#then i went through and rendered a poster for each camera

[kutekitty-43]

The Persona protagonists have decided to go on a road trip across iconic locations from different video games! Their first stop is the Black Mesa Research Facility, and... let's just say things aren't going so well...

Chapter 1, Part 1a of my new SFM series.

[dream-a-little-bigger-x]

Curiosity Killed The Cat | Owen Patrick Joyner

Requested: Yes/No

Hi! I was wondering if you can do an Owen imagine kinda based off his Instagram story of him finding a cat. I was thinking he’d actually find the missing cat though and come ring your doorbell at 4am bc he’s chaotic. You can decide everything. Thank you in advance!!!

A/N: The cat doesn’t actually die in this, it’s just a saying that i liked for the title, so don’t worry! It’s got a happy ending!

Pairing: Owen x Fem!Reader

Song(s) used: none 

Warnings: none

Words: 3,949

A week. It had been exactly one week since y/n last saw her cat, Tunabean. The white, grey striped Ragamuffin cat had been absent from y/n’s apartment for way longer than she normally would be and it worried y/n to the point where she’d be out looking for the little rascal every night after work. 

“Found her yet?” Jamila asked as she entered y/n’s apartment after coming home from work. 

Jamila was y/n’s roommate and best friend since college. The two had lived together through their college career and decided to be roommates after too, as long as neither had significant others to go live with. 

“No,” y/n’s lip stuck out into a pout as she feverishly reposted the message on all her social media platforms. “People have been tearing down my posters as well. Did you see the ones near Andrews Park? They were torn to shreds!” 

Jamila pulled her lips into a tight smile before putting her bags on the dining room table and joining y/n on the couch. “Yeah, I saw. I’m really sorry, y/n. If you want, we can go and put up some more posters? Exchange the torn up ones with some fresh ones?”

“You’d do that for me?” 

“Of course! Sweetie, I’d do anything to get little Bean home, you know that, right?” y/n nodded her head in response, though she wasn’t sure if she knew that. 

Jamila wasn’t the biggest fan of Tunabean at first. She hated cats. Growing up, she’d always had a dog but never a cat. She didn’t trust the little rascals for one second. So, when y/n showed up with little Tunabean after having had what felt like the worst week of her life, Jamila was a tiny bit angry. But eventually warmed up to Tunabean when the little kitty seemed so placid, you could easily cuddle up to it on the sofa. 

“Let’s go find Zach at his work, bribe him to print me more posters for cheap, hang ‘em up around town and then maybe Tino’s?” Jamila’s eyes lit up at the mention of her favorite restaurant. 

She snapped her fingers and pointed finger guns at her best friend. “Sounds like a plan!” she said and wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck. It was a cold November day and no person could leave their house consciously without being bundled up into layers and layers of clothing.  

“I hope Bean didn’t hide under a car and the owner didn’t tap the hood before getting in…” y/n muttered, her voice thick with worry, as they exited the apartment building and stepped into the blistering cold. 

“I’m sure she just found a few boyfriends and is spending her time with them,” Jamila tried to reassure her, but knew all-too-well that Tunabean wouldn’t stay away this long, even if she had a lover cat to make little kittens with. She loved Jamila and y/n’s home too much. 

“Are you slut shaming my cat right now?” 

“Our cat,” Jamila corrected, causing a smile to find its way to y/n’s face, “And no, I am not. I’m just trying to be optimistic here, y/n.” Jamila tucked her cold hands into the pockets of her tan peacoat. “I’m sure Tunabean is alright.” 

“What if she isn’t though? What if she’s like meowing somewhere in the middle of Norman and no one to hear her pleas?” Jamila rolled her eyes at how dramatic her best friend was being.  

“Norman ain’t that big, sweetie. I’m sure if she’s meowing somewhere, we would’ve heard her already.” 

“Exactly! Which means she’s either dead or god knows anywhere! She could be in Oklahoma City! We don’t know that!” y/n exclaimed loudly, using excessive hand gestures more so to keep herself warm than emphasis. 

Jamila stopped in her tracks and grabbed y/n by the shoulders, stopping her too. “Stop being such a drama queen, y/n! I’m sure Tunabean is fine. Maybe she’s on an adventure or making new friends, you don’t know that!” 

“You don’t care about our child, admit it,” y/n muttered. This rendered Jamila silent. “Admit you don’t care about our child, Jam!” Passer-byers shot them a weirded out glare, which Jamila sent right back. 

“Oh, please! Don’t pretend there are no lesbian families in Norman too!” she yelled at them. The comical side of the whole situation made y/n laugh a tiny bit. “There’s that smile I like to see.” Jamila softly touched y/n’s chin with her knuckle before grabbing the girl’s hand in hers. The warmth of Jamila’s hand radiating through to y/n’s made her feel all toasty. “Let’s go print some posters!”  

The girls reached a one-storey building with red decrepit letters stuck to the roof. 

HOOPER PRINTING CO. 

As y/n opened the glass door and held it for Jamila to walk in, the smell of ink reached her nostrils. Though not a very traditional scent to love, it reminded y/n of one of her best friends. It was like  her brain just knew that the muscles in her cheeks would soon start to hurt thanks to Zachary. A boy the girls had met in college as Xana. 

Jamila spotted the bleached blonde mop of hair immediately and signaled to y/n to sneak up to him. On their tippy toes, the two approached the tall slender man, and when they were close enough, they took in a deep breath and-- “Don’t even think about it,” Zach mumbled without even looking at them. 

Jamila and y/n glanced at each other, cheeks puffed out from the breath they were holding. “How’d you--?” y/n didn’t even finish her sentence as she looked past Zach and her eyes landed on a tiny tv screen. Cameras, of course. 

“Since when do you have security cameras?” y/n asked as she hopped onto the counter Zach was sorting invoices on. 

He shrugged, “Sometime this week, I think.” His bright blue eyes met y/n’s as she sheepishly looked at him while kicking her legs. The boy sighed exasperated, knowing all too well what the girls are here for. “No. Not again.” 

“Please, Zachy! Tunabean is still missing and her posters have been ripped down!” Her eyes teared up at the thought of her kitty being out there all by herself in Norman. All she could hope was that the creepy dudes from Doyle’s didn’t get their filthy paws on her little princess. 

“Come on, Zach. You love that cat too!” Jamila chimed in, crossing her arms across her chest and glaring at him knowingly. 

“Fine, come here,” he reached out his hand and y/n handed him the thumb drive on which she kept her self-made posters. “You’re gonna have to buy me Tino’s though.” 

“We were going there afterwards, if you wanna join?” y/n’s voice was teasing and sly. 

“I’m off at five,” he simply stated before pressing a few buttons on his desktop and waking up the printer closest to them. “How long has she been gone for?” he then asked after a few beats of silence. Y/N dropped her head and stared at her still moving legs for a moment. 

“About a week,” she replied. 

Zach pulled his lips into a tight smile. He reached his hand out and placed it gently on top of hers. “She’ll come back.” 

“How can you be so sure? She might be hurt somewhere or dead and I won’t even know. I won’t even be able to say goodbye to her.” Tears pooled in y/n’s eyes as she thought of the sweet little kitten she had found in a ‘take one for free’ box on a curb one day. She was the last one left. 

“I’m not sure, y/n. But I’d like to be optimistic. Besides, Tunabean is resilient and the most independent kitty I’ve ever known. She’ll survive. She’s probably out adventuring with some friends.” 

Though the words weren’t very reassuring and y/n knew she had every right to be worried, they did calm her down a little. Tunabean was resilient and extremely independent. She’ll find her way back home.    

*

“I’ll see you guys later, bye!” Owen waved at his friends as he stepped into the cold November night. It was 4 am and he was just returning home from a day spent with friends. He had fallen asleep during the movie, only waking up in the middle of the night, realizing his parents were probably worrying about him, seeing he’d told them he’d be home by midnight at the latest. 

He softly hummed along to the song that was playing in his head as he walked down West Main Street, his hands tucked deep into his pockets to try and keep them warm. He should’ve brought a thicker coat or a thicker jumper. 

“Ah, mister Joyner!” a familiar voice with a thick accent made him shake out of his train of thought about the cold. The friendly face of the robust Italian greeted him in the dim light of the restaurant behind him. 

“Still working, Tino?” Owen asked as he stopped in his tracks to talk to the man everyone in Norman, Oklahoma loved. 

“Already back at work, ragazzino!” he replied in his thick Italian accent. Owen always thought it was fake and just for show to lure clients, so that they knew he was a pure Italian man, sharing his love for the Italian cuisine in his restaurant. 

“At four in the morning?!” Owen exclaimed, stunned at the man’s determination for his job. 

“Deliveries don’t wait, signore.” His laugh boomed into the empty, dark streets of Norman. Owen couldn’t help but let out a laugh too while his eyes averted and landed on a poster in the window. A black-and-white picture of a small cat stared back at him.  

MISSING: TUNABEAN

Grey-and-white striped ragamuffin cat, listens to the name Tunabean. 

“She’s been missing for a week, the poor girl who owns her is worried sick,” Tino told Owen when he noticed what he was looking at. The blond twenty-year-old pressed his lips together. He only ever had a dog that had never run away, but he could imagine what it would be like to not know where your pet is. He would totally lose it if Bindi ever went missing. 

“I feel sorry for her,” Owen said, unsure of anything else to say. 

“Yeah, me too,” said Tino. “Keep an eye out for Tunabean, yeah?” 

“I will.” 

And with that, Owen continued his walk back home. The cat on the poster kept haunting his mind. Those big eyes were something he wouldn’t forget anytime soon. Thanks to said image plastered in his brain, he even started hearing meowing when he got to Andrews Park. It was a soft, fragile meow that had to echo through his brain for a few seconds before he realized it actually came from the bushes he was walking past as he passed through Andrews Park. 

Curiously, and kind of feverishly, Owen started to dig into the shrubbery until he found a tiny cat. “Oh, don’t worry, little one. I got you.” He said as he carefully detangled it from the branches. As he held it up to his face, he found the big, round eyes from the poster staring back at him in real life. “Tunabean?” he cooed, and the cat tilted its head ever so slightly. 

He stroked the cat’s head and scratched behind her ear before pulling it closer into his chest. She was shivering, but Owen wasn’t sure if it was from the cold or the fear. If she’d been missing for a week, God knows how long she must’ve been stuck in there. 

“You hurt, little one?” he mumbled to it as he absentmindedly made his way to the one person he knew could help. 

“Owen,” Emmy groaned when she’d opened the door to find him standing on the curb with a pout on his face. “It’s four in the morning, I have to be up in an hour for work.” 

“That’s why I’m here,” he said and showed her the cat he had tucked in his jacket to keep it warm. “I found her in the bushes near Andrews Park. Can you check if she’s okay?” Emmy’s eyes darted from the cat to Owen and back. “Please, Emmy? You’re the only one I know could help her out.” 

“Come on in,” she sighed, clearly disgruntled at the early wakeup call. But she couldn’t say no to a little kitty in need. She’d been rescuing animals since she was a little girl, she wasn’t going to leave this one in the dust. 

Owen placed the cat on the table as it meowed and nudged Owen’s hand with her head. “It’s okay, Tunabean, Emmy here is gonna make sure you’re okay.” 

“Tunabean?” Emmy asked as she put on latex gloves. 

“Yeah, I think it’s the cat from the missing posters you see all around town?” 

Emmy gingerly took the cat in her gloved hands and started her check-up. “Ah, yes! My brother and his buddies took some of them down, thinking they were ‘rebellious’.” She rolled her eyes. “You gonna bring her back?” 

“Of course, Tino said the owner was worried sick about her.” 

Emmy smiled at this. Owen had always been the compassionate one in their friend group. He’d only act upon things if he was sure it wouldn’t hurt anyone else. Though, sometimes that compassion vanished when they were with their friends and he got a ‘brilliant’ idea, which was most likely kind of dangerous. 

“Oh, look,” Emmy whispered as she showed Tunabean’s paw. There was a thorn stuck in the little pad. “Poor thing! Hold her for a second, please? I’m gonna get my tweezers to get it out.” Owen placed a hand on the cat’s stomach, his fingers lightly scratching at the white fur. 

Emmy returned with everything she needed, and within a few seconds, Tunabean was freed from the thorn in her paw and back on her feet. She suddenly seemed a lot more peppy than she was before. 

“Let’s get you home, yeah?” Owen said as he scooped the kitten back up into his arms, holding it close to his chest. Emmy took her gloves off and scratched the cat’s head. 

“Goodbye, Tunabean,” she cooed, earning licks from her rough little tongue. “Ooh, I think I got the girl’s address here somewhere. Tunabean is Anna’s client and we’ve got them in the system.” 

As quickly as she’d said it, she’d handed the address over to Owen. After thanking her profusely, Owen went on his way with the cat tucked safely in his jacket for warmth. 

He was nervous as it was already five in the morning and the woman most definitely was still asleep. But he didn’t want to keep her in even more suspense and worry about her cat as she already was. 

“Hello?” a sleepy voice sounded through the intercom. 

“Hi, I’m Owen, I think I got your cat, Tunabean?” 

A silence fell, only Tunabean’s sleepy snoring disrupting the peace and quiet of the night. The poor girl had fallen asleep in Owen’s arms. He almost felt sad he had to give her away again. 

It took a good minute before the door to the apartment building opened up and a girl in red flannel pj’s opened the door. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun with big strands falling out of it. Though she’d probably rather not be seen like this out in public, Owen thought she looked breathtaking, even in the dim light from the hallway of her corridor and the street lights. 

“You really got Tunabean?” she asked as she held onto the door, squishing herself in the small opening she’d granted herself. Owen opened his jacket and carefully showed her the cat who’d woken up from her slumber. “Tunabean!” the girl exclaimed and grabbed the grey pet from the boy’s hands. Their fingers brushed ever so slightly, and though y/n was too busy with her cat, Owen felt it. He felt the spark. 

“I would invite you inside for a drink to thank you, but my roommate is still asleep and I don’t want to wake her.” Owen held up his hand, a smile tugging at his lips as he shook his head. 

“That’s okay. I don’t need a reward. I’m just glad I could reunite the two of you again,” he said, smiling at the girl and her cat. “Oh! She did have a thorn in her paw though, but my friend is a vet and I took her to her for a check-up before I came here.” 

“Aw, poor Bean,” she scratched the cat’s head before turning back to the blonde boy. “Thank you. That’s very considerate of you.” He tipped his head forward, the smile still persistent on his lips. 

“Glad I could help,” he repeated, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jacket again. “I’m gonna go though. I’m sure you’d rather go back to sleep right now than talk to a complete stranger on your doorstep.” 

“Oh, uhm, okay… Goodbye then? And thank you again for bringing Tunabean back.” 

Owen took a few steps backwards as he said, “You’re most welcome. Goodbye, Tunabean and…” 

“Y/N.” 

“Goodbye Tunabean and y/n.” His eyes lingered on hers for a few more seconds before he turned around to really make his way home now, no distractions. 

“Wait! I didn’t catch yours!” she whisper-shouted after him. 

He turned again, but kept walking. “Owen,” he said. 

“Goodbye, Owen.” She grabbed Tunabean’s paw and waved at him with it, causing a giggle to rake through Owen’s body. With his hand still in his pocket, he waved back. 

The more distance he created between them, the bigger his smile became as he thought of her. She was the epitome of a beautiful dream come to life. It made him wonder what she’d look like if she did put effort into her appearance. That could just be the death of him. 

*

After two more hours of sleep, the alarm blaring through her room woke y/n from a beautiful dream with the mysterious blonde boy that rang her doorbell very early in the morning. It caused her to wake up with the thought of him, wondering if she’d ever see him again. 

“Morning,” she greeted Jamila when she found her best friend in the living room, gathering all her stuff. “Guess who came home last night!” As if on cue, the little cat pattered across the hardwood floor towards the dark beauty that was Jamila. Her eyes widened as did her smile upon seeing the white-and-grey ragamuffin. 

“Bean!” Jamila shrieked as she knelt down to pick the four-legged friend off the floor. “Oh, baby! I missed you!” She peppered the cat with kisses, receiving the kisses back from her tiny pink tongue. “Where’d you find him?” 

“Oh, I didn’t. This guy, Owen, did. He brought her back at, like, five in the morning,” y/n explained as she absentmindedly smiled at the thought of those pretty blue-ish eyes. 

“And this Owen guy is pretty cute, isn’t he?” Jamila asked upon noticing her best friend’s flustered demeanor. “Did you ask for his number?” Y/N rolled her eyes before she started gathering her things she needed for work. 

“It was five in the morning, I had just woken up and I was too busy with Tunabean’s return to even think of that,” she explained, mostly cursing at herself for not asking his number. “Besides, I looked disgusting, I doubt he thought I was the epitome of beauty.” 

Jamila simply shook her head, debating against saying any more about it before pressing a kiss to y/n’s cheek and leaving the apartment. 

A silence fell over the space, leaving y/n alone with her thoughts. Her beautiful, yet annoying thoughts of the handsome boy at her front door. “He was handsome, wasn’t he, Tunabean?” she asked her cat, who simply tilted her head to the side as she sat in front of y/n on the floor. 

Once y/n had gathered her stuff for work today, she said goodbye to Tunabean and left the apartment. She was fumbling around in her handbag to look for her car keys when a vaguely familiar voice made her look up. 

The gorgeous blue eyes she’d been dreaming of for two whole hours were staring down at her whilst the plump pink lips curled up into a dreamy smile. “Oh, hey, Owen.” 

“I wanted to come and check up on Tunabean,” he carefully said, pointing up at the building she’d just come out of. “You know, see if she’s okay and stuff.” He suddenly seemed nervous. More nervous than he did at five in the morning. 

“Uhm, she’s okay, actually. Slept well and seemed very chipper this morning,” y/n reassured him, a smile playing at her lips as her eyes scanned his face. She made sure to make a mental note of every single detail of his face. Like how he stuck his tongue between his teeth as he smiled or how his eyes squinted slightly or the stubble faintly growing on his chin. 

“Oh, okay, good. That’s--that’s all, then…” He awkwardly coughed. 

Y/N awaited anything else, her eyes darting left and right as they just fumblingly stood on the curb in front of y/n’s apartment. “I-uhm… I have to get to work though, so…” She pointed somewhere behind Owen, indicating she needed to pass him and get going. 

“Right!” he said and took a step aside to let her through. She offered him a little wave and a soft ‘bye’ as she passed him. He watched her walk away, cursing at himself for not asking what he really wanted to ask. “Wait!” he yelled, making her stop in her tracks and turn around again with an expectant look on her face. “That’s-that’s not what I wanted to ask. I mean it was, but it wasn’t the only thing I wanted to ask.” He scratched the back of his neck as y/n’s eyes searched for an answer on his face. 

Y/N looked at him with a piercing glint in her eyes, urging him to continue. 

“Oh, right! Uhm… Would you -- would you maybe wanna go have a drink with me later today? Or something?” Her smile grew wider as she slowly nodded her head in response. 

“I’m off at five. Meet me at Gray Owl then,” she told him before turning to walk away. 

Owen was left on her curb, wondering if he had died. He thought she looked pretty when she’d just rolled out of bed, but now that she was all dolled up for work, she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. And that smile. That smile was killer. 

She was more than the epitome of a dream come to life. She was beauty and grace. She was a poem and the poet. She was the lyrics and the melody. She was the question and the answer. 

Owen grew more and more curious about that girl the more he thought of her. He wanted to know what she liked and what she absolutely hated. He wanted to know how she laughed and how she cried, if she sang whenever her mind wandered. He wanted to know how she liked her eggs in the morning. 

Even though he knew curiosity killed the cat, he knew for a fact the cat in this story was just the beginning of something beautiful. 

 *

*

*

JATP taglist: @hannahhistorian92 @marinettepotterandplagg @thequirkybookaholic @bookdealer5 @tenaciousperfectionunknown @hemmingsness @iainttakingshitfromnobody @ifilwtmfc @angryknightstatesmantrash @kiss-themoongoodbye @rudysbay @thedarkqueenofavalon​ @caitsymichelle13​ @calamitykaty @wiselight @kcd15​ @vicesvsvirtuesfanfic @stars-soph @kinda-really-lost @notasofti

Owen taglist: @alexpjoyner

Lemme know if you wanna be on my taglist! 

[honeymoonjin]

런닝맨 방탄 - Running Man Bangtan

PART TWO OUT! READ IT HERE

A/N This is an AU where the reader, as well as the seven members of BTS, are on the popular South Korean show Running Man. Running Man is a little similar to Run BTS, but with much longer episodes and more elaborate games and tasks. If you want to get an idea of what Running Man is like, all their episodes are free to watch on Viki.

This is part 1, it’s just under ten thousand words, so I’m going to have this one-shot be in two parts. I’ve got all the storyboarding complete for the second half, it just needs to be written out. I’m also considering a sequel with smut, probably a threesome. I know who it’ll be with but I don’t want to spoil the ending of this one-shot, so I’ll put an A/N at the end of the second part that will give more details.

The eight of you were lined up in front of a production team, huddling together slightly against the sharp bite of the brisk autumn breeze. It was that time of the week where you began a new episode of your show, and as always, there was a hum of anticipation in the air. It was the 100th episode of Running Man, and coincidentally also your 50th episode as the eight member of the show. After almost a year of shooting, producers had decided a female amongst all that testosterone would make for some interesting television, and sure enough the ratings had skyrocketed after that.

The fans had been voting on a poll on social media for the theme of this anniversary episode, and the eight of you had yet to find out the result. You were secretly hoping for the relaxing vacation option, but the lack of suitcases and your current location in a public park made it seem unlikely. Besides, fans of the show certainly seemed to enjoy watching the eight of you suffer.

You were currently near the middle of the line-up, waiting patiently and rubbing your reddened nose as the loyal crew dutifully set up all the cameras and fiddled with sound systems. To your left was Yoongi, fidgety as he always was before shooting, and to your right, the ever-energetic Hoseok, bouncing back and forth as he fought to stay warm.

The red hoodies you all had to wear looked a lot more insulated than they were, as by the end of each shooting day you were sure to work up a sweat. Unfortunately it meant the stirring of wind went straight to your skin, and it was clear all of the members were feeling the chill.

“Alright,” announced Producer Lee, breaking the focussed silence, “we’re all clear to begin.”

The eight of you lit up like Christmas trees, eager to finally get going.

The gesturing of a finger and a blinking red light were the familiar signal that the cameras were rolling, and Producer Lee switched into his more authorial announcer’s tone. “This is Running Man’s 100th episode, and Y/n’s 50th episode as a member.” He broke off to let you all react to this, and you feel your cheeks heat up as the members give a whoop, Hoseok leaning over to give your shoulders a squeeze. Lee continues. “The fans have decided how they want you to celebrate this occasion. The theme for today’s episode is…”

As if rehearsed, you turn in unison to the poster board that has been set up behind you with a paper sheet covering it. One of the crew members walks up to it and strips away the cover, revealing the title for this episode. 8 Missions in 8 Hours.

The eight of you ooh and aah at the title, the excited energy rising. Episodes tended to get more views when they were objective-based, and this seemed like it would probably be a multiple-part episode as well.

Lee waits for the group to settle again before he explains. “The eight of you have eight hours to complete 8 different missions. If you complete all eight missions within the given time, you will be given a reward. However, one of you is a spy,” he breaks off for the inevitable gasping and accusing looks passed back and forth among the members, “and will try and prevent the team from completing all the missions. If the spy wins, all members but them have to do a penalty. If you manage to complete the missions in time and work out who the spy is, the spy will miss out on the reward and do the penalty instead. You will only be given the instructions for the next mission once you have completed your current one. Here are the instructions for the first mission,” he finishes, holding out a card.

Jimin rushes forward to take it from him and reads it aloud. “In the fountain behind you are 50 coins with a question mark and a number on them. Each member has to find one and bring it to the microphone and answer a question about that episode. Only one member can look for a coin at a time.”

While the group process the rules, you turn around and stare at the fountain. It’s a wishing fountain, filled with probably several hundred coins of different currencies. This will take forever if you can only do it one at a time. And surely the spy wouldn’t find it so hard to drag it out; they could just pretend to not know the questions, or not find any coins. As you pondered this, along with the rest of your team, still frozen in your line-up, Director Lee lets out a laugh, before changing back into his serious voice. “Your eight hours have already started.”

“Oh!” Jeongguk, ever the competitive one, runs and leaps into the fountain, not even bothering to take off his shoes and socks or roll up his jeans. You can tell he regrets it from the high-pitched yelp he lets out, water splashing up as he wades knee-deep in the water.

“Is it cold?” You tease him. “Too cold for little Jeonggukie?”

He begins to retort with a piercing glare but Jimin is shouting at him to start looking.

Energy begins high as you all crowd around the fountain and cheer him on as he desperately rakes through the layers of coins, his grey jeans almost black with water and his red hoodie covered in splatters, and it takes him less than two minutes to find a coin, stamped with the number 17 on it, and leap out of the fountain over to the microphone, still panting.

A crew member with a book of questions by episode number reads one off. “In Episode 17, which dish did Taehyung have to cook for the members after losing a penalty?”

Jeongguk frowns, slowing his heaving chest as he considers.

You think back to it. Suddenly it comes to you. “Producer Lee, can we help other members answer?”

