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averagesadperson · 2 years ago

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Back in Town

Cole Brookstone x Gn! Reader

Synopsis: You work in a small town bakery and when a man you recognize as your childhood friend stumbles in, you end up spilling some held in feelings.

Notes: Uhm, so- I started writing this but then I realized I’m sad today so this got a lot more self indulge-y then I meant it to be. sorry, but also not? but sorry if its a little all over the place. whoops. I tried to make it Gn, please let me know if I made any mistakes!

and uh,, 2k words?? what did I do

The scent of carrot cake wafted from the oven. Pulling on the bubblegum pink store-branded oven mitts, you pulled the dessert out and set it onto a cooling rack in the fridge that you had set out earlier. Turning off the oven with a ‘beep!’ you took the mitts off, set them into the drawer, and shut it with your hip as you walk past. They were cute, pink with white accents, along with almost everything else in the store.

Your ‘uniform’ consisted of latex gloves, a frilly apron, a mask, and a bandana covering your hair; all of which were the same shade of pink. The apron had patches of other colours and fabrics from where you’d sewn it when it ripped a few months back.

This was pretty routine for you, having been working in this bakery for years now. Your mother started it originally as a small passion project when you were still in high school, but people loved it so much that she ended up renting an old, homely store and the rest is history. You eventually mastered the skill of baking, learning how to make complex pastries, delicious filling, fluffy bread, moist cake, and more. Trial and error had kicked your ass more than once, but thankfully your customers were kind enough to let it slide.

You sighed, shaking your head as you stepped up to the counter. On it was various decorating tools laid out, along with bowls of white icing and food colouring of black, purple, and blue that still needed to be mixed. An order from one of your oldest customers, a sweet older woman with a plethora of grandchildren who, who woulda guessed, had birthdays. It was a lot of work, but hey, she tipped well.

You pulled your rubber gloves on, but before you could jump into it, the sound of the bell above the front door ringing caught your attention. Tightening your apron and walking out of the kitchen and behind the old wooden counter, you saw a young man with black hair browsing the treats behind the glass. He had a hand up to his mouth and his eyes were narrowed as if he was making the most important decision of his life. He reminded you of a boy you knew as a child, he left town a handful of years back, but when you first saw this guy you swore he looked just like-

“Cole?!”

The man’s head snapped up at the shrill of your voice, your jaw dropped in astonishment. His eyebrows furrowed and you saw his eyes rack your visible features, trying to remember if he’d met you before. At his confusion you remembered your mask, quickly raising your hands to rip the fabric from your mouth.

“Cole! It’s me, Y/N.” you said with a giddy smile on your lips, subtly leaning over the counter towards him. Cole’s eyes widened and he let out a gasp of shock at seeing you.

“Oh my god! Y/N, it’s so good to see you!” you giddily ran over to the removable countertop, quickly flipping it open and running over to the taller man who you haven't seen in years. He opened his arms and you jumped, wrapping your arms around his neck and resting your head on his shoulder, his arms circling your waist, fingers playing with the bow of your apron strings.

“I haven't seen you in forever, Dummy! I didn't know you were back in town.” the smile refused to fall from your lips. Cole was one of your best friends back in high school, you had a stupid big crush on him too, you two shared classes and would go over to each other houses almost daily, though it was usually him coming over to yours.

He chuckled lightly, shaking his head, making his soft bangs swish side to side. “I wasn't, this is my first day back here.”

“Well then,” you let him go, walking over to the front door, flipping the sign over so it now displayed ‘closed!’. “I guess it's fate you just so happened to come to this bakery then, huh?” you said with a playful smile, ignoring his ‘hey, it's a small town’.

You grabbed him by the hand and led him over to one of the bigger booths. “Here, come, we need to catch up.”

Once you two sat across from each other he leaned back in his chair and turned to you, “Okay, so what's been up with you? Surely a lot based on the new ‘baker’ status you seem to have.”

You laughed, resting your elbows on the table, leaning in closer. “Well, I'm in college now, nothing too fancy, just a few days a week.”

“Really? That's awesome! I’m glad you got there eventually.” his smile and the genuine look of happiness in his eyes made your insides twist, whether it be in glee or something else, you couldn't tell.

“Yeah, me too. Oh! I talked to your dad a week or so ago.” you giggled at his exaggerated eye roll. “He still thinks you go to MOPPA, you think you're ever gonna tell ‘em?”

He groaned, rubbing a hand at his neck and avoiding your gaze. “I dunno, his whole obsession with his dancing and Royal Blacksmiths is just… y’know..?”

You set a hand on his arm making him look back at you. You met his eyes with a gentle smile and an as understanding look as you could muster. “I get it, Cole, I do. But I still think you need to tell him eventually. He’s your dad and he loves you, don't waste that.” he’s silent for a moment before he speaks again.

“Anyway, you're just now getting into schooling? I thought you wanted to go ‘far, far away’ for college straight out of high school?” you flushed from his recounting of your childish words from one underage drunken night, but went along with it and let him change the subject without a fight.

“Ah, yeah, when I started in mom’s bakery I had to learn all the recipes pretty quick, so that took up the majority of my time. I barely had any time for anything but sugar.”

“Oh, yeah! I’m surprised your mom changed the style.” your heart sunk. “She really liked that old, rustic vibe she had going.”

The smile slowly slipped from your face but Cole didn't notice, he was busy looking around the decor of the shop. “Yeah, well, times change, I guess.”

“Hm, I guess so. Say, how is your mom doing? I’d love to see her again..” he trailed off when he turned back to you, seeing the look on your face. Cole's stomach dropped, dreading what that look meant and what you were about to tell him.

“Oh, she, uhm. Mom.. passed… a few years ago. It's just been me for a bit.” Cole set a gentle hand on your shoulder, rubbing your arm soothingly as your eyes started to water. Your father had died when you were young, leaving only you and your mother. Not long after Cole left town, your mother got sick and died quickly after. You neglected to mention her sickness to your old friend, knowing of his own mother's fate. Despite them not being the same illness, you knew it would upset him more.

“Your dad was pretty helpful, y’know. Let me stay with him until I got everything sorted.” your voice cracked and you raised a hand to rub at your eyes before any tears could fall.

“Why… why didn't you tell me?” he said in a gentle voice, it was comforting.

“Well, I didn't really know how to find you, Cole.” he winced, opening his mouth to either refute you or apologize, you didn't know but spoke over him. “It's true, you just…left, Cole. As happy as I am to see you now, I… I was really lonely.” you quickly rushed to reassure him, waving your hands in front of you to cover your reddening cheeks.

“Not to say it's your fault or anything! You left for a reason, I know that, and I don't blame you. I covered for you with your dad because I know you must've had a good reason. I just… I missed you, Cole. A lot.” you sniffled, looking at your hands that rested in your lap. You were both silent for a while until you heard fabric shift and felt Cole slide into the booth beside you.

You felt him hesitate to touch you, so you leaned in, laying against him with your head on his shoulder. You could feel him breathing beneath you and he wrapped his arm around you and pulled you in closer.

It felt… nice.

It was a relief to see him again after all those years. The months of crying yourself to sleep after he left, the temptation to send a letter, the guilt of not telling him, you could feel it all melting off your shoulders as you both sat there in silence together.

“I know I could have sent you a letter, but you barely respond to your father. I didn't want to bother you or distract you with something like that. I didn't know what you were doing, still don’t, it could be really important.”

