#she's a ten but she uses her printing privileges at work in a strange way

[terrainofheartfelt]

oops I did it again.

by it I mean print out a physical copy of a draft to mark up and proof

[angsty-omi]

pull the trigger.

CEO!Akaashi x Agent!Reader

synopsis: You were assigned to kill one of the richest businessmen in Japan, Akaashi Keiji. How? by getting close to him. By pretending to be an innocent, naive little girl. By pretending you actually enjoy his company. By pretending that you actually loved him. The plan was simple enough, and if you were successful, you’d be rich enough to retire for yourself and your future grandchildren. So, what happens when you couldn’t pull the trigger? Even worse, why didn’t he flinch?

“Agent Y/N, you’ve been assigned.” your boss notified.

It’s been so long since you had been assigned. After you accidentally blew up the evidence last mission, your boss hasn’t been to keen depending on you. This was music to your ears, so what did you do? Jumped gleefully and instinctively squeezed your boss. You realized what you were doing and how unprofessional it was, so you slowly latched off of her. Your boss just coughed awkwardly before she began, “This assignment is a big one, meaning there must be no flaws to this plan. One mistake and you’re done for, literally.” ending with a slit-throat gesture. You were confident in your skills, and aside from that one mission, everyone depended on you. No wonder why your boss came to you for this. You glad-fully shook her hand, in which expressed your disparity for a new high.

To start, you had to change your look a bit. See, you researched Akaashi Keiji, from his likes and dislikes to his convictions. Every conviction he got away with money. Dirty bastard. Every single job left you guilt-less because you knew these people were corrupt and somehow reasoned that your job was ethical. First, you started with a trim. Your split ends would’ve definitely caught the eyes of the girls from his front desk. Then, you used the budget money for this mission to buy luxury items. From Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, was this really for the mission or for yourself? No one really knows. Finally, and most importantly, you had to snatch a job as his personal assistant. The organization already falsified documents for you. After today, you go by ‘Akiyama Ami.’ As you walked out of your office, your coworkers couldn’t even recognize you. One even put a gun to your head, and having to state who you are.

You smirked, “Matsuda, I am deeply saddened if this is how you treat your advisor,” whispering in his ear. 

“Senior Y-Y/N?,” he stuttered, putting his gun away immediately. You grabbed his arm and forcefully pushing it to his back, “please make sure you never make that mistake again,” you stated. 

“Y/N, leave him alone already,” a voice joked.

You knew that voice. It was your long time partner, Atsumu. From when you both were rookies, you guys worked cases together quite often. Never more than that. 

“Atsumu, this is my first case without you... aren’t you going to miss me?” you pouted. 

“Don’t give me that look, idiot. Be safe out there okay? I can’t always save your ass like from that time you exploded our only evidence.” he shook his head in disappointment.

You punched his shoulder, and he ‘over-dramatically’ ached in pain. “I’ll be fine, Atsumu. Plus our person literally looks like a prissy privileged boy, doesn’t he?” you pulled up Akaashi’s Business Insider profile. For the next ten minutes, you guys were bullying the hell out of him. Until finally, you had to go. Your cab was already ready for you, so you hugged Atsumu goodbye. Platonically, you always thought you’d get married to him. He was handsome, strong, and witty. And he knew your job situation, so you never would have to feel judgement from him. 

From the cab ride, you got to fly in a private jet. There, was your boss, two intelligent analysis, and a linguist. This was your team, and who’d you tell your intel to. The whole flight consisted of breaking down the plan, even down to what time you have to walk in the elevator. The destination was in Tokyo, where Akaashi’s main headquarters lived. 

“I’ve made an appointment for your job interview,” One of them said.

“Here’s your resume,” The other said.

As you skimmed through, you spit your drink.

“I can speak more than five languages?!” your eyes widened.

“壊れた日本語で話せます” you quoted.

“What does that mean?” your boss asked looking at you surprisingly.

“It means I can only speak broken Japanese,” you nervously scratched your head.

“It wouldn’t matter, the job application is asking for english-speakers” the linguist stated.

As the plane started to screech, due to the wheels contact with concrete, you knew it was your time to shine. You practiced all your lines during the flight, so confidence soared through your body. On sight, there was a limo waiting for you. You waved goodbye to your team, and entered the lanky vehicle. 

The condominium the organization gave you was luxurious, their budget must’ve been high-grade. Broad birched doors, huge window panels that let in a lot of natural light, and a master bedroom. Your first move was to jump on the feather-light bed. Your feet sunk deep into the mattress every hop. Leaving you tired, you went straight to sleep. 

Today was your job interview. Even though everything was fake, you couldn’t help but feel nervous. If you didn’t go down the agency path, is this what you would’ve felt as a normal person? While the coffee was brewing, you decided to look at your grand closet, not knowing what to wear. There was already an outfit set out for you. With it, there was a note:

Good luck! ;) -Atsumu

As you read it, you couldn’t help but roll your eyes. The outfit he picked wasn’t even that bad. It was an emerald green two-piece, with a pale blouse underneath. 

“Not so bad,” you thought, while looking at yourself in the mirror. 

There, stood the building where the infamous person lived worked. Heels tapping the black marble, you stood in front of the front desk. The girls that worked there looked roughly young, around their early 20s. As they stared at you up and down, you could feel their judgement. 

“Welcome to Fukurodani Headquarters, how may we help you?” One girl asked.

“Hi, I’m Akiyama Ami, I’m actually applying for the personal assistant job. Where could I meet my interviewer?” You warmly asked.

The girls bursted into laughter. What was so funny? Did you miss out on the joke?

“Excuse us, its just... that’s one way to call Akaashi Keiji,” 

“Akaashi Keiji... is the interviewer? That’s even more stressful than a random person. It does make sense though, as a personal assistant there should be a close relationship,” you sighed.

“Close relationship? Please, you’ll be lucky if you can even give him coffee. Get in line.” The front desk scoffed in agreement with each other. 

“That’s enough,” a voice commanded.

“Are you Akiyama Aki? I’m ready for you.” 

Your face went pale. As you slowly turned around, there he was. The man himself, Akaashi Keiji. As an agent, you’ve went through strenuous training, so from the outside you looked relaxed as ever, but on the inside the butterflies in your stomach started awakening. He was a very attractive man after all.