He shakes his head, but while Jeongguk is searching his memory, Taehyung gives you a disbelieving stare. “You know the answer? You weren’t even on the show!”

“I still watched it,” you shoot back defensively. “Why, can’t you remember your own cooking?”

He narrows his eyes at you. “Wh- That isn’t the point! Were you a fangirl or something?”

Yoongi, currently the only one not hyped up by the action, calmly drawls a response. “Do you really think she would apply to be on the show if she didn’t even like it?”

Tae is rendered speechless, and you turn to Yoongi, partway across the fountain from you. “Thank you, oppa.”

At this point Jeongguk has given up and gone back to looking in the fountain for a different-numbered coin. Jeongguk, arguing desperately with Tae after he gave up on the question, was making enough racket that Yoongi has to make his way around the fountain in order to keep talking. He faces away from the action and leans against the fountain edge. “So which one of us is your favorite, then?”

Although most of the cameras are focussed on the action in front of you, both your and Yoongi’s cameramen are dutifully sitting a few feet away with their cameras trained on you both. “I don’t think any of you are particularly impressive,” you jibe.

His remark dies on his lips as Jeongguk lets out a hoot, rushes over to the microphone and correctly answers his second question. He groans in relief and yells out for someone else to go.

You take your chance to avoid the awkward, too-close-to-flirting conversation and pull yourself over the edge and into the freezing water.

Too late, you realise you made the exact same mistake Jeongguk did by not taking off your shoes and socks first. Luckily you’re wearing a pair of gym shorts, so you don’t have to worry about soggy pants, but the squelching of water between your toes is very uncomfortable.

Once you’ve gotten over the initial shock of the water, and the bubbles stirred up by your entry dissipate, you realise how tough this task really is. It feels like there are about a million coins and none in your immediate scan have a question mark.

Instead of adopting Jeongguk’s technique of desperate thrashing, you kneel upright, avoiding getting the seat of your shorts wet, and sift through a handful at a time. You try and block out the raucous chatter around you as your team members cheer you on, some a little more aggressively than others. Finally, a coin with a question mark comes up.

Leaping out of the fountain, you waddle over to the microphone stand in your waterlogged sneakers. Flipping the coin over, you shout out the number: 84.

The same crew member from before hurriedly flips through the book to find the appropriate question. “In episode 84, which member cheated in the final game by spending his own money?”

Your head tilts back in thought. Episode 84 was only a couple months ago, and around that time there weren’t that many episodes where money played a key role. You think back to when the producers announced a member from the other team in a four-against-four challenge had spent their cash instead of the money given to them. “Namjoon?” You guess your answer, but the pleasant jingle that sounds out lets you know you’ve got it right.

“See, Jeongguk!” Jin exclaims. “It’s not that hard! Why did you take so long?”

“You go next, then!” Jeongguk shouts in mock outrage.

Jin kicks off his shoes and socks and hitches up his sweatpants and jumps in. Unfortunately for him, he has even worse luck than Jeongguk. While he finds the coins fast enough - 4, 77, 94, 18 - all the questions leave him dumbfounded.

Jeongguk, who would find it extremely validating were you not on a time constraint, starts kicking at him each time he runs back defeated. “Yah, hyung! Do you really not know any of the questions? It’s suspicious that you’re so bad!”

You laugh as many of the others agree. “It’s just that all of the questions are about things you guys did!” Jin defends himself in a dragged out whine.

“Oppa only pays attention to himself,” you tease, “he just needs to get a question that says, ‘What did Jin eat for breakfast in episode 65?’ and we’ll be fine!”

“Exactly!” Jin affirms, half-distracted by his constant fossicking, before pausing, hunched over in the water. “Wait, hey! No!”

Yoongi returns to your side, resting his elbows on the edge as you take your place around the fountain. The staff had brought dry changes of clothing for you all, as well as towels, but luckily all you needed was to warm up your feet and put on some dry socks and sneakers, so you kick off your wet footwear and wrap up your bare feet, red with the cold.

Yoongi’s quiet, but you know he’s just enjoying the camaraderie of the team. Both of you, when sharing late-night chats or quick moments between shoots, had talked about how wonderful it was to feel like you were spending every day with these people who felt like family. You tuck your arm around his and lean onto the edge of the fountain beside him. You are quite happy to sit and watch the antics of your friends, but Yoongi breaks the silence.

“You better not be sucking up to me if you’re the spy,” he drawls, lip quirking in a suppressed smile. As tough as he likes to play, Yoongi has always been a sucker for snuggling.

“If I was the spy, I certainly wouldn’t tell you,” you counter.

You feel his shoulder shrug under the weight of your head. “That sounds like something a spy would say.”

“Well, then, what would a person who wasn’t a spy say? I’ll just say that.”

He goes quiet for a moment. “That’s also something a spy would say.”

You scoff.

Once Jin finally receives a question about himself (Where did Jin and Jeongguk go for their reward in episode 9?) the rest of the members get done pretty quickly. It’s been almost thirty minutes because of the two slowpokes, but finally there are only two left: Namjoon, currently running circles inside the fountain like a manic, and Jimin.

You jolt up away from Yoongi, accidentally elbowing him in the side as you do it, when Namjoon slips on a bit of algae on the bottom. Although the fountain’s water level only goes up to his knees, when he slips, he goes down.

The enormous splash causes a racket amongst the group. Jin, Hobi and Jeongguk laughing hysterically when Namjoon finally sits up, clothes drenched, hair dripping down his face.

There’s a lull as he clenches his eyes shut and squeezes his lips together in a tense smile - did he hurt himself when he fell? - and a sudden burst of joyous cheer when he raises a single stamped coin. He hauls himself out of the water, sloshing over the side and onto the grass, and heaves himself to the microphone. It’s a question from an episode only two weeks ago, and he answers immediately.

Jimin, already barefoot, makes a show of ripping off his hoodie before leaping into the water in a plain white shirt and jean shorts, but your attention has been caught by the shivering Namjoon.

Being so late in the game, he doesn’t have a change to get fully changed, so you wave him over to you, pulling up a chair so he can sit while you dry off his hair with a fresh towel. He’s taken off his heavily drenched hoodie, and another towel is clutched tightly around his shoulders.

“Ah, oppa, you should be more careful,” you chastise. He bows his head and apologises but judging by the way Yoongi shakes his head with a bemused grin, Namjoon definitely didn’t take your warning to heart.

You muss up his hair with the towel, tugging his head back and forth a little with it, determined to make sure he doesn’t catch a cold. The relatively short time it takes Jimin to find a coin with a question he can answer is spent drying off Joonie’s hair, periodically carding your fingers through it to break up any knots.

Once victory for your first mission is achieved, the lot of you crowd around the front of the fountain again and await the results. Producer Lee tells you all that it took you 42 minutes to complete the first challenge, and therefore you have seven hours and 18 minutes left.

Still shivering a little, you record for a while longer, throwing accusations back and forth about who the spy is, and why the slowest members took so long, before they cut the camera feeds.

Now comes the movie magic, or, you suppose, television magic. The eight of you are driven back to the dorm, take your time having hot showers and getting something to eat, putting on fresh, dry versions of the same clothes, and are driven back to the same spot again, where the timer is turned on again. Very rarely do you ever film an episode without breaking various times, as most of the things you did involved getting messy or dirty at one point or another. An associate producer lines you up in the order you were in before, and a stylist concurs with the camera crew to make your your hair styles and clothes look the same as they did before you paused shooting.

When shooting resumes, it’s just to announce that the second mission takes place at another location, and so you bundle into the van, already outfitted with cameras at every angle, taking off for the second stage.

In the very back row are Yoongi, Taehyung and Jeongguk; you’re sat in the middle of the second row with Hoseok and Jin on either side of you and Namjoon and Jimin are in the row behind the driver’s seat.

Most of the group are on their phones or taking quick naps. Generally when the place you had to go was more than ten minutes away, you would chill out for the start and make an effort for some good content in the last few minutes. The cameras would stay on the whole time, as was usual, but unless anything happened, they’d just delete the footage.

You let out a yawn, wriggling around in your seat to lean your back into Hoseok’s side. Automatically, his right arm snakes around you and links back up with his left, forming a secure hold to keep you from rolling around with the movement of the car.

In many ways, the Running Man cast really were like a family. You would even go so far as to say you were closer than that. You had worked with the same seven men five days a week for two weeks shy of a year now. Shooting days were always fun, but so were the ones were you all sat around a boardroom, brainstorming with Producer Lee about what future episodes you could do, which special guests you could invite on for cameos. When the cameras were off and you were allowed to act completely naturally with the men who were like your brothers. Well, maybe the relationships you had with some of them weren’t really sibling-like relationships, but that was just a side effect of the extremely close quarters you held.

Speaking of close quarters, just as you were drifting off in the secure warmth of Hoseok’s embrace, you feel a steady prod on your cheek.

“Jin-ah!”

“Why are you sleeping?” He whines.

“I’m dreaming of your beautiful face, oppa.”

You try your best not to crack a grin when you hear his bitter ‘humph’. “But my beautiful face is right here, Y/n. Why don’t you open your eyes and look at it now?”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Giving up in a dramatic sigh of defeat, you feel the car seat shift as he turns around in his seat to start talking to someone else instead. The weight of Hoseok’s chin comes down to rest on the top of your head, and you hum in contentment.

All of you are surprised when it’s a primary school that you arrive at. Producer Lee refuses to answer any questions as you’re all led into a classroom fully rigged with shooting gear.

It’s a pretty basic classroom as far as things go, and this kind of setting, with the blackboard and the school-desks, is a pretty common one for variety shows. You wonder what it is exactly you’ll be doing here.

Finally, everything is ready to go, and the crew start rolling. “Your second mission is to sit a high-school entrance exam. Students take this paper at the end of their first year in high school. They are given 90 minutes and must get 65% of the questions right to pass. You can take as much time as you want to answer the questions, but you only get one chance to answer each question and you have to get 80% right to complete the mission.”

You each sound off various groans of disappointment at having to sit an exam, except for Namjoon, who remains enthusiastic with a chance to show off his smarts.

As you each get into your positions at the desks, Producer Lee goes on to explain that there are 50 questions, and you need to get 40 right to get the passing grade.

The desks you are placed at are very fitting with your personalities, as the eager Namjoon as well as Taehyung and Jimin are up the front, and you, Hoseok and Jeongguk are sat in the back row. Yoongi and Jin sit in the middle, both looking rather put out by this challenge.

“First question:” Producer Lee announces, “what are the stages of the water cycle?”

You let out a groan and let your head flop on the table. You weren’t going to be much help with this mission.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, you only have three questions left. Unfortunately for the team, you’ve already got 10 questions wrong, and another would mean failing the mission.

Jeongguk’s competitiveness has outplayed his disdain at the mission format, and although he hasn’t answered a single question thus far, his butt is hovering ten centimetres out of his seat as he awaits the third-to-last question.

“Question 48: if a triangle has a length of 12 centimetres and a height of 5 centimetres, how long is the hypotenuse?”

You stare hopelessly into the camera closest to you, expressionless. What kind of genius children they were raising here, you didn’t know.

Taehyung gestures in the air, trying to visualise it. The others, assuming he must know the answer, wait with bated breath. He nods slowly. “…It’s gotta be more than 12 centimetres.”

“Wh- Okay. Okay, it’s longer than 12 centimetres. What’s the formula?”

Taehyung stares blankly at Jimin, who’s jumped up from his seat to start scratching out a diagram on the board. Jimin’s drawing is of a wobbly triangle, which although is marked with 12, 5, and ? respectively, has sides of roughly the same length.

You let out a bark of laughter. “Jimin, that’s not in proportion at all!”

“Okay, Albert Einstein,” he shoots back, “you tell us the answer, then.”

“I’m as bad at math as you apparently are at art, buddy.”

“Unnie!” He whines. “I’m trying my best!”

He turns towards you, puffing out his cheeks in a pout. His eyes glitter, and although you know he’s not so childish as to bring out the waterworks, your heart breaks anyway.

���Yeah, unnie!” Taehyung repeats. Soon all of your team are hounding you about being mean to Jimin, and the volume rises and rises until a quick ‘hey!’ causes everyone to pause.

Yoongi holds up a notepad of scribbles. “Thirteen centimetres?” The affirmative ding goes off and he smiles proudly to himself, unaware that the attack on you was about to be shifted.

“Wait a minute,” Hoseok begins, “you knew how to work it out that whole time?”

“Yeah.”

“And you just let us bumble around like idiots while you solved it for yourself?”

“…Well, it doesn’t matter who gets the answer, we just need to get these next two right.” Yoongi blinks innocently at the rest of you.

Hoseok stares at him incredulously. “What if one of us had given up and said a random number as a guess?”

You see your chance to get back at Yoongi for accusing you earlier. “We wasted our time and potentially could’ve failed the mission because you didn’t tell us. That seems like something a spy would do.” Throwing his words back at him, you wiggle your eyebrows at his exasperated glare.

“Uh, guys?” Jeongguk ventures. “We still have two questions to answer before we complete the mission. Shouldn’t we try and solve these two as fast as we can to make up for this time spent arguing?”

Producer Lee decides it’s a good time to speak up. “Question 49: what is the planet third closest to the Sun?”

“Earth!” Namjoon calls out, and you all breathe a sigh of relief when you get the question right, and can move on so quickly.

“Finally, question 50: What year did the Korean War begin?”

You were a bit of a history buff when you were in school, and so you tell the rest of the team that you’re pretty sure it’s 1950.

“Are you sure, Y/n?” Hoseok swivels in his chair to face you. “I thought it was 1948.”

You frown. Was it 1948? You would hate to be the one who made the team fail the mission. Just as you were about to concede to Hoseok, Jin speaks up.

“No, Y/n’s right, I think.” A couple of other members agree with him, and so you submit 1950 as your answer. It’s correct, and after an hour and 22 minutes, you’ve completed your second mission.

“You now have 5 hours and 34 minutes left to complete six more missions.” You scrunch your face up in worry. You had roughly an hour per mission, so the team was already beginning to fall behind. “Your third mission also takes place in this classroom. Each of you has to spin round in a circle ten times before picking up a bowl of water,” he gestures off-camera to the row of plastic bowls that were being set up on the front desk, “and trying to fill a jug that another player is holding. The combined volume of the water must exceed one litre for you to succeed in this mission. However,” he trails off dramatically, “the individual that contributes the most water gets a hint about the identity of the spy.”

And just like that, the third mission is a-go. Jeongguk, eager to impress after his lack of help in the last round, goes first. He twirls around with his finger to his nose, and after a little stumbling manages to tip in 180mL.

Hoseok stands up next. “I can do better than that any day!” Hoseok, who was a street dancer before starting the show, has excellent balance. Unfortunately for him, he also has terrible aim, and misses the bowl almost completely.

“35mL,” a crew member announces.

“Yah, Hoseok must be the spy to do that badly,” Jimin insists as Jin begins taking his turn.

“Am not!”

“Well, then, why would you tell us you’re great at something and do terribly?”

Hoseok, not responding so well to the ribbing, throws his hands up in the air in emphasis. “It’s not me, seriously! Look, Jin did a rubbish job, too!”

“65mL,” Jin declares matter-of-factly. “I did twice as good as you, Hoseok.”

“We still need…720mL,” Namjoon calculates, and heaves a big sigh as he steps up and begins twirling round in front of the desk. He slows to a wobbly halt when you all call out the tenth turn, and stumbles towards the bowl.

Knowing how clumsy Namjoon can be at the best of times, you all shuffle back a little to avoid getting splashed, but amazingly, almost all of it sloshes into the bowl. He collapses into a chair, and lets out a satisfied sigh when the water level is read off at 210mL.

“Woah, hyung, that’s amazing!” Jimin enthuses. “We can do this, guys!”

You have four people still to go, and just over half a litre left to pour in. It’s your turn, so you hook one arm around the other, finger on your nose, and close your eyes while spinning as you listen as the guys chant a count to ten.

On ten, you are surprised just how dizzy you are, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so easy to grab the bowl off the table. With the ground lurching beneath you and your knees knocking together, you fall forward a couple steps until you lean onto the table, using the solid object as support when you lift the bowl.

In your fuzzy-minded state, you lift up the bowl, feeling the water sloshing down your sleeves, and tip it in the general direction of the clear plastic measuring jug at the far end of the table.

It’s impossible to see anything when your surroundings are jerking back and forth. Totally unaware of how well (or poorly) you did, you lose your balance leaning towards the cups and your elbow slips off the side of the table, falling ungracefully onto the floor.

Strong hands help you sit up and you lean against the front wall of the classroom, blinking slowly. “How much did I get?”

Hoseok holds up a jug with about two centimetres of water in the bottom and gives you an unimpressed glare. “How come when I do a bad job, it’s all, ‘oh, Hobi, you’re the spy’ but when Y/n does even worse than I did, you guys are fawning over her, making sure she’s okay?”

“I did even worse than you?” You ask incredulously. “Man, I’m sorry guys.”

“Wait, wait!” Taehyung, who had been quietly observing thus far, runs over to the line of jugs. “Some of the water splashed into another jug, see!”

You look up in hope. Tae’s right; you may have all but missed your jug, but Namjoon’s water level has raised by quite a bit.

Producer Lee quickly confers with the team. “Because you need a combined score to win, it will count. However, it won’t be counted for either of your individual scores.” You nod, satisfied.

Next up is Jimin, who gives an average performance of 80mL.

Taehyung goes second-to-last and manages 200mL. He’s clearly proud, but slightly miffed he didn’t get more than Namjoon. When they read off the amount, he clenches his eyes together and pinches the bridge of his nose.

When Yoongi walks up to finish off the game, the producers remind you all you still need 180mL to complete the challenge. You all circle around Yoongi in nervous anticipation as he spins, hunched into a low crouch.

Jeongguk and Jimin start a chant of “hyung, hyung, hyung!” as he breaks out into a wonky dash towards the table. With amazingly steady hands, he grabs onto the bowl and slowly tips it over into the final jug on the end of the desk.

Barely spilling anything, Yoongi pours out the last of the water and then gives the camera a smug nod, holding out his arms with a cocky grin on his face.

Jeongguk rushes forward to read off the water level. “No way, hyung, you got 230mL!”

Your expressions are a mix of stunned and impressed, and the producer announces that you’ve completed the third mission, with Yoongi, of course, being the one who gets the hint.

“Here is your hint. You may choose to show it to any of the other players or keep it to yourself. There will be two more hints throughout your remaining five missions.”

You hold your breath as Yoongi walks forward, opens the envelope handed to him, and reads the hint. He looks up at each one of you with an inscrutable gaze.

“What’s the hint, oppa?” You ask.

He tilts the note away from the other members, showing it to the camera. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yeah, actually, I would!”

“I guess you shouldn’t have done such a terrible job in the mission then, Y/n.”

You narrow your eyes at him, ready to egg him on some more, but the producer cuts you off. “For your next mission, we’ll be heading to a restaurant. You currently have 5 hours and 8 minutes left to complete five more missions.”

Luckily, the restaurant wasn’t far away, and the car ride was spent placing bets on who the spy was, even though nobody except Yoongi had any idea. Once you arrived at the sleek, modern restaurant, you were led to an industrial kitchen in the back, and lined up behind a bench in the middle of the room.

On the bench were eight mini electric frypans, each with their own bottle of oil, fork, and a single egg. After you all got in place, they brought out bowls of bibimbap and placed one in front of each of you.

“Your fourth mission,” Producer Lee begins, “is to fry an egg and place it on the bowl of bibimbap without breaking the yolk. You can’t move the pan and all you can use to move the egg is a fork. To complete this mission, five of you have to succeed.”

This time, you were lined up in age order, and Jin and Yoongi both fried their eggs and deftly lifted them onto their bowls without breaking the yolk.

Hoseok and Namjoon were next in line, and just as expected, both fail. Hoseok almost gets there, you and Jeongguk cheering him on as the egg slowly cooks in the pan, but when he leaves it in too long the pan gets too hot and his yolk bubbles up and explodes. Namjoon, on the other hand, cracks his egg open with a little too much force and fails straight away.

You start heating up your pan, trying to go slow and steady. “Third time lucky,” you declare, pouring a small amount of oil into the pan before delicately cracking your egg. Once it cracks, you lift it up closer to you so you can wiggle your nails into the cracks and slowly pull it open. It cracks open faster than you were expecting, and everyone sucks in a unified gasp when the egg drops into the pan from your chest level.

Mouth open, you lean down to inspect the yolk, but it sits perfectly intact in the middle of the egg white, which is slowly turning opaque. The pressure is on, and you use the fork to flick at the edges to make sure it doesn’t get stuck. The real difficulty would be the transfer - making sure the egg didn’t flop off the narrow fork, or that the tines didn’t pierce through when you lifted it.

Once it was cooked (you admit, you left it to cook a little longer so the yolk wasn’t so runny) you held your breath and slowly manoeuvred the fork underneath the yolk. An idea strikes you, and you pause.

“What?” Jimin, standing to your left, hunches over to see if you’ve broken it already.

“We only need the yolk, right?” You confer with Director Lee, and after he nods you wiggle out the fork, only to cut away the egg whites from around the yolk, leaving a much smaller surface area for you to pick up.

Leaving the cut-off whites getting overcooked in the pan, you lift up the yolk easily and delicately set it down in the bowl.

“I told you, third time lucky!” You turn to your left at the three men left to go. “Come on, guys, we need two of you to succeed.”

Jimin, ever the perfectionist, manages to fry his egg and move it into the bowl without having to cut off the edges like you did, and the proud smile he sends you when you congratulate him warms you heart and sparks something off somewhere else, too. Trying not to blush, and avoiding his dreamy gaze, you lean over to Taehyung.

“You can do this Tae! Just don’t stress out too much and take it slow!”

The advice doesn’t help. He cooks the egg okay, but the second he puts his fork under to lift it, he pierces through and the yolk dribbles out around the pan, congealing and bubbling.

When you see his heartbroken expression, you quickly reach out and latch onto his hand, giving it a consoling squeeze. Tae was one of the members you first started spending time with, and really the only one of your three dongsaengs that you felt like an older sister to. The feelings you had for Jimin certainly weren’t family-friendly, and Jeongguk, although quite a bit younger than you, was your partner in crime more than anything else.

The crinkle between Taehyung’s eyebrows ease and his pout lifts.

“It’s okay, hyung, we weren’t really expecting you to win anyway,” Jeongguk teases, and starts oiling up his pan. “Let’s get it!”

The golden maknae is, unsurprisingly, very good at this challenge, and he stays calm under the mounting pressure.

The rest of you are tense, knowing that this is what this whole thing rides on, and to fail halfway through would be particularly embarrassing. Jin decides now is a good time to crack a joke and ease the atmosphere a little. “If the maknae became an author, what would he write?” He pauses for effect, nobody bothering to try and guess but just waiting for the punchline. “A Kookbook.”

Jeongguk has his egg draped across the fork, hovering over the bowl, but as he laughs the juddering of his shoulders causes a wobble, and just as he begins to lower it down into the bowl, the skin splits and the yolk runs off the fork.

Chaos erupts. Jeongguk begins complaining to Jin, Hoseok and Jimin are trying to convince the director to give them another chance, and the rest of you grumble and whine in disappointment.

“Okay, alright,” the director budges, and everyone goes silent in newfound hope, “we’ll let you pass this challenge if you sacrifice one player to the penalty, since you missed the goal by one.”

Namjoon ponders this. “So even if we win and get the reward, someone still has to pay the penalty?”

“Correct.”

Namjoon turns to the rest of the team. “If we lose now, we all do the penalty, but if we take the chance then maybe only one of us will. I say we take it.”

The rest of you agree, and you are allowed to move on to the fifth challenge.

Before any instructions are given, the director calls for a break, and the timer is paused while various staff members check cameras, clear up, and start preparing something else in place of the frying pans.

Your team is asked to leave while they set up, so you file out of the restaurant’s kitchen and take a seat at a round table in the middle of the room.

Tae’s cheered up since finding out that you were allowed to continue the game (that sweet boy always took losing so hard when he felt like he was letting others down) and he sits down with Jimin and Jeongguk on either side of him as they dig into the now-completed bibimbap from the previous challenge, slightly lukewarm but still apparently good enough to scoff like animals.

Namjoon and Jin sit together on Jimin’s other side, and you sit beside Jin, with Hoseok and then Yoongi filling up the table. Apart from the three youngest, the rest of you eat slowly, knowing it can take a while for the challenges to be set up depending on what’s needed, and there’s really nothing else to do while you wait.

You fall into conversation with Jin and Namjoon, unaware of Yoongi’s gaze on you as he ate quietly and tried to pay attention to Hoseok’s chatter.

“So, Y/n, how does fifty episodes feel?”

You wrinkle your nose at Jin. “Half as good as one hundred episodes, grandpa.”

He lets out a peal of laughter, leaning back in his seat with the force of it. You swear, you could read the weather forecast to Jin and he’d still see the humour in it.

“Anyway, Y/n,” Namjoon cuts in, “I was thinking a bunch of us should go out for drinks to celebrate. Hoseok knows this place downtown that has really great cocktails apparently, so maybe we can go on the Friday night.”

You push your mouthful of rice to one cheek as you reply, holding the back of your hand to your mouth to avoid any spillage. “Depends on what these rewards and penalties are, though. Didn’t they send you guys to Busan once?”

