#johnny's mass collection of names

[hoperays-song]

Johnny’s Names

Johnny has many different names. While Johnny is his most common one, he also goes by Johns, Jay, John, and so many more.

Johnny’s legal name is Johnathan Demarcus Taylor. 

Johnathan is after his mum’s brother in a way, since his teachers always called him John instead of his actually name. So, she decided that Johnathan would be a subtle nod to her brother’s memory.

Demarcus was actually also his mum’s idea. Since Johnny’s first name honored her family, she felt his middle name should honor Marcus’s, but due to Marcus being disowned, Marcus’s family was just Marcus. It had the added benefit of annoying him due to him having made fun of his brother Lucien naming his son Lucas and now his son was in the same boat.

The last time Johnny was every referred to by this full name was when his dad (temporarily) disowned him in Sing 1. And the only time he heard it before that was by his mum on her death bed. Needless to say, Johnny is not overly fond of this name for that reason and he is never referred to as it. He will start crying 

Johnny’s Hindi name is Jahnu Jiyaan Aarav Sutar.

Jahnu was actually his uncle’s name and carrying the theme from his english name, Johnny’s mum named Johnny after him. It also was a nod to her sister as well, as her name was Jahnaavi.

Jiyaan is the only “original” addition to Johnny’s Hindi name. Johnny’s mum was very sick when he was born, and while she did end up living a bit longer, she knew she would pass while he was still small. Therefore, she choose Jiyaan for his second first name since it meant near heart, symbolizing she would always be with him in his heart.

Aarav was after his maternal grandfather. Family was incredibly important to his mum, and due to her being the only surviving member of her family, she made sure to honor their memories.

Sutar was his mum’s maiden name and was her mother’s last name. It was her way of incorporating her mother into Johnny’s name.

Johnny is mainly called his Hindi name in more serious situations or when he’s in trouble. However, it is also the name Nana calls him (she insists on calling the trio by formal names) as well as his aunties and uncles at the Hindu Temple he sometimes attends. 

Hobbs calls Johnny Kallik.

Hobbs (Nana’s Butler) gave each member of the Moon Trio an Inuk name as a show of affection since the three reminded him so strongly of his own children. Johnny’s name is Kallik and means lightning, due to the lightning shaped markings in his undercut.

Johnny loves this name and has started to learn bits of Inuktitut as a form of respect to Hobbs and all he’s done for them.

Rosita calls him Jonatán at times.

The Spanish form of Johnathan, Rosita mainly used this when talking either to her family about Johnny or her colleges (as Johnny didn’t want to stand out and it helped hid him in her kids’ names. She only really uses it on Johnny if he’s in trouble.

Johnny is pretty ok with this name actually. It was nice for him to blend into Rosita’s kids (at least name wise) as then she wouldn’t have had to explain he was a foster kid. He is also terrified of it though since it means he’s in trouble.

His dad calls him John-Song or John-Bird.

John-Song and John-Bird are both versions of Johnny’s mum’s nickname for him, Songbird. Marcus started calling his son that when he was little but gradually stopped as he got older. It wasn’t until after Sing 1 that he resumed the use of the nickname as a way to be close to Johnny.

Of all the names he is called, this is Johnny’s absolute favourite. Not only does it remind him of his mum but it also the first thing his dad started doing once their relationship started to heal. It always makes him feel happy and loved.

[xxanaduwrites]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ a residue series installment ˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

sweet talkin’

main hive 🐝 | next part here: honey, are you comin’?

✎ elementary-teacher!reader (miss.honey) x biker!benny 🏍️

summary: in which “uncle benny” picks up johnny’s girls from school and finds some honey along the way ;)

warnings: not much of anything besides talks of danger & some side eyes from on-lookers. an absolute fluff cake of a piece really. enjoy! x

author’s note: ngl there is some inaccuracies. i fully made up locations & such. never been to chicago or illinois even, but maybe someday :)

word count: 2.8k

💌 requests are open, send ‘em honey 💋

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You remember it like it was yesterday, the very first time you met Benny Cross. Ironically, it was one of those sticky sweet days in June, just before the start of summer ‘65. The Chicago heat was hard to beat in the cramped little classroom you worked in on Phipps Avenue. Your third graders were all flushed faces with curly cues frizzing about, and their red little cheeks burned in exhaustion. It was no surprise that you lost their ears to the tsk tsk tsk of sprinklers swirling about on the school grounds. Even though the principal was against it, you were rather relieved to see your students running about the wet grass come dismissal.

It was a lovely reprieve, truly to be out of the shoe box you worked in at the end of the day. Sure, the heat hadn’t let up. It was awfully sweltering passing clammy hand to clammy hand to their designated pick up person. But you loved being a teacher. Moreseo you loved those sweet turned up smiles that graced those baby faces of your students as they chatted about their after school plans. Heading down to the local pool or picking up a firecracker pop at the corner store was such a sweet treat. It made you miss being that young again, finding hidden treasures through the little bits of life.

You moved like clockwork during dismissal, attentive as you made small talk with parents and hugged your students goodbye. The pick of the cycle was usually smooth on your part. You knew who tended to be retrieved right away and who was left hanging, so it took you by a hint of surprise when you found yourself still hand in hand with Mr. and Mrs. Davis’s little girls.

You knew the Davis’s well — as well as anyone could holding residence in the quaint village of McCook, Illinois. Mr. Davis and his wife Betty were perishoners at the local church you frequented with your Ma and Pa. St. Caron’s on the corner of Rose and Dawn. You’d see them all together in their Sunday best, the kids in puff pastry kind-of dresses packed together in a pew with their Ma, while their Pa was mulling about in his pressed suit and tie. There was no trace of the Vandals you’d come to know, the Johnny that would be amplified under that some-what imposterous clean cut demeanor. You’d see him solemn as ever ushering pew to pew with the collections basket for the poor and at communion during the mass.

Yet, if you had to name one thing that complimented Johnny to Mr. Davis, it had to be his consistency with being on time. Never once was he ever late to church. 12pm sharp he’d be looking at his watch, waitin’ for the priest and deacon to do their thang. The same applied for his children and their respected school schedule.

It took you a moment to remember the note from the office that was sent up in the afternoon. In your defense, mastering concentration in this heat proved almost impossible. Until it wasn’t. You could see the lovely writing of the secretary with that neat cursive of hers in the back of your mind, reminding you that the Davis girls would be picked up by their Uncle Benny come dismissal.

That would explain it, you thought. But would it really? Fathoming a member of Mr. Davis’s family not being as meticulous as him? You momentarily wondered how the man would react to such a thing as being late. You were sure it wasn’t in his vocabulary by any means.

Your fingers, engulfing the petite ones of the Davis girls, squeezed their hands reassuringly. “M’sure your Uncle Benny will be here any moment.” Neither of them said anything as you glanced between the two flanked at your sides, little eyelashes blinking up at you without a care in the world. And here you thought they would be just as anal-retentive as their father.

They weren’t.

Since the school yard was becoming less compact with people, and the principal put an end to the fun with the sprinklers, you figured some chit-chat wouldn't hurt to keep them occupied. “You girls have any fun afternoon plans?”

The Davis girl on the right, taller, darker hair, lookin’ far too much like her father — a carbon copy if you will — spoke up then. “Yes! Uncle Benny is takin’ us to a picnic. Gonna see Daddy race his bike, Miss. Honey.”

A bike race, huh? You couldn’t remember seeing anything in the McCook weekly papers ‘bout an upcoming cycling event. But, hey maybe you happened to miss it on your skim of the thing, when your Pa just so happened to put it down for a second durin’ dinner.

“Well, ain’t that sweet!” You chirped, smiling brightly at the girls with genuine excitement in your eyes. “Sure it’ll be tons of fun.”

“S’not when Daddy gets all muddy.” The smaller girl, the one that looked more like her mother. Lighter hair and lighter eyes said. Her tiny face contorted into a grimace.

Muddy? Weren’t cycling races on the roads?

Surely the town would block off the streets like they did for those celebratory parades. The little one was probably exaggerating.

“Aw,” you hummed, a frown dousing your features. “M’sure your Pa is just real dedicated, y’know?” You tried to bring out the bright side for your student. “S’like when you buy a fresh book and worry about those pages dentin’. Y’won’t know if you like it if you don’t read it, right?” The girls nodded. “Dentin’ the pages just goes to show all that love you had for that book while readin’ it.”

“I guess…” The Davis girl shrugged, tiny fingers wrapping about the strap of her pretty pink backpack. Seemingly, she wasn’t as impressed as her sister to the right.

You were gonna change the subject. Gonna start chatting ‘bout something else, when a twist of tiers against the pavement sent a squeak across the air. Your mother-hen instincts kicked in instantly, protective hands pulling the girls behind you without a second thought. All heads turned simultaneously to the intrusion on the road, expecting the worst. Expecting a crash of sorts. But no, there was no crash, just a slick car pulling abruptly up against the sidewalk and jerking to a startling stop. One that could only be equated to the driver going far above the speed limit in a school zone.

It went quiet. Far too quiet as the lot of remaining faculty, students, and parents alike kept their eyes peeled back sharply at the reckless driver. Funnily enough the attentive stares of onlookers could have very well been just as bad as those witnessing an actual crash.

You weren’t any better than the rest, collecting snap shot after snap shot like a roll of consecutive film. You could still hear the engine cutting out, the door swinging open and closing with a solid flick of his wrist. A wrist that would do far worse to you in the bedroom. Far worse in the eyes of your religious upbringing, but would feel too holy to you to be considered a sin.

You only caught a glance of him for a second until his back was facing towards you, thick white letters staking his claim with a skull and crossbones for the Chicago Vandals on his cut down vest.

You’d heard a thing or two about those motorcycle men. Your father ranting and raving about the disturbances near route 95 and police chases. But never, had you ever seen one of them in the flesh up close and personal. A shrill of unprecedented delight shot up your spine at the colorful sight, no longer reserved to those blurry black and white paper cuttings.

Stopping in his tracks, you figured his car must have broken down or somethin’ – but no. He was putting out his cigarette with his worn down boot before making his way over to you, and oh he had his eye on you alright.

A relative unease wahed across the school yard, harder than the obvious heat wave as he sauntered across without a care in the world. As if dozens of heads weren’t makin’ disgusted faces and whispering about. Yet a clear intimidation set over them, people stepping out of the way without a word as if he was a Bible figure. Like Moses parting the red sea.

“Uncle Benny!” One of them chirped. Who you didn’t know, couldn’t know with the sudden flush creeping against your cheeks. Your heart dropped to your stomach once you realized who it was and that the man himself with dirty blonde scruff, calloused fingers, and a black inked layer over a honey toned canvas was makin’ a beeline to you. A beeline to you and the girls.

It was the taller Davis girl that must have called out his name, cause suddenly she was pulling you and her sister forward to meet Benny half way. You almost tripped down the stairs within the broken bubble of her excitement. Barely having a moment’s notice to collect yourself, you found your pristine baby pink ballet flats toe to toe with some scruffed up biker boots that had seen better days. You managed a breath before you looked up and boy were you glad you did.

The wind was practically knocked clean out of you when you were caught face to face with the Benny Cross. It wasn’t because you were scared of him — no. You were more taken aback with how pretty he was. How his deeply set ocean eyes managed to speak volumes without saying a word.

And suddenly, on the front steps of Phipps Avenue School you felt seen. More seen than you had ever felt in your life. He wasn’t the only one sticking out like the sorest of thumbs. So were you with your baby pink tank to match your shoes with your signature embroidered denim overall dress. Hair up and out of your face, loose honey curls frizzing about. Your kitsch tastes and unpolished attire were rather baffling for the picturesque depiction gracing the magazines your Ma read at the salon.

Some would say you were lost somewhere in Neverland. Lots of your fellow teachers would crack jokes here and there ‘bout it too. Sure, on a bad day a jab or two could get to you — but hey you liked what you liked and you weren’t gonna change that. Not for anybody. Not even for your Ma or Pa who grimaced at your bedazzled pins wedged into your messy curls during Sunday mass.

So Benny, well who were you to judge him?

“Hi, you must be Uncle Benny,” you greeted the brood of a man in front of you, flexing a sweet-like-honey smile that was just oh-so-you. You let go of the Johnny look-a-likes hand then, allowing her to wrap her small self around Benny’s leg in pure delight to see him as you outstretched your hand in a shake. To your dismay, he didn’t take it. Instead, his free hand that wasn’t mushing up Johnny’s girls dark locks as he patted her head fished for his pack of Marlboro reds in his vest pocket. That didn’t stop you from introducing yourself though. “I’m Miss. Honey.”

He gave you once over, eyes tracing you from head to toe before the edge of his lip tweaked up in a sly smile. “Honey, huh?” He mused, that deep set voice of his, thick and smokey sweetin’ up something deep inside you.

Dropping your hand back down against your dress, the material felt rather rough on your clammy skin. “Yuh-huh.” You nodded, that tight smile of yours making your eyes twitch just a bit.

A fresh cigarette materialized between his teeth then, unlit. A strange courtesy you found rather charming on the midst of educational grounds. “Hm,” he hummed, the narrow cylinder vibrating against his lips as his eyes devoured you a second time. Yet, you figured he was more unimpressed. Most were anyways.

“Benny! Benny! Can we go see Daddy now?” The girl wrapped around his leg yanked his belt loop with a small finger. The little one was still at your side, hand in hand with you. It was kind of amusin’ how different the two were. It was simple figuring out who was the bigger Daddy’s girl of the two.

“In a ‘inute, sweet-art,” he mumbled, that cigarette of his disrupting any fully coherent sentence from spillin’ out. “C’mere ‘ittle one,” he motioned to the shorter girl who was rather uninterested in leaving. In the midst of your conversation, she managed to keep her hand raised, keeping herself conjoined to you as she sat down on the bottom step in complete and utter protest.

“Don’t wanna.” She pouted down at her bunny tied saddle shoes that matched her pretty little pick-tails.

In a sense, you couldn’t blame her. Now it was all adding up. What was really going on. This wasn’t just some run of the mill village cycling marathon. This was a Vandals bike race.

Any other teacher would have probably made a stink, called the parents in for a sit down with the principal over infiltrating their kids in a biker environment infused with criminal records. But, you weren’t like that — no. Especially when you’d see a child’s eyes light up with so much delight. It was clear that Mr. Davis’s look-a-like was really proud of her father. Who could blame her? Respected throughout the community, a family man who put his all into a trucking' job.

A picnic with some bike racin’ wouldn’t be so bad, right?

Not with Mr. Davis involved.

So, you gave the benefit of the doubt. Sure, it could have been for all those reasons that were swarming about your head, but in actuality your heart was working double time over your mind. The image of the Davis girl clinging to Benny’s leg had teddy bear written all over it, giving you all the sweet talkin’ you’d need. Ironically enough, in due time that soft side of him would turn into plushy lovin’ reserved just for you.

“Lemme,” you mouthed to Benny before getting down to the little one’s level. Flattening out your skirt you took a seat next to her and rested both hands over her own in her lap. “Remember when we were talkin’ about a good book? Dentin’ the pages?” The girl nodded, but didn’t meet your eye. Instead, Benny doing the opposite, his eyes practically grilled onto your peripheral vision. “Well, sometimes if we are too protective of it. Too keen on keeping it all in tack, we’ll never learn not to and we’ll just be more and more disappointed when we come across a little crack we never created in the first place. We may not like it, but it’s there, and there is so much love there.” You squeeze the little girl’s hand. “Just like your old man racin’. You may not like it, but he does, and that’s quite alright. You know why?”

“Why?” She looked up at you then, little doe eyes attentive as ever, clinging onto your every word. It was times like this that reminded you why you were a teacher.

“‘Cause you love him, no matter what” You replied, tilting your head ever-so subtly to observe her reaction.

And oh did Benny love you. He didn’t know it then. Couldn’t fully compartmentalize it until later. Yet, unbeknownst to you, it was one of the first of what would become many of Benny's thoughts on how damn good of a teacher you were, how fine of a wife you’d make, and how sweet of a mother you’d be.

Thankfully, your words must have resonated with the little girl. It only took a moment for those delightful dimples of hers to grace those little features before her lips turned up in a sweet smile. “We gotta go Uncle Benny!” The girl declared suddenly, standing up straight with a whole new attitude. You were glad to supply the optimism. That’s what you were all about. That was the lesson you hoped to instill to your students the most.

You couldn’t help but smile yourself, feeling like a warm blanket was being draped over your shoulders soundly. Not uncomfortable. Not contributing to the intolerable heat wave. You’d only been in your second year of teaching, but hey — small victories like this made it worth it. Made you proud of yourself, even if you couldn’t find such gratitude from others.

Little did you know, Benny — he was so fuckin’ proud. Proud to see you spreading such honey-coated wisdom to a youngin’. And there on the steep steps of Phipps Avenue school as the little one wrapped her arms around you and thanked you profusely before grabbing Benny’s hand and heading to Johnny’s car, he found his mission.

You were gonna be his wife.

He was sure of it.

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this was so much fun to write! i hope you liked it :) i’m thinking of also including some honey interviews curtesy of danny ! stay tuned for “from the hive” 🎙️🐝

also to note, my requests are open for any miss honey x benny cross works + any convos about these two in general. don’t be shy honey, i’m all for yapping in the asks.

+ don’t forget to comment if you’d like be added to “da bee hive” (my version of da tag list)

smoochies. all da love xanadu 💋

da bee hive 🐝🍯:

@nervousnerdwitch

@sunnbib

@rose-deathman

@austinbsblog

@thegabbyh

@jihyowrrld

@bellesdreamyprofile

@superemobitch

@m00npjm

@imusicaddict

@astrogrande

@alana4610

@cynic-spirit

@mariaenchanted

[octopiys]

Cw: blood/murder, body horror, mentions of catholic guilt

Witch!Johnny who has no idea of what he's doing.

His nights since "Simon" has returned have been restless, dreamless, and he's always woken up feeling.... unfinished. There was was always unease in his chest, buried deep, like the feeling of forgetting something. His days don't go by much easier.

His work is mostly on the computer, and there are sometimes where he must go into the offices, bring Gary some leftovers from the night before, fill out some files, and head on home.

Today, though, is different. He spends his time searching through every record their office had, trying to find any semblance of what he's seen.

Witch!Johnny, who's beginning to think the lack of sleep has made him go insane. Maybe he's making it up. He feels more comfortable gaslighting himself into believing that a storm pushed over the tree in his backyard, than-

NCO!Gary who finds Johnny asleep at his usually empty desk. There were numerous tabs pulled up on his computer, of age old chat forums and supernatural sightings from years ago, blogs that had gone cold. He smirks, shaking his head with the roll of his eyes as he pats Johnny on the back, trying to wake him up.

NCO!Johnny who wakes with a jolt. Gary looks slightly concerned, he must've fallen asleep again. He apologizes, and shuts down his computer. He's just felt so tired recently.

Witch!Johnny, who comes home to Ms. Riley, pacing anxiously on his front step, who's eyes light up when she sees him. She looks tired too.

"Oh, John, thank goodness- Mozzie's run away, and Tommy's coming in tonight, I was gonna ask if you can keep an eye out for him!" She pleads and he agrees, equally worried for Mozzie, short for Mozart, which is short for Mozzarella, who's been the Riley dog as long as he can remember. How the little rat dog escaped bequeaths him, but he promises to double check his wildlife traps tomorrow when he takes the cart around to collect them.

NCO!Johnny who ensured that his traps were practically harmless to the environment, not a doubt in the world that Mozzie had gotten into one of his raccoon cages.

Witch!Johnny who locks his doors twice tonight.

Fae!Simon, who thinks it's rather hot. The weather, that is.

It's a peculiar thought to have when some humans flesh and blood lies mangled beneath him. There was a soft inkling of recognition in the base of his skull, a little tendril that beckoned him to destroy it, and so he did. The heated metal bits that were fired at him had little effect. They could not hurt him now.

They could not hurt him anymore.

What used to be the wriggling mass under him had called him something odd, whispered it like a True Name, and it was. It hit a notch in the tendrils of his heart, and he sprung. This man had wronged him before, and used his true name to do so. Yet, when he said it, it didn't entirely feel like his.

Like something else shared it.

So it must've not been his after all.

He turns, the earth warm beneath his feet as the sun rose high in the sky.

What is a Simon, anyhow?

Witch!Johnny, who dreams tonight. He's a kid again, pouring over his nan's old books while she bakes too salty cookies in the kitchen. He never complained, and she gave him a handful of chocolate chips to munch on while the cookies were in the oven. Simon would be coming over later, and he too, would not complain about the cookies. Johnny would give him a chocolate chip for his bravery.

His Nan bumbles up to him, her chest puffing proudly that the boy is following in her footsteps. "Did ah ev'r tell ya 'boot my lil' Jackie?"

"Yes, Nan," He'd always say in response.

"Aye, but y' dinnae ever listen!" Something sharp lurks beneath her words, like sharp rocks that you take notice of when you finally take the training wheels off of your bike. "When ah was a wee lass, my lil broder, Jackie, was too curious for his own good. Born with caul, too, if ye can believe. Mam would call us in fer dinner, and she'd send me ou' ta find him. He loved the woods, that boy, and the life inside o' it. Real sweet lil' thing, too. Broke his heart anytime Mam squished a bug, and God forbid he stepped on one o' em on his own! I found him, one night, sittin' just inside o' the trees. There were mushrooms all 'round him, like somethin' had died just up under th' roots. An' ah knew then, I think. But ah ran inside and got me Mam, cus he would nae answer when ah called 'im. She came out with th' shears-" She pokes him in the side with a wooden spoon for extra measure, and he giggles, despite the tragedy of the story. "An' cuts up all o' the mushrooms, an' he sits up, and walks back inside."

"What then, nan?" He asks, always too eager for his own good.

"Thought ye said ye heard o' this one?" She teases him, before turning away and continuing. "He was so quiet after tha'. Made me sad, cus he would nae talk aboot anythin'. Like a switch had been triggered. He stepped on a bug he found that night. And another one, after that. His eyes were so cold." She trailed off, sounding almost sad, which seemed impossible to Johnny, because his Nan was never upset. "Me Mam turned him out the next week. Told him that she wanted her boy back. She warded the creature off with those shears up there, an I never saw 'im again." She hums, like this was an everyday occurrence as she gestures to the old sheers hanging in the window.

Witch!Johnny asks, no longer a child. "What was it, Nan?"

His Nan just smiles, before looking down at the book. "Seems like ye found one o' yer own, have ye nae?"

Witch!Johnny who looks down at the old book, where written in ancient ink across the top was the header: Changeling.

Witch!Johnny, who sits up in a cold sweat. His clock read 3:13. Unlucky. Somewhere in his former catholic brain, an alarm bell rang.

The curses of the law lifted by becoming the curse.

Did he still have that book?

He'd found one of his own. He spills out of his bed, racing to his bookshelf.

He blows dust off the cover and flips through it until he's satisfied, eyes settling on the thinning paper. Changelings. Was he right?

Deep-seated unease settles inside of him as he read, mentally ticking off boxes.

For it is written.

Pointed teeth. Cold eyes. Personality change. Precious, precious, precious. Did he play any instruments? No. Not Simon. He barely talked anymore. Barely ate, that he knew of.

Changeling, changeling, changeling.

The man that lives down the street, who came back rugged from war. The man who was not the person he grew up with. The Simon who came back. He should've known. Oh, his grandma must be turning in her grave right now, or laughing at his stupidity. He drops the book, hands shaking.

The Ghost that replaced Simon Riley was a Changeling.

Cursed is everyone who hangs in the trees.

Last part | Next part

Inspired by Meet Me In The Woods by Lord Huron

Taglist: @whorangi1104 @impossible-to-pronounce @the-only-universe-here

(If your blog is here but the tag doesn't work, there's a good chance your blog is accidentally hidden! Lmk if that's the case :) )

Any questions? My ask box is open!! <3

[beansmakesthings]

You 🫵

Yes you

Give me your Penny Lamb headcanons (legoland)

Boy, what happened to 'hello' and 'please'. I have a name, you know /lh

I will preface this one by saying I think it's very funny if Legoland Penny and RTC Penny exist in the same universe as separate people and all my hcs are approached from that perspective. Cool? Cool.

This one is also just random general stuff and will feature some vague references to parental abuse and mental health issues. Cause you know, it's Legoland.

- RTC Penny started calling her 'PB' when she found out she had a crush on Constance. As in, she's the future Penny Blackwood. (I will refer to her as PB for the rest of this for clarity)

- Yes this means there's a Penny Lamb dating Ocean and a Penny Lamb dating Constance. I just think it's funny.

- PB and Ezra'a parents were neglectful at best days and cruel at worst. PB did everything in her power to keep their attention off of Ezra and took care of him as best as she could. As a result, she's a lot more affected by their childhood than Ezra is.

- She has a bad habit of getting into fights as she has pretty poor emotional regulation due to her childhood trauma (see biting Johnny Moon in the face) and the internal anger over being unable to stop it. She's going to therapy and has improved considerably, but she still sometimes has a tendency to lash out at people who bother her.

- PB and Penny absolutely hated each other at first. It was just plain creepy. Both from somewhere a little outside Uranium City, have the same name, both have parental problems, both subject to bullying, both autistic, it just rubbed them the wrong way. They eventually grew to like each other though.

- PB still has a legally enforced curfew she has to follow as part of the court order after the Johnny Moon incident. This is a great travesty as it means she can't join any choir sleepovers.

