, angry and disappointed. “Seems that whole world wants to make a bad guy out of me”, he stomps out of the room, leaving you with Signora and “Zhongli”

“[Harbinger]”

“Signora'', you acknowledge each other, after she trails exiting Childe with her eyes.

“I am here to take the gnosis of Rex Lapis”, she says and you nod, accepting that your Goddess lied to you too: “Tsaritsa also asked me to give you this letter”, she extends her arm, a thick envelope with the familiar seal catching your attention.

With the trembling hands you snatch it out of her hold and almost rip the envelope - for what reason did Tsaritsa send you here?

She writes that you need to stay in Liyue for an undetermined period of time to upkeep “the agreement” made between her and Rex Lapis. You read her message silently, yet when your eyes trace over these words, the sensation of “ “Zhongli’s” eyes on you becomes ten times sharper and stifling. You don’t know what to do.

The other Harbinger leaves too, taking the gnosis with her, as “Zhongli” takes a couple of steps to you, touching your shoulder in a somewhat reassuring gesture. “[First]”, he starts, tone sympathetic and soothing. You don’t fall for it.

“You had your hand in it, didn't you?”, you hiss and accuse, throwing an angry glance at him, momentarily forgetting about the first two rules of dealing with archons.

He smiles, revealing two sharp fangs, his surprisingly scaly hands snaking around yours. “Yes”, Rex Lapis admits, and looks nothing like gentle and knowledgeable “Zhongli”. How could you forget? Archons aren’t humans, humanity is just a fancy dress they don to toy with mortals. He is the dragon, not the benevolent deity that is painted on the wall panels of Liuli pavillion, but a greedy and ancient creature, hungry for gifts and gratitude.

You are his generous offering.

[mxvladdy]

That Diavolo angst was perfect. The best, most high quality cheese at the end. Domestic fluff galore. Decadence straight from the source of your hands.

Could we get some Diavolo fluff with an MC who ran away from home(of lamentation) that wants to spend the night at the castle because the brothers were being dismissive [in tsundere and sibling fun-poking ways] but it just kept reminding MC of their abusive home life in the most innocuous ways

i.e. Satan mocking the books they like for being "too whimsical/fanciful". Asmo making a few too many degrading comments on their skin/hair care or lack thereof (like, tell me the RIGHT way to do it then!  If I'm such a fuck up on my own). Mammon and Belphie.... being Mammon and Belphie.  Levi gate keeping them from devildom equivalent interests because they're "not a real fan if they don't [x]"

A/N: Awww you spoil me with compliments ~^.^~! I hope this is to your liking!

It was late and Diavolo was exhausted. Diavolo looks down at his over inundated schedule, black and red ink covering the pages, barely any of the original white pages could be seen now.  Squinting he chuckles at the elegant handwriting of his butler. He had quite literally penciled in two hours for sleep. A sweet gesture for the evening. It was unfortunate he had wasted half of that time going over in his last meeting of the night. 

The meeting was supposed to be just a brief update on the expansion of the kingdom out west. New trading routes with the colonies and lands not yet in his domain. But, as usual, the evening turned to his exchange program and he always had time to talk about his pet project, even if his schedule didn’t. Each of the brothers was adamant that the program was going well. Better than they had hoped in fact, they all warmed up to you much to his delight, even saying they were treating you like you were part of the family.

That should have been his first clue. He knew the brothers and how they acted with family. Perhaps it was because he was exhausted that the comment went over his head, perhaps it was his own ego telling him everything was going great. He brushed aside the remarks to conclude the meeting and get to his rooms without a second thought. Diavolo practically vibrating with excitement at the hot bath waiting for him. Maybe he could nab some chocolate from Barbatos’s secret stash too. With those sweet thoughts filling his head and his eyes buried in his agenda he overlooks you standing by his door. He skids to a stop only after almost knocking you off your feet with his massive bulk. “My apologies, I did not see you there.” He steadies you looking you over for any injuries. “Do you need something?” He forces an energetic smile onto his face to hide his exhaustion and slight irritation at yet another snag in his evening.

He watches you shuffle in place for a moment, eyes downcast. “Sorry-sorry, it’s silly, but could I stay with you for a bit? I don’t want to be at the house.” Your voice warbles, hands coming up to wipe at fresh tears. Diavolo’s hearts sink, his previous exhaustion taking a backseat to you.  

He beckons you into his room without a second thought. “What’s wrong? What happened?” You shake your head rubbing harder at your face, your skin getting more and more agitated. He purrs deep in his chest pulling you close on instinct to comfort you and for you to stop agitating your skin. You bury your face in his uniform.

“It’s stupid really, I don’t know why I’m upset.” You laugh. The weak sound getting caught on a wet hiccup. “I just can’t handle the teasing right now.” Anger begins to brew in his gut, the brothers, you were obviously talking about them. Had he been to lose with his leash? Did they lie to him?

He leads you to his favorite chair by the window and crouches next to you. “Explain, please? If I need to correct this I will.” He listens, letting you vent and get your frustration out. He never had siblings nor any real family to relate your experiences with like you did, but he understood the mounting weight of words. There was only so much one could take before even the strongest shoulders crumble. “I’m sorry they hurt you.” He reaches to squeeze your knee in reassurance. “I could have Barbatos explain the matter to them, if you allow it.”

You sniff and give him a watery smile. “Thank you but I have to express this myself- I just needed some time away from them.” You cover his large hand with both of yours and squeeze back. “Thanks for listening.” Diavolo rumbles warmly, eyes locking with your warm hands.

“Anytime mi giglio,” He leans back onto his heels. “If I’m honest, their little jabs are utter baseless garbage.”

“Yeah?” You chuckle wiping your nose with his gifted handkerchief. “You don’t think I’m some boring sentimental human?” He shakes his head letting out a dismissive snort. You are beautiful and if Asmo was too blinded by his own standards and routines then it was his loss. He loves the character and different textures of your body. He loves your permanent laugh lines and the way your skin by your eyes crinkle when you smile. The way your nose scrunches when you are happy just makes him glow when in your presence.

Even the tiny scars and marks on your skin told stories that his body never could be able to do. He envied the way human lives could be seen through their bodies, the stories their bodies tell with or without them knowing was amazing. Demons, with their smooth lines, tight hard skin, and hidden agendas couldn’t do that. The idea of “gate-keeping” as you called it was a completely new contempt to him, and sounded ridiculous too. It was counterintuitive to his whole program. If you enjoyed the programs and culture then why were the brothers chastising you over it? He makes a mental note to find time off to take you to enjoy some of the sights of his Devildom without the brother's judgment.

“No. You- you,” He waves his free hand in the air trying to find words that won’t embarrass him. “You are fascinating and so unashamed of your interests. The life you live is unlike any demon or fallen angel could ever comprehend. If they tease you on such trivial things then that speaks to a fault in their character, not yours.” He lets them hang in the air between you, not wanting the meaning to be lost in useless banter.

The silence between you was comfortable and Diavolo basked in it. Normally silence was always tense around him, everyone always waiting for a decree or punishment. Right now though there is none of that. “Wise words, where did you get them?” You move away to pat at your blotchy face, trying to wipe away the tear stains.

Diavolo huffs at the loss of your soft touch. “Little D.” He jokes, voice deadpan. You laugh turning to face him. “There we are!” He cracks a small grin already feeling your mood relax. Leaning in close he wipes away a stray tear. “Feeling a bit better?  Perhaps we can-” Your phone buzzes from your discarded bag making you jump apart. You rush over digging through the bag to grab the blasted device looking at the rapid-fire amount of texts and calls all come in at once. “The brothers?” Diavolo sighs cursing their interruption. He can see the long streams of text bubbles scroll by in the reflection of your damp eyes.

“Yeah.” You look up from your screen. “They are wondering where I am.” Diavolo grimaces not even trying to hide his feelings. You glance back at the phone with little interest, then shrug powering it off. “I think I can let them stew in it for a bit, don’t you? Mind if I crash here for the night?” The Devil perks up, gold eyes following the trajectory of your phone as you toss it. The decorative case disappearing into the cushions.

“I couldn’t agree more.” He claps his hands together in excitement. “Come! Read me one of the stories Satan found jejune. I think I have a few Devildom children's stories on a shelf somewhere to share too!” Diavolo gets up already deciding which room you will stay in for the evening. Perhaps if he plays his cards right you could stay the weekend.

[hold-my-hand-kuroo]

tendou as my favorite naruto!! openings-

it’s midnight where i am right now, so a big hbd to one of my favorite nerds!!  here’s something quick and dumb that i did while i’m still functioning,,,this is what he would’ve wanted, i’m sure of it.

also before someone @’s me, i have more than four favorite naruto openings, but i just don’t have the time to write them all- (i am a “lovers” supremacist though).

pairing: tendou satori x reader

i. “We’ve pretended to forget the things we held dear, so we can just laugh and say it’s nothing.”

Tendou can’t say that quitting volleyball after high school was a bad idea. No longer does he have to ache throughout his legs and arms, and no longer does he have to practice inside a stuffy gym until the sun was gone. He can finally rest on the weekends or take time to work on assignments before midnight. It’s liberating and less stressful on his part. Plus, even if he slightly missed volleyball from time to time, he could just watch one of Ushijima’s games during his now-open weekends. For sure, Tendou can’t say that he regrets leaving the sport.

But he also can’t say that he doesn’t miss his paradise.

His favorite spot at university is the secluded spot in the back, hidden away from most students. It’s where you find him during long breaks in between classes or during lunch, and it’s where you sit under the shade of a tall tree, watching Tendou as he bounces the volleyball back and forth against the brick wall. The sound is soft, gentle, and steady, and it helps you concentrate on your work. Sometimes, after the long, grueling hours of an all-nighter, you find the noise to be lulling, almost hypnotic. It wasn’t hard for you to nod off.

Today is no exception. Procrastinating and leaving your final papers to the night before wasn’t your best idea, and after what seemed to be the strangest period of limbo, drifting between dozing off and waking up, you found yourself finally submitting and missing your entire night’s worth of sleep. You take your lunch break as an opportunity to finally get some rest, and when you round the corner, Tendou’s already there. He’s humming a tune, fingers pressing against the white ball. Hearing your footsteps, he turns and gives you a wide smile. Even then, he doesn’t stop tossing the ball.

“You look terrible,” he comments, stifling his laughter. You groan, settling against the wood of the tree but make no effort to respond. Tendou changes his song, picking a melody that is more calming while continuing to play. The gentle breeze sets you into a deep slumber with the redhead acting as your lullaby.

When you wake up, you find yourself leaning against his shoulder. Your eyes flutter open and then close almost immediately at the sudden intrusion of sunlight. Tendou chuckles from beside you, placing his hand over your closed lids and whistling to himself. Feeling around for his other hand, you trace your fingertips over his own, lingering touches dancing on his skin. You can tell that he’s in a good mood based on the song he’s humming. It was either that or the kiss he places on your cheek after letting you open your eyes.

“Satori?” you murmur, voice still tinged with drowsiness. He pauses his singing, signaling you to finish your thought. “Why aren’t you in the volleyball club?”

“Babe, are you getting sick of me? Or do you just hate me?” he laughs. “I’d run out of time to breathe, let alone see you on the regular.”

“You don’t miss it?”

“Are you really asking me if I miss being bruised all over and struggling to meet deadlines?” He laughs again and pokes your face with a teasing glint in his eye. “Y/N, I’m hurt!”

“You seem to like it a lot considering that you’re literally playing on your own every day.” You put extra emphasis on the last two words and give him a knowing look. Tendou just shakes his head.

“Nah. I only played in high school because joining a club was required. I don’t really care about it now.” His response is simple, less wordy than his usual elaborations, so you let the topic rest. Closing your eyes again, you take part in the humming. The melodies, completely different, clash like day and night, and it makes both of you laugh.

Tendou watches as you fall back to sleep, eyes filled with fondness. In truth, maybe Tendou misses his volleyball club a little bit. His paradise. Not the sport itself per se, but the people around him. It was hard finding classmates that didn’t find him utterly repulsive, so he wasn’t surprised that he fit well into a team that was filled with nothing but the most eccentric people he has ever met. Ushijima and his love affair with volleyball and Semi with his drive to risk it all were standouts, but he supposes that there were others too. Yeah, he misses them more than he’d like to admit, and he misses spending all his waking hours with them. Just a little.

“You stopped humming.” It’s more of a comment on your part rather a complaint, but you can tell by his jolt that you had unintentionally snapped him out of his deep thoughts. “There’s nothing wrong with missing high school, you know?”

“No, it’s okay.” He lies through his teeth, and you’re aware, but you decide to stay quiet.

ii. “I will never let go of your hand. Tell me what is on your mind.”

Tendou works hard because he knows he’s not enough. Because he feels undeserving.

When you waltzed into his life, he hardly had any time to prepare. It’s the first time someone has ever liked him back, and he’s still surprised to this day. Tendou’s not sure which qualities exactly that have caught your interest, but he’s almost 100% sure that your taste is terrible. There isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t think that the person holding your hand on the street could be someone so much more attractive, so much more appealing. Someone who didn’t make kids hide whenever they saw him or someone who could embrace you and say with full confidence that you deserved each other. You don’t need someone that constantly makes you worry. You definitely don’t need a guy like him.

He knows your entire schedule and pays special attention to your free periods so that he can visit you. His head is now space for him to keep notes on every little thing about you from your pet peeves to your favorite snacks. It’s counterintuitive for sure, thinking that he’s not worth your time but also desperately trying to keep a hold of you. It’s paradoxical, he knows, but he’s stuck in a limbo of wishing you the very best while also craving your touch and affection at any moment given in time. It’s selfish, and he finds himself wondering if the title of ‘Monster’ is fitting after all.

“Are you sure you’re okay like this?” he asks nervously one Saturday with you sitting by his side. You look at him curiously, setting your book down.

“What do you mean?” His eyes become shifty, looking away.

“I mean, aren’t you bored just reading manga at my house?” he asks, chuckling nervously. “We could go to that restaurant you wanted to go to instead-“

“We’re always doing the things I want though, Satori,” you whine. “That’s why today’s date is something you like. You’ve been wanting to catch up with this series for a while now, right?”

“Yeah, but-,” he tries to protest, frowning, but you just shake your head, silencing him. You don’t know much about the series, but you whenever you see Tendou’s eyes glitter at something particularly cool that his favorite characters did, your heart becomes warm. It’s incredibly endearing, and you definitely want to spend all day just watching him pursue his interests instead of fussing over you. You want to know more about his hobbies, his likes, and dislikes, but he’s oddly reserved about those topics.

“Which character is your favorite?” You ask in hopes of having Tendou open up and maybe give you a passionate rant, a sight you’ve been wanting to see for a while now. Nudging at his lanky arm, you crawl under, placing yourself in his lap. He immediately sets the volume down and pulls you into a tight embrace, balancing his chin on top of your head. You’re not upset about it, but you’re just a little disappointed. You were hoping that he’d keep reading.

“Do you know any of the characters?” he responds teasingly. You shake your head and pick up the book. “I can start from the beginning if you want-“

“No, no, no! Keep reading.” You’re urging him to continue, practically holding the pages over your head so that he can see them. Tendou laughs, shifts his chin to your shoulder, and complies, taking hold of the book once again. You’re not sure if he’s actually paying attention to the storyline since he keeps peppering you with kisses every few pages or so, but this is a good start. “What’s going on?”

“Curious, are we?” He clears his throat and points to one of the characters. “You see this guy over here? He’s the villain. My favorite, since you asked.”

“Is he…your type?”

“You’re my type,” Tendou coos, stifling another fit of laughter. He continues describing the plot, however, going through what has developed since volume one, each pivotal character, his favorite moments, and unbelievably deep analysis on symbols and events. He’s usually a chatty person, but you’ve never seen him rave over something so personal to who he is as a person. It wasn’t like when he would talk endlessly about something funny that happened or something he saw. Rather, his glow and animated gestures, his sense of comfort, and his lack of restraint keep you mesmerized, and it’s then that you realize that Tendou rarely talks about his hobbies in front of you. You wish he would.

“This is nice,” you murmur, returning a kiss onto his cheek. He immediately stiffens, and you’re a little bit startled. “What’s wrong?”

“Sorry for rambling,” he says rather on edge. He quickly closes the manga, arms returning to wrap around your body. “It was boring listening to me just talk about-“

“I thought it was cute though.” You sigh and turn around to face him. Pressing your nose to his, your lips are just barely a few millimeters apart from his. “I could listen to you talk about this all day, Satori.”

Tendou’s not sure if it’s the kiss that you press on his lips that intoxicates him or if it’s the fact that you smell like his shampoo, but for a moment, he feels himself wondering if it’d be okay to let you in onto his hobbies, his likes, his dislikes, and everything that he tries so hard to keep from you in fear of driving you away. Just for a second, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, it’d be fine for him to open up.

iii. “You cried just now like a sobbing child. Even if the future becomes invisible, I will protect you.”

An angel. That’s what Tendou thinks you are when you let him rest his head on your chest and wrap your arms around his shoulders, pulling him even closer into your comforting warmth. He’s calmed by the gentle rise and fall of your breathing and the soft beating of your heart. The way your fingers rake through his hair, the way your humming fills the emptiness, you’re his safe haven, his sanctuary. His new paradise. He likes how you just seem to know what’s wrong, because he hates to complain, especially to you. He would much rather prefer making you laugh with a funny joke or story, but for now, he lets you play with his hair and caress his back.

You’re humming the song that he often sings for you when you’re feeling down. While you’re not exactly the perfect vocalist, straining at some high parts, you wonder if it helps Tendou at all, even if minimally. He cries quietly, and you wonder if it’s because he’s spent years being sad alone. The thought pains your heart, so instead, you take his palm and place it against your lips, quietly whispering praise. Things about him being more than enough and things that you wonder if he’d laugh at, you pour your sincerity into it all. You know he’ll tell you when he’s ready, so you find a way to pass the time.

“Let’s take a bath, Satori,” you mumble into his hair, waiting to see if he’s willing to get off of you. His movement is slow, reluctant, but you do feel him nodding, getting off of you with his head hung low. He doesn’t mean to be so down, so annoying, and he doesn’t hold it against you if you get irritated. But you don’t, and he feels like he’s the luckiest man in the world. “I’ll wash your hair for you. Come on.”

He holds your hand all the way to the bathroom, refusing to lose contact from the warmth of your skin. Even when the two of you are getting undressed, he’s quickly back to leaning into you in the tub. It’s a little bit difficult since his limbs are so long and lanky, but with a bit of curling up on Tendou’s part, you make enough space for yourself. He practically sinks into your fingers rubbing through his scalp, and you see his shoulders begin to lose their tension. You hum, satisfied, and work the soap around his body, helping him wash up. The smile that spreads across your face when he starts humming back is wide. You feel a little bit dumb, but you’re just so relieved that Tendou’s energy is finally back. The giggles that spill from your lips as he splashes about practically pour out from your pretty lips that Tendou wants to kiss so, so badly, but he decides to wait for a more comfortable position.

He hates to admit it, but he loves the feeling of being pampered. Granted, he was always more of a giver, but he supposes that being on the receiving side of things isn’t as bad as he initially thought, especially when you take the towel to rub against his hair and sit him down on the couch with hairdryer in hand.

“My hair is gonna get all puffy if you use that,” is the first complete sentence that leaves his mouth after returning home that night. He lacks his usual energy, but you don’t blame him. Rather, his soft chuckle sends your own spirits flying. “I’ll look ridiculous.”

“Really?” you muse, plugging in the device despite his protests. “I think you’ll be cute, all fluffy and stuff.”

“Why don’t you get a pet or something instead then?”

“Wouldn’t you get jealous if I paid too much attention to a cat over you?”

He pretends to think hard, then nods his head rapidly. You giggle again, maneuvering the hairdryer around his head. The machine is a little loud, but you can hear Tendou back to his usual humming, moving his body around ever so slightly just to make your task a lot harder than it was supposed to be. You watch as he swings left and then right with a certain mischievousness about him, twiddling with his fingers and then casually flipping on the television to his favorite channel. You’re not sure if he actually likes the show that’s being broadcasted or just the BGM, as he never really watched it and would much rather prefer to listen to the audio only while doing something else.

“Babe, can this be our song,” he jokes before going back to sing the opening lyrics to the children’s show.

“Satori, I don’t even know this show,” you reply, trying to sound exasperated as possible. He knows you’re pretending though and raises a curious brow. Then, he breaks into a grin. “I don’t have a good feeling about this-“

“What do you want to watch then?” His question is abrupt, but his eyes glint impishly. You’d be nervous if you weren’t overjoyed at his newly regained energy. “You sound like you want to do something else.”

“You’ll catch a cold,” you try to scold, but he pays no head, grabbing the hairdryer out of your hand and shutting it off. He tugs at the chord gently, unplugging it all together, and reaches for your waist. He places you securely on your lap. You can only stammer short retorts that are muffled by the energetic kisses he places all over your face. He relishes in every giggle and every squeal that escapes your mouth. Even the ways your eyes crinkle when you’re smiling makes his heart go insane. Suddenly, he stops to rest his forehead against yours. Your gaze almost absorbs him completely, but he doesn’t have qualms about that part.

“What’s wrong, Satori?” you ask, barely above a whisper.

He takes a deep breath. “Do you…mind if I vent a little?”

“You know you never have to ask for permission about that, right?” You kiss him on each of his eyes, each a little bit puffy, and then on his cheek. “I’m all ears.”

iv. “So keep trying to break free to that blue, blue sky.”

It’s always a fun, albeit loud, time when Tendou invites his old Shiratorizawa friends over for his reunion parties. You don’t mind at all, of course, considering that you were the one who encouraged this gathering in the first place. To be honest, you’re a little bit curious about how he acts around his closest friends that he talks so much about. You even wonder if a man like Ushijima Wakatoshi, the one you only see on TV or in interviews, is actually as funny as Tendou makes him out to be. In other words, you expect your home to be loud, but what you didn’t expect was that it’d be loud over you.

“Guys, Y/N’s super-duper gorgeous, right?” he asks for what seemed like the thousandth time that night. He’s set on making Ushijima give in to the fact that you’re the most beautiful person in the entire universe, but you wonder how many times you have to witness the professional’s utter silence at the question before Tendou would give up. “Toshi, you should just give it up already and say it!”

“I haven’t seen every single person in this universe, so I can’t answer,” his friend answers, brushing him off. Shirabu snorts from Ushijima’s side.

“Boo,” Tendou whines, kissing your face. From the corner of your eye, you catching Goshiki gagging. “Can’t you be a little bit more excited over the love of my life?”

“We are excited.” Semi chuckles, whacking Tendou a few times on the back to which the red-head responds with feigned pain. “But we know you’ll start sulking if we go overboard with the compliments.”

“I do not sulk that easily!” Tendou huffs, chest puffed out, and slaps Semi back. He only laughs. “I can’t believe I’m being bullied by a guy with no sense of style at all!”

“I asked you about this jacket before I bought it, and you told me it was fine!”

“You shouldn’t have asked him at all.” Shirabu smirks from across the table, arms crossed. “I bet this smart ass thought it was Y/N texting him instead of you, Semi.”

“You didn’t have to do him like that,” Kawanishi mumbles from beside the former setter. Still, that doesn’t wipe away the smirks they’re both wearing, and Tendou can only chuckle sheepishly.

“Well, what am I supposed to when Y/N looks good in anything?” Tendou sighs. His exasperation and added theatrical flair make you giggle even though you’re slightly embarrassed that he’s showing off to everyone from his old team. “Semi Semi, if it was Y/N wearing that jacket, it’d look great. You? Not so much.”

“That’s the most roundabout way of insulting me.” Shirabu and Kawanishi snicker quietly, earning a glare from Semi that goes ignored. “I suddenly remember why all the underclassmen thought you were such a hassle, Tendou.”

You turn to him in fascination. It wasn’t a surprise to you that he liked to tease and poke fun of other people, but you never thought that he was a bully. You initially had imagined Tendou to be a well-respected senior based on his reputation as a middle-blocker. Never in a million years did you think that it was the exact opposite.

“Goshiki, is that true?” you turn to ask, and the younger man nods emphatically. He’s agreeing with Semi so much that his nods make his hair fly all over the place, earning a loud laugh from Tendou.

“Y/N, Tendou was the absolute worst,” Goshiki answers, setting down his drink so forcefully that it almost spills. “He’d always ignore us when we did something good, but then he’d compliment us for absolutely nothing. It messed me up so much that instead of expecting him to cheer for landing a really good serve, I waited for praise for turning off the lights or something. Tendou was awful.”