He shook his head. “When they do stuff like that, they have to warn us in advance that we might be needed on the weekend so that we don’t make plans. Besides, it gives us more incentive to survive four more missions. Hwaiting!”

You chuckle. “Did you see the timer before we left?”

Jin, breaking off a conversation with the youngest, leans back in. “Four hours twenty-something. I reckon they must have some long ones planned if we have so much time left.”

The thought of four and a half hours of filming to go triggers a yawn, and suddenly the contagious reaction is going around the table. Facing inwards again, you gradually all fall into one single conversation: drinks on Friday night.

You haven’t all been out drinking as a group before, as most of the time when you hang out it’s either all eight of you at home, or a few of you at a time going somewhere. It was difficult planning group activities outside of filming, and now that there was a good cause to celebrate, the group was buzzing with excitement.

“So, Hoseok, you must be quite the party animal if you know exactly where to go for the best cocktails,” you tease, elbowing him in the ribs. “And I never took you for a cocktails man.”

“Hey, don’t knock it til you try it! There’s one that’s got chocolate milk and vodka and you can’t even taste the alcohol in it. It’s like you’re drinking a milkshake one minute, and the next minute you’re fucked up, singing Christmas carols in April.” The group fell into laughter, sharing stories about things other members did while completely wasted, and the next half an hour passed in the blink of an eye.

Soon enough, you were back in the kitchen, gawking at the impressive set-up. The same frypan stations were on the long kitchen island, but this time each one was blocked off by a tall partition. They were high enough so that even the tallest member couldn’t peek over to the station beside him. Along with the electric frypans, there were a pair of tongs, a salt and pepper shaker, the same bottle of oil, a single sheet of instructions, and a slab of meat on a plate.

The order doesn’t matter this time, as you’ll be cooking at the same time, so the eight of you slot yourselves into the spaces. Although you were in a relatively large room, the feeling of being blocked in on both sides made your heart race with claustrophobia. It is a weird sensation, too, suddenly not being able to see any of your teammates, and you wish this challenge goes quickly.

The director starts rolling and reads out the instructions for the challenge. At least six of you had to cook a piece of steak to medium well-done exactly, using only the instructions given. Unfortunately for you, the instructions described how the meat should look when done, but not the time needed.

The challenge starts soon enough, and although the eight of you banter back and forth, you don’t remember ever being so uncomfortable and awkward during shooting before. Even being alone doing a penalty was preferential to being stuck in a narrow place, knowing your friends were there but not being able to really interact with them.

The challenge goes by in a miserable blur, and when it comes to taking down the partitions, revealing the doneness of each member’s steak, and getting a chef to come judge it, you are desperately trying to hide from the camera and your teammates how upset you are.

As the minutes go on, and whichever members are on either sides of you accidentally bump the placards closer and closer in on you, it’s all you can do to bite your lip and focus on the delicious smell of cooking meat.

There is a relief when they take away those awful white plastic sheets and you can see your friends again, but you can feel your eyes stinging, your stomach wobbling and your hands shaking. You clench them into fists and rest them on the bench, going uncharacteristically quiet for the judging section, letting the other team members do the most of the joking around for a while.

You force yourself to smile and relax a little when you manage to succeed in the challenge, with only Namjoon having the meat too overcooked, and keep up an airy persona while the director gives away a hint to the team, not that you hear a single word. It’s not until he calls out to cut that you let your chest sink down onto the table and you bury your face in your hands, letting your cheek press onto the cool marble bench-top.

You try and take a deep breath, but now that the pressure is off to smile for the cameras, you can’t help the tears that spring to your eyes, and the uneven pounding of your heart makes you feel sick.

A couple of the guys had started joking around once the cameras switched off, but once Yoongi, the first to notice that you aren’t okay, starts reassuring you in a hushed voice and trying to ease you into a standing position, the other six fall silent and crowd around you.

Your whole body is seized up with tension in an effort to stop from full-on sobbing, and Yoongi’s hands are gentle but insistent as they pull your arms away from your face and cradle your head into the solid, secure span of his chest. You can feel one arm around your back, thumb rubbing small circles into your shoulder, the other hand on the back of your head as he rocks back and forth slightly and shushes you.

You can hear the other members hovering around you, discussing what’s going on, voices dampened with concern, as well as Jimin’s voice in particular arguing with the director about why he would do a challenge like that.

When you had signed up for Running Man, you had filled out a form like all the other guys had, saying what things you were completely uncomfortable doing - things that were hard No’s if you were to be employed on the show. Being put into small spaces was one of those things. You didn’t blame the director at all; he had never made you go in a cave, or be stuck in a closet, or any of the things that sometimes other members would do. You were sure it never occurred to him that this would be a problem, and if you were honest, you weren’t really expecting it to be as bad as it was.

But still, it felt nice to have the comforting hold of Yoongi around you while Jimin defended your honour and the rest of them muttered sweet nothings to calm you down.

You took deep but shaky breaths, fingers clutching onto handfuls of Yoongi’s hoodie, and you felt the damp patch of fabric you were currently crying into.

After a couple minutes, he muttered to you in his natural Satoori, something he always avoided from using on-camera, that he was going to walk you outside for some fresh air.

You settled down enough to nod slowly, but made no effort to detach yourself from his grip as the manoeuvred the pair of you out the back entrance of the kitchen, sitting you down gently on a concrete step.

The harsh chill of the wind did wonders, and after a few more minutes of leaning into him and swaying back and forth, you had calmed down significantly. You sat up, but scooted your butt closer so you could pull him into a proper hug.

He rubbed your back and chuckled quietly as you thanked him.

The crew had finished setting up by the time the two of you came back inside, and your six other team members fell in to step with you, eager to make sure you were okay.

“We can call it a day if you need some more time, noona,” Jimin cooed, “Director Lee said it was fine.”

You sniffle resolutely and shake your head. “Just give me a couple minutes with the make-up team and we can move on. I’m okay, I promise.”

He gave you measured stare for a few moments, then relaxed his jaw and dropped his shoulders. “Okay, sounds good. We’ll go get ready, give you some space. No rush.”

You pat his shoulder reassuringly, and let him herd your teammates out of the kitchen. Yoongi looks like he wants to hang around, but you wave him on with a soft smile.

It doesn’t take long for the make-up stylists to work their magic with ice-packs under your eyes to bring down the slight swelling, and a fresh layer of concealer and foundation to make you look camera-ready again.

You take in a few deep breaths, willing the last of the wobbliness in your stomach to settle, and join the rest of the team.

They’re all lined up in a slight semicircle around a decorative fireplace in the dining area, and it warms your heart to see Taehyung, on the far left, create some distance between him and Jeongguk so you don’t have to stand on the outside.

Before you step into place, a thought comes to you. “Wait, I missed the hint for the spy. What was it?”

Jeongguk grins. “The spy is older than me but younger than Yoongi. A.K.A, it’s not me.”

“Nobody thought it was you anyway, Jeonggukie.” Tae pulls you into a side hug when you slip in between them, and his tight grip makes you think maybe he needs the support more than you do. He always takes it particularly hard when one of his hyungs or you get upset. You let yourself lean into him as the director reads out the instructions for the next challenge, hugging the arm he wrapped around you against your front.

“Your sixth mission is a game of wits. I’ll call out a number from zero to seven, and any of you can raise your hand, but it cannot be the number I called out. You need to succeed 5 out of 5 times to succeed.”

You figured the harsh stakes were to compensate for the fact that this challenge wouldn’t take a particularly long time. “At least this is kind of an impossible game to sabotage,” you muse. “Would be pretty obvious if someone suddenly changed their mind at the last minute to ruin the game.”

Jin narrowed his eyes at you from the other side of the semicircle. “Pretty interesting that you’re already thinking of ways the spy could screw this up, wouldn’t you say?”

“If I was the spy would I really point that out?”

A pause. “You win this round, punk.” He sighs dramatically, whipping his head to the side as if he’s in a k-drama. You chuckle at his antics, his attempt at cheering you up successful as always.

Without further warning, the director calls out a number and the game begins.

The first four rounds go well with everyone managing to avoid the number called out, and you only need one more to win.

“Three!”

Your hand shoots up, and as you all crane your necks to count the hands, you see Jimin, Jin, and Hoseok all have their hands up. A couple of you let out a cheer as victory is yours in less than five minutes, but Namjoon calls out. “Hey, wait, wasn’t Jimin just yawning?”

You all go silent, Jimin’s mouth open in a slight pout like he’s been caught redhanded. “What?”

“I saw you, you held up your hand to your face to yawn, and then when you saw there were only three you put it up higher.”

The room erupts into argument. “I still put my hand up, so it still counts!”

“Joonie, we had the win, why would you bring that up?”

“Yeah, hyung, you just made us fail the mission. Good going, buddy.”

To Namjoon’s credit, even if he was the spy and was making a deliberate attempt to sabotage the game, he has enough common sense to look guilty about the whole thing.

Eventually after conferring with (read: whining to) the director, Jimin finally accepts that his hand didn’t count, and that you had lost the challenge on the final round.

“Director Lee, can we just give up another member for a penalty like we did with the egg challenge?” Taehyung’s great idea has all the team buzzing, and the director reluctantly agrees.

“I say no matter the outcome, we put Namjoon on the penalty since he made us lose,” Hoseok declares.

“That is, if he isn’t already the spy,” you remind them, winking at Namjoon, thoroughly enjoying his hunched shoulders of defeat.

“Missions seven and eight,” Director Lee cuts in, “take place at the Running Man studio. You currently have three hours and forty eight minutes left to complete your final two challenges and guess the identity of the spy in order to claim your reward.”

The cameras cut after a few moments, and you all file your way out of the building and back into the company van.

This time, you get tucked into the back row against the window, with Tae remaining fast against your side, and Jeongguk on the seat beside him. Jin and Namjoon steal the second row, and in the middle sit Jimin and Hoseok with Yoongi on the middle seat between them.

You haven’t spend much time in this neighbourhood, but you can vaguely guess that you’re about twenty minutes drive from the studio, which is in the city centre of Seoul.

You and Tae let Jeongguk lead the conversation, as he seems to be the only one of you three in the back with any energy still left. “What do you reckon we’ll do in the studios? I mean, by the time we get there we’ll still have more than three hours, so they must be pretty long to still make it a reasonable time constraint. If we have loads of time it’s no fun at all.”

You hum half-heartedly, content to enjoy the steady flashing of scenery outside the window.

Hoseok swivels in his seat to face you. “Nah, I think whatever this next one is will be fine, and they’ll have one really big one as a grand finale. This must be, what, two or three episodes all up? Plus the reward and penalty follow-up, whenever that happens. But who do you reckon the spy is?”

Jeongguk wriggles his nose in thought. “Well, if Oscar the Grouch over here,” he kicks the back of Yoongi’s seat for emphasis, “would give us his hint, we’d know better. But we know it’s not me, it’s not him and it’s not Jin. Not gonna lie, Hoseok, the rest of you have kind of all done a terrible job so far, so it could be any one of you. Namjoon messed up that last challenge, Y/n did a horrendous job of the water jug one, you can’t fry an egg to save yourself, and Jimin just always looks suspicious.”

“Hey!”

Taehyung is pulled back into the conversation. “What about me?”

“You’re right,” Jeongguk says, “you’ve been a pretty decent team player so far. But anyway,” he digresses, “it doesn’t matter who’s been bad up until this point. Whoever the spy is will reveal themselves soon enough. Eventually they’ll get desperate enough and try something crazy to stop us from winning. So we just have to sit back and wait.”

Jimin, still upset about the earlier comment, fires back. “You get excluded by the hint and all of a sudden you’re an expert, huh?”

“We’ve been doing this for two years, hyung!” Jeongguk huffs and collapses dramatically back in his seat, staring obstinately out the window. Unfortunately for Jeongguk, it is only a few moments later that you arrive.

The studio that you’re heading to is actually part of a full floor with several rooms on it. The actual studio is where filming takes place, but there’s also a boardroom, an editing room, a break room, and the various small offices of all the head staff. When you weren’t filming or planning, a lot of your time was spent there anyway, playing video games in the break room with Jeongguk, chilling out with a hot cup of tea with Tae, sneaking into the director’s office out of work hours to leave little notes with Hoseok, because he liked the thought of Director Lee arriving in his office only to see a handwritten note with a smiley face and a wobbly heart. This was really your home away from home, and it was fitting that the end of the game would take place here.

In order to make things a little clearer for you all, Lee spent a couple of minutes while equipment was being checked to talk through the logistics of the rest of the game. Both challenges remaining were in the studio, and then you’d take a break for an hour or so while the crew ran over the footage to make sure there was nothing that needed reshooting, before coming back together to finish off voting out the spy, and revealing the rewards and penalties for the game.

It was pretty common practice, you had discovered, to go back to a location later in the day or the week to redo bits and pieces. Sometimes somebody blocked a shot, or the wind ruined the audio, or mishaps occurred in the editing room. It always sucked to try and mimic what you did earlier, knowing that the sincerity of your responses wouldn’t be there. You didn’t think the fans noticed or cared, but for you it was a real downside of the job. Luckily enough, all the footage was fine, and since the studio equipment was always up, it never needed any double-checking. So, it was time to start.

The penultimate challenge was another short one, a classic game of Chinese whispers with headphones on, where instead of sharing sentences, you had to pass a classic dance move down the line, and have the final person guess the song it was from.

All of you managed to do well enough, and another victory was secured in fifteen minutes. This was the round, however, that you would receive the final hint on the identity of the spy.

“Hint number three,” Director Lee announced, “is that the spy used to dance professionally before joining the show.”

You scrunched your nose. Hoseok was a street dancer for several years before joining the variety show and Jimin went to a dance school and performed in a few shows held at his local theatre. None of the other guys had any experience in dancing.

You were, however, also a dancer before you came on. In fact, less than a year and a half ago you had been a member of your local dance academy, teaching part-time.

And the rest of the team knew it.

One by one, they craned their heads to look at you accusingly. You glare back at them. “We’re still on the clock, idiots. Let’s go!”

[bountyofbeads]

Mueller Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Label and Warns of Russian Meddling

https://nyti.ms/2YiERaF

"There is one incontrovertible truth about the Mueller Report. It establishes, together with the FBI and CIA investigations, that your President was elected, in part, by Russia. That, together with the fact that three million more Americans preferred his opponent, will forever taint this President. His legitimacy is, and should always be, a massive question mark."

JOHN DAVID JAMES, CANADA 🍁

"Has anyone reported on why Senator MCConnell refuses to allow any legislation that would safeguard the 2020 election to even come up for a vote?" JOANNA SMITH, SANTA FE, NM

"Robert Mueller is an old-style, patrician Republican who devoted much of his life to serving the interests of the United States. People such as him have been driven out of today's Republican Party. But what he did was impart damaging information about this President and his actions. There was obstruction and there was no exoneration. Perhaps more significant, he elicited responses from Republican Members of Congress that highlighted how the Republican Party has devolved into a Trump Cult that cares little about truth, integrity or foreign attacks on our Democracy." PAT CHOATE, TUSCON AZ

"Mueller did not say Russia would attack our election again, he said they were attacking us "as we speak." Meanwhile, Democrats have already passed the Election Security Act and have sent it to the Senate, which would help states defend their election systems from attack and require a paper ballot back-up. But McConnell refuses take it up in the Senate. The outcome of the 2020 election hinges on battleground states like Michigan, Ohio and Florida, which Russia targeted last time (with help from the Trump campaign). It appears that McConnell does not care to prevent Russian hacking in these states, perhaps because he knows they will help Trump win." SHERRY, WASHINGTON

"My takeaway from today’s hearings is that impeachment can wait. Trump is not going to be convicted by the Senate. Democrats should focus on defeating him at the ballot box. Mueller and everyone else in this country knows that the Russians will be back to to help Trump win again. That is why Mitch McConnell, the traitor of the Senate, one of many Republicans who put party over patriotism, is refusing to allow a bipartisan bill to shore up and protect our election machinery. No paper trails will tell us if the count in closely contested states or any other state is accurate. Should the results be close , particularly if the Democrat loses, who but Republicans will believe it. Democrats should start demanding this bill be passed. Mitch has gotten away with enough obstruction. Put the pressure on him every day. That includes during his month vacation in August." MARY BETH, MA

"Several GOP panelists derided the Mueller investigation as prolonged and costly. Cost of Mueller investigation? ... through seizures of ill-begotten assets (eg Manafort forfeitures), it has more than paid for itself! Contrast the GOP Benghazi investigation on Clinton that went on for 4 years! ... with no indictments and no counts ... none (and no asset seizures)! Mueller’s investigation wasn't even 2 years, and already with 37 indictments and 199 counts and several in trump’s inner circle charged and in prison with more imminent." JOHN TOWNSEND, MEXICO

"In much the same way Trump demeaned, denigrated a former First Lady and Secretary of State; today the Republican Party did the same to another public servant. No 74 year old, War Veteran, public servant deserved to be spoken to the way Mueller was by the Republicans who questioned him. But then again, we saw with McCain how much this administration respects veterans. Never wandering far from the low moral bar their POTUS has set, Republicans today once more demonstrated how much they respect what were once established values."

DENISE, NM

"Today, it was reiterated that the sitting US President, Donald Trump, is guilty of the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of colluding with the Russians to attain the US Presidency in 2016, and of committing and continuing to commit the obstruction of justice in covering up his collusion. What we also learned today is that the rump GOP that remains, after all this Trump carnage, of what used to be the proud party of Lincoln, is willing to lie, to shill and to defend this narcissistic Russian owned clown to their bitter end. Sad. Humiliating. Depressing." JOE MIKSIS, SAN FRANCISCO

"That Special Counsel Robert Mueller III made a very grave statement about Russian tampering in the 2016 election for President and Vice President of the United States should be a very loud, resounding alarm to every citizen of this country demanding the assurance from every Board of Election in each state that their vote casting system is tamper-proof. And if there is not a very vocal public outcry to demand free and safe elections in this country, we are sunk as a democracy. There is no democracy of one person - one (tamper-proof) vote in the United States if we have Russian or any other outside interference. And yes, I continue to believe Donald Trump's tax returns will see a direct link between Russian interference - in many forms - vote tampering, money schemes, loans, and potentially blackmail that will bring this house of cards down. I think Trump knows this and continues his daily and relentless twittering directed toward whomever is disturbing his house of cards at the moment . All of his twittering behavior is simply to distract from the truth - which will be found in his taxes. And finally, Special Counsel Mueller, in his 11 minute televised address two weeks ago stated:, "if we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." Another shocking statement that should be sounding very loud alarms. That statement is yet another reason to issue court orders to subpoena Trump’s taxes." KKM, NYC

"Some of the media coverage of Mueller’s testimony today bothers me as a person who appreciates the American Constitution. The idea that the testimony was ineffective is ludicrous. The house majority did an excellent job of refuting Trump’s claim that there was “no collusion”. They also did an excellent job of meticulously outlining the actions that constituted that collusion. When Republican representatives pushed Mueller on making a political statement with his report, he pushed back vehemently. The American people who watched this testimony now have the truth as opposed to the spin that came from the White House. Hopefully citizens who love this country will uphold our democracy in the next election and today’s testimony gives us all some truths to take to the ballot box as we make our individual decisions." RMWARD, CONNECTICUT

"This is the best account I've read about what I witnessed on the live stream today. The one thing that no news articles have mentioned — I am not seeing hard core critique of the questions that were asked and statements made. The Republicans have so intimidated news media by attacking everything as "partisan" and "political" that the media posit a false equivalency between what one party does versus another, so as to refer to the parties equally. Thus there is not one word spoken about the odiously misleading and false statements and questions by the Republicans, oftentimes loaded with conspiracy theories. It is a disgrace that legislators feed these accusations to the public, and the press says nothing. Nunes telling Mueller to his face that the investigation was a hoax??? These guys are out front with Trump feeding delusions to the public. Many media are making the big news that Mueller seemed indecisive or shaky in his answers, all the while this public disgrace of Republican accusations that are completely disconnected from reality parades before the cameras and goes unmentioned — or else portrayed as equal to the serious and studential questions and comments of the Democrats. There are dangers headed towards U.S. democracy like a freight train. Please do more to wake everyone up to the dangers of claims that flagrantly violate known facts."

ANNE SHERROD

"The fact is, there is no law to say you can't indict a sitting president, neither is there anything in the constitution to that effect. It is simply a DOJ opinion that has been passed down over the years. It is not a high bar to expect that your president has not committed a crime. The simple answer: render the president accountable to criminal justice just as every American is."

YesIKnowTheMuffinMan, NEW HOPE PA

"If Russia can do it to Clinton, China will do it to Trump (and I expect they will). The GOP are unbelievably naive. China is much more experienced and skilled."

CHARACTER COUNTS, USA

"Putin is grinning ear to ear." CINDY, SAN DIEGO CA

"The best we can do is gather a great Democratic Party strategy, pick a candidate that can stand up to trump and beat him solidly in the 2020 election. Muellers report should provide plenty of reasons why trump and his cronies must go. The Democratic Party must insure that the Russians or any foreign country does not hack our election again." DR B, BERKLEY, CA

"Most questions were long winded, hard to follow and self served, aimed to impress the electorate base and embarrass Mueller. Republicans in particular excelled in irrelevancy, ranging form brash accusations to white noise generators. To his credit, Mueller chose not to play along and stayed within the scope of even the least cohesive question. Posterity will remember, hopefully, Mueller for his uncompromising and professional stance, focus on the job and carelessness for his public image. Picture him side by side with the president, and try to take in the difference." MIROCAL, SEATTLE WA

"They’re doing it as we sit here,” Facebook knows more about you than your parents. And they package that knowledge as a target for the highest bidder. As a Target. You and I are Targets. Cambridge Analytica leveraged those Targets to help Trump win. The Russian Government leveraged those Targets to help Trump win. Dear regulators, as a part of the Facebook settlement, how about banning Targeted political ads? Sure, the Supreme Court has ruled, in Burson v Freeman, that blackout periods for political ads are unconstitutional. But, it says nothing about Targeted ads. When I'm shown an ad for or against a candidate, I want to see what everybody else sees. I want to see everybody's response to that ad. Is it fake? Is it fair? One of the worse policies for political speech was the removal of the fairness doctrine -- where broadcasters were required to give free time to opposing views. Well, at the very least, it should be a requirement that ads for public office are truly public. Not some kind of guided missive keyed to my private data. Regulators, are you listening?"

IKO, HERE

"I believed Mueller. I wouldn't believe Trump if my life depended on it. Indeed, I would depend on this fact: Trump will always lie. He THINKS his lies are a "force of nature." I suppose we will found out just how strong they are. Because they are now exposed. Anyone who believes them now has no more excuses. Whoever believes Trump belongs to Trump. They are bought and paid for." PAUL GLASSON, GA

"I am frankly beyond being disgusted with these shameful Republican congresspeople. While they may believe the best defense is a good offense, and are aggressively trying to steamroll and invalidate a legitimate investigative process, I am not buying what they are selling. No amount of money or power could make me behave in such a despicable fashion, and the fact that they seem to be immune from self loathing for their behavior indicates what type of people they are to their cores. They dishonor this country."

GMR, ATLANTA

Mueller Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Label and Warns of Russian Meddling

By Mark Mazzetti | Published July 24, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 24, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III on Wednesday publicly rejected President Trump’s criticism that the special counsel’s investigation was a “witch hunt” and defended his conclusions about the sweeping Russian interference campaign in 2016, warning that Moscow will again try to sabotage American democracy.

The partisan war over his inquiry reached a heated climax during hours of long-awaited testimony by Mr. Mueller before two congressional committees. Lawmakers hunted for viral sound bites and tried to score political points, but Mr. Mueller refused to engage on those fronts, returning over and over in sometimes halting delivery to his damning and voluminous report.

Mr. Mueller remained a spectral presence in Washington over the past two years as the president and his allies subjected the special counsel and his team of lawyers to withering attacks. Speaking in detail for the first time about his conclusions produced occasionally dramatic moments where he ventured beyond his report to offer insights about Mr. Trump’s behavior.

When asked whether Mr. Trump “wasn’t always being truthful” in his written answers to the special counsel’s questions, Mr. Mueller responded, “I would say generally.” He called Mr. Trump’s praise of WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign “problematic” and said it “gave a boost to what is and should be illegal activity.” He said that he and his team chose not to subpoena Mr. Trump out of concern that a battle over a presidential interview might needlessly prolong the investigation.

Democratic lawmakers had hoped that Mr. Mueller’s nationally televised testimony would provide a dramatic culmination to a yearslong saga: the special counsel translating the dense jargon of his report into a bleak portrait of the Russian interference operation and the president’s behavior since winning the election. The testimony would, in their minds, make the report both more authoritative and more vivid for Americans who had skipped reading it.

Some television pundits built up the drama by comparing Mr. Mueller’s appearance to some of the most galvanizing moments of the Watergate era.

For the most part, Mr. Mueller did not play along. He gave clipped answers to lengthy questions, and forced lawmakers to give their own dramatic readings of parts of his report rather than reciting the conclusions himself. He sometimes gave a forceful defense of his investigation and his team in the face of the Republican fusillade, but his answers were at times faltering. Throughout, he was careful to avoid straying from his report’s conclusions.

