#zombie debts

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Wall Street Journal goes to bat for the vultures who want to steal your house

Tonight (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Tomorrow (June 6), I’m on a Rightscon panel about interoperability.

The tacit social contract between the Wall Street Journal and its readers is this: the editorial page is for ideology, and the news section is for reality. Money talks and bullshit walks — and reality’s well-known anticapitalist bias means that hewing too closely to ideology will make you broke, and thus unable to push your ideology.

That’s why the editorial page will rail against “printing money” while the news section will confine itself to asking which kinds of federal spending competes with the private sector (creating a bidding war that drives up prices) and which kinds are not. If you want frothing takes about how covid relief checks will create “debt for our grandchildren,” seek it on the editorial page. For sober recognition that giving small amounts of money to working people will simply go to reducing consumer and student debt, look to the news.

But WSJ reporters haven’t had their corpus colossi severed: the brain-lobe that understands economic reality crosstalks with the lobe that worship the idea of a class hierarchy with capital on top and workers tugging their forelacks. When that happens, the coverage gets weird.

Take this weekend’s massive feature on “zombie mortgages,” long-written-off second mortgages that have been bought by pennies for vultures who are now trying to call them in:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zombie-mortgages-could-force-some-homeowners-into-foreclosure-e615ab2a

These second mortgages — often in the form of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) — date back to the subprime bubble of the early 2000s. As housing prices spiked to obscene levels and banks figured out how to issue risky mortgages and sell them off to suckers, everyday people were encouraged — and often tricked — into borrowing heavily against their houses, on complicated terms that could see their payments skyrocket down the road.

Once the bubble popped in 2008, the value of these houses crashed, and the mortgages fell “underwater” — meaning that market value of the homes was less than the amount outstanding on the mortgage. This triggered the foreclosure crisis, where banks that had received billions in public money forced their borrowers out of their homes. This was official policy: Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boasted that forcing Americans out of their homes would “foam the runways” for the banks and give them a soft landing;

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

With so many homes underwater on their first mortgages, the holders of those second mortgages wrote them off. They had bought high-risk, high reward debt, the kind whose claims come after the other creditors have been paid off. As prices collapsed, it became clear that there wouldn’t be anything left over after those higher-priority loans were paid off.

The lenders (or the bag-holders the lenders sold the loans to) gave up. They stopped sending borrowers notices, stopped trying to collect. That’s the way markets work, after all — win some, lose some.

But then something funny happened: private equity firms, flush with cash from an increasingly wealthy caste of one percenters, went on a buying spree, snapping up every home they could lay hands on, becoming America’s foremost slumlords, presiding over an inventory of badly maintained homes whose tenants are drowned in junk fees before being evicted:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

This drove a new real estate bubble, as PE companies engaged in bidding wars, confident that they could recoup high one-time payments by charging working people half their incomes in rent on homes they rented by the room. The “recovery” of real estate property brought those second mortgages back from the dead, creating the “zombie mortgages” the WSJ writes about.

These zombie mortgages were then sold at pennies on the dollar to vulture capitalists — finance firms who make a bet that they can convince the debtors to cough up on these old debts. This “distressed debt investing” is a scam that will be familiar to anyone who spends any time watching “finance influencers” — like forex trading and real estate flipping, it’s a favorite get-rich-quick scheme peddled to desperate people seeking “passive income.”

Like all get-rich-quick schemes, distressed debt investing is too good to be true. These ancient debts are generally past the statute of limitations and have been zeroed out by law. Even “good” debts generally lack any kind of paper-trail, having been traded from one aspiring arm-breaker to another so many times that the receipts are long gone.

Ultimately, distressed debt “investing” is a form of fraud, in which the “investor” has to master a social engineering patter in which they convince the putative debtor to pay debts they don’t actually owe, either by shading the truth or lying outright, generally salted with threats of civil and criminal penalties for a failure to pay.

That certainly goes for zombie mortgages. Writing about the WSJ’s coverage on Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith reminds readers not to “pay these extortionists a dime” without consulting a lawyer or a nonprofit debt counsellor, because any payment “vitiates” (revives) an otherwise dead loan:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/wall-street-journal-aids-vulture-investors-threatening-second-mortgage-borrowers-with-foreclosure-on-nearly-always-legally-unenforceable-debt.html

But the WSJ’s 35-paragraph story somehow finds little room to advise readers on how to handle these shakedowns. Instead, it lionizes the arm-breakers who are chasing these debts as “investors…[who] make mortgage lending work.” The Journal even repeats — without commentary — the that these so-called investors’ “goal is to positively impact homeowners’ lives by helping them resolve past debt.”