“That was probably you being dumb, but I do agree that Tendou was never quiet during practice.” Shirabu grimaces, but you’re not sure if it’s because he just remembered something particularly annoying or if it’s because he’s agreeing with Goshiki. “I never want to go back.”

“I remember one time, he thought it’d be funny to salt the water,” Kawanishi mutters and the entire table breaks into a loud groan. “Yeah, I think I have to agree with you guys. Tendou was a handful.”

From beside you, you hear Tendou tsking and catching him wagging a disapproving finger. “Guys, you can’t insult Y/N like that! I’m gonna beat you guys up if you keep going on.”

“Dude, we get it.” Semi punches him once on the arm and then another time for good measure. “You’re married. You’ve told us a million times.”

“There’s that and the fact that we were, you know, at the wedding,” Shirabu sighs.

“Congratulations.” Ushijima’s comment is a little out of place, especially since the ceremony was already a month ago, and he had been one of the first people that Tendou told, but you only smile and thank him again. “It was an honor to be the best man.”

“Toshi, you don’t have to be so formal, you know?” Tendou grins, resting his chin on his hand. From underneath the table, you feel his other hand reach for yours, running his digits over the silver band sitting on your ring finger. “But really, I’m just reminding you guys that Y/N and I are married. I wouldn’t be surprised if you forgot since you’re all always so busy.”

“Oh, what would I give to forget you?” Shirabu sighs, earning another chuckle from Kawanishi and even Semi.

You laugh at the playful banter between Tendou and his friends. You squeeze his hand gently, and even while he’s participating in a heated debate with Semi over the gray-haired man’s best album, your husband makes sure to return your squeeze. In full truth, Tendou’s still aware of every little thing that you do. It’s one of the many things that have stayed the same over the years. He still sings, and he still likes to mess up your hair, but most importantly, he makes it a point to keep remembering everything about you. Tendou’s aware that something in him has changed, so he reasons that maybe you had your little changes too. And he’d remember all of them.

“Hey, spill the tea, Y/N,” Semi jokes. “Doesn’t Tendou make for a terrible husband?”

“Yeah right,” Tendou scoffs. His grin doesn’t falter and only widens when you shake your head at Semi. “That’s absolutely correct! I’m the best husband ever."

[residentlesbrarian]

Fandom and Fanfiction Galore

Ship It by Britta Lundin

Aaaaaalrighty...so this was written almost 3 years ago hot out of ClexaCon 2018 and it is...an interesting one. I had and still very much have feelings about this book. Would I write my thoughts the exact same way today as I did back then...probably not! So enjoy this bit of a pre-pandemic pre-a-whole-bunch-of-other-personal-stuff-y’all-don’t-need-to-know-about me talking about a book I still don’t really know how I feel about! Enjoy!

This was another book I found because of the Queering YA panel at ClexaCon 2018. Being able to talk to Britta at the booth after the panel was awesome, because you could tell talking with her that she was a true fan. She knew what being surrounded by fandom was like and it made me pretty excited to read the book.

Unicorn Rating:

Blurb: Living in the environment of fandom can be an insane experience in both good and bad ways. This book delivered a unique experience and look into fandom culture that was surreal to read about outside of fanfiction and tumblr.

Disclaimer: I will try my best to not spoil anything from the book, but my book loving rambles may give more away than a traditional review. Here we go! Ramble time!

Review:

I would say overall this book felt a little weird for me. I didn’t absolutely love it but I also didn’t particularly dislike it. It fell in a very ‘meh’ place for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have good things to say about it, they are just slightly confusing things.

The plot was actually one of the things I liked the most about it. Even though it was a crazy unrealistic plot, it helped capture the absolute lunacy of being a member of fandom culture perfectly. Sometimes being a fan is a simple life of surfing Tumblr and liking posts but sometimes the craziest things happen and change your life forever. In this case the reader is swept up in this craziness with Claire and the unrealistic aspect of it all made it feel more realistic as counterintuitive as that sounds. That is what the fandom experience can feel like at times, everything makes so little sense it actually circles back around to making sense, but enough about that...time for some character rambles.

Now we have two perspectives explored in this book. That of Claire, the fangirl, and Forest, the actor who has never had to deal with fangirls before. Let’s start with Claire. I am of two minds on her. Part of me really doesn’t like her, mostly because she is a person that in real life I probably wouldn’t spend time around and, as I’ve stated in a previous review, I have a hard time separating myself from characters and remembering that they are only teenagers. Multiple times I actually physically facepalmed, while reading a hardback book! That isn’t easy to do, but I did it, because she was doing things that just seemed so illogical from my perspective. But I am an adult, so of course I have a completely different perspective than a teen who is away from home and feeling a little out of control for a plethora of reasons. Now the other part of me really liked her, strangely enough for those exact same reasons, she was so real that I went full ‘Mom’ mode and wanted to sit her down and have a talk about what she was going through before she did something she was going to regret. Even if I found the character to be unlikeable the fact I was still on her side and wanted to help her really shows the depth that was written into her.

Now moving on to Forest. Oh, Forest. He was a character that I was very intrigued by at first because his was a perspective I, as a fangirl myself, had never seen in a book before, but damn if he didn’t make it so hard to like him. Some of the things he said and did made me want to throttle him. I could excuse some of the stuff Clarie did because of her age and the craziness of everything going on around her, but Forest is an adult and should know better. He would improve and his actions would start to win me over, but then he would overreact to something and make me want to put on my throttlin’ gloves again. I felt like that Tyra Banks ‘I was rooting for you!’ reaction gif while I was reading this multiple times. Again, though, there were parts that I was glad Forest called Claire out on her actions when it was called for, but overall they both needed an intervention to have them sit down and just chill for five seconds.

I actually genuinely liked a majority of the side characters in this as well. I actually have less of the weird mental confusion when it comes to the side characters. Rico was cute and great around the fans. Jamie was a total asshat but he was written to be that way to foil Claire in her mission to make ‘Smokeheart’ cannon. One of my favorite scenes in the whole book was actually between Claire and the social media consultant, whose name I totally remember and am just choosing not to put in because I think that’ll be all avant garde...okay fine I forgot her name and I am not digging the book out to find it. Anyway...I can’t really go into detail about the scene because, you know, spoilers but it was so well done in the context of the story.

Now for the last big character I want to speak on, the love interest, Tess. Now I really liked Tess and even understood how she wanted to keep her nerdy hobbies a secret from her small town friends. I was lucky that I grew up in a family and a circle of friends that let me embrace my passions no matter how off-the-wall they may seem to others. Tess obviously didn’t have that kind of support but she was still so passionate just privately. I will say though, ironically given the title of the book, I don’t ship it. Tess and Claire definitely share an instant attraction and the chemistry is there but they have so much growing to do before they are anywhere close to having an actual healthy functional relationship. Maybe if we saw more of them it would feel more compelling but it just wasn’t for me.

So my final thoughts on this book are just...a little discombobulated. Part of me was really happy to read a book that portrayed a part of my life that is so hard to put into words at times. I have never been a rabid fangirl, but after Lexa’s death I had to try and explain my utter devastation to people who just didn’t understand why a fictional character mattered to me so much. This book captures at least a layer of the fandom experience in a way that I’ve never seen before. The problem I have in the end though is how problematic everything that happens was, and then the ending just felt so sudden. We didn’t see any of the characters address their issues on the page. I hope this review made some coherent sense, because this book still doesn’t really make sense even in my brain, but I need to wrap this up now.

Queer Wrap-up: Okay, so, for our rep we have a questioning main character who definitely has some queer tendencies, but overall her realizing her feelings took such a back seat to her mission to make a fictional ship cannon on a show that was already filmed it took away from the rep as a whole. It just felt like the focus was so split that the actual rep gets lost in the pages. There is no argument by the end of the book that Claire is queer, which earns the three unicorns on that alone, but some of the tropes that played parts in the book were just so cringey that I couldn’t rationalize giving it more than that. Even with a couple side characters who were revealed to also be queer they weren’t enough to cover for the less stellar parts of this book.

Links:

Britta Lundin’s Website

TheStorygraph

Amazon

Okay, so if you couldn’t tell by that train wreck of a review this book just confused me. It kept me just interested enough to pick it back up after I’d put it down, but also wasn’t that bad. It lives in a weird oxymoronic vortex in my brain that honestly gives me a headache if I focus on it too much. There were aspects of this book that I did genuinely like but it all gets swirled together with the parts that made me put it down and need to take a break. If any of you want to discuss those more spoiler-filled aspects please send an ask and I’ll welcome you into the cyclical nature of whatever this book is doing in my brain. And as always if you want to read this but don’t want to spend the money without knowing for sure you are going to like it, go to your local library. You’d be surprised what they have on their shelves just waiting to be discovered. Trust me, I’m a lesbrarian.

[sanderssidesfanfiction]

If There’s a Place I Could Be - Chapter Seventy Nine

If There’s a Place I Could Be Tag

February 6th, 1987

Remy woke up from his dream with a start, looking around. He was still in his bedroom, which was a promising sign. He couldn’t go to his parents with a scary dream, seeing as last time his mother sent him back to bed with a growl and a threat, but he wanted to make sure everyone was still alive.

He crept into his parents room, and saw the steady rise and fall of his mom and dad’s chests. He tip-toed across the hallway and peered into Vanessa’s room, confirming she was breathing as well. He slipped into Toby’s room, to find Toby reading a book by flashlight. “Hey,” Toby said softly. “Bad dreams?”

Remy reluctantly nodded. He pointed at the book. “Mom and Dad told you not to stay up all night reading.”

Toby shrugged. “Don’t tell them I did? If you don’t, I won’t tell them anything you say tonight. Want to talk about your dream?”

“A little,” Remy admitted.

Toby patted his bed and Remy climbed up on it, sitting at the foot of the bed as Toby patiently listened to him.

  January 5th, 2003

Remy felt the shift on the bed before he really registered anything else around him. Without thinking, he rolled over and wrapped an arm around Emile in bed, murmuring, “You okay, honey?”

He didn’t get a response, and that’s when he cracked an eye open, to find Emile struggling out from under Remy’s arm, crying. Remy retrieved his arm and pushed himself upright in bed. “Emile? Honey?”

Emile was still crying and whimpering, but his eyes were squeezed shut tight and he didn’t show any signs of being awake. Remy’s hand touched Emile’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze, and Emile bolted upright in bed with a gasp, shaking like a leaf. “Emile? Are you awake?”

Looking over to Remy, Emile paled and Remy blinked once, twice. Remy wasn’t getting any verbal responses, and his worry was only growing. “Emile,” Remy said softly. “Are you okay?” Remy reached a hand out and Emile flinched. Remy retreated like he had been burned. “...I’m gonna give you your space, honey, okay? Whenever you’re ready to talk, come get me.”

And with that, Remy left the room. He went to his old room, which Emile had been helping Remy turn into a mini-office until they could move somewhere bigger and Remy could get “a proper office” as Emile had put it.

He laid down on the bed in the corner of the room and stared at the ceiling. Obviously, Emile had a nightmare of some kind. Something involving Remy. Remy wanted to help, but he knew that if Emile had a nightmare with him in it, it might be counterintuitive to force Emile to hang around Remy until he felt better.

Remy was drifting off to sleep, worry about Emile swirling in his head when there was shuffling in the doorway. Remy cracked an eye open to find Emile standing there, pale as a ghost. “Mm?” Remy asked.

Emile opened his mouth, before shutting it again. He looked at the floor, then up at Remy, unshed tears in his eyes. “Promise me that you won’t drink or smoke.”

Remy blinked, uncomprehending for a second before he said, “Honey, I’ve never smoked and I haven’t drank in years, and I promise I would never do either of those things in excess. What brought this on?”

“...Had a bad dream,” Emile said reluctantly. “You got high and...wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Oh,” Remy said, not really sure what else to say. “And you’re...worried I might do that in real life?”

“No, no. No, I don’t think you’d ever do that in real life, inebriated or otherwise,” Emile said, sitting down on Remy’s bed. “I just worry about what would happen if you did get drunk or high, and someone else didn’t have your standards of character.”

“Wait...” Remy said, frowning. “You have...a very vivid dream of me...doing that...to you, so vivid that you flinch away from me when you first wake up, and you worry about me being violated once you’re fully awake? You’re not...mad at me for it?”

“It was a dream, Rem, I’m not going to hold you accountable for a dream,” Emile said. “But...this is a college town. You’ve been to parties, so have I. And...it’s not like we’ve never had close calls.”

“Wait...what?” Remy asked, blood running cold. “We’ve had close calls?”

“Back when you still drank at parties. Like, drank enough to actually get depressed and not remember much. You were getting hit on by a junior back when you were still in college. I had to drag you back to the dorms with the promise of Halloweentown?”

“She was...she was trying to...?” Remy stammered.

“It looked that way. I thought I told you,” Emile said with a frown.

“Oh, my God. If you did, I forgot about it entirely,” Remy said. “I mean, I know I’m dumb when I’m drunk, but...”

“Hey, this is not a matter of smart or dumb. This could happen to anyone,” Emile said. “And I’m very thankful it didn’t happen to you. But I don’t ever want it to happen to you, or have a chance of happening to you, again. So I don’t want you drinking or smoking.”

“...Honestly, that’s such a good reason to stay sober,” Remy said. “Like, if you think I’m not going to drink champagne at our wedding, you’re dead wrong, but I’m not getting drunk off it.”

“And you wouldn’t...”

Remy shook his head. “Mio amore, let’s be honest here. I couldn’t afford a cigarette habit, let alone anything heavier. I’m safe, you’re safe, neither of us are going to get into trouble over that sort of thing.”

Emile blew out a breath. “Okay...okay. You’re right. I might have gone a little overboard in the fear department.”

Remy shook his head and leaned up to kiss Emile’s temple. “You had a vivid dream. It happens. And if it will help you sleep better, I’ll keep away from the alcohol except when cooking.”

“Yeah, I think that would help...” Emile took a breath. “I know it doesn’t exactly inconvenience you, but I’m still sorry that you would have to take those extra steps.”

“I’m not,” Remy said. “If it helps you feel better, I’ll do it happily. Besides, it’s probably better to not get in the habit of drinking whenever I feel like it anyway.”

“I mean, drinking a little is not a bad thing,” Emile sighed. “I admittedly feel a bit like I’m overreacting. But not enough to tell you to not take those extra steps.”

“And like I said, I don’t mind taking them if it helps you feel at ease,” Remy said, hugging Emile. “What say you to an early morning walk when virtually no one else is awake, just because?”

“Sounds like it would be chilly, I’m not sure...” Emile said.

“Hmm...then what about we make breakfast, together, just to spend some time together?” Remy proposed.

Emile smiled. “I can definitely get behind that.”

Remy grinned. “Excellent! Come on, let’s get to work!”

Dragging a laughing Emile to the kitchen, Remy grabbed the things they needed for a small breakfast. He didn’t want to do anything too huge, just enough to get both of their minds off of Emile’s nightmare. “What do you say to an egg sandwich?” Remy offered.

“Sounds perfect,” Emile said with a little smile.

Remy nodded and started to grease up a pan, while Emile got the bread slices toasting. “You want turkey on it, too?” Remy offered.

“Oh, that sounds great,” Emile said, rubbing his hands together.

Remy grabbed sliced turkey from the refrigerator and tossed it in the pan. As it sizzled and cooked, Remy looked over to Emile, who was staring at the toaster in consternation. “You okay?” he asked.

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” Emile said, shaking his head slightly. “I was just caught in my own thoughts. Dice said he was going to call me soon-ish.”

“Yeah?” Remy asked. Admittedly, he had forgotten that Dice was still looking for Toby. He had been swamped between working on research for Sleep Easy and still working at the other shops in the area.

“Yeah. He said that almost all his contacts had gotten back to him, and he would call me if he got something sooner than our arranged meeting, but I haven’t gotten a phone call or an email yet.”

“Ah,” Remy said, feeling a little disappointed. Dice had said they were “eighty percent done” for two months now. He didn’t know how long this whole thing would take, but he didn’t think it should be this long. Remy removed the turkey from the pan and put it on the waiting slices of toast before cracking open eggs. “Are you hopeful about the next meet-up?”

“Honestly? Yeah,” Emile said. “I mean, it’s been months. Something has to give eventually. And I really trust Dice. I don’t know why, but I do. He’s not just half-heartedly searching, I’ve asked him to go more in-depth about his searches with me and he has. He’s really looking, Rem. He’ll find Toby.”

“Yeah,” Remy sighed. “I just wish that it would happen sooner, rather than later.”

Emile offered Remy a small, sad smile. “I know. It’s not easy to wait for anything, but especially something like this.”

“Tell me about it,” Remy griped. “Like, I knew if Dice was any good, he’d take his time, but it’s been literal months and we haven’t gotten any further than ‘eighty percent close’ and it’s...enough to make me want to bang my head against a wall. I’m just...frustrated.”

“Yeah,” Emile said softly.

Remy sighed and ran a hand down his face before dishing up the eggs. “I don’t want to talk about this so in-depth. I don’t need that kind of stress in my life right now. Houses. Do we have an estimate on houses?”

“A couple,” Emile said, nodding. As Remy threw a bit of spices onto the sandwiches he said, “There’s a few townhouses for sale nearby. I say nearby, it’s like a fifteen minute drive. Forty five minute commute to college by car, we’ll have to coordinate a lot more when it comes to who gets the car when.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Remy said, passing a sandwich to Emile. “I think we could make it work, though. And, we wouldn’t have to deal with my mother coming around anymore.”

“True,” Emile said with a little grin. “Should I call the realtors? See if we can get something set up?”

“Definitely,” Remy agreed. “I want to see these townhouses for myself.” Emile grinned and Remy smiled back. “It’s weird being an adult. I thought adults have everything together, always. When in actuality you’re just flying by the seat of your pants with actual lives at stake.”

That earned a snort from Emile, and Remy laughed. “It’s true!” he defended.

“I never said it wasn’t,” Emile said. “That is...painfully accurate.”

Remy sighed and shook his head. “I’m...more stressed than usual recently. I didn’t want to say anything at first, but I think you ought to know. The new shop is amazing, but it adds an extra layer of work to everything I already need to do, and it’s stressful.”

“Should we get a computer?” Emile asked. “So you don’t have to go to the library to do research?”

Remy grimaced. “A computer is a lot of money, Emile.”

“So’s gas money when you have to research stuff at the library for your shop,” Emile said with a shrug. “In the long run, it might be cheaper.”

Remy shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “Maybe once the shop is doing comfortably.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Emile agreed. “I can’t wait for the day you open it up and there’s a line going out the door.”

Remy laughed. “Come on, Emile. My coffee’s good but it’s not that good.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Rem,” Emile warned.

“I don’t think I am, I’m just being honest,” Remy said. “Of course I’ll puff myself up in advertisements, but I know I’m not perfect, and I always have room to learn and improve. My coffee is good, yeah. The blends I make when the managers let me use leftover grounds are unique in a good way. But...this is going to be a lot of work, and there’s going to be a lot of room for self-doubt.”

Emile tutted. “Come on, Rem, you’ll do fine.”

“You say that now,” Remy laughed, somewhat hysterical.

Emile kissed Remy softly, and Remy melted into the kiss, letting all of his stress melt away if only for a brief moment. “I’m sure you’ll do amazing, Rem. This is you. You won’t let your business go under if you have any means of saving it. I doubt you’ll even need saving in the first place. I’ve heard people talking about your shop who I haven’t even talked to about it. All our friends are in your corner. You’ve got this.”

Remy smiled softly. “You really think so.”

“I do,” Emile said.

“Then what could possibly go wrong?” Remy asked with a grin. “I’ve got you and our friends on my side, this’ll be great!”

[theastrophilearchitect]

I started writing a book.

And I’m mad about it, because I just started this post, brought up a new tab and lost it because I didn’t save my draft.

Anyway. That’s a thing I did. Wow.

As of this moment, this post won’t be going up until April 19th, but I’m starting writing this at 10.30pm on Sunday, February 21st, 2021. I’ve done a lot in the last couple weeks, and I want to have some record of all I’ve accomplished without just letting most of it fade over the next two months.

I’ve always wanted to be an author. From when I was reading under my covers with a torch past bedtime, through the years I wanted to be an artist, through the years I wanted to be a lawyer. It’s always been there - no matter what primary career path I went down, I wanted to be an author. The last few years, I’ve been invested in becoming a biologist, and that dream really took a backseat.

In the start of this lockdown, my mental health went downhill, and some advice my therapist gave me was just to prioritise myself. It sounds simple enough, but, even in my free time, I’d been focusing on schoolwork - revising constantly for exams I’m still not sure are actually happening. (Boris Johnson is apparently making an announcement tomorrow about beginning to ease lockdown, but we’ll see) So, on Saturday, February 6th, I started an attempt to coalesce the ideas I had floating in my head into something tangible.

I’ve tried to write books countless times (not technically countless - I have all the documents on my laptop, so I could if I wanted to), but mostly, I’ve never gotten further than a couple bare plot points and some characters, maybe some ideas for subplots, before I’ve stagnated and given up.

Three times, I’ve finished a skeletal outline. Twice, I’ve started to go back over those outlines only to realise they made no sense or just seemed week, and simply not cared enough to fix it. Until now, I guess.

February 6th, 7th, and fast-forward to my week off beginning the 15th, up until the 19th, I kept developing this concept I’d managed to form, but I was struggling to establish a coherent plot. I had up until and including a midpoint (which was later condensed into just a first act), but everything after that was just a void. I began searching for some skeletal structure I could apply to it, both to work on pacing and fill in the blanks. I tried several, and got a little further, but was about to give up hope.

Then I remembered a video by Katytastic I’d watched years ago about the 3-act, 9-block, 27-chapter structure she used, and couldn’t see the harm in giving it a go. And something clicked.

You can find the video here - the structure’s detailed and easy to follow, plus she even gives an example of using it to generate a plot.

I started binge-watching her writing vlogs in the background, and even started using her same writing program, Scrivener, which just made every a thousand times easier by taking away the need to juggle a billion Word documents. It’s fairly pricey, but I’m currently using the 30-day free trial - it’s 30 days of use, not of ownership, too: if you use it every day, it lasts 30 days, but if you use it once a week, it lasts 30 weeks.

Where Kat used the 27 parts the structure broke down into as chapters, I chose to refer to them as beats, and separate chapters later.

On Saturday the 20th, I finished defining my scenes and started writing an actual draft. I wrote two scenes, putting me at a collective word count (not including notes, synopses, etc.) of 2,580 words.

This morning, Sunday the 21st, I started over. I hated my opening. I’m not going to go through the mess of today’s process, but I currently have around 80 one-line-outline scenes, split into 3 acts. I wrote a draft of my prologue and detailed-outlined (which I’m mentally referring to as zero-outlining because it’s similar to how Katytastic does what she calls a zero draft, but is very much outlining, not a draft) two and a half other chapters. Scriver also tells me how many words I wrote in total, across notes, character profiles, location lists, a document I’ve named ‘Train of Thought’ for my ramblings as I go etc.

Today, I wrote a grand total of 4,141 words, which, rather counterintuitively, puts me at a draft total of 2,598. That makes sense. Anyway.

There are a lot of unknowns in the world right now, and I have no idea how much time I’ll have in the next six months to invest in this project, but I’d like, at bare minimum, to have one complete draft by the start of the next school year in September, which gives me just over 6 months. Which is probably too much time to actually motivate myself, but that’s not the point.

A manuscript needs to have a minimum word count of 50K words to be considered a novel, so, even though my ultimate goal for this project is around 80K words, 50K is going to be my goal for this draft.

I’m being optimistic about sticking with this.

Tuesday 23/02/2021 - Word Count: 3,099 I wrote nothing yesterday; planning to focus writing solely on days off rather than work days, but last night, watching through the incredibly long queue of Alexa Donne writing videos, I came to the conclusion writing every day, even just a little, would be the best way to ensure I keep working on this, so I set myself a goal of just 500 words a day.

Wednesday 24/02/2021 - Word Count: 5,350 After doing a little bit of maths as to how long this outlining and draft would take me if I were to only write 500 words a day, I decided to boost that goal to 1,000. I got started around 1pm today, online school draining me so much I couldn’t face another two hours. I worked on and off until 6pm, and around 4.45pm, I finished outlining Act One!