Mr. Trump has spent months characterizing the special counsel’s report as a “total exoneration,” though Mr. Mueller was careful on Wednesday to state that he and his team had drawn no such conclusion. The special counsel’s 448-page report, released in April, laid bare that Mr. Trump was elected with the help of a foreign power, and on Wednesday, Mr. Mueller was most impassioned when describing the contours of the Russian interference playbook.

“They’re doing it as we sit here,” he said of Russia’s tampering in American elections.

Looming over the hearing was the question of whether Mr. Mueller’s testimony might shift the ground in Congress and propel more lawmakers to push for Mr. Trump’s impeachment. Only one new call emerged for impeachment hearings by late afternoon Wednesday, from Representative Lori Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts, and lawmakers will soon depart Washington for a summer recess. It was too soon to say whether the spectacle would change Americans’ opinions about Mr. Mueller and his work that have only hardened over time, and whether Democrats would return to their districts and encounter more vigorous calls for Mr. Trump’s removal.

The questioning on Wednesday reflected a bitter philosophical divide, both on the committees and in the country as a whole: whether it was Mr. Trump, or those investigating him, who committed crimes. Throughout the day, the Democrats hit the high points from Mr. Mueller’s report: the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the efforts by Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller, the discussions between Michael T. Flynn and a Russian ambassador about Obama-era sanctions, the strategy by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to sow chaos before the election.

The Mueller report cataloged numerous meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russians seeking to influence the campaign and the presidential transition team — encounters set up in pursuit of business deals, policy initiatives and political dirt about Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent.

Mr. Mueller concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” to determine that the president or his aides had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the Russians, even though the Trump campaign welcomed the Kremlin sabotage effort and “expected it would benefit electorally” from the hackings and leaks of Democratic emails.

On Wednesday, Mr. Mueller was asked about the Trump Tower meeting, WikiLeaks and the decision by Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, to share campaign information with a Russian oligarch, and whether these episodes were a new normal for political campaigns.

“I hope this is not the new normal,” Mr. Mueller said, “but I fear it is.”

Republicans tried to flip the lens, peppering Mr. Mueller with questions about what they have long argued, with little evidence: that the F.B.I. opened a politically motivated investigation in 2016 with the aim of preventing Mr. Trump from becoming president. They focused on the research firm that commissioned the dossier by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. They focused on Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic identified by the special counsel as linked to Russian intelligence, and advanced unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Mifsud was actually under the sway of Western spy services.

Mr. Mueller mostly deflected those questions, saying the origins of the F.B.I. investigation predated his time as special counsel and was outside his purview.

Mr. Mueller was a reluctant witness and had tried to avoid the spectacle of a congressional hearing. In a brief public statement in May, he urged the public — and, by extension, members of Congress — to read his report, which he said “speaks for itself.” “The report is my testimony,” he said.

House Democrats were unmoved and chose to take the aggressive step of compelling Mr. Mueller’s testimony under subpoena.

[togafukagiftexchange]

Kaleidoscope and Barrikuya

@pinlc-candy: This is my gift for @die-einzelganger. I went with “Prompt #2 for fanfic *Supernatural powers (NEXT abilities, Stands, bending, etc.)” and when I told you that I was going into your t&b fic blind, I KIND OF told a lie - I had watched the movie by that point. I threw in a few minor ships that you mentioned liking, but it’s my first time writing one of them though i tried to do them justice. I really hope you enjoy this. <3 I had a lot of fun writing this.

During the day, Hope’s Peak City looked like a lost civilisation, washed out with grey and blue hues. Buildings towered over the intricate network of roads, dominating the endless stretch of sky, and many, many, statues dotted the city, but at night, the city’s mood advanced by centuries. Warmer hued colours consumed the city, a starving fire with an unsatisfiable appetite, stinking up the air with the smell of spices and smoke. Sleek, silver trains with long noses careered along rails that wound through the city, not bound to only ground level, whizzing far above people’s heads too. They operated during the day as well, but when darkness usurped the sky, they hurtled like shooting stars.

A loud thump above one of the carriages jolted everyone onboard. People tensed, clustering into little groups or huddling by themselves, and they tried to appear smaller by hunching their shoulders and stooping their heads a little, all except one person. This person, dressed in a grey tracksuit, gazed up at the roof with the rest of the passengers, but he didn’t stay still for long. He spun around and shoved his way toward the door at one end of the carriage, and everyone that he elbowed out of his way tumbled aside passively.

When he reached the door, loud screeching grated on the ears of those present. The man looked over his shoulder. Seconds later, two men dropped into the carriage through a hole ripped into the roof, wearing clothes that were as outstanding as the other man’s tracksuit intentionally wasn’t. One of the men was gangling and wore black with red accents on the joints, red boots, shoulder pads and gloves, and there was red on his eye mask that resembled part of the distinctive mark of a widow spider, and his crotch completed the pattern. His outfit was vaguely reminiscent of a cyclist’s attire.

Beside him, the other man’s maroon mask covered not just his eyes but his head and cheeks too, and his white outfit had a different pattern on the front, marked with brown lines, also like a cyclist’s attire. Most notable were his eyes, rendered completely black by his mask.

Whispers and shouts overcame the passengers in a frenzy.

“It’s the Green Widower and Bloodhound!”

The only green component of the man dressed mostly in black was his long hair, which was streaked with red dye, but Bloodhound lived up to his name, with the flaps on his mask resembling ears and his gloves bearing claws. They both stared at the man in the tracksuit.

“It’s the end of the line for you!” Bloodhound snarled, raising a fist in front of him.

“Not literally,” Green Widower pointed out with an awkward smile. He scratched at his chin. “There are several more stops and the train’s still moving, but you’ve got nowhere to run.”

As if fate slammed down its hand with ill-judgement, the train stopped and the doors either side of the carriage drew open. The man in the tracksuit dashed out, carrying a duffel bag under his arm, and he burrowed through crowds as he tried to flee.

From the helicopter looming overhead, he seemed ant-sized, but the camerawoman zoomed in and after some blurring, his image blew up and he came into focus.

“And the thief has disembarked,” announced a man sitting in the helicopter, holding a microphone to his mouth.

Beside him, his redheaded companion pointed her camera at the scene below, following the man in the tracksuit as he sprinted down a flight of steps and recording his every movement until he disappeared into the station building.

“Will Green Widower and Bloodhound, his partner in more ways than one, apprehend him?” the announcer wondered aloud. “Or will the thief get away with stolen diamonds worth millions? Stay tuned!”

A beat passed.

“All right, we’ve got one minute of commercials,” said the announcer, dropping the hammy pleasantness and volume. He touched two fingers to the side of his jaw, placing them below his earpiece. “Togami-shacho, what do we do?”

Across the city, a blond man in a suit stood in a room where monitors occupied an entire wall, each one showing different perspectives of the outside of the station in District Sixteen. By now, Green Widower and Bloodhound had followed the thief into the inside part of the station, and so couldn’t be seen anymore.

The blond man pushed up his square, white-framed glasses.

“Hey, Touko,” he said, and someone squeaked behind him. He didn’t turn around and folded his arms over his chest. “You know what to do.”

“R-Right,” said the same person who squeaked. Touko Fukawa was a head shorter than him and her aubergine hair was styled into two long twin braids. She adjusted her circular framed goggles and opened the compact mirror that she had been holding in one hand, in case a situation like this called for it.

Her brow furrowed in concentration, and her body began to sheen blue. Just as she started to lean into the mirror, it sucked her in, and immediately after, she was spat out into a tunnel. It seemed to go on forever either side of her, and she looked around, floating, weightless.

For all she knew, the tunnel did finish at some point, but she had never reached the end of it. Then again, she had never tried to because as soon as she found the right exit, she left. Touko had entered the tunnel through a paneless window, and many more plastered the surface area all around her, showing snapshots of a variety of scenes frozen in time. Their colours bled out beyond their screens and tinted Touko’s skin with their light. Her dark grey full body suit, which covered everything apart from her head, remained unaffected, as did the leather holster strapped to her right thigh. Even as a keen reader and an experienced fiction writer, Touko would struggle to fully describe such an otherworldly environment.

When she entered this separate dimension, a short commercial break had been taking place. The hit television show, ‘Hero TV’, would resume its broadcast once the break finished, but here, time didn’t seem to pass, not on the outside and not inside of it either. Or if it did, it passed very, very slowly, which she greatly preferred over returning to reality with hours unaccounted for, and Touko flew through the tunnel at a slow and steady pace, glancing this way and that, occasionally pausing to study a particular window before proceeding forward again.

After peeking through a lot of windows, she came across one that showed a grey wall with a dark green stripe running horizontal at the top. The image trembled. Part of a poster advertising an opera could be seen near the edge, and from the kind of poster and the colour scheme, she knew that this was her destination.

Touko kicked her legs and boosted herself toward the window, soaring through.

On the other side was a corridor in District Sixteen’s train station. She jumped out of a puddle and stumbled as she landed on solid ground. People dodged out of her way. Sparse crowds stopped to stare, and she glared at them, holding her tongue for professionalism’s sake. They should have been used to this by now. Her heart raced. So should she.

She grimaced and pressed a discreet notch on the rim of her goggles. A pinprick of green light lit up on that spot. The thief was nowhere in sight, so she hurried down the corridor, trying to avoid bumping into people, and swerved into the next one, already out of breath.

With every step, her heart bobbed up and down. For those watching the developments unravel in the comfort of their own homes, or on their phones as their train sped them to their next destination, they were only exposed to certain sights and sounds. They didn’t feel the bounce back of hard floor against her feet, the tightness in her chest and the pressure from indoor heating cranked too high.

In an attempt to help people get off at their stop when music or a crowded carriage could prevent other senses from alerting a commuter, each district’s station had been assigned a certain smell. Touko inhaled. The smell of beer hops wafted over her, but that couldn’t be transmitted to the viewers.

Even with the senses available to them, the audience listened to the music that the television company played, or the rumble of people picked up during recording. Whatever the show wanted them to hear, they heard. Not the ringing between Touko’s ears or her shallow, uneven panting, and they saw what Touko saw.

Her foot twisted a bit as she stepped forward, causing her to stagger. She flailed her arms, but managed to stabilise herself and kept going. As jittery as she was, she refused to disappoint the viewers and most importantly, him.

The announcer’s voice chirped in her earpiece.

“Welcome back to Hero TV, the go-to show for all your hero needs. For folks just tuning in, diamonds worth millions of yen was stolen from ‘Fora Selec Thew’, and our favourite superhero couple Bloodhound and Green Widower are hot on the criminal’s tail. As the first on the scene, they’ve bagged one hundred points, but will they rack up more and capture the crook? We bring this to you live from District Sixteen - ”

Footsteps spluttered at one end of the corridor. Touko was halfway down the corridor at this point. The footfall didn’t belong to someone on their way home after a busy day, or a worker heading to their night shift, but possessed a mantic energy, and when Touko whipped her head around, her eyes locked onto the thief. He lurched forward, heading her way with no care to who or what lay ahead of him.

As the distance between him and Touko shrunk rapidly, she stiffened. No way could she fight him, not with her slender frame, with her lack of fighting experience. All she could do was avoid being flattened and give chase. She scrambled out of the way, making sure her goggles kept recording him.

“Oi, piss-for-brains!” yelled Bloodhound from the ceiling, back-to-back with Green Widower, their arms hooked at the elbows.

“P-Piss-for-brains?” Touko said, wrinkling her nose, but Bloodhound hadn’t been talking to her.

The thief glanced back but kept running. While Bloodhound’s legs were tucked up toward his chest, Green Widower carried him on his back and sprinted across the ceiling in a way that he always had one foot touching it. Blue light emitted from Green Widower’s body, like that which had been around Touko when she entered her mirror and until just after she had fully risen out of the puddle.

Bumping into people slowed down the thief, while Green Widower had no one to evade on the ceiling. Therefore, Green Widower easily overtook him.

Bloodhound unlinked their arms and slammed down onto the anti-slip platform panels below, not far from the thief. He bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. The thief widened his eyes and bolted off, with the spectators too stunned to change from their passive role, some even side-stepping to let him pass so they wouldn’t get run over.

With great speed, Bloodhound stampeded over and leaped forward, tackling the thief to the floor. They rolled but in the end, Bloodhound was on top. Above them, Green Widower stopped glowing and fell from the ceiling. He flipped in midair and landed expertly on the same surface as everyone else.

“And Bloodhound and the Green Widower have caught the bad guy!” roared the announcer as the spectators erupted into cheers.

Green Widower cupped the back of his head and waved his other hand with a sincere but creepy smile, which if it had a noise, would have been nails down a chalkboard. Bloodhound sat on the thief, posture stooped, and leered at no one in particular. He might have been trying to smile.

“Oi,” came the voice of the blond man with white glasses from Touko’s earpiece. “Get closer. We need some shots of our sponsors’ logos.”

Touko nodded, shaking the camera in her goggles by doing so, and approached them. On Green Widower’s chest, in black font, was the name of a Chinese restaurant, and on Bloodhound’s chest, over his heart, was the emblem for Bepsi.

“And our company name too,” said the blond man.

She shifted slowly and made sure to get the writing on their shoulders, as instructed. Across one shoulder in kanji and in romaji on the other, in gold text, on both costumed men, was ‘Togami’.

*****

In the sea of buildings that made up Hope’s Peak City was a tower called Togami HQ. It belonged to a young billionaire who had taken over the company from his father a few years ago. Or, rather, the position had been thrust upon him after his parent’s sudden death. Touko remembered that the very next day, he had come in, not taking even one day off despite what happened. He had thrown himself into his work more so than usual and continued to power through with the same level of formidable diligence to this day. People had doubted that a boy fresh out of high school would cope, no matter what his father had insisted should happen in the event of his demise, but the company had since thrived like it had never done before.

The automatic doors yawned open. Air conditioning hummed in the blue-hued room. Byakuya Togami took a few paces forward, leaving enough space behind him that Touko could follow him in. A silver-haired maid darted past them to the table, put down a tray, and bowed before leaving. Seconds later, the doors shut.

Further in, already seated at the table, were two men. One looked like a standard businessman. Short, dark hair, plain suit with tie, and the only bit of colour on him was his dark purple tie. His companion, in contrast, seemed like an eccentric time traveller dressed up for Britain in the 1960’s, and wore a white suit accented with orange, a few of his shirt buttons unfastened at the top, a matching trilby hat and a loosened tie. The first man turned his stony gaze on the new arrivals while the other man gave a crooked smile and saluted lazily with one hand.

“Don’t worry, we weren’t waiting too long,” promised the second man. As he inclined his head forward, his scraggly blond hair, hanging limply down to his chin, swayed a bit. He pinched the rim of his hat and twitched it.

“I wasn’t worried,” Byakuya told him.

Byakuya pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him. Touko dragged out another chair and seated herself a short distance away from the table. She plucked a pen from behind her ear and positioned the nib at the top of her clipboard. He crossed one leg over the other and poured himself some green tea from the teapot on the tray. Three other cups flanked the teapot still.

What reason would Byakuya have to be worried?

“I’m not the one with anything to prove,” said Byakuya. “All I’m losing is time that I could be spending elsewhere.”

The man with the hat chuckled. He slouched, resting his chin in his hand and hiding his goatee from view. His blue eyes studied Byakuya with a gleam.

“I assure you, Togami, this is a proposal that you will be very interested in,” said the plain-looking man.

“We’ll see.” Byakuya pursed his lips.

Touko jotted down everything being said.

“My name is Jin Kirigiri,” said the plain-looking man. He gestured toward his companion. “And this is Koichi Kizakura. Currently, I head a private tutoring company for Noted Entities with Extraordinary Talents. NEXT, as people call them. We currently have five students.”

“But with some funding, we could train more,” said Koichi as he rubbed his index finger and thumb together. His wide grin distorted the shape of his thin moustache, and the skin by his eyes crinkled.

“So you’re after money for your school,” said Byakuya bluntly. Touko flung a dirty look their way.

Koichi remained slouched and flapped a hand. “Ah, but it’s not like it’s all going toward alcohol, is it? This is something even more important. The Togami Conglomerate is a fair way down the scoreboard despite owning HERO TV, and it has mostly been the same two heroes doing all the work... and they’re getting on in age.”

His eyes stayed just as playful but his smile became more subdued. More like a smirk.

“We’re astute guys, but I’m sure other people have noticed too,” said Koichi. “NEXT are a fairly new phenomenon. They’ve only been cropping up in the last few decades, and younger, fitter people in their prime are going to be the ones bagging all the points, not middle-aged men. By the way, can we smoke in here?”

All of that, even the last request, was spoken in the same casual tone.

“No,” said Byakuya.

Koichi sighed and got out a lollipop from his chest pocket. He unwrapped the plastic and stuck the sweet into into mouth. His tongue pushed it to one corner of his mouth. It clacked against his teeth.

“So what do you say?” asked Jin.

“That was ‘no’ to both your requests,” said Byakuya icily. “Bloodhound has the ability to track people by their smell, as long as he has access to something that they have touched within the last twenty-four hours. That’s why he was first on the scene and him and Green Widower were able to pursue him. We don’t need more heroes.”

“But what if it wasn’t a petty thief they were chasing?” asked Koichi. He removed his lollipop and wagged it, pointing the sweet end at Byakuya. “Are your heroes capable of handling all possible crimes? Assault? Kidnap? Murder? Terrorism? Those are the crimes that people are most concerned about. Recovering a few diamonds won’t net you big points, like catching a bloodthirsty killer like Genocider Syo would.”

Touko accidentally scribbled a jagged line across the page. Byakuya’s face betrayed nothing.

“How many NEXT have you got?” asked Koichi. He began counting off his fingers. “There’s those two, and your gloomy assistant...”

She glared. Byakuya’s nostrils flared.

“Better gloomy than a vagrant,” hissed Touko.

Koichi’s eyebrows rose. His lollipop froze in place for a few seconds, and then he returned it to his mouth.

Jin squared his shoulders, regarding Byakuya with flinty eyes.

“We’ve done our research, Togami. Those two aren’t your biggest point-getters. They’re your only ones,” said Jin. “And new heroes are going to be coming onto the scene. Some already have. With us, you would have a steady stream of heroes who have been trained and will continue training while representing you.”

Touko glanced at Byakuya, whose brow had creased. He stared downward, drumming his fingers against his arm, and finally raised a hand to his chin.

“You have five students?” Byakuya asked without looking up. Koichi lifted his head a fraction.

“Would you like to see them in action?” asked Jin. “We’ve brought them with us, so we can provide a demonstration of our work. If you got the Green Widower, Bloodhound and your assistant together, we can show them off in a friendly spar.”

For a few seconds, Touko noted down what was being said, but when her mind caught up to the present, she tensed violently and jerked her head up.

“Don’t make such demands!” Touko snapped, gripping her pen tightly. “I don’t fight. I can’t fight. I won’t fight. That’s not - ”

“Fine,” said Byakuya. He met their eyes calmly. “Let’s go somewhere more spacious. There’s an abandoned factory just outside of the city that will be sufficient.”

Touko squealed, jumped up, slapped her clipboard against her legs, and bowed so deeply that her braids flopped down and smacked the floor. “I’ll be r-right there!”

She held her position. Kokichi scratched his temple.

Jin blinked a few times before saying, “That was a quick change of heart.”

Her body straightened.

“That’s not it. My heart is always with Byakuya-sama, you see,” explained Touko, hugging her clipboard.

Koichi cracked a grin. Byakuya continued gazing into space.

*****

Up until a few years ago, the building that Touko, Byakuya and everyone else walked into used to be a clothing factory until a fire devastated it, killing tens of people. She had woken up here once before, some time after the tragedy, and she had left in a daze. To some, that might have sounded shocking, but this sort of thing used to be a regular occurrence for her. Above their heads loomed a network of support beams, the blue metal discoloured by heat and with rust in places. The factory consisted of two floors, but the upper floor had been particularly ravaged and mostly destroyed, so much of the grubby arched roof was viewable. Streaks of light seeped through misshapen holes and crevices, and dust particles danced ring o’ roses in the spotlights.

A low whistle blew behind them. Touko turned and as she expected, Koichi had let off that sound. He cradled the back of his neck as he inspected their surroundings with Jin, who permanently looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a long time. With them were the five students that they claimed to have. They all wore a uniform appropriate for gym class, comprising of sneakers, a white t-shirt and navy unisex long-legged shorts. Two of the girls came to an expected height for people in their late teens or early twenties, a male fitted a standard height for those like him, and the last two, a woman and a man, surpassed their companions’ heights, but only the woman was taller than Byakuya. Just one of the girls was shorter than Touko.

“So these are the runts, huh?” asked Bloodhound, shorter than two of the five. He cracked his knuckles and showed off his teeth wolfishly. “You got their parents’ consent forms on ya? Extra packs of diapers?”

“They’re all around the same age as your boss,” Koichi pointed out while a few of the students glared, though the others seemed equally unamused, but Bloodhound blanked Koichi, eyeing the students like they were helpings on a platter.

The tallest male, who had a brown pompadour that had gone out of fashion before people even knew about the existence of NEXT, strained to keep his composure, hiking up one end of his mouth in a tight, lopsided smirk.

“These are the guys we’re meant to be beating up?” asked the male. “Their hips will probably break if we breathe out too much air near them. This feels like elder abuse.”

Green Widower jolted his head back like he just received an electric shock, features asymmetrical, while Bloodhound’s jaw clenched and his cheeks began to fill with pink.

“Remember, you’re representing our school,” warned Jin, but Byakuya apparently didn’t share this complaint in regards to his own heroes. He turned to Byakuya with the closest to a smile that he had given so far. “I’ll let our students introduce themselves. Shall we give them some space?”

Jin held his hands behind his back and without waiting for an answer or even acknowledgement, he retreated to one of the walls. Byakuya and Koichi did the same, standing themselves either side of him.

“You may begin,” said Jin.

The two groups of NEXT faced each other.

“Three against five?” said Green Widower, oozing a grin. “That’s not fair on you guys, is it? You’d need at least double our number to suffer a defeat that isn’t humiliating.”

Touko hesitated, but it didn’t take her long to count to three. Chills drenched her. Right. She had agreed to join in. Still, her first instinct was to run for cover or cower, but her legs wouldn’t budge and other than trembling, her body wouldn’t respond. The first person to move was the shortest woman, who leaped into the air with her hands above her head.

At the peak of her jump, the woman tilted so she was upside down, and she plummeted downward with her arms still stretched out beyond her head. Touko and her teammates braced themselves, but the woman didn’t go near them and dived into the ground like one would dive into a swimming pool.

Exactly like that. Her body glowed a gentle blue as the ground swallowed her whole, leaving behind no crumbs, no splatter. The trio squinted at the ground, while their opponents’ countenance didn’t change at all.

“W-Where did she go?” asked Touko, squeezing her hands together tightly.

Bloodhound sniffed ungraciously. His face remained screwed.

“I can’t smell her,” he said, and moments later, a large diamond crashed into him. He rolled several times. Touko shrieked and bent forward with her hands on her head.

The diamond didn’t bounce or tumble like Bloodhound. It hovered for a moment where it had smashed into Bloodhound and then transformed into the tallest of the men, the one with the pompadour. When he landed, small clouds of dust poofed by his feet, and he gritted his teeth, but he wasn’t in pain - the corners of his lips twisted upward.

Green Widower gasped and staggered over to Bloodhound with a hand extended, but then the woman who had vanished shot up from the ground just in front of Green Widower, and she dealt a punch to the underside of his chin.

He stumbled back with a yelp, and losing his balance, he fell down with an additional squawk.

“Impressed?” Jin asked Byakuya at the edge of the factory.

Byakuya’s smooth features were unreadable. Jin turned back to watch the fight.

Touko looked this way and that, hugging herself. Bloodhound had returned to his feet and thrown himself into a fistfight with the pompadour guy, who was able to turn parts of his body into diamond, ideal for punches and body parts that he predicted Bloodhound would aim at. Both exchanged heated cuss words between huffs as their strikes whooshed and thudded.

Nearby, Green Widower dodged the next attack from the woman who could flit in and out of the ground as she pleased like it was water. He swung a fist at the woman and caught her on the cheek. She tottered to the side and before she could recover from the first hit, Green Widower continued on his onslaught, dealing blow after blow, and though he lacked Bloodhound’s raw power and ferverence, his fighting style involved a lot of unpredictable movements, almost like he was breakdancing, his limbs jutting at strange angles as he glided from one stance to the next, sometimes striking, sometimes feigning. On top of that, or maybe partly due to that, the woman seemed to be in a stunned state, mesmerized, and she only managed to clumsily block some of his attacks until she fell onto the ground, not into it.

The remaining three students had been standing back up to this point. One of the women had long violet hair and wore dark purple gloves, while the other had scraggly white hair and leathery skin. Despite her appearance, the woman with white hair didn’t seem older than the others, and her hair thrashed against her back as she rushed over to Green Widower. She wasn’t just tall but wide as well, yet despite her heavy footsteps, she didn’t emit a single sound. Therefore, she was able to reach Green Widower without him hearing her approach, and she kicked his back hard. He was tossed through the air like a ragdoll and smacked painfully into a wall.