“You must be Mr. Akaashi, let’s begin!” you enthusiastically smiled, while following him into his office. 

“So Akiyama, tell me about yourself?” Akaashi read off a list.

“Well I was born in the states, but my parents are foreign. They enforced me to take a lot of language classes, hence why I know quite a lot.” You were dying inside. It was a half-true statement though, you were from the states and your parents are foreign.

“It says you speak French, Aimez-vous boire l'eau des toilettes?” He smirked. 

You had no idea what he just said. The silence was deafening, so you just laughed it off. You’ve been told your laugh is very contagious, so you used that to your benefit. Your laughter increased, his did too. 

After you both calmed down, he continued with his next question, “Out of all of the candidates, why should I hire you?”

“Well I guess my stats match up with everyone else, but what’s not on the textbook is my characteristics. I am dependable, calm, and honestly easy to work with. I will do my best to help you any way I can, and keep your stress levels at ease.” You smiled with confidence. 

“Any way huh?” Akaashi whispered to himself. You acted like you didn’t hear his whisper. As an agent it was also one of your many talents to keep an ear out for anything. 

“Akiyama, congratulations! you’ve gotten the job.” Akaashi put his hand out.

“R-r-really? That was only two questions” you tilted your head to the side. You could feel his glare as a response.

“Well, thank you anyways! My parents will be pleased.” you gushed as you shook his calloused hands. Parents? Please, more like your boss. You swore you could hear a ‘cha-ching’ sound effect in your head.

Over the next couple of months, you’ve been working under Akaashi. If he was staying up til’ 2 AM at the office, so were you. Continuously brewing coffee, while also printing papers, and keeping him company. 

However, one day the routine changed. Prior to this day, your boss had just kept you up for the next order, so you were extremely tired. During the 2 AM session, your eyes slowly started to drift off, feeling the wave of drowsiness pound into your head. Akaashi walked into your office and was going to ask you for copies, until he saw you sleeping head down on your desk. At first, he was going to viciously shake you awake, but seeing your dainty face in the moonlight he couldn’t bring himself to. This was the first time he saw you vulnerable. Typically, when he would ask if you were tired, you would just shake it off with a bright smile. However, he knew. He could tell that you were pushing for him. So, he draped over his blazer around you, in hopes to insulate some warmth and went back to his office. Minutes later, you jerked yourself awake. You felt a strange piece of clothing around you, so you pinched at it while analyzing. Does it look like a weapon? No. Does it have any toxins? No. Could this harm you in any way, shape, or form? It honestly just looked like a plain blazer you thought. As you checked the shoulder pocket, there was an ID. 

“Akaashi’s jacket huh?” you said to yourself, not even noticing the smile that crept up on your face. As soon as you caught yourself, you immediately slapped your face. Oh no. Quickly, you sent a picture of the ID, so that the agency can create a replica for future secret documents and shoved it back inside. 

Knocking at the entrance to his office, he looked up at you with bagged eyes. His sleepiness radiated off of him, so you did what you promised on the first day-- relieve his stress levels. You pulled down the shutters of his clear office so no one could look in. In addition, setting up the couch to where there was a pull up bed under it.

“Miss Akiyama, if you’re trying to seduce me you could’ve just said so,” He flirtatiously grinned. You rolled your eyes in response, and grabbed him to the bed.

“I like where this is going, Ami, I didn’t think you were so bold.”

“Just shut up and get some rest, I’ll appoint some things out so your projects aren’t due.”

As he opened his mouth, you anticipated that he was for sure going to deny. However, no words came out of his mouth, instead he grabbed your wrists and pulled you onto the bed with him. 

“I’ll accept, on the conditions that you, too get some rest.”

Too tired to argue, you complied. As you both fell asleep, with his arms wrapped around you.

a/n: i was planning on making this a one shot but i feel like this might be a multiple part-er(?)

[wizardessheart-sideb]

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said nonchalantly, as if we were in town and not in a forest on a hard to reach peninsula. For a moment, I wondered if I was hallucinating. But no, Zett was really here, right in front of me.

“What are you doing here?!” I demanded. “You’re not a student, are you?”

“No, I’m here doing some freelance security,” he replied. He looked weirdly proud of himself, smirking and folding his arms against his puffed-up chest.

“‘Freelance security?’” I wanted to sigh. What was he doing now? This was seriously the weirdest dude I’d ever met.

“Yeah. I’m just making sure the Academy’s secure so no weirdos get in,” he told me.

“Well, you already failed. You’re here.” I couldn’t stop myself from letting the words slip out of my mouth. But instead of getting mad, he just grinned at me.

“Oh, I’m allowed here,” he said. I really doubt it, I wanted to say, but pissing off a guy in the middle of the forest seemed like a really bad idea. “All right, I make sure my secret entrance is secure, but really, I watch out for creeps,” he added with a shrug.

“Is that a problem?” I asked. All right. I could bite for a moment.

“Well, yeah. You got a private school full of privileged rich kids and a lot of them either come from real old money or their parents are celebrities. And also, you know the kind of parents that send their kids to private school,” he said with accusatory eyes and a bitter note in his voice. I wouldn’t lie, that stung a bit.

“No, I wouldn’t, actually. I was home-schooled until now, and I’m an orphan” I told him. I wanted to add, “Are you happy now?” but the smirk slid off his face in an instant and there was something… strange in his eyes. Was that worry?

“Shit, are you also a part of that whack job cult – I mean, are you a part of Kristina’s church?” Zett quickly caught himself. I raised an eyebrow.

“Kristina? The waitress?” I searched my mind for the night we met. She had a brother here, doesn’t she? I don’t think I’ve met him. “Uh, no, I don’t know Kristina or her brother at all.” Zett’s body relaxed and he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Geez, you scared me. I was worried you were a part of their cult or something. Zacharias – her twin – was home-schooled too until a year ago. It’s kind of their thing.” He straightened up, that cocky grin returned to his face. “Well, I’m glad you’re not getting religious trauma.”

“… Thank you?” What the hell was I supposed to say to that? Like, I guess I’m glad, too? “But really. Why and how are you here? Don’t you need an Academy emblem to get in?” I asked. When in doubt, change the subject.