“You’re also important, you know that right?” your breath hitched at his words.

“That's not what I-”

“Doesn't matter. You’re important to me, Y/N. You were like, my only real friend for years and I would have dropped anything if you said you needed help. You were never, and will never be a bother to me, especially with something like that.” he placed his fingers under your chin and tilted your head to look at him. Your eyes widened when you saw his coal-black ones were watering. Your hand clutched the fabric of his shirt as he brought you into a crushing hug.

“I’m so, so sorry you thought otherwise and I'm sorry I haven't sent letters either. I've been..” he chuckled sadly. “Very preoccupied, but I never forgot about you.”

“I really missed you. I’m glad you're back, Cole.”

“..I missed you too.”

~~~

Eventually, it got dark and, after both your tears had dried, Cole had politely excused himself. You offered him a place to stay with you above the shop for the night, but he said he and his friends already had a hotel and they would get worried if he didn't show up. When you said your goodbyes, you sent him on his way with a bag filled with the best of the best of your sugary treats.

“Oh, before you go, why don't you take a to-go bag?” you stepped behind the counter, sliding open the glass panel and choosing snacks you think he’d like best.

“Well, I won't say no to that.” he stepped up to the counter with a chuckle and you saw him dig around in his pocket before you stop him.

“Hey, no, it's on the house. No complaints.” you filled the paper bag, folding the edge and handing it to him.

“You sure?” you nodded with a smile as you walked him to the door, linking your arm with his. “Well, we’ll be in town for a bit so if you wanted to meet up for a bit tomorrow?”

“Mhm! I do have to finish an order but I’ll probably be free after one or so? Wanna meet at the center fountain?” you pushed open the door, the bell chiming in the background.

He agreed, wrapping his arms around you one last time for the night and you reciprocated, patting his back lightly.

“Bye, Y/N.” he walked out the door and when he turned to wave back at you, you lifted to your tiptoes, resting a hand on his cheek and pulling him down to you.

The setting sun cast a beautiful glow against his skin, making his eyes shimmer. You closed your eyes and pecked his cheek, letting him go soon after.

“See ‘ya, Cole.” You waved at him with pink cheeks, turning back and softly closing the door. You saw him gently touch his cheek with a smile before he turns and walks into the warm summer air. You watched him walk down the street before he eventually turned the corner out of your view.

You sighed, crossing your arms, locking the door, and walking back to the kitchen to pack up. You’d finish your orders in the morning, but tonight you dragged yourself upstairs and into your bed. You wrapped yourself in blankets, tears springing to your eyes. You had dreamed of seeing Cole again countless times before. When you were kids, everything was fine, everything was perfect. But then he left, and things fell apart.

But now? Cole was back.

Maybe not back in town forever, but back in your life.

#cole brookstone x reader #cole x reader #ninjago x reader #ninjago #cole brookstone #cole brookstone x you #cole x you #ninjago x you

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dweemeister · 4 years ago

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The Little Colonel (1935)

Whenever I watch older films with black actors in subservient roles, I have a habit of pausing the film, and scrolling through their filmography. For the African-American actors and actresses that worked at Hollywood’s major studios before the emergence of Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Dorothy Dandridge in the 1950s, they toiled in stereotypical roles that read repetitively – servant, maid, busboy, slave, villager, savage, African chief. Like many black moviegoers in the early twentieth century, I am glad these mostly-unknown actors found work, but am sick to see the buffoonish, stereotype-adhering characters they play on screen (this raises questions about whether no representation or bad representation is better, but that is for another day).

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was the highest-paid black entertainer of the 1930s: a masterful tap dancer (tap dancing is an innovation from the minstrel show, where Robinson’s career began) idolized by Fred Astaire, the Nicholas Brothers, and Gene Kelly. His birthday, May 25, is National Tap Dance Day. Robinson’s vaudeville and Broadway career had long made him a national celebrity, and Hollywood studios looked to procure his services for bit and supporting roles. While in Hollywood, he quickly learned that he could not escape the restrictions Hollywood executives had set for non-white actors – casting directors, whether by a lack of imagination or naked racism or somewhere in between, could not envision black actors beyond certain roles.

Another American cultural fixture in the 1930s was an adorable, curly-haired girl named Shirley Temple. Months before its merger with Twentieth Century Pictures, Fox Film Corporation cast Robinson in a Shirley Temple picture, The Little Colonel. Shirley Temple movies often relegated A-list actors to supporting roles – disgruntling those actors to some extent, but mollifying their frustration with the dependable profits made at the box office. Seen today, The Little Colonel is problematic in its depiction of race relations and portrayal of its black characters. And yet, it is also groundbreaking. The film features the first interracial dance couple in American film history, and spawned a close intergenerational friendship between Temple and Robinson that lasted until the latter’s death.

It is the early 1870s in Kentucky, and life has changed little since the American Civil War ended. White landowners retain their plantations and black subordinates. Those subordinates are no longer slaves, but racially-coded relations remain. Though Kentucky remained in the Union, there are numerous veterans and supporters of the defeated Confederacy within its borders, including Colonel Lloyd (Lionel Barrymore). The colonel has learned that his daughter, Elizabeth Lloyd (Evelyn Venable), has married a Yankee, Jack Sherman (John Lodge). Furious, the Colonel disowns Elizabeth – forcing her and Jack, an American soldier, to accept a posting in the West. There, they raise a girl, Lloyd Sherman (Temple), before moving back to Kentucky six years later. Before leaving the fort with her parents, Lloyd, the outfit’s darling, is made an honorary colonel of the United States Army. Elizabeth, Jack, little Lloyd, and housekeeper Becky “Mom Beck” Porter (Hattie McDaniel) settle in a household near Colonel Lloyd’s plantation without his knowledge. Colonel Lloyd eventually learns that the happy-go-lucky rapscallion bothering him and his head servant Walker (Robinson) is his granddaughter, and continues to exile Elizabeth and Jack from his life.

The Little Colonel, shown in black-and-white, ends with a brief two-strip Technicolor scene (Walt Disney’s monopoly on three-strip Technicolor would end later that year) – a “pink party” that marked the only time Shirley Temple wore makeup in a Fox film.

Adapted from Annie Fellows Johnston’s novel of the same name by screenwriter William M. Conselman (several Shirley Temple films, including 1934’s Bright Eyes and 1936’s Stowaway) and journeyman director David Butler (another Shirley Temple regular, 1942’s Road to Morocco), The Little Colonel sees Temple play a hallmark of her characters: a precocious troublemaker whose very charm melts hearts and inspires others to do what is just, despite their personal prejudices and historical biases. Only if the real world could be like that, audiences must have thought – packing movie theaters to see escapist fare like this, to forget momentarily the Great Depression. Like any Shirley Temple picture, the film is at its best when it concentrates on its young star. Most of the G-rated humor on display is gentle, ribbing others’ sense of self-importance and their absurd, absolutist behavior (especially Barrymore’s Colonel Lloyd, who looks as if he is about to sell me fast food served in a red-and-white tub). Not even little Lloyd is spared:

LLOYD SHERMAN: Aren’t papas supposed to love their little girls? MOM BECK: Yes, honey, they should. LLOYD SHERMAN: It seems might funny to me. MOM BECK: It’s ��cause all the Lloyds are stubborn. The old colonel is, your mama is, and you is. LLOYD SHERMAN: I’m not stubborn! Don’t you call me that! MOM BECK: Don’t you stomp your foot at me. That don’t change it, that just proves it!