With Green Widower down at least for the time being, Bloodhound preoccupied with his own fight and Touko keeping to herself, the woman with white hair dropped to one knee next to the woman able to swim through solid matter, and she cupped the back of the smaller woman’s head, gently lifting it, while her other held her companion’s hand.

“Are you all right, Asahina?” asked the white-haired woman. She brought her head closer, causing her hair to brush against the cheek of who could only be Asahina, the white hair standing out starkly against Asahina’s skin.

“I’m fine,” said Asahina, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail. A paperclip kept her fringe in check. The white-haired woman smiled softly and helped Asahina up.

Touko turned away from them and watched the other fight taking place. Bloodhound reeled back and looked past his opponent. He spotted the downed Green Widower.

“Yuusuke!” he bellowed, and he sprinted over even though the man with the pompadour was more than able to continue their brawl. Bloodhound’s footsteps pounded and he pulled back his fist, growling, but halfway there, he was ripped from the ground by an invisible force.

The shorter of the two men had his arm stretched forward, and as he slowly raised it, Bloodhound elevated too. All Bloodhound could do was cycle his legs uselessly through the air, only able to make small movements side-to-side as he squirmed. His captor had a very serious face. Between his thick eyebrows, his skin puckered, and his red eyes were absolutely focused.

No matter how much Bloodhound flailed, he couldn’t break free, and the man with the pompadour charged toward him, kicking off the ground on the way over. Mid flight, he changed into diamond, and he ploughed into Bloodhound. Both collided into the ground together.

Only the man with the pompadour rose afterwards.

He swaggered over to his teammates. Touko gripped herself tighter and her feet dragged as she shuffled backward. She made sure to keep everyone in her field of vision. Her body shook as she got out her compact mirror from under her clothes, dipping her hand down her neckline, and her eyes darted about frantically in search of a reflective surface.

Across the open room, the violet-haired woman who up to now had kept to the sidelines now finally strode forward. Blue light flickered across her body and she summoned an ogre three times as big as the white-haired woman.

The ogre fixed its eyes on Touko and ran toward her. Touko could have used her mirror to escape. She should have used her mirror to escape and gone far, far away from here. But Touko, who had barely any fighting experience, who had been hit too many times since she had been a child, froze up, and she watched the ogre’s fist sail toward her.

To her surprise, the ogre passed through Touko harmlessly, not pounding a hole in her like she expected, or leaving any mark. Not a single hair moved on her and her skirt didn’t flutter even once, but though she didn’t feel anything, she shrieked and blanched. Straight after, the white-haired woman tried to follow up with her own attack, but her fist stopped just short of Touko. There was a loud crack and the woman flipped back, landing beside her teammates. Blue electricity rippled in front of Touko across an otherwise invisible plane floating in front of her, rectangular and wide enough to shield Touko. It had almost certainly appeared there prior to the ogre’s attack.

Koichi and Jin stared for a short while, and then in unison, they turned to Byakuya.

His body glowed blue. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“You’re a NEXT too?” Jin exclaimed.

Byakuya didn’t bother answering. He ran forward and positioned himself between Touko and the invisible shield, with his back toward her. The ogre leered down at them.

Touko trembled. Her legs wobbled. In a small voice, she said, “B-Byakuya-sama...”

“Don’t just stand there, you dolt,” he said. The ogre punched him, but its hand carried on going through him like it had done with Touko. He turned his head so she could see half of his face and added, “It’s an illusion. It can’t hurt you.”

“Right,” said Touko. Next to Byakuya, she felt calmer and safe, and was torn between swooning and passing out with relief.

Asahina balled her hands into fists.

“Kirigiri-chan’s powers might be illusions, but ours aren’t!” Asahina cried out.

She dived into the ground, and she wasn’t the only one on the move. The pompadour guy lowered his head, like a bull about to gallop forward, and his male companion began to glow blue.

Like Bloodhound, Touko started to drift upward due to an unseeable force created by the man with the thick eyebrows. Byakuya hurled out his arm and launched a spray of invisible shards at him, each individual one smaller than the plane that he summoned before. In order to avoid them, the male had to sacrifice his concentration, and Touko was freed. Her feet returned to the ground. Some of the shards fired by Byakuya sliced the man’s skin, and he cringed and touched a hand to a wound on his cheek.

Blood. Touko averted her eyes, feeling woozy. If she stared too long, she would faint, and if she fainted, her other self would take over, and Touko didn’t want that. She couldn’t let that happen. Her desire to protect Byakuya hardened her resolve.

Byakuya activated his powers and formed a shield beneath him and Touko. He levitated it with them on it, lifting them off the ground, and Touko drew closer to his side.

Asahina emerged from the ground underneath them, but by then they had risen high enough that she couldn’t reach them even by jumping. Despite being able to swim through solid matter, she seemed unable to fly. Her fingers couldn’t even skim the platform, and she winced when she touched down again. Though Green Widower had been defeated, Asahina hadn’t left their fight unscathed.

The white-haired woman squatted and then leaped up. She was able to attain a height much greater than Asahina, but when she threw a punch at them, her fist rammed into something solid.

A wave of blue light swept through the transparent flat surface between her and the other two. Byakuya had generated another barrier. It didn’t break, dent or even shake, and the woman swooped back down to join the others on the ground. The man with the thick eyebrows turned his attention onto the pompadour guy, and he floated him over to Touko and Byakuya, suspending him in mid-air above them.

When he was high enough, the man with the thick eyebrows released him. During the fall, the man with the pompadour changed into diamond, but even someone with his hardness rebounded off the barrier without doing it any damage. Touko watched the man revert back to normal as he fell. She shivered. Byakuya had surrounded himself and Touko with barriers from all sides in a box structure, but though they had protected themselves from their opponents, they couldn’t safely leave either. They had reached a deadlock.

“Can you see any reflective surfaces?” muttered Byakuya.

Touko raised a hand to her forehead and studied the factory. Places that the Sun didn’t touch were as dark and dull as her outfit, and she shook her head. Even if she could travel to another area in the factory, all she would be able to provide was a distraction, and against five opponents, that wouldn’t help because with their number, they could deal with more than one person at a time. Maybe if Green Widower and Bloodhound were up, then they could have come up with a plan, but they showed no signs of rejoining the battle.

The woman with white hair picked up Asahina. Her palm cushioned Aoi’s behind, and she drew back her arm, readying a throw.

They didn’t know if Asahina could travel through barriers, but now was a bad time to find out.

Slow claps echoed from the side of the room. Touko and Byakuya turned, and so did the students. Asahina remained in the palm of the woman with white hair.

Jin lowered his hands and strolled over. Koichi sauntered toward them with his hands in his pockets. Both grinned.

“I hope that taster whetted your appetite,” said Jin. He didn’t shout, but the large room carried his voice. His violet eyes stared up at them. Touko noted that they were same colour as the eyes of the girl with violet hair who could create illusions.

Someone groaned nearby. The sound came from Green Widower. He raised his head groggily.

“These students and more would represent your company,” said Jin, not breaking eye contact with Byakuya. In the background, the man with the pompadour dabbed a handkerchief against the cheek of the man with thick eyebrows. “We would also be happy to have Green Widower and Bloodhound help train the new recruits, and our training wouldn’t be just for those we take on... but for the four of you too.”

“I’m not a fighter,” grumbled Touko, but Byakuya was holding his chin thoughtfully as he gazed down at Jin.

Green Widower limped over to Bloodhound and helped him up. Both were conscious.

“Togami, you were incredible,” said Jin. “And with us, we could unlock your full potential.”

Touko bristled.

“I’m here too!” she said, but she couldn’t disagree with Jin. “And of course Byakuya-sama was incredible. It’s a given, right? He’s perfect.”

She fidgeted, beaming widely, well aware of her face warming and unashamed of it.

Koichi gave a short laugh.

“Fukawa-chan’s not too shabby either. We’ve seen her on Hero TV,” said Koichi. He winked and whipped a hand out of his pocket to point up at Touko. “Her form-fitting non-glitzy outfit stands out, and she has a useful power too. After hearing some interviews - ” - which Touko rarely gave, so at least some of those must have been with other people - “I think ‘Kaleidoscope’ would be a good crimefighter name. And Togami-san could be Barrikuya.”

Touko pulled a face.

“I’m not a superhero,” she reminded everyone, but she fizzled out when Byakuya shot an icy look at her. He turned back to Jin and swished a hand.

“That name is stupid, but I suppose I can hear out the finer details of your proposal over dinner,” Byakuya drawled.

Jin’s previous smiles were up for interpretation, but this one was definite, and he bowed. “You won’t regret it, Togami.”

Byakuya finally lowered the barrier carrying him and Touko to the ground, and when he took a step forward, he revealed that the other barriers had disappeared too. Asahina slipped onto her friend’s shoulder. Bloodhound and Green Widower hobbled over with their arms around each other.

The man who could turn into diamond faced them. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Um... Sorry about all that. I get carried away when I’m fighting sometimes.”

Bloodhound sneered with a bloody nose. Touko wished he would clean himself, or at the very least get his husband to do it for him.

“If I were a few years younger...” He trailed off. The tension in Bloodhound’s face faded and he broke into a grin. “But today’s today, yeah? And this is nothing a little time in a healing pod won’t fix. You’re not bad, kiddo. You’ve got potential. You all do.”

He gave them a thumbs up and guffawed. Then he had a coughing fit. Green Widower looked at him worriedly, and only once Bloodhound recomposed himself did Green Widower relax a bit.

“Thanks,” said the pompadour-bearing guy, equally cheerful, and he returned Bloodhound’s gesture by thrusting up his thumb. “Hey, Togami, how’s about I buy us all a round of beer? My treat. We did a number on your heroes and I know we didn’t land a hit on you or your girlfriend, but she looked pretty freaked out, and I feel kinda bad about that.”

Toward the end of his offer, the man’s face darkened a little, though he maintained his smile. A muscle jumped in Byakuya’s cheek but he said nothing back.

“G-Girlfriend!” Touko said, hands over her heart. Bloodhound ignored her.

“Are you even old enough to drink?” Bloodhound asked.

“Don’t make me give you another thrashing,” responded the man with the pompadour but without any malice, and they both burst out laughing.

Asahina turned to the white-haired woman, who shrugged. The one with violet hair folded her arms over her chest and the man with thick eyebrows tilted his head to one side.

“I’m done here,” said Byakuya. He adjusted his glasses and marched toward the doors leading out of the factory. Touko hurried after him.

Koichi cupped a hand beside his mouth and craned his neck. “So that’s dinner and beer, right? Is tonight good?”

“Tonight is fine,” said Byakuya, not wavering in his pace.

Touko and Byakuya continued on in silence, but just before they arrived at the doors, Byakuya stopped, and Touko halted abruptly right after.

“One more thing.” Byakuya whipped his head around. His eyes narrowed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

He grabbed her left wrist and raised her arm, to better show off the ring on one of fingers.

“She’s my fiancée.”

[sehunsmuabrows]

Superstar// Byun Baekhyun part. 2

Pairing: Baekhyun x Reader

Genre: ??? angst ???

Word count: 1,716

Summary: You haven’t been back home since your career took off and a huge breakup. After traveling around the world, you return home to see that your ex boyfriend has achieved his dreams.  

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

You were a mess, at least on the inside. You wanted to scream and cry when you finally made it outside of the arena, but your common sense told you to hold it together until you got home. However, as you walked through the crowded parking lot, you noticed the stand selling merchandise for the concert. Seeing Baekhyun’s face plastered onto posters and fans set something off inside you. All sensibility left your body as you angrily marched to the front of the stand, slapping your credit card onto the table and pointing to the life size cardboard cutout of Baekhyun.

“How much is the cut out?” You asked through gritted teeth, staring the poor cashier down. He quickly told the price and rung you up, hesitantly handing you the large cut out, seemingly curious as to why you were so angry about your purchase. You text Areum telling her that a family emergency had come up and you decided to take the bus home so that she didn’t freak out when she realized that you were gone.

The bus ride was uncomfortable, seeing as you had hauled a cardboard cutout and it was taking up half of the isle. You knew that you were being irrational and childish when you decided to buy the cutout, but you figured that it would be a good object to take out your frustration on.  You stomped through the apartment building, avoiding the curious eyes of the nosy elderly couple that live next door. You could feel their judgement, but it didn’t bother you as much due to the amount of emotions you were dealing with.  

Areum had replied to your message and told you that she wouldn’t be home until late, so you soon found yourself on the couch watching exo performances with tub of ice cream, a stack of papers to grade, and a scowl on your face. You felt twenty-two  again while you were watching his performances on the tv, fist tightening on your spoon whenever the camera zoomed in on your ex. You formed a routine in order to distract yourself from thoughts of Baekhyun, deciding that one paper graded earned you one kick to cardboard Baekhyun. Eventually, cardboard Baekhyun had gotten pretty beaten up and you realized how immature you were acting.  He was allowed to succeed in life and move on from you, he was allowed to be happy. You chanted this to yourself as you picked up the trashed cutout and stuffed it into a large trash bag, putting it beside the trashcan in the kitchen for it to be taken out on trash day. You didn’t want to be bitter any longer, so you decided to work on the slides for your next lecture. Unfortunately, before you could get yourself completely together, Areum burst into the room with all her might, causing you to whip your head in her direction. You watched as she scoured the room, looking at you suspiciously. As she analyzed you, you realized that you probably looked extremely disheveled, since you just got done having a bit of a temper tantrum. She slammed her hands onto the arm of the couch, staring into your soul. Her eyes caused you to cower slightly, she was quite intimidating when she was serious.  “Would you like to explain to me what that was about? And why are you crying, weirdo” Her question was fair, seeing as she knew none of your family knew you number, or that you were even in the country, so there was no way that you would be aware of any family emergencies.

You exhaled loudly, letting a few more tears flow down your face, “I ran into my ex today” you spoke honestly. You had never cried in front of Areum before, but she didn’t respond awkwardly. All the irritation left her eyes as she pulled you into a hug, the sudden contact surprised you, but you leaned into her nonetheless.

“Oh my god, are you okay? They didn’t do anything to you right?” She watched you closely, searching for any sign of trauma. You shook your head furiously in response to her question, Baekhyun would never hurt you. Physically at least.

“No no, nothing like that, I just saw him for the first time since we broke up, we didn’t end on good terms.” She nodded in understanding, hugging you even closer. You didn’t want to tell her who he was because you knew it would probably get her fired up, but you still wanted to vent to someone. “It’s been some years since we split, but I was really in love with him, he said he loved me back but I guess my sister’s pretty lovable too” you chuckled bitterly at the end, thinking of your sister and how different she was from you. You looked similar in many ways, even your mannerisms matched each other, but that was where the similarities ended. Areum’s face contorted in disgust.

“You deserve better than that scumbag, don’t waste your tears on him” she sighed out as she rubbed your back, trying to console you. “You should probably get to bed, you have a long day tomorrow” she said, pushing you up towards your room. You looked at her in confusion “I looked at your schedule remember” She smiled down at you with a hint of sadness in her eyes. You didn’t want her pity, but you expected it regardless.  

Since seeing you in the crowd, Baekhyun had been distracted. He didn’t know what to do when he saw you, having the urge to grab your arm and pull you back before you stormed off but knew that it would produce bad results for both of you. His mind was elsewhere, wondering why you had come to his concert just to run away, and why you seemed so surprised that he was there. He did his best to mask his frustration through the rest of the show, faking his smiles and hoping that he was being convincing enough. He wasn't convincing at all, as he came to find out while looking through his phone, seeing that #cheer up baekhyun was trending on twitter. The other members had started to tiptoe around him, noticing that he was on edge, until Jongin had come up to him with a soft expression on his face. “Um, so I noticed that there was this girl in the crowd that looks alot like the one in that picture in your room. Are you alright?” He asked nervously, put off by Baekhyun’s oddly serious stare.

“Yeah” He answered shortly, walking off to change out of his stage outfit. He had lost all contact with you the day of your breakup, seeing as you had changed your phone number and disappeared from his life in one fell swoop, cutting him off and shutting him out immediately. He made an effort to keep up with how you were doing, he knew that you were touring the world lecturing and promoting your new book. He had even bought the book and promoted it on his instagram, hoping that you would see it and reach out. That only led him to finding out that your social media was handled by a publicist and not yourself after receiving a robotic direct message thanking him for the promotion. He attended one of your lectures when both of your tours had managed to sync and had you both in the same city, but the lecture hall was much too large for you to notice him through the sea of people. All of his attempts to re-enter your life had failed and he was lost in the smoke of a fire that he started himself. But now that he knew you were in Seoul, he wasn’t going to let this opportunity go to waste.

You woke with a start as your alarm went off loudly. You began to freak out, getting dressed rapidly because you usually wake up before the alarm. The alarm was to let you know it was time to leave. You quickly put your hair into a bun and did your makeup, doing your best to make yourself look put together. Your legs were sore from standing in line for hours and your eyes were tired from crying the night before. Today is going to be very long, you thought to yourself as you pulled out of the driveway and drove towards your first meeting  of the day.

You weren’t wrong about the day being long. You endured three different staff meetings, two lectures, and twenty students attempting to argue for their grade. For whatever reason, some students entered your class expecting for it to be an easy A, due to the interesting topics and open ended subject matter, but there is a right way to do things. You finally made it to your last class of the day and you were relieved, having fun with the lecture, as it was a more captivating subject, and you had a small amount of students. “One of the most difficult concepts that we’ll deal with this semester is the effect of mass media on personal behavior. How has media shaped our culture, and how it will continue to shape us. Who here has an Instagram account?” you paced as you spoke, switching slides as you went through your speech. Several hands raised at your question, causing you to smirk slightly. “The use of social media has become so widespread, that it has begun to shape and change our culture in ways that we would not have thought possible 50 years ago. It is only logical to wonder how this will change how we interact face to face with one another. Do any of y-”  you were cut off by the sound of the door creaking open slowly. The face that emerged from the door rendered you speechless as he walked through to an empty seat in the front, sickeningly confident. All eyes were on Baekhyun, when he sauntered in, you assumed all of your students must have recognized him, seeing that their jaws went slack. You must have looked angry, Baekhyun visibly shuddered when he made eye contact with you. This has been a very long day, you thought.

previous | next

[nate-gibson]

Week 6

04/05/2020 Monday Today we went through our narratives that we thought up over the weekend, after a brief discussion of new story ideas we decided to stick with our original idea of a normal office with the player having to complete x amount of tasks, while the character progresses through the story the NPC’s and environment will also change to show our theme of dissociation (further research in previous blogs). We needed this in order to remember our vision for the project as we had forgotten what we were working on. We next decided to think of tasks that the player needs to complete, since all the progress we’ve made hasn’t been towards game play. 4 tasks were decided on today: 1) Popup Scene. 2) Coffee Scene. 3) Microwave Scene. 4) Printer Scene. We will go more in depth on these task tomorrow. Since we were about to start making the tasks I decided to get player movement working, I did so using the following video: Unity VR Movement

05/05/2020 Tuesday Went into more detail for scenes: In the Popup Scene the idea was for the player to approach his computer, enter his password which is told to him by a post-it note on his desk, load up email page, when clicking button popups will begin to appear eventually loading a nsfw popup accompanied by moaning which will attract the NPC’s attention, the player is then required to locate the plug for the computer to stop the popups and moaning.

In the Coffee Scene the player is required to talk to 3 NPC’s that want coffees, they will give each give the player a different recipe for their coffee, the player will then go to the kitchen and have to make the 3 coffees, the player need to put the required ingredients in the coffee machine as well as a cup and press start in order to start brewing the coffee, if the player takes out the coffee too early it will be “under cooked”, if just right it will be “perfect”, and if too late it will be “overcooked”, the player will be supplied with 6 cups in case of mistakes, once all coffees are finished the player has to put them on a tray and take them to the NPC’s, the tray and freshly made coffees will cause the players hand to overheat making him drop them, the coffees will have to be delivered to place mats located at the certain NPC’s. In the Microwave Scene the player searches for his food in the fridge, after locating it the player then puts it in the microwave and sets the appropriate time for it to be on then starts the microwave, no matter what the microwave will “blow up” and be lit on fire, the player is then required to find a fire extinguisher in the office, there are 3 and two of them are duds so the player is encouraged to search around, the fire will spread x amount once leaving the kitchen, once finding the correct extinguisher the player must then put out the fires.  In the Printer Scene the player will have to enter their password into their computer, load up printing page, click button to print page, go to printer, running low on ink, NPC’s tells player that the boss has backup ink and tells a general location of where the key to his office could be, find key, have to log into his computer to find ink location, password hints located on posters around the room, screen loads up telling location of ink in bosses room (or maybe combination to bosses draw containing ink), get ink, put it in printer, reprint document. We considered other scenes to make but since we only have 6 weeks left we decided to stick with these four for now. They scenes have a sequential order with each new scene showing the player a new game play element that will be needed for the final scene. The Popup Scene teaches the player how to login to the computers. The Coffee Scene teaches the player that they can interact with NPC’s.   The Microwave Scene teaches the player that he needs to look for items around the office. These are just the core parts for the Printer Scene but there are also other smaller things the player will be able to pick up to help him with the next scene/task. The reason this is important is because most games which play level to level teach the player basic ideas in the beginning levels before introducing them to a challenging puzzle that uses the elements they've previously been taught. The game Portal 2 does this with it’s levels to give a sense of progress just like many other games.

06/05/2020 Wednesday After the Wednesday class we decided to start making progress on our 4 tasks. We decided to start with our first task the Popup Scene, Matt and I will be working in unity to create code that makes the "computer” work, while Ethan will be working in blender in order to make the assets for task such as computer screen, desk, draws. Ashton will be working on setting up the office environment in a separate unity project and once he has that set up will help Ethan with blender. I created a unity collab project for Matt and I to work together on for the Popup Scene, collab allows us to both work on one unity project on different devices, I also set up a basic screen putting together some cubes to make it look like a computer screen, I found something called a render texture which allows whats viewed on a camera so be shown on an object, this allows me to have a camera setup in the scene with images being cast on it which will shown on the computers “screen”.

Not much else done today it was more of everyone understanding there parts to complete in the project.

[promptis-imagines]

In Hope and Festivities (Happy Birthday, Bococho!)

Look at you, you made it!! First off, I want to wish you a super happy birthday (again) and I hope you have a wonderful time doing whatever it is you’re doing before you read this. I’m still marveling at the fact that we became friends over Klance and it escalated into...this lol. You’ve been a cool as hell friend to me and I hope it stays that way for a while. Anyway, here’s your birthday present in the form of my suffering. I wanted to put so much more in there, but I ultimately had to choose a few scenes and roll with it. Have fun!

The festive spirit was almost palpable in the air when the crew stepped off of the boat and onto the welcoming grounds of Altissia. Children giggled and ran with their balloons past restless chocobos while adults chatted and wandered aimlessly through the streets. The boys were in the spirit, too; Noctis and Prompto had decided to go all out in their carnival shirts and hats, while Ignis and Gladiolus were taking a more relaxed approach in their casual clothes. All together, they looked like parents and their over-excited teenage children on vacation.

"Oh. Em. Gee. We're actually here!" Prompto clapped his hands together and bounced in excitement. "Look at all the chocobos, and the lights, and the food!" Noctis could practically feel the energy buzzing around Prompto as his smile only grew wider. "What do you guys wanna do first?" he asked.

Gladio laughed, not quite matching Prompto's enthusiasm but looking happy nonetheless. "How about we look around to see what they got?"

"Yes, this looks like a lot to take in all at once," Ignis noted. "Perhaps we should view our surroundings and decide on a schedule of what we'd like to do after we've seen all the options." He paused while Prompto gawked at him. "What?"

"Ugh, loosen up, Iggy!" Prompto visibly drooped in exasperation. "This one time. Just…go with it," he pleaded. "You have to."

Noctis nodded in agreement. "Yeah, just have fun, Ignis," he joined in. He knew Ignis needed this break as much as everyone else.

He still looked slightly taken aback. "I was only trying to make the experience more fulfilling for all of us," he said, "but if you would prefer running around with reckless abandon, be my guest."

Noctis had to hold back a laugh when Gladio slapped him on the back, causing him to stumble forward. "It's gonna be okay, Specs," he said. "If you wanna plan it out, I'll go with you."

Ignis straightened his shirt and cleared his throat, a light blush dusting his cheeks. "We'll see." Noctis thought he almost looked embarrassed.

As they moved to head towards the row of chocobos along the sidewalk, Noctis felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned his head to see Prompto, who made a small gesture to the other two walking in front of them. "They're totally gonna be a thing by the end of this. Guarantee it," he whispered. "Just look at them."

He had a point. Ignis and Gladio were keeping suspiciously closer to each other than normal, and Noctis didn't think it was a result of less walking space. In fact, he was fairly certain he'd noticed Gladio staring dreamy-eyed at Ignis on multiple occasions in the recent days.

"If he doesn't make his move soon, he's an idiot," Noctis responded.

Prompto covered his mouth with a hand as Ignis cast a raised-eyebrow look over his shoulder at them. The goofy grin on Prompto's face stayed even when Ignis looked away. Somehow it was contagious enough to put a smile on Noctis as well.

Noctis' attention changed directions when he almost stumbled right into a chocobo. The bird jumped back out of the way, leaving Noctis teetering over the edge of the sidewalk. He let out a startled yelp as he fell, preparing to warp to safety, but stopped short when he felt his shirt pull taut.