“I got a fake. It works just fine and I’m free to come and go as I please.”

“To do your ‘freelance security?’”

“That and bring people things they need.”

...

“Wait… you’re an errand boy?!”

“Sometimes. For my good friends. And you, if you want to hire me,” he added with a wink.

“So you just avoided my question for like, five minutes to avoid telling me you’re just an errand boy?” What was up with this guy? I didn’t know whether to laugh or be irritated.

“You know I like my secrets,” he said. “But seriously, what are youdoing out here looking for a lantern?”

“I’m being hazed,” I replied. That wiped the grin off his face. “What’s with the seriousness?” I asked as he started walking deeper into the forest. Not knowing what to do, I followed him. As we walked, he rummaged through his bag and brought out

“I know what you’re looking for. I helped design it,” he told me. “When you find it, don’t touch it. If you do, it’ll start projecting ghosts and shit.”

“I, uh… Thank you? But why are you helping me?” I inquired.

“Why not?” he replied. There was a moment of silence and he turned back to me, shrugging. “You look like you’re in a bad mood. I doubt you wanna deal with the lantern.”

“I mean, you’re not wrong.” I kept my eyes peeled for the lantern or any kind of animal I can ask. Zett and I were silent as we walked through the forest. I tried to stay on my guard too, just in case. I really should invest in pepper spray or a knife.

We turned a corner on the trail and I spotted an owl on a branch, looking regal as it surveyed its surroundings. Yay! Now I canget to work.

“Excuse me, Mr. Owl,” I called out, approaching the bird. It looked down at me. “Hi, I’m looking for a lantern. It looks like a golden sphere. Have you seen anything like that around here?”

“I don’t know what it looked like, but I did see something glowing over yonder.” The owl stretched his wing off the trail, towards a large oak tree.

“Great! Thank you so much!” Carefully, I stepped over some bushes and went off the path.

“Uh, what was that?” Zett hurried after me, gracefully stepping over the bushes and getting to me in no time. Huh. I wouldn’t have thought he could move so elegantly, but here we were.

“I can speak to animals. I figured they’d know where the lantern is. Or at least, they’d have a clue,” I told him.

“Impressive.” Again, a silence fell between us as we made our way towards the big tree.

“So, who are you doing errands for? Or is that confidential?” I added teasingly. He laughed.

“Maybe.” He flashed me a grin. “Nah, I can tell you. My best friend Isabelle asked me to get her a makeup collection that released earlier today, so I’m going to go give it to her.”

“Isabelle? Super short, purple hair?” I asked.

“You know her?”

“Yeah, I met her earlier,” I said. It was probably for the best I didn’t mention we lived in the same suite. “Do you know everyone in the Night Class?”

“Mm, probably not. But I know a lot of them.” We reached the large oak tree. From behind it, there was a faint, golden glow. I hurried towards it. “Hey, remember not to touch it!” Zett called after me. I peeked around the tree and sure enough, there it was, casting star-shaped rays of light onto the ground. Honestly, it was a very pretty lantern. Maybe Zett could make me a real lantern that looked like this. And speak of the devil, he walked right on by me, getting of his knees and fishing what looked like a screwdriver out of his back pocket. He carefully stuck it into the lantern and after fiddling with it for a few seconds, the lantern flickered and smoke poured out of the holes. The acrid stench made me cough, but soon the thick black smoke turned to gray wisps. Zett picked it up and handed it to me.

“There you go. It should be safe now,” he said. I couldn’t see anything written on his face that would tell me if he was lying or not. He seemed to be telling the truth. Not to mention this looked broken now. Tentatively, I grabbed it and held onto it tight. It was still pretty warm and nothing happened.

“Thanks again for helping me,” I told him.

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t know what’s up with you, but I hope you feel better. Really.” He paused. “When you give that back to whoever, tell them it was smoking when you found it and you had to douse it with water, all right? Don’t tell them I was here.”

“Okay…” And again, with the shady stuff. “Uh, I guess I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah. You ever need me, tell Isabelle and she’ll call me. I’ll see you later, baby.” It was good he left because otherwise I would have hit him. Geez. How was I going to handle him? If he ran errands for the other students, I was bound to run into him again. I didn’t mind him he was nice, but man, he was really capable of leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I hurried back to the trail and back to Zeus. As soon as he realized the lantern was off, that gleeful smile on his face disappeared.

“What the hell?! Why isn’t the lantern lit?!” he demanded, storming over to me. He wrenched the lantern out of my hands.

“I found it because it was smoking. I couldn’t really figure out the mechanics, but I think something’s busted in it,” I lied.

“Damn it! I’m going to have to have my friend look at it,” he groaned. I wondered if he meant Zett. “Well… Good job, I guess.” There was a distinct bitter note in his voice.

“Cool, I’m going back to the dorms now.” I didn’t wait for an answer, heading back to the mausoleum and back to my room. As I neared our suite, I could smell something spicy and fragrant in the air. My nose twitched. I slipped into our suite and peeked into the kitchen. Dorian was stirring something in a large pot, Aika beside him slathering melted butter onto some rolls.

“That smells really good,” I commented. Aika flinched a little and the two turned back to face me. Dorian gave me a stern look and immediately my stomach dropped.

“Can you go tell Isabelle to get her ass in here? I told her dinner was ready ten minutes ago,” he demanded. I just nodded and hurried out of the room. Isabelle’s door was propped open just a smidgen and I poked my head in. Isabelle was on the floor, a huge cardboard box with an intricate pattern printed on it sitting in front of her. It was full of assorted makeup items. I knocked and she looked up.

“Come on in! You’re just in time! I just got this delivered!” she told me. I opened the door and ventured in a step.

“Dinner’s ready and Dorian doesn’t seem happy with you,” I told her quietly. She just laughed and stood up, leaving the box in place.

“Oh, Dorian’s always big mad,” she said. Together, we walked back to the kitchen. “So, how did the first day go?” Isabelle asked as she plucked a roll off a plate.

“It was fine. Hard, but fine,” I told her.

“How did Zeus’ dumbass hazing go?” Aika asked.

“How do you know about that?”