Thursday 25/02/2021 - Word Count: 7,022 I continued my scene outlining into Act Two, but I hit a brick wall around the midpoint. I have to write chronologically - some people jump around, but I have to write linearly, or it feels like I’m trying to make something in a void. It just doesn’t work. I didn’t know how to get from one scene to the next - there were so many things I needed to establish to get there, but I didn’t want to backtrack. I decided to re-jig the whole thing, but, after dinner, I realised I didn’t have to, and instead, decided to just start a draft, conscious of the things I need to establish as I go.

Friday 26/02/2021 - Word Count: 8,208 Starting draft one, I rewrote the prologue I’d already written, technically putting me to my second draft of it, because I’d been thinking about it for days and just wanted to revisit it, and it was so much better. Then I moved on to chapter one, but decided I wanted to re-jig my chapters. While outlining, I’d split the whole book into only about twenty chapters, but decided to go for shorter ones for more effective divisions of the story. I got most of the way through the first scene of chapter one, but basically ran out of both time and motivation, since I hadn’t heavily outlined that scene. in total, I wrote over 2000 words today, but because I only increased the prologue word count by about 100 words, it didn’t do that much to the total count.

Saturday 27/02/2021 - Word Count: 11,050 I got some chores done Saturday morning and focused on finishing my book so I could include it in my February wrap-up, but I still had time to get some writing done around mid-day. My goal was just to hit 10K this weekend, but I though I could do it in one day. I wrote about 1,000 words before feeling a little word-drained, but took a break for lunch, got back to it and wrote 2,400 words. Though that only added a little over 2,000 to the word count, it took me to 10K! I’m 20% of the way to being able to call it a novel! We’re in quintuple digits!

And then eight hours later, I wrote another thousand words and got to 11K.

Sunday 28/02/2021 - Word Count: 13,722 I spent most of my Sunday morning writing, though it took me more than two hours to write about 1500 words, though it only added about 1100 to my count. I decided to set myself an overall and weekly deadlines to hold myself accountable. Due to the fact I don’t yet have a clue how many words this will work out as, I decided I wanted to have either a complete first draft or 100K words (which I doubt I’ll reach, but it seems like a good way to make myself finish the draft before my deadline) by the end of April. Which works out to a little under 1500 words a day, or just under 11K a week, which is perfectly doable. Bearing in mind my current word count is including outlines, but I still believe in myself.

I wrote another 1600 words later, which took me to 14K, until I deleted the 300 word outline I wrote for one scene, but I worked out my words per day for the next two months with the assumption of a 10K word count as of March 1st and a target of either a complete draft or 100K words by the end of April, so I’m nearly 4,000 words ahead of schedule. Which gives me 6,606 words to write this week, instead of 10,328. (If you couldn’t tell, I like numbers. They just make sense to me.

Monday 01/03/2021 - Word Count: 15,005 I didn’t quite hit my daily goal, but I was completely leached of motivation today, I’m ahead of schedule anyway and I was only under by less than 200 words. It’s alright. But, hey, we hit 15K! Two days after hitting 10K!

Tuesday 02/03/2021 - Word Count: 21,119 This was an insane writing day. My end-of-day target was only 16,480, and that was still ahead of schedule - if I was sticking to the 100K by April 30th, I’d only actually need to be at 12,950 today. This was the best writing day I’ve ever had. I wrote before school and during breaks, which kept both my writing and working momentum up.

I didn’t read a page of my current read, but I wrote a total of 7,681 words and increased my wordcount by 6,114 words, or literally an additional 40.75%. I hit 20K three days after hitting 10K, and am 42.238% of the way to being able to say I wrote a novel, be it a shitty first draft that won’t be complete at 50K words.

I also finished chapter three, which I’ve been working on for three days and came out ~5,000 words, and wrote chapters four and five in their entirety.

Note to self: this is day 10 of vaguely outline-drafting this project.

Wednesday 03/03/2021 - Word Count: 23,364 I've only written 490 words today, as of writing this update, but I just wanted to make note of the fact I've done some calculations, and can reasonably finish my draft this month. I'm still not completely sure how long it'll work out to be, so I can't quite work out my daily words to finish on the 31st, but if I stick to my current 1,475 words a day, I'll hit 63,894 words by the end of the month, which is a little less than I imagine this draft will be, but if I stick to that as a minimum, my first draft won't have to go into April.

I'd like to post this later this week, but I already have a post for this Friday, so God only knows how long this will be by the time it goes up. So far, I've written 1,900 words today, and I don't think I'm out of fuel yet, but I'm stopping because I need to read today, and I'd rather not burn out. I'm over my goal, anyway.

Oh, also, I'm nearly at 25K, which is halfway to a novel, but I haven't broken into Act Two yet, which means this book will be 75K minimum. I'm going to do some maths and work out how many words a day to hit 80K by March 31st. 2,030. That's doable. So I haven't read, but back to writing for like ten minutes.

I've now hit an additional 2,245 words for the day, though I wrote a total of 2,663

Thursday 04/03/2021 - Word Count: 25,415 I've decided to work out how many words I need to write each day to hit 80K by March 31st, and watch the fluctuations. (I like statistics). It should steadily go down throughout the month if I surpass it each day. Today's minimum word count is 2,023, already seven words less than yesterday's. How exciting.

The last scene of Act One was very heavy on world-building I haven't yet figured out, so I stuck what was meant to happen in brackets and just moved on, meaning I have now broken into Act Two!

I think, during the week, I'm going to focus on just meeting my minimum word count rather than exceeding it, just to save fuel for the weekends, when I can write so many more words.

And, we hit 25K! I'm halfway to a novel!

Friday 05/03/2021 - Word Count: 26,693 In complete honesty, I'm beginning to lose momentum. Maybe it's just today, but I don't really want to write and feel like I need a break, but I'm going to make myself write anyway. I'm going to make myself keep writing until this draft is done, however shitty it may end up. I really hate first drafts.

When you say 2,000 words is only 7-8 pages, it doesn't sound like that much to write per day but my god. Luckily, most of the stuff I've had to save to a Pinterest board called 'Writing Motivation' says if you write when you don't want to, it should pass instead of worsening. I wanted to hit 35K this weekend, but I'm not sure I'll have the momentum. I'll at least hit 31,270, though, which is my minimum goal for this week. I'm still over 700 words off my goal for today, but I'm taking a break because my head is foggy and there's still eight hours left in the day. Besides, 700 after dinner is easy. She says, realising she's probably jinxing it. Oh, well. 80K by March 31st would be difficult, even if I weren't going back to school soon, but that's a stretch goal. 100K by April 31st is my minimum, and I'm 9,000 ahead of where I need to be for that.

I think I’m stagnating because I’ve hit the ‘Fun and Games’ section, which I find really boring. I’m going to try to keep going with it, but I may just skip it and come back later.

Saturday 06/03/2021 - Word Count: 28,150 So, I did not get the extra 700 words in. Before dinner, some stuff I had to deal with came up, and by the time it was done, I just wanted to go to bed, so I did. Today, I'm going to try to make up for it, which I think is reasonable because it is now the weekend. I'm still kinda exhausted this morning, but I'm going to do my best, and my wrist hurts, but I'm not sure why. You'd think it would be from all the typing, but only one wrist hurts - you know what? Never mind. They do both hurt. I'm just not sure why, but it doesn't hurt typing this, so that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, to hit my word count for the day, I need to write 2,555 words, which doesn't sound like too much, but it kinda is because I'm primarily writing Act Two at the minute, and for every thousand words I write, I lose like 400 from my outline. You'd think I'd just not include my scene outlines in the word count, but it's too late for that now.

I'm thinking this over, and I really don't think trying to write 80K by the end of the month is going to be good for either my motivation, mental health, or ability to function back at school, so I'm going to stick to 100K or a finished draft by April 30th, and re-work out my goals from there, based on yesterday's word count, so I'm not making myself do catch-up today.

So, to hit 100K by April 30th, I only need to write 1,309 words each day (which will decrease over time because if that's my minimum now, I'll probably surpass it, decreasing the amount of words left etc.). That's so much less pressure.

God, I really don't want to write today. I just want to watch YouTube and Netflix and read.

Okay, so here's the thing. I've been working on this story straight for three weeks and I'm kinda exhausted of it. I'm not done with it, not at all, and I want to keep working on it because it exists, which makes it workable.

I watched a writing vlog by ShaelinWrites yesterday, and she said she writes different projects at once, alternating in week- or multi-week-long blocks. I think I might try that.

My plan with this post and the following updates was to keep updating it until the day it goes up, the day after which is when I begin drafting the next, but, since I may be switching projects for a while and this is really about the project I've decided to dub 'Bay Tree' (which is just, I guess, a pseudonym for here because while I have no idea what it would eventually be called, I know that's nothing like the title I'd want to give it) so I'd want to start a new post for a new project.

I'm now doing a little outlining instead of actually continuing writing, but I think this will help me, though I'm still not certain about whether or not I'm going to directly continue with this specific project for the minute. Instead of setting daily goals based on a target, I'm also just going to say 1,000 words a day, and see where that takes me.

I've just been outlining into Act Three, and I've met a major plot stumble, but I'm going to work that out and explain what I'm doing in my next writing update.

So, go drink some water, eat if you haven't eaten in the last few hours, stand in front of the mirror and tell yourself how wonderful you are and how much happiness you deserve, and, if you want to write a book, stop thinking about it, and go write.

[mbtiofwhys]

How Ni and Ne (don't) binge watch

Premise

MBTI is a serious topic for us mods and we always put our best effort writing articles for this blog. However, we also find entertaining to write in a more light way about how MBTI shows off in real life. This article is one of those: we won’t discuss deeply about theory, but we’ll rather talk about our experiences with binging works of various media, be them books, videogames or tv shows. We love typing fictional characters since we also love works of fiction. Listening to other high Ni and Ne users we found an interesting correlation between those two function and media consumption, especially regarding the topic of binging. So, this isn’t hard science, it's simply a light reflection that 200% comes from our experiences. That being said, we hope this article will be relatable and intriguing. 

Ni dom and binge

INFJ mod here. This may sound counterintuitive, but even if Ni is known to be a function about searching for deeper meanings, discarding options and focusing on the few remaining, I approach works of fictions with a “multitasking” method. What do I mean? Well, I’m not the kind of person who will just sit down and watch an entire season of a tv show, even if it’s the best I ever seen (there are few exception to this rule, works like Persona 5 Royal which I heavily binged. With no regrets). I simply prefer to watch a little amount of episodes, or read few chapters of a book, for example, and then stop, thus having time to reflect on what I saw or read. I just need time to process all of the data and feelings, otherwise I’ll just hit the wall of information overload.

Even if they’re just my attempt to find a correlation between high Ni and all those aspects, I’d like to talk about what the causes of this behaviours may be, with a MBTi perspective.

Binging may be hard for Ni users since they need time to analyze things, putting them in their abstract subjective system. This means, in other words, that the higher the level of complexity is, the longer will be the time needed to absorb it. For example, I can read mindlessly a novel for a mere entertaining value, but if I really like it I’ll just take my time to enjoy the journey, reflecting and talking about my feelings and first impressions to my friends (this is my auxiliary Fe showing, I know).

Ni operates by discarding elements, thus Ni users may reach a point where they simply prefer to stop. This process allows them to elaborate those information, be them characters, facts or emotions (based on personal preferences, for example feelers may tend toward the emotional aspect and T users toward puzzles, mysteries, logical consistency). As I stated above, if I absorb too much data and feelings I’ll just freeze, submerged by the information overload. With works of fiction, I have an underlying fear of missing important aspects of it and the more I read, watch or play, the more I’ll need time to stop and see how all the new things make sense, be them theories, feelings, or simply understanding what’s going on. Even while I’m actively reading/watching/playing I process all the informations as a way to put them into perspective, constantly elaborating them in the back of my mind.

Another personal consideration is: high Ni implies low Se. Low Se may find binging as a form of overstimulation. Moreover Se, in lower positions, requires little stimuli, allowing Ni users to organize the environment (rationally or emotionally through Te or Fe), since high Ni users are J and need a certain amount of control over the environment (Te or Fe) and their feelings or internal logic (Fi or Ti) .

Finally, I think there’s a tendency in high Ni user to consume multiple media, but in small amounts. This isn’t supported by hard evidences, it’s just a trend I noticed talking to friends about the subject. Ni users may prefer to approach different media rather than a single one, splitting their attention and energies through them. So, this is the opposite of binging. Personally, except for few works of fiction which I blindly burned with my passion, I usually switch from a medium to another, a sort of “media multitasking” as a way to “cool down” from one by simultaneously approach another one and still being engaged.

Ne dom and binge

ENFP mod here. I fear I’ll have to repeat the same premise as INFJ mod: This may sound counterintuitive, but even if Ne is known to be a function that works with multitasking and jumps from one topic to the other very quickly, I tend to approach works of fiction by shamelessly binging one and proceeding to be obsessed with it for months (or years.)

This happens especially for the works that end up being my favorites once I finish them - paired with the fact that I usually go through them again at least a second time after I’m finished. It almost feels like that if I’m not binging, I’m not interested/invested enough to care. I binge so much, in fact, that I’ve come to distinguish the ‘soft binge’ from the ‘hard binge’ - where ‘soft’ means a 12 episodes anime in 2-4 days and ‘hard’ means 145 hours of Persona 5 Royal in 3 weeks.

So, how might this work?

Firstly, Ne dom needs stimuli. Constantly. The more, the better. Because external stimuli means more prompts from something that isn’t one’s mind, which causes further reflection, connections and a ton of brainstorming. Ne can connect dots scaringly quickly, and even though proper reflection is appreciated to deepen the subject, connections are often made on the spot. I think it’s very difficult for me to reach a point of information overload - it usually happens with very complex topics and study subjects, for which I need to take a break and write things down into diagrams and lists in order to make proper sense of what I learned. But even in the case of works with heavy and intricate worldbuilding/plot (e.g. Stein’s;Gate, but I’m a sucker for time travel fiction so whichever is fine) I rarely stop watching if something doesn’t add up - I usually understand it later on, or wait for everything to end and search on the internet or talk about it with friends. My only time off is the one between OP/ED (which I NEVER skip and my friends hate me for that.) In that time, I disconnect my brain for 1 minute and 20-ish seconds to recharge.

Ne dom doesn’t have the patience to wait. If it wants answers, it wants them now. Binging is great because it offers both stimuli, questions and answers in a short amount of time. Also, (but maybe this is more of an F thing and for Ti aux might be different) I’m not one to make theories and speculations over fictional works - I might do that, but later, once I’m finished. While I’m enjoying a work, I’m usually so involved that all the theorising is limited to hunches and intuitions. Proper theorising needs time, needs one to stop and reflect on one’s knowledge in order to find hidden meanings and try to predict the outcome. I don’t have the patience to do that. I’m not interested in doing that - I want to know what’s going on, period. The few times I happened to reflect and speculate on a work of fiction were when I watched/read/played the thing simultaneously with some friends and talked to them about it constantly.

Which brings us to: discussing with people. Knowing a work means you’re able to discuss it with others, read reviews and watch video essays and analysis, of course Ne dom wants to devour it as quickly as possible. I literally watched the whole Evangelion (and I mean: the anime, EoE and the 3 rebuilds) in two weeks in order to finally enjoy those sweet, sweet video essays and parody and abridged YouTube wouldn’t stop to suggest me. This may sound silly, but searching discussion topics of the works I went through -even the ones I disliked- is very important to me, because listening to other people’s opinions and prompts is a way to further feed my Ne with different perspectives, viewpoints, things I might have missed while binging.

The problem: the quicker the binge, the more it’s difficult for me to remember details about plot, characters etc that, yet minor, can be important or interesting. Which is kind of the main struggle of having low Si: you know something, but you don’t remember everything you’d need precisely. You can’t pinpoint the scene where a thing happened, you feel you might have already seen a detail but you can’t recollect when and in what circumstances, and the list goes on. And this doesn’t stop once you’ve finished, obviously - it can only get worse. Typing the main Persona 5 cast was such a pain that, during my second playthrough of vanilla P5, I literally had to open a document and write down every single line or detail or plot point that could’ve helped me later. Otherwise, the situation would be: “damn, I know [character] said something alongside the line of [thing that could help me with typing] but I can’t remember what exactly! Let’s spend hours on YT watching walkthrough in order to find by chance the exact scene I’m thinking about.” This may also be why I periodically feel the need to go through my favourite works again: I may know them by heart, but there will always be things that I missed.

[tearsofthemis]

Tears of Themis : Chapter 1 “Social Snobbery” Part 7 [Investigation Stage]

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▌Location- QingPing Restaurant

(Xia Yan doubts that this case was caused by accidental food poisoning since it’s suspicious that pesticides known to cause harm to humans would be found in a restaurant where people are eating and drinking. And to make things troublesome, the accused is adamant that this was caused by his own negligence.)

MC: “Then let’s start looking into the pesticide and how it made its way into the restaurant. Even if the incident happened two weeks ago, there should be residual powder left.”

Xia Yan: “Yeah, the pesticide used in the restaurant and the spring water that came in contact with it are our main focal points right now.” We were interrupted by a phone notification. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the voice message Zuo Ran left me.

Zuo Ran (voice message): “The case isn’t as simple as we thought it would be. Pay close attention to Fang Yuan. Call me if you run into trouble.” MC: (Lawyer Zuo shares similar doubts in regards to the case, and now he’s also suspecting foul play from Fang Yuan?)

Zuo Ran: “Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?”

The sound of Zuo Ran’s voice startled me. I only then realized that I had accidentally dialed his number - and a video call at that.

MC: “!!!” ~~~In call~~~

Zuo Ran:

“Wrong number?”

“Forget it, you don’t need to apologize. As long as you’re okay.”

“The study guides for the intermediate exams… did you mean to leave them at the law firm?”

“That’s fair, the books are heavy and a nuisance to carry around.”

“Ah, there’s no need to worry that the case investigation will hinder your study progress, I’ll help you organize the key topics and questions for the exam.”

“No need to thank me. I’ll let you get back to work.”

~~~End call~~~

(After Zuo Ran hung up, I pressed a hand to my chest and let out the breath that I was holding.)

Xia Yan: “That person just now, was he your boss? You seem scared of him, is he bullying you?” MC: “Not at all. Lawyer Zuo is our firm’s executive elite lawyer, and a senior of mine. He’s one of the best in the industry. Although he’s strict, he would never bully juniors such as myself.” Xia Yan: “Really?”

MC: “Yes, really.” Xia Yan: “If you say so. Regardless of whether it’s work or personal troubles, you can rely on me to help you. I’ll have you know, I’m quite impressive myself.” MC: “Of course, Mr. Most-Impressive-Detective!~”

~~~Investigation starts!~~~

▌ [Examine powder sachets and mug]

MC: “Hai O’Sen powdered beverage? I’ve heard that this company’s wellness supplements have been all the rage these past two years.”

Xia Yan: “Consuming four or five packets in one go is way past the daily limit; overconsumption of supplements is harmful to the body.” (Xia Yan and I both reached out to grab the sachets, and our fingers touched. His fingertips felt hot against the back of my hand. I looked at our hands, then turned to look at Xia Yan.)

Xia Yan: “...We’re still so in sync, it’s like our brains work as one. C-cough! Why do you think Mr. Fang would consume so many packets?”

MC: “Ah… XinRan did mention that Mr. Fang has heart issues…” (What’s wrong with Xia Yan? He jerked his hand back as if he had gotten an electric shock. I pondered on what Xia Yan said earlier, and we gradually fell back into work mode.)

MC: “I think Mr. Fang’s been consuming supplements as placebo effects.”

Xia Yan: “But there ought to be side effects to his health if he’s been drinking so much of it…”

▌ [Examine receipt stuck under ledge]

Xia Yan: “Ow…” MC: “What’s wrong?” Xia Yan: “I cut my hand. There’s a piece of paper stuck under the cabinet, so I was trying to pull it out. My hands are too big, I can’t seem to grab it.”

MC: “Ha.. I’m sorry I can’t help but… laugh!” Xia Yan: “Then, may I inquire of this all-mighty lawyer with small hands to retrieve it? Ah, be careful not to cut yourself as well.”

(I’ve rarely seen Xia Yan be this deflated, and it’s probably unprofessional of me to be joking with him while we were working. I knelt down, and with the help of the flashlight on Xia Yan’s cell phone, I tried to free the piece of paper.)

MC: “Hu… it’s difficult. I got it! It’s a receipt.”

Xia Yan: “The time of purchase was two weeks ago, on Thursday. The item purchased was Insect Repellent 330…”

MC: “It’s an industrial pesticide, you usually won’t be able to purchase this from the stores here.”

Xia Yan: “The receipt also has the payment information. We have the first and last four digits of the credit card used for the transaction, so we can find the person that purchased the pesticide.”

▌ [Examine spring water container]

MC: “This should be the spring water sourced from YunXia mountain. The filling date is recorded on the side here. The production date is the same date as the incident. This jug is the same one that was delivered to the restaurant two weeks ago.” Xia Yan: “The container’s opening is narrow since it is to be placed on top of a dispenser for drinking. In this case, a pump would be affixed to it in order to retrieve the spring water. The likelihood of accidentally contaminating the spring water would be very difficult.”

MC: “That means whoever is behind the incident must have done it with malice.”

Xia Yan: “It’s a shame that the water container has been scrubbed clean of any other clues or fingerprints.”

▌ [Examine front door lock]

MC: “The door employs a fingerprint lock, and the door itself is free from any signs of forced entry. If the narrative is that this was a case of sabotage, then the culprit isn’t just anyone looking to extort money, but maybe one of the restaurant’s employees?”

Xia Yan: “To be more specific, the culprit would be anyone with fingerprint access, not necessarily just the employees. The restaurant’s employees would share liability if anything went wrong in the first place, so they would face the risk of being laid off. Especially if it was discovered that there was foul play, they would most likely be the ones to shoulder the repercussions. Unless one of them holds a personal grudge against Mr. Fang, under regular circumstances, an employee would have little motive to try and sabotage their workplace.”

MC: “But who else would have fingerprint access? Even XinRan had to ring the doorbell to get in. And there’s no way Mr. Fang would try and ruin his own livelihood…”

(I mulled over the possible suspects as Xia Yan pulled out a tablet from his bag and plugged it into the finger scanner’s power connector.)

MC: “Are you trying to…?”

Xia Yan: “To find the other people with access, all we gotta do is check the fingerprint IDs registered.”

▌ [Examine the water pump on the shelf]

Xia Yan: “This must be the pump that they attach to the spring water container.” ▌ [Examine water pump’s nozzle]

Xia Yan: “Look, there’s some yellow crystallization on here.”

MC: “Is this the leftover residue from the pesticide after it had dissolved in the water?” Xia Yan: “The amount of crystallization implies that the concentration of the dissolved pesticide was very high. But of course, this would be one of many possibilities.” MC: “One of many possibilities… What if someone rubbed the pesticide all over the spout? We can’t eliminate that theory, either. Regardless, we can say with certainty that Mr. Fang was lying when he claimed that the water was accidentally contaminated.”

▌ [Examine prints on water pump]

MC: “If only I had brought magnetic powder to lift these latent prints off of the water pump, then we could confirm whether or not anyone tampered with it.” Xia Yan: “You mean this stuff?”

(Xia Yan pulled a small bag filled with a powdery substance out of his shirt pocket.)

MC: “Why would you carry that around?”

Xia Yan: “As a professional, I gotta make sure I have all the tools on hand. How could I not take my gear everywhere?”

(Xia Yan used the magnetic powder and lifted several prints from the water pump. We have no way to cross-reference them at the moment.)

▌ [Examine pesticide packet in the drawer]

Xia Yan: “This must be the pesticide that Mr. Fang sent his runner to buy. The convenience store receipt was kept with it. It reads that the time of purchase was two weeks ago on Monday.”

MC: “Mr. Fang is a meticulous person. If it were me, I would’ve tossed the receipt two days after purchase. It says here, Mr. Fang purchased… Bugger-Off. Wait that’s not right, I recall that this type of insecticide is harmless to humans.” Xia Yan: “Yeah, it’s harmless towards mammals, which makes it suitable for use in households with pets. That reminds me, you used to be extremely scared of cockroaches when we were little. What about now? Are you still scared?”

MC: “We can still be friends if you drop this subject right now.”

▌ [Examine blue powder by the wine rack]

MC: “That’s strange, why can’t we find any trace of the pesticide that they claim they used? It would be counterintuitive if they sprinkled it on the ground and then wiped it up soon after.” Xia Yan: “That’s something worth looking into… Eh? There, by the corner of the wine rack, there are some traces of it left.” MC: “Judging by the blue color of the powder, it looks like any other insecticide you can buy on the market.”