"Woah, I gotcha!"

The ground was soon back underfoot after he was pulled back up, and Noctis breathed a sigh of relief at his rescuer. "Thanks, Prom."

"No prob, buddy," Prompto said with a pat on his shoulder.

"Y'know, you could've just said you wanted to go swimming," Gladio remarked.

Noctis frowned, rubbing his neck under his shirt. "My bad, should've voiced that sooner."

The chocobo Noctis nearly bulldozed let out a soft kweh. Noctis turned with the intention to pet it and apologize, only to see Prompto with his arms already wrapped around the large bird's neck.

His friend had always done an extraordinary job of catching Noctis off guard, bringing heat to his cheeks and rendering him useless. So seeing Prompto giggling and hugging one of his favorite animals effectively knocked the breath out of Noctis.

To think he'd almost forgotten about his crush.

He was pulled out of his trance when Prompto called him over. "Noctis, I think she wants you to apologize," he said under a laughed, taking a step back to allow Noctis some room.

"Yeah, I-I was about to do that." With slower steps, Noctis approached the chocobo and pet her neck where Prompto had just been. "Hey there, girl. Sorry about that, I was a little distracted and wasn't watching where I was going." The chocobo pressed her head against the side of Noctis', and he laughed. "Guess I'm forgiven," he said.

"Group hug!"

Before he could react, Prompto had once again wrapped his arms around the chocobo—and Noctis. They just barely locked eyes through its feathers, but it was enough to make Noctis' heart speed up.

The smile faltered from Prompto's face. "Noct, you good there?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"You look a little shocked. The hat messing with your head or something?" he teased.

Noctis shook his head, desperately wanting to deter Prompto's thoughts away from him. "All good."

They left the chocobo in peace and returned to Ignis and Gladio, who had gone down the street to admire some of the docked gondolas.

Ignis barely spared them a glance when they approached. "What say we look around a bit? Give you all some time to prepare for losing the chocobo races," he said, the faintest smirk on his lips.

"In your dreams, Iggy," Prompto retorted. "I'm definitely winning this time."

"Oh no, I'm beating both of you in this," Noctis interjected.

"Ladies, ladies, calm down," Gladio said. "No need to argue, it's obvious I'm gonna be the winner." He crossed his arms over his chest, watching with that smug smile he'd mastered as the other three shouted arguments and accusations at him.

Eventually the overdone aggressiveness of the conversation silenced when they noticed that the other carnival-goers were beginning to stare.

Prompto was the first to speak up again. "Uh, maybe we should see about those other activities now."

"Yeah."

"Let's do that."

"Sounds good."

The group made their way down the sidewalk once more, their excited energy restored. Gladio and Prompto both practically forced Noctis to dance along with the person in the moogle costume, which was not the most proud moment of his life. Out of embarrassment and spite, he made Gladio do it as well. Much to his annoyance, he actually looked like he was having fun doing it. So much for revenge.

Prompto led the way up the nearby stairs, stopping short when he passed a poster situated on a small board. "No way," he said incredulously. "There's a photo challenge!"

While Prompto excitedly scanned his finger over the list of subjects, Noctis glanced over his shoulder to see Gladio tapping his foot in rapid succession, staring intently at the back of Ignis' head. He was most definitely thinking about confessing to Ignis, no doubt about it.

"Hey, Prompto, you and I should go see about those pictures," Noctis said, his lips quirking up in a smile as Gladio snapped back to reality.

"Seriously? Hell yeah!" Prompto exclaimed. He was fiddling with his camera before he even finished his sentence.

Turning back to Gladio and Ignis, Noctis crossed his arms. "You guys go find something to do. We'll meet up at some point later."

Ignis gave a curt nod. "If that's what you want, then alright. Don't go getting into too much trouble," he warned, though it was a lighthearted remark.

"You heard that, Gladio? Don't get into trouble," Prompto joked, earning an indignant frown from the larger man.

"Yeah, whatever."

They agreed to try and find each other around the arena in roughly two hours, and the pairs went their separate ways. It was only when Prompto flashed him his sunshine smile that Noctis realized he'd accidentally sealed his fate—he was alone with the person he was in love with for the next two hours.

Much to Noctis' relief, nothing drastic happened in the first half an hour of searching for photo spots. He did his best to help find the things on the list, but Prompto always spotted what he needed and bolted to it without warning. If anything, Noctis was trailing him as his support system. At least he helped with finding scattered Choco-Mog medallions on the ground.

"Hey, Noct, there was something about a guy in a chocobo outfit, but-" Prompto did a quick turn, "-that's most of the people here."

Noctis glanced around. He was right; most of the workers were wearing yellow, and it had been a while since the two of them had seen the face on the poster. "Well, next time we pass up the pictures, we can check again," he replied.

Prompto let the camera dangle from his neck. "Sounds good to me. Where to now?"

Noctis shrugged. "Up the stairs?" he suggested.

"Then up we go!"

They made small talk as they meandered their way up whichever staircases they came upon, dodging the couples and groups of people that dotted the area. It made Noctis happy to see Prompto so casual and excited. Stress had been visibly getting to him lately, and they'd all noticed. Now, at least, they could enjoy their time and have fun. Even if it was secretly driving Noctis insane not to kiss him.

"Oh, Noct, there's some musicians up there!"

He was right; there was a small group around the center fountain, playing out an upbeat jazz number. Noctis found himself almost swaying to the rhythm, but stopped short.

While Prompto was admiring the saxophone solo, a slightly disheveled man in yellow caught Noctis' attention. He was tapping his foot rapidly and rubbing his temples under the chocobo hat he donned, overall looking extremely troubled.

"You think that guy needs any help?" Noctis muttered to Prompto, having watched him for several more moments.

Prompto diverted his attention from the musicians to follow Noctis' gaze. He pursed his lips in thought. "Probably. Let's go see," he decided.

The man's head snapped up when they approached. He was speaking before Prompto even got the chance to open his mouth. "Excuse me, sirs, have you seen any chocobo chicks trotting around?" he asked. He sounded frantic, and didn’t do well hiding his embarrassment.

"Baby chocobos?!" Prompto exclaimed, attempting to regain his composure immediately after. "Well, uh, I wish we had. They're tiny and adorable and-"

"What he's trying to say is we haven't seen any," Noctis interjected, giving Prompto a pat on the shoulder. "Why?"

The chocobo hat man continued glancing around, as if he could spot them nearby at any second. "Well, I brought my prized chicks to the carnival, but, y'know, they flew the coop."

Had he honestly not realized that the birds can jump?

"How did you manage that?" Prompto changed his wording after a flick to his arm. "I-I mean, you want us to go find your chocobo chicks?" Noctis almost laughed at the way Prompto's lips were pulled taught in a straight line; he was desperately trying to hide a grin.

The man nodded. "If it wouldn't bother you too much."

Seeing as Prompto was ready to explode, Noctis quickly stepped in front of him. "I think we can manage that," he said smoothly. "How many are we looking for?"

With a sigh, the man shook his head. "Fifteen."

"Fifteen?!" the boys said in unison.

"Of course if it's a hassle, I could try to-"

"On it!"

Prompto was already heading for the nearest stairwell, of course.

Noctis said a quick word of affirmation to the man and hurried back to Prompto. "So, you ready to catch some chocobos?" he asked, knowing full well the answer.

"You know it!" he replied. "I've never been more ready for anything in my entire life."

"Sure about that?"

"Positive."

Descending down the stairs, it didn't take long to spot their first target. The small yellow bird stood unsuspecting near the far wall. It was surrounded, and there was no way the both of them could miss it.

Noctis held up his hand to wait as they inched their way towards it, two hunters closing in and waiting for Noctis' command.

"Now!"

They sprang forward together, reaching for the runaway baby. They had managed to underestimate how fast it would react, and both came up empty. It continued sprinting in a zigzag line away from them, dodging legs and heading for the bend in the sidewalk.

Prompto, already giving chase, yelled, "After it!" It didn't take long for them to corner it again.

This time, Noctis jumped in its path first, causing the bird to circle around and run straight into Prompto's open arms. He scooped it up with a triumphant holler.

"Second time's the charm," Noctis remarked.

Prompto beamed as he held it snugly to his chest. "Isn't this the cutest thing ever?" he asked excitedly.

"Yeah, it is." Prompto and a baby chocobo was a pretty damn cute mix in Noctis' opinion. "One down, fourteen to go."

It took a moment for Prompto to calm the chocochick down, but with Noctis' help they managed to bring it back to the man who had, understandably now, lost them all.

Only after chasing down eleven more of them did Noctis and Prompto take an actual break. They found a bench and collapsed onto it, panting from the heat.

"I know I've always said that I want to grow old and own seven chocobos," Prompto gasped, "but I take it all back."

Despite the exhaustion he was feeling, Noctis laughed. "I dunno, I think I'd have a pretty hard time getting you to go home without one."

Prompto playfully hooked an arm around Noctis, laughing with him. "What, you're gonna live with me just to monitor my chocobo obsession?"

"Yup. Better start making room." Noctis swallowed the realization that he'd just said he would willingly move in with him. Almost too close.

They continued laughing together, talking about whatever came to mind and eventually getting to how they thought Ignis and Gladio were holding up.

"That big guy has to have said something by now," Prompto pointed out. "He's not the kind of person to wait that out, right?"

"Doesn't seem like it. But Ignis can be pretty intimidating to talk to, especially if it's something that big," Noctis said. But Prompto was right; Gladio shouldn't have a problem with it. "You think Ignis likes him back?"

Prompto snorted. "Duh. I can't picture what the guy would act like if he didn't."

"Me neither."

For a few minutes they just sat and soaked in the sounds of the festivities going on around them. Out of the corner of his eye, Noctis watched Prompto flip through the pictures he'd taken so far. Was that a picture of him? When had he taken that?

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a little girl crying. Noctis stood up, looking around until he saw her. Prompto followed suit when he began walking over to her, looking just as concerned as he was.

Noctis approached her tentatively, getting down on one knee to see eye-level with her. "Hey there, you doing okay?" he asked.

The little girl sniffled and pointed at a set of balloons that were heading towards the roof of a nearby building. "My balloons got away," she mumbled.

Not wasting a moment, Noctis whipped around and warped in a flash, landing soundly on the ground soon after, string of balloons in hand.

"There you go," he said with a smile.

She clapped excitedly. "Thank you!" she said, taking off in down the steps.

"Aw, Noct," Prompto said. "Always such a hero." He pretend-swooned, and Noctis shrugged, his smile growing a little wider.

"What can I say, I'm trying to impress."

As they continued wandering nowhere in particular, nabbing two more of the chocochicks on the way, they two found themselves at the gondola port that led to the Galviano Arena.

"Hey, wanna go check out the games over there?" Noctis suggested. "I think they have one where you have to shoot targets.."

Prompto lit up. "Oh, what? Heck yeah, I'm up for that."

Once they reached the arena, Prompto made a beeline for the Tiromatto game. He read through the objectives, which basically stated that he needed to hit enough targets without overheating the gun in order to gain enough points. Not to Noctis' surprise, he chose the hardest level.

"I can make 35,000 points, easy," he assured. Noctis believed he could, but he wasn't entirely sure he should be comparing the carnival game to his real gunmanship skills.

Noctis crossed his arms and leaned forward against the railing as he watched Prompto ready himself for the challenge. The moment the buzzer went off, Prompto was wiping out a line of targets almost too fast for Noctis to see.

"Damn," he whispered to himself. He really was good.

In no time, Prompto had taken down a hefty number of targets, including a few small daemon-shaped ones. When the final one dropped, Noctis was over the rail on his toes in anticipation.

Even though he couldn't see it from where he was, Noctis could picture the smug look on Prompto's face from the thought of besting the game. He was probably too into it, which is why he ignored the warning plume of smoke emitting from the gun.

Noctis was about to shout out to him when the smoke overtook the weapon and it exploded in a small poof. He winced seeing Prompto cough and air the excess smoke away with a hand.

The game officially ended, and Prompto stepped out of the little arena, smiling sheepishly. "Guess I got a little carried away, there," he said with a cough. His face was a layer darker now, smudged where he'd rubbed it. When he took off his hat to jostle his hair back into it, his hair stuck up in way more directions than it was supposed to. Gods, he was adorable.

"You alright, Prom?" Noctis asked.

Prompto gave a thumbs up. "Yup. Still got enough points to pass!"

"Seems you did," he agreed. "Nice going."

"Aw, thanks." Prompto made a move that seemed like he was going in for a hug, but quickly switched to lay a hand on Noctis' shoulder. "You should start my cheerleading squad."

They headed back to the gondola, Noctis wondering about that aversion. Prompto had never really shied away from him before; was he acting too unfriendly? He needed to clear that up, which only added to the burden of confessing to him in the first place.

On their way, Noctis overheard two women saying something about a voucher for seeing the fireworks. He knew he had to tell Prompto today, and he thought he had a way to do it.

The ride back to Port West Station was calm. The small passageway was still a wonder to Noctis, how it was meant to fit the gondola's size.

"Man, the confetti doesn't stop falling, does it?" Prompto was staring up to the sky, tracing the falling patterns of a few individual strands of confetti with a finger. "It's kinda cool."

"Yeah," Noctis replied. "I didn't know they even had this much confetti."

"Heh, it's almost like the Astrals are pouring buckets of it down on us."

Noctis found himself again staring wistfully at his best friend. "Uh-huh," he said absently. He was bracing himself for a rejection, but still holding on to a shred of hope that his feelings were reciprocated. All he could wish for was to not embarrass himself too badly.

Both of them had forgotten to check the time on how long they had before they were to meet up with Ignis and Gladio. However, it seemed they other party had paid no mind to that, either.

"No way." Prompto gawked across the way. Noctis followed his gaze to where their friends were walking through the crowd of people. Holding hands.

"We called it," Noctis pointed out.

Prompto laughed. "Oh, man, I can't wait 'til we see them later. Not letting them hear the end of it."

Noctis nodded. "How do you think he did it?"

"Gladio? He probably thought of doing some grand thing for, like, five seconds," Prompto said. "I think he just gave a short speech and messed up half of it. Just ended up saying ‘we should go out’."

The two disappeared from sight, not to be seen for who knows how long. "How would you have done it?" Noctis asked. The curious side of him had to know.

"Me?" Prompto leaned against the wall, averting his gaze as a look of melancholy crept its way onto his face. "Don't tell anyone, but I'm not sure I could ever confess first to the person I like. Too embarrassed to find out it's one-sided."

Noctis frowned. "Is it Cindy?"

"What-" Prompto stopped, breaking out into a laughing fit. "No, no, it's not Cindy.” He sighed. “I think I had a crush on her at first, but she's more like a weird sister to me, now." He grinned once more. "You're a riot, Noct."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. But what if this mystery person told you first?" The small glimmer of hope still took control, wanting to make Prompto's fantasy a reality in any way he could. "How would you want that to happen?"

"Nah, you don't wanna hear about-"

"Too bad. It's a 'what if', so you have to answer it." Noctis gave him a playful punch to the arm, and Prompto shook his head with a chuckle.

His friend’s expression grew thoughtful. He looked down at the ground, tapping his foot slowly while Noctis waited. "Honestly, I don't really care how. I'd just love hearing that they, uh...." He finally looked up, staring straight into Noctis' eyes and catching him off guard. "Y'know...love me back."

In that moment, Noctis felt his heart stop. He didn't care if it was wishful thinking or the truth, because Prompto was speaking to him just then. And he needed to say something back.

"Hey, Prompto, I-"

"Hold that thought, Noct. The last one's right there!"

Noctis was left trailing off, rooted to the spot as Prompto dashed towards the last of the chocobo babies.

With a sigh, he shook his head clear of the words he was about to speak and chased after him.

Noctis was the eventual capturer. The chick let out a soft kweh, burying itself into his arms. "Woah, there, buddy," he laughed out.

"Aw, so cute. Hey, lemme take a picture of you two," Prompto said enthusiastically.

"Sure thing."

The bird safely in his grasp, Noctis offered a smile to Prompto and the camera. When he heard the shutter snap, he started to turn towards the staircase to bring the chick back, but Prompto jumped to the side of him and held up the camera once more, holding up a peace sign and snapping another shot.

"Two for the album, I think." Prompto boasted. "Okay, now let's go."

For the second time, Noctis headed for the stairs. Once they returned the last chocochick to the man, Prompto said a final goodbye while Noctis accepted a few medallions from him.

"How many of these things do we have?" Noctis asked as they made their way back to the Palsino Station.

Prompto fished around in his pocket—he was in charge of holding the medallions—and produced a handful of coins. After searching all his pockets and adding them to the ones Noctis just received, they came up with thirty-eight.

"You up for hunting down a few more?" Prompto challenged.

"Dunno about you, but I'm getting those by fishing."

They started towards the nearest fishing spot while Prompto laughed. "Of course you are," he teased. "You'd get a hundred if you could."

"Hey, don't tempt me."

It was beginning to get dark out when Noctis first cast his line. Prompto contributed most of the commentary while Noctis fished. He'd tease him about the size of the fish, Noctis replying that he couldn't control what was in Altissia. After his sixth fish, Noctis recast the line once more. "This one's gonna be the best, promise."

"Alright, if you're moving in with me to keep my obsessions in check, I get to do the same to you. You'll have a fishing limit," Prompto announced.

Noctis frowned, glancing at him over his shoulder. "What? Unfair."

Something tugged on the end of the line, and Noctis flicked the pole upward to catch the hook in its mouth.

"Plenty fair. You like fishing too much," Prompto pointed out.

"Nope, not possible," Noctis said with a soft grunt as he reeled in the fish. This one was stronger than the other ones.

Prompto moved closer to the edge of the water, watching as Noctis fought to bring the fish in. "Definitely possible," he replied.

The fish leapt into the air, nearly taking Noctis' pole with it. He took a step back and continued reeling it in while Prompto shouted.

"Dude, what the hell was that?" he questioned. "Get it!"

When Noctis finally wore it out enough to bring it up, he smiled triumphantly. It took both hands to haul it out of the water, but Noctis held up the Tide Grouper with pride above the dock. "Told ya," he said to Prompto, who was staring at it with wide eyes.

"Fine, I take it back. Not saying you're not obsessed, but you can have your fishing freedoms."

"Thanks. Means a lot."

Noctis turned in his fishing pole and searched the ground for the last few medallions they needed. Once Noctis counted out fifty, he led Prompto to the shop counter.

"What’s this for, anyway?" Prompto asked. "You could get a pretty good amount of potions for that."

Handing over the medallions to the lady at the counter, Noctis shook his head. "Not potions. These are for the fireworks."

Prompto looked surprised. "I thought anyone could see the fireworks."

Noctis folded the lodging voucher and shoved it in his pocket. "Yup, but now we get to see it on the water and we get to stay at the Leville," he said, hoping the fact that it sounded like a date wouldn't scare away Prompto or weird him out.

To his relief, Prompto still looked as excited as ever. "Woah, sweet! Isn't the show starting soon?"

"Yeah. C'mon, let's get going."

The water reflected the night sky brilliantly, its dark surface dotted with countless lights from the city. Prompto had long since readied his camera, now staring out across the water with a look of excited wonder. "Ignis wasn't lying when he said this place was gorgeous," he said, half-turning to face Noctis. "Super cool at night, don't you think?"

"Yeah, it is." He had to admit, it was definitely a wonder to look at.

But now, he could only see Prompto. Beautiful, handsome, fun-loving Prompto. His best friend for years, the guy who loved all things chocobo and wanted to be a photographer, who stood by his side in every situation. Noctis had never been the most poetic in his choice of words, and he couldn't recite everything he loved about him  in a way that would move a crowd. Still, he couldn't go on without saying something.

If you don't make your move soon, you're an idiot, he told himself, using the same words he'd said about Gladio earlier. It worked out well enough for him.

"Hey, Prompto," he started. He swallowed the nerves rising up in his throat. Damn, he hadn't felt this scared in a while.

Prompto put his camera down. "Yeah?"

It was now or never. Noctis took a deep breath. "You've, uh, probably noticed that I've been kind of a mess today."

"A little. You've been on and off looking like you're on the verge of passing out," he said. "You tired again?" Prompto moved to sit next to him on the bench in the back of the gondola.

Noctis shook his head. "No, it's not that. I was just really...nervous, I guess. I've been meaning to tell you something lately, but I couldn't find the time, or the place, and then you kept doing things that made it worse-"

"Shit, did I do something wrong?" Prompto asked, at once looking frantic and concerned.

"No, no, not like that!" Noctis assured. "Crap, I'm really bad at this," he muttered to himself.

Noctis forced himself to look into Prompto's confused eyes. This was the hardest part. "Prompto, we've been best friends for years. I think I started to notice some time ago that you mean more to me than an old friend." He held his breath, watching Prompto's expression go unreadable. "So, yeah, I like you. A lot."

He braced himself for Prompto's words, but was only met with sniffling. It hadn't been that bad, had it?

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"Noct, you idiot, don't apologize," Prompto said, wiping his eyes as a smile broke out onto his face. "That was really good."

Not exactly sure how to respond, Noctis only tilted his head. "Huh?"

Next thing he knew, he was being pulled into a kiss. His arms wavered by his sides in shock for several moments before his mind caught up. With a sense of relief and happiness washing over him, Noctis allowed his arms to wrap around Prompto as he returned the kiss.

The brim of Prompto's hat hit his own, knocking it off and causing both of them to laugh into the embrace.

"Sorry," Prompto said behind a laugh.

"Whatever, it's a really stupid had," Noctis replied.

They met in another kiss as the fireworks show began. The bright flashes of light illuminated the two of them in each other's arms in an array of colors. By the time of the finale, they were staring up at the sky together, hand in hand.

"Oh, man, we completely forgot about the chocobo races," Prompto said near the end.

Noctis shrugged. "We still have time tomorrow."

"I guess so. Ready to give Iggy and Gladio a run for their money?"

"I'm still gonna beat all of you."

Prompto gasped, feigning shock. "My own boyfriend won't even let me win? How disappointing."

Noctis tried to suppress a smile at being referred to as his boyfriend, but ultimately failed. "Maybe I'll go a little easy on you. Maybe."

"Good enough," Prompto complied.

`The fireworks finished off with a huge bang. Every inch of the sky was parted for the show, shrouded in plumes of smoke when the colors dissipated.

The gondola began its way back to the docked ones. Prompto yawned, a contented smile on his face. Noctis was really looking forward to the rest of the carnival, but first, he was ready to sleep.

[dontbreakstride]

An Adventure at Annecy

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A few years ago, I had discovered the existence of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2015 when some of my online friends had attended it. When they shared their experience on Facebook, I knew I had to go some day.

In finishing the second year of my animation course, I felt this would be the best time for me to visit, so I planned my journey, got advice on what to see and how to get around and made my way.

Annecy is a really nice city. The main building that the Festival was hosted at Théâtre Bonlieu is just across the road from the huge open air screening, the lake and a view across to the mountain range. I was stunned by how the mountains loomed in the distance everywhere I went and everyone just went about their business. Since Norwich doesn’t have a mountain range, I was just in awe of them everywhere I went. There are also a lot of colourful buildings with grand architecture, large comfy cinema theatres and startlingly blue water.

Having never been before, and being unaware of Annecy Festival traditions, I was surprised by the amount of paper planes being thrown while the cinemas filled up. It was a completely different experience to going to the cinema any other day, and was a hard time adjusting to when I returned to England and no one was throwing paper planes and the like.

The experience at Annecy was very informative, and helped develop my ideas on my practice, which is extremely useful as I enter into third year.

WHAT I LEARNT

NEW CREATIVE CONTEXTS: A shared talk with Jean-Baptiste Spieser of Teamto and Tom Box of Blue-Zoo about current and upcoming things in the industry. The Teamto talk was about the production pipeline and how it can change radically depending on productions. The Blue Zoo talk was also quite interesting as it explained how they built and overhauled their render farm, as well as how they collaborate creatively within their studio.

The Art of Visual Storytelling with WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS: The two speakers were Nathan Engelhardt, an animation supervisor, and story artist Lissa Treiman (who had, coincidentally, illustrated the first few issues that got me hooked to the comic GIANT DAYS). This was a massively helpful talk, very much worth the wait. The two speakers talked about how to make good shots great, through the positioning of cameras to the two cores of 'greatness' in animation – truth and entertainment.

Triggerfish's MAKING REVOLTING RHYMES: Mike Buckland and Sarah Scrimgeour of Triggerfish discussed the creative process of collaborating on the production of the short film Revolting Rhymes, including compositing and rendering.

The Art and Science of RENDERMAN: Dylan Sisson of Pixar held a talk showing the developments and potential for their Renderman renderer. It opened my eyes to the scope of things that Renderman takes into consideration, such as a recent shot in a Pixar film that had over ten thousand individually rendered lights.

VIRTUAL REALITY is the future: Google Spotlight Stories had a VR station set up with new videos daily. I managed to catch the session on Thursday which presented a preview of SON OF JAGUAR (dir. Jorge Gutierrez) and ARDEN'S WAKE: PROLOGUE (dir. Eugene Chung, Jimmy Maidens). I had never understood the true potential of VR in animation until after watching these, so much so that after I'd watched them I wandered around Annecy in a daze. Arden's Wake was especially mind blowing, as you could actually walk into the setting and see it from all angles. This has made me want to experiment with VR in my own practice.