“Tsukasa came in here in a panic and told us about it,” Dorian replied. “He wanted us to do something about it.” And you didn’t? I made a mental note not to trust them in an emergency.

“Poor thing was hysterical. His heart’s too big for him,” Isabelle commented, taking a seat. I quickly got my own food and sat down across from her. “He’s too nice for the Night Class, if you ask me.”

“I don’t know, he’s pretty stubborn,”Aika commented.

“He and Fandamilia seem really nice,” I added. Isabelle’s lips pursed into a fine line. Dorian snorted.

“I wouldn’t mention her if I were you. Isabelle hates her,” he told me.

“What? Why?” Once again, words I shouldn’t have said slipped out. I really need to work on my filter.

“Because she likes Zeus and keeps trying to justify his shitty behavior,” Isabelle said tensely. “I just don’t think you should try and make excuses or ignore people’s shitty behavior.”

“I mean… Yeah…” Aika said, looking a little uncomfortable. “No one’s perfect and you can’t bleach red flags. Not acknowledging bad behavior isn’t great. … But she’s in love, you know? She just wants him to love her back.”

“Explains it, but it’s not an excuse,” Isabelle added.

“I’m stopping this before it becomes a fight,” Dorian spoke up. “We’re moving on.” I wondered if Isabelle excused the bad things Zett did. Or maybe she didn’t know about him being a weird and lowkey creepy flirt. But then again, he didn’t have to derail his job to go help me with the lantern. Speaking of, Isabelle had that makeup package, so he must’ve already come through here. Did he see my name on the nameplate next to my door? Did Isabelle mention me to him? Was I going to run into him again? Something told me that even if I wasn’t suitemates with Isabelle, I’d be seeing more of him.

[cyberpunkpsychedelia-blog]

@CYBERPUNKPSYCHEDELIA

CONDITIONS –– August 10 @ 11:44:57 a.m.

You awake to the blunt force of unfiltered daylight on your face, the hollow moan of city traffic sounding far below this tenement cube like a distant flushing toilet. Oft you have lamented how trees do not grow, birds do not chirp at these heights.

As you rub your eyes you are privileged to witness the awesome –– if not rather stomach-churning, when it takes you by surprise –– sight of her transmogrification, the split second it takes her to collapse her humanoid frame and resume her form as a cat.

She leaps onto the desk across the room where she sits for a moment, licks herself, and yawns. She regards you with starry green eyes, unblinking and inscrutable to you –– but which you always vaguely perceive, somehow, to be scrutinizing you.

And in a flash of paranoia, as you stare back at her stupidly thru sleep-crusted eyeballs, you wonder if she might only be staring at you to cause you to project whatever insecurities you might have back onto yourself, and then you cannot decide which of these postulations would be the preferable one –– her judging you or her trolling you –– and anyway you reflect that if either were the case (or, for that matter, if neither of them were), the effect would all still be the same…

Indeed you do not know what goes on in her mind in these moments. But you will never presume to ask, and she will never tell.

Your head hurts. You close your eyes. Eventually, she jumps from the desk to the bed, steps on your face and, pausing not so much to intimate a goodbye as to command that you appreciate the drama, jumps out the window.

And so you are left to dwell alone in your lowly airborne pod. But as you roll over in the sheets, your thoughts quickly latch on to her, and they hitch-hike with her out the window. The image is clear enough:

Having fallen a few hundred feet through the air and landed deftly on her paws like the best of feline acrobats, in a single flowing movement she recalls her human form and unlocks and mounts her hoverbike which was chained to the tree outside your apartment.

She dons her gas-mask, conjured seemingly from thin air (breathing is hazardous to pedestrians in this locale, where the fumes have reached peak levels of toxicity). It is heavily worn, all decked out with astrological stickers and painted over crudely with pink lipstick. Straddled over the bike seat in a printed flower skirt and black stockings, hers is a loud image –– poster child for this bold new century.

She wrenches the throttle and barrels over the curb onto the street.

Now, as she makes her way to the club in Center City where she labors daily for her wages, you worriedly reflect that she is now at the mercy of the grid: Baffling assemblage of lighted conveyor belts zipping this way and that at arbitrary speeds, teeming with cargo and people, where a single wavering misstep along your urban odyssey and a blink of the eye could suddenly find you ten blocks south of where you were just standing only moments ago.

For the commuter, the grid adds a valence of radical uncertainty to a journey already fraught with fatal obstacles: You can see her right now, booking down Chestnut Street, head on a swivel, dodging flung-open car doors, tunneling thru clouds of exhaust, careening upstream along this main artery in a sea of traffic where middle fingers and shouted obscenities fly freely out of car windows from every direction.

For 2100 woolongs an hour at the club (on average, with tips), she knows the stakes on this journey are high. But it’s as if the very ground beneath her is working against her, and she begins to wonder, as she often does, if this is all really worth it: Without warning along this strip, potholes open up into sinkholes, gaping hungrily like rips in the fabric of spacetime, plunging full city buses into the abyss. Human screams join the chorus.

And as if this were not enough, the grid, an internationally-sanctioned entity and thus not subject to the local laws of physics, periodically cuts through her path at impossible angles like an interdimensional guillotine, always threatening to whisk her away some place she does not particularly care to go: a bullet-train to Fresno, a people-chute to Hong Kong.

To protect the city’s most vulnerable commuters from the daily carnage, the city of Philadelphia has gone to lengths to establish a bike lane on each street.

But over the years, the lane has been encroached upon, inches at at time, by a steady influx of street vendors pushing their wares, hundreds of kiosks spilling over the sidewalks. In this way, the tiny strip of concrete has become a site of contestation between two parties, and both sides have suffered losses: Bodies displaced into the street, split in half between crashed cars or otherwise ripped apart in spectacular displays of gore.

The roadways in this forsaken metropolis are painted with the blood of the multitudes.

As for her, she harbors no real beef with the street vendors. She will not debase herself to choose a side in such petty human squabbles. She knows too well by now how every death will inevitably become a casualty in someone else’s war, and this is a violence that she refuses to perpetuate. The battle she wages is with the forces of a higher order, transcending these earthly divisions.