- When Constance finally cracked and told PB all about the warehouse after the Cyclone accident and coming back to life (she felt guilty lying and hiding it from her), PB took it rather well. She once used her brother's money from selling his ADHD meds to cross the boarder into the States, snuck into a bar, and attacked a celebrity once, so who is she to decide whether or not 6 people collectively remembering God in the form of a fortune machine making them perform a musical for a rat was a real event or just mass hysteria? Weird things happen all the time. She's just glad they're all alive either way.

- PB loves going into the woods and finding little bugs and frogs and things. She takes pictures of everything and gives them all names

- She has no idea where the whole 'PB' thing came from, but literally everyone except Ezra calls her that at this point and she DOESN'T GET IT

- Constance usually shortens the PB nickname even further and just calls her Peebs. It's so far from her own name at this point that it's kind of frustrating, but she can't convince anyone to stop (Constance is also in on where it comes from and thinks it's adorable)

- PB has no idea how most teenagers dress and has never been in on a trend in her life (aside from Seven Up and we all know how that turned out) so she usually dresses like a 70s hippie

- She has a tendency to bring home wild animals and try to sneak them into her room. She once hid a family of raccoons in her closet

- PB formed a weird friendship with Ocean that almost entirely relies on comparing their shitty drug addict parents

- PB absolutely loves music. It's so stimmy. Once she's out in the world and becomes friends with the Saint Cassian Chamber Choir, she's being introduced to more music than she ever knew existed. She loves watching the choir perform and loves being in a car with any one of them and cranking their music until she can feel the bass in her chest.

- Constance keeps telling PB she could join the choir if she wants. They have plenty of room for her. PB declines because, while she can hold a tune and play ukulele, she doesn't like singing nearly enough to get in front of so many people and open herself up to judgement. She prefers to listen, so she'll just sit in the front row, thanks.

- PB does not like eye contact and will never look anyone in the eye ever unless she has no choice

- PB and Ezra were featured in one of Mischa's rap songs on YouTube

- Elysium didn't have a lot of modern technology so PB is terrible with most of it. She can barely use her phone without getting trapped in the notes app and panicking and needing someone to fix it

- Since she was homeschooled and kind of got to pick whatever she found most interesting to learn about, PB is incredibly knowledgeable about a lot of history and biology, but is god awful at math. She's pretty convinced she'll fail grade 12 math because what the hell is a parabola?

[jannah1721]

The state of my heart

This is a fanfiction, meaning that all events and occurrences in this story are all fictional and all are part of my imagination. Any resemblance to actual life events and people, living or dead, are all purely coincidence. I am not, in any way, affiliated to Snow Man members or Johnny’s Entertainment so I do not own the Snow Man members mentioned in my fanfiction.

________________________________________________________________

A team of police, investigators and forensics surrounded the house.

 “The identity of the victim?”, a police in his 50s asked.

“Miyadate Hiroyuki, 35 years old. Program manager at Toshiro Tech”, a young policeman next to him answered.

“Who is the first discoverer?”, the old man continued.

The young policeman points his index finger to a lean man who’s sleeping on a sofa.

“He brought me here asking for help and as soon as I opened the main door and we saw the corpse, he fainted”.

 Meguro Ren. This is the name of the young policeman. After 4 years in a police academy, Meguro is a freshly appointed police officer. He was assigned to the criminal investigation team after the seniors acknowledged his skills and abilities as an investigator during his internship. Today is his fourth case as an official investigator.

 === 1 hour before ===

 Meguro was on his way back home from hanging out with his friends. They ate at a nice restaurant and went to karaoke after that. Ahh it was a fun night.

 He was just carefreely walking down the street when suddenly he was surprised by a man in white clothes rushing onto him and more surprisingly, squeezing him in a tight hug. The man was visibly shaking.

“Please help me…”, the man whispered.

Before Meguro can even asked what happened, the man hold his hand and pulled him to the direction of a 2-storeys house. The name “Miyadate” is carved at the entrance.

 When they arrived at the entrance door, the man looked hesitant. Meguro saw that the man was panting hard too. Seeing the frustration on the man’s face, Meguro volunteered to open the door. What he saw beyond the door was a bloody body of a man lying down on the floor. He heard a thud. When he turned back, the man in white was already on the floor, fainted.

 === Current time ===

 A cute, pink-haired forensic officer approaches Meguro and his superior.

“The cause of death is organ failure from stab wounds. Seems that he was killed instantly as the stab wounds reach his heart. He was stabbed another 6 times in other parts of the body. The weapon is nowhere to be found”.

He continues while holding up a huge toolbox, “We have finished taking the fingerprints and collecting evidence. We’ll go back first to analyze these at the lab.”

“Good job, Sakuma. We’ll reach out to you later”, said Meguro’s superior, Iwamoto, while patting his hand on Sakuma’s shoulder. Sakuma nods and makes his way to the entrance door.

 Meguro hears a groan. Seems like the man in white had awake.

“You go get his statements. I’ll look around the house a little bit more”, urged Iwamoto to his junior. Meguro nods and walks to the said man. Meguro examines the man – pretty tall but not as tall as him, soft features and lean. Doesn’t look like he could murder anyone but Meguro shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The man in white looks up at him with his big eyes.

 “Hello. I’m Meguro from Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. It’s a scary coincidence that you brought a police officer to a crime scene”, Meguro greets. He held up his notebook, “The victim has been sent to the hospital for post-mortem. Now, kindly introduce yourself and what is your relation to the victim”.

The man in white sits up properly. “My name is Abe Ryohei”. Abe looks sadly at the floor where the victim was found dead. “I was taken in by the Miyadate family since 7 years ago after my other family members passed away. You might know about the mass murder using poisonous gas at a wedding ceremony 7 years ago. It was the wedding of my relative. It was supposed to be a joyous celebration, but that day turned out to be my worst nightmare”. Abe covers his face with his both hands, “I was supposed to be there too but fortunate…or unfortunately, I have a high fever that day so my parents didn’t allow me to attend the wedding. The bride was my close relative too.”

 Meguro sits down next to Abe and soothes his back. Meguro vividly remembered the case. It was the talk of the whole country back then. It turns out that the perpetrator was the bride’s ex-boyfriend, who was so obsessive of the bride. He can’t believe the fact that his ex-girlfriend left him for someone better.  Abe calms down a bit and continues, “I still have other relatives, but they live in other countries and it didn’t seem like they would like to take me into custody. Miyadate-san was my father’s best friend. He offered to take me into custody as my official guardian, however, I’m keeping my family name, Abe. I was only 16th at the time. I was yet to reach the age where I may engage in legal rights and responsibilities. That’s why a guardian was needed. Or else, I thought I would be able to survive by myself at least for a few years with the wealth my late family has left behind.”

 Abe takes a deep breath and turns to Meguro, “It’s only me and Hiroyuki-niisan who live in this house. The other family members live at Edogawa. We moved here 2 years ago, because it’s nearer to my university and his workplace. Hiroyuki was my foster brother. Today he arrived home earlier than usual. I was in my room when I heard slamming sounds. When I went down, I saw niisan was surrounded by a pool of blood”. Abe paused, hugging himself, “I saw a man. He was wearing a black cloak with a joker’s mask on his face. He was holding a bloody knife. He ran up to me too, but I was able to get away. He chased me throughout the house and when we entered the library, I used all my strength to push the big table onto him, towards the fireplace. The fire was still on when it happened. He finally left the house by cracking the window there with his back in flames. That’s when I immediately ran up to the front door and met you”, Abe finishes.

 Meguro writes down everything in points and asked, “May I know what do you study at university?”

“I’m currently a post-graduate majoring in Informatics in the Department of Science and Engineering”, Abe answers, with light in his eyes.

Meguro is stunned for a while. “A genius, I see. I never like Science”.

Abe laughs a little, “For me, Science is the tool I use to understand the world around me. It provides logic and sense and order in what might otherwise seem chaotic”.

Meguro just smiles and stares at the man beside him. Abe has a nice smile.

 Inspector Iwamoto seems to have finished his rounds and come up to them. Meguro showed him the notebook. Iwamoto-san sneers, “Anyways, until we can prove the existence of this masked man you talk about, you will be regarded as the prime suspect of this case. You said it yourself too, that only you and your niisan live here.”

Abe puts his head down. The way this man speaks hurts him a little. “I understand, inspector. I will cooperate”.

 “Ryohei!”

Everyone turns their heads to the door. There’s a man, probably the same age as Abe.

“Ryota!”, Abe runs up to this “Ryota” and envelopes him in an embrace, just like what he did to Meguro earlier.

“I saw the police tape in front of the house. What happened?”, Ryota asked.

“Niisan is dead, Ryota. He’s dead. He was killed by a Joker! The Joker tried to kill me too, but I escaped from him”, Abe answered, still embracing Ryota. Ryota soothes Abe’s back in circles with his hands, “Thank God you’re safe”. He then moves his attention to the two officers in front of him. “I’m Miyadate Ryota. Hiroyuki’s cousin. You might be wondering why I came here this late at night, but this is normal. Sometimes I swing over after work before I go home to hang out with Ryohei and Hiroyuki.”

Abe releases himself from the hug and nods, acknowledging Ryota’s statement.

 Meguro doesn’t know why but his detective guts is telling him that there is something fishy about this Ryota guy.

“Hang out? What do you guys do?”, Meguro questioned.

“What do we do? Just normal things people do during hang out. Eat, drink, play games, storytelling…” Ryota answers, looking strangely at Meguro.

Meguro nods, “Just routine question. Don’t mind it. Anyways, where do you work at?”

“I work as a chef at Juicy Diner near here”, answered Ryota.

“Ahh Juicy Diner! I’ve eaten there once and the steak was so delicious. I shall come over again some other time. Hmm, ok, what about your home? Is it near here?”

“Yeah. Just a 10 minutes’ walk from here”.

“You live alone?”

“Yeah. My parents work outside the city, so I live alone here”.

 Meguro finished writing more points in his notebook. “I think it’s good that you came here, Miyadate-san. We would need to seal this house to preserve the crime scene and to avoid any evidence being tampered with. So would you kindly bring Abe-san to live with you for a while? We will try our best to solve this case as soon as possible”.

“That would be no problem. We’re no strangers to staying at each other’s place and sleeping on each other’s bed”.

Meguro flinches and he can also see his superior lift his eyebrow. Was the last part necessary to tell? But Abe doesn’t show any discomfort with Ryota’s words.

“The house is also not in a good condition for you to live in now”, Inspector Iwamoto adds, pointing to the direction of the broken window of the library.

 Meguro turns his head in the direction of Abe and Ryota when he sees Ryota caressing Abe’s face. “Come, let’s pack your things and we can go home. You need rest”, said Ryota.

Meguro is feeling that doubtful instinct again. As if a danger is going to come. What is this unsettling feeling?

“Well then. I think that’s all for tonight. Thank you for your cooperation. We shall keep in touch with you guys until the case is closed. I’ll ask the security police to keep an eye on you two so be quick with the packing. We shall take our leave now. Have a good night”, Inspector Iwamoto exits the premise, ushering Meguro to follow suit.

Meguro turns back and look one last time to the disappearing figures of the two men inside the house.

 “Keep an eye on them”, Meguro hears Iwamoto-san says.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I know you are suspicious of them too. Let’s dig more on those two later. There must be something in their private lives that could serve as a motive for murder. That Abe guy, he is studying Informatics he said? There could be a relation with Miyadate Hiroyuki’s job at the tech company”.

Iwamoto-san sighs, “Good job today, Meguro-kun. You must be tired. Have a good rest tonight and I’ll see you tomorrow at the HQ, alright. My house is this way. Be careful on your way home”.

“You too, sir. Good night”, Meguro bows till his superior is a few distance away.

 “The estimated time of death is between 8:45pm to 9.30pm last night. According to the length and width of the wounds, the murder weapon is probably a 12-inches cooking knife. No other abnormalities were found in the body”, Sakuma explains. “We also analyzed other evidence inside the house but no other fingerprints aside from Abe-san and the victim was found”.

“Hmm. Is he lying after all?”, Iwamoto-san thinks.

“However~”, Sakuma sing-song. “We found footprints outside the house near the broken window”. Sakuma pushes forward a photo of a footprint. “Size 9 shoes.”

Meguro and Inspector Iwamoto look at each other.

“We have checked the shoes in the house. Seems like both Abe-san and the victim share the same shoe size – size 10. So…where does this size 9 came from?”, Sakuma suggests, with a smile.

Meguro doesn’t understand why but he suddenly feels relieved.

 “Come to think of it, when I looked around the house last night, I saw that all the knives were in place in the kitchen. So there is a possibility of someone else breaking into the house and killed Miyadate-san with their own knife”, Iwamoto-san utters.

“12-inches cooking knife is pretty heavy, so the perpetrator has to be someone that has huge hands and stronger built. Probably someone who is used to cooking with that heavy knife”, Sakuma adds.

Meguro’s mind immediately goes into thinking Miyadate Ryota.

“I know what you are thinking Meguro-kun. We can meet Miyadate Ryota later to confirm our suspicions, but we are yet to find concrete evidence. What about data from Miyadate Hiroyuki’s phone and laptop, Sakuma?”

“The data analyst team is currently working on it. I will report to you with our findings at the soonest!”

“Great! Thanks for the update, Sakuma. Come Meguro-kun, we’re going to Juicy Diner!”

 “Welcome to Juicy Diner!”

Meguro and Iwamoto-san was greeted by a bubbly waitress. “For two?”, she asks.

Meguro holds up his right hand and brings out his police badge from his coat pocket. “We’re from the police. I believe there is a chef here with the name of Miyadate Ryota. May us see him?”

The waitress nods and calls for the said man.

 Miyadate Ryota comes out of the kitchen, looking dashing even in chef’s uniform. “Good afternoon, officers. Please come with me over here”, he greets and bring both the policemen to the corner seating.

“Please have a seat”. He then brings out two glasses of water for the policemen before he sits down in front of them.

“Any updates on the case, officers?”

“A bit. We’re here to confirm several things with you. Were you working last night?”, Meguro questions.

“Yeah. I worked till closing time last night. You can ask the other staffs too”.

“Ok. Next, may I know your shoe size?”

Ryota lifts his eyebrow. “I’m a size 9. But why?”

“We found footprints that doesn’t match the shoe size of your cousin and Abe-san”.

“Ok. May I know the shoe size?”

“Size 9. Your size.”

 Ryota freezes but immediately regains his composure. He laughs.

“I see. So I kinda become the main suspect now, is it? Haha ok ok I understand. It’s understandable that you guys are suspicious of me. But officers, he was my dearest cousin. I will never hurt him or Ryohei. And I have no reason to murder him at all”.

Meguro snickers. “Don’t take it to heart, Miyadate-san. Again, it’s just routine questions. We need to check every nook and cranny so that we won’t overlook any possibilities. As you mentioned just now, you were working here last night. So if you are the murderer, we have to knit the loopholes in your alibi”.

“You’re right. Well then. I’m leaving the rest of the investigation to you, officers. Please find the killer soon. For Ryohei’s sake”. Ryota smiles, as if challenging the officers in front of him. Meguro doesn’t like that.

“How was Abe-san?”, Meguro queries.

“In trauma, I guess. I was woken up by his scream last night. He was dreaming of “The Joker”. He said the Joker is coming to get him. But I managed to calm him down soon after. Other than that, he’s ok. I can see he was trying to be as normal as possible this morning. Even though I can still see sadness in his eyes. He must be trying his hardest to accept this situation he’s currently in. I told him he doesn’t have to attend his classes today and just take a rest but Ryohei being Ryohei, he doesn’t want to. Ahh he always made me worried”.

Meguro realizes that when it comes to Abe, Miyadate Ryota’s tone turns fond. He doesn’t like this either.

 “Ok. We will come back if anything else comes up. We might visit Abe-san too in the near future. Thank you for your cooperation”.

Both policemen leave the diner after confirming with the staffs, the whereabouts of Miyadate Ryota the night before.

 “Miyadate Hiroyuki’s last LINE chat was with his colleague. About work-related things. However, he made a call to Kitayama Rintarou an hour before his death”, Sakuma reports, when both Meguro and Iwamoto-san returns to HQ in the evening.

“Who is this Kitayama Rintarou?”, Iwamoto-san asks.

“He is Abe Ryohei’s university lecturer”.

“Hmm? What is the relation between the deceased and this university lecturer?”

“From the LINE chats with this Kitayama-san, we found that this Kitayama-san is currently doing his PHD. Once he had used Abe Ryohei’s research findings in his thesis without consent. Abe-san eventually found out about it when his findings were deemed plagiarized during a presentation. Abe-san confronted the man, but he ended up getting assaulted. Maybe Abe-san reported this to Miyadate Hiroyuki so the deceased tried to take care of the matter”.

“I see. Anything else?”

 At this moment, there is a call to the office. Meguro picks it up.

“Miyadate Hiroyuki seemed to have done extensive research on this guy. The night before the incident, he sent Kitayama-san a threatening text message – saying that he knows other mischiefs Kitayama-san had done. He even attached some evidence. This guy is disgusting. He even offers “Sex-for-grades” with his students”, said Sakuma while scrunching his face.

“Hmm. So this Kitayama-san is afraid of Miyadate-san exposing his wrongdoings so he killed him, is a possibility, isn’t it? Alright! Looks like we have a new suspect. We shall investigate this university lecturer soon. Thanks again, Sakuma. You’re really helpful”.

“Sir!”, Meguro yells. Both Iwamoto-san and Sakuma turn their heads to him.

“We got a call from a crime scene in Chuo ward. The victim’s name is Kitayama Rintarou”.

 The crime scene is inside an apartment on the 5th floor of a 7-storeys apartment building. The dead body of Kitayama Rintarou is lying on the floor of his living room.

 “Similar modus operandi”, Sakuma starts. “Deep stabbed directly to the heart followed by few more stabs on random parts of the body. We will find out if it’s the same weapon once this body gets examined for autopsy later”.

 Meguro looked around the house. From the photo frames on the desk, he can deduce that the deceased is still unmarried. There are only photos of the deceased himself and together with who might be the deceased’s parents. There are also numerous certificates on the wall which indicate his achievements. Meguro sneers. He wonders how many of these certificates the deceased actually achieved with his own hard work and effort.

 Meguro moves to the bathroom. Only one toothbrush. He can confirm that the deceased lived alone. He walks to the kitchen next. Nothing else seems out of order aside from a jug of orange juice on the counter, along with a bottle of sleeping pills beside it. A jug? Means that the deceased was going to serve the juice to other people. Means that…the deceased was waiting for someone. He immediately shouts from the kitchen, “Sakuma-kun! Take a photo in the kitchen later. There’s a jug and sleeping pills. Suspicious!”

He can hear Sakuma replies with, “Roger that!”

 “SENSEI!”

Meguro hears a familiar voice and rushes out from the kitchen. Abe Ryohei is standing at the front door, with both his hands covering his mouth, looking shocked. Meguro doesn’t understand why his heart skips a beat.

 “Abe-san? Why are you here?”, Meguro approaches him.

“Sensei texted me this afternoon. To meet him here…”

“Why is that?”

Abe breaks eye contact with Meguro. “That is…”

“Is it about the research findings that he stole from you?”, Iwamoto-san queried. Abe freezes. “We already found out about that from the data of your niisan’s phone. Do you know that your niisan was checking the background of this sensei of yours till he was able to get hold of some evidence of other misconducts that this sensei had done? We believe that your niisan was trying to expose this dude’s dirt after what happened to you”.

“Ohh niisan…”, Abe falls to the floor, he’s visibly crying now.

Meguro reaches down to hold Abe’s shoulders. “Let’s talk outside, Abe-san. Show me the message you received from Kitayama-san this afternoon”.

 Meguro brings Abe to sit down in the lobby of the apartment. Abe shows him the message. It reads: “Come to my apartment at 8pm. I am terribly sorry for my actions previously. Let’s settle this out in peace.”

Meguro cringes reading the message. Settle in peace, my foot!

 “I can’t believe that niisan actually went a long way to bring justice to what happened to me”.

Meguro looks at Abe. The man has his right hand on his chest.

“Can you tell me more of what happened? And do you know about other unpleasant things that your lecturer had done?”

“It was a month ago when I found out about sensei’s fraud. I came to confront him at his staff room. It was a frustrating experience. I was humiliated in front of other scholars. I wasn’t aware that my findings were already published under sensei’s name a week prior. The scholars who attended the presentation already read through sensei’s research paper, so they called me out for plagiarizing”. Abe hugs himself before he continues, “I never heard of any bad reputation about sensei. I know why after I went to his staffroom that day. He gave me a drink. I drank it. Then I feel dizzy. Then suddenly…He was…He was on top of me…He was…He was touching me everywhere. Then he told me to wait. Then he shoved his phone in front of my face. Thankfully there was a part of my mind that was still on alert. I know where this is going. I know what he’s going to do. With all the strength I had left, I pushed him, I kicked him and I ran away. I ran till I reached home. It was long. I might’ve run for about 30 minutes. But I didn’t feel tired. I didn’t feel anything other than sadness and disappointment. And my mind was already in haywire that I don’t even gave any thoughts of what other people might be thinking seeing me at that moment. Niisan just got back home so I bumped into him in the living room. I cried in his embrace. He asked me what happened. I told him my hard work is ruined. I told him my lecturer stole my research findings. I told him if I were to start with a new research topic, I might have to extend my university period. I might have cursed sensei some more or told niisan several other things too before I exhausted myself to sleep”.

 Meguro clenches his fist. The jug in the kitchen…Kitayama might be planning to do the same thing again tonight. What a disgrace!

 “Ever since that day, I avoid meeting him. I didn’t attend his classes. It was only this afternoon that we finally contacted each other after a while. But Meguro-san. The fact that sensei was killed too…Means that sensei wasn’t the one who killed niisan, right?”

“That’s right”, Inspector Iwamoto suddenly appears before them. “Both of you, follow me to the control room”.

 “This is the CCTV recording from the emergency staircase”. Iwamoto-san then point to the black hooded figure on screen. The figure was walking slowly till there was a point that he was walking closer to the camera that the CCTV could capture the figure’s face. Abe gasps. “It’s him! It’s the Joker!”

 The Joker was captured at every level’s staircase from the bottom to the 5th floor. The Joker stopped in front of Kitayama’s room and rang the bell. For a second, the Joker looked like he moved his mask upwards to his head, but the CCTV couldn’t capture his face as his head was covered by the hoodie. Kitayama opened the door, and the Joker went in.

“One thing we know now is that Kitayama-san knows who is this Joker”, Iwamoto-san states.

 Few minutes later, the Joker was seen going out from Kitayama’s apartment with his mask on. The Joker looked at the CCTV for a while – as if mocking the police who are going to find out about this later.

“Come to think of it…Meguro-kun, who was the first discoverer?”, Iwamoto-san asked, looking like he was just reminded of something.

Meguro shakes his head. “An unknown person. The emergency hotline receives a call from the victim’s phone, saying that Kitayama Rintarou has been murdered at his residence. The caller was using a voice changer and before the staff could ask for more details, the caller hung up. So the staff forwarded the call to our division. Also, when Sakuma and the forensic team arrived just now, the door was unlocked. We suspected that the Joker was the one who made the call”.

 Inspector Iwamoto sighs. “This is troublesome. By the way, Abe-san, where were you before you came here?”

Meguro lifted his eyebrow. Such is a life as a detective. You got to be suspicious of everything!

���I was at the university since the morning. I went here straight from there. I walked here together with my friend, Fukazawa before we part ways halfway through. I can give you his number if you need it…”

“I see. I’m sorry if you feel uncomfortable with me treating you like a criminal, but I hope you understand that it’s my job to suspect anyone, especially if they are directly involved in a case”.

Abe shakes his head and cracks a little smile, “Don’t worry, Inspector. That firmness is what makes you a respectable inspector. I understand”.

“Good. Let’s recap what we know so far. Miyadate Hiroyuki threatened to expose Kitayama Rintarou’s malpractices, so we suspected that Kitayama was the one who murdered Miyadate-san. However, that wasn’t the case because Kitayama was murdered in the same way Miyadate-san was murdered. From the text messages, we assume that both of them never had a direct meeting with each other. Which translates to no one else knows that these two knew each other. The only thing connecting both of them is you, Abe-san. But we won’t exclude the possibilities that either of them might have told someone. Say, have you ever heard your niisan talking to someone about Kitayama-san?”

Abe shakes his head. “I didn’t even know that he was researching sensei’s background and his past offenses. He might have done it in private”.

“What about Miyadate Ryota? Does he know about what Kitayama-san did to you?”

“Yeah, obviously he knows. He’s the next person after niisan that I would talk to about my problems”.

“How was his reaction when you told him about Kitayama-san?”

Abe glances at Inspector Iwamoto. His eyes are glowing with, probably anger. “What’s this? Are you suspecting him?”

Iwamoto-san raise both his hands up, in a surrendering pose, “Like I said, it’s my job to suspect everyone”.

“Why would Ryota killed niisan though? They’re cousins, for God’s sake! A close one too! They thought of each other as their own siblings. Me too, he’s like a brother to me too. Remember that the Joker was going after me as well? Ryota will never do that. Ryota has always been caring. He never hurt me. It’s impossible for him to be the one doing these murders”.

“Ok Ok calm down, Abe-san. We actually visited him this afternoon and he has an alibi for last night. Iwamoto-san was only making sure that we won’t overlook any possibilities”, Meguro interferes, sensing Abe was feeling offended. “But you should answer his question though, how was Miyadate Ryota’s reaction when you told him about Kitayama-san?”, Meguro asked again, in a soft tone.

Abe sighs. “I’m sorry I got emotional. Ryota is important in my life. I don’t want to lose him too”.

Again, Meguro doesn’t understand why it feels like a storm is raging in his chest. Ouch!