WHAT I WATCHED

THE PEANUTS MOVIE outdoor screening: Having seen this movie before in English, I was surprised at how easy to understand it was in French. The broad animation style of the movie definitely helped.

A SILENT VOICE: A rather touching story about communication, repentance and forgiveness. Quite interestingly featured sign language in animation, which to me feels like a perfect match of two things, visual language and visual storytelling.

DESPICABLE ME 3: This is the first world premiere I have ever been to, and the atmosphere was wonderful. This was without a doubt one of the most active audiences I have ever been in. Whenever a joke hit, there would be a wave of laughter and applause, when one of the characters did something cute, there was a collective 'awww', even the applause at the end of the film ended up slipping into the same beat as the music of the credits. It was wonderful.

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS: I never read that many Captain Underpants books when I was younger, so I was pleasantly surprised with how funny this was. Much like The Peanuts Movie, it managed to capture the style of its source really well, whilst still giving it their own flair.

ZOMBILLENIUM: An adaptation of a French graphic novel. Before the film began, the crew were on stage and threw production caps into the audience. The film was very stylish, with bold colours and shapes for the characters and making the CG look 2D.

SHORTS: I caught several showings of graduation shorts and shorts in competition. I was amazed by the diversity of shorts on display, showing the talents from animators of all walk-cycles of life. Shorts that stood out to me were the following:

Wednesday with Goddard (dir. Nicolas Menard, Canadian/UK) – a humorous and existential journey as a man tries to find answers to whether or not God exists.

When Time Moves Faster (dir. Anna Vasof, Austria) – stop motion using objects like plates and curtains to animate sequences, showing each frame being set up in real time, then speeding up the footage to bring the sequence to life.

Double King (dir. Felix Colgrave, Australia) – there is something in seeing this on a big screen that makes it all that more fun.

Nachthexen (dir. Julie Herdichek Baltzer, Denmark) – documentary short about the Nachthexen of WW2, animated in the style of Soviet posters

The Burden (dir. Niki Lindroth Von Bahr, Sweden) – a musical stop motion based around anthropomorphic animals who are stuck in an anxious and existential space in their lives. Won this year's Cristal for a Short Film award

Aenigma (dir. Antonios Doussias and Aris Fatouros, Greek) – a surreal trip through a painter's landscape mind-bendingly presented in 3D

Tuhi rumm (dir. Ulo Pikkov, Estonia) – stop motion of a doll in a doll house-like setting, has a mix of a nostalgic and haunting feeling

Casino (dir. Steven Woloshen, Canada) – a musical, energetic drawn-on-film animation capturing the frenetic energy of a casino

After All – Michael Cusack (Australia) – a very poignant stop motion film about a man going through his recently-deceased mother's belongings and reliving memories he had, very heart-rendering but with the occasional splash of humour

TIPS FROM MY EXPERIENCE

Take care of yourself: In the height of summer in the south-east of France, Annecy is hot. But when you are standing, walking, waiting and surrounded by other people who are also hot, the heat becomes unbearable (so much so that my watch had condensation on it at several points). Drink lots of water, try to keep in the shade when waiting outside, remember to eat.

Learn key phrases in France: This is something I'm going to try and pick up should I go again. I used to know quite a bit of French, but having forgot most of it, struggled at points of my visit. A lot of the hosts are bilingual should you have any questions, but knowing the sound of general phrases and what they mean is helpful in a pinch.

Beat the crowd: The Festival's 'first come first seated' events will fill up fast, and the queues for the screening events might result in you not getting in if you don't book a place during ticketing. The 'first come first serve' events that I missed were with popular big names, such as a talk with Guillermo del Toro and another with the creators of The Amazing World of Gumball and Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, which I am still kicking myself over, so be sure to arrive early for those.

Patience is a virtue: The queueing process at Annecy is quite arduous, but the wait is always worth it. I got into the talk with Walt Disney Animation Studios by waiting two hours earlier. It pays off very much.

Be tactical: Annecy is a big festival in a big city. Events conflict and travel times might be longer than you expect if you are travelling by foot or if you need to retrace your steps. When it comes down to seeing a mainstream film or a studio focus talk, choose which one would be a more informative experience. This links in well with taking care of yourself too. If you haven't eaten or drank anything for a while and you are thinking of joining a queue for something that needs you to wait for an hour and a half in the sun, it's better to take care of yourself first and foremost.

If you can, go in a group: Not only will this be a 'strength in numbers' type deal, where you can book into the same events and wait together in the queue and tap out should you need to get food, but this experience is one to share if you are enthusiastic about animation and the like.

Don't be afraid to try: I hate plane travel. I knew very limited French. I have the worst sense of direction in the world at times. But I went to Annecy regardless of these things and actually had a brilliant time.

[raygoodwinphotographyjournal2]

PHOT201 Weird & Wonderful ‘Alienated Spaces’ - Evaluation

The time has come again to close off another project with an evaluation of said project. In this evaluation, I shall detail how it was started, how it progressed, what went well, what didn’t go so well, what could of been improved, how it could of been improved and thoughts about the project as a whole. The evaluation will also cover technical aspects, shoots, research and anything else covered in the project.

Alienated Spaces began as an amalgamation of past work and a project to do over the summer period of 2018. It was highly influenced by Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, and Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism - Is There No Alternative?. Alienated Spaces was heavily guided by a majority of contextual information about the society that we live in, and the feelings of alienation within said society, as well as my own personal alienation to society and the people it creates. I wanted to convey this feeling of alienation and estrangement of living in a capitalist society by taking photographs of the mundane banality of the everyday. These scenes/spaces are often overlooked areas of towns and cities which usually don’t garner a secondary glance. This managed to sustain my creative endeavours until I started college again in October 2018. This is where Alienated Spaces was implemented to Weird & Wonderful, and made to fit the brief. I was adamant to work on this project, as I already had a body of work behind it - this meant that I had to make the project fit the brief but finding out how Weird & Wonderful fit amongst a project mainly propped up by alienated thoughts about a western capitalist societal system and dehumanised urban spaces. I managed to fit in the ‘weird’ as my own weltanschauung; or at least interpreted that way. The ‘wonderful’ was harder to fit. My interpretation with that was the wonderful nature of societies expected values of people within the society: having a nice car, a nice job and being spectrally subjugated by the system.

Once the project was implemented into PHOT201, there was some experimentation within the early stages. I originally wanted to create a cinematic aesthetic to my photographs. And, for this I used a modified medium format folding camera, that was able to shoot 35mm film in a similar letterbox aspect ratio to a Hasselblad Xpan - creating a 2:1 (or similar) image that replicated the cinematic letterbox images of motion pictures. This however, was fraught with issues. Firstly, the construction of the modifications on the camera caused light to bounce around inside of the camera, causing light to hit the film where it wasn’t meant to hit. Secondly, I had a large issue of my developer at home deciding to be defunkt. Originally, this was thought of a fixer issue, so I had bought some fresh fixer, thought it was the fixer’s issue and thrown that away. However, I made another fresh batch and the same issue arose. So the developer was the main culprit for a number of rolls being destroyed. I moved away from that and decided to challenge myself and shoot my images using a medium format camera that utilised the 6x6 format. I have never been a massive fan of shooting 6x6, as I have always found square images awkward to compose and shoot with. I managed to come across and purchase a Mamiya 6 IV for a decent price. This was certainly a turning point for Alienated Spaces, as it granted me an affordable way to shoot medium format for a project that I was initially excited for shooting. I also chose to shoot Fujifilm Pro 400H, as the coolness managed to fit the visual aesthetic of Alienated Spaces, and that I have never been keen on Kodak Portra 400’s overly warm tones. I can appreciate a good Portra shot, but it’s just never worked for me. After shooting a roll or two through the Mamiya, I realised that it was a winning combination for me. I was able to shoot extremely high quality negatives at a relatively small cost. I also felt that shooting 35mm and digitally just didn’t fit what I was doing. I initially shot early on in the project with my Canon 5D, but it somehow didn’t feel right to shoot the project digitally. So I decided that this project should be totally analogue based, as this would pressure me to think about the shots I was taking and make me realise that each photograph actually costs me money and time. This would eventually work in my favour, and grant me with a selection of images that I feel represent my project as a whole (although some 35mm film was shot at the end of the project).

The main portion of the shooting actually went rather smoothly, apart from two or three underexposed frames. Of course, the early portion of the project was haunted by failure and a lack of success, but I am thankful that these were the only failures and that they were fairly early on in the project. However, the shoots utilising the Mamiya were certainly the most fruitful in terms of images. I have gained a lot of images within my repertoire, and also gained some knowledge into composing 6x6 and shooting medium format as a whole. I would certainly use the Mamiya 6 again for future projects, despite its idiosyncratic operation. The Mamiya is rather fiddly and awkward to use, but when one gets used to how it works, it becomes second nature. I was surprised by the Mamiya’s optical performance, seeing as it was made during the time Japan was still occupied by allied forces. And, I was also surprised by Fujifilm Pro 400H’s tonality and exposure latitude. This gave me a lot of room to overexpose where it was needed, so I could gather some shadow detail whilst maintaining details in the highlights. I always made sure to overexpose by at least a stop or two from what the meter was reading, just to be on the safer side of exposing the film properly.

The main piece of research for this project was the work of Tom Westbury. I have been a fan of his work for a while, and the way he renders space is certainly something that I look up to, and wish to create. Westbury manages to render the banal and mundane non-spaces into an aesthetically pleasing and intriguing set of images. But, Mark Wilson was also a key piece of influence early on in the project. I was inspired by his work with The Last Stand, and especially by his talk/tutorial. I was also inspired by Anthony Haughey’s Settlements. Haughey managed to document a pertinent political/economical issue that certainly relates to capitalist greed, whilst in turn creating a photographic body of work that relates to Alienated Spaces’ inherent dehumanised ethos. All of these photographic artists are relevant to my craft in one way or another. Westbury features the aesthetic qualities, Haughey features aesthetic fulfillment/contextual ideology and Wilson features aesthetic and professionalism based fulfillment.

The book is the finale of PHOT201. I originally intended to create a zine with a graphic design inspired cover. I have always had an affinity for a certain graphic design style that is often used in poster design and architectural books/magazines. However, I felt that the zine aesthetic and graphic design didn’t fit the ethos of my project whatsoever. I didn’t feel as if the handmade creation of the zine fitted with my project, as I feel that it’s more intune with more artistic and homebrew projects. Due to this, I felt that using the services of a third party publisher would of been a better option - plus I would get a professional looking photo book instead of a badly made zine, which would certainly look amatuer on my behalf. For this, I used the services of Bob Books to create my book. We did have a representative from Bob Books explaining their services to us, and I liked their professional print quality and competitive prices. I also liked that I am able to fully publish the book with Bob Books and sell what I have created through them. To create the book, I used their Designer software. This was an incredibly easy and intuitive way to create a book. At first, I was rather reluctant and daunted with the task of actually putting a semi-coherent book together. But, thankfully the software was easy to use, and once I had thought how the narrative would of translated onto paper, it wasn’t a bad a expected. Once the book had been ordered and delivered, I was able to hold the actual product in my hands. Whilst there were a few issues with that are out of my control, for the most part, the book was a resounding success. The print quality was outstanding, the paper stock has a nice tactility. The book also took around 9 days from ordering to arriving on my door, which is certainly a respectable amount of time to print and ship a 28x21cm 30 page photo book. I knew that it would take over a week to get the book in my hands, so managing my time was imperative. Thankfully, I was able to keep my work at a steady pace across the majority of the project, apart from when it came to the Christmas break. After I had finishing shooting (and shooting slightly differently in London), I had lost my interest in the project entirely. When I ordered the book, the interest dropped to a low and I didn’t entirely care about the project anymore. I felt that the book had been ordered and everything had been shot, so my intrigue within the project disappeared.

What could I of done better with this project, and how could I improved upon it? Firstly, I would of read much more into the contextual side of my project. Whist the main portion of this project was contextually based, I would of liked to of delved deeper into the depths of capitalism, and alienation within a modern society. The two main influences of Debord and Fisher are certainly cornerstones of my work, but I feel that some more reading wouldn’t of gone amiss. Perhaps some further reading into Karl Marx or Fisher’s views on Neoliberalism could of been fruitful for this project? I would of also of liked to shoot much more medium format film, and explored the more architectural side of the work (see the last two shoots). This project was born out of a mix of projects and at a time when I wasn’t in the best of mindsets. The project was spawned from my own mental state of being depressed and alienated within my contemporaries, and I no longer feel this anymore. So, for a long time I have been shooting for a project and trying to convey a feeling of which I don’t totally feel anymore. Towards the end of the project, I realised that I enjoyed shooting architecture more than the non-spaces I had been documenting for a couple of months. Whilst I would like to continue on with this project, I feel that it should be renewed or worked upon if I am going to use it as a base for PHOT202. I could potentially do this by focusing more on the architecture of the space, and/or explore the interiors of said architecture. But, I am not sure at this moment in time if the continuation of Alienated Spaces will continue as that - the theory can stay the same, but I feel that level of being alienated just doesn’t fit me or my work anymore. Meaning, I can still create work that underlies the basic premise of capitalism being estranging and inescapable, but not implement my own feelings of being alienated within my contemporaries. I feel that reading more into the capitalist system (re-reading George Monbiot’s Captive State could be in order) could offer me a new perspective on my worldview and my work as a whole. This would ultimately give me a wider perspective to view the world with and in turn improve what I can create - without a decent understanding of the theory, how can one’s work stand out from the crowd and be exemplary, instead of a half baked execution of a photographic body of work with very little theory to back up the ethos?

In reality, I have become alienated from a body of work that is solely based around personal alienation, purely on the basis that I no longer feel alienated within a societal system which is inherently alienating to its occupants. Whilst I do enjoy what I have created, I feel that the driving force in the work has been lost as I have progressed through time; despite it being a relatively short space of time from August 2018 to January 2019. This is mainly due to changing how I view the world around me and a massive improvement with my mental wellbeing/mental health. But the main epiphany came when I was in London, taking more architecture inspired imagery and realising that it fitted me more than alienating malaise ridden non-spaces.

PHOT201 was a real learning curve for me. It started out as a personal project, that was eventually forced into the mould of the brief. The beginning of the module was fraught with technical chemical related issues that forced me to rethink what I had to do, and how I had to do it. Without failure, one isn’t able to progress with their work and make ample improvements upon it. Thanks to the early failures, I was able to work around them and create a body of work that I am proud to call my own. I was then able to experiment and improve my skills with medium format film, shoot a film stock that I have never experience and shoot a camera that I have never experienced. Those failures made me explore past my comfort zone and use a format which is usually rather alien to me, and create some work from it of which I rather enjoy. Whilst I did enjoy shooting these non-spaces, I felt it hard to convey a feeling which I no longer felt within the work. I do like documenting these areas of non-space, but it’s difficult to phone-in an ethos into a body of work that isn’t totally felt within the documenter. This project shall continue, but it shall take a different turn from alienation within a capitalist society, and most likely be related to the architecture of the capitalist society. I feel as if I am jumping the gun slightly and planning a project before one finishes, but I feel it’s necessary to place a basic underpinnings of something before fully committing to it’s ideology. Just like all of the previous projects undertaken before hand, Alienated Spaces will just serve as future inspiration for projects that haven’t happened yet, and just another project under my name.

[golfbloggercom]

Heading out to the course. First tee grandstands on left. Eighteenth green grandstands straight ahead.

Visiting the US Open at Erin Hills:

I was lucky enough to get media credentials from the USGA for the week at the 2017 US Open in Erin Hills. Knowing that I would be just one of perhaps hundreds of on- and off-site scribes reporting on the proceedings (writing the same “who’s ahead” stories with the same quotes and using same photos), I decided to take a different tack. Since the vast majority of golfers will never have the chance to attend a US Open, I thought I would provide a sense of what it was like to be there in person. Not for me the “inside the ropes” passes and watching the tournament on the jumbotron inside the aid conditioned media tent. I would walk the course with the masses.

Visiting the US Open was fun and very rewarding. Being on course during a tournament is a total sensory experience: seeing the entire expanse from tee to green; the feel of the wind and air; the smell of the grass; the buzz of the crowds. A thunderous cheer or groans from a distant hole lets you know how things are progressing.

The icing on the cake, however, was that I had the chance to play Erin Hills on the day after the US Open ended.

I highly recommend attending at least one top level pro event in your golfing lifetime.

Turnstiles at the offsite parking and bus boarding area.

As with most of the big golf tournaments I have attended, parking is at remote lots, with shuttles moving fans to the front gates. The buses moved with regularity, transporting some 30,000 fans to the course each day. Before the tournament there had been some concern about whether the surrounding country roads would handle the traffic (I was among them after playing Erin Hills last summer), but I heard no fan complaints.

Entrance to the US Open at Erin Hills

Just inside the entrance were several tents for guest services, “fan experience” tents from the USGA and Lexus, as well as a merchandise tent and a food area.

A view of the interior of the 41,000 square foot merchandise tent.

The merchandise was a sight to behold. Covering 41,000 square feet, the tent was largely divided into areas which featured apparel from individual manufacturers. An Adidas area was just to the right of the main door, adjacent to a Ralph Lauren area, and so forth. The merchandise tent also had lots of hats, cups, ball markers, bag tags, commemorative plates, sunglasses, towels and more.  In my opinion, one of the best items were the commemorative posters, signed by artist Lee Wybranski.

Artist Lee Wybranski was on hand to sign official posters for the US Open

Also in the immediate area were American Express and Lexus hospitality tents. A couple of American Express tents around the course offered phone rechargers and a break from the heat. American Express also had small radio earpieces through which fans could listen to PGA TOUR Radio play-by-play anywhere on the course.

The USGA had a “USGA Golf Innovation Experience” pavilion which had a golf simulator which let fans play several holes on the course, a faux play-by-play booth, and an area where fans could record commentary on the proposed rules changes. There also were several interactive exhibits. The Lexus tent had putting and Johnny Miller signing autographs.

The best part about the tents was that they were air conditioned. Saturday, in particular, was hot and muggy.

Nearby were food tents from the likes of Starbucks and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. There also was an area on a nearby hillside with large beanbags where people could collapse and just watch the action on a large screen tv. Very strange.

The USGA had beanbags for people to lie on and watch the US Open on a large tv. Not sure of the point of that.

Past the tents, it was a short hike downhill to the course (photo at top). Lining the path were banners celebrating significant US Open venues and players.

One the course, there clearly were two classes of spectators: those who could afford a seat in one of the air conditioned, richly appointed viewing tents, and those who could not. One person I talked to said that a single seat for a single day in one of the fancy skyboxes ran around $800.

Corporate tents lined the fairway of the first. This view is looking back toward the tee.

I am not sure that the corporate tents are all that good for golf fans though. If you had a seat in a box along the first hole, your viewing vantage point was rendered useless as soon as the last group played through — some five hours before the tournament’s end. If you were in a tent off the eighteenth, you had a good view of people finishing, but saw nothing of the contest up to that point. Other than the brief periods when player passed in front, a tent-bound fan had to rely on television to find out what was going on.

Perhaps the food and drink were enough to compensate.

One option for regular ticket holders was to arrive early and get a good position in one of the grandstands. Exposed to the sun like that, it likely was quite hot, and ultimately thirsty and hungry.

If (when?) the USGA returns to Erin Hills, I think they will need to add more grandstands. In particular, I think there is room for one behind the ninth tee, to the left of the eleventh green, and additional stands behind the fourteenth and fifteenth greens.

In the stands on the tenth.

For my part, I enjoyed walking the course. I would follow a group for while, then either jump ahead to see a group ahead, or linger for the one following. The USGA phone app had a neat feature where you could easily see which groups were on any particular hole. The app also told you where any player was on the course. Therefore, by keeping an eye on scoreboards, fans could quickly locate the position of leaders or hot players and make a beeline to good viewing positions. Knowing that I would be back Sunday, I scouted out good positions to see the action around the course.

Spectators on a hill overlooking the second at Erin Hills

Sight lines for regular ticket holders were adequate. While the width of fairways and the expanse of the course kept spectators further away than at Oakland Hills, Colonial, or Warwick Hills (other pro tournament venues I have attended), elevations offered more stadium-like seating.  I could not always get close, but I nearly always had a view of some sort. That’s actually better than my experience at the PGA at Oakland Hills, where rows of spectators in front made me with I had brought a periscope. Even as Brooks Koepka finished up on 18 on Sunday, I was able to find a knoll from which to observe the play. I was about midway down the par five, but with the assistance of the aforementioned American Express radio, it still was a good experience. I saw him finish out; the radio let me know how close the ball was and how it moved.

Upon reflection, visiting the US Open at Erin Hills was a bit like attending a baseball or football game. From elevated points, I could clearly see all the action, but the players looked small. I certainly had a better view than I had when I attended a University of Michigan football game last fall.

It would be wise, I think, to bring binoculars to this, or any tournament. And a periscope.

Food and drink on the course were pricey, as you might expect from a sporting venue. A hot dog was $5.50; a Pepsi, $4.00. Curiously, in a state known for its love of beer and brats, there were no brats. Further, the only beer choices were Miller Lite, Leinenkuegel Summer Shandy and Blue Moon. Surely a tournament in Wisconsin could do better. Where were the cheese curds?

Apparently, spectators could have the opportunity to purchase better food if they paid double for a ticket and got access to a particular tent near the entrance to the tournament. Media were not allowed in there, though, so I can’t confirm.

Saturday was a scorcher, so I went through several bottles of water, even while completely soaking my hat with sweat. Fortunately, if all you wanted was water, free hydration stations were available.

Restroom facilities were of the standard porta-john type, discreetly clustered in villages away from the cameras.

The USGA still uses manual scoreboards.

One thing that stuck me was that — in the digital, 21st Century, the USGA still was using old fashioned scoreboards.  Volunteers behind the board were filling out names and numbers as they were called in by radio. The small scoreboard to the left indicated who currently was on the green. Behind the boards, the volunteers were filling out the updated scores upside down, so that as new players approached, the boards were simply flipped.

Volunteer forecaddies

Volunteers at the US Open deserve special mention. The US Open at Erin Hills had some 5,300 volunteers to keep things running smoothly. Volunteers manned parking lots, tee boxes, grandstands, concessions, and other on-course facilities. They directed fans, spotted balls, carried score signs, untiringly waved “quiet” and “no photography” signs and generally did anything that needed doing.

Strangely, to be a volunteer, you had to be able to afford $175 to purchase two official golf shirts, windbreaker and hat. So, poor people need not apply. Volunteers did receive meal vouchers for work shifts and admission as spectators during non-working hours. Volunteers served four, four hour shifts during the US Open and attended training sessions prior to the tournament.

Spectators milling about around the par 3 sixth.

A significant amount of on-course volunteer energy was expended to keep fans from taking photographs. Even in stands up and away from greens fans were being told “No photography. Please put the phone away.”

The USGA’s obsession with preventing photography seemed to me to be a relic of the past. Everyone has a camera these days in the form of a phone, and few paid any attention to the No Photography Police. As soon as the volunteers were looking away, the phones came back out. For a great many, photos that can be shared via social media now are a part of any experience.

I think the camera prohibition may reflect the day when cameras had actual shutters that clicked. Or perhaps the ban is the result of the USGA trying to control the images of the tournament. I ran into a spot of trouble myself when I was told that the USGA doesn’t grant photography privileges to online publications. They’re going to need to amend that archaic policy. In a few years, ALL golf publications will be exclusively online. The venerable Golf World now is exclusively online. Others will follow.

Obviously, I was able to talk them into letting me take photos. More photos from Saturday at the 2017 US Open at Erin Hills follow:

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Turnstiles at the offsite parking and bus boarding area.

The USGA had a tent where, at one part, you could comment on new rules changes.

Lexus brought Johnny Miller in to sign autographs at their corporate tent.

A view of the interior of the 41,000 square foot merchandise tent.

A view of the interior of the 41,000 square foot merchandise tent.

Artist Lee Wybranski was on hand to sign official posters for the US Open

The official poster of the 2017 US Open. Artist Lee Wybranski was onhand to sign

Checkout at the merchandise tent. The tent covered 41,000 square feet.

Food service near the entrance.

The USGA had beanbags for people to lie on and watch the US Open on a large tv. Not sure of the point of that.

Heading out to the course. First tee grandstands on left. Eighteenth green grandstands straight ahead.

Behind the first tee grandstands.

Ernie Els warms up on the putting/chipping green.

In the stands behind the first tee.

Corporate tents lined the fairway of the first. This view is looking back toward the tee.

Infrastructure away from the television cameras. Lots and lots of infrastructure you will never see on tv.

Spectators on a hill overlooking the second at Erin Hills

A view of the third at Erin Hills

Ernie Els’ poor caddy. The “Hills” part of “Erin Hills” is no misnomer.

Ernie Els navigating the hill between the third and fourth holes at Erin HIlls

Ernie Els tees off on the fourth hole.

A stairway to help players get up the hill between the fourth and fifth holes.

Spectators around the fourth green.

Spectators milling about around the par 3 sixth.

Tee sign.

Teeing off on the 18th.

Spectators passing. The hill on the left is between the eighth and 12th fairways. Center is the 18th fairway.