And so she dips in and out of traffic with a silent grace, maneuvering deftly through the maze of kiosks, taking care to avoid any stray banana or rolling citrus that might send her tumbling into the onslaught to take up final residence in the Boneyard (local name bestowed to the median near the expressway at 30th and Chestnut –– a tangled mess of mangled bodies and rusted bike frames).

She dips into a back alley at 23rd Street. She is relieved to have reached her destination unscathed, and with a few minutes to spare. She chains her bike to a pole at the backdoor of the restaurant. Once more she conjures her feline shape to carry out a ritual which all members of her scattered race are compelled to perform before crossing new thresholds. 

She stalks in a circular movement like she is hunting something you cannot see, tracing intricate patterns in the ground with her paws. The signs glow with a strange luminescence, opening channels of dire communication with ancient deities whose names have been lost with the passing of so many millennia.

She sits and licks herself, staring at the ground. Eventually, she stops moving altogether, and you perceive that in this back alley she has momentarily dropped off the dimensional plane. She is outside of time, somewhere else, scaling some other axis. Those twinned orbs of radioactive green… Again they are inscrutable to you, but as you stare and ponder over this curious figure, your astral body casting its vague kind of shadow over her, you slowly arrive at the rather stomach-churning realization that this whole time she has been sitting there she has, in fact, been staring directly back at you.

Your presence has been detected! Your thoughts have collided at some fated point of tangency in the cosmos! The connection is precious, but it is fleeting. She slinks around a dumpster and with that, she disappears from your sight.

You open your eyes, wrenched back into your bed, and you are reminded of your own wretched condition. O you! beastly creature, who has lost his way completely to literature and pornography!

In a claustrophobic panic you lean out the window, inhaling deeply the fumes of the afternoon. But this offers you little comfort as you survey the scars of the city below, reflecting on all the ruin the world has exacted –– which is to say, yourself. You reflect on yourself. You are the ruin the world has exacted, disavowed, and finally cast outside of its orbit –– or at least this has been your suspicion as of late. Indeed you have dimly perceived the heights you maintain in your floating pod to be increasing with each rotation around the sun; daily you feel yourself further adrift of the Earth’s gravitational field.

The distance has, in fact, become rather harrowing. For it was Heraclitus who said you cannot step into the same river twice: The river changes, yes, as the current rushes headlong in its velocity –– but this is not the point. The point is that you, yourself, will have also changed in the interval. Never the same river, never the same you. This is either a utopian thought, or one that is terrifying in the extreme.

Ultimately, though, it was Bolaño who was able to grasp the full implication of Heraclitus’s existential musings when he spoke of the condition of exile: “Probably all of us,” says Bolaño, “set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind.” In other words, all of us who are born into this world are at risk, someday, of never being able to go back home. This is the risk that the condition of exile implies. Thus we have Heraclitus’s warning brought to its fullest expression: It is the extent to which you yourself change that will determine, after so many nights of errantry, whether or not there is a home for you to go back to at all…

These are your conditions at 12 o’clock in the afternoon, as you look upon the city from your unlucky vantage in the stratosphere. Star among stars, you feel, somehow, exhausted –– but with a glimmer, nevertheless, of satisfaction, or hope, perhaps, as some other person might feel after having completed a jigsaw puzzle. You bring your head back inside and climb into bed.

You close your eyes and wait longingly for a scratch at the window.

Follow me @cyberpunkpsychedelia where the saga continues.

Hi My Name Is Noah, your faithful assembler of data, transmitted from the roof of a tenement cube via satellite cobbled together from space junk.

Dear reader, whenever you are, I hope this missive finds you well.

[pens-and-parchment]

Hello fellow bookworms! I saw a few different bloggers/bookstagrammers (most recently, Cait @ Paper Fury) do this tag and it seemed like a ton of fun. Given that I haven’t done a tag in a loooong time, I figured this was perfect to get back in the game!

Three Favorite Authors

LEIGH BARDUGO – (as if y’all didn’t see this coming from ten miles away) Leigh is my Queen. She writes character development like no one else I know. I worship her and very much wish that I was her. Enough said, honestly.

RICK RIORDAN – This one might actually be more of a surprise, since I never really talk about Percy Jackson in my posts. But PJO is arguably the series that changed my life the most, and given how Rick manages to use his privilege as an accomplished white dude to write very diverse casts and stand up for marginalized representation, I basically will stan him for the rest of my life.

LAINI TAYLOR – This one was a tough slot to fill, since Rick and Leigh have always been my go-to favorites. But when I think of stunning writing, I think of Laini. I’ve read her DoSaB trilogy and Strange the Dreamer, and with every book she publishes Laini only seems to get better and better. Her prose are lyrical and luscious, if I’m ever able to write half as well as her I’ll consider myself to be a pro.

Three Weirdest Things I’ve Used as a Bookmark

Truthfully, I’m a really boring bookworm that actually just uses normal bookmarks most of the time. But here’s a few random things I’m pretty sure I’ve attempted to use as a bookmark before:

RECEIPTS – Everyone has done this at some point so it’s not really that weird, but I seem to lose my bookmarks a lot and receipts are everywhere in my house, so they end up taking a spot in my book all the time.

A HAIR TIE – My room has approximately 83 billion elastic hair ties sprawled all over because I notoriously wear one and then lose it, so in moments of both desperation and laziness I’ve used these as bookmarks.\

MY CAT’S TAIL – Saving the weirdest for last, I’ve attempted to use my cat’s tail as a bookmark more than once! She’s always laying next to me on my bed while I read, so when I have to get up for a short period I’ve kinda just sneakily slid her tail in between the pages. Sometimes she wakes up and gets mad, sometimes if I return fast enough it actually works! Such is the problem with using an animal for a bookmark.

Three Books Binged

We all know I’m a notoriously slow reader, so there aren’t too many books out there that I’ve managed to binge read in one go. But I managed to think of a few!

TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE – I remember randomly picking this book up one night and not finishing it until 3 am that same day (well, technically the next day, but you get what I mean). I just couldn’t stop reading until I saw what would happen between Lara Jean and Peter K!

SHATTER ME – I’m kind of cheating with this because I think it actually took me two days, but I read this dystopia on my Nook over vacation and remember blazing my way through it!

SIMON VS THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA – Another contemporary that I read in just over 24 hours, also on my Nook. Becky’s writing is so funny and relatable that I’m pretty sure my eyes were glued to the screen until the very last sentence.