Elsewhere, too much of The Little Colonel’s humor is premised in racial stereotyping. That Lloyd Sherman befriends two black children in May Lily (Avonne Jackson) and Henry Clay (Nyanza Potts) might be enough to spark outrage among millions of American moviegoers in the 1930s. As much as this decision should be commended, that commendation is tempered by their appearance – inspired by minstrel shows – and by the fact they are eating watermelon in several scenes. Barrymore’s Colonel Lloyd is not only a misanthrope, but a racist misanthrope. Where little Lloyd sees an old man who needs to be taken down many notches, few others who see this film would probably be as disarming towards him. Colonel Lloyd refers to May Lily and Henry Clay as “pickaninnies”, threatens physical punishment towards Walker and Mom Beck at the slightest mistake, and indulges in Lost Cause rhetoric that glorifies the Confederacy as righteous. He is the sort of person that many Americans on tumblr would rather not speak to over Thanksgiving dinner. For Mom Beck and Walker, the two black servants in this film are understandably undereducated. But though the film paints them as self-aware and quick-witted, it mocks their lack of education during a scene where their poor spelling and grammar is apparent.

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The Little Colonel is less of a musical than other Shirley Temple films, but it is obviously not devoid of musical moments. Its one notable musical scene is without lyrics and is best known for its fancy footwork. The staircase dance between Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple is transcendent cinema. This sequence is set to an original rhyme before transitioning into “My Old Kentucky Home” (Robinson mimics a trumpet to provide the melody) and follows a late-night confrontation between little Lloyd and Colonel Lloyd. Lloyd Sherman, who has been sent away from home because her father must be quarantined due to illness, wants to see her parents – ironically, this is for the good of the film, as Lodge and Venable’s performances are indifferent. She has never been away from her parents this long, and finds herself unsettled by living with her cantankerous grandfather. But there is Bill Robinson, as Walker, to provide comfort and solace.

In this complicated, potentially dangerous dancing scene, they showcase their agility and technical ability together. Robinson was Temple’s sole tap dancing teacher; she was a quick study, soon learning how to feel the beat rather vocalize or visualize it. Without hyperbole, Robinson would later claim Temple to be one of the best dancing partners he ever had. Depression-era audiences of all races witnessed their mastery on-screen. The scene celebrates and implies that blacks and whites can address and overcome hardship together. Robinson holding Temple’s hand proved incendiary to many Southern theater owners, as many requested prints that edited out the hand-holding.

During the years after The Little Colonel’s release, Robinson – fifty years Temple’s senior – became her most frequent co-star and a dear friend (best described as a close uncle-niece relationship). Nevertheless, unlike his white co-stars, he could never embrace or kiss Temple on-screen. Robinson also stayed in and used different facilities – giving the young Shirley Temple an early, though, understanding of the racism blacks faced in America. She recalled how, on the set of The Little Colonel, Robinson was the only person in the cast or crew to treat her as an equal, never patronizing her. The two sent telegrams when apart, encouraging and motivating the other to do and be their best. This meeting of two cultural giants, their careers constrained in their respective ways, continues to provide the inspiration and joy that audiences in the Depression sorely needed – even if the films themselves reflect the most unsavory aspects of American attitudes towards race.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#The Little Colonel #David Butler #Shirley Temple #Bill Robinson #Lionel Barrymore #Evelyn Venable #John Lodge #Hattie McDaniel #William M. Conselman #Cyril J. Mockridge #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

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d-noona · 4 years ago

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BARTERED BRIDE

Chapter 1: Acquisition

Kim Namjoon is a ruthless financier used to buying and selling stocks, shares and priceless artifacts. But now Namjoon has his eye on a very different acquisition - Park Han Byeol. Left destitute by her father's recent death, Han Byeol walks into Namjoon's bank looking to extend her overdraft. As Han Byeol needs money and Namjoon needs a wife, he proposes the perfect deal: he'll rescue her financially if she agrees to marry him. But in this marriage of convenience can Han Byeol ever be anything more than just a bartered bride?

Expecting him to be a middle-aged toad, Han Byeol was surprised when the man who rose from behind the large orderly desk was a tall, dark, middle twenties, very handsome, with dimples on top. Man was he handsome.

“Miss Park, please sit down.” He gestured to the chair on the outer side of the desk and waited until she was settle before resuming his own sit. She knew nothing about him, except that his name was Kim Namjoon and he occupied a large office on the highest floor of a prestigious office block in the City. This area of Seoul was one of the world’s great markets. Judging by his discreetly luxurious surroundings, this man was one of the market’s moguls. To Han Byeol, until very recently, money has been something she spent with careless extravagance on clothes for herself, presents for others and anything else she wanted. Now the supply she had dried up. That was why she was here in the formidable presence of this well-built, 5’11 tall, whose physique didn’t match her mental image of a top-level financier. All she knew about him was that Mr. Lee, her late father’s lawyer, had said that Kim Namjoon wished to see her and might be able to help her and her mother out of their predicament.

Predicament being the understatement of the year, Han Byeol thought wryly, leaning back in the comfortable leather chair and automatically crossing her legs, remembering a moment too late that this was a no-no in the books of advice on how to impress interviewers. The movement caused Mr. Kim to shift the focus of his cold brown gaze from her face to her shapely knees and then to her ankles. Han Byeol accustomed to men admiring her legs furtively or openly according to temperament. Kim Namjoon belonged to the latter group, but whether his frank appraisal was appreciative, critical of indifferent it was impossible to tell. He had the most deadpan expression she had ever come across. It made her nervous.

And Han Byeol wasn’t used to being nervous. She didn’t like it. The appraisal didn’t last long, perhaps not more than three seconds. Leaning forward, his forearms resting on the edge of his desk and his long-fingered hands loosely clasped, he returned his gaze to her face. “You’re in trouble I hear.”

Lacking any regional of social accent, his voice gave no clue to his background. Self-assured and brisk, it was a voice she could imagine giving decisive orders people would jump to obey. Had she met him in surroundings not indicative of his occupation, and had been asked to guess it, she would have assumed that he held a senior rank in one of the special units of crack fighting men called to the world’s trouble spots when drastic action was the only solution. He had an air of contained physical power. A man of action rather than a desk-bound number-cruncher. “Yes,” she agreed, “We are. Since my father’s death, my mother and I have discovered that instead of being comfortably off were extremely hard up – virtually penniless.”

“Not penniless,” he said dryly. “The watch you’re wearing would pay the grocery bills of an average family for several months.” She looked down at her Cartier watch her parents had given her for her eighteenth birthday “I won’t be wearing this much longer, but I don’t mind that. I can cope with the change in our circumstances. It’s my mother I’m worried about. She’s not young. She’s never worked. She –“ He interrupted her. “Nor have you, I understand. The press described you as a playgirl”

“The press put labels on everyone…not always accurate. It’s true I’ve never had a job. There was no point. My father was rich…so we thought. I wasn’t brainy enough to train for one of the professions. I don’t have any special bent. The most useful thing I could do was to help keep other people employed, not take a routine job someone else needed” as Han Byeol attempts to explain her situation. “You do not have to explain your butterfly existence to me Miss Park, but without any work-experience, you’re not going to find it easy to start supporting yourself, particularly not at the level you’re accustomed to.”

“Presumably you didn’t ask me here to tell what I already know,” she replied, with a flash of irritation. There was something about his manner that put her back up. He hadn’t smiled when he greeted her. Beyond standing up when she was shown in by his secretary, he hadn’t done anything to put her at ease. “Why did you send for me?” she asked quirking at eyebrow at the man.