Xia Yan: “It may look like it, but after we perform a compound analysis, we’ll be able to say for certain.”

MC: “Y-you even have equipment for that with you?!”

(I looked all around to see where Xia Yan would hide bunsen burners and beakers, kind of hoping that he could pull them out of thin air like magic.)

Xia Yan: “You don’t have to stare at me so intensely… we won’t need to actually test it using a chemistry kit…” (Xia Yan pulled a palm-sized device out of his bag. It looked like some sort of electronic screen with a thin dropper attached to it.)

Xia Yan: “This is the D-type Rapid Composition Tester that I modified; it’s capable of detecting common compounds.” MC: “D-type, huh… does that mean there’s an A-type, B-type, C-type that came before it? I doubt that you studied hard in your bio-engineering program.”

Xia Yan: “Wrong again, I graduated from my Master’s program with high honor distinctions!”

~~~Investigation ends!~~~

(After we finished preliminary investigations around the restaurant, Xia Yan and I sat down and discussed what we found. Xia Yan also took this time to run tests on the yellow crystals found on the nozzle of the water pump, as well as the pesticide sampled near the wine rack. The fingerprints lifted from the body of the water pump was compared to the fingerprint IDs registered in the door lock. On closer investigation, we also managed to lift fingerprints from the Insect Repellent 330 receipt. Lines of data and formulas appeared on Xia Yan’s computer, but they all looked like mumbo jumbo to me. I turned my attention to the cut on the back of his hand as it was starting to swell as it bled.)

MC: “We should take care of that cut on your hand.”

(I pulled out a packet of alcohol wipes and tried to not disturb Xia Yan as he worked.)

Xia Yan: “A cut? Where?”

(He smiled when he saw that I was staring at his hand with worry.)

Xia Yan: “Ah, I would’ve forgotten about it if you hadn’t pointed it out.”

MC: “Why are men always so careless. The underside of that cabinet probably hasn’t been wiped down in years. What if your cut gets infected?” (I pulled his hand toward me, and before he could complain, I unwrapped the alcohol wipe and dabbed it on his cut. I blew on it as the alcohol evaporated.)

MC: “Hang tight, it might sting a little. It’s a good thing that I always keep these disposable wipes when I go out for investigations. I often use them to disinfect things.”

Xia Yan: “...” (Xia Yan stayed quiet for a long time, so I looked up to glance at him. A pink blush settled on his cheeks, and it made his amber eyes look brighter than usual.)

MC: “Y-you…” Xia Yan: “Ah.. Uh… I’ll remember it well. Next... time, I’ll be careful. I’ll make sure you won’t have to worry.” MC: “Okay, as a hotshot detective, you better keep your word.”

I smiled at Xia Yan, and he turned even redder. He awkwardly coughed and scrambled to change the subject.

Xia Yan: “More on the results, there’s something questionable about both the fingerprints and the pesticide.”

-------

[Previous Part] | [Masterlist] | [Next Part]

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《CREDIT》 Translator: @humi-and-co​ Editor: @hallowsivy​​ 《未定事件簿》Tears of Themis is a 2020 Chinese otome game by 米哈游Mihoyo. All original credits go to 米哈游Mihoyo. 

《 VOICE ACTORS 》  Xia Yan | Jin Xian: https://weibo.com/riceranger Zuo Ran | Zhao Lu: https://weibo.com/mzhaolu Lu HaiYang | Zhang Pei: https://weibo.com/u/1937059462 Xue XinRan | V17-Su Wan: https://weibo.com/u/2925530143 Fang Yuan | Zhao Yang

《OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS》 Official website: https://bbs.mihoyo.com/wd/ Official WeChat account:  未定事件簿  Mihoyo official website: https://wd.mihoyo.com/

[headfullofstories]

Truly Monstrous Luck - part 2

I wake up in a new room, and the first thing I notice is that my binder is off. Fuck. I bolt upright and bring my arms up to cover my chest. Oh no, oh no no no no no. If someone had to take it off of me, then… someone saw my body. I throw up a little bit in my mouth at the thought.

I look around the room I'm in. I'm on a cot, and… oh god, there're my tits. I curl my knees up to block them from sight, and continue to survey my surroundings. The room as a few more cots scattered about, most of them empty. There's a desk at the end of the room, currently occupied by a girl who looks a little older than me, skin the color of volcanic glass - a sort of deep blackish purple, covered in white freckles that look like stars. Her lavender hair is tied up into a bun, and she's wearing a denim jacket. Fuck, she's pretty.

She looks up at me suddenly, corneas jet black and irises a startling silver. If I was still alive I’d probably have a ridiculous blush all across my face right now.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” She lets out a sigh of relief. “Yvonne was freaking out when you collapsed, thought she pushed you too hard with that walk, which was… kind of the case, but c’mon dude, you had to know this was gonna happen if you kept this thing on.” She holds up my ratty old Underworks binder, stretched and worn from years of constant use. I’m not quite sure the last time I took that thing off, whether it was last night or the day before, but my ribs are sore as hell now.

“There’s a recommended maximum time to wear these for a reason, y’know.” She sighs, dropping it onto the desk and picking up a walkie talkie. “Yvonne?” She asks into the radio, “your kid’s awake.”

A few moments later Yvonne runs through the doorway at the far side of the room near the desk, looks around the room for a moment and sees me.

“Oh thank god.” She sighs, walking up to me. “Camilla said it was probably nothing to worry about, but… I didn’t wanna cause you more grief today.”

“You gonna adopt every single fledgling you find, Yvonne?” The girl at the desk grumbles, looking down at her phone. “That’s… five now, right? Over the past 15 years? You should introduce New Kid to the others.”

“Well, none of my other 4 have left, which is a lot more than can be said for a lot of people here.” Yvonne reasons, before turning back to me. “I’m sorry that we had to take the binder off, Victor, but you’re not supposed to sleep with it on. Or do strenuous activity, which is on me, but you really should follow the doctor’s recommendations on these things.”

“I know, but… it’s… too much, sometimes, not to wear it.” I reply cautiously, doing my best to use the right words. “I get sensory overload really easily, and looking at my body makes it… a lot worse, most of the time. Being on T has helped with a lot of the visual dysphoria, but until I get surgery I’m gonna risk it with the long hours.”

The girl at the desk grumbles something under her breath, then picks up her walkie talkie again and mutters something into the speaker. Yvonne looks saddened by this and mutters something about the healthcare system in this country, but doesn’t object outright. After a few minutes Arthur walks into the room, exchanges a few brief words with the girl at the desk, then walks over to me and stands next to where Yvonne is sitting. He sighs and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment.

“Hey kid, what are your thoughts on top surgery?” He asks, sounding a little fed up. “Because what happened today can’t happen again, and if you fuck up your ribs there’s only so much vampiric healing can fix, and you’re gonna have a bitch of an afterlife.”

My vision goes double for a moment as I try to process what I just heard. “T-top surgery?”

“We have contacts at this practice out on Long Island, some people who are… specially equipped to handle people like us.” He elaborates, “We’ll cover all of the medical expenses, so you won’t have to worry about selling your fucking soul to the american healthcare system.”

Against my better judgement, I start sobbing. Arthur looks confused and Yvonne looks worried.

“Hey kid, you good?” Arthur inquires cautiously.

“I'm really sorry,” I manage to blubber out between hiccups, “but… th-that’s the closest thing to good news I’ve had in m-m-months.”

He nods. “I had bad luck when I was your age, too. Broke a rib wearing ace bandages when i was 19, couldn't bind for a year and damn near killed myself. In a fucked up way, dying was the best thing to happen to me.”

I look up at him, wipe my tears out of my eyes, and calm down a little. “You-you’re trans?”

He flashes a demonic looking smile, all teeth and a bit of pride, and lifts up his shirt to flash twin scars sprawling across his chest.

"Came out at the Stonewall Riots when I was 18 years old." He explains, still smiling wide and wild. “Year and a half before I was turned; when that happened I was a little younger than you, I think.”

I look at him in awe. “I’ve never met a trans person that was so much older than me.”

“For real?” He snorts, crossing his arms. “I should introduce you to Liz, then. 600 years old, turned when she was 14, didn't start transitioning until she was 87. I think she came over here on a Spanish Galleon, I'm pretty sure she originally made landfall in Guatemala..."

"Art, I know you're trying to focus, but you keep getting off topic." The girl at the desk yells over.

"Thank you Camilla, I realize that." He growls at the girl. Oh, so she's the Camilla person Yvonne mentioned. "Shit, did I forget to take my adderall again?”

I suddenly realize I don’t know where my backpack is. Oh fuck no, that thing has everything I own in it - my T, my journal, my charger, my spare clothes…

"Where's my backpack?" I ask Yvonne, panicked. I can feel my leg start involuntarily bouncing. “I need it, it has everything I have in it…”

Yvonne leans down and reaches under the cot I’m on and pulls out my ratty jansport, setting it down on my lap. I cling to it for dear life. It’s too late to stop the shaking, but at least it’s not gonna get any worse.

I see Yvonne go to rest her hand on my shoulder, but Arthur grabs her wrist and mutters something in her ear. My vision goes out of focus again as I try to calm myself down.

After a few minutes the shaking stops and I look up at the two now even more worried adults in front of me.

"Sorry…" I mutter, looking at my feet. "I… I need to know where this thing is or I… lose it, a little. It's really stupid, I don't know why it happens, it's super overreactive… my teachers all thought I just wanted attention in school."

“They…” Arthur starts, then hisses something unintelligible before looking at me in the eyes. The eye contact makes me a little nervous, but I do my best to hold it. “You’re not looking for attention if you have big emotions. That’s bullshit.”

I look down at my hands now, pulling at my joints and popping my knuckles. “My parents always said I’m broken and my brother thinks it’s something I can manage. I love my brother, but it’s… hard to get him to understand.”

He nods a little, then looks over at Camilla. “Can you check when Boris is open next?” He shouts over, to which Camilla gives a thumbs up. He turns his attention back to me, and shoots me a quick finger gun. “You need a new bus card, right? And you were going to your brother’s house when you got attacked, did you call him when you were heading over?”

I shake my head. “He was at work when I was heading over, and I have a key to his apartment so I was just gonna head over and wait for him.”

“Do you feel comfortable staying here for the night?”

"I think… that'll be better than going to my brother's house. I’m not sure if I can deal with the subway yet…”

He nods, mutters something to Yvonne, then heads out. Yvonne stretches out her hand, a silent invitation to get up and follow her. I take it after a moment of consideration, suddenly overwhelmingly nervous about my entire situation. What if these people are bad? What if they want to use me? I consider running, but after a moment I start thinking logically again. At the very least, Yvonne and Arthur are good. That’s enough for right now.

I grab my binder from Camilla on the way out, her silver eyes piercing my very soul, a silent warning to bind properly. I put the binder in my backpack, and throw the bag over my shoulder.

Yvonne guides me through ancient looking halls, lined with candelabras fitted with dim mercury light bulbs. I pull out my phone to check the time - 1:34PM. Shit, the day’s still only halfway done. I try to read Yvonne’s expression as we walk, but all I see is worry. No indication of where we might be going or what Arthur was whispering to her about.

Some people look at us as we walk by - some stare for a moment, but mostly they just glance briefly then look away. I keep as close as I can to Yvonne, and eventually we stop in front of a big pair of wooden doors.

“This is the common room,” she explains, gesturing towards the doors. “It has the best wifi in the building, it also has public computers, some books, board games… the works. I’ll leave you here, but feel free to explore around. There are signs at most of the intersecting hallways, so it’s not too hard to get lost around here, but most people will be willing to give you directions if you get turned around. You good with that, Victor?”

I give her a thumbs up, and hang outside of the common room until she disappears down the hallway. I debate going inside for a moment, but decide against it. There’s probably people in there, and people means social interaction. It means people seeing me without my binder on. I subconsciously start hitting the heels of my hands together as I debate what to do from here before deciding to head further down the hallway, away from where Yvonne and I came from. I cross my arms in an attempt to hide my chest, which is a little counterintuitive since it's probably just drawing more attention to that area.

I walk around for a few minutes without really seeing anybody, and after a little while I start to zone out, looking at the ironwork on the candelabras instead of where I’m walking, when I bump into someone. I yelp and jump back out of instinct, and the other person falls to the ground.

“I-I’m sorry!” I squeak as I start to fiddle with my backpack straps. “I didn’t see you!”

The person I knocked down, a boy with black hair and dark brown eyes, growls at me as he stands back up, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Um, m-m-my name’s Victor.” I respond, on the verge of tears.

“Alright, Victor, what the fuck are you? What are you doing here?” As soon as he’s fully upright he starts examining every detail of my face, and I realize that my mouth is still slightly open, so I slap a hand over it to cover my fangs.

“Oh, you’re a vamp.” He grumbles. “Were you one of those assholes who sells their blood to rogues, one of em went too far, threw you out?”

Suddenly I’m crying again. Three times in one day, what the hell? I start scratching my arms to try and counteract it. I try my best to look even smaller.

“Wh- oh fuck, don’t cry! I… fuck, I’m such a dumbass!” He hits his head a couple times. “Look, I’m really sorry, I have really bad impulse control issues, that was just the first thing that came to mind. Uh…”

It takes all of my willpower, but I manage to stop crying, only thing now the stimming is worse. I start hitting the heels of my hands together and tapping my left foot uncontrollably. “Um… thanks for the apology. Most of the time when I start crying I just get yelled at even worse.”

He looks at me, mild horror on his face, which I’m not quite sure if it’s from what he said earlier or what I said just now. “That’s fucked up.” He mutters, then he outstretches his hand. “I’m Adrian. Again, so sorry about what I said, I do not know what came over me. You’ve probably had a really rough day, huh?”

I take his hand after a brief moment of hesitation. His grip is really strong, I think normally I would be a little hurt by it but now it just feels like a very firm grip… wait, can I still be anemic if I'm a vampire?

"Um, yeah." I laugh a little, slightly intimidated by this guy. I'm automatically a little scared of anyone who makes me cry, but… I don't know. "It was kind of a shitty day before, but then with the… getting jumped and everything, and my life kind of being over, it's just been a whole lot worse."

"God, I'm an asshole." He says, a forced grin plastered to his face. "I completely understand if you never want to interact with me again."

"I'll think on that." I respond as I bring my arms back across my chest and start to focus on the wall right next to his head. "Uh, nice to meet you? Kind of?"

"Um, likewise." He responds as he shoves his hands in his pockets and walks off quickly. That was... weird.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Misfit of Demon King Academy 1 | Healin’ Good PreCure 13 - 14 | Lapis Re:Lights 1 | God of High School 1 | Muhyo and Roji’s BSI s2 1

Misfit of Demon King Academy 1

This originally had the ecchi tag on its anime entry on AniList…or, at least, that’s how it was in my memory…but now that I see it doesn’t have that, it’s just another reincarnation isekai-type series. Let’s dig into it!

I…think this guy is meant to be portrayed as “hot” because he has the piercing eyes and he’s tall (against the girls in what will presumedly be his harem), but he kind of looks like your standard Potato-kun in a white outfit…so, uh…*shrugs*

Uh…is that guy meant to be Indian? You can’t get more obvious than the “Indu” family. Update: You see his brother later and Leorg has fairer skin, so maybe not.

LOL, “Flame of Darkness” makes someone nothing but a chuunibyou.

Uh…this is called The Misfit of Demon King Academy, y’know? Anos (Anoth?) is gonna get in, you bet your butts.

The owl is cute.

…guy, that 3 second rule thing was actually funny, but the more you think about the joke, the less funny it gets. Show: 1. Me: Infinity -1

Just from appearances, I wanna guess Misha is an ice or light magic user, or whatever equivalent the show has.

Is this what Assassin’s Pride could have been…?

How did the mother (Anoth’s) think her kid maturing that fast wasn’t weird?

Mushroom gratin? Is that an actual dish?...Yep, seems so. Sounds nice. I like mushrooms.

What’s up with young mothers in anime these days? Then again, the only other point of reference I have is Masamune-kun’s Revenge…

I thought it was the other Indu guy we saw earlier. This guy’s…not that bad-looking, though (LOL, my preferences ring out loud and clear…)…welp, spoke too soon. There he is. Update: Leorg kinda looks like Hakuto Kunai from Demon Lord, Retry!, come to think of it.

If Zepes died several times over the course of this episode…would one more death actually matter? (Not really, to be honest. Zepes is a scumbag.)

Come to think of it, this anime got postponed due to COVID, yeah? Was that why there was a sakuga spot earlier…?

Was that Sasha (Misha’s sister)? I found her name while checking if the anime was postponed.

I like the colour choices in this show, at least.

I don’t think this show has the best sense of comedic timing. Let your jokes breathe, dammit! That’s what comedic beats are for!

In a season with more offerings, I might get rid of this or pause it, but the season’s fairly sparse as it stands (darn virus!) so it stays.

Update: I didn’t notice, but an Anime News Network staff member wrote that Anoth’s surname is familiar…if you read Harry Potter.

Healin’ Good PreCure 13

Gotta start in the middle for this and work our way back. Note I did watch the 1st 2 eps without subs earlier this year when they were on the official PreCure YouTube, so I’m ahead of most people.

(From wandering the wiki and the news) I’ve seen nothing but pink/blue/yellow Cures these days, so I kind miss the more adventurous colours like green and orange…but then again, I never really liked green. It’s the colour of envy and…as petty as it sounds, I think I developed that bias because green is stereotypically the colour of rot, vomit (aside from anime’s rainbow vomit) and stinky things.

I didn’t notice this, but there’s a faint highlight on the Cures’ eyes (red for Grace, purple for Fontaine and blue for Sparkle).

It’s a drone! In PreCure! Yay! (It finally hit me exactly how much of a distant dream it’s been – from watching Suite and episodes of most of the other PreCure ‘til now – watching PreCure legally as a simulcast is! It’s crazy and it only took, what…5 years between Suite and this? 16 if you count from Futari wa to Healin’ Good.)

Is it that drone?

Hah? This is almost like the electricity-themed PreCure I came up with on the fan wiki. It’s not like I could sue Toei for it, though…they own that stuff, I only own what came out of my own imagination.

The subs say “Rate”, but “rate” has a meaning in English. No wonder the initial wiki translations say “Latte”, especially because the queen is “Teatine” to match.

Okay, so Mei is the sis and Yota is the brother. Got it.

Hey! What if there was a PreCure where the villains had devastated another world before? That would really raise the stakes.

“[T]hunders” (sic)? Thunder is the sound, lightning is the flash. Which one is it?

I see. As soon as they identified it as the Element of Lightning, I sort of guessed they could add it to their repertoire later, and I was right.

Its’s nice to see they put a woman in the moving company as well. Proves that girls can do anything they set their minds to, even what are supposedly “men’s jobs”.

I guess from the face I should’ve expected the element to talk, like the Fairy Tones from Suite, but I didn’t really figure that out until I saw it talk,

I feel like Hinata should’ve gone to see how Mei made her juice. That way, the two might be able to make similar-tasting juice…but that’s just an idea.

Healin’ Good PreCure 14

I feel like Byogens were responsible for Nodoka’s sickness, much like they are for Latte.

“Energy Source” seems to refer to a place where energy appears…I know that sounds a bit dumb if you don’t realise genki hakken means something like “appearance of energy (for a person)”, but…yeah, the PreCure series is like this. Unfortunately, that’s what you have to deal with.

I feel like this “teamwork overcomes all hardships” message is important in this time of COVID-19.

Guaiwaru = “condition is bad”, or ill health (guai ga warui).

Is that the element of air? I thought the PreCure would’ve used their element of lightning to fix the steamer, but hey, teamwork works too.

I’m a weeny bit peevy they translate minna to “girls”. It’s correct in context when it’s been translated that way, but minna means “everybody”.

I imagined Hinata saying “Watashi no smartphone ga!” instead of “Atarashii sumaho ga hoshii!”

Lapis Re:Lights 1

Eh…COVID-19 means I gotta sample things I’m not so crazy about.

Why is one of the first lines in this show “My behind hurts!”?

Bristol? Is this England?...Nope, it’s a place called “Mamkestell”.

I was thinking this girl…I think the reviews said her name was Tiara…was going to sing to the flower to make it perk up again, but nup, she whistled to it. That seems a bit irrelevant, to be honest. (I would prefer an all or nothing approach to a wish-washy approach like this…as in, if this is an idol show, then either go all in with the singing and dancing, or do something else that’ll catch my attention.)

Tiara’s face looks hella generic.

For some reason, I get this ominous feeling when the word “witch” is mentioned…must be the instinct from Madoka popping up again.

Lemme guess. Lynette is the bookworm?...*sigh* Just another method of showing a character is a bookworm without actually showing their reading a book, which I think is counterintuitive.

Get some protective gear, girls!

Rosetta keeps saying “Yes” (in English).

Lemme guess…people ship the dumb one and the smart one? They’re like a gender-flipped Dice and Gentaro, only the smart one is more uppity and the stupid one is more sporty.

The word appears to be noumei, but that exact word doesn’t seem to exist. Lavie seems to say the word is the opposite to something else, but I can’t tell what that is either…

Albino rabbit, eh?

…people probably ship Rosetta and Tiara too, right? *sigh*

So there’s…no singing in this fantasy/idol show. Whistling is how you invoke magic…so how is someone who can’t whistle supposed to invoke magic?!

Whose idea was it to put the OP in the middle of the episode?

It was “Neechan, daikirai!” “Forget you” is a fairly loose translation…

Little Miss Rosetta = Rosetta-chan.

I think Tiara called Rosetta “sensei” when the former wanted the latter to take care of her (i.e. take her to their dorm).

Titi = Tiara. I didn’t actually figure that out because I thought it referred to the rabbits.

Gah! These almost-real-world names (or real world names, in regards to “Bristol”) are gonna drive me NUTS!

*sigh* Boob jiggle.

*sighhhhhhhhh…* Lemme guess, there’s a potential expulsion on the horizon? Update: Yep. Dropped.

God of High School 1

First Webtoon series I’m covering here.

Oh, I checked out the first chapter of the webtoon because CR linked it to their anime page. The only difference I’ve seen from that, aside from fleshing out the backgrounds, is…that creepy skull (?) on the wall.

You can tell it’s Korean when I don’t understand what the text says. (I don’t know Korean, but I do know some Chinese and Japanese.) Update: This is Japanese-dubbed, but they left the Korean text in.

That intro is much more powerful now that the backgrounds are fleshed out.

Ooh, the colours in the OP are very nice!

Hmm? They’re starting with the grandpa, rather than starting with “I’m Mori Jin, 17 years old”? Good choice.

The expressions in this show are funny. I like them already.

Waittttttttt…I dunno how Korean names work. Is Mori Jin’s first name “Mori” or “Jin”? Update: I checked it up, and I got even more confused!

KORG Arena seems to be…from Marvel? Like BnHA references Star Wars???

*sigh* Moonbucks? Again?...and of course the girls only talk about “hotties”. We need a Bechdel test in this thing.

The comments on ch. 1 said “A new Luffy is born”, so now I agree with it…but they’re not going to show how Mori Jin was enlisted for GOH (as they seem to abbreviate it)?

There’s Japanese, English and Korean in the afro dude’s comments.

I’m amazed that tall dude with the spiky hair wasn’t more surprised about Mori Jin and the girl passing by…

Would those glasses on Mori Jin’s head be any help? Update: Turns out those aren’t “glasses”…they’re a sleeping mask.

Kamina glasses!

They put CR and Webtoon advertising over everything in this anime…geesh.

These red parts of people’s noses are gonna bug me, aren’t they…?

It should be battle royale, right? Update: Okay, so I checked and both are correct spellings.

This seems like the sort of thing that would never get funded because you need to pull off every battle scene right.

They cut the initial fight with “Blondie” out, but that actually makes things more interesting! Good choice.

Lemme guess – Mori Jin is going to have to fight this Kang Manseouk guy at full power one day? *shrugs* (Can I stop referring to people by their full names already??? I can’t stop until I know which is the first name and which is the last.) Update: So the wiki finally helped me out and Mori is the first name and Jin the last, meaning I can call him “Mori”. Got it.

*Mori suddenly pulls the prisoner’s pants down* - That was…random.

I liked it more than I thought I would! (Just for reference, the other protag dude is called Han Dae-wi and the girl is Yoo Mira.)

Muhyo and Roji’s BSI s2 1

(Update for the Tumblr fans: I finished s1 outside the seasonal format.) 

Kokkuri-san never goes well in anime…

Where does Nana work again…?

I don’t think Muhyo and Roji are legally (magically legally?) obligated to tell Nana anything about what they do.

Yay! Goryo is animted for the first time! He has such a beautiful voice~!

Notably, Roji wouldn’t have had a smartphone in 2004 (or whatever year close to that when the manga put this bit out).

Goryo (5) vs Muhyo (6). Didn’t figure this out at the time I read the manga.

I think the subbers misgendered Goryo. Goryo is a dude, as can be gathered from the name “Daranimaru”.

“Waka”? Does that stand for “young head [of the office]” or something?

Okay, whose bright idea was it to pair Now on Air (female vocalists) with Muhyo and Roji’s (a series dominated with dudes)…?

Ah, Funimation is on the production team of this anime. That would explain the dub rights.