 “Hmm…How he reacts? Ryota is not the type that shows his feelings much. I think he might’ve just asked me to calm down and said that karma will bite back while pulling me into his embrace. Yeah. I think that’s what happened. That’s so Ryota. May I know why you ask?”

“Is that normal? I mean, we saw how he treated you last night. It’s that…it’s unusual to see two grown up men being that affectionate with each other, you know…”

Abe finally comes to a realization and blushes, “Ahh…That…Umm…It’s habit, I guess. Because we’ve been together for so long. The first time I met Ryota was on the day I was adopted into the family. I was still emotionally unstable, I felt overwhelmed by lots of things happening at the same time, so I remembered I was crying most of the time within the 3 months after the incident. Ryota’s parents are always busy with work so almost every day, Ryota will come over to our house to play. We all lived in Edogawa at the time. The Miyadate family owned a huge plot of land where all the families lived in one area. So our house, Ryota’s house and the other relatives’ houses are all within the same area. Anyways, it’s always Ryota who calms me down when I have my breakdowns. It’s always Ryota who came to my aid when I was faced with troubles. Ryota didn’t talk much, he just envelopes me into his embrace. And I find myself feeling relaxed, all the time, with him just doing that. And I think I had become dependent on him emotionally since that time…”

 Meguro is speechless, listening to Abe’s explanation. Inspector Iwamoto clears his throat. “Alright. Do either of you have a partner? I mean, romantically”.

Abe shakes his head. “Neither me, Ryota or niisan is in relationships. We always tease each other about this. When will each of us have a girlfriend? But we all agreed that for now, we are still too busy to commit to a relationship. So yeah, none of us has any girlfriend”.

 Iwamoto-san nods. “That was a touching story, Abe-san. Thank you for cooperating with us tonight too. We will reach out to you again if there’s any updates on these two cases. Meguro-kun, please send Abe-san home. Now that we confirmed that the Joker is real, I’m afraid he might come to attack Abe-san next. Follow him till the entrance door”, Iwamoto-san ordered.

“Yes, sir!”

“I’m sorry for this inconvenience…”

“No, no, not at all! It is my duty!”

Abe gives a small smile, “Thanks…”

 Meguro thinks he’s in love. Yeah. He must be.

People say you’ll feel butterflies in your stomach when you are crushing on someone and yes, that’s exactly what Meguro is feeling right now. Other than that, he is feeling some other crazy emotions! He is feeling uncontrollably giddy at Abe just saying “Meguro-kun” and is feeling shy to look at the said man eye to eye. Another crazy thing he thought is that…He just met Abe-san last night! Can a person really fall in love in that short amount of time?

 “Meguro-kun, turn right at the next intersection. Then it’s the second house on the right”.

 Abe leads him to a huge 2-storeys house at a high-end residential area. Meguro is flabbergasted.

“Uhh…So Miyadate-san lives here all alone…?”

Abe laughs a little. He understands the look Meguro is giving. “The Miyadate family is pretty wealthy. However, they aren’t involved in any huge businesses or anything so not many people know about the family name”. Abe reaches out to touch Meguro’s left hand on the steering wheel. Meguro gulps. “Thank you for sending me home tonight. As you can see from here, there’s no one lurking around so it should be safe. You don’t have to leave the car. I can take my leave from here. I hope you will be able to catch the culprit soon. Good night”.

“Ahh! Abe-san!”

Abe turns around before he can open the door. “Yes?”

“Here is my card. Please call me if you find anything strange, ok?”

Abe gratefully accepts the card. “Will do. Thanks”.

 Meguro waits until Abe enters the house. Abe even waves at him before he closes the door. Meguro gladly waves back.

 Meguro doesn’t drive home yet. He drives and parks his car at a side where he can monitor the house. He’s determined to protect Abe-san. So he keep a lookout for any suspicious figures around the house.

 About half an hour later, he sees a figure coming out to the veranda on the 1st floor. It was Abe-san – now already changes to more comfortable clothes, an oversized white shirt. He’s gazing at the sky above, looking at the stars. He had a melancholy expression on his face. Meguro decides that it is such a breathtaking view. A sudden poetic thought comes up on his mind – we are looking at the same stars, yet you are so far from me. Oh no. He had turned gloomy too. He quickly switches on the radio to distract himself from unnecessary thoughts.

 At a little past 11pm, Miyadate Ryota arrives home. Abe, who is still on the veranda waves down at him with a wide smile on his face. Meguro can see Ryota waves back and running fast towards the entrance door. In a moment, Ryota is there on the veranda too. They hug each other, a “normal” thing they did and Meguro notices that Ryota doesn’t leave his hands off Abe’s waist for a long time. Looks like they talk a bit before Ryota escorts both of them back into the house. Meguro tightens his grip on the steering wheel before he drives off. Damn, ugly jealousy!

 “How are you, son? I’m worried about you. I’m sorry I can’t visit you”, Abe’s foster father can be heard from the other side of the line.

“Don’t worry, father. You’re not in good health. Please, don’t stress yourself. I’m fine, really. I’m staying with Ryota now. We can protect each other. I’m sorry for niisan’s passing, father. You must be sadder, since niisan is your biological son. I’m really sorry, father…”

“Shh…I am indeed sad, son. Which father will not be sad when his son was taken away from him? But it already happened, son. I can’t bring him back to life even if I want to. What I can do now is to just be strong for him and to pray that the killer to be caught soon”.

 Abe slowly laughs. His foster father is really strong-minded. As expected from a retired army. Abe always admires his foster father’s wisdom. Miyadate-san is the most patient man Abe has ever met.

“We will have a funeral for Hiroyuki after his body is released. I hope by the time, justice will be served. I’m glad Ryota is there in Tokyo too. Please take care, both of you”.

“You too, father. I will call you back later. Bye!”

“Bye, son”. The call ends.

Relief is a feeling Abe has after calling his father. Feels like some burdens from his shoulder are removed.

 Abe is packing his bags to be brought to the university soon when his phone rings. It’s from an unknown number. He picks it up. “Hello”.

“Ryo~hei~” A deep, creepy voice answers. “Ryo~hei~”. Abe feels chills on his spine.

Abe quickly switches on the voice recording app on his phone. “Hello. Who…Who is this?”

The voice on the other line keeps on repeating his name.

“This is not funny. Come on, who are you?!”

The person on the other line creepily giggled. “You look so beautiful in white, Ryohei”.

That sentence makes Abe vigorously check his surroundings but there’s no one in sight. “You’re the one who killed niisan and sensei, right? What is your motive?”

“Hehehe…”

“What’s so funny?!”, Abe’s voice turns more agitated.

 Suddenly there’s the sound of an explosion from outside the house. He screams. It shocks him.

“Hehehe… That’s my present for you, my dear. Expect more from me next time”. And the call ends.

 Abe looks out at every window, but he can’t see any figures around the vicinity. When he peeks at the front garden, there is a bouquet of flowers and a “Jack-in-a-box” doll on top of the table inside the gazebo. Perhaps the explosive was put inside the “Jack-in-a-box” and the doll pops out when it exploded. It is not wise to go outside by himself now. He takes out Meguro’s business card and swiftly dials the number.

 Meguro miraculously finds another link between Miyadate Hiroyuki and Kitayama Rintarou. The name is Fuji Ichiro. The name comes up in both Miyadate and Kitayama’s contact list. Meguro is about to check Miyadate and Kitayama’s previous chats in case there are any chats with this Fuji Ichiro guy, when his phone rings. “Hello, Meguro speaking”.

“Meguro-kun, it’s me Abe”. Meguro instantaneously stands up from his seat.

“Abe-san? Is something wrong?”

“He was outside the house. He just called me. He left a bouquet of flowers and a “Jack-in-a-box” outside the house. There was an explosion too…”

Meguro’s mind grows alert hearing the word “explosion”. “What?! You’re still in the house, right?”

“I am. I’m supposed to go to university now but…”

Meguro cuts his sentence. “Stay there! I’m coming. Don’t open the door to anyone. Anyone, ok? Even the people you know!”

“Ok, Meguro-kun. Drive safely”. He hung up.

 “What happened?”, Iwamoto-san asks from his desk.

“The Joker was at Miyadate Ryota’s home. He called Abe-san”.

“What?! Hey! Don’t go alone! You don’t know how strong the man is if you were to encounter him. Take Hikaru with you!”

“Roger!”

 Meguro runs to the Security Operations Department in search of Iwamoto Hikaru, his superior’s son.

“Hikaru-kun! You have a task from your father, let’s go!” Meguro shouts, from outside the department.

A tall man with a nice built, stern-looking face, neatly gelled side parted hair, looking dashing in full suit walks fashionably towards Meguro with both hands in his pocket.

“Where to, Meguro-kun?”

 “Abe-san, you may open the door now. I’m outside”, Meguro requested by calling Abe.

The door opens soon after. Abe observes the surroundings outside.

“We’ve checked till the backyard. There is no one around. I’m Iwamoto Hikaru. Nice to meet you”, Hikaru casually introduces himself to Abe and hold out his hand for a shake. Abe shakes his hand.

 Meguro inspects the items the Joker left behind. There is a note in red ink attached to the doll. It says, “You are mine, Ryohei”. What kind of sick game is this?!

Abe peeks through Meguro’s shoulder. He gasps when he sees the note. The Joker is targeting him after all. He shivers when he examines the bouquet of flowers. A combination of Red Camellias, Azaleas and Yarrows. In flower language, it means “You are a flame in my heart, you are in danger, I love you for eternity”.

 Hikaru whistles. “Looks like you got a secret admirer, huh?”

Meguro shushes him. “Be sensitive. His brother and teacher got killed by this man!”

“Ehh~~~ Alright, alright. I’m sorry~”, he might be apologizing but his tone sounds insincere. Abe doesn’t take it to heart. People have different characters after all.

“We’ll take these to Sakuma-kun. Now come, Abe-san. We’ll drop you at your university”, Meguro ushers Abe to the backseat of the police car.

 Abe plays the recording of the Joker’s call in the car at Meguro’s request. Hikaru is driving.

“This can be filed as a stalker case. Looks like he’s following your every movement. The problem is he’s still invisible to us. We have no idea who this stalker is. We don’t know who we have to protect you from”, Meguro states, frustratingly.

“Hmm. For now, it’s risky for you to go anywhere alone, Abe-san. You should be accompanied at all times. I suggest you stick with your trusted best friends to go with you anywhere in the university. The more the better. We can’t exclude the possibility that your closest friend might be the culprit. You can’t trust even your closest friends now. Avoid secluded areas. Call Meguro if you find anything strange. Also, he can fetch you from and to university. Just inform him of your schedule. And I suggest you stay with Meguro until your partner is home”, Hikaru advice, with a serious expression while Meguro gives him a side-eye. “What?”

“I’ll take your advice. I’m sorry for troubling you…”

“Don’t be sorry. That’s what the police are for. To protect the citizens from danger”.

 The car is now entering the small road leading to the university. It’s still a little far from their destination though. So not many people and cars are in this area during non-peak hours. Just like at this moment…

 Out of nowhere, a hooded man wearing Joker’s mask suddenly jump out directly in the middle of the road.

“SHIT!” Shocked, and in an attempt to evade the man, Hikaru rapidly turns the steering wheel to the right. The car crashes into a fence wall of a house, causing immense damage to the front of the car. All men inside the car are thrust forward from the impact and air bags are deployed.

 “Ugh…” Meguro’s field of vision is tunneled for a while. He sits up straight and takes a deep breath before he regains full vision. He looks to his side. Hikaru seems to have fainted. Then he hears the sound of broken glass and Abe’s scream.

“AGHHHH! STOP! LET ME GO!”

 The Joker breaks the window of the backseat and grabs Abe’s hand, pulling him out of the vehicle.

“Abe-san!”, Meguro is still a bit dizzy and he’s struggling with removing his seat belt. When he is finally able to get out from the car, he sees that the Joker is having a hard time pulling Abe into a van parked near there. Abe is flailing so much to remove himself from the Joker’s grip. He runs up to them but before he can reach them, Miyadate Ryota suddenly appears to save Abe from the situation.

 Ryota grabs the Joker by the shoulders from behind and throws a punch to the Joker’s head. The Joker punches Ryota back and when Ryota evades the punch, the Joker runs away from them all. Meguro lets out his gun and aims it at the Joker’s legs. He pulls the trigger.

“AGHHH!” Bullseye. The Joker falls to the ground.

 Both Meguro and Ryota run up to the Joker. The Joker tries to get up when suddenly, he starts to cough vigorously, then he holds his neck with both of his hands. Looks like he choked. Both Meguro and Ryota stop in their tracks. In a split second after, the Joker falls back down. The two men continues to reach the Joker.

“Oi! You are under arrest for an abduction attempt!”, said Meguro, breathing heavily. He crouches down, shaking the Joker but there is no response. He turns the Joker around first and removes the mask. A young man he never seen before and Ryota also looks like he doesn’t know the man. Meguro shakes the Joker again. “Oi! Wake up!” At that moment when his face is close to the Joker, he feels no breathing. Meguro stops his action. It can’t be! He checks the pulse on the Joker’s neck and wrist. Inexistent. The Joker is dead.

  It takes about 15 minutes before the ambulance and police force arrive at the scene. Hikaru is already awake by this point, helping Meguro inspect the van while Miyadate Ryota accompanies Abe at the backseat of their damaged police car, getting medical attention. The main doctor declares the Joker is dead and takes him away by ambulance. Meguro finds the Joker’s wallet inside the van and identifies him as “Fuji Ichiro”. Meguro suddenly got reminded of the mutual contact he found in the previous two victims’ contact list. He checked his mobile phone for the data. Indeed, it’s “Fuji Ichiro”.

 “Thank God you’re safe, son, Meguro-kun!”, Inspector Iwamoto approaches them both near the van.

“Yeah. It’s unfortunate that the perpetrator is dead when we captured him though”, Hikaru said.

“Hmm. Run me down what happened and who is behind this Joker?”, Iwamoto-san implores.

“We were on the way to send Abe-san to his university when the Joker suddenly appeared in front of us. Hikaru tries to evade the man, sending the car crashing. The Joker attempted to kidnap Abe-san by pulling him into this van but before that happened, Miyadate Ryota suddenly appears. They had a little fist fight before the Joker tried to run away. I shot his legs and he fell. We saw that he was like choking, and when I finally reached him, he was already gone”, Meguro explains in detail. “The man is identified as Fuji Ichiro, a post-graduate at the same university as Abe-san. I did my research at the HQ before I came here, this name actually came up in both Kitayama-san and Miyadate-san’s contact lists. But I still haven’t checked what is the link between the three of them”.

“Good job, Meguro-kun. After listening to your story, I become more suspicious of this Ryota guy”, Iwamoto-san whispers. “After they receive medical attention, we shall bring both of them to HQ for statement. Hikaru, son, thank you for helping Meguro-kun today. You guys should seek medical attention too. You never know what side effects you will be having after the crash”.

Meguro and Hikaru nod. “We’ll go to the hospital ourselves after we got the statement from Miyadate Ryota and Abe-san”.

 Ryota and Abe are sitting side by side inside the interview room of the Tokyo MPD. In front of them are Iwamoto-san and Meguro, notebook ready as well as ready for questioning.

 “Abe-san, do you know a man by the name of Fuji Ichiro?”, Meguro starts.

Abe is thinking. “Umm…I can’t recall anyone by that name. May I know who he is?”

Meguro puts a photo of Fuji Ichiro on the table. “This…is the Joker”.

Abe gasps. “Ehh…? But…I didn’t know him. Why is he after me?”

“He attended the same university as you. A post-graduate too”.

“Ahh…then, we might have come across each other. But really, I didn’t know him”.

Meguro leans back on his seat. “We find his contact in both your brother and your sensei’s phone. We will analyze their chats, if any, to find out what could be the motive”.

“He knows my brother?”, Abe asks, looking confused.

“Don’t worry, Abe-san. Our team is very efficient. We will find the relation between them in no time”, Meguro assures him.

Abe smiles and says a soft “Thank you”.

 “About you, Miyadate-san. Why were you there at the crime scene?”, Inspector Iwamoto questioned, his tone stern and looking suspiciously at the man in front of him.

“Ryohei informed me about the explosion at the house. At first, I offered to take him to university but he said that he had already called the police so they would be the one to accompany him to university. We kept on texting until Ryohei said the police has arrived and we ended our conversation”, he pulls out his phone from his pocket and shows the policemen the chat between him and Abe.

“I was obviously still worried. So I tracked him using “Find my Iphone”. When I saw that he wasn’t moving from the location for a while, I rushed to the scene”, Ryota explains calmly.

“Wha…When did you set up that feature on my phone?”, Abe asks him, clearly surprised.

“Last night when you were sleeping. I’m worried, Ryohei. If it’s not for my work, I don’t want to leave you alone. I’m afraid that things like today happened”, Ryota softly says while caressing Abe’s left hand with his right. Meguro decides that Miyadate Ryota must enjoy showing his affection towards Abe-san in public. “Does that answer your question, Inspector?”

Inspector Iwamoto gave him a look. He’s not satisfied with Ryota’s answer just yet. “Hmm alright. Where were you before you arrived at the scene then?”

“When Ryohei called me, I had just finished shopping for ingredients. I was at the diner. My workplace and Ryohei’s university are not that far, if you’re wondering how I rushed to the scene on time”, Ryota finishes his statement.

Truth be told, Iwamoto-san is still very wary of Miyadate Ryota even after the explanation. His stories are too perfect, too calculative. Something is definitely fishy about the guy…

 Inspector Iwamoto looks at the clock on the wall.

“Ok, I guess that’s enough statement. Thank you for cooperating with us again today. I’m sorry that you had to go through the experience of getting in a car accident in a police car, Abe-san. I’m glad you didn’t suffer any fatal injuries”.

Abe shakes his head, “No no! I should be the one apologizing for putting Meguro-kun and Hikaru-san’s life at risk. Since I was the target after all”.

“Hmm…I think we won’t bother you so much anymore now that the Joker is dead. We will contact you again probably if we need further information and when we have settled the three cases. You may take your leave now. Have a pleasant day”. All the men shake hands.

 Before Ryota and Abe leave, Abe turns to Meguro. “Thank you so much for all you’ve done for me, Meguro-kun. Here, a little token of appreciation from me. I hope you can keep it with you always. Hehe.”

Abe hands over a flower bouquet charm to Meguro. It’s a combination of blue and white flowers.

“They are blue violets and gardenias”, Abe mentions, and somehow, he suddenly looks shy. “You can search for its meaning later. Until we meet again”, Abe bows and left towards the direction of Ryota. Meguro’s heart rate speeds up and he can’t utter a single reply. He is so happy to receive something from Abe-san. However, during the whole interaction just now, he could see, from the corner of his eye that Miyadate Ryota was glaring at him. He doesn’t know why but he’s pleased with that reaction.

 Back from Tokyo MPD building, Ryota brings Abe for a meal at Juicy Diner and persuades him to stay at the diner until Ryota finishes work so they can go home together. Abe has a productive rest of the evening, peacefully doing his university work at the corner seating of the diner.

 When they arrive back to Ryota’s home, Ryota takes a bath first while Abe continues doing his assignment some more. After Ryota’s done bathing, Abe strides to the bathroom and has a relaxing, long bath.

 Abe gets out from the bathroom after about half an hour. He is only in his boxers, and he sees Ryota reading a book on the bed. Abe opens the wardrobe, rummaging its inside for his nightwear.

“Nee, Ryota”

Ryota turns to him, acknowledging.

“When the police finally settle everything about niisan’s murder later, I believe I can return to the house. I will not bother you anymore hopefully sooner”, Abe casually comments.

He finally pulls out his signature nightwear, an oversized white button-up shirt. While buttoning up his shirt, Ryota suddenly hugged him from the back.

“Ahh~” He startles when Ryota bites his neck.

He nervously looks to his side. “Ryo…Ryota?”

Ryota looks up at Abe while helping him button up his shirt. “Why are you in such a hurry to leave me? I don’t mind if you stay here forever. I love your company”. After Abe’s shirt is fully buttoned, Ryota buries his head into Abe’s neck, inhaling the smell of a freshly bathed Abe.

Abe smiles and raises his hand up to pat Ryota’s head. “Stop behaving like a possessive boyfriend. I’m tired. Let’s go to sleep”.

Ryota chuckles and let go of his Ryohei. Oh he doesn’t know.

 === The next day ===

 Meguro is in cloud 9. He searched for the meaning of the flower charm as soon as he got back home last night. He found out that the flowers mean “Secret Love”. Could it be? Meguro animatedly punches the air before he covers his face with both of his hands. He’s excited just thinking about the possibility that his feelings are reciprocated. If that’s the case then he should look for clues and more evidence fast so that the cases will be settled – then, he will be able to meet his Abe Ryohei.

“Yosh!”, Meguro is very motivated now.

 “Ding-dong! May I come in?”, Sakuma slides open the office’s door.

“Welcome, Sakuma!”, Inspector Iwamoto greets, gesturing for the pink haired man to enter.

“Good news or bad news? Which one do you want to hear first?”, Sakuma asks.

“The good one”, Iwamoto-san answers.

“Ok! I shall report to you what we know so far~ Fuji Ichiro’s cause of death is heart failure. Ahh you must be thinking how could a healthy young man like him have a sudden heart failure, right? Because that’s what I thought too. If the deceased is an old man I will conclude it just there but since this is a young man, it is pretty suspicious especially for someone who has no history of heart diseases nor inherited conditions. So we checked the stomach contents very carefully. There is still quite a volume of material left in the stomach, meaning that the victim had his meal just before his death. Seems like he had a burger. We took a sample and Walla! Poison. We believe this is the kind of poison that doesn’t killed you right away. It stays in the body for a few hours before the toxin spreads throughout the body especially to the heart, causing a heart attack. The poison might also speed up its action from vigorous activity. Like running”, Sakuma explains, while passing all the relevant documents to Iwamoto-san.

“Poison? Did he took it voluntarily or was he unaware that he was consuming the poison?”

Sakuma claps. “You should hear his story then. So let’s start with how he is connected to both Miyadate Hiroyuki and Kitayama Rintarou”.

Meguro passes a chair towards Sakuma and gestures to him to sit down so he can report his findings comfortably.

 “All the information I’m about to tell you is gathered from these 3 people’s LINE chat. Fuji Ichiro was Kitayama’s student and he had been sleeping with the sensei since a month ago. He was doing this to gain information and firsthand evidence of the sensei’s misconduct. He would always make the sensei drank lots of alcohol because truth always came out when a person is intoxicated. And it looked like the sensei wouldn’t remember anything when he sobered up. Fuji then passed whatever information and evidence he gained to Miyadate-san. We can’t be sure of the nature of Fuji and Miyadate’s relationship though. The first chat between those two was Fuji telling Miyadate-san that he’s willing to provide Miyadate-san with information regarding the wicked sensei to help Miyadate-san with his brother’s case”. Sakuma shows the printed copy of the LINE chats.

 “However, we came up with one possible reason why he was doing this. Look!” Sakuma shows them the wallpaper of Fuji’s phone. It was a candid photo of Abe! Meguro throws a questioning look at Sakuma.

“Uhuh. Next, look at his gallery”. Sakuma opens the photo gallery of Fuji’s phone. It was full of Abe’s candid photos! Photos of Abe in lectures, Abe reading book at a cafe, Abe playing the violin, Abe working with other people, Abe at a flower garden, Abe at the museum, even Abe stargazing at the balcony of his house in his inviting nightwear, and many more…

“He even wrote poems and stuffs, fantasizing about being together with Abe-san. Hear this:

When I loved you, the whole world became my enemy;

I rejected the whole world, and choose you today;

Your love is my kingdom;

You’re my persistence, my passion;

I’m heart burnt; you’re my addiction.

What do you think? He can write! I like it!” Sakuma recites dramatically. Meguro can feel a headache coming.

“So you mean…This Fuji…is obsessive over Abe-san that’s why he’s willing to help Miyadate-san to expose Kitayama sensei? Ok, I got the connection but if that’s the case, then why did he kill Miyadate-san? It just doesn’t make sense”, Meguro questions while rubbing his temples.

“Ahh~ That leads us to the bad news I’m going to convey to you today”.

 Sakuma takes a deep breath. “Fuji Ichiro…is not the Joker that killed both Miyadate and Kitayama”.

Inspector Iwamoto and Meguro stared at each other.

Sakuma repeats, “Fuji Ichiro is indeed Abe-san’s stalker, but he was not the Joker that killed these two people. Why? Because his footprints don’t match with the footprints we found at the first and second crime scenes”. Sakuma puts down the printed copy of the forensic results on top of the table.

Meguro is trying his hardest to make sense of Sakuma’s words. What is this plot twist? He thought they were already moving towards the end of the investigation. “Ehh…Ehh? So you mean…Fuji Ichiro was not the killer, correct?”

Sakuma nods. “From here, we can assume what happened: the real killer knew about Fuji’s obsession towards Abe-san, possibly persuades him to be the Joker with the reason so that he can acts on his fantasy towards Abe-san since this Fuji guy is quite withdrawn, feed him a meal with poison, then finally, wait for him to die”.

Meguro thinks hard. “Hmm. It’s a pretty foul proof plan, if not for the footprints. But still, we are nowhere near finding out the motive behind the murder. I have a suspect in mind. In my point of view, it must be him pulling the strings behind all this. But we have no solid proof other than that his shoe size matches the footprints found on the crime scene”. Iwamoto-san and Sakuma know who Meguro is referring to.

“Don’t you think he is over-protective of Abe-san? Maybe he wanted to remove whoever posing a threat to Abe-san’s life. But that doesn’t explain why he would kill his own cousin. And why would he chase Abe-san? Ugh! This is so confusing!” Inspector Iwamoto aggressively scratches the back of his head.