Rising, he picked up a file lying on top of his desk. He walked round to hand it to her. “Have a look through that.” He strolled away to a window looking out on a vista of rooftops. He stood with his hands behind him, the right hand clasping the left wrist. The file held plastic pockets containing illustrations taken from magazines and the glossier kind of catalog. Mostly they showed pieces of sculpture, paintings and other objects d’art. There were also several photographs of horses, an aerial view of an island off Scotland and a picture of a small French Chateau. Half turning from the window, he said “They're all things that caught my eye over the last few years. Some of them are mine now I’m in the fortunate position of being able to indulge my acquisitive impulses…as I expected you did before your father died.”

Shaking her head “Not on this scale,” said Han Byeol. She couldn’t see where the conversation was heading, as she glanced at him, Kim Namjoon returned to his desk, resting one long hard thigh along the edge of its polished surface and folding his arms across his chest. “There’s one picture in there that you’ll recognize. Carry on looking.”

Intrigued, she obeyed, turning the pages more rapidly than before. Suddenly, with in drawn breath of surprise and puzzlement, she stopped. She hadn’t expected to see a photograph of herself. It had been taken at a party of socialites. She was wearing a figure hugging dress of black crushed velvet and showing a lot of sun-tanned cleavage, having recently returned from a winter holiday in the Caribbean. “What am I doing here?” she demanded, baffled. “You, I hope, are going to be my next major acquisition, Ms. Park.” For the first time a hint of amusement showed in the hard steely-brown eyes and flickered at the corners of his wide, chiseled mouth.

Inconsequentially, it struck her that his mouth was at variance with the rest of his features. It was the mouth of a sensualist in the face of a man who otherwise gave the impression of being self-disciplined. But it was the meaning of his extraordinary statement, rather than the contradiction between his mouth and his eyes that preoccupied her at the moment. “What do you mean?” she said warily.

“I need a wife. You need financial support. Do you understand the word fortuitous?” says Namjoon. “Of course I do,” she retorted, her long lashed – brown eyes sparkling with annoyance at the implied aspersion of her intelligence. It was true she had been considered a dunce by most of her teachers and had never done well in examinations, but that was because she hadn’t been interested in the things they wanted her to learn…grammar, math, physics and incredibly tedious bits of history, all of them taught in a way guaranteed to send the normal teenagers – particularly the sort of restless, hyperactive teenager she had been…into well…boredom. She said, “It means happening by chance…especially by a lucky chance. But I can’t see anything lucky about my father dying of massive coronary in his middle fifties, with his business on the rocks and his wife destitute,” she added coolly. Matching her coldness, he said “In my experience, most people make their own luck. Your father’s lifestyle wasn’t conductive to a long healthy life. As a business man, he took too many risks for a man with responsibilities.”

“Did you have dealings with him?” she asked. She knew nothing about her father’s business life. Since her late teens he had spent little time with his family. It was years since he and her mother had shared a bedroom. Han Byeol knew there had been other women. “Not directly. But after seeing that picture, I made a point of finding out more about you. I was on the point of making a contract when your father died and I put the matter on hold. In the light of subsequent events, I’ve adapted my original plan to deal with things more expeditiously. If my information is correct, you have no relationships with men in train at the present time?”

“How did you find that out?” she said baffled. He said coolly, “I had you investigated…a reasonable precaution in the circumstances. Marriage is a very important contract. When people are buying a house, they have searches made by surveyors and lawyers. I had you checked out, very discreetly, by a private detective. You may want to run a similar check on me. For the time being my secretary has prepared a file which will give you most information you need.”

Retrieving the file she was holding, he placed another slimmer folder on the edge of the desk in front of her. “I can’t believe I’m even hearing this, I thought this was a merchant bank…not marriage bureau.” Han Byeol’s eyes were both perplexed and angry. He didn’t look like a crazy person. In his expensive suit and diagonally striped tie, perhaps the emblem of one of those old boys’ networks which still wielded so much influence, he looked eminently sane and sensible. But he must be out of his head to believe he could buy a wife as casually and easily as everything else in the file he was putting away in a drawer. “It’s a bank and I am its chairman,” he said calmly. Han Byeol cocked her head to the side “You wouldn’t be much longer if your shareholders heard what you’re suggesting. They’d think you were out of your mind. You can’t buy a wife.”

“It isn’t the usual method of acquiring one,” he agreed, going back to his chair. “But these are unusual circumstances. I have neither the time nor inclination to follow traditional course. You are in urgent need of someone to straighten out the financial shambles you find yourself in. if you agree to marry me, your mother won’t have to move and you won’t have to worry about her future. I’ll take care of that. Think it over, Han Byeol, when you’ve had time to assess it. I think you’ll agree it’s an eminently sensible plan.” For some reason his use of her first name detonated the anger which had been building inside her. It was rare for Han Byeol to lose control of her temper. But she did now. Jumping up, she said fiercely “I don’t need to think it over. Nor would any sane person. I’m furious you’ve made me come here, thinking I’d hear something useful! This trip to Seoul has been a complete waste of time. I’ve damned good mind to write to you board of directors and tell them they’ve got a nutcase in control.” Without waiting for his reaction, she marched to the big double doors of solid mahogany and yanked one of them open. Glowering at the startled secretary at his desk in the outer sanctum, she slammed in resoundingly behind her and returned to the private lift which brought her up to this rarefied level of the building

#BTS #BANGTAN SONYEONDAN #KIM NAMJOON #RM #BTS LEADER #RMXREADER #KIMNAMJOONXREADER #NAMJOONIE #JOONIE #bts fanfic #btsromanticfanfic #BARTERED BRIDE

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s-asuke · 7 years ago

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SasuSaku Month 2017 - Day 10 - Photograph

No warnings. Here, this is a small contribution, bc it's still the birthday of my fave person, Sasuke Uchiha. Thanks for reading, please leave feedback!! Konoha in the morning was beautiful. Tenten thought it was simply breathtaking – the way the colors played and swayed at the edge of the unknown – so she could climb at the edge of Hiruzen's head and catch the dawn at its most magnificent. The colors splayed in an endless aquarel that cleansed her soul with both sadness and grandiose self-conciousness, her existence didn't matter much, at least not here, underneath this sky. Polaroid camera she had always had with herself was always to come in handy, and her generous, civillian father, the last of her family (the one she knew) had always fixed it, ever since she was young and she even carried it to the war. Numerous pictures have passed through this polaroid. But ever since the young Sarada Uchiha was born, Tenten's favorite thing had become a different one. All the sunsets and moons and flowers had looked the same. Instead, she was filled with new hope. That life can be good again. No matter how bad our losses. Because if a person who encourages, loves, or just simply makes you a better person exists – you need nothing else. And after the war, the just blooming Uchiha family made place for one more. And another. TenTen, not having a last name to go after was adopted by Sasuke and Sakura Uchiha, three years after the war. Sasuke found out, before the war started, that Tenten was related to him in a very far sense, but still his last (now quite literally) living relative. TenTen was also amazed by the request of the survivor, so she moved without a word. Her three years were spent mourning, Neji and some comrades from Konoha and others whose faces she has seen fleetingly, but missed their existence, through never experienced the joy of meeting them. Sakura