[s-j-ace]

The Same Question

Chapter Six

Characters:  Shuichi Saihara, Ouma Kokichi

Words: 14290

Summary:

After Detective Shuichi Saihara encounters mysterious thief Kokichi Ouma  for the first time, a game of cat and mouse ensues as both men ask themselves the same question. Why exactly does the elusive phantom thief  do what he does?

This is Chapter Six, Here are Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, and Five

Read on AO3

[Log of Text Messages from Maki Harukawa’s Cellular Device]

From: Me

Did you touch down at Haneda yet?

From: Principal Emo

Yeah

A while ago actually

I’m actually on the train home right now

Which I guess is a little silly considering I’m coming right back over tomorrow

But also I definitely need to sleep in my own bed at least once before meeting people Kaito works with

From: Me

Ugh

Meeting people

From: Principal Emo

Yeah

Especially meeting people with Kaito “What’s your favorite blood type?” Momota

From: Me

Hey that’s my boyfriend you’re talking about

And your description is completely accurate, continue

From: Principal Emo

Ugh sorry that was mean

I’m mean today and I don’t like it

I need coffee :(

From: Me

Or, you know

A decent night’s sleep

From: Principal Emo

Too hard

From: Me

Oh, you’re right, taking care of yourself is too hard

Back to relentlessly roasting Kaito it is

From: Principal Emo

What no

I’m not roasting him

I’m just

Trying not to be mad at him because the only reason I have to be mad at him is that I’m going to miss him while he’s on his mission and I don’t understand why he didn’t tell me he was going on the mission soon enough that I had time to ease into missing him and if I’m just angry at him about that then I’ll be missing him when he’s here so I should try and not be angry at him so that I don’t let time with him go to waste while he’s not in space yet

That makes sense right?

From: Me

I mean feel about it how you wanna feel

But I’d just be mad at him if I were you

From: Principal Emo

:(

From: Me

*>:(

From: Principal Emo

*<:(

From: Me

What is that

A party hat?

From: Principal Emo

No its like

Concerned eyebrows

From: Me

What are you concerned about?

From: Principal Emo

Right now? Or in general?

Because right now I’m worried that people on the train are giving me weird looks because my suitcase is taking up too much space

But like in general I fear that I am somehow secretly inadequate according to an unclear set of standards that only exist in my own mind

From: Me

Cool

Well not cool actually

You want me to give you a ride to the open house so that you don’t have to take the train again tomorrow

From: Principal Emo

I would actually very much appreciate that

I know that the lines under the Towa bridges have the newest trains and the most up to date security and all

But also there’s just a lot of people on trains and places to hide knives one would use for a train stabbing and even thought that’s super unreasonable maybe it’s not that unreasonable because we have a lot of stabbings in proportion to other countries but also we have a low homicide rate

From: Me

Ah so you don’t just want to carpool for my charming company

From: Principal Emo

If you’re trying to be sarcastic let me just say your company is genuinely more charming than the motley crew of characters one would expect on the Towa to Tanegashima line at ten in the morning

From: Me

Even though my car has the same amount of places to hide knives?

From: Principal Emo

Yeah but those knives are for your purposes and not train stabbings

From: Me

My purposes?

From: Principal Emo

You know what I mean

From: Me

Yeah I do

Also

While I do not want to validate your fear of train stabbings via the association of an abrupt subject change

I’ve been meaning to say for a while that I am sorry that I don’t trust your detective work more often

Well I don’t know about more often

What I mean is

I think that you are a good detective

Even when you say stuff that obviously sounds stupid

And if I implied a different stance through my words or actions

Then I regret those words and/or actions

From: Principal Emo

What?

Oh are you talking about what you told me before I went to Paris

From: Me

Yeah

I mean I don’t think I’m in the wrong when I say clowns stealing toilets from the louvre is a stupid premise for a crime

But I guess criminals are stupider than popular media and common sense would lead me to believe

And I think I should have believed in you more

But also I think I was right that you need a vacation and you haven’t taken one yet and I think that’s not great for you either

From: Principal Emo

Oh um

I guess not?

From: Me

And Kaito told me you’re not allowed to chase the clowns anymore

So maybe you should take a break now

From: Principal Emo

Well

I feel like in a way following the DICE case was a break?

Because I essentially didn’t get any cases done the whole time I was working it

Which means I’ll have catching up to do when I get back to the office

From: Me

Not if I kill you first

From: Principal Emo

Sorry, we’ll have to fit that in later

If you kill me then I’ll be even more behind

From: Me

Your eyeballs better be behind your eyelids at 8pm today or else I’m taking them

From: Principal Emo

Taking what?

From: Me

Your eyeballs

From: Principal Emo

No I need those

From: Me

Then hide them because I’m coming for you

From: Principal Emo

Okay, maybe I’ll sleep a little tonight

From: Me

You better still be sleeping when I get to your house

I’ll be there 8:30

From: Principal Emo

Maki if you want me to sleep at 8pm then that means you want me to sleep for 12 and a half hours

From: Me

Did I fucking stutter

From: Principal Emo

<:( --- Kokichi Ouma's flight from the Malpensa Airport in Milan, Italy to the Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan was the first time he had ever been on a plane by himself. He had done that on purpose when organizing the flight groups yesterday. Ace and King had suggested that groups be made up of twos and threes to avoid "unnecessary danger," which Kokichi heard as avoiding "letting our boss eat paper and be in vents." Naturally Kokichi responded that it was a positively splendid suggestion, considering he had come up with it already, and he had obliged by it, organizing them into four groups with Kokichi's own group including Queen and Jack. Except somehow they had booked tickets for the wrong flight. Oooh noooo, how could that be? And Queen had been the one to book the tickets too…

Kokichi supposed that he hadn't quite thought this whole being on a plane alone thing all the way through when he was hacking into the airline's online ticket system last night. It seemed now, in the daylight of sitting in the window seat of aisle 22 watching the clouds stroll listlessly across the sky so that he wouldn't have to look at the lady next to him paint her toenails, that there was nothing overtly beneficial about the lack of a familiar audience to his exploits. Sure, it was nice that he could have his blue eyes white dragon on the plane with him in his pocket instead of hidden within the checked bags, but what was the point of it if there was no one to duel with?

Basically he was bored.

But also weirdly not motivated to do anything to end the boredom. Which seemed counterintuitive, because not being bored was his whole deal. Then again maybe having a whole deal was counterintuitive to his supposedly liquid personality. If he wanted to stir things up maybe he should indulge this part of himself that wanted to be boring because then that would vary from his constant need to not be boring, which in excess could be viewed as boring. Then again, changing things about his personality just to avoid an arbitrary standard of boring-ness would also be pretty boring, wouldn’t it?

He tried to think of what the Kokichi who didn't want to be bored with all of his being would do right now. Maybe he would turn around and just start picking apart the insecurities of miss "my toes need to be pink for the beach!" over here until she started crying and jumped out of the plane. Then again, he didn't trust his brain not to imprint onto the next person who had long eyelashes and who he thought might fuck up his whole deal if he let it wander free into the dangerous world of airplane small talk. Sure, he could steal something or break something or just cause some sort of problem on purpose, but, very concerningly, it didn't seem like he wanted to.

It just... seemed like a hassle right now, to think about things and scheme. If he was the maitre d' of mischief then what was the point of it if there wasn’t someone important's perceptions to attend to?

So his brain was left here, grasping at straws, rewatching episodes of Detective Conan in his head, and wondering where he went wrong with the whole dashing phantom thief thing.

It also felt like there was something he was supposed to be doing that he was forgetting to do but he didn't have a lot of time to think about it, what with the recently discovered antique fabregé egg being stolen from the Suzuki Modern Art Museum in Osaka and all. How did Kaitou Kid do it?

Oh, wait, Kokichi knew what this feeling reminded him of. It felt something like being twelve again. Back when DICE was just around a year old and they were still living in that apartment in Hokkaido. They were barely scraping by at that point. Spades and Clubs were in junior high, still seriously considering going back to the old home. All the other teens were still in highschool, except for King, who was just starting nursing school, and Ace still had their first job with that phony resume Kokichi made them. Wait, they hadn't even come up with their code names yet had they? Yeah, they still called him Ouma-sama back then.

That seemed kind of silly, looking back on it. While everyone was at school or work, Kokichi would stay in that little apartment and watch anime for hours, sometimes making nasty little bills disappear through some light, white collar crime. Well, it wasn't always anime he watched while committing tax fraud. Sometimes he would watch game shows or browse the internet while sending emails that would topple companies in just the right way so that rice cakes would be on sale the next week. He memorized a lot of different security detail layouts while lazing around and rerouting rubber horse mask deliveries to the CEO of the Towa corporation because their stupid TVs were too expensive. He also played a lot of video games. Like… a lot a lot. Most of his time was spent playing video games now that he thought of it...

Recalling those times now felt like looking down at half of a person. Or more like looking back at someone who didn't know he was a person yet.

Except now he was a person and he knew that he was one and he was on a plane by himself because he wanted to sulk defiantly. Wait sulk? Sulking? Was that what he was doing?

Well yeah, maybe he was a bit bummed about Saihara. He hadn't been able to think about that earlier because if he thought about the pit of disappointment sapping in the back of his head it might suck the rest of him in too and then he'd be no use to anyone. But now he was alone and it didn't matter how he felt about anybody and somehow he was still confused by it.

Maybe Saihara just wasn't the hot shit Kokichi thought he was. Actually, Kokichi was probably just being dumb for expecting more. Or, on the other hand, Saihara might just be doing things the right way. Tracking an internationally traveling thief through flight records was logical, but somehow knowing how the trick was done made it lose a little bit of magic. Or all of it, seeing as magic isn't real and all. Maybe Kokichi had just been excited by the possibility that Saihara had presented, and thus blew his minor deductive talent out of proportion.

Obviously whatever had made Saihara so interesting to him was of no consequence now, because the detective wouldn't be able to find them with his little method this time, what with DICE staggering out the ticket buying and all. He wasn't even going to leave a note to Interpol this time around. And so the semi-epic story of Shuichi v. Kokichi would end here.

Then Kokichi could just keep leading DICE in heists. Forever. He guessed. He didn't know, actually, what the long term plan was vis a vis their ever escalating chain of petty thefts. Bishop had said they made ¥2,000,000 this month. Kokichi didn't even know how much they had saved up in out of country bank accounts. It seemed like too much.

What was he supposed to say about that to DICE though? Ok guys, we’re making too much money actually, time to slow it down a bit and face the fact that we've wasted our young lives on being only mildly disruptive to but somehow somewhat supportive of the institution of capitalism.

Then what would happen after that?

When he started planning these heists, Kokichi had never really thought of an “after” to becoming an internationally wanted thief. He had seen it as the end goal. The destiny career.

How do you end that?

Maybe he should just pull a Ryo from GX except instead of a heart condition killing him he could just jump off a-

“Ladies and gentlemen,” The crackling voice of the Captain over the plane intercom interrupted the train of thought Kokichi was having as well as where he was in his mental Detective Conan Kaito Kid best hits Marathon, “As we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins. Thank you.”

Uh. What? This was a twelve hour flight and that sounded an awful lot like a landing announcement. Was the Captain on crack or someth-

Kokichi realized that the sky outside the window he had been spacing the fuck out through was dark now. Even more telling of the passage of time, though, was the fact that he was on episode 703 now, the train one where Kaitou Kid disguises himself as a maid.

In order to function like a real living person who experienced the passage of time, Kokichi banished anime from his brain.

Okay, not thinking about anime anymore… thinking instead about what to do when not on the plane….

Right, he was supposed to wait at the baggage claim until Rook, King, Queen and Jack’s flights came in. Then they would drive to the rendezvous in central Tokyo where they would meet the members who landed at Haneda instead of Narita. Then they would head to the JAXA launch site on one of the islands in the Kagoshima prefecture and Kokichi would lay out the heist plan he came up with on... the…. plane….

Oh... he forgot to do that, didn’t he?

…

See, who needed a nemesis when Kokichi had self foiling down to a science? --- Shuichi Saihara really meant to sleep last night. He really did. He went through the whole thing too, brushing his teeth, putting on a sleep t-shirt, and lying down in the bed. Yet somehow his brain never got the message that it was time to shut down.

Instead, it compulsively lit up with anxiety, which began dueling it out with the half hearted self reassurances he postulated to pretend he was coping.

The afternoon before, Shuichi had returned to the small building which served as his dual purpose home/office to find a slew of missed phone calls and letters. He spent three, gut-wrenchingly guilt-ridden hours sorting through everything from distress calls from potential clients, some well wishes from clients he had been following up with, and worst of all extremely distressed calls from clients he had failed to follow up with in wake of the DICE case.

He felt like the stupidest, most pathetic excuse for a detective on the face of the earth. He knew that he shouldn’t feel that way, but how could he not come to that conclusion with all the evidence that lay before him? Every call and letter was from a person that Shuichi had failed to help because he had somehow decided vainly pursuing international thieves was something only he could do. Maybe early on it had seemed like the logical step to pursue the thieves where interpol couldn’t. Shuichi had just come off of a big bust in the organized crime sector of Towa City, tracing back a series of revenge killings at the behest of a secretive swordswoman, and had been passively keeping up with the DICE case on the side. When he had managed to get his hands on one of the encoded letters sent to Interpol, he was certain DICE was going to hit the Smithsonian, so he and Kaito had gotten on a plane to America. And then they didn’t catch the thief and obviously that was Shuichi’s fault because the evidence was all in his hands if he had only been fast enough… So he got the next letter and pursued the thieves to Paris and he got even closer and when he failed it was even more obviously his fault because he should’ve been smart enough to notice an internationally wanted thief sitting literally right next to him. And then some how he had decided that? Stealing plane records was the next logical step? How did he even get there? It was so obviously over the line… But would he really have been satisfied, then, if he had just given up on the truth? Was he really satisfied now? He couldn’t possibly-

It didn’t matter whether he was satisfied or not. Not everything was about him. He had his own job to do here in Towa City and he had forgotten that for about a month and a half to chase after a group of essentially harmless thieves. There had been four murders in Towa City since then! And Shuichi knew that because four people had called him to investigate them! And Shuichi was aware that people would be calling him about violent crime! And he had seen the evidence that the thieves had a zero casualty count! And yet somehow he still had to have Agent Ishimaru spell it out for him that he should’ve just stayed home!

Okay he was freaking out a bit, things were fine. Interpol was going to take care of DICE now. It wasn't Shuichi's case. He needed to calm down. Stop trying to convince himself there was more to the case. Why would he think he knew the case best when he worked on it for less than half a hear? Interpol had been tracking criminal activity suspected of the organization for nearly a decade now. Then again maybe that was a point against interpol. What if they were in-

Stop! No! Not his case! Stop being suspicious!

Shuichi had other things to focus on now. He had managed to get into contact with most of the people who had left him messages, and to make up for lost time he had decided to try and take up a few cases at a time. Except contrary to his own self-conceited beliefs there were more detectives in Towa City than just him, and everyone who had called him about a case had managed to hire someone else already.

He tried to convince himself this was a good thing, as he lay awake at night. Everything was fine. He wasn’t failing anyone. There were so many other capable detectives in Towa city. No reason to be concerned.

Yeah, nobody needed him, the pathetic detective he was anyway. He hadn’t even managed to get close to catching DICE’s leader, let alone the nine other members of the group…

Well maybe he had gotten pretty close. He remembered grappling with the thief in Taipei and Milan. The close contact with the pilferer of his pursuit only made Shuichi’s own incompetence more frustrating, his mistakes made more obvious in the light of hindsight.

He really wanted to know why-

Not his case. God what an idiot. What had Dr. Iruma diagnosed him with after the thief escaped? Ah that’s right, shit for brains.

… That reminded him, he should follow up with the Idabashi labs people. He had gotten so caught up in making sure he stayed on DICE’s tail that he forgot to even perform the most basic courtesy in his practice as a detective. Being able to check up with clients, bystanders, and victims without risking a witness tampering charge was one of the main benefits of being a private detective versus being a police detective. When he had started his private practice Shuichi had promised himself that now that he could put the people involved in a case before the case itself he would do so to the best of his ability. He usually took much better care to address concerns of breaking and entering victims, what had he been thinking leaving the labs immediately to pursue DICE? Dr. Iruma had still been uncertain if her friend would recover from being shut down right in front of her! Shuichi was shocked at his own behavior. It was the kind of awful thing he would have pulled as a reckless teen detective, pursuing the truth without regard for who he accused or lied to along the way. The resurfacing of this behavior seemed appalling to him now.

He should call Idabashi labs right away to apologize.

It was this thought that finally stirred him from his half-awake stupor at 4 AM. At realizing the time, the part of Shuichi’s brain that was still capable of higher reasoning decided that calling would be rather rude at the hour, but he was too anxious he’d forget to call at all if he postponed now to abandon the idea altogether. In compromise, he took out his laptop and began drafting a letter to Dr. Iruma instead, expressing his regrets and apologies of every little thing he could think of. The broken windows, the used bomb, the cup of coffee he had made in her kitchen without asking…

He was typing and retyping the sign off at the end of the letter (Sincerely was a good stand bye but not very personal? Concernedly? Too personal. Thank you for your time? Ugh not the right tone) when he heard the knock at the door.

Shuichi blinked, breaking the trance-like state that he now realized had led him to write a four page letter. He looked at the grandfather clock on his mantle. It read 10:31 AM. Which meant it was actually 8:27 AM because that clock was 2 hours and 4 minutes fast and Shuichi was too afraid he might break it to try and fix it.

Maki had promised to pick him up at 8:30 so by process of logical deduction Shuichi could safely assume that it was her outside, coming to bully him for being sleep deprived.

Sure enough, the sound of the spare key he’d given her and Kaito could be heard jiggling in the door knob. Maki opened the door.

The desk Shuichi was working at was in his client reception area, which was unfortunately immediately in view of anyone opening the door. Maki locked eyes with him almost instantly, and the look in hers was that of disappointment.

“And here I was thinking you might actually be asleep.”

“Uh. Sorry.” Shuichi said, closing his laptop. Then he opened it again. “Hey if you were apologizing to someone for not catching a burglar in their home/place of work and then leaving while their friend was sick so that you could chase said crook to another continent, would you sign the letter ‘sincerely’ or with something more like ‘once more expressing deepest apologies...”

Maki frowned, coming in and closing the door. “I’m not good at apologies. Those both sound polite but, knowing you, you probably didn't do something you would actually need that level of politeness to apologize for.”

“Um.” Shuichi went with ‘deepest apologies, -Shuichi Saihara.’ “Better safe than sorry?” He hit print. The printer his laptop was connected to was upstairs in the office where he kept his case files, so he had to run up the stairs to grab the printed letter.

Maki, seeming to sense he was going to need a second to put his four page letter in an envelope, sighed and came into the building from the entryway. She took off her shoes, heading towards the kitchen in the next room over.

When Shuichi got back down stairs with his four page apology letter safely tucked away in an envelope with a nice international stamp on it, he came into the kitchen to find Maki unplugging his coffee maker.

Both took a moment to register what one another was holding in their hands. Then they both frowned disapprovingly.

“Maki come on…” Shuichi protested weakly. “I don’t want to fall asleep at the JAXA open house.”

“Shuichi you’re at ten-page-apology-letter crazy right now and you think caffeine is going to help you?”

“Yes.” Uh. Wait. Was that healthy? “Maybe.” Probably not. “It’s only four pages.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Okay Shuichi was not on the winning side of logic here that much was clear. But still…

“Okay you win.” Shuichi relented, moving toward the kitchen counter as if to set down the envelope in his hands.

The second he dropped it, he made a mad lunge for the coffee maker cord. Maki effortlessly pulled it out of the way and grabbed his wrist, twisting him into a lock and then bringing him to a pin on the ground.

“What was the plan there?” She asked. Was it just him or did she sound bemused? He couldn’t really look at her face to garner her expression because his own face was currently smashed against the tile of his own kitchen.

“No plan.” Shuichi admitted through a mouthful of the floor. “Only caffeine withdrawal.”

“Okay.” Shuichi felt his center of gravity flip once more, “You’re sleeping in the car.” Shuichi realized that Maki had scooped him up into a princess carry too late to actually do anything about it.

“Hey!” Shuichi protested, a little indignant.

Being close friends with Maki Harukawa came with the knowledge that you were going to be treated like you weighed less than a ragdoll from time to time. She had a tendency to muscle her way through social interactions if at all possible. Her significant other just gave her a compliment she didn’t know how to deal with? Punch him. That guy at work wouldn’t stop talking to her about his fucking car? Walk through a door and close it in his face if he tries to follow. Her best friend wants to make a series of regrettable decisions? Physically prevent him from doing so because he is easier to lift than a handful of grapes.

Shuichi had been friends with Maki for about seven years now, and he knew this all well enough, but that didn’t mean he had to go down without a fight. “Maki I have to get my letter to the-”

“Shuichi when you get back to that letter tomorrow morning you’ll be embarrassed you even wrote it.”

Okay, maybe Shuichi would go down without a fight. Maki made a good point, Shuichi was very often embarrassed by things he himself did while off his daily recommended prescription of z’s and or caffeine.

“Okay! I give! You’re right.”

“I know.” Maki had gotten to the front door and seemed to be puzzling out how to open it with her elbow.

“Here I can walk by myself.” Shuichi made a move to roll out of Maki’s arms, but she was still gripping his shoulder in place.

“Walk to the car by yourself or walk to your kitchen and feed your caffeine addiction?” She looked down at him with a stern expression that implied only one correct answer.

“The car.” Shuichi relented.

“Alright then.”

Maki set him down and opened the door while he grabbed his coat from the closet.

She gave him another look.

“What is it?” Shuichi thought she was scrutinizing his appearance, so he mentally did the same. “Oh! I forgot to do my eyes-” Today his morning routine had been: get out of bed, go to computer, write apology letter, whereas usually it went: get out of bed, apply eyeliner, worry about inadequacies, drink coffee, feel marginally better. Shuichi had skipped the second step, and he was about to rush to the bathroom to correct it, but Maki grabbed his arm.

“Shuichi we’re going to Tanegashima in August. It’s 30 degrees there. Your eyes are going to melt. Along with the rest of you.”

Shuichi took a moment to realize that Maki herself was wearing shorts and a loose aloha shirt. Meanwhile he was standing here in his baggy sleep t-shirt, skinny jeans, and black trenchcoat.

“Uh.” Shuichi took off his coat and tied it around his waist. “Better?”

“Hmph.” Maki grumbled, walking out onto the sidewalk. “If you die of heatstroke on the way there, I’m not going to your funeral.”

“Not even if Kaito went?” Shuichi followed, locking the door behind him.

“Especially not if Kaito went.” Maki pulled out her keys and unlocked her car, which was parallel parked on the street by Shuichi’s office. “He’d cry like a baby. It would be insufferable.”