 Meguro’s phone rings. The caller ID shown on the screen named “Abe-san”.

“Hey, speak of the devil”, Sakuma comments.

Meguro shushes Sakuma and picks up the call. “Yes, Meguro speaking”.

“Meguro-kun…It’s still happening…”, Abe is talking in a really soft voice, as if whispering as well as in fear, from the other side of the line.

Meguro frowns. He suddenly had a bad feeling. “Can you explain what’s happening, Abe-san?”

After a long pause, he can hear Abe take a deep breath and says the next line frantically, “Someone sent me frightening letters. With candid photos of me. I’m afraid, Meguro-kun! What should I do?” Abe-san is sobbing now.

“Hey, hey, calm down, Abe-san! Ok, listen to me. Take a deep breath. Do it together with me. One, two, breathe in~~~and out~~~ Let’s do it one more time. One, two, breathe in~~~and out~~~ Ok, tell me where you are. I’m coming as soon as possible”.

“I’m at the university’s lab. Today is the weekend so there are not many people on campus. And I’m alone here inside the lab. It’s on the west side of the campus. I’m so scared to even move now Meguro-kun. I feel like I’m being watched. I’m sorry to trouble you but can you come to the lab? I’ll send you the location”, Abe whispers, trying to sound calm but Meguro can hear fear in his voice. Probably fear that this conversation will be heard by “that” someone.

“No problem, Abe-san. I’ll move now. Ahh! If it’s ok with you, please keep this call running. Hopefully it will lessen your fear knowing that I’m here, listening to you, ok?” “Alright. Thank you, Meguro-kun”.

 Abe puts his phone down on top of the table and takes another deep breath. At least he feels relieved after talking to Meguro-kun. He sits down on the stool then rubs his temple. He gazes at the cardboard box with his candid photos and creepy “love” letters in red ink inside it. Abe would think of these words as romantic, if not delivered to him this way.

“You’ve resided in my heart”

“After awakening the magic of desire, you’ve made me crazy”

“You’re stealing my peace, taking my sleep away”

“I’ve written your name on the walls of my heart”

“My heart is restless, jealous – when someone looks at you”

“The moonlight of your love, has settled in my eyes; The fragrance of yours, has settled in my breaths”

“The fire that is burning in my heart, didn’t extinguish even with many rainfalls”

“This intoxication and silence, this distance and helplessness, these heights and depths, these riddles and blockers; Love is a difficult thing”

“If this is madness, then I want to remain mad today”

“This longing doesn’t let me be far from you, even when I am at a distance”

 Abe shakes his head. No, he can’t be weak. Whoever does this to him must have some mental issues. Any sane person will approach the one they like with kindness and affection, not by instilling fear. He gently slaps his cheeks, “Focus on the work now, Ryohei”, he reminds himself. He puts the box aside and restarts his experiment.

 His peace is short lasting as he is disturbed by the sound from the announcement speaker resounds throughout the lab. “Ryohei~”

He gasps. He is indeed being watched! He looks around frantically. Then it occurs to him that if the perpetrator’s voice can be heard from the speaker, means that the man is currently in the broadcast room. The problem is…he doesn’t know where the broadcast room is! His body is in a “Fight or Flight” mode now. He brings his phone up to his ear and in a shaking voice, he asks, “Meguro-kun, can you hear that?”

A screeching sound can suddenly be heard from the speaker, followed by the person dark chuckling from the other side. That person continues with singing: “Secret~ I’m a secret~ I’m hiding here and there in the smoke~ Yes, I’m incognito~ Secret~ I’m a secret~” Then he lets out a big, evil laugh before it turns silence.

It feels like the calm before the storm, Abe hates this.

 He can hear Meguro utters “Shit!” from the other side of the line. “Hold on! I’m nearly there! Don’t move from there, ok?”

Abe hopes Meguro will arrive soon. He feels paranoid. He tries hard to be as calm as possible and carefully cleans up the apparatus he uses for his experiments just now. After that, he packs his stuffs and anxiously tapping his fingers on the desk, waiting for Meguro. After a while, he hears footsteps coming nearer. The person knocks on the door. Abe has a bad feeling. But he braves himself, “Meguro-kun?”

 The door is roughly opens…by a man in black, hooded, and with a Joker’s mask on his face. The man is holding a knife on his gloved, right hand.

“AGHHHH!” Abe screams. Then he throws whatever apparatus near him towards the Joker. The Joker slaps the equipment away and it breaks on the floor. Abe runs within the lab. Trying to block the Joker from reaching him as much as possible. There is only one entry and exit door. He must go in a circle before he can get out of the room. Fighting the man head on is not a choice since the man looks like he has stronger built. He could be stabbed in a flash. Abe is glad that he can still somehow think rationally in this situation.

 “How do you like my presents, Ryohei? Don’t break my heart~”, the Joker speaks out in a Joker-y tone.

 Few more steps till Abe reaches the door. The Joker seems to be aware that Abe is aiming for the door, so he fastens his pace. Abe manages to push the anatomy model near him towards the Joker before dashing out of the room. “HELP!”

 The laboratory is located in a secluded area, 15 minutes’ walk from the main campus. People say it’s an ideal location for horror stories – what’s with a long tunnel before the entrance and the buildings are literally inside a forest. Today, Abe unfortunately experiences that horror. Enhance with the fact that it is currently raining and stormy outside.

 Abe is running towards the tunnel when he turns around. The Joker is catching up to him. “AGHHH HELP!” He sprints as fast as his feet can go.

“Abe-san!”. Meguro is racing towards him.

“Meguro-kun!” Abe quickly hides behind Meguro as soon as he reaches him, while Meguro shoves his gun out in the direction of the Joker.

The Joker stops in his tracks then turns around, making a run from it. The Joker is running to the left to the right, not allowing Meguro to get a perfect aim. When the Joker finally reaches the end of the tunnel, he turns back around to look at both Meguro and Abe. The Joker makes a salute pose before he jumps headfirst towards the bush on the right. Meguro grabs Abe’s hand and runs in the direction where the Joker disappeared. No traces, no movements. It’s as if the Joker had disappeared into thin air.

 Meguro opens the backseat door of his car then ushers Abe to enter. Meguro follows, entering the backseat as well. They are soaking wet from the rain. Both of them pant hard, tired from all the running. Meguro holds out a bottle of water towards Abe. “I’m sorry I don’t have any towels but here, water. You must be tired from all that running”.

Abe gladly accepts the water. “Thanks”.

Meguro stares at the view of Abe gulping down the water. He is certainly feeling something. He quickly averts his gaze away.

“I’m sorry for making your car wet. And thank you for your help back there”.

Meguro lets out a tiny smile. Abe-san is apologizing and expressing his gratitude for the trivial things.

“You are mentally strong, Abe-san. With all the things happening around you, you’re still able to do things as per normal. I mean, with your niisan’s passing, I thought you might be grieving all the time – at least for this period. And it’s understandable if you do”. Abe snickers. “I am grieving. I am still grieving. I only let out my sadness when I’m by myself. I have to be strong. For me, life must go on. Excessive sadness is not good for anyone’s mind. Plus, I’m not good at not doing anything. We need distractions to steer away from thinking about sad things all the time”.

“Good. I’m impressed”.

They sat in silence for a while, didn’t know how to continue the conversation. Abe is now hugging himself while rubbing his arms with his hands in an attempt to keep himself warm.

 “Umm…I have searched the meaning of the flowers”, Meguro starts.

Abe turns his head towards him first, before he realizes something and blushingly looks away. “Ohh…you do?”

“Yeah…” Meguro is feeling awkward now. What should he say next?

 Meguro turns his whole body facing Abe. “Abe-san, I feel the same”.

Abe gazes at Meguro in disbelief. “Ehh?”

“Umm…How should I say this? I…Whenever I see you, I have this jittery feeling in my belly…Uhh…Like a flutter of electricity runs through my body…My palms sweat more than usual…Umm…Whenever we part ways, I longed to see you again…I don’t know…I mean…Those are signs that I’m in love with you, right? I’m sorry that I’m not good with this kind of thing…”, Meguro confesses fast, stuttering in between sentences. He is looking anywhere but Abe.

Abe laughs softly. He finds Meguro looking so cute right now. “I’m glad”.

 Abe reaches out to hold Meguro’s hand in his. Meguro stops panicking. Abe gazes at him directly in the eyes. Meguro is sensing a change in atmosphere. He unconsciously moves his gaze towards Abe’s lips. So tempting, he thinks.

As if listening to Meguro’s mind, Abe licks his lips. Meguro gulps.

“Nee, Meguro-kun. You know what people do after their confession is accepted?”

Before Meguro can answer and gives any reaction, Abe moves forward, claiming Meguro’s lips.

The kiss starts slow as Meguro is still in a daze, not believing this is happening. But as Meguro already makes sense of the situation, he dominates the kiss, turning it into a hungrier, passionate kiss. Meguro had his hand at the back of Abe’s head at this point. They broke the kiss for oxygen. Meguro watches as Abe’s expression turns sultrier, with cloudy eyes and his inviting lips slightly parted. He is about to initiate the next kiss when a ringing from Abe’s phone interrupts their moment. Abe quickly moves away from Meguro before answering the call. Meguro curses in his head.

 “Hello. Ryota?”

“Ryohei! I’m sorry I didn’t pick up your call earlier. Was busy in the kitchen. Anything you want to let me know?”

“Umm…Ryota…The Joker is not dead yet”.

The other line is silent for a moment. “What do you mean the Joker isn’t dead?”

“He was here. He sent me scary letters and photos of me! He also tried to kill me again! But thankfully, Meguro-kun saved me”.

Silence again. “Are you ok, now? Is the officer with you?”

“Yes, I’m alright. And yes, Meguro-kun is here”.

“Can you please pass the phone to him?”

“Sure”. Abe passes his phone to Meguro. “Ryota wants to speak to you”.

Meguro takes the phone. “Yes, Miyadate-san?”

“Ahh Hello officer. I would appreciate it if you could send Ryohei over to Juicy Diner. I’ll make sure to keep an eye on him so that nobody can hurt him”.

Meguro doesn’t know what comes over him at that moment. Perhaps, jealousy? Maybe this is how possessiveness feels like too. He replies with, “I think it would be best if he is under the supervision of the police at the moment. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to keep Ryohei safe. Well then”. He ends the call. He also put Abe’s phone in silence mode.

Abe is dumbfounded with the way Meguro answered. “Hey, why did you…Hmph!”

Meguro pulls Abe into a tight embrace and roughly slams his lips onto Abe’s. They continue to kiss, without caring that there is another call made to Abe’s phone.

 Meguro drives both of them back to his house. Meguro lives in an upper-middle apartment in Shinagawa City. “My home is not as luxurious as the Miyadate’s. I hope you don’t mind”.

Abe chuckles. “It feels homey. I like it”.

Meguro is glad. “Make yourself at home. Let me take a towel and a change of clothes for you first”. Meguro dashes into his room to find the towel and clothes for Abe. Abe is standing still at the entrance, afraid to make the apartment wet from his soaked clothes.

“Ahh Here! The bathroom is over there. Take your time in the bath. I’ll cook dinner”.

Abe scrunches his face. “Umm…What about you? You’ll catch a cold if you keep wearing that”. It is simply an innocent statement, but Meguro thinks otherwise. Meguro slowly approaches Abe till Abe’s back hits the wall.

“What? Is that an invitation?”, he asks, seductively.

Abe is confused. But once he realizes, he vigorously shakes his head and runs inside the bathroom. His heart beating fast. He can hear Meguro’s laughing from outside.

“Hey, I’m kidding! You’re so adorable! No worries! I’ll dry myself and change into fresh clothes! Remember, be careful of what you say, Ryohei~” Meguro said the last sentence in a suggestive tone.

 Abe emerges out from bath about 20 minutes later. He is still embarrassed about what happened with Meguro just now, so he prolongs his time in the bathroom. But he thought that Meguro-kun probably needs to use the bathroom soon as well, so he went out after 20 minutes of dealing with his emotions. Meguro gave him a black silky pajama set. It’s a little big on him, both top and pants. But Abe doesn’t mind. Abe forgot about his emotional situation when he smells food. He walks to the kitchen. He is presented with a view of Meguro’s back. Meguro is now wearing new clothes – a simple white T-shirt and comfortable pants. He’s making fried rice.

 “Hmm. Smells nice~”

“Tastes nice as well. Have a seat”.

Upon seeing a drink station, Abe walks to the said place. “I’ll prepare the drinks. What do you want?”

“Hehe being helpful on our first date. I like it. You’re a good husband material”, Meguro teases.

Abe throws him an annoyed look. “Awww you’re cute when you’re angry too”, Meguro continues to tease. “Anyways, green tea for me”.

Abe laughs softly. Return his attention to the drinking station. “Then, I’m taking the rose tea, ok?”

Deep inside their hearts, both of them enjoy this domesticity.

~~~

Meguro and Abe sitting facing each other at the dining table. “Itadakimasu!”

“How was it? Good, isn’t it?”, Meguro proudly asks.

“Hmm! It’s delicious! It’s amazing that you can cook like Ryota does!”

Meguro’s smile falters, unknown to Abe. Speaking of Miyadate Ryota, he suddenly remembers about the Iphone tracking.

“Ohh about Miyadate-san…Did he…The Iphone tracking…?”, Meguro unable to form a sentence but Abe gets the hint.

“Ahh that! I switched the feature off last night. That Ryota, he did that without my permission. It drains my phone’s battery, you know! Ohh he must be worried. I should inform him…”, Abe is about to get up to get his phone when Meguro grabs his arm from across the table. “Meguro-kun…?”

“I know I’m being selfish…but can I ask you to not talk about other men when we are together? Especially Miyadate-san. I’m sorry, I…I’m feeling agitated whenever you mentioned him. All the way here I was trying hard to distract you away from your phone. Don’t worry too much about Miyadate-san. You heard what I told him in the car, right? That you’ll be under the supervision of the police. He’ll understand. I’m sure of it”, Meguro explains, desperately.

Abe’s eyes soften and link Meguro’s hands with his. He lays his cheek at the back of Meguro’s hand. “I’m sorry. I understand. Come, let’s continue to eat before the food gets cold”.

Just like that, they continue eating and have small talk, getting to know each other better, throughout the dinner.

 “Tomorrow is Sunday. You have any plans?”, Meguro asks while flipping through the TV channels.

“Hmm…Not exactly but I’m planning to continue working on my thesis”.

“Such a hard worker, aren’t you?”

“Hehe what about you, Meguro-kun? In you scope of work, I believe you still have to go to work if needed even during weekends, right?”

“Such is a life of a police officer. Our family has to be understanding with our job too”.

“Hmm…”, Abe nods, agreeing. A vinyl player at the edge of the room suddenly catches his attention. “Hey! An antique vinyl player!”, he exclaims, excitedly hopping towards the thing.

“Ahh That’s used to be my grandfather’s. After his death, my father said that I can have it. So I take it with me to this house”, Meguro also goes towards the vinyl player. “Let me make you listen to my favorite songs”. Meguro then rummages through his collection of vinyl.

“Yay!”, Abe cheers.

 Meguro brings out a classic vinyl of a Canadian singer, Dan Hill. The song track is “Sometimes When we Touch” from 1977. He inserts the vinyl onto the player. The song resounds within the apartment. Abe is peacefully enjoying the song when Meguro stretches his hand towards him. “May I have this dance?”

Abe snickers. So cheeky of him! He accepts Meguro’s hand for dance. He links his right hand with Meguro’s while he adjusts his left hand on Meguro’s shoulder. Meguro on the other hand, has his right arm on the other’s waist. They start dancing to the beat.

 And sometimes when we touch The honesty's too much And I have to close my eyes and hide I wanna hold you 'til I die 'Til we both break down and cry I wanna hold you 'til the fear in me subsides

 Both of them got deep into the song that in their subconsciousness, they start to do more than just dancing. Meguro closes the distance between them, staring at each other’s eyes and he can feel that Abe’s left hand now roams around his body. They didn’t kiss just yet. Simply continue the staring contest, while their breaths mingling with each other.

 Meguro lost his patience first. He claims Abe’s lips, gently this time, before their tongues start fighting for dominance, in which Abe predictably loses. Swayed by passion, Meguro leads Abe inside his bedroom, without stopping the kiss. Only when they reach the bedroom that they break the kiss for oxygen. Abe looks at Meguro with his hazy eyes – it ignites a fire Meguro doesn’t know he had inside him. He swiftly picks Abe up and gently throws him on the bed. His Ryohei looks so alluring right now. Meguro wants to ravage him. He got major aroused right now.

 Meguro crawls on top of Abe, ready for a feast when Abe blocks his face with both of his hands. “No. Don’t”.

Meguro stops in his tracks. “Do you want me to stop here?”

Abe peeks out. He shakes his head.

“Then, what do you want?”, Meguro softly asks. “I won’t do things you don’t want me to. So tell me what you want”, he caresses Abe’s head.

“Umm…I want you…but I don’t want…I mean…I don’t know…”, Abe hides behind his hands again.

Meguro gets the hint. He chuckles. “You’re so cute, Ryohei. It’s ok, we can take it slowly. We won’t do it all the way today”.

Abe lets out a little laugh. He’s glad that Meguro understands.

 Now that Meguro confirms Abe’s desire, the sensual mood resumes. He reaches out to take the necktie he wore to work yesterday from the chair in the room. Then he crawls back on top of Abe, takes both of Abe’s hands away from his face before tying them up with the necktie. He brings the tied hands on top of Abe’s head.

“Trust me. I won’t betray your trust”, Meguro reassures. Abe nods.

Meguro then takes off his clothes, revealing broad shoulders and abs that shows how Meguro frequents the gym. Abe licks his lips.

 Meguro proceed with unbuttoning Abe’s pajama top, one by one, while they’re having a staring contest again. After that, Meguro swiftly removes Abe’s pants. Abe was panting sensually throughout the whole action. Meguro lays back to admire the beauty in front of him. His Ryohei, with an unbuttoned top that reveals his attractive body, and underwear, with his hands tied above his head. It’s as if he’s unboxing a present. Meguro moves forward now to firstly, bites Abe’s earlobe. “Ahh~” The action emits a luscious moan out of the other man. Good step. Next, he moves to kiss Abe’s forehead, then both of his eyes, down to his nose, skips the lips, directly to the chin. Then he moves to kiss Abe’s collarbone and bites his neck, which results in Abe’s arching his back from the pleasure and he moans again. Meguro moves down to play with both nipples with his fingers for a second, which emits another pleasurable moan from the man beneath him, before he places kisses on the abs.

 Meguro uses his fingers to trace the area below the belly. “Ahh~~~”

Abe lets out a long moan while arching his back. So he feels the most pleasurable right there. Meguro smirks. He moves down to caress both of Abe’s thighs, also biting the inside of Abe’s right thigh. Abe squirms. Meguro holds both of Abe’s legs in place again and continues kissing down to his feet. Meguro had kissed all over Abe’s now aside from his lips and obviously, the private part. He’s satisfied with this today. They can take this slowly. He can explore more of his beloved’s body next time. Now he moves back up to claim Abe’s lips, passionately while his hands roam all over the other man’s body. When they break the kiss, Meguro moves back to place airy kisses on Abe’s collarbones and neck while his fingers traces over the area below the belly. Not long after, he hears a lewd chanting of his name.

“Meguro-kun…Ahh~ Meguro-kun… Ahh~ Ahh~ Ahh~~~”

Only the sound of their pants can be heard right now. Even the music outside had long stopped. Abe finally reaches his climax.

 Meguro smiles and unties the bind on Abe’s hands. “You’re so great. So beautiful”. He gives Abe a peck on the nose before he moves to his wardrobe, pulling out a fresh boxer and putting it at the edge of the bed. He also takes a tissue box from his work desk then puts it on top of the boxer. Abe sits up. The afterglow causes Abe to take a little while to be able to think rationally again. He just keeps on staring and following Meguro’s every movement. Meguro walks to the door. He turns around and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this in the bathroom”.

 When Meguro returns from his “business”, he finds Abe already asleep on his bed. Meguro let out a smile. He wishes that time will stop to let him enjoy this happiness a little bit more. He doesn’t want to think about his work, his commitments, just yet. He just wants to spend more time with his Ryohei – falling in love again and again with every little new things he knows about the other person.

 Before he can switch off the light, Abe suddenly jolts up from his slumber and lets out a fearful scream. Meguro quickly moves over to envelope Abe into his embrace, while whispering, “It’s ok. It’s ok. I’m here. I’m here. No one can hurt you, ok?”

Abe, who is awoken by a nightmare, tightly hugs Meguro back. He is sobbing.

“It’s the Joker again, Meguro-kun! He’s coming to get me again!”

Meguro steps back and wipes the tears off Abe’s face.

“Shh…He won’t be able to hurt you now. I’m here. I’ll protect you”.

Abe pushes himself towards Meguro’s chest, holding him in a tight hug again. After a while, he calms down. “I felt someone caressing my face in my sleep. At first, I saw my dad. I missed him. I took that hand in mine. Then I felt that hand moved away. I followed that hand when I finally felt something cold and metallic. When I looked up, the Joker was staring at me! I’m afraid, Meguro-kun!”

“Shh…Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I’ll make sure to expose who is behind the Joker next time”.

Abe then falls asleep in Meguro’s embrace.

~~~

Meguro is not sleeping yet. He has been silently watching Abe’s sleeping face for the past hour. Now, he wants to go to the kitchen. He’s suddenly thirsty. It takes a few attempts before he successfully removes himself from Abe’s embrace. Abe is hugging him like he is his teddy bear. He chuckles at the thought.

 After he finished drinking, his eyes caught Abe’s phone lights up on the living room’s table. He picks up the phone and sees that “Ryota” is calling. Meguro picks up the phone.

“Ryohei! Thank God you finally pick up! Listen, don’t do this again! You don’t know how worried I…”

“This is Meguro speaking”, Meguro cuts Ryota’s frantic lecture. “Ryohei is already asleep right now”.

Silence. “Is that so? Where do you let him stay now, officer?” Meguro doesn’t know how to describe it, but he feels as if Ryota’s tone turns tense.

“My home. Don’t worry, Miyadate-san. Until we catch the Joker, I’ll keep Ryohei safe. I hope the Joker can reveal himself soon”, Meguro emphasizes on the last sentence, as if challenging. “You should go to sleep too, Miyadate-san. It’s late”.

“…You can send him home tomorrow, officer. I have an off day tomorrow so I can look after him”.

Meguro lifted his eyebrow. This man doesn’t give up. “I’ll tell Ryohei later. He can decide if he wants to go home or stay here. Good night, Miyadate-san”. Meguro ends the call.

Meguro feels like he wins.

 Abe wakes up to a view of someone’s chest. The memories of last night return to his mind. A warm feeling is engulfing his chest. He looks up to a handsome sleeping face of a man he loves.

After a while, Meguro opens his right eye. “Do I look that handsome?” Sneaky! Meguro is already awake!

Meguro then playfully pokes Abe’s sides. “Ahh!”, Abe squeals.

Meguro widened his eyes. “You’re ticklish there!” He pokes Abe’s side again. And Abe squeals again.

“Hey! Stop it! Hahaha!”