helped her the most – in pulling her out of her depression. And Sasuke, for the sake of his last family member not being fucked up. He truly put in effort (a complete one hundred 'n' eighty for him but around TenTen, even the ever-so-beloved Fifth spilt top-secrets of the nation with ease). Her grandmother was an Uchiha, who was Sasuke's cousin. So Sasuke, just based on that decided to elope and meet up with the best weapon wielder in all of the Great Five Nations and beyond. They trained together – Sasuke amazed at her marksmanship – hundred out of hundred hit with pure ease. Some targets she didn't even look at. The sadness didn't prevail – and Sasuke, the person who hated being photographed the most, endured the brunette's hobby. TenTen was being thanked on a daily basis, Sakura had over a thousand photos monthly. And that was just the beggining. Baby Sarada was born – the new hope of the Uchiha clan. And TenTen cried. Because Sasuke brought her home, broke the terrifying loneliness that somehow always loomed over her, because he was smiling, his real smile – and told TenTen with Sakura smiled behind him, "This is our baby girl." And Sarada, opening her dark eyes, cooed, stretching her small, smallest arms over to her, hugging her so instinctively – the child that had seen her for the first time – and she already knew they will love each other forever. And before she thought it couldn't be a purer and a more beautiful sight – she got her little head hidden in the crook of her neck – and the beautiful brunnette brushed the swirl of black hair with her lips. "Ah... you are going to be Auntie's little girl. I feel it..." mouthing a thank you at the two of them. From then on, every day of Sarada's growth, including the one of her family was recorded. Tenten had her first teeth on camera – burps and bumps and snowflakes and birthdays and basics and smallest and biggest: nevermind how ordinary – Sarada and she had a special familial bond. She would childishly sneak into the room and photograph the couple as they kissed, the three year old next to her giggling and revealing their presence. Sakura would pout at the brown eyed girl – but quickly forgive as she noticed the beautiful stroke of light on her pictures – their beauty abnormal, Sasuke's even more so, exceptional and pure, rendering her wordless. To be honest, there were so many pictures that Sakura had just one bookshelf for all the photo albums. If the Uchihas had anything those were the photographs. Sasuke would tsk and hn at the shelf when Sakura would mention it but approve nevertheless. Women would often spend their evenings watching the flat screen and the news in Five Nations, and Sasuke and Sarada would indulge in quality father-daughter time. Uzumakis and the Uchihas often ate dinner with one another and TenTen didn't like to interrupt – but Sakura wanted to always ask TenTen out of politeness, until one day Sasuke asked her (more like ordered her but hey, we don't care about the little things) and she had missed only three dinners in ten years. Boruto's toothy grin as him and Sarada tortured the poor Himawari with hugs, cuddles and tickles, and TenTen would scoff, making Sasuke and the Uzumaki couple laugh. Sakura and Sasuke would even luxurize themselves once a week, having nights off and resting at a small lake just outside Konoha. TenTen knew that they deserved every 'alone time' moment they could get. She told Sarada stories about Neji, how brave and selfish and stupid and oblivious he was, and how she will never marry. She told the little girl a lot. Of love and loss, of relatives and bonds that exceeded those simple labels – and the little girl acknowledged that her auntie TenTen was someone who was actually very knowledgeable of life. Sakura would lay down with Sasuke and Sarada and often talk to him about Sarada's family – the Uchiha clan, because knowledge was very important – and about your roots was a very important one. TenTen was asked these questions but rather gallantly escaped them as Sasuke took on the burden of the existence of such questions. Small and perfect, she would tug at her father's sleeve to teach her how to use her clan's jutsu, or spend the mornings with her mother trying to heal fish or something akin, since she wanted to master three things in her life: become the best nin that Konoha's Uchiha clan ever had, better medic than her mother, the best weapon user in the history. All that in kind, and she would train her patience and kindness too, and become Hokage. So, recording every day of her hard work – the living room quickly became the room with the most photo albums in their house (not including TenTen's own), so the day before Sarada's inauguration, TenTen skated among the most important dates, speeches and trainings, to remind the family and the young Hokage how important and full were their lives – how beautiful their existences. How precious Sasuke's and Sakura's little girl was. Because on the day she put the hat with 'Hi' and put in her the Will Of Fire completely, becoming the Ninth Hokage, Sarada Uchiha was photographed smiling, the picture afterwards showing her cape with the Ninth Hokage emboidered on it – later pictures showing her mother crying tears of joy and her stoic father smiling. TenTen loved both nature and human expression. But her family – Sakura, Sasuke and Sarada Uchiha, no one could ever beat them at a prettier picture they make.

#ssm17 #ssm17d10 #my writing #sasusaku

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stephenjaymorrisblog · 5 years ago

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1965

(Year One of My Rock & Roll Fandom)

By Stephen Jay Morris

Wednesday. June 12. 2019

©Scientific Morality

Selective memory? Why not? It’s my past and I can review it anyway I want! Yes. I do remember the bad times. Yes. I try to avoid past mistakes. True. Nostalgia is a symptom of depression. I went to my doctor and he prescribed a drug from which I am still withdrawing! You want to know what’s over rated? Modern day. Now! The only people who are happy are narcissists. Technology? Fantastic! Pretty soon a drone will deliver my pizza. I’m still waiting for flying cars. Well? Where in the fuck are they!?

So, let me indulge in my reminiscences of a crappy youth. I may die of natural causes tomorrow. This is my party and it’s freaking me out, baby! You don’t dig old farts? Then flake off!

Every older generation thinks the music they heard in their youth was and is better than that of the present day. I plead guilty. Let’s explore why I feel that way.

A certain musical tone will reflect the character of the times. As recording Technology changes and improves, the tone of music changes. In my youth, analog magnetic tape produced an inimitable sound. In the 50’s, most music was recorded live onto a two-track, stereo tape. In the, 60’s it grew to four-track and was no longer done live. Engineers would overdub recordings onto each individual track. Well, not to go over the evolution of recording, but to put it succinctly, recording went from analog to digital. Hell, you don’t even have to sing well anymore; you’ve got auto tune! Warning: old man whining alert. That is why there aren’t any more requirements for talent. It’s all about sex appeal and fake masculinity and not emoting the lyrics of a song. It’s no longer about art! It’s about being a braggadocios Dandy. Well, you can have it. Not me. I am going back to 1965.

Where do I start? All I need is a list. The science community always said that one’s olfactory is a trigger mechanism to memory. You smell something familiar and you are transported back in time. For me, it’s a song. With every song, comes a memory. Here is an example: Whenever I hear a Four Tops song, like “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch!),” I remember my dad driving my young family to the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park. We would drive through the Black community of South Central Los Angeles to get there. I would see Black kids sitting on stoops of old Craftsman houses, listening to portable radios blasting out that Motown sound. They were engaged in happy conversations or good, old fashioned horseplay. I wanted to get out of the car and join them! Instead, I had to listen to my dad pontificate, like he was some collage professor! I would later learn that he was really stupid and it was all a false front. What I resented was his absolute control of the car radio. We either had to listen to news or a station that played only classical music. Conversely, whenever my mom drove the car, she would tune it to the local pop/rock station. I used to tell my mom I was saving up to buy a Japanese transistor radio. I really was. I had my own piggy bank. In 1963, she bought me a transistor radio for my birthday! For the next two years I would listen to Dodger radio with Vin Scully. Then, I saw the Rolling Stones on the Ed Sullivan Show. I recently looked this up: It aired on a Sunday, October 25, 1964. That would be only time my dad allowed me to watch the Stones on T.V. After that, he would chase me out of the room because of something negative about them he’d read in the newspaper. But, all I needed was that first exposure. I fell in love with Rock & Roll!