Maki’s car was an old black honda that always smelled a little like burnt sugar. With Maki, Shuichi couldn't be sure if the smell came from a baking mishap or the trace of nitroglycerin from a recently fired gun. It was probably both. On hot days the air inside was unbearably warm until the AC was turned on for at least a minute, because the seats were made of a dark, greasy pleather sort of thing that made it its mission to absorb as much heat as possible. Shuichi had a distinct memory of pressing his face against the material to avoid being shot from behind. In fact he sort of had a slideshow of bad memories associated with riding in this car on various high stake chases or on the approach of even more stressful social situations. Yet despite all that, the second Shuichi settled into the passenger seat and pulled the seat belt over himself, he felt more at home than he had pulling up the covers when he’d been trying to sleep last night.

What happened next was embarrassingly predictable. From Shuichi’s point of view it seemed like Maki started the car, he closed his eyes, and then when he opened them his face was pressed against the window and he could see the Towa Bridge Expressway zooming past him.

The road was on the upper side of one of the bridges Towa Corp had built about a decade ago connecting Islands like Tanegashima, Yakushima, and Towa City to the mainland. On the underside of the bridges were bullet trains that ran underwater between the islands.

Regardless of this, all roads feel the same under the wheels of a car you forget falling asleep in.

“Hghh.” Shuichi was half aware that his throat was the thing that just made that noise.

“Wow you got a whole REM cycle in there.” Maki seemed to hear his rooster cry of wakefulness despite the interference of some sort of j-pop song coming out of the car speakers. As Shuichi’s eyes adjusted to the pale daylight stinging his retinas, he could make out that his friend had her eyes fixed on the road. “That must be a new record.”

“If you’re gonna-” Shuichi realized his speech was muffled and that it was because his face was still against the window. He made an effort to sit up straight and started his sentence again, unobstructed. “If you’re going to make fun of me for sleeping the same as not sleeping then why should I even bother?”

“Because your health is your health and that isn’t beholden to my judgement.”

“Everything about me is beholden to judgement.” Shuichi muttered, still thinking miserably about his poor uncle’s good name, which he was most certainly running into the ground by having the office closed for another day. He was working a sum total of NO cases right now. Maybe he should write his uncle an apology letter too. Then again he wouldn’t want to bother him in his retirement… Who would want to have their nice day interrupted by their whining nephew? No one.

“Yeah, you should fix that.” Apparently driving for an hour and a half hadn’t changed Maki’s stance. She still had biting comments about his poor self esteem at the ready.

“Hghk.” Shuichi replied eloquently.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Maki muttered in reply.

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing." Maki replied a little too quickly. She was chewing her lip. After a moment of thought she went on. "Well I guess it means something. But I'm still trying to wrap my head around it and I don't want to tell you until I have it phrased right in my mind."

"Hm. Okay."

Shuichi tried to regain faculty over his higher social functions in an attempt to discern what Maki was upset about and to make sure it wasn’t anything that he did. But while he was performing this heroic feat he closed his eyes on accident and then when he opened them again Maki was parking, presumably on the campus of the Tanegashima Space Center.

Shuichi groaned, now finding himself leaned in the opposite direction of the window. “Why does it feel like the part of my brain that produces melatonin is always waiting to get me by surprise?”

“Because you keep trying to drown it in caffeine,” Maki replied readily, seeming to have lost her contemplative mood after another hour of driving, “it’s fighting for it’s life, of course it’s going to use guerilla tactics.”

Shuichi shook the feeling back into his legs as Maki pulled into a spot. He remembered when he used to drive a lot more. When he was on the force he had access to a police cruiser, but nowadays Shuichi had trouble driving a car while he was on his own. He kept having intrusive thoughts about accidentally hitting pedestrians. A lot of grisly murders happened like that. Even now he could picture that guy whose head had been crushed under the wheel of a yakuza boss’s car…

“Come on, we haven’t got all day.” Maki tapped him in the arm with her fist, then got out of the car. Shuichi was going to follow suit, but he paused to check himself for eye crusties in the pull down mirror. He had just regained the mental capacity to remember he didn’t put on his eyeliner and now it was time to be anxious about his appearance again. Well, at least this would probably go better than the last time he encountered a social situation without doing his eyes. He really thought he’d be safe going to ask Keebo about the wi-fi, but he had managed to stumble into a robbery in process, which had then turned into a hostage situation, which had then turned into an all night police investigation and journalists tried to talk to him again and then Dr. Iruma was doing robot surgery and he got chewed out by Ishimaru again and-

“Shuichi?” Maki had ducked her head back into the car. “Are you coming?”

Shuichi startled out his internal anxiety tirade. “Y-yeah! Sorry.” He shut the mirror and opened the door of the car. It took a second to untangle his coat from the seatbelt, but he managed to get out and retie it around his waist.

“Hey…” Maki had locked the car and come around to his side. Her eyebrows were furrowed. “Are you alright?”

“What?” Shuichi blinked. Did he really look that bad? “No, yeah, I’m fine.” It only occurred to him he was kind of lying for no reason after he said it. “I mean, well. I’m just like. Embarrassed about not being able to see that case I was doing through all the way to the end. Like, I’m thinking about all the ways I messed it up, you know?”

Maki nodded. “Yeah. I feel that way too. About my own stuff. Sometimes. A lot of times. Actually.” Her fingers tangled into a strand of her hair. “But… Well, you know what he would say about it already, don’t you?”

Oh yeah. “Probably something like… the past is the past. What really matters is what you do now.” Just thinking about what Kaito would say made him feel better... He shook his head. “I really should just get ‘what would Kaito do’ tattooed on my brain…”

“Yeah, as long as you’re not in a haunted house.” Maki pointed out.

Shuichi laughed. “Yeah… I guess so…”

Maki looked down at her feet, still carding her hands through her hair.

“I’m… Going to miss him.” She confessed.

Shuichi suddenly felt extremely guilty. Here Maki was trying to keep his anxiety from preventing the performance of his every day functions and he had totally neglected to consider she was going through a lot right now too. Shuichi knew that Kaito had been a lifeline for Maki for a long time, and even though she was in a much better place now Shuichi would be much less of an awful friend if he had realized how much harder Kaito’s absence would hit her.

“What’s with that expression?” She muttered. Shuichi realized he was making a very fretful face. “Ugh. Nevermind, talking about this is pointless anyway…”

“It’s not pointless!” Shuichi rebutted quickly. “Of course you’ll miss Kaito. Talking about your feelings is an important step in processing them… And you know I want to be here for you if you ever need that. I’m your friend.”

“Yeah.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “I know.” She was chewing her lip again. “Uh. Thanks. Sorry if I’ve been kind of… mother henning you today. It��s just. I don’t want to be… Alone again.”

Now Shuichi really felt like a bad friend. “Oh, Maki-”

Shuichi was interrupted by the 2012 song ‘Space Unicorn’ blasting from Maki’s phone. Whenever Shuichi heard that song, it reminded him of udon noodle soup, because that’s what he’d been eating in the college cafeteria when Kaito set it as his ringtone in Maki’s phone.

“Ugh. I hate that song.” Maki took the phone out of her pocket. “We’ll talk later.” She told Shuichi, before answering the call.

“What is it.” Shuichi overheard Maki’s side of the conversation. “We just parked… Yeah… Where?... That’s troublesome… I’m kidding… Ok, see you there… Gross.”

She hung up.

“He says he’s waiting for us by the bus terminal at the museum. Which is on the other side of the campus.”

Oh, Kaito… “It’s like he’s making us run laps again…”

“I’ll try not to leave you behind.” Maki offered, kindly.

“Hey, maybe I’ll be able to keep pace…” Shuichi postulated. “I’ve been in a lot of chases recently.”

“You won’t be.” Maki said, already jogging in place.

“I’ll try my best…” Shuichi promised. --- Kokichi Ouma found himself wondering where exactly that big old brain of his had wandered off to. He knew that by all accounts he was very good at coming up with plans on the fly. Yet for some reason the performance of the actual organ that processed his mental functions was lacking at the moment. Like it didn’t know it was supposed to be the brain of an internationally wanted criminal today. Spontaneity was supposed to mean fun for him, but for some reason this whole build a plane plan seemed more like a point of stress than anything else. Which was weird because Kokichi didn’t usually get stressed. There was just something about this heist that he wasn’t looking forward to and he couldn’t identify what exactly it was or how exactly he was supposed to get around it.

Kokichi was still trying to halfass his way to a half decent plan when DICE reunited in Tokyo. And on the drive down to the Kagoshima prefecture he had more than enough time to think about a plan. In fact he had another 15 hours. And he just… Didn’t. He just didn’t think of a plan. He just sat around pretending to be sociable and analyzing the rest of the group’s conversations and sleeping habits. He thought that maybe he was anxious about them scheming behind his back again, but realizing that he was anxious should have made the being anxious go away, so he decided that it wasn’t that.

So when they finally did arrive at the Tanegashima Space Center in their stolen Space Center Tour bus the next morning and everyone huddled in the backmost rows of seats to hear what exactly the plan was, Kokichi had to pause for a second.

Uh. Okay. Plan time.

“You may not have noticed,” Kokichi started off after compiling some observations in his head, “But there’s an open house happening at this facility for JAXA employees and family members right now. We’re going to capitalize on that for our fakeout heist, which will be centered around the museum’s gift shop.” Right because the open house wouldn’t let them have access to the non-touristy shit. “Rook, King, Bishop, you’re going to be on that.” Ugh that wasn’t very detailed. “The fake mark is…” Fuck think of something stupid. “As many of those freeze-dried ice cream things as you can carry.” Okay that left him with 7 pieces for the real heist. “Jack, Clubs, Spades you’re on floor duty, make sure to call in suspicious personnel, we have the map of the space center in the heist planning chat.” He had remembered to do that much at least. “So spread out as much as you can.” Four pieces. “Queen, you know what you need. Get Ace to handle transport.” Should he really be delegating that much power to Queen after his little upstart? Or did it just show insecurity to not trust him? Too late to contemplate. “When you get back to the bus, text us and then take off ASAP.” The jet engine would take up most of the tour bus, so they had to get an alternative means of escape. “Hearts, you and I are going to disable security systems and get the secondary escape car.” That was something he knew how to do at least. “Any questions.”

Kokichi would usually expect a hearty “No sir!” to that concluding statement, but instead he observed a smattering of queer looks from the car full of clowns.

Hearts was the first to pipe up. “Uh, boss, your plan for disabling the security system wouldn’t happen to involve getting into the vents, would it?”

“Yeah.” There wasn’t really a better way to covertly sneak around a facility like this when their identities may be compromised. “What about it?”

Kokichi really didn’t have time for Hearts’s whole ‘I don’t like getting vent dust on my white uniform’ thing. He would just pretend like the whole group misheard him and he assigned her to ground duty in the first place if she said she wanted to swap-

“No, I just think maybe I could handle the security system myself.” Oh. That was a new one. “There’s not really a need for you to... You know, risk yourself.”

Kokichi was suddenly made aware of the bandage that was still wrapped around his forehead. He consciously resisted the urge to graze his hand over it. He didn’t want to play into the whole damaged goods bullshit that was going on right now in terms of how his subordinates were viewing him. Then again maybe that’s exactly what he should do…

“Believe me, I’ve considered the consequences,” Kokichi compelled himself to shed a single tear, clenching his fist like a shounen anime protagonist. “And though I may be suffering great pain and personal injury… I’ll risk it if it means not letting my friends down…”

Queen rolled his eyes, seeming to buy Kokichi’s bit, but Hearts still looked concerned, and now King was getting ready to add his two cents.

“Uh, Boss.” Ugh him and his stupid Nurse’s license, “It’s really fine if you wanna stay back…” Maybe if Kokichi cried he could derail this? “Your head is still healing and if, you know, an accident happens, you could re-open it and then we might have to suture...”

No, crying would just make him look worse now. The power dynamic would make it look like he was trying to convince King to let him go on the heist, which didn’t make sense at all. Maybe he could slot himself into a different group? No, most elements of this plan involved being in civilian wear and that’d just remind his crew about that time he just casually let a detective get a police sketch done of him like one of his french girls. Besides, he didn’t strictly need to participate in every step of this heist anyway. Kokichi’s real goal here was to maintain the idea in his subordinates’ minds that he was not a twerp trying to find the most unreliable time to bleed out. Hmm, okay, let’s go with this then.

Kokichi flashed an incredulous grin before smothering it into an exaggerated damsel expression. “Oh,,, I hate to admit it, but you’re so right, King.” He leaned over dramatically, “Every second is torture in this frail body of mine, it’s taking all my strength just to stand here before you!” He wasn’t standing but that was probably the easiest thing he was lying about right now, “I guess I’ll just have to.. Stay here, and.. Regain my strength… While you guys do all the work.” He pulled out the handkerchief he just remembered he had and was going to blow his nose into it before he remembered at the last second it wasn’t his handkerchief. He settled for a grotesque imitation of blowing his nose instead. He lay down across the back seat in a faint. “Ohh, alas, I fear I am not long for this world…”

   “I vote we leave him here to die.” Jack bought in, rolling her eyes.

   “I second the motion.” That was Queen, and yeah, Kokichi had expected that much.

   “Hey, since when is this a democracy?” Kokichi sat up, adjusting the fluidity of his motions to reflect perfect health once more.

   “Since our boss died,” Jack wiped away a fake tear with her finger. “I miss him every day… Sometimes I even hear his voice…”

Kokichi tossed aside the handkerchief and took a bag of chips out from the seat in front of him where he had seen Bishop stash them earlier. He poured the chips into his own lap and then crumbled up the bag into a ball before throwing it at Jack’s face.

Jack, in turn, batted it away, and it hit Spades, who caught it and threw it back at Jack, who dodged, which led the bag to hit Rook instead. Rook picked it up and got ready to throw it again, but Hearts took it out of their hands, leading to Rook just throwing air at Clubs, who squealed despite nothing actually hitting him and jumped out of his seat.

Okay, success. Concern about Kokichi’s injuries had all but dissipated as Club’s reaction got a smattering of giggles.

“Wow,” He remarked to Hearts, who was still holding the crumpled chip bag. “I’m sure a dove of peace such as yourself can handle the security system all on your lonesome.” He gestured to his lap, which was still covered in chips. “As you see I have other business to attend to.” He picked up one of the chips and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly. When he finished the first chip he issued his final direction. “You guys better get started on your assignments. I’ll be here when you need to hijack the second getaway car.”

“Yes, Boss!” Most of his crew said the words more for their ritualistic purpose of ending the team huddle rather than out of genuine enthusiasm. They collected their gear, mostly stored in beach bags and casual purses, and filtered out of the van one by one. Everyone was still in their civilian clothing, so they’d blend right in with the crowds of tourists and open-house-goers.

And then Kokichi was alone again. Except instead of a plane he was on a tour bus. Eating chips off his lap. He got through them in about four minutes, which he estimated was about how long it would take DICE to get out of sight’s distance from the bus. When that time had passed, he licked the remaining salt and grease of his fingers and then stood up, brushing chip crumbs off his lap. Once he was clean, he picked up the handkerchief he had thrown aside earlier. He folded it up along the crease lines into a square, and put it in his pocket again. He convinced himself it was just because he wanted something to do.

He went up to the driver’s seat, sitting down. He didn’t have his license to drive a normal car, let alone a bus, but it didn’t really matter because the bus’s windows were reflective from the outside. They had parked the tour bus close to the entrance in the bus lane, so Kokichi had a good view of the people coming and going from the space center. If he had put any effort into this plan at all, he might’ve stationed Club or Spade here as a look out. Well, he guessed he was the look out now. Hah. Great.

….

BORED. He was bored again. Hgghghgfffkk.

He considered hitting his head against the horn of the car just to do something and by “considered” he meant he tried to actually do it but missed and almost hit his head on the dashboard before stopping and realizing that was a bad idea. For one, honking the horn would just make the vehicle look conspicuous, which was not ideal for a getaway car. And then there was also the fact that his plan had needlessly included bashing his head again which could open his cut and just cause a big hassle when King got back with his whole ‘I’m a licensed practical nurse’ thing he had going on.

So, okay. No horn honking. Right.

Kokichi took out his phone and checked Discord. The channel for heists had no new notifications. He put his phone away again.

God he was going to die in here. Wow, needy much? Shut up brain. Um.

Kokichi leaned over, smushing his chin against the dashboard, and occupied himself by looking at the passersby and picking out random details to build conspiracies about them. That guy’s shirt was untucked, untucked had eight letters in it, magic eight balls could see the future, eight balls were round, you know what else is round? An eyeball. Illuminati, natch. Next. That woman’s achilles tendon was chapped even though she was wearing sandals, which meant she wore heels a lot. Heel was something you said to train a dog. Who was trying to train the human race like dogs? The Illuminati. Next. That guy had really ugly hair. Looked like he used a lot of gel. Gel has three- wait, what?

Kokichi recognized that dumb hair style. It was almost like… No, it couldn’t be. The guy who had been with Saihara at the Smithsonian. What?

Kokichi didn’t let himself get excited until he spotted the slightly less dumb and slightly more familiar haircut on the guy standing next to him.

There was Shuichi Saihara, who was, apparently, the best detective in the world. Also, he was wearing a T-shirt, which was hilarious because he usually wore business casual button ups under his dark trench coat. Kokichi could see his arms, which were-

Wait, no, forget about his arms. How did any part of him even get here? How did he know? There wasn’t any way- Did he lie? HE LIED TO INTERPOL.

Wow, Saihara had more balls than Kokichi had originally anticipated. He should get out there and tickle them a little.

Kokichi started reformulating everything he had originally thought about this heist. If Saihara was going to buy into the phony heist he would have to get into the mix himself. How much would the detective have learned from their last bout in Milan? He knew about Kokichi’s head injury, surely. Kokichi stood up and headed for the door out of the bus. He would have to make his approach subtly, but the buffoon probably wouldn’t be much trouble to deal with. If anything he might make Saihara easier to trick. They were on the move, Kokichi would have to catch up. Was that woman in the hawaiian button up with them too? Yeah, it seemed like it. When she paused to look around, they paused too, looking back, presumably to see what was keeping her. Her eyes were scanning the crowd like she was some kind of terminator bot or something-

Every part of Kokichi froze when that gaze slipped past his.

He saw her face in that moment. Blunt brunette bangs. A dark birthmark. Blood red eyes.

For one shallow breath, a metallic tang poisoned the air in his lungs.

The eyes glanced unnotably over the JAXA tour bus. And then the red woman just... turned and walked away.

Saihara followed her into the building.

Kokichi sat back down.

…

…

What the fuck was she doing here. --- Shuichi Saihara’s best, it turned out, was most certainly not enough to keep pace with Maki Harukawa in a run across the Tanegashima Space Center’s beautiful green campus. Shuichi had plenty of time to admire that beautiful green color the grass had as he stood doubled over trying to catch his breath in front of the center’s main entrance.

Maki was standing by Kaito, breathing perfectly fine with only a modest sheen on her forehead as evidence of the run. Meanwhile, Shuichi was over here sweating through his t-shirt and trying not to let his lungs burst.

“Is he okay?” Kaito not so quietly whispered to Maki.

“He will be.” Maki replied, “He’s just an idiot who decided black skinny jeans were the way to go even though it’s the middle of the sunny season…”

“In my… Defense…” Shuichi panted out between gulps of air. “I didn’t… know… I’d be… running…  today…”

“Hey man, sweat’s just another word for hard work.” Kaito claimed, coming over to pat Shuichi on the back. “Awesome effort, sidekick.”

“Thanks… Kaito…” Shuichi was still trying to suppress his aching lungs into a normal pattern of breathing.

“Hold your hands over your head.” Maki advised, “It’ll open up your chest.”

Oh right, right. Shuichi should know that by now. He moved up from his hands-on-knees-to-make-sure-he-didn’t-fall-over position to one where his arms were up with his hands on his head. Immediately he found breathing easier, although the air was just as hot and stifling as before.

“You know,” Maki was looking at Kaito now. “We wouldn’t have had to run if you had been more specific before I paid for the parking permit… You said you wanted to show us the launch spectation sites, so our car is parked all the way out there...”

“Well, yeah, I did say that…” Kaito was characteristically unflustered by the accusation, “but, then I realized it would be better to show you guys the museum building first! This way we can take our time looking at the launch viewing sites without having to worry if the museum will be open or not later...”

Shuichi wondered if that was just an excuse for Kaito changing his mind about hiking when he realized how hot it was today.  Kaito had a tendency to be a little unreliable when it came to making plans with friends, but then again Shuichi also had a tendency to forgive him for that.

Maki usually did not. So when Maki just sighed and shook her head, Shuichi took that as a signal to let Kaito off the hook on this one.

…

It was so strange to think that in just another week, Shuichi wouldn’t be able to make any plans with Kaito at all…

Ugh. He shouldn’t think about that right now.

“Hey, what’s with the sour looks, you two?” Kaito’s words made Shuichi aware of his own conflicted expression, “Come on, I know what’ll cheer you up!” Kaito turned, walking towards the entrance and gesturing for them to follow him with a sweeping arm movement.

Shichi complied, but stopped when he noticed Maki wasn’t moving with them.

Instead, she was scanning the parking lot behind them with a dangerous look in her eyes…

“... Maki?” Shuichi asked hesitantly.

She didn’t seem to register him, but Kaito did, turning back around.

“Is something the matter, Maki Roll?” He called.

That seemed to snap her out of it. “It’s nothing.” She shook her head and started walking into the building. “Let’s go inside.”

“Hey, what’d I say about secrets?” Kaito confronted her, but he followed her through the doors anyway, Shuichi not far behind him.

“I never agreed to that…” Maki muttered, still walking. “But it really isn’t anything. I just felt like someone was watching us out there…”

Shuichi felt a chill go down his spine. He had also felt something off, but he thought it was just a him thing. He had been seeing the faces of DICE in random passerby ever since he touched down in Tokyo and it was setting him on edge even though he knew his suspicions were completely unsubstantiated. In fact there had been that big tour group of 9 or 8 people that passed them by while they were at the entrance... Could-

“Oh well, they probably were,” Kaito shrugged, “You know, I’m a famous astronaut and all.”

Oh. Yeah. Duh. Maybe the chill Shuichi had felt was just the museum’s AC …

“That isn’t…” Maki cut herself off, seeming to think better of whatever she had been about to say. “You’re probably right. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“Alrighty, whatever you say, Maki Roll.” Kaito moved forward as if the issue was entirely settled and had maybe never been unsettled in the first place. “Now come on! I want to show you something!”

What Kaito had wanted to show them turned out to be a series of star maps that were up for display as a promotion for the upcoming launch. Included were larger infographics about which lights in the sky were actually satellites, but those weren’t what Kaito was interested in.

“Look!” He exclaimed, pointing at a section of one of the maps, “Right here! What do you see?”

“Stars?” Maki asked, looking mildly amused by her boyfriend’s enthusiasm.

“Well, yes but…”

“Oh!” Shuichi exclaimed, now pointing as well. “I recognize this one! It’s the beard of despair!”

He was pointing to a circle of stars that he and Maki had named after the cheek to cheek beard Kaito came back from his winter break with in their last year at Towa Community College.

“Hey, that’s right!” Maki exclaimed.

“Why is that the only one you guys remember…” Kaito grumbled.

Come to think about it, a lot of the stars looked familiar… “Are these the stars that appear over TCC?”

“Well, it varies depending on the season, but yeah that’s what we were looking at most of the time!”

Shuichi was overcome with a wave of nostalgia. He first met Maki and Kaito when he had been doing the mandatory two years of training it took to become a Towa City police officer after he had passed the national exam. He had been disillusioned with a future in his uncle’s practice because the idea of getting paid to dig up dirt had skeezed him out, not to mention that he still had huge doubts about his own ability as a detective to earn a living off of it. A police detective had seemed like a more secure, if more restricting, job than private detective work.