A woman who was not clear on the concept that attending a golf tournament would involve a lot of walking.

Volunteer forecaddies

Spectator’s view of the tenth.

In the stands on the tenth.

A spectator’s view of the 12th green.

On the thirteenth tee

A spectator’s view of the fourteenth.

A spectator’s view of the seventeenth.

The USGA still uses manual scoreboards.

Fowler tees off on 14

Ricky Fowler waits for his playing partner to finish his shot.

      Visiting The US Open At Erin Hills Visiting the US Open at Erin Hills: I was lucky enough to get media credentials from the USGA for the week at the 2017 US Open in Erin Hills.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Required Reading

MASS MoCA will unveil what it’s claiming is the “world’s largest watercolor painting,” a 120-square-foot (8′ x 15′), site-specific commission by Barbara Prey. That’s quite a claim, though I do wish the painting was a little more exciting. (via MASS MoCA)

This article about a family “slave” in the US has been much discussed this week. Alex Tizon, who died at the age of 57 this year, writes about when he realized who the woman who lived with his family was. The whole story is chilling:

To our American neighbors, we were model immigrants, a poster family. They told us so. My father had a law degree, my mother was on her way to becoming a doctor, and my siblings and I got good grades and always said “please” and “thank you.” We never talked about Lola. Our secret went to the core of who we were and, at least for us kids, who we wanted to be.

After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.

RELATED: Some interesting responses:

"My Family's Slave" is now trending in the Philippines, where it's lunch time. I'm going to share a few interesting threads from Filipinos:

— Adrian Chen (@AdrianChen) May 17, 2017

Honestly I'm convinced 3/4 of you who are opining about the Tizon piece didn't finish reading it

— Sarah Jeong (@sarahjeong) May 17, 2017

Eudocia Polida was an enslaved person whose hopes and dreams we know filtered only through the service of others by system not choice

— Sydette (@Blackamazon) May 17, 2017

Read "My Family's Slave" &I just literally wanted to reach into the story and punch every fucker in the Tizon family, including the author.

— ✡️Josh Shahryar ☪ (@JShahryar) May 16, 2017

I hate Interview, which is a celebrity-obsessed rag full of starfuckers, but I do always love Antwaun Sargent’s perspective, so I really enjoyed his interview with painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye:

SARGENT: One signature aspect of your painting is that the figure almost blends into its surroundings, because the earth tones of your backdrops are reflective of the character’s dark brown skin tones. There are a lot of things that are being signified but particularly there’s a critique of the hypervisibility, which Ralph Ellison talked about, that renders blackness completely seen and unseen. Is that part of the negotiation between the figure and its surroundings in your work?

YIADOM-BOAKYE: Maybe I think more about black thought than black bodies. When people ask about the aspect of race in the work, they are looking for very simple or easy answers. Part of it is when you think other people are so different than yourself, you imagine that their thoughts aren’t the same. When I think about thought, I think about how much there is that is common.

Robert Rauschenberg’s “Bed” (1955) piece includes a “stolen” bedcover from another artist:

But for the artist Dorothea Rockburne, the painting carries a more personal charge. She first met Rauschenberg during their student days at Black Mountain College, the fabled school near Asheville, N.C., that was briefly the epicenter of the American avant-garde. One day, Ms. Rockburne was in the college laundry room unloading her wash from the dryer when she realized that her patchwork quilt was missing. “The next time I saw it was at the Leo Castelli Gallery,” she recently recalled in a tone of disbelief, referring to the public debut of “Bed.” “My first thought was: Son of a bitch! We were close friends.”

Masha Gessen writes about the language of autocrats:

A Russian poet named Sergei Gandlevsky once said that in the late Soviet period he became obsessed with hardware-store nomenclature. He loved the word secateurs, for example. Garden shears, that is. Secateurs is a great word. It has a shape. It has weight. It has a function. It is not ambiguous. It is also not a hammer, a rake, or a plow. It is not even scissors. In a world where words were constantly used to mean their opposite, being able to call secateurs “secateurs”—and nothing else—was freedom.

“Freedom,” on the other hand, was, as you know, slavery. That’s Orwell’s 1984. And it is also the USSR, a country that had “laws,” a “constitution,” and even “elections,” also known as the “free expression of citizen will.” The elections, which were mandatory, involved showing up at the so-called polling place, receiving a pre-filled ballot—each office had one name matched to it—and depositing it in the ballot box, out in the open. Again, this was called the “free expression of citizen will.” There was nothing free about it, it did not constitute expression, it had no relationship to citizenship or will because it granted the subject no agency. Calling this ritual either an “election” or the “free expression of citizen will” had a dual effect: it eviscerated the words “election,” “free,” “expression,” “citizen,” and “will,” and it also left the thing itself undescribed. When something cannot be described, it does not become a fact of shared reality. Hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens had an experience of the thing that could not be described, but I would argue that they did not share that experience, because they had no language for doing so. At the same time, an experience that could be accurately described as, say, an “election,” or “free,” had been preemptively discredited because those words had been used to denote something entirely different.

Siobhan Burke is speaking out against imagery in dance that exploits women (including images of sexual violence):

By “images of violence against women,” I mean not just depictions of violent acts but also the kind of forceful partnering that’s become so ubiquitous, so gratuitous, so banal in ballet — the yanking, dragging, prying open of women’s bodies by men — both with and without a narrative pretext. Calling it out, as I did after seeing Angelin Preljocaj’s “La Stravaganza” (1997) for City Ballet in 2014, or Mauro Bigonzetti’s “Cantata” (2000), performed by Gauthier Dance in 2016 — feels as tiresome as watching it, and unpacking its history would take more space than I have here.

… My disappointment with “Odessa” led me to post a photo on Instagram — my favorite place to air an impulsive thought — with the caption “no more gang rape scenes in ballets, please.” (The photo was of my face, looking directly at the camera, wearing what I consider an “over it” kind of expression.) This prompted an expansive thread of comments, including by my colleague Alastair Macaulay, who had reviewed “Odessa” for The New York Times. He asked whether my call for “no more” was a call for censorship: “Must works of art only depict people behaving correctly?”

The answer, of course, is no. If artists want to deal with rape, gang or otherwise, as subject matter, they should, as they should grapple with any difficult issue. But they must really deal with it: Say something. Don’t just toss it in as one more incidental plot twist, one more exquisite thing to behold. Acknowledge its urgency, its complexity and the fact that to many in the audience, it may not be so abstract.

Documenta or Crapumenta?

Graffiti castigating the spectacle as “Crapumenta 14” soon appeared. “I refuse to exoticize myself to increase your cultural capital. Signed: The People,” has been a particular favourite. While Giorgos Kaminis, the city’s mayor, maintained Documenta was fantastic for tourism (as Aegean Airlines’ new and fully booked Kassel to Athens route has proved), critics complained that it amounted to the worst kind of crisis tourism.

“There’s anger because they haven’t taken circumstance into account,” says Nadja Argyropoulou, a curator in Athens. “Their theory is beautiful, radical and timely, but they didn’t mingle or take the leap into the everyday or address the reality here. Circumstance is what humbles theory and makes art as important as real life.”

For detractors, Szymczyk had become the embodiment of the corporate, neo-liberal order he professes to abhor, a purveyor of the worst kind of soft German power. Not only was the exhibition abstruse, it had committed the cardinal sin of omitting Greek artists and curators. “There are so many names,” Argyropoulou says. “People who should have been in it but were never approached. But please also write that we want them to succeed. If they fail, it is us who will be left with their ruins of contemporary art – and in a country that is continually looking to its past, with unresolved questions of identity, that would be disastrous.”

An obsessive fan found the source for the cover image of Radiohead’s OK Computer album (it’s a highway in Hartford):

    After looking at 2,000 scripts, 25,000 actors, 4 million lines, and analyzing them by gender, this is what Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels (writing for the Pudding) found:

A tour of the new Foster Partners–designed Apple HQ, where the tech company even designed a special pizza box for employees:

For workers who want to take the café’s pizza back to their pods, Apple created (and patented) a container that lets air and moisture escape so the crust won’t get soggy. (via Wired)

Jack O’Donnell worked for Trump in the 1980s, and he reminds us that everything he’s doing is NOT a surprise:

After I resigned in April 1990, I wrote a book about my time with him, Trumped: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump, His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, in 1991. In the book, I told stories about Trump’s leadership style that would come to echo his presidency years later.

I witnessed him make public phone calls that he insisted were private and use those conversations to humiliate and corner the person on the other end. I witnessed him demand loyalty from those who worked for him. I witnessed him make impulsive decisions as a result of his short attention span.

RELATED: Did you know Nixon wrote to Donald Trump in 1987? Presidential historian Michael Beschloss posted this:

Nixon writes to Trump, 30 years ago this year: http://pic.twitter.com/rKxHBXNuXO

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) May 17, 2017

ALSO RELATED: A new poll suggests a majority of Americans believe Trump is a liar and wish Obama was still president. More data from Public Policy Polling:

Only 40% of voters approve of the job Trump is doing to 54% who disapprove. For the first time we find more voters (48%) in support of impeaching Trump than there are (41%) opposed to the idea. Only 43% of voters think Trump is actually going to end up serving his full term as President, while 45% think he won’t, and 12% aren’t sure one way or the other.

… By an 8 point margin, 49/41, they say they wish Hillary Clinton was President instead of Trump. And by a 16 point margin, 55/39, they say they wish Barack Obama was still in office instead of Trump.

And Time Magazine‘s new cover became a topic of discussion on social media. This is probably the funniest take on it:

@TIME Fixed this for you. *Turn on audio* http://pic.twitter.com/7soqnUZI7r

— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) May 18, 2017

Or did Time rip off Mad Magazine?

Once More, With Stealing Dept. TIME MAGAZINE RIPS OFF MAD MAGAZINE?https://t.co/dWYykrr4tJ http://pic.twitter.com/bfYrj2DpUb

— MAD Magazine (@MADmagazine) May 18, 2017

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

The post Required Reading appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[nettamr-blog]

Planning for Evaluation Question 3

How did you use media technologies in the research, planning, constructing and evaluation stages?

Script:

Hi, my name is Netta, and I am currently studying A2 media in the Billericay School. The brief I chose for my coursework this year is to construct a short film, along with two ancillary tasks of a film poster and a magazine film review. These ancillary tasks act as a promotional pack for my short film.

The brief we were given this year is much higher in difficulty than last year’s, as it requires for me to work on three different projects simultaneously rather than only on one. This was more challenging also because it involved the use of many more skills, due to the additional ancillary tasks.

RESEARCH

As a result to this I had to expand my research process this year by looking into a variety of short films using youtube and vimeo. In addition, I looked into magazine film reviews and used google images to research into film posters. The use of technology in this process allowed me to familiarise myself with the conventions of each element of my promotional package as well as of my short film. I used the media platform of a tumblr blog to post my analyses. I found this useful, as I could also access it through my phone and post some blogs even when I wasn’t near a computer.

On top of this, I researched into the romance genre using google. I used images of film posters I found online to create a mood board of my genre. This advanced my understanding of the conventions of the romantic genre.

I have also researched into a photographer and artist using google. I was inspired by their creativity, which influenced my creative decision making when it came to constructing my products. I was especially fascinated by Saul Leiter’s photography, as I thought his photography style was unique and engaging. This is a good example of the improvement of my research process from last year, as at the time I did not research into any of the above in order to gain inspiration.

PLANNING

I used technology in my planning process is by creating my pitch in the form of a prezi. This made my pitch more advanced than last year’s, as it allowed me to present it in a multimedia way by adding sound and animation between the slides, displaying my film ideas more clearly and in a more engaging way. Unlike last year, where I presented my pitch in the form of a powerpoint, with minimal images, no sound and no animation.

In contrast to last year, I have used technology to create my focus group, which I can contacted using the Facebook messenger chat I created. The use of technology here made my focus group more accessible, as they all have a Facebook Messenger app on their phones, which therefore allowed them to respond and give me feedback relatively quickly. This group chat was beneficial to get feedback from throughout my coursework process, as it gave me different points of view, which allowed me to improve my work.

Additionally, this year I posted the script for my short film on my tumblr blog, which I could then quickly email to my actors. I found this saved me a lot of time, especially in contrast to AS where I wrote out the script on paper. This was quite problematic, as I also only had one copy for my actors to share, which is why I decided to improve my organisation skills this year.

CONSTRUCTING

The use go media technology was crucial in my filming stage due to the equipment I had to use. Firstly, I used a DSLR camera, which allowed me to play around with the focus of shots, which I believe was important to develop my skills and was also useful for some of the shots I included in my short film, such as the close up of the blue mug as the protagonist in my film picked it off the table. In this shot the mug itself was in focus but everything else in the shot wasn’t, which I believe was effective as it allowed the audience to focus on the mug of tea. 

Another piece of technology I used was a Rode BoomMic in order to clarify the audio in the scenes that were shot outside. The days I filmed on however, were extremely windy and therefore although there was a noticeable difference between using the mic and not using it, I still wasn't pleased with the audio result. Therefore, I recorded the audio separately to the filming in order to achieve the quality of sound I was hoping for. In order to do this I had to use a separate mic to record the audio, which I did via the software iMovie.

In addition, I used my phone in the filming stage in order to get the scripts up, rather than having to bring my laptop out. This, again, was only achievable because my scripts were on my tumblr blog. I believe this was useful, as it was less time consuming and very accessible.

The main digital software I used to construct my film was iMovie. It has all the basic functions to construct a professional looking piece of media and since I already had a positive experience with it in the past I decided to use it instead of Final Cut, which I find is time consuming due to rendering. I used iMovie to cop out all the unnecessary footage and edit all my shots seamlessly. iMovie also allowed me to adjust the colouration of the flashback shots in order to make the narrative clearer. I did this by decreasing the saturation and adding warmth to these shots, which made them look more old fashioned. 

I then used several media platforms to work on the sound element of my editing. I used youtube as a source for the soundtracks I picked for my film and the converted them from mp4 to mp3 using onlinevideoconverter.com. After re recording the audio for two of my scenes, I went through the same process but picked background sounds of a park and a street, as these were the two locations of the problematic audio scenes. I then added these on top of the audio I re recorded for two scenes, adding to the verisimilitude of my film. 

EVALUATION

For one of the four evaluation questions I answered I compared my final product to real media conventions. I did this by comparing my work to real media work, and therefore used screenshots for both. I used google and youtube in order to look into these media pieces. This allows the reader to understand my answer in a more visual way. 

To receive comments and feedback on my work I, again, used the Facebook messenger app to interact with my focus group.

I further used iMovie in the process of my evaluation in order to construct a short voiceover clip in which I explain how digital technology has been useful in my coursework. I believe this makes my work more engaging and interesting, seeing as most of my other posts are displayed in a written form.

Overall, I believe media technologies have played a significant part in all stages of creating my film, film poster and magazine film review.

[amnportfolio]

Shopping with Mom - Memoir

           At first, the video is unintelligible, rendered grainy from the years.

           But then, the film focuses on a door and the nymph-like singing of a child can be heard. A strikingly pale hand presses against the grey wood of the door, and once again the camera has to refocus. Now, a white tile bathroom with seashell pink walls comes into view. I’m sitting in the tub, four years old, swaddled with nothing but baby fat like a child in the Garden of Eden. My tiny voice swells and fills the bathroom with a shameless yet gentle melody.  My grandma always told me that babies only sing when they’re happy, so I’m assuming in that moment, I am happy, content with the thin, warm water of the bathtub and the presence of my mother. I still retain an affinity for bathtubs.

           The woman holding the camera giggles. “What are you doing?” She asks. Her voice is deep and instrumental. It’s clear she adores me, her only daughter. In my infantile eyes, my mother is life giving goddess, a Platonic form of beauty. I smile up at my mother, dimples creasing the edges of my mouth. The same dimples dapple the outskirts of her lips, too.

           “I wrote a song, mommy.”

           “What’s it about, baby?”

           I laugh, a high-pitched reflection of my mother’s own laugh, the kind of laugh you only hear before the complexities of adulthood put their hands around a child’s throat. “I don’t know.”

           My mom turns the camera on herself, now sitting on the edge of the bath tub. The camera refocuses on a moony face with warm brown eyes and cropped red ochre hair. It is apparent that my green eyes must have come from my dad, but everything is else is wrought from the chromosomes of this woman. My mom looks at the camera lens, her pupils darting from side to side, trying to figure out where to look. We always teased her about being bad with technology.    

           “My baby wrote a song,” she asserts with a quiet pride.

           This tape is all I have of Mom before the walker and the pain pills and blood tests and Lupus. Always the Lupus.

***

           “Ok, Mom. One foot at a time.”

           I take my mom’s leggings in my hands and gently roll them up, so that they go on faster when she puts her atrophied legs in. Gingerly, I take the first foot and place it in the bunched up hole of the legging, and smooth the fabric across her soft, creamy calf. I follow the same delicate operation for the second foot, and look up at her face when I’m done.

           “Ready?” I ask.

She shuts her eyes tightly. They are almond shaped and slope downward innocently, like mine.

           In one quick, haggard movement, she shoots up off the edge of the bed onto her feet, with help from her walker, so that I can pull her leggings up all the way. A grunt laced with pain and effort escapes her translucent lips, and she crash lands back onto her bed.

           “Ok. Ok. You did it,” I murmur, brushing some lint off her knee. “You’re dressed.”

           “Thanks baby,” Mom begins, and then tacks an “I’m sorry” onto it discreetly. She is always apologizing for being my mom. While I can understand this sentiment, there is nothing to be sorry for. Despite her severe Lupus and all the consequent health problems, she is a good mom. Always has been.

           “Alright. I’m going to work. I got my cell on me at all times. Dad’s taking a nap on the couch.” I brief my mom as I open the window blinds beside her big, four-poster bed. Silvery slivers of sunlight shoot into the room, illuminating all the oak furniture and the shag carpet and the dated floral patterns. We moved into this house fourteen years ago, so it’s a different house than the one in the video. I never liked it. It’s a big house in a nice American neighborhood, the kind that the wind blows right through without being warmed first.

           “Sounds good hun. Have a good day.” My mom settles back into her pillows. I lean down and plant a kiss on her forehead, careful not to lean on her too hard. I’m afraid of breaking her.

           My workplace is a hot pink, sparkly gumball of a world. I’m a part-time key holder for Charlotte Russe, a young women’s clothing store. All my coworkers are also women, so sometimes over the summers, I forget men actually exist.

We do things like bring each other waffle fries from Chik Fil A on our breaks and give each other discounts we aren’t supposed to give. We sarcastically dance to the cheap pop music corporate makes us play, and the giggles of girls line the merchandise fabric like rhinestones.

As much as I like my work, the constant montage of moms and daughters shopping together reminds me of something I’m missing.

I see girls running out of the dressing rooms in half naked ecstasy to show their mom an outfit, and I can’t relate. I see girls asking their moms for advice on color coordination and nothing in my brain pings in response.

You see, I can’t remember the last time I went shopping with my mom. It’s such a petty, suburban detail, I know, but you don’t realise how much the little things count in a relationship until you can’t have them.

***

The first Spring Formal dress I bought, I bought alone. I bought it the spring that my mom was in the hospital (again) with pneumonia. It was the spring the dog died, and not soon after the floods came and washed out the wildflowers on the side of the road, and the road with them. Houston forgot how to swim. It was the spring I forgot how much my body was worth and slept with a boy I really shouldn’t have slept with; so it was also the spring of my almost baby, and crying in a nail salon bathroom.

           Though it was a beautiful dress, it was a dark one, more suited for fall than spring. The bodice was a nude tan with muted rhinestones peppering it, and it was slightly too big— gravity and my ribcage fought for supremacy. However, I could endure the suffering and the constant bust checks for the sheer beauty of the dress. The full length, ballroom tulle skirt was tar black. Add a couple stars, and it could have been mistaken for the night sky.

           For that Formal, I got ready at my friend’s house. I remember sitting on the stairs in my dress as her mom took pictures with her, smiling boisterous pearly smiles into the camera lens. I could almost see the camera flashes bouncing off their teeth. Her mom told her in melodic tones how beautiful she looked in her purple mermaid dress. A thick ball of an emotion I could not quite name formed in my chest, on top of my heart, and it sat there all during the Spring Formal. It was there when I danced with my friends and when I drove my friend home that night across town, the highway unraveling under my swollen feet. It was there when I arrived home at 2am and nobody was awake to greet me.

           I sent my mom a few selfies of the dress in a mirror at the dance, but the hospital always had had bad reception.

           The first and only time Mom saw my dress was on a hanger a few months later. She looked at it with an expression like flat soda in her eyes. She ran the tulle between her finger tips lightly, considerately.

“It’s lovely, Lexy. Really,” she said her wind chime voice. She didn’t say it, but we could both feel the “I’m Sorry” hanging thick in the air.

***

           “Shit. I just remembered something.”

           “What is it Lex?”

           “The Spring Formal is next weekend. I still need a dress.”

           “Why can’t you wear the one you wore last year?”

           I shake my head. “It’s too big now, Mom. I’m gonna have to go today to get a dress.”

           I look over at my mom. We are cuddled into her bed the day before Easter, an expanse of half eaten Cadbury bunnies and crème filled eggs spread before us. Her eyes are getting dewy clear and red.

           “Oh God, Mom. What’s wrong? Please don’t cry.” At the sight of my mother getting choked up, I feel a wad of tears in my throat as well. It’s a universal, primitive instinct, the urge to cry at the sight of one’s mother crying.

           “Dammit. I wanted to go with you this year.” Her voice cracks a bit, coated with a mixture of frustration and sorrow.

           “Relax. What about next year?”

           “Next year I’ll still be sick, baby.”

           Unable to respond, I walk to her side of the bed and wrap my arms around her small nymph body. I have to be careful not to step on one of the Ziploc bags of pills on the ground. We remain like that for a bit, twisted into each other like wisteria plants. The TV murmurs with “Say Yes to The Dress” in the background. I want to reach in between the static and crawl away, my mom in hand.

           “Listen. I’ll send you a picture of all the dresses, ok?” I know this offer isn’t much, but my brain is wired for problem solving like my father, and this is the best I can come up with.

           Surprisingly, Mom brightens up at this idea.

           “Deal.”

           At the mall, I try four different stores and countless dresses. I film myself dancing around the dressing room in all of them, and my mom responds with her varying, unapologetic opinions. The other moms and daughters look on in confusion, wondering what the hell I’m doing, and why I’m alone. The moms help their daughters carry the heavy dresses and are convinced of their child’s exceptionality. I am alone to haul my own dresses back and forth from the sales floor to the changing room. By myself, it is a daunting and tiring task to wriggle in and out of the dresses, but my mom’s digital voice urges me on. I can almost see the invisible thread tying us together suspended above the dressing rooms, and reaching across town and over all the heads of the other moms and daughters.

           After two hours of this, I narrow things down to two dresses. One is relatively reminiscent of the dress I picked last year; strapless, with a muted peach bodice and dusky ballroom skirt. But the other one is so strikingly different from anything I’d usually pick.

           It, too, is a full length ball gown, but instead of polite, quiet colours, it’s awash with vivid spring magentas and oranges. Water colour flowers flit about on a silvery satin ocean. It’s an open back with a crisscross. If I wanted to be buried in my past dress, I wanted to live in this one.

My mom and I are sold.

           “THAT’S THE ONE” she texts in all caps.

           Before racing to the checkout, however, I check the price tag and realize it’s egregiously off budget. I sink back into the changing room bench. In the next dressing room over, I hear a mom helping her daughter shuffle into a dress. At first they spar at one another in shrill voices, but once the dress is on, silence pervades the dressing room.

           “Oh, wow.” Her mom finally sighs. “You’re so beautiful.”

           I can’t hear the girl blushing, but I can feel it.

           I sigh and reluctantly call my dad, the budget setter.

           “I think mom and I found a dress we like.”

           “Oh great! Are you gonna be home in a bit?” His burly Caribbean accent fills my ear.

           “Well, the dress is a little bit more than we expected. Like 80 dollars more.”

           My dad makes a sharp sound by blowing air through his teeth.

           “Lex, are there any other ones—“

           He is cut off by an assertive yell in the background.

           “Well, you just got lucky. Your mother chimed in. She’ll pay the extra 80.”

           I jump up off the dressing room bench.

           “Really?”

           “Yup. Hurry home. I just made dinner.”

           “Oh. Ok. Thanks Dad. Tell Mom I said thanks.”

           He lets out a broad chuckle. “You’re welcome. See you in a bit.”

           When I get home, it is my turn to be exceptional. My mom and I coo over the dress, and I jump up and down on my side of her bed and dance around the dusty oak bed posts, hot pink hibiscus flowers bouncing victoriously on my hip bones. I think I hear every synonym for “beautiful” that night. In the shiny dress before my mom, I am rendered a bright creature, lit from within like a floral Christmas light. She just smiles and smiles and the bedroom fades into a warm whirlpool of laughter and lamp light.

           Suddenly I don’t care about the dressing rooms or the other girls or the Lupus.

           ***

           I still dream about being able to go shopping with my mom. By this, I mean that the walker and the pills melt away, and my mom rises from the bed. By this, I mean that I imagine the Lupus gene switched off, allowing us to be just a mom and her daughter.