I must have spent a lot of chump change on batteries for my handheld radio. The station I listened to the most was 93 KHJ AM. It had the strongest signal in Los Angeles, 1600 Kilocycles. At night, its waves would travel all the way to Utah! Then, there were the DJ’s who had funny pseudonyms like “Machine Gun Kelly,” “Bobby Tripp,” “Robert W. Morgan,” “Sam Riddle,” and the one and only, “Humble Harve.” He would play the most Rolling Stones records than any of the other disk jockeys.

In 1965, radio was popular among teenagers for music listening. Television soon got worried, so they created dance shows to attract the youth market. On the local stations there was “She-Bang,” “Hollywood-A-Go-Go,” and “Boss City.” On the major networks, there was “Shindig,” “Hullabaloo,” and “The Lloyd Thaxton Show.” They all booked musical acts who would come on and lip-synch to their records. They also featured dancers, most of whom looked like mannequins. These shows aired for either 30 minutes or one hour. However, the radio was on 24 hours a day! That was except for holidays. Every Christmas and New Year’s, they played only stupid Christmas music! Radio was everywhere you were! At supermarkets, car garages, public parks, the beach, and just about any place within earshot. I did most of my radio listening in the privacy of my bedroom, with the door locked.

There wasn’t much reading material for Rock fans. There were the teenybopper magazines like “16” and “Tiger Beat.” These consisted mostly of gossip and interviews with the musician of the month, asking such questions as what his favorite color was. I’d glance through it, flipping pages. The only redeeming value of these zines was the photographs, most of which were in black and white. That was the scene in 1965.

I didn’t like all of the music that year. There was this novelty record called, “The Name Game.” It was an American pop song written and performed by Shirley Ellis, as some rhyme game that creates variations on a person's name. You could take anybody’s name and make it rhyme. Here’s an example, using the name “Katie:”

Katie. Katie. bo-batie,

Bonana-fanna fo-fatie,

Fee fi mo-matie

Katie!

It was as an annoying song, especially when my sister sang it!

One thing I can say about the music on A.M. radio was that it had variety! You could hear all types of music. Country & Western, Soul, Motown, Folk-Rock, Jazz, Tex-Mex, British Invasion, Pop, and good old Rock & Roll. There was one country song I remember by Roger Miller. It was called, “King of the Road.” Then, I heard my first “answer song,” meaning the music was the same, but the lyrics had been changed. It was called, “Queen of the House,” by Jody Miller (no relation to Rodger), about the trials and tribulations of being a housewife. There were the double-entendre songs that sounded goofy, and I mean goofy! Their music sounded as if it was produced by a roller rink organ! One was called, “The Birds and the Bees,” by Jewel Akens. It’s about this horny guy, reciting the facts of life to his virgin girlfriend. The music sounded so fibrous and idiotic; you would think the song was about watching clowns at a circus. This next one was a channel changer. When I heard the first five notes, I was out of there! It was called “Yes, I’m Ready,” performed by Barbara Mason. It was lyrically about a young, inexperienced girl who didn’t know how to make love. Of course, the man was going to teach her. Barbara intentionally used a voice inflection that was off-key to sound like she was nervous. It worked! For years, this song had no face to me. I thought some white, nerdy, teenage girl did it. It turned out it was actually recorded by an attractive, Black R&B singer. She later had another hit that made a lot more sense, “Baby, I’m Yours.” I’ll bet her manager put a gun to her head and made her do it! The song did make it into the Top Ten.

Recently, I found a list of the top 100 records from 1965. You know something? I know 98% of the songs listed! Every one evokes a memory.

My mom and our neighbors took turns in car-pooling us kids to school. One morning, we had a sing along in the back seat. We sang Herman’s Hermits’ “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.” We mimicked their British accents as we sang. In the schoolyard, during lunch period, my classmates broke out in song and sang “The Game of Love” by Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders. I sang the bass part.

At this time in my life, I was not having a happy childhood. I was a fat kid with braces. It was at this time that I started experiencing panic attacks, but didn’t know what they were. I also had a bad constipation problem, so much so that family and neighbors dreaded me using their toilets! I was doing very badly in school and suffering very low self-esteem. My dad verbally abused me and physically hurt me. School bullies would come after me. I was an uncoordinated fat kid who was fearful of the world. The only thing my dad would say to me was, “Be a man!” Yeah. At the age of 11, I was supposed to be Superman!

My transistor radio was the only refuge I had. Music was my best friend and it consoled me in that extremely difficult time of my life.

So, if I seem sentimental about the music of 1965, it is because I am. I am currently going through a rough patch in my life, and while I lay in bed at night, I revisit the music of 65.

#60's music #baby boomers #rocknroll #motown #poets on tumblr #stephenjaymorris #history

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wandashifflett · 4 years ago

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Revolution and Counter-Revolution in America

Commentary

The recent turmoil—the protests, riots, occupations, vandalism, and destruction across the country and in other countries in response to a death in police custody in Minneapolis—reminded me of my own days as a student radical.

In May 1968, I was in London, excited as any of my contemporaries by the “events” of that month. The student revolt in France, which spread like wildfire, gained some support among artists, intellectuals, even sections of workers, and seemed to herald the revolutionary overthrow of the government and the “system.”

Some recalled the words of the poet Wordsworth, composed in 1804, in response to the French Revolution of 1789. He recalled the exhilaration many young people felt at what seemed a dawning of a new age of liberty, equality, and fraternity. As he put it,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

I shared the enthusiasm of the students in Paris—I wrote a leaflet, entitled “France Today, Britain Tomorrow,” and went down to the London docks with a few comrades and handed it out to some bemused dockworkers there. The aim, as in many earlier revolutions, was an alliance of students and workers that would transform society.

My contemporary (though unknown to me at the time), the English philosopher Roger Scruton, was in the Latin Quarter of Paris at that time, watching the mayhem in the cobbled street below.

He was filled with repugnance at the nihilism, the glee with which demonstrators below injured policemen, overturned cars, uprooted lamp-posts, pulled up cobblestones to make projectiles, and vandalized buildings and defaced them with graffiti.

He had a particular dislike for the revolutionary spirit, with its self-righteous contempt for the knowledge and wisdom that we inherit unearned from our forebears, along with the duty to preserve, improve the culture, and hand it on to future generations.

What he saw in Paris was a self-indulgence, a squandering of a great patrimony, a kind of play-acting by the privileged youth who would soon enough settle down and become good bourgeois themselves.

Scruton became a lifelong conservative in the tradition of that great critic of the 1789 French Revolution, Edmund Burke. It took me several more decades to see that he was right.

Class and Race

The activists and leaders of revolutions are often not those for whom they claim to speak.

In France, it was not the workers who led the revolt, but students and intellectuals. Indeed, the once-revolutionary French Communist Party, along with its large trade union, presented itself as the party of order, organizing its members on demonstrations to keep the workers physically separate from the students.