Well, maybe it was more accurate to say that Kaito had met Maki and Shuichi and then decided they were all going to be friends because he said so. He used to make them meet him in the school court yard every night after dark to do exercises of various kinds. Sometimes they put aside exercise in lieu of star gazing when Kaito was in the mood.

“Hey, do you remember when Kaito told us which planets he thought were most like us?” Maki asked Shuichi, probably remembering the same times he was, “And when we asked him what planet he was, he said the sun?”

Shuichi squinted. “Oh yeah… I think I remember…” he vaguely recalled thinking that the planet Kaito assigned him was weird, but he didn’t remember why or which planet it was.

“Well, now that I know more about space and stuff, I think he was right.”

“Aww… Maki Roll.”

She smiled a little. “Yeah… The sun is a big ball of gas, just like him.”

“Hey!” Kaito smacked his chest, acting as if taken aback, but Shuichi was pretty sure he was secretly delighted that Maki admitted to knowing more about space now.

Maki laughed, “This is what you get for talking about astronomy every night…”

Shuichi remarked to himself how long it had taken for Maki’s laugh to seem commonplace in a conversation. She was really a lot more open then she had been when they spent those first few nights under the stars. It was understandable, though, considering…

“Which planets did you say we were again?” Shuichi found himself asking.

“Hm?” Kaito paused, squinting for a second in thought. “Uh… I’m pretty sure it was…”

“You said I was Mars,” Maki supplied, “And I think Shuichi was Venus.”

“Oh yeah!” Kaito made a sort of ‘That’s it!’ gesture with his palm and fist, “Maki was Mars because she tried to seem dry and uninhabitable, but there was definitely a frozen ocean in there somewhere, and Shuichi, you were Venus, because even though you thought you tried to blend in with the stars all the time, sometimes you could appear in the day as a second sun!”

Huh. That was pretty nice to say, but Shuichi wasn’t sure it was what he remembered…

“Oh, wait.” Maki interjected, “Didn’t you say something else last time?”

“Hm?” Kaito put on his ‘I’m remembering something’ face again. “Did I say… Oh yeah!” He laughed. “I said Venus suited Shuichi because Venus is the goddess of love and Shuichi’s clients keep falling in love with him!”

Shuichi suddenly remembered exactly why he had been so offended by Kaito’s characterization of him all those years ago.

Maki gave him a bemused look, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the face you made last time too...”

“Yeah, that’s because it’s a really weird thing to say about my clients Kaito…”

“Oh yeah?” Kaito grinned now that he wasn’t the one being teased, “You can’t say I’m really wrong though, bro…”

Shuichi shook his head, “A detective can’t think that way about his clients! It’s exploitative!”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t stop them from thinking that way about you…” Maki pointed out.

“I- What- Maki-” Shuichi did not want to talk about this actually, he turned to Kaito hoping for some kind of escape, but his so-called friend just shook his head.

“You gotta face facts some time, Shuichi. You’re a heart-throb!”

“I don’t know what you mean…” Shuichi was finding that there was nowhere to hide his face and he cursed himself for letting Kaede talk him out of wearing his hat again.

“What about that girl who gave you chocolates?”

Oh, why had he told Maki that story?

“They were just for gratitude-”

“What about the guy who invited you on his yacht?”

Maybe asking his friends to help him out on cases all these years had been a mistake…

“That was to set up a trap for the-”

“The person who asked you out for dinner?”

Hghk.

“That was only to meet another contact-” “But then the contact didn’t show up and it was just the two of you.”

“They got in a car accident!”

What about the guy who pretended to be your husband on a plane? His own brain supplied rather unhelpfully.

*Bweeeeoop* *Bweeeeoop* *Bweeeeoop*

Shuichi had never been so grateful to hear an alarm sound off in his entire life.

Maki and Kaito stopped railing into him, looking around as if to see where the noise was coming from.

“I didn’t even know we had one of those…” Kaito muttered, barely audible over the continuing beep of the alarm. “I’m going to go ask someone what’s going on.” He declared, before storming off into a door marked ‘employees only.’

Maki, seemingly unperturbed by the sign, was about to follow him, but Shuichi grabbed her arm.

“Wait,” He said, retracing his own memory, “Come with me, please.”

“What?” She looked at him like he was crazy. “Where are you going?”

“Somewhere I’m more likely to get in a fight than Kaito…” Under scrutiny, Shuichi found that he didn’t recall seeing that group of suspicious tourists among the exhibits… They disappeared at the entrance, which was by the...

Shuichi started making a beeline for the gift shop, untying his coat and wrestling it onto his shoulders as he went.

“You two are so high maintenance…” Maki grumbled, following him nonetheless.

Sure, Shuichi had thought his gift shop theory was pretty on point, but when he got to the doorway of said gift shop the cartoonishly big mallet coming down over his head took him by surprise.

Maki grabbed him, pulling him back just in time. “Watch where you’re going, idiot.” She scolded him before grabbing the hammer and pulling it out of the hands holding it, which were the gloved hands of, you guessed it, a clown with a checkered scarf, standing over the doorway and poised to pounce.

This wasn’t one of the DICE members Shuichi recognized, but it seemed that they recognized him.

“What the hell is this guy doing here?” They called back into the shop, where Shuichi realized two other DICE members were shoving freeze dried ice cream into a bag, before diving down and trying to sweep Maki’s feet from under her. Maki jumped up and tried to use the gravity of her dodge to kick the clown in the head, but the clown rolled away, hopping back up, where Maki was waiting to meet them with their own mallet in the face.

Shuichi heard a sickening crack and the clown crumpled to the floor.

“Rook!” The leaner looking of the two members grabbing ice cream dropped his bag and ran up to help his friend.

“Maki!” Shuichi exclaimed, rather horrified at this level of violence, “They’re just thieves!”

“What?” Maki asked, unshaken. When she saw Shuichi’s expression, she blinked as if genuinely confused. Then she straightened up in a gesture that Shuichi recognized as sheepish even though her tone remained flat as she clarified, “That wasn’t the clown’s skull, it was the hammer.” She raised the big mallet to show him the end of it, which had popped off, “This is just a toy.”

“Yeah! That don’t mean it don’t smart, lady!” The one on the floor, ‘Rook’ if their friend was to be believed, waved off the other DICE member, rubbing their face under their mask.

“Was I talking to you?” Maki fixed the clown with her patented death glare, taking the stick of the broken mallet and twirling it into a fighting ready position like a bo staff.

“Where’s your boss?” Shuichi muttered aloud. “And the rest of you for that matter…” Maybe the gift shop was a distraction, it didn’t seem like the most attention had been given to it. Then again if there were something happening further inside the facilities then Kaito’s people were probably wise to it by now, so there might not be any point in wondering...

“I dunno, ask your mom!” The bearded DICE member standing next to ‘Rook’ threw something at him.

Maki acted quickly, hitting the object dead-on with the broken mallet handle before it could smack him in the face. It burst open, and by the time Shuichi realized it was a smoke bomb his eyes were already stinging from exposure.

“Gah!” He exclaimed, hiding his face in his arm to prevent himself from inhaling the smoke.

Maki, however, ignored the smoke, pressing forward into the gift shop.

Shuichi stayed back, blocking the doorway and tried to remember if he had seen an external entrance to the gift shop. The question was dismissed from his mind as he heard the clattering of shattering glass and remembered that these thieves had no qualms about making their own exits. When the smoke cleared, Shuichi saw that Maki was now holding the bag stuffed with freeze dried ice cream. She dropped it and started walking towards the wall of windows opposite to the entrance. She pulled back her hair and grabbed the side of the window like she was going to try and climb out the hole at the top, which the clowns seemed to have escaped out of.

Except… As Shuichi came up the steps from the entrance he didn’t see any clowns beyond the window. Remembering DICE’s knack for misdirection, Shuichi did a quick glance around the room and… There!

“Maki!” He called as he moved forward, “There’s a sliding door back by the register!”

It was open just a jar, and as Shuichi got closer he spotted the last DICE member vaulting over the balcony just outside.

Maki beat him to the door, sliding it open and hopping on the balcony. She paused for a second, then turned back to look at him. “Stay here.” She ordered, as if it had crossed her mind Shuichi might try to scale down the wall as well.

He would have found it weird that Maki would take the time to tell him something so obvious as ‘you would fall if you tried this,’ but Shuichi remembered what Maki had said to him before, about not wanting to be alone again. He nodded in an effort to reassure her. “Right, I’ll call the police.”

She seemed satisfied with this, turning around and shifting off the balcony to climb down the wall. Shuichi, in the meantime, pulled out his phone and called 110. The operator put him through to the Kukinaga substation, which was the Tanegashima police station only four minutes away from the space center. Shuichi reported what had happened, and the substation representative asked him to stay put to give a report to the officers when they arrived. He voiced acquiescence and thanked the representative before hanging up.

And then Shuichi was standing alone in a gift shop with broken glass and a bag full of freeze dried ice cream on the ground. He noticed some things he hadn’t before. For instance, it looked like the gift shop was partially divided into a sort of cafe, with a freezer full of purchasable food and tables by the windows to sit and eat. For some reason, he decided that sitting alone in a gift shop with broken glass and a bag full of freeze dried ice cream on the ground would be marginally better, so he pulled out one of the chairs, sitting at the table.

…

It was weird how much time Shuichi sat around, waiting for things to happen. Well, maybe less weird and more just plain old pathetic… He wasn’t really the action type like Maki and Kaito were. A lot of his work as a detective was done in the aftermath of events. He was usually only trying to figure out what had already happened. This whole DICE thing was a bit of a change of pace, requiring him to be able to predict the next course of events and perhaps even stop potential crimes. Except, well, maybe he wasn’t so good at that part of it… Today was pretty clear evidence of that. This gift shop robbery was obviously a ruse covering up some sort of bigger crime. Something similar had happened in Egypt, where in order to keep one room’s artifacts secure, Shuichi had to alert the actual museum security to take care of things. Except, had that really been the right choice? The entire museum besides the room Shuichi was in were rugless because he refused to take action. Shuichi knew that staying in this gift shop would prevent it from being robbed, but he had to weigh that against the great uncertainty of what was happening elsewhere right now. It just felt shitty, knowing he could do nothing right now but wait. It had been part of the reason being a detective had yucked him out when he was a teen. For a while he had been solving exclusively murder cases, which were the worst way to be reminded his job was usually only useful after the horrible things happen… Maybe working on the DICE case had felt good because so much of the work was preventative. Predicting where DICE would strike next always gave him the hope that the next time would be the last and it would all be thanks to him… How stupid…

A memory flashed through his head

“You’re really something else, Shuichi.” A face very close to his had said.

Maybe that was something else about the case that felt good. Chasing DICE’s leader had been light and exciting. A mystery less pursued out of a sense of requirement or needed justice, but rather because the mystery itself was genuinely intriguing. Shuichi had started out fearing that DICE may have had some sort of tie to organized crime or some sort of international conspiracy, but… After investigating into such ties and looking at all past robberies attributed to them, Shuichi had turned up nothing. It was almost comical how good these clowns were at going about their globetrotting crime-spree untraced. And it was weird that Shuichi kept crossing paths with them by almost complete happenstance. Sure, he had predicted their movements in DC, Paris, Reno, and Milan, but Egypt, Taipei, and now… Yeah, completely by chance. Unless… DICE weren’t following him, were they? No, there really would be no point to that at all… Hah, Shuichi was starting to see why Interpol suspected that he had ties with-

Oh, fuck. Interpol.

For about four minutes, Shuichi had forgotten how much trouble he was going to be in. --- [Log of Text Messages from Kaito Momota’s Cellular Device]

From: Me

Hey where are you guys?

I can’t find you anywhere?

From: My Sidekick

Sorry I’m talking to the police right now

From: Me

What??

Bro

I’m gonna need like

A follow up on that

From: Maki Roll

Did you not know the police were here?

From: Me

Uh no

Should I have?

Oh I get it

They’re here about the alarm right?

Well you can tell them it's nothing to worry about

We figured out that a sleeping security guard tripped it on accident...

From: Maki Roll

The museum got robbed

From: Me

What??

From: Maki Roll

Well Shuichi thinks something was stolen

I’m pretty sure I chased the clowns away though

From: Me

Wait the clowns are here?

From: My Sidekick

Sorry Kaito! I’m back

Maki is being questioned now

The alarm going off was probably staged as part of the distraction

Did you check the other exhibits to see if anything was stolen?

From: Me

Yeah everythings fine we did a whole check

From: My Sidekick

What about other buildings on the campus?

Anything missing?

From: Me

Nope everything is where it should be

From: My Sidekick

Well I guess that’s somewhat of a relief

Although that does open up a lot of questions about what exactly happened here…

From: Me

Shuichi I need you to come down to the Space center building

The one with the rocketship

Like right now

From: My Sidekick

What?

What happened?

Kaito?

From: Maki Roll

Where are you guys?

The police are gone and you’re not by the space center

From: Me

We’re chilling in the museum gift shop

From: Maki Roll

What?

It’s not closed?

Isn’t it a crime scene right now?

From: Me

Nah nothing was really stolen

So me and Shuichi were fixing the window

But now we are c h i l l i n g

From: Maki Roll

Huh

I thought you might be investigating still

From: Me

Nah

Shuichi needed to do something with his hands

From: Maki Roll

Oh so you mean Shuichi was fixing the window and you were watching

From: Me

I was moral support!

From: Maki Roll

You know you won’t be able to get other people to do your chores when you’re in space…

From: My Sidekick

He wasn’t making me do it

It was something I needed to do

To like

Avoid freaking out

From: Maki Roll

Oh

Are you okay?

From: My Sidekick

Yes

I just uh

Lost an entire space engine and i can’t do anything about it

From: Maki Roll

What?

From: Me

He did NOT lose a space engine

He was interrupted while doing an investigation on our STOLEN rocket engine

From: Maki Roll

What????

The engine in your shuttle was stolen???

Are you not concerned about that? You can’t fly without one of those right?

From: Me

Hey we’ll find it!

Or maybe we’ll build a new one

It doesn’t matter I’m going to space no matter what!

From: Maki Roll

Wait and you’re not out looking for it right now?

From: Me

Well Shuichi was having a moment here

And hey when it comes to looking after your ride or looking after your sidekick your sidekick has gotta come first

From: Maki Roll

A moment?

From: My Sidekick

I

Uh

Found out I’m on red notice

From: Maki Roll

What’s that

From: My Sidekick

Uh

It like

Means that

Interpol thinks I should be arrested

But Interpol doesn’t actually have the power to arrest me

So they’ve basically told every recognized country in the world to arrest me if I’m spotted

So maybe Japan will try to arrest me if they find that they agree with interpol that I should be arrested

From: Maki Roll

What??

Did you do something???

From: Me

No! He didn’t!

Get this

Some asshole in a green coat just came up

And told Shuichi that his boss thinks Shuichi is too good of a detective to be doing things legally

But it's like

No actually he really is just that good

From: My Sidekick

Hhhhghhhghghhghg

That was Agent Sakakura

Them sending him means they really want me dead…

From: Maki Roll

That’s so stupid

You’re just doing your damn job

Hey do you want me to kill that guy for you?

Because it sounds like he sucks and I will totally kill him for you

From: Me

No you won’t because killing is not good

But your anger is valid I am also very angry about this

From: My Sidekick

Hghfgfhhghhhgggggggggg

From: Me

Hmmm Maki roll Shuichi needs to vent some more so we’ll stop texting

From: Maki Roll

Ok

I’m bringing the car over

Tell me if you want me to kill someone for you Shuichi

From: My Sidekick

No thank you

But I appreciate the sentiment --- [Log of Messages sent via Discord to “#boss-where-he-shouldnt-be” from ???’s Cellular Device]

Ace: Hey, I know this is like a meme chat

Ace: But it's like the only one boss doesn’t have access to

Ace: And I wanted to know if anyone has noticed anything up with him?

Ace: Because I feel like he’s been kinda weird since we got the rocket

Queen: It’s not a rocket its an engine

Queen: In fact it’s actually only about 2/3s of an engine

King: What do you mean weird?

Queen: Rocket engines are built with mechanisms of fuel oxidization that won’t be strictly necessary for an aircraft that isn’t designed to operate in 0 ppm oxygen environments

Queen: So we’ll have to substitute it with an intake mechanism

Queen: Although the pre-existing combustion mechanism is EXQUISITE

Rook: No one cares queen

Queen: Its an important distinction

Hearts: Queen we have a channel for infodumping

Hearts: rn this channel is for gossiping about boss

Ace: He’s been quiet

Ace: Idk ive been worrying about it

King: Do you think it has to do with his injury?

Ace: Naw like

Ace: I feel like he was actin weird because of that before the space station

Ace: But now he’s actin weird a different way

Ace: Like before he seemed a little terse

Ace: And now he’s like catatonic in conversation

Queen: wym

Queen: I literally talked to him five seconds ago

Rook: no wait that is suspicious

Rook: if I were him I wouldn’tve just sat there and let you yap

Queen: oh shut up

Rook: MAKE ME

Ace: honestly i don’t know

Ace: but like you guys saw that detective guy there right

Ace: Do you think something happened with them that we didn’t see

King: What??

Jack: Oh you mean how boss definitely has a crush on him

King: What?????

Jack: Literally in Paris he dropped his entire 100 page plan just to go bully that guy

Jack: He’s like a middle schooler pulling pig tails

Hearts: Hmm… Hate to bring it down but pulling pigtails is a misogynistic notion that reinforces the normalization of violence against women...

Jack: It's true tho

Jack: My pigtails got pulled all the time because as you all know I am extremely attractive

Hearts: Maybe they were just bullying you darling

Spades: Yeah I can see that /s

Spades: Hey you know who really normalizes violence against women?

Spades: That detective guy

Spades: He flipped me in Milan!

Spades: Guy knows fucking aikido or some shit

Spades: And boss isn’t really a fan of violence

Rook: No wait

Queen: What? I thought he really liked yamikawaii shit

Rook: Even though that guy’s friend literally gave me a black eye

Spades: No I’m pretty sure he hates it

Rook: I see what Jack is saying

Rook: Boss totally has a thing for him

Rook: Like literally you can see the hearts pop into his eyes when he spots that guy

Rook: He dropped a display case on my foot when you told him the detective was in Cairo

Ace: Okay well thats not what I meant though

Jack: What you mean you don’t think he got his heart broken by aged up kid conan

Clubs: Conan’s name in his adult form is Shinichi Kudo.

Clubs: Also I think that talking behind Boss’s back is kind of not cool guys. :(

Spades: If you snitch I’m firing you from being my brother

Clubs: :(

Ace: I just meant like maybe he embarrassed himself platonically

Ace: Or I guess adversarially? Idk whatever word you would use for that

Queen: kismesissitude

Ace: What?

Spades: I will swiftly execute you

King: I mean i guess i could see him getting bent out of shape about that

King: But we were kinda onto the detective the whole time

King: I don’t think they would’ve had time to interact at all

Jack: Maybe he’s just sad he missed him

Ace: Ok sorry I don’t know if he’s sad

Ace: Just maybe in a weird mood

Ace: We haven't been in japan for a while and we haven't stuck around a place for more than a week in an even longer while

Ace: It’s putting me in a weird mood too so maybe that’s it

Hearts: Yeah he always likes to be on the move maybe he’s just antsy

King: Or maybe he feels bad cuz Rook got kinda beat up today?

King: I mean I feel bad about that

Rook: I’m okay <3

King: I know <3

Queen: Gross

Queen: You two are literally sitting right next to each other get a room

Bishop: He seems fine to me

Spades: Oh wow Bishop stopped scarfing for a second to weigh in...

Bishop: And by fine I mean terrible because he just dipped his pork dumpling in his panta right in front of me

Bishop: Also you guys know he can see you texting each other right

Bishop: We’re literally all eating at the same table rn

Queen: Oh yeah

Spades: Oops

[nicoismywaifu]

Eclectic Influences, or, Silly Love Songs

Summary: Nico finds her father’s old guitar, gets some lessons from Eli and decides to sing some love songs for Maki. Or something like that. Word count: ~6000 Estimated reading time: ~30 minutes, according to http://niram.org/read/ AO3 link: here! Notes: It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten what I usually write here. If you like a certain rock band from the 1960′s, there are a few nods to them here. If you don’t, then you might want to read something else...

As was the tradition they had built over the year, Nico sat perched beside Maki at the piano bench as the latter ran through her pet pieces to play. Well, it was more like Nico was perched on Maki, but that didn’t distract Maki from delivering a soulful rendition of Debussy.

‘Maki-chan’s so talented,’ Nico cooed as the song ended, nuzzling herself against Maki’s shoulder. ‘It makes Nico want to play an instrument, too!’

‘What about the maracas?’ suggested Maki.

‘No way! First off, that’s Rin’s trademark and secondly, they’re so not cool. Nico needs something cute and amazing, like a guitar! Think of how cool it would look in photoshoots, and then bringing it out on stage and amazing everyone with a sweet serenade!’

Maki sighed and set down the piano’s fallboard. Nico had that look in her eyes. No doubt she was already dreaming of the Budokan, or perhaps the Tokyo Dome. ‘A loud instrument for a loud girl,’ she said, snapping Nico back in the direction of reality.

Nico narrowed her eyes. ‘You mean a dashing instrument for the number one idol in the universe, right?’

‘Sure, let’s go with that.’ Stretching her arms up into the air, Maki yawned and looked at the room’s clock. A good few hours had passed, although it sure hadn’t felt that way. ‘I think it’s about time to head home.’

‘Ah, you’re right.’ Nico copied Maki’s actions contagiously. ‘Kokoro and Kokoa are gonna complain again if I get back too late.’

And with that shift in topic, Maki could again tell that Nico had forgotten all about picking up an instrument in the first place as she got up and made for the door. Such a fickle minded girlfriend. It was endearing, but also a little disappointing to Maki.

‘You can learn any instrument as long as you spend more time here with me,’ Maki murmured as she closed the door behind them.

‘Sorry,’ said Nico, distractedly looking up in the midst of messaging her siblings. ‘What was that?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Of course Kotarou broke another toy with his hammer.’ Nico grumbled to herself as she held in her hands what was once a dinosaur plushie, before her brother had made it well and truly extinct. It was not what she was hoping to come back home to after the school day. ‘And of course Nico has to put it in the basement. With all the other broken toys.’

She flicked the switch at the top of the stairs before making her way into the depths, an abyss of junk, junk and more junk. All hand-me-downs from one Yazawa sibling to another. Until they got to Kotarou, anyway.

‘We have got to sort this out one day,’ Nico muttered to herself, displacing boxes and paraphernalia in order to tidy up and create some more space. As she did so, however, something hard and weighty became dislodged and made a beeline for Nico’s temple. After hitting the target, it then made a heavy smack on the concrete flooring.

‘Ouch! Son of a-‘

Rubbing her tender spot, Nico’s anger turned to curiosity as she regarded the object more closely.

‘Huh? What’s this?’

She didn’t know what to make of it – the solid hunk of polymer plastic which had high-fived her scalp a few seconds before. Around one meter in length, two or three thick paperbacks in depth, roughly oar shaped, although that wasn’t quite right. There were several dull silver hinges along its side which were too inviting for the item within to remain unsealed.  

Nico unclasped the hinges, opened up the case and there it was.

An old, worn red acoustic guitar.

The body was dusted over and the strings had the murk of rust on them. The lacquer of the finish had faded in parts and worn through to the wood beneath. And as she leaned in closer, she could make out the scent of must. But even with how old and disused it looked, Nico felt an odd gravitation towards it.

Nico scooped the guitar into her arms and made her way back up the stairs, having forgotten what she was ever down there for in the first place. She found her mother who had just returned from work and had settled at the low, Japanese-style table for dinner.

‘Mama?’ said Nico, holding up the guitar in her hands. ‘What’s this?’

‘Oh!�� Nico’s mother stood up from the table with excitement. ‘That’s your father’s old acoustic. Wow, that brings back memories.’

‘Papa played guitar?’

‘Yep. He would sing you lullabies before bed, or whenever you were crying. You used to love it when you were a toddler.’

‘I don’t remember any of this,’ Nico replied.

‘Maybe you were too young. But I remember him serenading me with some silly love songs back in the day. Beatles songs and all that. It was romantic. A little cheesy, but romantic.’

Nico could only feel a small melancholy at not having those memories. ‘Papa…’

Smiling, Nico’s mother reached across and patted her eldest’s head. So her daughter was still a daddy’s girl, even after all this time. ‘Your father always said it was a good sounding guitar. And if you just give it a clean and change the strings, it should be playable.’

Nico couldn’t hide her surprise – the clump of wood in her hands seemed as far from new as was humanly possible. ‘Really?’

Her mother smiled. ‘Just give it a try.’

One afterschool trip to the local music store and some YouTube tutorials later, Nico had finished fitting a new set of bronze strings to her father’s guitar. She had also made a few passes with a damp cloth before admiring her handiwork.