Three Characters I Love

KAZ BREKKER – Another answer you definitely should’ve seen coming. Kaz is my favorite character of all-time, I always joke that if I had had a terrible childhood, me and Kaz would be identical. Other than his crappy past, we basically are already.

AIDAN – AIDAN’s chapters in Illuminae are, in my humble opinion, the best written, most creative pages in a book that I’ve literally ever read. Jay and Amie are fricking geniuses. AIDAN is such a morally complex and dichotomous character, his internal dialogue definitely qualifies as poetry.

ENNE SALTA – If you guys haven’t read Ace of Shades yet, I have to kindly ask you to drop literally every single thing you are doing, run to your local library or bookstore, and grab this gorgeous book. Enne is feminine, logical, tough, sexy, and insecure all at the same time. I think she’s the perfect example of a real teenage girl that finds herself neck-deep in a ton of trouble.

Three Unpopular Bookish Opinions

Oof, buckle up kids.

MOVIE/TV ADAPTATIONS SUCK – Okay I know that not all adaptations suck, but I personally get sick to my stomach when news comes out that my favorite stories are being translated for the big screen. I actually wrote a whole blog post on it a while back, but it basically boils down to the fact that the Percy Jackson movie gave me deep-rooted trust issues for the rest of my life.

TROPES ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY FUN – While it does admittedly depend on the trope, I find that most of them don’t bother me. Fake dating? Give it to meeee. Dark, swoony guy with a tragic backstory? As long as he isn’t problematic, I’ll probably fall in love. Competition to the death? Hasn’t gotten boring yet.

OLD BOOKS SMELL TERRIBLE – New books smell fricken amazing. The crisp pages, freshly printed ink, I could smell it for days. Old books, however, smell musty and make my nose itch and remind me of old people.

Three Favorite Book Covers

AGFKAOSUFBDOOAUDF THIS WAS HARD SO I CHOSE A BUNCH OOPS

Let Shadow & Bone represent all Grisha covers because they’re the best and I’m clearly an original person

I didn’t really like Onyx & Ivory or The Hazel Wood but both of them have gorgeous covers so I guess they deserve appreciation

I’m pretty sure every human under the sun chose Caraval for this question because honestly how could you not

All the Nyxia covers together are so spacey and colorful and you all NEED TO READ THIS SERIES

I hope you guys enjoyed the tag, now tell me what books or authors you would choose for each question! And what’s an unpopular bookish opinion of yours?

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  What are your top three favorite authors? Three unpopular bookish opinions? Check out my new post, where I talk about a bunch of fun things in groups of three! Hello fellow bookworms! I saw a few different bloggers/bookstagrammers (most recently, Cait @ Paper Fury) do this tag and it seemed like a ton of fun.

[calmgrove]

Phil Shaw’s Shelf Isolation 2

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis many of us have resorted to fiction for consolation, distraction and information.

Myself, I have generally avoided harrowing dystopian tales, inventive novels about conspiracies, and books about personal tragedies — there’s enough of all this in real life which I can access through print, social and broadcast media.

Instead I have gone for more optimistic fiction, whatever ends in what Tolkien dubbed eucatastrophe, the upbeat ending, instead of the catastrophic conclusions where hearts hang heavy and melancholy pertains.

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⬆️ Medieval PPE, ancient and modern

Largely that has meant children’s fiction and fantasy. I am steadily working my way through Maria Sachiko Cecire‘s fascinating Re-Enchanted (University of Minnesota Press 2019), subtitled The Rise of Children’s Fantasy Literature in the Twentieth Century, finding insights on every page about the positive nature of modern fantasy along with some of the less salubrious aspects that rear their head — anglocentrism, imperialism, racism, and sexism, for example. While I have recently questioned the charge of escapism sometimes levelled at these genres (indeed at literature in general) I was grateful to have the chance to consider the other -isms in more detail.

But for now, let me consider the current Covid-19 buzzwords that are going the rounds — social distancing (‘physical distancing’ is perhaps better), self-isolating, contagion and pandemic — and relate them to a few novels I’ve read over the years (links are to review-discussions).

First, social distancing and self-isolation aren’t new. Robert Carse‘s The Castaways: A Narrative History of Some Survivors from the Dangers of the Sea details several who were (usually) forcibly separated from fellow humans, many literally ‘cast away’ on the open ocean or marooned on an island. But it can also happen that one can become isolated (the word is from Italian isola, an island) somewhere landlocked. This is the case with the protagonist in Robert C O’Brien‘s famous Z for Zachariah: in this meditation on solitude the lone survivor of a nuclear holocaust, holed up in a mid-Western valley in the States, finds her refuge hasn’t insulated her from an intruder who, remarkably, seems to have avoided death from radiation sickness.

The main character in Agatha Christie‘s Absent in the Spring is also, after a fashion, forced to self-isolate and in so doing does what many of us may be contemplating, how long will this last, and when it does what does the future hold? Yet her isolation comes not from a nuclear winter but from the lack of a train connection, being sick at heart a result of soul-searching, not infection. The titular character in Philippa Pearce‘s Tom’s Midnight Garden goes into quarantine with older relatives to escape being infected by his brother, who has contracted the very infectious measles virus; the story is set in 1958, ten years before a measles vaccine was available in the UK. Still, he’s curiously reluctant to return home once the danger is past.

Corona typewriter, Book-ish café, Crickhowell

We’re social-distancing now to avoid a particular contagion, obviously. I read Albert Camus‘ La Peste many years ago, before I began reviewing, but that’s apparently one of the go-to novels flying off the virtual bookshelves at the moment, along with Boccaccio’s Decameron and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. But there are other significant fictions about plague of one kind or another.

I called P D James‘s The Children of Men a disturbing dystopia, a “critique of totalitarianism masquerading as a benevolent despotism, of privilege assuming it has a right to power, of religion distorted into the worst forms of superstition.” Sound vaguely familiar? Though the main events occur in 2021, crucial to the plot is the sudden drop to zero of male sperm counts around the world in the year 1995, through no known agency (though most likely due to a virus, I suspect). The author’s centenary is celebrated this August, so if you’re unfamiliar with her work this might be a good place to start. A future pandemic which also creates infertility is a trigger for Eifion Jenkins‘s future dystopia If You Fall I Will Catch You, set in the years following 2084 (aptly, 100 years after the date chosen for Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four).