In Mao’s China, at the same time, the Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a movement launched by Mao Zedong to remove those in the party he saw as a threat to his power. It was an intra-elite struggle rather than a working-class insurrection against the ruling bureaucracy as a whole.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa movements in the United States are led by people who claim to be revolutionary (“We are trained Marxists,” as one founder of BLM said), but they do not pretend to be movements of workers or to seek an alliance with workers as trained Marxists had done in the time of Marx. They emphasize race rather than class. At the same time, the mass of protesters, in Minneapolis as in Seattle and elsewhere, are not anarchists or Marxists, or working-class, or even black.

So the radicals of the 1960s—already influenced by the identity politics promoted and funded by the Ford Foundation and federal bureaucracy—at least talked about a worker–student alliance, and those of the present do not.

Like some of today’s “Marxists,” they adopted some of the creepy-cult practices of the Cultural Revolution—the denunciation, public repentance, shaming, groveling, kneeling, prostrating, the iconoclasm—that have led some to call today’s BLM a religion for woke white people or a white-guilt cult.

The radicals, then as now, rejected what the Cultural Revolution called the Four Olds—old ideas, old cultures, old customs, old habits. We see today the elements of indoctrination into a cult of wokeness, but in this case as a kind of human resources activity for white public employees to “interrupt [their] whiteness.”

Large corporations have publicly endorsed and lavishly funded BLM. White multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos regales us with his view of what we should be reading and watching about race every time we go to an Amazon website to order anything. In our new cancel culture, employees, teachers, and celebrities have been twitter-mobbed or fired instantly for daring to express the slightest question about the movement or its association with lawlessness, violence, and intimidation.

That is not how I remember the 1960s. As Sohrab Ahmari asks in The Spectator:

“Does anyone seriously believe the American establishment—Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, the trustees of Ivy League universities, the major sports leagues, even Brooks Brothers, for God’s sake—would sign on to a movement that genuinely threatened its material interests? And yet these and many other firms and institutions are falling over themselves to express solidarity with the ‘uprising’, some going so far as to donate millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, an outfit that lists among its objectives the abolition of the nuclear family.”

Who Is Using Whom?

Is BLM using its clever hashtag name to gain money and support from well-meaning liberals while pursuing by any means necessary extreme aims of destruction of society, its traditions, customs, habits, and institutions? Or is the ruling class using BLM for its purposes? Do they simply share a coincidence of interest in bringing down President Donald Trump and his program?

Does the American establishment support BLM because they like to be on the winning side and think the movement will win? In that case, the answer to Ahmari’s question would be affirmative. They think Americans will come to believe as BLM does, as the New York Times is teaching its readers and our children to do, to despise their country and its traditions and values, to see everything in politics and history as about race, as Marxists once saw it as about class.

Is that why the country’s leading newspapers commemorate the nation’s birthday not with a party but with a list of its shortcomings? Is that why Joe Biden used the occasion for a finger-wagging lecture, in contrast to the president’s great patriotic and celebratory speech at Mount Rushmore, which elicited an orgy of denunciation from Democrats and their media? As one conservative columnist put it, the media “turned the Fourth of July into an embarrassing fiasco.”

Or does the ruling elite, who dominate the commanding heights of economy and society, see BLM as a necessary evil, the best chance of defeating Trump in the upcoming election and regaining political power? That is a declared aim of BLM and the ruling class’s highest immediate priority.

Is such support a continuation of the policy response to the race riots of the 1960s, a “developmental separatism” that balkanizes and separates the working class into formal categories or identities and keeps them weak and divided? Every success of Trump—like the unprecedented rise in real wages and fall in unemployment for blacks and Hispanics in Trump’s term prior to the pandemic—has to be minimized or denied.

By rejecting the nation and its Founding as rotten and racist to the core and from the start, the mainstream media turn the expression of patriotism, not least the traditional and joyful celebration of Independence Day by all classes and races, into a display of white supremacy.

Everything that can be is used to delegitimize the 2016 election and Trump’s presidency, to ensure a speedy return to the rule of the affluent, educated elites who had dominated both parties and presided over the ruin of the industrial heartland, the major cities, and working-class families of all races.

The adolescent attitudinizing supported and funded by adults may seem a small price to pay to signal virtue and to damage Trump. But BLM is, in the words of a leading black theologian, “a trademark phrase … designed to use black people. That phrase dehumanizes black people.”

Much of Minneapolis may lie in ruins, with minority small businesses built with decades of sweat and tears looted and destroyed in minutes. To the indulgent rich, the university-credentialed managerial elite, and the experts, it is a price worth paying to restore the old regime and signal their virtue at the same time.

In short, understood this way, the present turmoil is not a revolution at all, but an anti-democratic counter-revolution.

Paul Adams is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Hawaii and was a professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University. He is the co-author of “Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is” and has written extensively on social welfare policy and professional and virtue ethics.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/revolution-and-counter-revolution-in-america from The Ray Field https://therayfieldreview.tumblr.com/post/623499108585504769

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therayfieldreview · 4 years ago

Text

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in America

Commentary

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

My contemporary (though unknown to me at the time), the English philosopher Roger Scruton, was in the Latin Quarter of Paris at that time, watching the mayhem in the cobbled street below.

What he saw in Paris was a self-indulgence, a squandering of a great patrimony, a kind of play-acting by the privileged youth who would soon enough settle down and become good bourgeois themselves.

Scruton became a lifelong conservative in the tradition of that great critic of the 1789 French Revolution, Edmund Burke. It took me several more decades to see that he was right.

Class and Race

The activists and leaders of revolutions are often not those for whom they claim to speak.

That is not how I remember the 1960s. As Sohrab Ahmari asks in The Spectator:

Who Is Using Whom?

In short, understood this way, the present turmoil is not a revolution at all, but an anti-democratic counter-revolution.

from Rayfield Review News https://therayfield.com/revolution-and-counter-revolution-in-america

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d-noona · 6 years ago

Text

BARTERED BRIDE

SUMMARY: Kim Namjoon is a ruthless financier used to buying and selling stocks, shares and priceless artifacts. But now Namjoon has his eye on a very different acquisition – Y/N L/N. Left destitute by her father’s recent death, Y/N walks into Namjoon’s bank looking to extend her overdraft. As Y/N needs money and Namjoon needs a wife, he proposes the perfect deal: he’ll rescue her financially if she agrees to marry him. But in this marriage of convenience can Y/N ever be anything more than just a bartered bride?

WORDS: 1928

Kim Namjoon x Reader

M.List | Ch. 02

CHAPTER 01 - THE ACQUISITION

Expecting him to be a middle-aged toad, Y/N was surprised when the man who rose from behind the large orderly desk was a tall, dark, middle twenties, very handsome, with dimples on top. Man was he handsome.

“Miss L/N, please sit down.” He gestured to the chair on the outer side of the desk and waited until she was settle before resuming his own sit. She knew nothing about him, except that his name was Kim Namjoon and he occupied a large office on the highest floor of a prestigious office block in the City. This area of Seoul was one of the world’s great markets. Judging by his discreetly luxurious surroundings, this man was one of the market’s moguls. To Y/N, until very recently, money has been something she spent with careless extravagance on clothes for herself, presents for others and anything else she wanted. Now the supply she had dried up. That was why she was here in the formidable presence of this well-built, 5’11 tall, whose physique didn’t match her mental image of a top-level financier. All she knew about him was that Mr. L/N, her late father’s lawyer, had said that Kim Namjoon wished to see her and -might be able to help her and her mother out of their predicament.