They end up playfully wrestling each other before the day officially starts. Ahh how they wish this will last forever.

~~~

“Meguro-kun, I’m going back to Ryota’s house today, alright? He said that he’s taking the day off today”.

Meguro frowns. “But…” Meguro moves around restlessly, desperately trying to think of an excuse to not let Abe leave his place. He sighs. He gave up thinking of an excuse and just told the truth. He puts his arms around Abe from the back and kisses his neck. “But I don’t want you to leave. Say, what about we go to Miyadate-san’s house together for you to pack your things up for the night?”, Meguro suggests.

Abe snickers. “Officer Meguro, it seems that you’ve taken your job seriously, hmm? Officers don’t usually let their protected persons stay at their own homes”.

“Hmm…whose fault is that? You’re guilty for seducing an officer to let you stay at his place”.

“Hehe Alright then. Let’s go”.

 When Meguro and Abe arrive at Miyadate Ryota’s home, the said man surprisingly wasn’t at home. Abe rings the bell numerous times, but nobody answers. “Hmph! This Ryota! He said he’ll be home all day”, Abe complains while rummaging inside his bag for the house key. “Maybe he’s going to the convenience store for a while. I’ll text him later. Come in, Meguro-kun”.

 “AHHH HELP! THIEF!”

Both Abe and Meguro turn their heads to the scene at the other side of the road. A thief is running away after stealing a woman’s purse.

“I’ll come back later, Abe-kun!”, and Meguro sprints towards the direction of the thief.

 Abe shakes his head. He goes into the house and immediately up to his room. He unconcernedly packs his things and when he’s done, he brings his small suitcase back down. When he arrives downstairs, he can see a black shadow from the corner of his eyes. He thought Ryota is back.

“Ryota? Where have you…AGHHHH!”

Standing in front of the entrance door, is the Joker.

The Joker bops his head before he charges towards Abe. Abe left his suitcase and darts into the closest room he sees – the guest room. The Joker manages to somehow catch up to him and he’s stuck in his left hand so that Abe won’t be able to close the door. Abe forcefully pushes the door so that it could more or less hurt the Joker’s arm and hopefully made him give up. At the meantime, Abe can make out a golden chunky chain bracelet the Joker wore on his hand.

After a few attempts, the Joker finally gives up and Abe slams the door shut, locking it as well.

The Joker is slamming the door from outside. In Abe’s panic state, he first thought of calling Meguro but when notices that the slamming has stopped but the lock of the door as if the lock is being picked, his mind comes up with an idea of opening the window, so that the Joker will think that he had escaped outside. While actually, he’s still hiding, inside the room.

 The door finally opens. The Joker notices the window opens wide and it seems that no one is in the room. Abe is actually hiding inside the closet, covering his mouth with his both hands. After a minute, he can hear rushing footsteps going far and far away. Once he makes sure the sound is totally gone, he immediately comes out from his hiding place, dashing to the entrance door, then goes outside.

“MEGURO-KUN! MEGURO-KUN!” Abe shouts with all his might.

However, who emerges soon after is Miyadate Ryota instead. He runs up towards a hysterical Abe, holding Abe’s shoulders, asking him what had happened.

“Ryota! Ryota! The Joker was here! The Joker…” Abe pauses.

Ryota has moved his hands to caress Abe’s face. That’s when Abe notices the bracelet that Ryota is wearing. It’s the same bracelet he saw on the Joker.

 Miyadate Ryota follows Abe’s line of vision. He finally realized. Abe steps back from Ryota.

“Ryota…Are you…”

Ryota suddenly grabs Abe harshly by the hair, bringing him back inside the house.

“AGHHH! RYOTA! IT HURTS! STOP!”

Ryota tosses Abe onto the sofa in the living room relentlessly. He then crawls on top of Abe and forcefully kisses Abe on the lips.

Abe is struggling to push Ryota off him, but the kiss makes him breathless and his movements falter after a moment. When Ryota finally let go, he lovingly caresses Abe’s face again. He’s drunk with this view of Abe with his hazy eyes and plump lips.

“How long should I wait until you ask the state of my heart?”, Ryota whispers.

Abe is unable to think straight. Ehh? Is Ryota the Joker all this time? “But…why?”, Abe softly asks.

“The reason is you. The reason is always you, Ryohei”. They are still in their position. Ryota just inches his face closer to Ryohei.

 “I didn’t mean to kill Hiroyuki-niisan, Ryohei. But you know what? I saw it!”, Ryota harshly cups Abe’s chin in his hand. Abe flinches. “I saw what niisan did to you! He forced himself on you, wasn’t it?” Ryota raises his voice.

 === A day before the first incident ===

 Ryota informed Abe that he’ll be visiting Abe’s house as usual after work. Abe would leave the entrance door unlocked around the time Ryota would usually be coming, which is around 10.30pm – 11pm so that Ryota could freely came into the house.

Ryota came a little later than usual that night because cleaning the diner took longer than usual as they are short-staffed that day.

 “Hello~”, Ryota greeted, but no one answered.

He then tried to be cheeky and surprised either Abe or Hiroyuki, whoever he saw first. So he tiptoed inside the house quietly. However, he was the one to be surprised instead.

 “Ahh~”

Ryota heard a soft moan. He walked slowly in the direction where he heard it.

It seemed to come from the music room. The door was left slightly ajar too. Just enough for a person outside to peek in.

Ryota’s blood boiled. Abe was bent over at the edge of the table, holding himself up with his elbows, while Hiroyuki-niisan was behind him, straddling his Ryohei’s legs.

“Ahh~ Stop~ What if…What if Ryota sees? Ahh~ He’s going to arrive soon…”

“Hmm? Then let him be. He’s a man too. He’ll understand that men have needs. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get both of us tonight”.

“Ahh~ No~ Ahh~” Abe was a moaning mess at this point.

“Hmm? What is this? Do you get excited by the thought of being seen by Ryota?”, Hiroyuki teased.

Ryota watched the erotic display in front of him until both of them reached the climax.

~~~

“And then I went back to the entrance and greeted you guys aloud, as if I didn’t see anything. That’s what triggered all of this, Ryohei! I am in love with you since forever! I always make sure to show my affections towards you, but you never noticed! At first, I was ok with it. So what if you don’t love me the same way? I can still love you silently, protecting you from afar. But to see in front of my eyes, my cousin who doesn’t even love you as much as I do, did “that” to someone I love – It’s too much! It’s not fair!”, Ryota explains exasperatedly.

 “I can’t sleep that night. I toss and turn on my bed but the image of you and Hiroyuki-niisan keeps on appearing in my mind. I called Hiroyuki-niisan the next morning. I told him that I want to discuss what to do on your birthday. He said he’ll come back early from work and that we should discuss it before the usual time I visited the house. My mind was already not in a right state, Ryohei. I indeed planned to kill him that night, but the rational part of my mind also told me to wait and listen to Hiroyuki-niisan’s explanation. If my judgement said that he should be killed, then I’ll kill him right away. And that’s what happened”.

~~~

=== Nearly an hour before the first incident ===

 “Sawamura-kun. I already prepared all the ingredients here, the broth is still boiling over there. I’m going to the loo. You know me, “No.2” can take a long time. Ughhh my stomach hurts”, Ryota hurriedly removed his apron and chef hat, and rubbed his belly, faking a stomachache.

“Hahaha! Yeah, sure! Take your time. I’ll take care here”, Sawamura-kun laughed heartily and allowed Ryota to go.

 Ryota obviously didn’t go to the loo. He was rushing to Abe’s house to meet Hiroyuki and initiated his plan. He brought a knife from the diner and wore the hooded long jacket on the way, as well as the Joker’s mask.

 He arrived at Abe’s house in no time. He knew that Hiroyuki-niisan unlocked the door for him so he quietly sneaked into the house. He saw his cousin in the living room. He sneaked up behind his cousin quietly and touched his cousin’s shoulder. Hiroyuki jumped in surprise.

“Shhhhh…”, Ryota raise his index finger to his mouth then slipped off the mask.

“Oh my God, Ryota! You scared me!”

“Hehe what do you think of this concept for Ryohei’s birthday?”

“What? Haha he’ll freak out!”

“By the way…I saw it”, Ryota was now staring at Hiroyuki darkly.

“Hmm? What did you saw?”

“You and Ryohei. Last night”.

“Ahh~”, Hiroyuki pointed at the music room, then looked at Ryota as if asking for a validation. “Haha is it a problem to you?”

“How long? Is he ok with it?”, anger is evident on Ryota’s face now. His volume also rose.

“Ryota~Ryota~ You do understand that men have needs, right? And that boy is available within my beck and call, at least in this house”. Hiroyuki took a sharp breath before he continued, “I did it with others too, outside. But no one had ever left me as satisfied as he does. You’re a Miyadate, too. You can try to ask him if you want. You understand what I mean, right?”

Ryota sees red. So Hiroyuki was treating his Ryohei like a toy, wasn’t it? It disgusted him!

His mind decided at that time. He would end his cousin’s life.

 When Hiroyuki walked past him to go to the kitchen, he took the knife out from his pocket and in a flash, stabbed his cousin directly at the heart. Hiroyuki was still able to turn around to look at Ryota. In his last moments, he was still able to slightly fight back by grabbing Ryota’s shoulder then pushing him to the wall, which caused Ryota to push Hiroyuki back to the wall on the other side before Hiroyuki fell dead on the floor.

~~~

“My hands were trembling, Ryohei. I can’t believe what I have just done. I have no backup plan as well. And you…You’re not supposed to see what happened there that night. I got panic when I heard your footsteps going down the stairs. I quickly put on the Joker’s mask, and I decided to just play the villain at that moment. I have no intention of killing you, Ryohei. I will never”. Ryota releases Abe’s jaw. He takes Abe’s right hand and leads it to his back. Abe can feel uneven skin texture. “You did this to me that night, Ryohei. I left the house with a burning back. But I was pleased with it. This is the mark that you left on my body”, Ryota smiles wickedly and kisses Abe’s hand.

Abe shivers. Ryota loves Abe’s reaction. He then moves forward to trail kisses from below Abe’s ears down to his collarbone.

“Ahh~~~”, Abe lets out a delicious moan.

“Hmm…You’re so sensitive. Hiroyuki-niisan really taught you well”, Ryota comments, amused.

 Abe squirms. He doesn’t remember when it started, but what he knows is that he can never say no to his niisan’s requests. Perhaps because he is indebted to the Miyadate family, that he is willing to give his body to pleasure his niisan. And as his niisan said, men have needs. And Abe himself got his needs fulfilled by doing it with his niisan. His niisan never forced him if he didn’t want to, never used the Miyadate’s name to manipulate him into doing it and they always done it safely. He thought it was a silent agreement between both of them.

 Abe tries hard to focus on Ryota’s statements. Ryota is still ravaging his neck. With a shaking voice, he continues to ask, “Ahh~ What about Kitayama-sensei? Why did you kill him?”

Ryota abruptly sits up. “Hmph! He’s the one that was very deserving to die! He made me sick! He did not only hurt you by stealing your hard work, but he also tried to do sick things to you! Just thinking about it irks me!”

 “I knew that he was waiting for you at his condo that night. I got the information from Fuji-kun. So I came to him before his appointment with you and killed him”.

 “About Fuji-kun”, Ryota snickers. “He’s simply beneficial for me. About a month ago, I accidentally caught him in the act of stalking you. He took so many candid photos of you when he was dining at Juicy Diner. At the time, you just complained to me about your sensei’s mischief. I thought it was a blessing. I could use this man to help you. So I approached him – told him that if he wanted to help Ryohei, then he had to help me gain information about the wicked sensei and passed it to Hiroyuki-niisan. I knew that Hiroyuki-niisan will do his best to bring justice to what happened to you. It’s in his character after all”.

 “Remember the day you were attacked inside the police car? That was my plan to deceive the police into thinking Fuji was the killer for both cases. I gave Fuji the Joker idea, to scare you. You don’t know that he had sick fantasies involving you. So I let him do what he want to you. I asked him to share his plans so that I could initiate my own plan afterwards. He came to the diner, I served him a burger, a poisoned one. He must’ve felt betrayed when he saw me on the scene that day. But I don’t care. I knew he was going to die after all”.

 “Stop! Ryota!”, throughout the entire time of Ryota retelling his stories, he managed to unbutton Abe’s shirt and unfasten his belt, pulling down the pants to his thighs. Abe’s attempts to push Ryota away from him are in vain. Ryota is too strong for him. “Then why did you keep the role of the Joker? Why did you keep on scaring me?”

Ryota uses his fingers to trail along Abe’s body from the chest to below the belly. Abe arches his back, feeling the pleasure. “No~”

“Why? Because you look so spicy when you’re scared, Ryohei. Whenever I remembered how you look that night when Hiroyuki-niisan died, I got turned-on. How helpless you look. It excites me! It made me want to protect you and ruin you at the same time”.

Abe is stunned, hearing all of this. He can’t think at this moment. He wishes that a miracle will come his way soon and save him from this predicament. He can feel tears threatening to fall. He brings both his hands up to cover his face. The shock leaves him with no more energy to fight. “Please let me go, Ryota…”

 Ryota hears a clicking sound from the back of his head. He turns around. He is face-to-face with a gun, pointed at him. Then he sees the angry face of Officer Meguro.

“You’re under arrest for the murder of Miyadate Hiroyuki, Kitayama Rintarou and Fuji Ichiro”.

 Ryota sighs. He stands up, facing Meguro. “So this is it? Then it’s game over for me”. Ryota gazes at the coffee table near him. There is a paring knife on it. He dashes to the table to get hold of the knife. He then positions the knife to his neck. Then a gunshot was heard. Meguro shoots Ryota’s arm, dropping the knife to the floor. Ryota screams in pain. “Just kill me, officer. I better off dying than living without seeing Ryohei”.

~~~

When Meguro returned to the house, the house was silent. Maybe it’s his detective instinct, but he decided to look behind Miyadate Ryota’s house first. How shocked he was when he saw the black hooded long jacket and the Joker’s mask on the ground! He tried not to react brashly. He quietly walked to the back of the house and found the back door leading inside through the kitchen, was unlocked. He walked into the house and eventually heard Ryota and Abe’s voices. His eyes widened when he saw the condition Abe was in. But then, it seemed that Ryota was confessing his crimes. So he moved further in, closer to them and recorded the whole happenings until he confessed about his perverted fantasy towards Abe. The two of them were too occupied to even notice that Meguro was there the whole time.

 With that, Miyadate Ryota is arrested and there’ll be no more Joker in Abe’s life.

 It doesn’t take long for the judge to decide on the sentence to be made on Miyadate Ryota.

There was enough evidence, plus, Ryota also plead guilty to the crimes.

 Abe was looking at Ryota sadly. Even though Ryota had hurt him, he still feels sorry for the man. Ryota will always be his best friend, no matter what. When Ryota walks past him, guarded by the police on his sides, Ryota stops. He looks back at Abe and bitterly smiles. “Happy birthday, Ryohei. Come visit me always”.

 27th November – this date will always remind him of the hauntings of the Joker, aside from his birthday.

 Few days after Miyadate Ryota was sent to jail, the police released Abe’s house and his niisan body can now be collected from the morgue. The Miyadate family is obviously devastated with both the death of Hiroyuki and that the perpetrator was actually, Ryota. Still, they prepared a funeral for the late Hiroyuki at their hometown at Edogowa, and Abe invites Meguro to the occasion. “It’s a good opportunity to meet my family”, Abe said.

And when Meguro asked why, he saw the other man blushing. “If you are to be my partner for life, isn’t that the ideal thing to do?”

And Meguro can’t stop himself from pouncing on after that. This man is too cute too handle.

 Abe introduced Meguro to his family as the policeman who helped him during the whole ordeal and now, they had become “friends”. The conversation he had with the family is mainly regarding Ryota’s case. After the funeral, Meguro asked Abe if he wanted to accompany him for a walk first before he excused himself for the day. Abe accepted the invitation. Before they leave the graveyard, Miyadate-san, Abe’s guardian, stopped them. “Meguro-kun, we’ll be having a belated birthday dinner for Ryohei later. Please, stay with us”.

Hmm. Seems like he’ll be staying until dinner then. Meguro accepted. Abe then led him to the park nearby. They strolled around the park, enjoying the scenery and the moment. A date.

~~~

“Happy birthday, Ryohei!”

 Meguro stares lovingly at the smiling Ryohei. The man is now surrounded by the other excited family members, taking turns to take photos of/with him with his birthday cake. The room was decorated with balloons and a banner on the wall which says, “Happy Birthday”.

 “Meguro-kun!”, one of Abe’s cousins calls out to him. “Come here, take a photo with Ryohei”.

Meguro awkwardly walks to Ryohei’s seat.

“Stand behind him, Meguro-kun. Awww don’t be too stiff! Hmm…it’s better if you move to left. Now put your right hand on Ryohei’s right shoulder. Yes! Ok, that’s nice! Ready~ Say Cheese~”

The cousin then hands him the polaroid.

First photo with his beloved. He’s going to treasure this forever.

~~~

The celebration ended pretty late. Meguro didn’t expect to find himself getting comfortable with Ryohei’s family so easily. It’s a warm family, and Meguro hopes that he can build a family like this too in the future.

 Abe accompanies Meguro to the train station. Before they parted ways, Abe thanked Meguro for the day.

“Thank you for coming here today. I’ll be staying here till the weekend. See you in Tokyo next week?”

“We should! Thank you for inviting me too. Your family is so warm and welcoming”.

“I’m glad”. Then Abe looks down shyly. Seems like he wants to do something, but he hesitates.

“Hmm? Anything you want to tell me?”

A peck on Meguro’s cheeks. It was so fast that Meguro thought, did Ryohei just do that?

 “Umm…I hope you don’t mind me doing this…from now on…”, Ryohei’s face is all red now. Ahh this man is so cute that he’ll be the death of me, Meguro thought.

Meguro then brings Ryohei’s head forward, kissing his forehead. This is his reply.

“I’ll text you. See you next week, love. Good night”.

 They waved and parted ways.

~~~

This is a story about obsession. About how dangerous a man could become with obsession. How obsession will ruin and eventually destroy you.

 Do everything in moderation. Don’t love too hard, don’t trust too much, don’t overthink, don’t hold on too tightly. Because that too much, can hurt you so much.

 === FIN ===

[chjewelry]

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[missellafitz]

**The concert dates for this Caesars Palace engagement were June 6-18, 1974, which begs the question, why did this take place on the 19th? Was Frank doing an additional show without Ella? How was she a surprise? Was the show itself a surprise? Love the possessive pronoun of "my" though, hehe.

Also, this engagement apparently brought Frank out of retirement and was the catalyst for "The Concert" that he, Ella, and Basie had at the Uris Theater in NYC the next year. One thing I'll say is that Frank LOVED to sing with Ella, so maybe she really was enough to bring him back to the stage.

A Secret Caesars Palace Trove Captures Sinatra, Ella and Scores of Others, Unaware

By Anna Wilde Mathews Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

March 19, 2001 12:01 am ET

LAS VEGAS -- On June 19, 1974, Frank Sinatra took the stage at Caesars Palace. Backed by the Count Basie Orchestra, he delivered a set of standards before telling the audience, "Surprise! My girl's gonna sing for you." On that cue, Ella Fitzgerald joined him for a rollicking duet of "The Lady Is a Tramp." The two traded lines and improvised harmonies, punctuated by Mr. Sinatra's exhortation: "Swing, baby!"

It was a special evening, even by the lofty standards of the Caesars showroom, then a premier venue for the biggest names in entertainment. But the two singers themselves probably weren't aware of one thing that made their performance exceptional: Every note was captured by a reel-to-reel tape recorder wired directly into the Caesars sound system.

It was only one of scores of acts recorded in secret over a quarter of a century at Caesars Palace -- a playlist that includes Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Bette Midler, Diana Ross, Sarah Vaughan and dozens of other show-business luminaries.

Behind it all was Dave Rogers, the longtime sound engineer at the hotel and casino's 1,000-seat Circus Maximus showroom. Mr. Rogers stored the tapes at home, keepsakes that he occasionally played for the memories.

Then, in 1998, he died, and the tapes were in the hands of his stepson, Gilbert Cebollero, a former craps dealer who set out to turn them into a profitable endeavor. Since then, Mr. Cebollero has managed to strike an unlikely deal with a fledgling company backed by television impresario Norman Lear to release the material on compact discs and, possibly, over the Web. Already, singer Andy Williams and the estates of Mr. Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. have tentatively agreed to participate, and the first CD is in the works.

The obstacles are big, however, and many of the recordings may never reach a mass audience. Mr. Lear's company, Neon Tonic, is still struggling to secure release rights from many of the artists, their estates or their record labels -- which have been surprised to learn of the tapes and aren't all eager to strike a deal. Some of the artists worry that their performances may not be good enough for public consumption.

Yet the tapes themselves aren't the typical muffled bootlegs. Mr. Rogers created recordings of startling clarity, often with nearly commercial sound quality. And the collection is more than just live music; it is an unedited record of Vegas culture in its heyday. As the curtain falls on Mr. Sinatra's duet with Ms. Fitzgerald, a microphone picks up his parting remark: "OK, baby, the bar's open." On another tape, a disoriented Judy Garland stumbles off-key through "Over the Rainbow." Moments like those may never make it to record stores, but if Mr. Lear and his partners succeed, many hours of unique recorded entertainment will.

In 1966, when Andy Williams performed on opening night at the new casino and its showroom, the venue was among the most glamorous in the world. The hotel feted its first visitors with two tons of filet mignon, 300 pounds of crab and 50,000 glasses of champagne.

Mr. Rogers helped build the sound system that was used on that first evening. A veteran engineer at the Flamingo and the Sands, Mr. Rogers had moved over to Caesars about a month before the opening. For much of the next quarter of a century, he could be found in an open booth suspended above the rear of the Circus Maximus. There, he twiddled dials on the soundboard to ensure that the mix was clean and balanced. He almost never missed a night. "His home was Caesars," says Donovan Belian, a son of Mr. Rogers who is now a carpenter in Las Vegas.

A constant tinkerer, Mr. Rogers worked hard to please the most finicky artists. He built an echo chamber under the stage to add depth to performers' tone. As a special favor, he once set up a VCR in Mr. Sinatra's hotel room.

Such services put Mr. Rogers on a first-name basis with many stars. He collected autographed pictures from the likes of Raquel Welch and Burt Bacharach. One of his backstage photos shows Bill Cosby arm-in-arm with Sammy Davis Jr., who is wearing a "Caesars Sound Crew" T-shirt. In another, Mr. Rogers hugs a smiling Nancy Sinatra. The pictures weren't his only souvenirs. A pack rat, he also filled a wooden locker backstage with old tools and gadgets, and at home collected discarded televisions, radios and other electronic debris.

Then there is the stash of Caesars recordings, made from the showroom's soundboard over a period stretching from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Mr. Rogers kept the reels and cassettes in his workshop at home and occasionally listened to them while he puttered around, his stepson Mr. Cebollero says.

The taping may have begun as a way for the sound engineer to catch technical mistakes and thus hone his craft, says Mr. Rogers's daughter Suzynne Fowler. Michael Rogers, the sound engineer's oldest son, says, "I think he wanted to record his history, and maybe even the industry's history." The younger Mr. Rogers, now a Las Vegas theatrical electrician, worked at Caesars with his father in the mid-1970s.

Dave Rogers took a leave of absence in 1994 as he battled liver disease brought on by years of diabetes. He never returned to work. In January 1998, he died at age 66. A brief obituary published in local newspapers noted his National Guard service and his membership in the theatrical stage employee union. It gave his occupation as "director of sound in the entertainment industry."

In all, Mr. Rogers had captured hundreds of hours of concerts and comedy by well over 100 performers. Upon his death, it all ended up with Mr. Cebollero.

The Balloon Drop

Mr. Cebollero's mother, Elba, had met Mr. Rogers, who was already divorced with four children, while she was working at the Caesars front desk. The two married in 1970. As a teenager, Mr. Cebollero hung out backstage at Caesars while his stepfather worked. He recalls New Year's celebrations when his stepfather let him release the flood of balloons above the Caesars audience.

https://archive.ph/s1csZ/edae5250cb4b4f7d6decc057a4570949fecb8ae5.gif

Through the 1970s and '80s, Mr. Cebollero bounced around Las Vegas as a bellboy, a stagehand and eventually a craps dealer at various casinos. More recently, he has worked as a residential real-estate agent. By the time his stepfather died, Mr. Cebollero faced a federal tax lien of more than $19,000, which he says was related to a dispute over tip income from his casino days. The lien was lifted in 2000; Mr. Cebollero says he took care of it with a reduced payment.

Mr. Cebollero says he was motivated to turn the tapes into a business in order to preserve his stepfather's work, not to pay a tax bill. In the past, "I never applied myself," he says. "But I plan to now."

Today, Mr. Cebollero, 43 years old and never married, lives with his mother in the modest two-story white stucco house Mr. Rogers had built for the family in the mid-1970s. Over the door hangs a small sign: "Mi casa es su casa." In the basement and in a shipping container in the backyard, he keeps all the things his stepfather hoarded over the years. "Everything they were throwing out, he'd bring home," Mr. Cebollero says.

His mother wouldn't comment for this article. Nor would his sister, Lorraine. Stepbrothers Mr. Belian and Michael Rogers say they support Mr. Cebollero's efforts. Ms. Fowler declines to comment, saying she doesn't know the details of her stepbrother's plans. Stepsister Trish Elliott says she "has no problem" with Mr. Cebollero's efforts.

Mr. Cebollero used an address for Nancy Sinatra obtained through a Web site to send her a compilation of Sinatra snippets from the Caesars tapes. But he sent it under the name of a friend, keeping his own identity secret: "I didn't know what kind of feedback I would get," he says.

His efforts drew the attention of Robert Finkelstein, a longtime Sinatra family attorney who represents the music-rights companies controlled by the singer's children. Mr. Finkelstein says the Sinatra estate had no knowledge of the recordings before hearing from Mr. Cebollero in 1998.

Threat of Litigation

After several months, negotiations over the rights to the Sinatra tapes stalled. Neither party will specify the terms Mr. Cebollero sought. Mr. Finkelstein then fired off a letter threatening to sue, arguing that the recordings were illegal, unauthorized bootlegs. "If someone says to you they possess tapes of your recordings, your initial reaction is, 'You have no right to those,' " he says. "That can be resolved either by litigation or by compromise."

But Mr. Finkelstein also explained the situation to longtime acquaintance Hal Gaba, chief executive of Act III Communications, a media holding company of which Mr. Lear is chairman. A jazz buff, Mr. Gaba already ran a side business distributing videos of performances by Mr. Sinatra and others, and Act III was negotiating to purchase the Concord jazz record label. He immediately saw the potential of the Caesars tapes. With Mr. Finkelstein's knowledge, Mr. Gaba contacted Mr. Cebollero.

Messrs. Gaba and Lear had already been noodling around with the idea of a music Web site that would reach jazz fans all over the world. The recordings, they figured, could provide a one-of-a-kind draw to the site. "I had this fantasy of this little guy in this obscure corner of Caesars Palace," says Mr. Lear.

In early 1999, Mr. Gaba began traveling to Las Vegas to meet with Mr. Cebollero, first over lunch at a Caesars coffee shop, and later at the home Mr. Cebollero shares with his mother. There, Mr. Gaba was ushered into a dark basement cluttered with dusty equipment, including an old Caesars soundboard and a pile of black-painted floorboards from the original showroom stage. During hours of reminiscing about oldtime Vegas, Mr. Cebollero played samples from the tapes.

Over the next few weeks, Mr. Gaba and Mr. Cebollero pinned down details of a tentative deal. Mr. Gaba would see to the daunting task of securing legal clearances from artists and record labels. Mr. Cebollero would receive royalty payments. Neither side will disclose terms.

Mr. Cebollero also insisted that he retain possession of the original tapes. "It's sentimental," he says. "My dad's handwriting is on it." And he wanted his stepfather credited on the CD packaging.