Her mother was right. With a bit of effort, the guitar now at least looked like it was capable of making sound.

‘Now, I just have to tune it…’

She sat up on her bed and laid the guitar across her legs. The timber was cool against the flesh of her thighs as Nico tried to suss out the instrument.

This arm went here and that one went there, right? And then she’d hold the pick in that hand and then play the strings? Which way around did the pick go? No matter where she held it, it felt alien to her. She took a quick strum anyway.

On its own, the guitar made a strange, tuneless sound. Nico didn’t get it.

‘You used to play this, Papa?’ Nico asked the empty room. ‘To play love songs?’ She didn’t get a response. Sighing, she nestled the guitar back in its case.

Her feet dragging her along almost unconsciously, Nico brooded over the afterschool meeting she had with her teacher about the grades on her practice exam.

Didn’t they know? Becoming a super idol takes a lot of work and dedication! Why would she let mere schoolwork get in the way of that?

The meeting had delayed Nico from her usual attendance in the music room with Maki.

She stopped short of entering, content with peering through the window unnoticed. Being by Maki’s side as she played was wonderful, but there was a majesty to watching her work the ivory from a distance. The way she exuded dignity and control over every single bar of music; how she closed her eyes and expressed the voice inside herself through the instrument. It was always captivating for Nico.

Nico was taken out of this reverie by a tap at her shoulder. She turned to find a smiling Eli. From the folders she was carrying under a wedged arm, Nico surmised she was in the middle of some student council errands.

‘Hey.’

‘Heya, Eli.’

‘Not going in?’

Nico shook her head before returning her gaze to Maki. ‘It’s times like this that Nico wishes she could play an instrument as well,’ she said, a wistful tinge in her voice. ‘I did find a guitar the other day, but I have no idea how to play it.’

‘A guitar?’ Eli asked. ‘I know a few chords. I’d be more than happy to teach you, if you like?’

‘Really?’ Nico couldn’t hide the surprise forming on her face. ‘They have guitars in Russia?’

‘Yes, Nico. Guitars exist in Russia. We even have a thing called a balalaika, which is like a Russian guitar. But that’s not the point.’

The two fell quiet for a moment, such that the only noise was the muffled piano from the music room. Maki’s music and songs, which meant so much to her. That was the only moment that Nico needed to decide.

‘I think I’ll take you up on that, Eli.’

Now that she thought about it, this was the first time Nico had been to Eli’s place, let alone her room.

‘Pardon the intrusion…’

For Nico, Eli’s room was reflective of her personality. Books were all put away and sorted into their shelves, there was a clear desk for studying at and a small speaker system for some music. There was also nowhere near enough pink for Nico’s taste. Though there was a suspicious amount of purple…

It was best not to dwell on that, thought Nico. She settled onto the, sigh, purple bedsheets and released her guitar from its case. Eli soon joined her, unzipping her gig bag and unsheathing her own acoustic. Thankfully for Nico’s sanity, it wasn’t purple, rather the parchment like colour of natural, unvarnished timber.

‘Well then,’ Eli said kindly. ‘Shall we begin?’

Nico nodded before settling the instrument across her legs. No sooner than she did that, however, Eli gave her a strange look.

‘I haven’t played anything yet,’ said Nico, shifting her body with unconscious nervousness.

‘Well unless you became left handed overnight, you’re holding the guitar backwards right now.’

‘I-I knew that!’

‘Sure,’ Eli said, before leaning over towards Nico. She took the guitar from Nico’s hands, and brought it so that it was oriented correctly. ‘Left hand goes on the neck; right hand holds the pick. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but just do it.’

Nico did as she was instructed. Eli wasn’t kidding – it felt completely alien.

‘With your left hand, place your fingers down and press the strings to the board. Then strum the strings with your right hand.’

Once more, Nico followed Eli’s instructions. The guitar made a tuneless racket, but Eli still nodded in approval. ‘Good. Just get used to the sensation for now.’

Nico took in the feeling – the vibration of the guitar’s neck in her left hand, the tense metal strings against her fleshy fingertips. She wondered, could people really get used to this?

‘Hey Eli,’ Nico decided to ask after a few strums, ‘why did you learn the guitar of all instruments?’

‘The same reason most people decide to learn the guitar,’ Eli answered. ‘To impress girls.’

‘Did that work on Nozomi?’

Eli puffed her chest. ‘It sure did! I’d come over to her apartment and serenade her with some Beatles songs, and then we’d cuddle up on the bed or the couch and, um, well… Anyway! Your guitar!’

Nico stopped strumming and looked up. ‘Yes?’

‘It has a nice sound to it. How’d you get hold of it?’

‘This was my Papa’s guitar,’ replied Nico. ‘I found it in our basement. I don’t think anyone’s touched it in years.’

‘I’m surprised it’s in such good shape,’ Eli remarked. ‘Spending that long in a basement, you’d think that the humidity would’ve bent the neck or body and make it unplayable. Can I have a go?’

‘Sure,’ said Nico, curious as to how her father’s guitar would sound in someone else’s hands.

Eli received the guitar, placed it across her lap and strummed it a few times before picking out a few notes. ‘Let’s see, what should I play… I guess you can’t go wrong with some love songs.’

‘Love songs…’ Nico murmured.

‘And if it’s love songs, it has to be the Beatles,’ Eli concluded. She fished a clamp like object from her bedside table and affixed it to the neck of the guitar she held in her hands. She answered Nico’s unasked question as follows: ‘A capo. It presses the strings at a certain part of the neck, so you can play in a different key. It’s handy – but you don’t need to worry about that yet. Now then…’

Nico watched as Eli took a breath, then gave all her concentration to the guitar and voice as she started the song – a soft and quiet ballad.

I once had a girl, or should I say

She once had me;

She showed me her room

Isn’t it good, Norwegian Wood,

She told me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,

So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair…

It was the first time Nico had ever paid attention to someone other than Maki playing an instrument. A different feeling was evoked in her. Eli was good, no doubt about that, but not quite Maki good. And not as pretty, said something else in Nico’s brain.

But music was music, and it was beautiful all the same. As Eli concluded the song, however, there was a question Nico couldn’t help but ask.

‘Is that really a love song? It sounded like you were going to burn someone’s house down in the end.’

Eli opened her mouth to reply, then closed it.

‘Shut up, Nico.’

Maki found herself alone in the music room once more - Nico hadn’t turned up yesterday as well. Maybe she had to take care of her siblings again? Or perhaps she had gotten a part-time job and didn’t have the chance to tell her?

Maki went for her phone and tapped away at the screen.

M: Nico-chan? You aren’t coming to the music room today?

N: sorry <(_ _)>

N: nico made plans with eli today

M: Eli and Nozomi?

N: nah, just eli

Maki paused at this for a moment.

M: Oh.

N: i hope you’re still in the music room like a good girl!

N: nico nii loves her super talented girlfriend ^_^

M: Whatever.

Thankful that text couldn’t give away the grin on her face, Maki picked up the piano fallboard and pondered what to play next.

‘Since you’ve gotten the hang of E and E minor, we’ll be moving to a different chord.’ Eli placed one finger across several strings in horizontal, then strummed it out.

‘Second fret of the D string, G string and B string,’ Eli explained over the sound. ‘That’s an A major chord.’

Nico giggled. ‘G string.’

‘Seriously? Now if you shift your finger on the B string down a fret, you’ll be fingering A minor-‘

Nico snorted.

‘Oh, come on!’

‘I can’t help it!’ Nico laughed as she grabbed her phone from the bedroom table. ‘I’ve gotta tell Honoka and Rin what you said.’

Eli groaned, not knowing why she had expected otherwise. Nico might’ve been older than Eli, but she sure didn’t act like it. She sure didn’t look like it either. But Nico would probably take a swing at her if she said that, and she was armed with a guitar.

As such, Eli decided to get her revenge in a different way.

‘Nico, a word of advice. Whatever you do, do not look at your fingers right now.’

Eli knew the sort of person Nico was. She was the type that if you told her not to do something, she would do the exact opposite out of spite. So Eli was completely unsurprised when Nico rolled her eyes, stretched out the fingers of her left hand and looked at her fingertips.

Eli was also unsurprised when Nico screamed a split-second later.

‘My fingers!’

Sadly for Nico, no-one had told her about the side-effects that happen when you place soft skin against thin strands of metal alloy held under considerable tension. With a glance, Eli saw all the telltale indentations and strands of skin hanging limp, leaving the layer below exposed. She smiled from the nostalgia.

Nico, however, was feeling no such happiness.

‘I’m moulting!’ she bemoaned to the world. ‘I’m shedding my skin like… like an animal that sheds its skin!’

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ Eli chided. ‘And pay more attention in class. For your fingertips, gently tear off the loose strands. It won’t hurt. In time, the skin will harden and callous up the more you play. See?’

Eli held out her left hand. Nico, eyeing her with suspicion, pinched Eli’s fingertips within her own before making a surprised look. ‘You’re right. They feel weird.’

‘Thanks,’ Eli replied in deadpan. ‘Yours will just like them in a few months of practice. You can also forget about growing your nails out – at least on your left hand.’

‘No one told Nico about this!’

‘Now you know. The guitar is not an easy instrument, Nico. If you want to give up because of it, save both of us the time and effort and give up now.’

Eli smiled inwardly. She knew the exact reaction that would get.

‘Nico is not a quitter.’

Nico huffed and pressed the phosphor bronze strings to the fingerboard once more, but came out with a wince. Eli made a sympathetic look.

‘I thought as much. But it’s no good to push yourself. Let’s practice again tomorrow.’

‘Okay,’ Nico replied. She shook her hand a few times to try and dispel the prickly feeling from her fingertips.

‘Here’s one final tip for the day,’ Eli said as she set her Bluetooth speaker on the bed and fiddled with her laptop. ‘You should get used to playing along to the record, because that trains your ears. Now, what song do I want to play… I guess we’ll go with this.’

Eli hit play and the chords came out a pained slow and melancholy. Eli matched this with a longing timbre in her voice and guitar as she played along:

Is there anybody going to listen to my story,

All about the girl who came to stay?

She’s the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry

Still you don’t regret a single day,

Oh, girl…

Oh, girl…

The end of the song came around, and Nico felt a new appreciation for the instrument and Eli’s skills. But once again, she couldn’t help but point out: ‘Eli, that sounded great, but it was more like the girl in the song was being emotionally controlling and abusive. It’s, like, the opposite of a love song. Did you seriously play these songs for Nozomi? And she seriously liked them?’

And once again, Eli went red and muttered: ‘Shut up, Nico.’

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Maki mumbled to herself, fanning herself in the shade of a conveniently placed tree near Eli’s apartment. ‘But I have no idea what they’re up to, and they won’t tell me except they’re hanging out. For two weeks? Without me?’

For Maki, what choice did she have when Nico wasn’t spending time with her anymore? Not to mention being so evasive about what she was doing?

These were the circumstances which led to Maki breaking out the trenchcoat, disposable mask and sunglasses. (Nico would’ve approved.)

Speaking of Nico, she was facing the looming spectre of graduation, with an uncertain future ahead of her. Especially with those grades that she hid from the others. When that time came… then what? What else would keep them together?

‘Nico-chan… What are you doing?’

‘It’s suspicious, isn’t it? Then again, so is your getup.’

Maki jumped with a start before turning around. ‘N-Nozomi?! What are you doing here?’

‘The same thing as you,’ Nozomi answered. ‘Though with less people looking at me and thinking of calling the police.’

Glancing around with slight self-consciousness, Maki asked, ‘It’s not that bad… is it?’

Nozomi grinned. With a sinking feeling, Maki knew that that meant. She decided to change the topic instead.

‘…They’re spending an awful lot of time together.’

‘Right? I hope your Nicocchi isn’t doing anything lewd with my Elicchi. But then again, maybe it’s for the best. We could have a threesome-’

‘Nozomi!’

‘Dear me, where are my manners? I should invite you along as well and we can all join in-‘

‘That’s not the issue here!’ Maki shouted, face even redder.

‘It isn’t?’ Nozomi asked. ‘Then I guess I can have all the fun to myself!’

‘Hey, wait!’ Maki called out to Nozomi, as the latter began walking towards the apartment. ‘You’re just going to barge in on them?’

‘Whatever’s happening, I want in!’ shouted Nozomi, not bothering to turn back.

‘Nozomi!’

Maki made to follow the older girl, then hesitated.

Nozomi’s inappropriate words rang in her ears. Would Maki really want to see… that?

…Or be part of it?

She shuddered and decided in the negative. Instead, she kept watch from the shade of the trees.

Nozomi made her way into the apartment complex, took the lift up a few floors, fished a key from her pocket that Eli didn’t know she had, unlocked the door and tiptoed into the apartment. Her eyes went wide as she heard voices coming from the bedroom.

‘Put your fingers right there, Nico.’

‘Like this?’

‘More like this. Make sure to curve your fingers so they can fit in a tight space.’

‘Got it.’

‘Then, you can slide your fingers up and down, like this…’

‘Is this okay?’

‘Mmm. You’re a quick learner, Nico.’

With a gasp, Nozomi placed a hand over her mouth. She didn’t expect them to be actually going at it! This needed to be stopped! Or at least have her join in!

She burst through the door, then looked between Nico and Eli as they sat on the bed, eyes wide in surprise. Eli’s hands hovered close to Nico’s as she demonstrated how to play a particularly difficult chord.

‘So you’re not having sex,’ Nozomi said, frowning. ‘How disappointing.’

‘Nozomi,’ Eli whined and pouted, turning away from her girlfriend who had sat beside her on the bed. ‘Didn’t you trust me?’

‘Of course I trust you, Elicchi,’ Nozomi cooed, placing a hand on Eli’s shoulder. ‘Nicocchi on the other hand…’

‘I already have a girlfriend, you know,’ Nico scoffed. ‘One that’s way better than Eli.’

‘…Why on Earth am I teaching you, again?’

‘Maybe she just enjoys Elicchi’s interesting choice in songs?’ Nozomi said.

Eli buried her head in her hands as Nico burst into laughter. ‘You too, Nozomi? Why didn’t you say anything before?!’

‘Well, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, y’know? You have such a dumb smile when you stop thinking and just play.’ With a quick lean in, Nozomi planted a kiss on Eli’s cheek. ‘I love it a lot.’

Dazed, Eli rubbed the place her girlfriend had marked with her lips. ‘Nozomi…’

‘Gross,’ said Nico, sticking her tongue out and making a face. ‘But I think I know what you’re talking about.’

Nozomi made a knowing smile. ‘Right? You have your Maki-chan after all.’

‘Since Nozomi is here, how about a special song?’ said Eli, still on a high from Nozomi’s display of affection.

She fished up her guitar and struck one chord three times in quick succession. It was a dramatic sound, but it seemed oddly familiar to Nico. Nico’s suspicions were confirmed when Eli struck the chord thrice more. She rolled her eyes as Nozomi and Eli made a loving look at each other and began to duet.

Yume no meiro…

Yuri no meiro…

Nico threw her arms up in exasperation. ‘Get a room, both of you.’

‘I haven’t had Elicchi all to myself in weeks, so I’m making up for lost time,’ Nozomi said, glomming onto Eli, much to Eli’s enjoyment. ‘Much like how Maki-chan is suspiciously camping outside this apartment block, since she hasn’t had her little Nicocchi in weeks.’

‘Weeks?’ Nico asked. ‘There’s no way… Wait. Maki-chan is where?’

Nozomi pointed and Nico followed with her eyes. She then walked across, opened the apartment door and called out to the streets below.

‘Maki-chan? Are you out there?’

‘Eep!’

Catching the movement in her peripheral vision, Nico saw a figure in the distance begin bolting down the street in the opposite direction. The flash of red hair was even more of a giveaway, if she needed it.

‘Hey!’ shouted Nico. ‘Don’t make me run, I haven’t put my shoes on yet!’

‘Have fun, Nicocchi!’ said Nozomi. ‘And close the door behind you, because Elicchi and I need some private time!’

The thought of what “private time” meant made Nico jump into her sneakers and slam the door even harder than she would’ve otherwise. She raced the elevator down three flights of stairs and won, but still couldn’t make out Maki’s figure despite her desperate efforts. She cursed under her breath and sprinted towards where Maki was headed – the nearby area of Akihabara.

Passing by the small stores which sold idol goods, Nico was in familiar territory. Perhaps too familiar, considering as she was getting distracted by the shiny new merchandise they were selling. That Tsubasa keychain was tempting…

Nico’s thoughts were disrupted by the kind of high-pitched screams that could only belong to pubescent schoolgirls. ‘It’s Nico Yazawa! From μ’s!’

Nico risked a look over her shoulder, then immediately wished that she hadn’t. She could feel the footsteps of a crowd beginning to pursue her and pushed herself even faster.

‘Of all the times to be surrounded by fans. Nico has a private life, you know!’

This! This is exactly why she told everyone else in μ’s to be prepared! But did they listen to her? Of course not!

With her spare hand, she delved into her bag and retrieved her trusty mask and sunglasses before ducking into the back alleys. The fangirls weren’t so easily deterred – but that was as expected of a super idol’s super fans! Nico used all her wiles and tricks: hiding out in a photobooth, blending in with cardboard cutouts, sneaking between narrowly parked vehicles, heading back and checking out the idol merchandise again…

Being a super idol is tough work.

With the burn of a stitch in her side, Nico finally doubled over with her hands on her knees and gasped for air. She had probably run a marathon under the afternoon sun trying to escape all the attention. But she didn’t have the time to be hanging about – she just needed a good five minutes and to wipe down with a towel-

‘Please visit our café, madam!’

Glaring, Nico looked up at the complete airhead who would pass her a flyer at such an inconsiderate moment. She took in the maid outfit, the flowing taupe hair, the big, amber eyes…

‘Kotori?!’

Nico hacked and coughed after shouting – she should have thought that one through. The maid blinked in confusion. ‘Kotori? What? I’m Miss Minalin- oh, it’s Nico-chan! How are you today?’

‘Could… be… better…’ Nico gasped out as Minalinsky/Kotori beamed at her. ‘You still work here?’

‘I’m just helping out today,’ answered the maid, still holding out the pamphlet to Nico. ‘But it’s meant to be quiet. I hope you can keep a secret, Nico-chan!’ Scowling and muttering, Nico accepted the paper and placed it in her pocket, much to Kotori’s delight. Nico’s mood was about to get worse.

Over Kotori’s oblivious shoulder, she saw what looked like the entire population of Tokyo homing in on her location, screaming and pushing past anything in the way. (Except politely, because this is Japan we’re talking about here.)

And then she had an idea.

‘That store is selling discount fabric!’ shouted Nico, pointing over Kotori’s shoulder. She realised too late that shouting was a bad idea, and spluttered into coughing again.

Kotori turned on a dime, ignoring Nico’s plight. ‘Where, where?!’

That was all the chance Nico needed to push Kotori in the small of her back, towards the oncoming mass of people.

There was a shrill cry from the crowd. ‘Ah! It’s Minalinsky!’

‘The legendary maid?! I thought she retired!’

Nico was already pivoting on her heel and breaking away. She had an accurate image of what was happening behind her without seeing it: something like Kotori being surrounded by a human swarm and then disappearing out of sight, akin to a horror movie.

‘N-Nico-chan!’

That’s another thing Kotori should’ve learned. In the world of showbiz, there are always necessary sacrifices.

Koi ni koisuru, shoujo no, shizuka na tameiki wa Lonely... michitarita Lonely...

Eli finished off the duet with some flourishes of her guitar, before graciously bowing to the applause Nozomi made. It was a nice change, going back to playing the songs she had practiced for her girlfriend. ‘How about another song, my sweetheart?’

Nozomi stretched herself out on the bed and grinned. ‘Sure.’

Eli smiled back as she fired out some upbeat chords, singing:

I’ve got something to say that might cause you pain

If I catch you talking to that girl again

I’m gonna let you down

And leave you flat

Because I told you before, oh!

You can’t do that!

It’s the second time I’ve caught you talking to him

Do I have to tell you one more time, I think it’s a sin

I’m gonna let you down

And leave you flat

Because I told you before- Nozomi?

‘Is there something wrong?’ Eli asked in concern. Nozomi was sitting up at this point with a hand on her forehead, as if she had a long-running headache.

‘Elicchi,’ she moaned, ‘way to ruin the mood.’

‘I finally got away,’ wheezed Nico after running a few more blocks. ‘But so did Maki-chan.’

(She failed to mention Kotori, whose fate was sealed.)

Night began to fall across buildings which were unfamiliar even to Nico, a native of the area. Fumbling in her bag, Nico groaned as she failed to locate her phone. She had probably left it back at Eli’s house, which was not useful for several reasons.

Firstly, because she couldn’t contact her siblings to let them know she’d be late. Secondly, and more pressingly, because Nico couldn’t answer a rather important question:

‘…Where the heck am I?’

The ringing of the bell meant the end of another school day. Rin and Hanayo watched with knitted eyebrows as Maki retrieved her belongings, swung her bag over her shoulder and trudged away in silence, shoulders slouched and eyes facing the ground.

Walking past the second-year’s classroom, Maki paid little attention to Umi and Honoka fussing over Kotori, who was slumped over her desk.

‘Kotori?’ Umi asked, feeling Kotori’s temperature with her palm. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘Kotori-chan is broken,’ said Honoka, poking at Kotori’s cheek a few times, much to Umi’s dismay. There was no visible reaction from Kotori. ‘She was muttering to herself earlier. Something about how even little birds will grow talons and take their revenge?’

‘How cryptic…’

Maki’s feet had carried her to the music room’s piano without her thinking.

It had been their routine. Had. Why had it stopped? Why was there no more time together in the music room?

She folded her arms and slumped down into the keys. It made an awful, juddering sound and it was against good etiquette, but that was the last thing on her mind right now.

‘Nico-chan…’

She could feel her breathing start to catch in her throat. She loosened the school ribbon around her neck, which made things a bit easier. It wasn’t like Maki was going to cry over something like this, not at all…

Maki paid no attention to the footsteps in the hallway. She did pay attention, however, when the music room door crashed open. She looked up with a start, and found two things which didn’t make any sense to her.

‘Nico-chan? And a guitar? What?’

‘Nico has spent the last few weeks ruining her fingertips to play you this,’ the senior girl shouted, ‘so you’d better be grateful!’

Maki’s eyes were wide as Nico strummed the guitar with purpose, smiled, then began to sing:

Can’t buy me love, love,

Can’t buy me love- whoops!

‘Wrong chord.’ Nico grimaced as a discordant sound rung out. She quickly ran through a few chords before finding the missing piece of the progression. ‘There we go. Okay, let’s pretend that didn’t happen.’

She started again:

Can’t buy me love, love,

Can’t buy me love;

I'll buy you a diamond ring, my friend

If it makes you feel alright

I'll get you anything, my friend

If it makes you feel alright

'Cause I don't care too much for money

Money can't buy me love!

I'll give you all I've got to give

If you say you love me too

I may not have a lot to give

But what I got I'll give to you

I don't care too much for money

Money can't buy me love!

Nico stopped and there was silence. Then awkward silence.

‘How… How was that?’ ventured Nico, feeling the need to say something.

‘That’s what you’ve been doing for the past few weeks?’ asked Maki.

‘Yes?’

Maki crossed her arms and huffed. ‘Well, it could’ve been better.’

‘Oh,’ said Nico. But before her ego could deflate, Maki grinned and stood up from the piano. She made her way over to where Nico was sat, then hugged her close.

‘I missed you,’ Maki whispered. ‘I missed you a lot. But you didn’t seem to miss me, since you were with Eli all the time…’

Returning the embrace, Nico tousled Maki’s mess of hair. ‘Nico missed you a lot, too. Nico wanted to wanted to make our time together even more precious by being able to play with Maki-chan. So I got some lessons from Eli.’

‘Nico-chan…’ Maki sniffled and rubbed at her nose. ‘I’ll forgive you this once. So let’s practice together from now on, okay?’

‘Then why don’t we start now?’ said Nico. Maki watched as her partner delved into her bag and handed her a songbook: The Beatles Collection. ‘I got us some sheet music to play along to! Well, I can play the chords. Most of them. If they’re not too complicated… Do you think you can play this one?’

Maki glanced at the open pages and grinned, firing out the opening chords. ‘I think I can manage.’

Smiling, Nico placed her fingers on the strings and gripped her plectrum. ‘This song’s for you, Papa,’ she whispered to herself.

The music washed over them both as they sang in duet. It was an uptempo, silly little love song, like many others they would play from the book.

Baby's good to me, you know She's happy as can be, you know She said so! I'm in love with her and I feel fine!

‘Stupid, ungrateful Nico,’ Eli grumbled to herself in her bedroom, guitar slung over her legs. She plucked through the strings and tuned them accordingly. ‘Always with her nit-picking. And Nozomi, too! It’s the Beatles we’re talking about here! All happy, poppy love songs! How can they be inappropriate?’

Balancing the guitar with one arm over the guitar’s body as she leaned forwards, Eli used her other to flick through her song book at random. She stopped at one she couldn’t recall playing before. It looked simple enough – just five easy chords.

‘Run for your Life,’ Eli mused to herself. ‘Sounds interesting!’

She placed her hands in position to start the song, then sung out with her guitar in gleeful accompaniment:

Well, I’d rather see you dead little girl

Than to be with another man

You’d better keep your head, little girl

Or you won’t know where I am;

You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl

Hide your head in the sand, little girl

Catch you with another man, that’s the end-

Eli’s palm smacked into her forehead.

‘Damn it, not again!’