You’ll have realised that my title is a not so covert reference to Gabriel García Márquez‘s novel Love in the Time of Cholera which, though I haven’t yet read it, includes a play on words (cholera in Spanish is cólera, which can also translate as passion). I have however read his novella Of Love and Other Demons, which includes a girl bitten by a rabid dog. Though she survives she infects many others with a whole range of passions, mainly because of the fact that, as well as recovering from rabies with no ill effects, she is somehow perceived as strange, as different, as abnormal and therefore some kind of threat to society, to religion, to propriety.

A different kind of pestilence rages in Rome at the conclusion to Henry James‘s novella Daisy Miller, namely malaria, caused by a mosquito parasite and sometimes called ‘the Roman fever’ (which is also the title of one of Edith Wharton’s short stories). However, the contagion in Michael Crichton‘s The Andromeda Strain is due not to an earth-borne virus but to an extraterrestrial micro-organism from a meteor crashing into a returning spacecraft. On our planet’s surface it attacks humans by clotting their blood, causing instant death. It also mutates…

Before you get too freaked you might like to smile at my recreation of PPE for medieval quacks, or reread the titles in Phil Shaw‘s Shelf Isolation 2 (photo above) in sequence. I tried something similar to Shaw’s artwork on Twitter, and if you’re at a loose end you might like to try your hand as well — though probably with more success.

Emotionally weird

It reads

“Emotionally weird, I shall wear midnight behind the scenes at the museum.” Hunted down, Titus awakes, changing planes in strangest Europe. “The Secret of this book? Understanding English place-names of giants. How to stop time? Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

Books in the time of coronavirus In the midst of the coronavirus crisis many of us have resorted to fiction for consolation, distraction and information.

[spanlish-blog]

White Privilege as a Western Student in China

When some friends of mine came back from an exchange program in Beijing, each with a wad of $1,200 in cash they'd received from the Chinese government, my response was, "Um, what?"

The cash was their scholarship money, given to them in crisp 100 yuan bills after class one day.

Turns out you don't need a 4.0—or even a 2.5—to get that kind of money. After interviewing several more exchange students about their experiences in China, I learned that even if your grades are "shit," you might still be offered a scholarship, free accommodation, and a monthly allowance to study in the Middle Kingdom.

You may also get free booze, free entry into clubs, and professors who won't care if you skip class or use your phone during an exam. These are tough things to resist when you're a broke college student who'd rather explore the city than actually attend your lectures.

"Foreigners enjoy a very favorable situation in China, for sure," says Jon*, who worked at a Chinese university as a liaison between international business students and the staff. "If you go to a club, yes, you'll get free drinks, and you'll get in for free. Whereas Chinese people still have to pay."

These perks are a way for China to make itself more appealing to foreigners, who, Jon says, are still viewed by Chinese citizens as "super powers" and also enjoy advantages like higher wages and better job opportunities than locals.

But according to students I spoke with, not all exchange students are treated equally. While white skin awards you near-celebrity status, black skin might get you spat on outside a McDonald's or labeled as "dangerous." You might also be sized up according to your assumed race and gender at clubs, then treated in accordance with that value.

Hello again, white privilege.

For the purposes of global education, VICE has included six stories about what it's really like to live and study in China and why being treated like a VIP can either be wildly fun or weirdly dehumanizing.

Ashton*, 25 Exchange Student From: Germany Program: Marketing

In 2015, I went on a six-month exchange program to China. I really had no restrictions at the university. You're late? It's fine. You want to change your exam date? Fine. It's easy to use; "this is how we do things in Germany" as a justification for anything. Even bringing your phone to an exam. I'm actually going back there for my master's degree because it'll be easy for me to get good grades. I tried to find a program in Germany or the Netherlands, but it was really difficult because my grades are shit. When I asked my old university in China if they had any programs in management, they said: "Yes, of course, we'll give you a scholarship." They're also giving me free housing, an allowance per month, and no tuition fees. So I said, "OK, yeah, I'm coming back." But all this makes you feel pretty weird because while a lot of non-white foreigners are just so fucking happy to have the chance to come to China, you're only there because it's free. For example, I'm in a WhatsApp group with 40 people who have applied for scholarships in China. There are three Westerners and 37 people from either Africa, Bangladesh, or Pakistan. The only people who got replies from the university were the three Westerners.

Before my trip, I'd heard China preferred foreigners at clubs, but I didn't understand the racism until I went there. My ex-girlfriend was a promoter at one of these clubs—she sold guest list spots to people—and got paid according to what types of people she brought in. Non-Western foreigners were level one and worth nearly nothing to promoters. The second level was Western foreigners, and the third level was pretty girls. So there was a man at the door checking "is she pretty or not pretty?" and if she was pretty, the promoter would get more money for bringing her in. The last level was models—like real models, ones staying in Beijing for shoots and stuff. Promoters would get about $20 for bringing them in.

It's also normal to get free drinks the whole night if you're white. For my farewell party, we went to a club, and there were ten people, six of them blond girls. We got two bottles of Grey Goose—worth about $300 in that club—all for free. I felt like a king at first, but it was also really weird. They were catering to our every need, and we didn't pay a thing.

It's hard to enter certain clubs if you're with black people. I have a friend from Mozambique, and once we went to a really nice club and booked a table in advance. We all met at the entrance—five Westerners and one black person—and the promoter was like, "Yeah, you cannot enter." When we asked why, he told us it was because my friend looked dangerous, which was just crazy. We argued with the guy for about 15 minutes and told him that if he didn't let us in, we'd post on WeChat that the club was racist, and so he finally let us in. From there, it was open bar all night.

Sami, 25 Exchange Student from: Finland Studying: Law

I studied international and Chinese law in Beijing, and the first night I was there, I went out with some master's students, and they took us out to a street filled with different clubs. We got in free to all of the clubs; all the alcohol was free, and we got VIP tables. That first night I was like, "Woah, what is this?" I'm not sure if it felt wrong, but it felt weird. There'd be big lines of Chinese people waiting to get in, and we'd walk right by. Also, we went to this pretty famous club in the center of Shanghai—it's called M1NT, they've got sharks in the dance floor—and again, we just walked past this huge line, got VIP cards, and also free alcohol the whole night. Just because we were European. All the free stuff and better treatment was fun in the beginning, but in the long run, it felt... it didn't feel good.