Predicament being the understatement of the year, Y/N thought wryly, leaning back in the comfortable leather chair and automatically crossing her legs, remembering a moment too late that this was a no-no in the books of advice on how to impress interviewers. The movement caused Mr. Kim to shift the focus of his cold brown gaze from her face to her shapely knees and then to her ankles. Y/N accustomed to men admiring her legs furtively or openly according to temperament. Kim Namjoon belonged to the latter group, but whether his frank appraisal was appreciative, critical of indifferent it was impossible to tell. He had the most deadpan expression she had ever come across. It made her nervous.

And Y/N wasn’t used to being nervous. She didn’t like it. The appraisal didn’t last long, perhaps not more than three seconds. Leaning forward, his forearms resting on the edge of his desk and his long-fingered hands loosely clasped, he returned his gaze to her face. “You’re in trouble I hear.”

Lacking any regional of social accent, his voice gave no clue to his background. Self-assured and brisk, it was a voice she could imagine giving decisive orders people would jump to obey. Had she met him in surroundings not indicative of his occupation, and had been asked to guess it, she would have assumed that he held a senior rank in one of the special units of crack fighting men called to the world’s trouble spots when drastic action was the only solution. He had an air of contained physical power. A man of action rather than a desk-bound number-cruncher. “Yes,” she agreed, “we are. Since my father’s death, my mother and I have discovered that instead of being comfortably off were extremely hard up – virtually penniless.”

“The press put labels on everyone…not always accurate. It’s true I’ve never had a job. There was no point. My father was rich…so we thought. I wasn’t brainy enough to train for one of the professions. I don’t have any special bent. The most useful thing I could do was to help keep other people employed, not take a routine job someone else needed” as Y/N attempts to explain her situation. “You do not have to explain your butterfly existence to me Miss L/N. but without any work-experience, you’re not going to find it easy to start supporting yourself, particularly not at the level you’re accustomed to.”

Rising, he picked up a file lying on top of his desk. He walked round to hand it to her. “Have a look through that.” He strolled away to a window looking out on a vista of rooftops. He stood with his hands behind him, the right hand clasping the left wrist. The file held plastic pockets containing illustrations taken from magazines and the glossier kind of catalogue. Mostly they showed pieces of sculpture, paintings and other objets d’art. There were also several photograps of horses, an aerial view of an island off Scottland and a picture of a small French Chateau. Half turning from the window, he said “Theyre all things that caught my eye over the last few years. Some of them are mine now I’m in the fortunate position of being able to indulge my acquisitive impulses…as I expected you did before your father died.”

Shaking her head “Not on this scale,” said Y/N. She couldn’t see where the conversation was heading, as she glanced at him, Kim Namjoon returned to his desk, resting one long hard thigh along the edge of its polished surface and folding his arms across his chest. “There’s one picture in there that you’ll recognize. Carry on looking.”

Intrigued, she obeyed, turning the pages more rapidly than before. Suddenly, with indrawn breath of surprise and puzzlement, she stopped. She hadn’t expected to see a photograph of herself. It had been taken at a party of socialites. She was wearing a figure hugging dress of black crushed velvet and showing a lot of sun-tanned cleavage, having recently returned from a winter holiday in the Caribbean. “What am I doing here?” she demanded, baffled. “You, I hope, are going to be my next major acquisition, Ms. L/N” For the first time a hint of amusement showed in the hard steely-brown eyes and flickered at the corners of his wide, chiseled mouth.

Inconsequently, it struck her that his mouth was at variance with the rest of his features. It was the mouth of a sensualist in the face of a man who otherwise gave the impression of being self-disciplined. But it was the meaning of his extraordinary statement, rather than the contradiction between his mouth and his eyes that preoccupied her at the moment. “What do you mean?” she said warily.

“I need a wife. You need financial support. Do you understand the word fortuitous?” says Namjoon. “Of course I do,” she retorted, her long lashed – brown eyes sparkling with annoyance at the implied aspersion of her intelligence. It was true she had been considered a dunce by most of her teachers and had never done well in examinations, but that was because she hadn’t been interested in the things they wanted her to learn…grammar, maths, physics and incredibly tedious bits of history, all of them taught in a way guaranteed to send the normal teenagers – particularly the sort of restless, hyperactive teenager she had been…into well…boredom. She said, “It means happening by chance…especially by a lucky chance. But I can’t see anything luck about my father dying of massive coronary in his middle fifties, with his business on the rocks and his wife destitute,” she added coolly. Matching her coldness, he said “In my experience, most people make their own luck. Your father’s lifestyle wasn’t conductive to a long healthy life. As a business man, he took too many risks for a man with responsibilities.”

“Did you have dealings with him?” she asked. She knew nothing about her father’s business life. Since her late teens he had spent little time with his family. It was years since he and her mother had shared a bedroom. Y/N knew there had been other women. “Not directly. But after seeing that picture, I made a point of finding out more about you. I was on the point of making a contract when your father died and I put the matter on hold. In the light of subsequent events, I’ve adapted my original plan to deal with things more expeditiously. If my information is correct, you have no relationships with men in train at the present time?”

Retrieving the file she was holding, he placed another slimmer folder on the edge of the desk in front of her. “I can’t believe I’m even hearing this, I thought this was a merchant bank…not marriage bureau.” Y/N’s eyes were both perplexed and angry. He didn’t look like a crazy person. In his expensive suit and diagonally striped tie, perhaps the emblem of one of those old boys’ networks which still wielded so much influence, he looked eminently sane and sensible. But he must be out of his head to believe he could buy a wife as casually and easily as everything else in the file he was putting away in a drawer. “It’s a bank and I am its chairman,” he said calmly. Y/N cocked her head to the side “You wouldn’t be much longer if your shareholders heard what you’re suggesting. They’d think you were out of your mind. You can’t buy a wife.”

“It isn’t the usual method of acquiring one,” he agreed, going back to his chair. “But these are unusual circumstances. I have neither the time nor inclination to follow traditional course. You are in urgent need of someone to straighten out the financial shambles you find yourself in. if you agree to marry me, your mother won’t have to move and you won’t have to worry about her future. I’ll take care of that. Think it over, Y/N. when you’ve had time to assess it. I think you’ll agree it’s an eminently sensible plan.” For some reason his use of her first name detonated the anger which had been building inside her. It was rare for Y/N to lose control of her temper. But she did now. Jumping up, she said fiercely “I don’t need to think it over. Nor would any sane person. I’m furious you’ve made me come here, thinking I’d hear something useful! This trip to Seoul has been a complete waste of time. I’ve damned good mind to write to you board of directors and tell them they’ve got a nutcase in control.” Without waiting for his reaction, she marched to the big double doors of solid mahogany and yanked one of them open. Glowering at the startled secretary at his desk in the outer sanctum, she slammed in resoundingly behind her and returned to the private lift which brought her up to this rarefied level of the building.

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