A Five-Hour Trek

More troublesome, he wouldn't let the fragile recordings out of his sight even for an overnight shipment. So starting in the summer of 1999, he and a friend drove five hours from Las Vegas every couple of weeks to deliver boxes of tapes to a recording studio in the San Fernando Valley home of a producer who works with Mr. Gaba.

Initially, Mr. Cebollero refused to leave the house while the producer and another sound engineer transferred the recordings from the original analog tapes to digital tape. Later, the music was put on computer, and song by song, they smoothed out distortions and toned down extraneous noises -- the foot-tapping of a Count Basie Orchestra musician, for example.

Many of the tapes were dusty or moldy, and a few were so brittle that they broke. Some of the older ones needed a special player obtained from a used-equipment dealer. Many had only fragmentary, hand-scrawled labels, or weren't identified at all. Clues such as a reference to Watergate helped pinpoint performance dates.

The sound quality of the Caesars tapes is nonetheless impressive. Band members can be heard laughing quietly at a headliner's jokes. Comments never meant for an audience also come through clearly. When Mr. Sinatra turned to quietly thank the band after a rendition of "My Kind of Town," he added, "Sang my d--- off that time!" Then he told the audience, "I just had an intimate discussion with the gentlemen of the orchestra which cannot be repeated."

The engineers also had to make sense of a jumbled archive. A single shipment contained a 1991 routine by comedian Joan Rivers; a 1972 show by singing duo Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme; and a 1988 Red Skelton performance. Another tape in the batch came with a label that read only, "Thunder and Cow." It turned out to contain a series of moos and booms apparently meant for sound effects.

In the same shipment, Mr. Cebollero brought a vintage Sammy Davis set from Halloween 1981. It opens with the Basie orchestra swinging through "Sweet Georgia Brown." Then Mr. Davis delivers several of his standards, such as "Teach Me Tonight," along with some classic Vegas stage patter. "You're looking at the only black actor who wasn't in 'Roots,' 1 or 2," he says at one point. Later, he jokes: "I can't help it if I'm short! If I had any real class, I'd be in a bell tower someplace, saying 'The plane, boss, the plane!' "

By last fall, nearly 500 hours of concert tape had been digitized. Mr. Cebollero was now flying the tapes over from Las Vegas, though he still didn't want to check them as luggage. Mr. Gaba and Mr. Lear, meanwhile, were putting together their start-up in a Beverly Hills office lined with posters of "All in the Family" and other Lear television shows.

Calling on friends and their own resources, they raised about $3 million in seed money. The new company began a months-long process of building a Web site and picking a name and logo. Eventually, Neon Tonic beat options like "Gigolution" and "Shanghai Lobster" because, company executives thought, it suggested a sophisticated music club.

Mr. Gaba began trying to resolve the tangled legal questions surrounding the tapes' past, starting early last year with Caesars' parent company, Park Place Entertainment Corp. Mr. Cebollero insists that his stepfather never tried to conceal his taping from the performers or his bosses. "It wasn't like it was hidden," he says.

But Caesars executives say they weren't aware of the tapes before Mr. Gaba contacted them. Tom Pilkington, once Mr. Rogers's boss at Caesars and now a vice president with Park Place, says he had "no clue" that his employee was keeping a collection of such recordings. "It wasn't a policy of the hotel" to regularly record and archive shows, he says. He does remember Mr. Rogers making some tapes for performers' personal use, at their request. Generally, acts that played Caesars had contracts that explicitly banned recordings.

Still, Park Place decided to work with Mr. Gaba. The hospitality firm agreed to sell compact discs containing the showroom tapes and to allow the start-up to use the Caesars name in packaging and marketing the CDs. The Neon Tonic CDs would first be sold exclusively through Park Place retail outlets, then distributed more widely by Concord Records, the jazz label Mr. Gaba and Mr. Lear had bought. But the deal was contingent on Mr. Gaba's securing legal clearances from artists and others with rights to the recordings.

For help, Mr. Gaba looked to Mr. Finkelstein, who had been named to Neon Tonic's board. Together, he and Mr. Gaba crafted a tentative agreement to allow use of the Sinatra material. Then Mr. Finkelstein reached out to others who manage the rights to some of the other big acts Mr. Rogers had taped.

Jeff Lotman, who runs a marketing company that represents the work of Sammy Davis Jr. and others, says he was surprised when Mr. Finkelstein called him and told him of the tapes. But he liked the offer: The Davis estate would get a stake in Neon Tonic, as well as royalties from recording sales. "Our clients are not making new movies, so anything we can do to raise the awareness is obviously a good thing," says Mr. Lotman, whose company is called Global Icons LLC. Mr. Davis's widow, Altovise, agreed to participate.

Mr. Gaba personally courted Andy Williams, a longtime acquaintance, at the Grill, a Beverly Hills power-lunch venue. Mr. Williams, who became a Caesars regular after performing the hotel's first show, says, "I never knew they were recording me." When he found out that several of his shows had been taped, "I felt an invasion, a little bit, of privacy."

A tape of a June 10, 1969, show finds Mr. Williams performing a lush, brass-backed "Moon River," along with a medley from the musical "Hair." The show includes an appearance by a very young Jimmy Osmond, who delivers a squeaky "I Dig Rock 'n' Roll Music." Between songs, Mr. Williams warns: "I think I ought to tell you the truth -- I'm a swinger!"

Mr. Williams agreed to sign on as an investor, with veto power over recordings of his own performances.

Neon Tonic has offered other artists veto power, as well as royalties based on album sales. Some also have been offered stakes in the new company. The company says it is close to signing agreements with several, whom it declines to name. One problem: The Sinatra estate wants the original tapes of Mr. Sinatra that Mr. Cebollero now holds. Until the two sides agree to terms, none of the Sinatra material from Mr. Rogers's recordings is likely to be released.

Some of Mr. Rogers's recordings probably won't ever reach the public. Jeffrey Berkowitz, an attorney who represents Judy Garland's daughter Lorna Luft, says the singer's children wouldn't want "to have poor-quality stuff released" and are "more concerned about protecting the name and image of their mother" than anything else.

During an undated Garland show that Mr. Rogers recorded, the singer leaves the stage soon after the start, telling the audience, "I'll be back in a minute." Later, in the middle of "That's Entertainment," she stumbles on a line. Then, as the band plays on, she interjects, "There are too damn many words in this song. I'm sure that someone from either Warner Brothers or MGM wrote the lyrics."

Retreat From the Web

The Web downturn has altered Neon Tonic's plans. Just days before a test launch of the Web site in late January, Mr. Gaba decided to delay it indefinitely. For now, Neon Tonic will focus on the CDs.

The first disc, a compilation of individual tracks from several artists' performances, is tentatively scheduled for summer release. It isn't yet clear how many artists will be on it. Mr. Sinatra's duet with Ms. Fitzgerald probably won't be, though Neon Tonic hopes to include it in a later CD. Remarks Mr. Rogers taped that obviously weren't intended for an audience -- including Mr. Sinatra's risque private remark to his band -- probably won't make it to disc.

A Neon Tonic executive says the liner notes are likely to acknowledge Mr. Rogers in some way. As for the tapes, Mr. Cebollero hasn't told even his partners where he keeps them.

Last September, the Circus Maximus showroom closed forever with a performance by Steve and Eydie. It has since been leveled. Park Place is considering building a larger showroom at the hotel. A company spokeswoman won't comment on the type of entertainment it might provide. The hotel still has a sound engineer on staff. He works part time, mainly to handle special events.

[thehorrortree]

            In 1978 William Hjortsberg produced a novel based on one of those ideas so obvious that you wonder why it hadn’t been done before.   The novel was Falling Angel, and Hjortsberg innovatively combined the hard-boiled detective genre with the horror one, or as Stephen King so aptly put it, the result was  if “Raymond Chandler wrote The Exorcist.” Like skilled horror writers, Hjortsberg grounds the novels in realism.  Harry Angel (every character has a unique and revealing name) is a private eye in 1959 New York who is hired by a bizarre character named Louis Cyphre to find a missing pre-World War II crooner named Johnny Favorite.  Cyphre enigmatically wants to collect on a debt Favorite owed Cyphre for helping the singer with his career. Like Dashiell Hammett, Hjortsberg uses super specificity as well as the slumming,  poetic qualities of Raymond Chandler.  Every character and setting, even what Angel eats, is minutely described, and like Philip Marlowe, Angel walks over graves and discovers a greater crime than what he is tasked with investigating. The tropes of Hammett and Chandler are present.  Angel is blackjacked by hired thugs and threatened by bent cops.  But Hjjortsberg breathes new life into them with an admirably restrained sense of a lurking conspiracy.   Religion abounds in Angel’s journey, and it is not the Sermon on the Mount version.   Angel witnesses Voodoo rituals (in Central Park of all places) and Black Masses—the worship of Satan that always begins with a  living sacrifice and ends with an orgy—are carried out in abandoned subway tunnels.  The people Angel encounters during his investigation are stepped into Black Magic.  Voodoo high priestesses, practicing witches, and Satanists populate the novel. The more Angel learns about Favorite; the more sinister the latter is revealed to be.  Favorite was obsessed with all forms of Black Magic, and those who knew him call him the most evil person they had ever met. Still gory by today’s standards, the murders in Falling Angel are horrific.  Hearts are ripped out of bodies, genitals cut off and inserted into mouths to those Angel interviews. But everything remains in the realm of the possible until the novel’s jolting conclusion.  To describe the ending would ruin the experience.  Suffice it to say, Hjortsberg takes the standard noir conclusion of the protagonist being doomed from the start and turns it on its head. In 1987, Alan Parker adapted Falling Angel into the film Angel Heart starring a young Mickey Rourke.  Parker, who wrote the script, improves on the novel in several ways.   Rourke is even more of a rat in a trap than in the novel.  Rourke is plagued by nightmares and flashbacks where what he is remembering is just out of reach.  Unlike Hjortsberg, who kept the novel in New York (the novel often reads as a travel brochure of Manhattan), Parker cleverly situated the film in New Orleans, the most appropriate setting for Black Magic.  Cyphre, chillingly played by Robert De Niro, toys with Angel from the beginning, and creepily comes across as a father figure to Angel.   What works the best in the film is that, unlike the novel, with its realistic base, there is no ambiguity about who Cyphre really is. That said, Falling Angel holds up surprisingly well, and noir would never be the same after it.  Not even James Ellroy, at his most perverted, approaches the horrors of the novel. About The Novel: Edgar Award Finalist: The hunt for a vanished singer leads a detective into the depths of the occult in this “terrific” novel (Stephen King). Big-band frontman Johnny Favorite was singing for the troops when a Luftwaffe fighter squadron strafed the bandstand, killing the crowd and leaving the singer near death. The army returned him to a private hospital in upstate New York, leaving him to live out his days as a vegetable while the world forgot him. But Louis Cyphre never forgets. Cyphre had a contract with the singer, stipulating

payment upon Johnny’s death—payment that will be denied as long as Johnny clings to life. When Cyphre hires private investigator Harry Angel to find Johnny at the hospital, Angel learns that the singer has disappeared. It is no ordinary missing-person’s case. Everyone he questions dies soon after, as Angel’s investigation ensnares him in a bizarre tangle of black magic, carnival freaks, and grisly voodoo. When the sinister Louis Cyphre begins appearing in Angel’s dreams, the detective fears for his life, his sanity, and his soul. Falling Angel was the basis for the Alan Parker film Angel Heart, starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet. This ebook features an illustrated biography of William Hjortsberg including rare photos from the author’s personal collection. Available on Amazon.

[silyabeeodess]

FusionFall Headcanons: Orchid Bay and Bravo Beach

Set right between the ocean and the bustling entertainment in Marquee Row, both Orchid Bay and Bravo Beach combined is a--if not the--top vacation destination within FusionFall’s world. When the invasion hit and fusion monsters began to crowd the coast rather than the usual tourists, needless to say, the residents took a big hit to their wallets and their morale. In order to survive, they needed to change according to the war effort. Now, they’ll fight hard to at least bring back some normalcy to their not-so-normal community.       

As discussed in Johnny’s headcanons, we can infer that Bravo Beach was somehow founded/owned by the Bravo family: Johnny himself is featured in advertising for the location and his aunt, Jebedissa Bravo, is likely someone with old money as seen through her owning a mansion and caring deeply about the family name.  From this, it is also possible that they have a large stake in property surrounding the beach, dealing mainly in vacation homes/timeshares.  Besides Johnny signing-up for the war, the Bravos don’t have much to do with the Fusion Fighters directly.  Some of said homes have been opened up to help accommodate soldiers--like at least one those set on the hill overlooking the eastside of the beach--but the Bravos have generally focused on giving aid to the community itself.        

Despite the Orchid Bay’s large population, it seems to struggle with keeping many long-term businesses that aren’t focused on the tourist industry itself.  One thing you’ll notice when you arrive is that there’s less stores under the Morbucks’ name or other familiar places like Jelly’s Candies and more large-scale hotels and swim/watersport shops.  In The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, we also see this being an issue with the odd set-up of its malls: Orchid Bay’s main mall doubles as the local museum after the latter was bought out, and in the episode “It Takes a Pillage,” we learn that there’s an outlet mall on Takar Island that won’t get customers for months at a time.  Whether this is the result of a mass collective of strange business decisions by local entrepreneurs, poorly thought laws affecting business, high monster activity deterring people from setting up shop, or a combination of the three is hard to say. In any case, the stores in Orchid Bay tend to be the most unique out of the City areas as a whole.   

Again, Orchid Bay and Bravo Beach were hit hard at the start of the war.  (Good luck finding a place to park yourself near the water with Squish Scalers and Jetskills all over the shoreline...) Not only were they unable to bring in the usual crowds, the residents also couldn’t enjoy the ocean for themselves.  The loss of other attractions like the auditorium in Marquee Row and the skatepark didn’t help either, making the residences feel cornered as their income dwindled and the things they enjoyed in their everyday lives were stripped away.  

Orchid Bay’s port was their biggest security.  When the Fusion Fighters moved in, the area’s focus quickly changed from tourism to trade. Soldiers and resources shipped over by the Slider could easily be sent to other locations by sea and vice-versa, making the port a critical location to the war effort.  This includes shipments that couldn’t be delivered to the Wilds over-land and were instead carried to the Monkey Foothills on the Whoosh.    

However, that isn’t to say that the locals have given up on bringing in tourists entirely. Gradually, fusion monsters became less of a point of fear and more of a point of frustration.  This mindset was most notable to the people in Orchid Bay as the first spring break during the war drew near and the things still hadn’t gone back to normal by then.  As a result, they led one of the first major booms of recruits and volunteers from ordinary civilians, as well as made an example of themselves to the public that they couldn’t simply bunker-down in a long-term crisis.  They decided to give themselves back their sense of home and peace of mind.  People will still explore the boardwalk and you can find both civilians and soldiers alike resting on the beach during their off-time--just armed and ready if danger does show up.  

Besides the roaming fusion monsters, supernatural phenomena in Orchid Bay has gone down since the invasion started.  This is believed to be the thanks to some Earth’s supernatural creatures staying in hiding within their own realms and well as Grim’s influence making it so that their actions don’t affect the war effort and worsen things for everyone.   

The Ice King’s appearance during the latter half of the war was a surprise to everyone in Orchid Bay.  They’d had refugees from other areas come in before and knew in-advance that they’d receive new arrivals from Ooo; however, no one was expecting a giant ice spire to suddenly tower over the coast one day with the ruler scouting for any “princesses” in the area.  As bothersome as both it and the Ice King was to them, after the Fusion Fighters promised to keep him in-check, they just kinda accepted it so long as he didn’t cause any other, large-scale issues like raising more spires or summoning blizzards. Most find him to be more of an annoyance than a menace.   

On the other hand, the penguins he brought with him have become a bit of an attraction themselves.  People will watch them along the beach from afar and often find it cute if ever the Ice King sends them into town for something.     

[the-cookie-jar-system]

"That little man means 'walk' " - Pinned

Requests: Open! (0/infinite) (to do list) TL;DR: We're Charlie // Sans // GodForbid // Sodapop ! We're a system, white, and use he/it/neopronouns (no feminine ones) collectively! We coin genders and post whatever we want really, we just chill here! Full version below cut (if we did it right lol):

"The streets are only empty when I need somebody." - Intro Hi, we're an OSDDID traumagenic system that coins genders and also just posts whatever comes to our minds. We go by Charlie, Sans, GodForbid/Forbid and Sodapop. Collective pronouns are He/Him, It/Itself, &/&self (pronounced "and") and other neopronouns as long as they are not feminine.

No real need for tone indicators other than for sarcasm. "There's nothing to see here, move along!" - DNI If you are any of these, do not interact with me:

Basic DNI criteria (racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, etc) Anti-mogai Pro-contact paraphile Are against anti-contact paraphiles Are just really mean about my interests/spinterests Are super political (I don't care) Are just gonna come on to ask about discourse (if you're my friend, sure, why not? but leave me alone otherwise) Especially syscourse (I don't care about endos and I don't care if you believe in them or not, that's not my business) Are anti-mspec lesbians, anti-lesboys, anti-male lesbians etc Supporter of JK Rowling Just be nice "Just lie here waiting for the ambulance to come" - Requests Feel free to ask/request us! Here's what we'll do for requests! - Coin genders to the best our ability! - Make flags now! (we couldn't before but now we can!) - Pronouns! - Name and pronoun validations! (any amount! we don't mind!) - Mass requests (we don't mind! just please try to keep them in the same ask if you can!) One we're not entirely sure of is pronoun finding. If you give us a theme, we can try our best however we may skip the request, we'll let you know though. We won't do! - Coin sexualities - Headers, DNI banners etc - Name finding "Don't take me to the hospital, I said" - Tags # "Money is the symbol for love" | Cookie Jar System # "People interrupting meetings screaming 'bout repentance" | [alter name] Speaks # "Sodapop and bubblegum" | Gender # "Honeybees and jellybeans" | Pronouns # "But Johnny wouldn't die" | Reblog # "I'm looking for the man who is selling sleep" | Request Fufilled # "Somebody help me I don't sleep so well" | Request Denied # "Used to have pity now I don't have any" | Asks This was long, have fun! - Cookie Jar [ Songs the lyrics are from: - "That little man means 'walk'", "The streets are only empty when I need someone", "There's nothing to see here, move along!", "Just lie here waiting for the ambulance to come" "Don't take me to the hospital, I said," = Sleep It Off by That Handsome Devil - "Money is the symbol for love" = $ = ♡ by That Handsome Devil - "Sodapop and bubblegum" "Honeybees and jellybeans" = Sodapop & Bubblegum by GodForbid, Doc Delay and ThirtySeven - "But Johnny wouldn't die" = Johnny Wouldn't Die by That Handsome Devil - "I'm looking for the man who is selling sleep", "Somebody help me, I don't sleep so well" = Selling Sleep by GodForbid and Doc Delay - "Used to have pity now I don't have any" = Pity Party by GodForbid and Doc Delay ]

[talenlee]

Henry Orenstein

I'm going to tell you a story. It jumps around a little, to future and past, and it has a big twist in it that I'm going to need you to trust me on. Because of that, the fold - and content warning - is coming later than you'd expect.

This story, started, for me, on the Transformers wiki.

This is a Rubsign. It's a small piece of plastic that's heat-reactive. When Transformers started out as a brand, there was an immediate push to make cheap knockoff toys with similar ideas. In order to 'protect' the brand and ensure kids only wanted to buy the genuine Transformers, they developed something that they could pretend was part of the play pattern: a small symbol on the robot's body that had the silhouette of either the Decepticon or Autobot faction, and you wouldn't know for sure if you didn't heat it up, usually as a child, by rubbing it with your finger.

Transformers, and their gimmick of 'transforming', is essentially, open source. You can't copyright it or even copyright the techniques of a mould. This is one of the reasons there's so many knockoffs of those toys — the actual technique of a transforming toy is pretty much uncopyriteable method.

The rubsigns, however, were made with patented technology; not only weren't other people allowed to put them on their toys, but even worse, they simply couldn't make them because the method for their creation was proprietary. What I thought as a child was a clever way to represent a disguise, for a moment of tension in the narrative, was really just a corporate control collar, a thing that meant they could draw a hard line between their version of the idea and the other, shitty ones, so I could ensure my collection of second hand transforming robot toys was properly branded.

Rubsigns are a cop is what I'm saying.

But, they had to be invented.

This is Henry Orenstein. Learning about the origin of the rubsign meant learning that to my surprise, the patent for them is not held by The company per se, but is instead partially owned by Hasbro, and partially owned by this one dude, Henry Orenstein.

When I found his name in the Transformers wiki, the wiki stated, perhaps boldly: His life is more interesting than Transformers.

Bold claim.

This is professional Poker. It's a well known game that involves players playing for extremely large sums of money, often with similarly large sums of money involved in the buy-in. It's grown in popularity over the past twenty years, in part because of improvements in presenting the game to an audience. Back in 1995, a patent was filed for a device known as a hole camera, which let the broadcasters collect the information about the players' hands without doing anything that disrupted the natural flow of the game. The hole camera was used in 1999, and that's about when poker started to pick up in public discourse.

And the patent for the earliest hole camera (which isn't used much any more) is to a guy named Henry Orenstein. So important was this - and his winnings and his achievements lifetime - that he's been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

This is a Johnny Seven OMA, which were made by Topper Toys. And that's a company Henry Orenstein founded to make his toys after being annoyed at how expensive dolls and toy guns were for poor kids. Topper Toys eventually folded into another brand, Deluxe Reading, which I understand if you are a hardcore toy collector, really into things like barbie accessories and cross compatibility, is very important to the hobby.

This background was how Henry got the attention of Hasbro, and wound up working with them on acquiring new toy properties. That meant he was in position to be in Japan, looking at Takara and Microchange toys, and come back with the idea of acquiring both toy sets, and rebranding them as Transformers in 1980.

Interesting dude, right? He should write a memoir.

Except he did already:

And now, when we jump back in the story, I have to say: Content Warning: Nazis.

Henry Orenstein was born Henryk Orenstein, one of five Jewish children to a Polish family, born in Hrubieszów, Poland, 1923. That is to say, when he was 16 years old, the Nazis invaded and occupied his country. This was obviously not ideal, and the Orensteins first hid themselves in their house through secret passages and hidden chambers between the walls. When the food and water ran out, the parents made the painful decision to surrender to arrest, in the hopes of keeping their children alive.

Henryk's parents were taken, shipped to a camp, and shot. The children were then sent to a camp, where Henryk dedicated a plan to keeping moving. If they were being moved around, transferred from thing to thing, if the person in charge of them was different from time to time, nobody would have the time to really make a protracted plan to execute them. That, hypothetically, was the idea. This meant that he and his siblings were in five different concentration camp - including the camp run by Amon Goeth, the villain of Schindler's List.

They end up in the camp in Budzyń. A few days after arrival, a report comes over the loudspeaker that 'Any Jews with math or science training must report to front office' and Henryk signs himself and his brothers up.

... they did not have math or science training

See, as things were Getting Worse towards the end of the war, the Germans were trying to maximise the resources they did have. This is part of the grouping of things you'd possibly hear as the wunderwaffe — the preposterous weapons of the later days of Hitler's aspirations. You may know these as a sequence of History Channel tv ads, like Hitler's Greatest Tanks or Superboats or The Cannon That Shoots Time Frozen Chunks Of Hitler's Future Brain or whatever. Nowadays, wunderwaffe is a German word primarily used sarcastically, in case you're curious. The Nazis were desperate, because they were a bunch of sucky losers who couldn't make anything good on their own —

And never did

— they instead tried to turn their prisoners to the task of solving their problems with the finest of Nazi Bullshit Magic. At this point, Henryk is maybe nineteen years old, and he and his brothers are signed up to the camp's equivalent of the Shed they dump the A-Team in. The scientists in charge of the lab are scared: if this fails, they're just wasting manpower, and while the Jewish subordinates may fail, if they fail, they're going to get shipped to the front and treated like meaty bullet catchers.

Henryk, recognising the situation, proceeded to run cons on the Nazis with his brothers.

They made bullshit devices that wouldn't work, but did look like they worked. They stole from the labs. They crafted things that could be faked to working but wouldn't work for real. They entertained the scientists with the finest of hokum. And then the researchers, full of relief that they wouldn't become a statistic on a Soviet soldier's bayonet, started to talk about how great their progress was of Doing Science At Shit to their command.

Command released an order to demand that these Jewish Science Wizards produce a tank paralysing gas.

Which was a problem.

Look, the Nazis were fond of demanding things that couldn't be done. Then they could shout at their subordinates who were fucking up, or they'd deliver and you looked great. Again, this is not an environment for refined science, this is a shrinking circular firing squad where everyone is trying to just not be the next person shot. But nonetheless, Tank Paralysing Gas was demanded.

Henryk and his brothers did what they could, they made something they assured the Nazis would work, and the scientists, sweating bullets, sent it off to another base to be tested.

Where it didn't work.

Obviously.

Okay, so now for a moment, consider the situation. Consider what this looks like. These scientists have sent a giant pile of reports about how great a job they were doing, and there's a big trapdoor labelled Actual Bullets on it underneath them. They just put together their wunderwaffe and sent it off to be tested, and it didn't work, so what do they do?

Blame the prisoners?

Uh, that's going to go poorly, because they were saying the prisoners were doing a great job just a few days ago.

Come clean?

Fuck off.

Okay, so what else do they have as an option? Well, they did the only thing a fascist can do. They posted through it, Nazi style.

They sent infuriated reports to the other camp. WHAT DID YOU DO TO OUR TANK-PARALYSING GAS THAT MADE IT NOT WORK!?