I got preferential treatment outside the party scene, too. When my parents came to visit, we went to a restaurant that was a little fancier. I didn't book a reservation, and so there was a two-hour wait when we got there. We thought, Well, that's OK, we'll go shopping for a bit. But when we left, the staff came running after us and said, "Wait, we have a free table for you." We thought that since it was just the three of us, maybe a small table had opened up and that's why we got in, but inside there was a whole other room full of Chinese people still waiting. Throughout the meal we had four waiters serving us, people taking photos of us, and the whole experience was very strange. In China, you're often perceived as super rich if you're Western. They think you have a lot of money and you're there to party, and that's it. It gets annoying because in reality most of us are there because of grants, scholarships, and wanting to travel; we even take out loans to do it.

Erin*, 24 Exchange Student from: Canada Studying: Law

My boyfriend and I chose to study abroad in Beijing this past summer through a program where Chinese government scholarships are available for Canadian students. Being fairly poor law students who love to travel, we were pretty intrigued by the idea of government funding.

We didn't know when we would be getting our scholarship—$1,200—or even how it would be given to us. We didn't get anything when we arrived, which we thought was a little odd, but then during our last week, a Chinese student came to the front of the class and was like, "Hey, everyone, your money's here!" Everyone cheered. Then the next day they brought in cash—stacks of freshly printed 100 yuan bills, all put into envelopes and stored up in the program administrator's office. So, 80 students lined up in the hallway, all waiting for their $1,200. Considering you can buy lunch for the equivalent of $0.80, it was a ton of money to have in cash.

Edson, 21 Exchange Student from: Africa Studying: Accounting

There aren't many black people in China. I didn't want to study abroad there, but in recent years China has been investing a lot in Africa, so our government has started giving scholarships to students. From the moment I got there, things were just really different. I walked out of the airport, and my nose just started itching. There was so much pollution. I thought instantly: This place isn't good for me. Then came the stares on the train. People look at you as if you're really, really different; they've never seen someone like you, and so they take pictures.

China is growing economically, about 6 percent every year, but I don't think it's a good place to study. Some foreigners really like it because of all the free stuff. I mean, I still got the free drinks and free entry into the clubs, but it would depend on what kind of club it was and who I was with. I was with a bunch of friends from the Netherlands most times, and so I was viewed as part of their group. Actually, most people would assume that since I'm black and speak English, I must be American. And if you're American or European, Chinese girls love it, but I didn't like the attention because I'd rather be liked for who I am. The fact is if you tell them you're African, you're viewed as poor, like you don't know what an iPhone is, etc.

There were only two black people in the entire university, which was a problem for me. I would invite people in my class to go to clubs, or I'd say, "Hey, let's grab a drink or something," because I wanted to make friendships with the Chinese students. But they'd say they had to go to the library. Every time it was the same: "I have to go to the library." I tried to make friends, but they didn't let me in. Eventually, I met some people from Europe and just hung out with them. And so I didn't go to a lot of classes. My teachers never gave me a hard time about it because I think they knew it was difficult fitting in. I could do whatever I wanted. In that way, I was treated basically the same as the white students.

I remember one very sad day in particular. In China, they have a habit of spitting on the floor, and so one day I went to McDonald's and bought a Big Mac. As I was leaving, there was a Chinese man who spit on my shirt. I don't know why he did it. Anyway, I thought maybe it was a mistake, but when I looked at him, he didn't say sorry, just gave a look like "I don't like you" or something. I was sad but also angry. I didn't do anything, just walked away. And that was when I thought, You know, I can't put up with this bullshit anymore. It's too hard. I wasn't OK with myself over there.

Jackie*, 26 Exchange Student from: Canada Studying: Law

I went on a summer exchange program to China, and afterward, I got an internship at a big law firm in Beijing. At the firm, some other interns and I would get invited every week or two to go have dinner with a group of lawyers from the firm. They'd bring us to these fancy restaurants, and they'd pay the bill, and you knew it wasn't the type of dinner they were inviting their Chinese colleagues to every week. We got invites because we were international interns. And even though I was the only white person in this particular group of interns, I was the only one they invited personally, and from there, they allowed me to bring friends. Once, during dinner, the woman who invited us was really making sure we were having a good time. She even started to dance and sing. Often, my friends and I would go out as a big group, and night after night our table would be given several bottles of spirits, solely based on the color of our skin. Some people in my group would abstain from drinking because it was discriminatory, like white privilege at its finest. That's the kind of racial privilege caucasian people have access to in Beijing. That said, we always hear that China is taking a bigger place in the world and its economy, and so it's good to go there and see what's behind these great firewalls that prevent us from exchanging with them.

There's also a local version of Tinder, it's called Tantan, and if you're a foreigner, this app can really open some doors if you're looking to meet new people. Some of the people in my group were using it, and every single time they'd swipe, they'd get a swipe back in return. If you're white, it just isn't the same game.

Shaun, 26 Exchange Student from: Canada Studying: Law

During my exchange program, I was photographed quite often. I remember being approached three distinct times, and each time it happened at a pretty big tourist attraction. I'm tall and caucasian, and from what I heard, Chinese people are interested in photographing someone like me because by doing so they can show their family and friends that the places they're visiting have such a high status that they attract white Westerners as well. It's like, "Look, this place is so cool, even this white guy went there!" I just kind of went along with it because I didn't feel like it was doing any harm, but it always felt a little awkward. It's like, why me? It's uncomfortable to be this, well, image of beauty or whatever. But I also think it's learned behavior culturally. One time my girlfriend and I were approached by a family, and the mother and grandmother were super into getting a picture with us, but their six-year-old daughter wanted nothing to do with it. It was like she hadn't learned the rule about wanting photos with white people.

*Names have been changed.

Follow Mica Lemiski on Twitter.

Source: White Privilege as a Western Student in China Source: White Privilege as a Western Student in China