And... you can see how this goes.

Right now, nobody wants to be the person who admits something is wrong. Nobody wants to be the person who pulls the circle of who gets shot even closer. You don't want to tell your superiors you fucked up handling the Tank Paralysing Gas, or if you made the Tank Paralysing Gas, you don't want to tell them that the Tank Paralysing Gas didn't work.

And so back and forth they go. Testing things that won't work and demanding ever-increasing test protocols to try and make it the other person's problem. I don't have proof of it, but some accounts of the story include the two camps getting infrastructure projects like new roads to make sure the transport of the Tank Paralysing Gas works and is good and proper and anyway, the war ended before they got this resolved.

But there is paperwork, recovered during the fall of Berlin, with Heinrich Himmler's signature on it, ordering the mass production of the Tank Paralysing Gas made by Henryk and his younger brothers.

"The whole tale about the scam they pulled on the nazis is... instructive, too"

[xxanaduwrites]

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ a residue series installment ˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

from the hive 🎙️🐝 : session 1

✎ elementary-teacher!reader (miss.honey) x biker!benny 🏍️

🐝 main hive | sweet talkin’ | honey, are you comin’? 🍯

summary: based off the two parts listed above, spoken from honey’s pov. some never before seen bonus tidbits included to be extended upon in future residue parts ;)

warnings: smoking, talks of violence, arson, potential stalking, some cursing here and there. nothing too crazy.

word count: idek tbh, i oddly wrote it in my tumblr drafts to get me inspired before writing the main residue installments.

💌 requests are open, send ‘em honey 💋

↻ ◁ || ▷

↺ ▶︎•၊၊||၊|။||||။၊|။•

honey: “y’want some honey in your tea?”

danny: “sure, thanks.”

[ a clanking sounds of what must be a spoon is heard in the background of the recording ]

honey: “anytime, sweets.”

danny: “wait, i’ve seen this before.”

honey: “huh?”

danny: “this company. isn’t that — wait that’s your last name ain’t it?”

honey: “yeah, my pa’s a bee keeper. ma jars the honey with some top secret ingredient that’s got the town buzzin’. whole family business.”

danny: “ah, no wonder you got that nickname.”

honey: “yep, since the womb.”

danny: “interestin’. did benny know that when he met ya?”

honey: “hm…not that i know of. might of. if he didn’t, m’sure johnny must of told him.”

danny: “how’d you meet benny then?”

honey: “how’d i meet benny?”

danny: “yeah.”

honey: “well…you know, i was just mindin’ my own business. working a regular school day at the elementary school on phipps. i was teaching the third grade at the time and johnny’s girls just so happened to be in my class. the main office sent me a note in the middle of the day informing me that the girls would be picked up by their uncle benny. i didn’t think too much of it at the time, hey it wasn’t unusual for kids to be picked up by extended family members, y’know? but i guess i — i had this vision of what he’d be like. fucked up i know, but ya see, i knew johnny. not in the way one would expect. [ honey laughs ] johnny was — well he was mr. davis to me, respectfully so, just like any parent would be to one of my students. but he was also the mr. davis i knew from mass at st. caron’s on the corner of rose and dawn. he’d be walkin’ around in a suit and tie, the whole get up, solemn as he ushered pew to pew with the collections basket for the poor and during communion on sundays 12pm sharp.

danny: “interesting. so i suspect you saw johnny rather often then?”

honey: “oh yeah, every week. went with my ma and pa all the time and like clock work he was there. such a clean cut dignified family man. so it was no surprise for me to be taken aback by benny’s appearance when he pulled up at the school yard.”

danny: “did he bring his bike?”

honey: “hell no! had johnny’s car. ‘twas a real trip with his colors on and a cigarette propped between those pillowly lips of his.”

danny: [ laughs ] “i can imagine. when was this exactly?”

honey: “oh it had to be close to the end of june, right before the start of the summer of ‘65. school was just about ending. had a week left or so. oh yeah — yeah, i remember cause it was real hot out too — sweltering heat, like that sticky kind that can only be equated to bein’ stuck in a classroom with a half broken fan. aw it was the worst. i had on this baby pink tank of sorts with thick straps under this overall dress i decked out a while back. it was real cute. had all these flowers and things i embroidered on it.

danny: “right, the embroidery. heard a thing or two about bedazzled patches on the vandal jackets.”

honey: “‘course you did. the skill got me going with the boys. when sonny started riding with ‘em he let me bejewel the fringes of his jacket real pretty. always a good sport. but anyways — yeah so i had this cute little get up on and my hair was all up and out of my face, real messy for the 60s. kinda stuck out like a sore thumb at school, but what shits did i give?

danny: “none?”

honey: “damn right. so yeah, it was kind of funny when benny came strolling up to me, weaving through all the parents like a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit one bit.”

danny: “what were your first impressions of him?”

honey: “i was impressed to say the least. only had my reservations for what — half a minute? yeah, i’d say a good thirty seconds before i was smiling up at him.”

danny: “did he scare you? scare any of the parents, other teachers?”

honey: “i wasn’t scared of him no…as for the others, sure. mrs. rubin was all this and that and the other thing ‘bout him after that, especially when it got more serious and he was waitin’ round the school. she didn’t appreciate the loitering, but he was harmless, as harmless as benny could be. though, i was more refreshed really to see somebody so interesting….so different from everybody else. it made me feel seen, y’know?”

danny: “so what happened next? when he got to you?”

honey: “he’s standin’ in front of me and i’m bein’ a good egg with both girls at my sides, small fingers wrapped around each hand, and i go ‘hi, you must be uncle benny. i’m miss. honey.’ and he takes a good minute to give me a once over, like introducing myself was the craziest thing i could of done. then that thick smokey voice of his went “honey, huh?” and my tummy rumbled up so much so i was sure the butterflies i stitched ripped right off and flew about my dress. [ honey laughs again ] i was kind of just like ‘yep, that’s me’ or whateva, and god i was so sure i fucked it all up.”

danny: “how come?”

honey: “anyone that knows benny knows he’s not a man of many words by any means, so at the time i took his silence as a sign of unimpression. i mean if you took a look at us two — and i mean a quick glance or somethin’, we definitely seemed like an odd pair. but if you really looked rather closely, takin’ the time to absorb every detail, i’d definitely say we were far more similar past the common eye. but, i’ll go into that later. [ honey pauses for a moment ] sorry did i answer the question?”

danny: “you did, you did.”

honey: “good, good….so where was i?”

danny: “you were talkin’ about introducing yourself to benny and him being unimpressed.”

honey: “right, so one of johnny’s girl starts gettin’ all antsy. wants to go. has herself practically all over benny in a beg. her sister — no. her sister doesn’t wanna. the little thing has her hand practically chain locked to mine. so i did what any teacher would do and sweet talked her into going.”

danny: “how’d you manage that?”

honey: “i reminded her that her pa was a good man. that his interests were just as important as her own. that was all it took really.”

danny: “did you still think that later on? still do? after everything?

honey: [ honey sighs and puts out a cigarette she’d been smoking throughout the session ] “i did and i still do. i know some people will say that johnny was no good, that his club only created chaos. really though, the johnny i knew was trying to keep the peace as my benny well — wasn’t. one wrong look in my direction and my man was jumping the fool in seconds flat. and if they got a hand on me, oh they’d have to have a death wish upon ‘em. benny would not stand for that. he’d make their life a livin’ hell for as long as they lived. johnny — no johnny wasn’t like that unless it was real bad. unless someone got real hurt, then he’d fight back.”

danny: “like the bar fire?”

honey: “exactly like the bar fire. sure, a part of me felt bad for the owner. that his establishment just went up in flames like that. but the other part of me was glad those fuckers couldn’t step foot in such a place no more. and on top of i was rather pissed off — still am — by the fact that the owner just let my benny get attacked like that. did nothing to stop it. boils my blood just thinking about it. just thinking about my sweet benny minding his business and gettin’ swarmed for just wearin’ his colors. colors that wouldn’t come off of him once i got my artsy hands on it. he was absolutely obsessin’ with the patches i made. especially the one that said “honey’s hubby” with a big ol’ heart. made my cheeks burn real bad when he’d kiss it before tossing it right back on.”

danny: “i remember seeing that.”

honey: “you do?!”

danny: “yeah, the times i rode with the guys. i caught ‘em doing it here and there. especially when he was ‘bout to mount his bike before a ride. figured it was some sort of good luck charm before i really took a good look at what the patch said. then i realized it was you.”

honey: “danny?”

danny: “what?”

honey: “you gotta stop or i’m gonna be gushin’ the whole rest of this interview without giving yuh the real stuff.”

danny: “alright, alright [ lyon laughs ] back to business. so, what happened after you got johnny’s girl to go with benny? when’d you see him again?”

honey: “funnily enough, ‘twas the very next day. saw him first in the mornin’ y’know at drop off. i figured he gave a ride to the girls again or somethin’ — but no. it was betty who did. she came right up to me that morning to say hello. the hell was i thinkin’? i mean benny had his whole bike on him. no shot in hell he’d bring the girls on it.”

danny: “sure.” [ sarcasm is apparent in lyon’s words ]

honey: “danny no! [ honey laughs ] benny was wild but not that wild. he’d never let anything happen to those girls.”

danny: “i know, i know. only jokin’. i’m assumin’ that’s what drew you to him though?”

honey: “it was definitely a solid factor.”

danny: “understandable. did you go talk to him, at drop off?”

honey: “no, no. I didn’t think too much of it at the time and i couldn’t go shoot the breeze with him anyways. the lot was packed with all these little ones. i had to roll call mine. it wasn’t until after lunch hour during recess that i did.”

danny: “he was still there then? never left?”

honey: “as far as i know, no. had a whole garden of cigarette buds circling his feet like he’d been there for hours.”

danny: “what’d you say when you approached him?”

honey: “said something about the girls not getting out for another few hours and then asked him if he was stalkin’ me off the bat. oh — he offered me a cigarette too, and i took it.”

danny: “ripped the bandage right off i see. how’d he take that?”

honey: “seemed amusin’ to him. he made one of those faces that had all his features turnin’ up real pretty. can never forget that. flat out told me he wasn’t which i found strangely adorable. then — i don’t really know how it happened, but he was changing the subject completely. y’know when you’re having a conversation and ya kind of just naturally switch topics easily, but it’s done so smoothy, like the segue isn’t rough or whatever?”

danny: “yeah, i know what y’mean. the previous topic is wedged in there somehow subtly, but it makes sense why you got there.”

honey: “exactly. but, benny. no — when benny was in the midst of a conversation and started going on about something else there was no ease there. yet, you’d be fooled to think so. that’s how he got us out of most arguments honestly. one minute i wouldn’t be too happy with him about somethin’. probably somethin’ stupid anyways. if not stupid, than definitely about him ridin’ with an injury. always got me nervous. but then of course the next he’d have me wrapped up in his embrace as if five minutes prior hadn’t happened. here, for instance though, i guess the transition kind of made sense? i mean i was goin’ on about my co-worker freaking out about him just parking ship near campus, blabbing about and he’s asking about what time i get out, and if i wanna go on a ride. now, i’m dumbfounded by this. cause what the hell does he want to do with me, y’know?”

danny: “so what did ya do? did ya go with him?”

honey: “what’a ya think, daniel?”

[ an unknown interruption cuts the session here, but lyon obtains all the information from honey he needs — for now, that is ;) ]

[ the tape ends ]

↻ ◁ || ▷

author’s note: hope ya liked this! i’m such a sucker for an interview writing style. daisy jones & the six is my favorite books ever if you can’t tell! <3

my requests are open for any miss honey x benny cross works + any convos about these two in general. don’t be shy honey, i’m all for yapping in the asks.

+ don’t forget to comment if you’d like be added to “da bee hive” (my version of da tag list)

smoochies. all da love xanadu 💋

da bee hive 🐝🍯

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[greatworldwar2]

• Duško Popov

Dušan "Duško" Popov OBE was a Serbian triple agent who served as part of the MI6 and Abwehr during World War II, and passed off disinformation to Germany as part of the Double-Cross System and working also as agent for the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.

Dušan "Duško" Popov was born to a Serb family in Titel, Austria-Hungary on July 10th, 1912. His parents were Milorad and Zora Popov. He had an older brother named Ivan ("Ivo") and a younger brother named Vladan. The family was exceedingly wealthy and owed its fortune to Popov's paternal grandfather, Omer, a wealthy banker and industrialist who founded a number of factories, mines, and retail businesses. Records from as early as 1773 describe them as the most affluent family there. Popov's father expanded the family's business interests to include real estate dealings. When Popov was an infant, the family left Titel and permanently relocated to their summer residence in Dubrovnik, which was their home for much of the year. They also had a manor in Belgrade, where they spent the winter months. Popov's childhood coincided with a series of monumental political changes in the Balkans. In November 1918, Austria-Hungary disintegrated into a number of smaller states, and its Balkan possessions were incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929). The newly established, Serb-led state was plagued by political infighting among its various constitutive ethnic groups, particularly Serbs and Croats, but also Hungarians and Germans. The young Popov and his family enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle and were far removed from the political turmoil in the country. They boasted a sizeable collection of villas and yachts, and were attended by servants, even on their travels. Popov's father indulged his sons, building a spacious villa by the sea for their exclusive use where they could entertain their friends and host expensive parties. He was also insistent that they receive a quality education. Apart from his native Serbian, Popov was fluent in Italian, German and French by his teenage years. Between the ages of 12 and 16, he attended a lycée in Paris.

In 1929, Popov's father enrolled him into Ewell Castle, a prestigious preparatory school in Surrey. Popov's stint at the school proved to be short lived. After only four months, he was expelled following an altercation with a teacher. He had previously endured a caning at the teacher's hands after being caught smoking a cigarette. Another caning was adjudicated after Popov missed a detention, and so as to evade further corporal punishment, Popov grabbed the teacher's cane and snapped it in two before his classmates. Popov's father subsequently enrolled him at Lycée Hoche, a secondary institution in Versailles, which he attended for the following two years. At the age of 18, Popov enrolled in the University of Belgrade, seeking an undergraduate degree in law. Over the next four years, he became a familiar face in Belgrade's cafes and nightclubs, and had the reputation of a ladies' man. In 1934, Popov enrolled in the University of Freiburg, intent on securing a doctorate in law. Germany had only recently come under the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, but at the time, Popov paid little regard to politics. He had chosen Freiburg because it was relatively close to his native country and he was eager to improve his German-language skills. Germany was already the site of mass book burnings, the first concentration camps had been established and the systematic persecution of Jews had commenced.

Popov began his studies at the University of Freiburg in the autumn of 1935, and in subsequent months, began showing greater interest in politics and voiced his political opinions more vigorously. Around the same time, he befriended a fellow student, Johnny Jebsen, the son of a German shipping magnate. The two grew close, largely due to their raucous lifestyle and a shared interest in sports vehicles. In 1937, Popov began participating in debates at the Ausländer Club, which were held every other Friday evening. He was disappointed that many foreign students appeared to be swayed by the pro-Nazi arguments espoused there. Popov discovered that the German debaters were all hand-picked party members who chose the subject of each debate beforehand and vigorously rehearsed Nazi talking points. He persuaded Jebsen, then the president of the club, to inform him of the debate topics in advance and passed this information along to the British and American debaters. Popov himself delivered two speeches at the club, arguing in favour of democracy. He also wrote several articles for the Belgrade daily Politika, ridiculing the Nazis. In the summer of 1937, Popov completed his doctoral thesis, and decided to celebrate by embarking on a trip to Paris. Before he could leave, he was arrested by the Gestapo, who accused him of being a communist. His movements had been tracked by undercover agents beforehand and his acquaintances questioned. Popov was incarcerated at the Freiburg prison without formal proceedings. When Jebsen received news of his friend's arrest, he called Popov's father and informed him of what had occurred. Popov's father contacted Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović, who raised the issue with Hermann Göring, and after eight days in captivity, Popov was released. He was ordered to leave Germany within 24 hours, and upon collecting his belongings, boarded a train for Switzerland.

He soon arrived in Basel and found Jebsen waiting for him on the station platform. Jebsen informed Popov of the role he played in securing his release. Popov expressed gratitude and told Jebsen that if he was ever in need of any assistance he needed only ask. Upon his return to Dubrovnik in the fall of 1937, Popov began practicing law. In February 1940, he received a message from Jebsen, asking to meet him at the Hotel Serbian King in Belgrade. Popov was shocked to find Jebsen a nervous wreck, chain smoking and drinking exorbitantly. He told Popov that he had joined his family's shipping business after graduating from Freiburg and explained that he needed a Yugoslav shipping license to evade the Allied naval blockade at Trieste. Popov agreed to help Jebsen, and the latter travelled back to Berlin to collect the required documentation. Two weeks later, Jebsen returned to Belgrade, and informed Popov that he had joined the Abwehr, German's military intelligence service. Jebsen's ability to travel across Europe on business trips would remain unimpeded so long as he submitted reports detailing the information he had received from his business contacts. He told Popov he joined the Abwehr to avoid being conscripted into the Wehrmacht. Jebsen said military service was not an option because he suffered from varicose veins. The news came as a surprise to Popov, as his friend had previously expressed anti-Nazi views.

Popov informed Clement Hope, a passport control officer at the British legation in Yugoslavia. Hope enrolled Popov as a double agent with the codename Scoot (he was later known to his handler as Tricycle), and advised him to cooperate with Jebsen. Once accepted as a double agent, Popov moved to London. His international business activities in an import-export business provided cover for visits to neutral Portugal; its capital, Lisbon, was linked to the UK by a weekly civilian air service for most of the war. Popov used his cover position to report periodically to his Abwehr handlers in Portugal. Popov fed enough MI6-approved information to the Germans to keep them happy and unaware of his actions, and was well-paid for his services. The assignments given to him were of great value to the British in assessing enemy plans and thinking. His most important deception was convincing the Germans that the D-Day landings would be in Calais, not Normandy, and was able to report back to MI6 that they fell for this deception, which corroborated Bletchley Park's decryption of Lorenz cipher machine messages. Popov was famous for his playboy lifestyle, while carrying out perilous wartime missions for the British.

In 1944, Popov became a key part of the deception operation codenamed Fortitude. At the time of the operation, he was staying in Portugal. He stayed in Estoril once again, at the Hotel Palácio, between March 31st and April 12th, 1944. When Jebsen was arrested by the Gestapo in Lisbon, the British feared Popov had been compromised and ceased giving him critical information to pass along to the Germans. It was later discovered that the Abwehr still regarded Popov as an asset and he was brought back into use by the British. Jebsen's death at the hands of the Nazis had a profound emotional impact on Popov.

In 1972, John Cecil Masterman published The Double Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945, an intimate account of wartime British military deception. Before its publication, Popov had no intention of revealing his wartime activities, believing that the MI6 would not allow it. Masterman's book convinced Popov that it was time to make his exploits public. In 1974, Popov published an autobiography titled Spy/Counterspy, "a racy account of his adventures that read like a James Bond novel." Miller describes it as "fundamentally accurate, if occasionally embellished". Several of the events described in the book were either entirely fictional, such as a fistfight Popov claimed to have had with a German agent, exaggerated for dramatic effect, or could not be substantiated through subsequently declassified intelligence records. Popov's wife and children were apparently unaware of his past until the book's publication. By the early 1980s, years of chain smoking and heavy drinking had taken a toll on Popov's health. He died in Opio on August 10th, 1981, aged 69. His family said his death came after a long illness. He was predeceased by his brother Ivo, who died in 1980. Popov was the subject of a one-hour television documentary produced by Starz Inc. and Cinenova, titled True Bond, which aired in June 2007. Two other documentaries recounting Popov's exploits, The Real Life James Bond: Dusko Popov and Double Agent Dusko Popov: Inspiration for James Bond, have also been produced.

[kaidenya]

⌕ :: about the mun...

...I absolutely love talking about my interests so if we have anything in common, reach out! I’ve only got one friend (@softlybakugou) so I’m always down to meet new people!!

Name: Kai

Age: Twenty-Three

Pronouns: She/Her

Timezone: EST

Sexuality: Pansexual

STATS

Sign: Scorpio

MBIT: INTJ-T

Enneagram: Five — Wing Four

PASSPORTS

Wizarding World

House :: Slytherin

Patronus :: Runespoor

Occupation :: Magizooligist

Wand :: Holly wood with a phoenix feather core, 10 ¾" and surprisingly swishy flexibility

Mount Olympus

Cabin :: Thirteen

Weapon :: Bow & Arrow

Location :: The stables

Miscellaneous

Fae Court: Night Court

House of Night Element: Spirit

Game of Thrones House: Baratheon

INTEREST STATS

Movies :: Midsommar, American Ultra, The Mummy, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), TMNT, The Proposal, The Shape of Water, V for Vendetta, John Wick, Howls Moving Castle, The Maze Runner, & Black Widow

Shows :: Attack on Titan, Outer Banks, Haikyuu!!, Sherlock, The Mandalorian, Arcane, Euphoria, Vikings, Game of Thrones, The Punisher, American Horror Story, Avatar The Last Airbender, Teen Wolf, Charmed, & Scream

Books :: The Spider’s Mate Trilogy, Vicious Lost Boys, Naga Brides, A Court of Thorns & Roses, House of Night Series, Darkest Powers Trilogy, Promises and Pomegranates, Orc Sworn Series, & Junji Ito Collection

Games :: Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect 2/3, Detroit Become Human, The Last of Us, GTA V, Until Dawn, Little Hope, Skyrim, & Fallout 4

Celebrities :: Pedro Pascal, Will Poulter, Florence Pugh, Lee Dong Wook, John Boyega, Keanu Reeves, Dev Patel, Hailee Steinfeld, Sophie Turner, Jackson Wang, & Adam Driver

CHARACTER STATS

Arcane :: Vi/Violet, Viktor, Silco, Echo, & Scar

Haikyuu :: Tendo Satori, Kentaro Kyotani, Kotaro Bokuto, Shoyo Hinata, Tsukishima Kei, & Keishin Ukai

My Hero Academia :: Mirio Togata, Izuku Midoriya, Tenya Iida, Tamaki Amajiki, Mezo Shoji, Kugo Sakamata (Gang Orca), Katsuki Bakugou, Hanta Sero, & Ochaco Uraraka

Jujutsu Kaisen :: Choso, Yuji Itadori, Toge Inumaki, Aoi Todo, Nobara Kugisaki, & Ryomen Sukuna

Cyberpunk 2077 :: Goro Takemura, Johnny Silverhand, Panam Palmer, River Ward, Misty Olszewski, Vik Vektor, & Judy Alvarez

Horror/Slashers :: Thomas Hewitt (Leatherface), Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Evan Macmillan (The Trapper), & Vincent Sinclair

Monsters/Aliens :: Yautja, Thane (Mass Effect), The Gill-Man, Garrus (Mass Effect), Venom, Telok & Ketahn (TSM Trilogy),

Harry Potter :: Charlie Weasley, Severus Snape, George Weasley, Fred Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, & Newt Scamader

Marvel :: Frank Castle (The Punisher), Yelena Belova, Erik Lensherr (Magneto), Matt Murdock (Daredevil), Wade Wilson (Deadpool), Cindy Moon (Silk), Marie D’Ancanto (Rogue), & Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier)

Game of Thrones :: Sandor Clegane (The Hound), Tywin Lannister, Oberyn Martel, Stannis Baratheon, Tormund Giantsbane, & Podrick Payne

Miscellaneous :: Din Djarin (The Mandalorian), Sherlock Holmes (BBC), Pope Heyward (OBX), Fezco (Euphoria), John Wick, Donatello (TMNT), Gally (The Maze Runner), Azriel (ACOTAR), Charles Smith (RDR2), Leonardo (TMNT), Solas (DAI), Ivar The Boneless, & Connor (DBH)

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 9

Les Filles de Illighadad

Another collection of short reviews closes out this week at Dusted, with selections ranging from avant garde classical to free jazz to whacko punk to an unusually gender-inclusive guitar band from Niger.  Writers this time included the usual stalwarts, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw, Bryon Hayes, Tim Clarke, Andrew Forell and Chris Liberato. Enjoy.

All Set — All Set (RogueArt)

In 1957, serialist composer Milton Babbitt’s All Set applied his language-transforming compositional tool kit to the sonic resources of a jazz orchestra. Six decades and change down the road, such ideas haven’t exactly infiltrated the mainstream of either jazz or orchestral music, but they’ve become as handy for some music makers as hammers and nails are for carpenters. So, when saxophonic colleagues Ingrid Laubrock (who sticks to tenor here) and Stéphane Payen (playing the straight alto) needed to come up with a framework to make music together, out came Babbitt’s notion, which they did not play straight, but used as a suggestions for writing their own tunes, and for good measure named their band after the Babbitt’s piece The formative influence manifests in zig-zagging intervallic leaps, but instead of treating these of ends in themselves, the saxophonists carry on constant overlapping dialogues. The rhythm section of Chris Tordini (bass) and Tom Rainey (drums) can’t help but swing, but they do so in a shifting, discontinuous fashion that occasionally leaves it to the saxophonists to play the gaps as well as the horns they use the fill them.

Bill Meyer

 Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Alexander Von Schlippenbach — The Field (No Business)

The Field by Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio & Alexander von Schlippenbach

Motion Trio is one of tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado’s more enduring combos. But it’s not one that has played often in the years preceding this concert, a consequence of the growth and success of its members; Amado, cellist Miguel Mira and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini all keep busy with other projects. So, this encounter with pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, which took place in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2019, was not just a reenactment of the trio’s favorite tactic of improvising with a strong fourth musician, but a reunion of the trio itself. This means that the process-oriented can listen for three comrades finding reviving a common language at the same time that they confront with an outsider’s efforts to deal with it. Schlippenbach’s playing brings an unusual harmonic density to Motion Trio’s music, which seems to coax an especially dynamic and at times reflective response from the saxophonist. Ferandini, on the other hand, proposes shapes and timbres that seem to build out from Schlippenbach’s intricate constructions, while Mira keeps up a steady, almost subliminal stream of contrapuntal commentary that is simultaneously assertive and nearly subliminal. But some of the concert’s most exciting moments come when the pianist lays out for a second, and you can hear Motion Trio’s members responding to each other.

Bill Meyer

  BangGang Lonnie Bands — H2K On the Way (TF Entertainment \ Anti Media)

Lots of artists have watched small projects intended only as appetizers grow to surpass their grander efforts. BangGang Lonnie Bands’ recent work, especially his King of Detroit albums, contained a few gems but were bloated in length. There was an ironic twist, as Lonnie’s claimed the throne to the city where he no longer resides. While it remains to be seen what the rapper brings after H2K On the Way, this 15 minutes long EP is his leanest work in years, leaving a long list of LPs behind. Lonnie no longer flirts with scam rap and returns to murder music, fusing gutsiest Michigan-style punchlines with no hostage Californian approach to verse spitting. He’s the naughtiest when he’s trolling the music industry: “Copped a 100 pounds of crank \ should have bought a verse from Drake.” 

Ray Garraty  

  Buffalo Daughter — We Are the Times (Anniversary)

Buffalo Daughter always caught in the cracks between mainstream and experimental, layering vocal sweetness over chopped up blippy beats, not as wildly original as OOIOO, but not exactly girl pop either. This latest album comes after a long break and a slightly less lengthy COVID lockdown, and it’s got some prickly, dreamy jams, part dance, part pop, part funk, part inscrutable. “ET (Densha)” is the mad, moody single, full of low-end synth blasts and thundering drums, but leavened by high whispery vocals. It’s like Shackleton sound-tracking a Hello Kitty movie. “Global Warming Will Kill Us All” is similarly ominous, with vocoder chants and trippy pop choruses and blown out by phosphorescent blots of synth, but I like “Don’t Punk Out” the best, because it struts like an animatronic James Brown, the funk percolating through gleaming futuristic swells of sounds. If disco’s going to come back, can it be this weird and disorienting?

Jennifer Kelly

 Fashion Pimps and the Glamazons — Jazz 4 Johnny (Feel It Records)

Jazz 4 Johnny by Fashion Pimps And The Glamazons

This new EP from Fashion Pimps and the Glamazons manages to fit into the tradition of whacko punk records from Cleveland (and what a tradition that is…) and to comment on the problematic nature of tradition itself. There’s a decided No Wave vibe to Jazz 4 Johnny: listen to it, and you’ll flash on Buy Contortions and on Robert Quine’s attempts to channel Miles Davis and Pharoah Sanders through his guitar. At points you’ll swear there’s a sax somewhere in the buzz and thunder that the Fashion Pimps create — but that’s just Richard Glamazon’s skronky guitar tone, which does Quine one better by not only aping the cadences of a free jazz solo but also the sound of a brassy axe. That’s fun, but we should also recall No Wave’s sharp antipathies for concepts like “tradition” or “perpetuity.” A lot of those bands wanted to neutralize their own existence and thus evade the ultimately conservative action of canonization. Other tunes on Jazz 4 Johnny are more engaged with the later Downtown noise rock scene. The guitar on “Dream Police” gestures toward early Sonic Youth—but even there, the band can’t quite help themselves. Vocalist Steve Chainsaw shouts, “Show me your DNA!” Most of those references are based in Manhattan, so what about Cleveland? The city often recedes into the background when conversations turn to rock-n-roll history, which is too bad. Fashion Pimps and the Glamazons don’t sound all that much like electric eels or Pere Ubu, but the band is tuned into a similarly feral, post-industrial ethos and an avant-garde sensibility that makes anti-art into art you can dance to. Or break things to. Or both. Which may be the best response to the wild and smart tunes on this record.

Jonathan Shaw

 Les Filles de Illighadad — At Pioneer Works (Sahel Sounds)

At Pioneer Works by Les Filles de Illighadad

The entrancing At Pioneer Works documents the American touring debut of Niger-based Tuareg ensemble Les Filles de Illighadad, specifically a pair of shows at the eponymous Brooklyn venue. Travelling as a four-piece ensemble, the band created a swirling three-guitar maelstrom, as captured on this pristine-sounding recording. Founder Fatou Seidi Ghali — the first known woman Tuareg guitarist — and her cousin Alamnou Akrouni were joined by Fatimata Ahmadelher, the only other known woman Tuareg guitarist, with Ghali’s brother accompanying on rhythm guitar. Blending the traditional calabash drum and call-and-response vocals of the tende song form with the electric guitar, Ghali and company steep the communal origins of their sound with a gentle clangor. The music is simultaneously hypnotic and driving, the four performers acting as one multi-limbed, multi-throated being. For the most part, Ghali is content setting the pace and playing along with the melody. One exception is the trio of deftly executed solos during “Chakalan,” where she demonstrates her prowess with six strings. Reports from those Brooklyn shows indicate that the band completely enraptured their audience, and if At Pioneer Works represents only a fraction of how powerful Les Filles de Illighadad are live, this writer doesn’t doubt that at all.

Bryon Hayes  

 Henri Guédon — Karma (Outre National)

Karma by Henri Guédon

You don’t have to be a big fan of R.E.M. to feel overly familiar with “It’s The End of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” In dire times, it’s such an easy go-to tune that even adherence to lockdown prescriptions won’t keep it out of your ears. So, deejays, we’ve done your research for you, and found a new tune to soundtrack defiant frugging in the face of disaster. It’s called “Fin Di Mond,” by Martinique-based singer/percussionist/sculptor Henri Guédon. It, and eight more similarly motion-motivating tunes, can be found on Karma, a predominantly celebratory set of retro-futuristic, Franco-Caribbean grooves. Mind you, this music wasn’t retro when Guédon recorded it 46 years ago; the synth lines that swoop through its massed percussion were probably the height of modernity back in the day. Heard now, this music is just the thing to put time itself on pause.

Bill Meyer

HTRK — Rhinestones (Heavy Machinery)

Rhinestones by HTRK

Rhinestones is a sneaky one from Melbourne’s HTRK, a slight but incisive release that seems minor compared to their previous albums but cuts just as deep. Running to a brutally economical 26 minutes, most of the album is built around delayed guitar, drum machine and Jonnine Standish’s ghostly, dejected voice. To a world laid low by the pandemic, Standish sounds startlingly apposite for these times, and track titles like “Sunlight Feels Like Bee Stings,” “Real Headfuck” and “Straight to Hell” signpost the vibe clearly. This is sad, skeletal music, sure to offer a degree of solace if you’re weary, wrung out or wasted — 2021 in a nutshell.

Tim Clarke  

 Matt Jencik — Matt & Lyra (Trouble In Mind)

Matt & Lyra by matt jencik

Matt Jencik is a member of doomy, spacey Chicago band Implodes, plus he’s released two solo guitar albums: 2017’s Weird Times and 2019’s Dream Character. For his latest, Matt & Lyra, part of Trouble In Mind’s Explorers Series, Jencik focuses on the thick, fuzzy tones of the Russian-built Lyra-8 synthesizer (hence the album title). Having said that, he does pull out his guitars to add some acoustic strumming to “Cmellow Ayellow,” and builds 16-minute closer “Clandestine Half Pipe” around electric guitar drones before the Lyra begins to dominate the frame. Jencik apparently made this music to help him sleep, and while this music is suited to nocturnal listening, with an all-enveloping warmth, there’s also the sense of something looming in the darkness. Whether this presence is reassuring or threatening probably depends on the frame of mind with which you approach this immersive 35-minute release.

Tim Clarke

 Joakim — Second Nature (Tiger Sushi)

French producer and Tiger Sushi founder Joakim’s Second Nature is a reflection on the state of the world. It combines samples of whales, elephants, toads and other wildlife with the kind of pop facing ambient techno from aughts chillout compilations.  It is testament to his skill as a producer that the record doesn’t wear out its welcome despite the occasional lapse into the anodyne and the associations this kind of gentle background music evokes. When Joakim disturbs the tranquility on tracks like “Sferics & Whistlers” with its crackles of static and breakdown of discordant notes, Angel Bat Dawid’s klezmatic clarinet on “Waves Ahead” and the komische roll of “Kepler-39” that one is jolts from reverie and pays close attention, but at 16 tracks it feels like Second Nature needs more such moments.

Andrew Forell 

 The Killing Popes — Ego Kills (Shhpuma)

Ego Kills by The Killing Popes

Thank god this unfortunately named combo isn’t someone’s absurd scheme to crossbreed the sounds of Killing Joke and Smoking Popes. Instead, the Berlin-based project exists at the crossroads of jazz and electronics. I know what you’re thinking, and no this isn’t a modern take on acid jazz; this crew makes a jazz-on-acid sort of racket. The core Popes are drummer-percussionist Oli Steidle and multi-instrumentalist Dan Nicholls, who together conjure up a brew with a myriad of ingredients. Their genre-defying fusion of disciplines does have a center, however. Steidle’s dextrous drumming and the elastic band bass proffered by Phil Donkin serve as an anchor point for the other elements — both melodic and bizarre — to revolve around. The addition of vocals inserts the sense of narrative, creating a gravity that tugs at the sounds and prevent them from spiralling out of orbit. As zany as Ego Kills may be, it’s jazz-like enough for afficionados to appreciate. On their own, each of the instrumentalists demonstrates a mastery of their craft; together, they create an uncanny sort of magic.

Bryon Hayes

 Norman W. Long — BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN (Hausu Mountain)

BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN by Norman W. Long

Chicago soundscapist Norman W. Long walks his southeast Chicago neighborhood, listens deeply and records the ambient sounds of nature, the echoes of railyards, wasteland and industrial sites both working and abandoned. Adding subtle electronics and treatments to his field recordings, Long conjures atmospheres that speak to space, atrophy and the delicate symbiosis between nature and humanity. On BLACK BROWN GRAY GREEN he immerses listeners in the often unnoticed aural richness at the intersection of the built, neglected and the natural. His choices about when to augment or to present his sources as are forms a narrative of associations, displacements and tensions. Long’s is also a story of reclamation and recognition, a rumination on the situation of the largely minority and migrant populations who live in the neighborhood, many of whom toil as essential workers across the city in the face of ongoing prejudice and hostility. Site specificity is integral to Long’s art but his themes are universal.

Andrew Forell 

 Andy Moor — Music For Safe Piece (Unsounds)

Music For Safe Piece by Andy Moor

Music For Safe Piece is the antidote for every piece of children’s music that’s ever made you want to not hear another played or sung note, ever again. Electric guitarist Andy Moor (the Ex, Dog Faced Hermans) and dancer Valentina Campora have included their sons, Elio and Milo, in onstage performance ever since they were so young, they had to be swaddled and strapped to one of their parents in order to participate. The recorded results of this shared adventure are raw, unpredictable and exhilarating. Moor’s guitar, occasionally augmented by a child’s vocalization, a foot pounding the floor or some choice tune fragments on a cassette tape, blazes a trail of reverberations, scrapes and wobbles. In performance, the boys are known to get in on the act, helping pop to make his sounds while mom handles the movement. This music isn’t particularly pacific, but it’s pretty close to the way kids actually play when no one’s stopping them. The technologically adept will find a QR code inside the CD’s gatefold, which unlocks the short film, “Safe Piece.”

Bill Meyer

RXM Reality — Advent (Orange Milk)

Advent by RXM REALITY

Long-time Hausu Mountain dweller Mike Meegan has relocated to the Orange Milk abode, taming his frenetic brand of electronic mayhem in the process. The blown-out, off-the-grid beats are still plentiful, but with Advent Meegan injects his tunes with melody. He’s also allowed himself to slow down and relax. The vast expanse of “Character Limit” literally breathes deeply as Meegan allows it to swirl around. He drinks up the pleasant melodic aromas of the track before switching gears and unloading burst after burst of explosive beats. “These Days” comes off as an electro-shoegaze hybrid, with gauzy synth pads that float effortlessly among bouncy percussion clusters. Of course, the signature RXM Reality sound — a hybrid of 1990s video game and blockbuster movie — is present and accounted for in tracks like “Allure,” “Screaming,” and “Grip of Evil.” Yet even these balls of energy are tempered with shades of consonance. Having blunted some of the jagged edges of his frantic brand of electronic music, Meegan fits in nicely among the kooky ranks of the Orange Milk imprint.

 Bryon Hayes

 Macie Stewart — Mouth Full of Glass (Orindal)

Mouth Full of Glass by Macie Stewart

You might already know Macie Stewart as one-half of the complicated indie rock duo Ohmme or for her regular appearances as violinist of choice in Chicago jazz and experimental music scenes, but this solo LP shows another side.  These eight songs are lushly, intricately arranged with strings, orchestral instruments and brass, recorded with precision and clarity, but nonetheless personal and introspective.  “Garter Snake” sheathes flaying honesty with baroque instrumental flourishes. Stewart’s voice is bare and unaffected as she confides, “I am addicted…to indecision,” but she makes riveting choices in framing the melody.  Old-fashioned movie strings swell in the spaces between talking-right-to-you verses; agile guitar chords mark time.  “Finally” begins in bare, Bahian guitar play, as Stewart’s voice flutters and floats an unpredictable but fetching tune.  Strings swoop in at the end of the phrase, lavish and lucid.  The title track unlooses massed, harmonized vocals on the spare architecture of picked guitar, a shock of extravagant sung beauty in an otherwise restrained palette.  Like Wendy Eisenberg, but with different instruments, Stewart weaves post-modern complexity into the delicate fabric of pop songs.  The difficulty — combined with the beauty — makes this music memorable.

Jennifer Kelly

 Stingray — Feeding Time (La Vida es un Mus)

Feeding Time by Stingray

In places where heavy music is played and endlessly debated, 1982 might be most strongly associated with English street punk — see the ersatz “genre” of UK82, which enshrines the year and ties it to acid green liberty spikes and scuffed Doc Martens. Fair enough. But street punk was thoroughly informed by the dirty working-class metal being made by bands like Motörhead and Venom, and this new EP by Stingray celebrates those noisy intersections of influence. Of course, Stingray’s version of celebration likely involves several cases of Bass Ale, an eightball of something white and a fistfight or two. Or five. The English band features members of other current hard-driving acts, including Subdued, the Chisel and Chain of Flowers, but Stingray doesn’t prize currency. The songs are short, hard and nasty, landing their punches like a “Bomber” and also like a bunch of “Death Dealers.” The guys in Stingray understand the past they’re drawing on, but does music like this have a future? Fuck knows. Do any of us have a future? Does the earthball? The tunes are less interested in such flights of existential angst, and more intent on their rapacious appetites for speed, sweat and raunch. It’s Feeding Time. Get it while you can.

Jonathan Shaw

Nick Storring — Newfoundout (Mappa)

Newfoundout by Nick Storring

You’ll miss some towns if you blink. The ones that have given their names to the compositions on Newfoundout might confound both eyesight and your GPS, since they are all ghost towns in Ontario, Canada. The music that Nick Storring has made to go with these titles is correspondingly elusive. Performed entirely by the composer, using strings, percussion and whatever bric-a-brac happened to be at hand, it is by turns lush, staccato and propulsive. “The sounds are never particularly difficult, but they rarely telegraph where they’re going, so if you listen passively, sooner or later you’ll look up in dismay, wondering how things got from where they were to where they are now. “Khartum,” for example, starts out sounding a lot like “In A Silent Way,” and finishes up sounding like a respectfully paced conference of grandfather clock chimes. So, put your head back and your ears forward, and let Mr. Storring do the driving. 

Bill Meyer

Ten Ka — Sonic Geometry: Structures, Patterns And Forms (Jersika)

sonic geometry: structures, patterns and forms by TEN KA

Ten Ka is experimental side project of Deniss Pashkevich, a Latvian woodwinds player. The album title’s invocation of mathematics is apt, since this music is produced by dissimilar musical values acting upon each other. Pashkevich’s sound on tenor sax is full and soft around the edges, which is probably what it takes to be a working musician in a part of the world that doesn’t have much of a jazz tradition; on flutes, and especially the Bansuri, he hints at a far Eastern vibe. He also plays Fender Rhodes and prepared acoustic piano, bringing in further elements of user-friendly jazz, but also some sharp, Cage-y edges. But most of the nine tracks on Sonic Geometry: Structures, Patterns And Forms feature modular synths, which provide a foundation of pulsing bass patterns and some intriguing disruptive, acidic sizzles.  It all adds up to something simultaneously familiar and out of the ordinary.

Bill Meyer

 Luis Vicente / Vasco Trilla — Made Of Dust (577 Records)

Made of Mist by Luis Vicente & Vasco Trilla

Not many improvisational settings are more exposed that the drums and trumpet duet. The two instruments are sufficiently different in timbre and frequency range that you can’t help but hear everything each player does, and also how those actions fit together. Trumpeter Luis Vicente and percussionist Vasco Trilla approach this situation with a combination of relaxed consideration and wholly earned confidence. Vicente can power-play when necessary, but for this session, he exercises restraint, using mutes to extract the most lyrical and vocal sounds he can muster. Trilla likewise seeks out the extremities of his kit, drawing continuous ribbons of widely differing characters, such as the alarm clock-like clatter and low-scrubbed drumskin heard on “Swirling Mist.” Their interactions are not just sonically novel, but trusting and deeply intimate.

Bill Meyer   

 Simon Waldram — So It Goes (Self-released)

So It Goes by Simon Waldram

Simon Waldram’s refrain-heavy eighth solo album, So It Goes, is a song cycle on love, loss and acceptance influenced by classic indie pop bands like The Field Mice, The Fat Tulips and The Go-Betweens. Indeed, it was the Grant McLennan-channelling “Don’t Worry,” a plaintive reassurance to a past lover, that initially caught my attention. But “I Miss The Sun” betters it, really laying on the Hammond, and squeezing in something noticeably absent from the other songs: a bridge. “When will we see the lull again/Feels like these dark days will never end,” Waldram sings, reestablishing buoyancy as it winds down repeating the title phrase. There’s promise elsewhere, like on the 1960’s-flavored psych strummer “Boats In The Sky,” before it lifts its bow in harmonic repetition a few too many times without checking its fuel gauge first, stranding itself in the firmament. “The Wild Wanderings of Wildebeests” is another one with potential, but its flawless first verse’s worth of strum and fuzz just recurs instead of building towards something of greater impact. The record hits its lowest point on the nearly nine-minute “Windswept,'' a “Primitive Painters'' rip that goes nowhere productive. When Waldram starts repeating ad infinitum “I miss you so much/ I can’t let go of this dream of ours,” you wish you could step in and save him from himself. A pleasant enough acoustic instrumental with birdsong follows in the form of “One May Afternoon,” serving as a much-needed palate cleanser and bridging the gap to the album’s closer. However, “Shimmer” is another moaner that never quite rounds into shape and instead fades out and then, unremarkably, back in.  There’s an EP’s worth of good material on So It Goes, but as an album it only ends up burning itself with the flame its carrying, leaving the listener wondering, “Who hurt you, Simon?”

Chris Liberato

[thewreckkelly]

ESL: Don’t Just Blame the Owners

Despite being Irish I can still name every player and their position from that game at Wembley on July thirtieth. I was six when it was played.

For nearly six months the Saturday matinees at my local cinema in Dublin included newsreel footage of the Lisbon Lions. I was seven and a fan of the Cisco Kid.

You couldn’t move in the good room of my Uncle’s house the night the Belfast boy destroyed Benfica. I was eight and not that familiar with watching football on TV.

I collected souvenir coins from petrol stations leading up to, throughout and after the World Cup finals in Mexico. I was ten and an outraged defender of the English captain.

‘Revie’s Animals’ found my undying loyalty throughout the seventies with my first live game being at Anfield in 1971. I was eleven and thought Liverpool was an incredible city and Johnny Giles the best player ever.

World performers like Cruyff, Ardiles and Muller intruded into my fandom and opened up a bigger world picture as they performed in the German and Argentinean World Cups.

Spain 1982 provided my first experience of a live stage for world football where Northern Ireland shocked the hosts and Scottish fans became my friends in Malaga.

London 1983 saw my first visit to Highbury and resulted in me becoming a proud season ticket holder.

For the best part of fourteen years I didn’t miss an Arsenal game, (including every final up to and including the 2005 FA Cup), as well as being privileged enough to attend many internationals, World Cups and European Championships.

The 1992 Barcelona, Sampdoria final at Wembley saw me experience in person a sidelined Cruyff steer his total football to the ultimate success, (not that it was that obvious in that particular game).

Euro 96 allowed me to indulge in ten memorable live matches.

There is little doubt that watching Maradona do his thing in Italy and Internationally, rates among the very special experiences of my football love affair.

Sky Sports proved a Godsend when I moved back to Ireland in 1997 and delivered me not just the Gunners experience but also allowed the wannabe coach in me to watch the technical side of the game develop and grow beyond recognition.

Then came Spain and Messi – enough said .....

All of which is a preface to my provenance and how I feel about the current state of football along with the recently abortive attempt by the big clubs of Europe to go their own way in a thing they chose to call; ‘The European Super League’.

First of all, Football doesn’t belong to anyone. Two sweaters and a ball will allow those, who want to, to live the dream for as long and as often as they want. Commercial Professional football is a whole different animal altogether.

I was born a year before Jimmy Hill changed the financial landscape of the sport and grew into the game with enough of a curiosity - from watching him as a staple pundit on TV throughout the seventies - to research and try to understand the significance of his success and how it had affected the game.

When Jean-Marc Bosman went to court and won, it caused me to again reflect long and hard as to what the knock on effect would be.

While I was a subscriber to Sky Sports for many years and tipped my cap to the way they presented the game I was forever aware Rupert Murdoch was not likely to be a fan of football and yet again wondered at where this pursuit of satellite domination would take the sport.

The USA has a had a chequered history with football, where on several occasions the Napoleon's of money tried to buy what they considered a product so it could be customised to suit the taste of viewers and advertisers with an entirely different understanding and approach to televised sport.

These businessmen had developed a successful TV sports model with their own home grown games that was based upon exploiting a herd mentality with inconceivable numbers, promoted ‘innocent’ escapism, nativism and an highly unlikely avenue for anyone to succeed in an American dream.

I remember being somewhat uncomfortable that day in 2015 when it was announced on the news the FBI had arrested several high profile FIFA officials – my discombobulation was not with regard to the corruption charges but rather the sole involvement of an internal American law agency in what was essentially a non-American criminal enterprise – where were Interpol?

Three of the biggest clubs in England are owned by Americans and the ‘Golden Boy’ of a ‘Golden’ generation of English footballers has set his tent up in Florida as the new face of the game stateside.

The financial exploitation of the game is in full swing and being led by US corporate vultures and bankers.

And therein lies the problem.

I believe European football changed when mostly egotistical owners believed it was necessary to adopt a profit and loss ethos over and above the reasonable – as set out by the management of professional sport in the US.

It could be said that this became most visible when merchandising was designed to marry itself to personal identity - a cornucopia of uniforms for the masses to openly display a sense of belonging. And all of a sudden ‘Official’ kits costing a pittance to produce in South East Asia were being hawked to fans at a mark up of ten thousand percent or so.

And the fans bought it.

Ticket prices galloped ahead of inflation by ridiculous percentages. Player wages went through the roof and transfer fees – coupled with agents’ commissions – found, to their collective delight, there was no ceiling.

Satellite companies shut out traditional terrestrial 'free to air' national broadcasters with unacccountable fees for exclusive rights.

Catering prices at stadiums became the stuff of usury practice with cognac shrimp con beurre blanc finding its way on to menus for non- football loving patrons of newly constructed corporate boxes.

Meanwhile the next World Cup is to be hosted in one of the richest non-football playing dictatorships in the world.

And the fans bought it.

Then an announcement out of the blue that the ESL was real!

And the fans didn’t buy it, (for the moment)

However it would appear fans are of a mistaken assumption they get anything in return for the excessive amount of money they pay into professional football - other than the ninety minutes promised, overpriced propaganda ridden tat, satellite service and being told little or nothing constructive by so called experts.

The brief history outlined above would, instead, indicate supporters unwavering attendance and acceptance of financial and other abuses will continue as long as fans demand a fix.

It’s an awful comparison but reality tells me street dealers don’t lower the price of heroin for the good of the addict.

So should we really blame the twelve clubs and their owners for the ESL debacle?

The number of highly paid pundits, managers, players, agents and broadcasters who have stood on a recent soapbox of straw to exclaim their abhorrence of the ESL make me laugh and cry in equal measure.

These are the same people who continue to personally milk the game with their outrageous salaries and fees – in most cases for being very average at what they do and in all cases way beyond anything approaching honest. They are not just hypocritical they are a curse on the game and absolutely guilty of legal daylight robbery.

Yet all the people of ‘standing’ in football have targeted a convenient scapegoat in owners and board members whom they believe are somehow more insidious than they are themselves. All of these horrors are most defiantly not the gatekeepers of football but they do uncaringly exploit the professional game for their own personal benefit – given the actual mediocrity of the majority of these parasites they are not just robbing the fans they’re actually robbing the owners as well.

The sport has reached a point where there are few, if any, innocents involved who are not, at least, partly responsible in the creation of the ESL and no amount of sanctimonious slobbering will convince me otherwise.

And the fans should know that by now.

Maybe not!

So, is there a solution to this problem?

No!