This is where the Journal’s ideology bleeds off the editorial page into the news section. There is no credible theory that says that mortgage markets are improved by safeguarding the rights of vulture capitalists who buy old, forgotten second mortgages off reckless lenders who wrote them off a decade ago.

Doubtless there’s some version of the Hayek Mind-Virus that says that upholding the claims of lenders — even after those claims have been forgotten, revived and sold off — will give “capital allocators” the “confidence” they need to make loans in the future, which will improve the ability of everyday people to afford to buy houses, incentivizing developers to build houses, etc, etc.

But this is an ideological fairy-tale. As Michael Hudson describes in his brilliant histories of jubilee — debt cancellation — through history, societies that unfailingly prioritize the claims of lenders over borrowers eventually collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Foundationally, debts are amassed by producers who need to borrow capital to make the things that we all need. A farmer needs to borrow for seed and equipment and labor in order to sow and reap the harvest. If the harvest comes in, the farmer pays their debts. But not every harvest comes in — blight, storms, war or sickness — will eventually cause a failure and a default.

In those bad years, farmers don’t pay their debts, and then they add to them, borrowing for the next year. Even if that year’s harvest is good, some debt remains. Gradually, over time, farmers catch enough bad beats that they end up hopelessly mired in debt — debt that is passed on to their kids, just as the right to collect the debts are passed on to the lenders’ kids.

Left on its own, this splits society into hereditary creditors who get to dictate the conduct of hereditary debtors. Run things this way long enough and every farmer finds themselves obliged to grow ornamental flowers and dainties for their creditors’ dinner tables, while everyone else goes hungry — and society collapses.

The answer is jubilee: periodically zeroing out creditors’ claims by wiping all debts away. Jubilees were declared when a new king took the throne, or at set intervals, or whenever things got too lopsided. The point of capital allocation is efficiency and thus shared prosperity, not enriching capital allocators. That enrichment is merely an incentive, not the goal.

For generations, American policy has been to make housing asset appreciation the primary means by which families amass and pass on wealth; this is in contrast to, say, labor rights, which produce wealth by rewarding work with more pay and benefits. The American vision is that workers don’t need rights as workers, they need rights as owners — of homes, which will always increase in value.

There’s an obvious flaw in this logic: houses are necessities, as well as assets. You need a place to live in order to raise a family, do a job, found a business, get an education, recover from sickness or live out your retirement. Making houses monotonically more expensive benefits the people who get in early, but everyone else ends up crushed when their human necessity is treated as an asset:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Worse: without a strong labor sector to provide countervailing force for capital, US politics has become increasingly friendly to rent-seekers of all kinds, who have increased the cost of health-care, education, and long-term care to eye-watering heights, forcing workers to remortgage, or sell off, the homes that were meant to be the source of their family’s long-term prosperity:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

Today, reality’s leftist bias is getting harder and harder to ignore. The idea that people who buy debt at pennies on the dollar should be cheered on as they drain the bank-accounts — or seize the homes — of people who do productive work is pure ideology, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on the WSJ’s editorial page, but which sticks out like a sore thumb in the news pages.

Thankfully, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is on the case. Director Rohit Chopra has warned the arm-breakers chasing payments on zombie mortgages that it’s illegal for them to “threaten judicial actions, such as foreclosures, for debts that are past a state’s statute of limitations.”

But there’s still plenty of room for more action. As Smith notes, the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement — a “get out of jail for almost free” card for the big banks — enticed lots of banks to discharge those second mortgages. Per Smith: “if any servicer sold a second mortgage to a vulture lender that it had charged off and used for credit in the National Mortgage Settlement, it defrauded the Feds and applicable state.”

Maybe some hungry state attorney general could go after the banks pulling these fast ones and hit them for millions in fines — and then use the money to build public housing.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in London and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/vulture-capitalism/#distressed-assets

[Image ID: A Georgian eviction scene in which a bobby oversees three thugs who are using a battering ram to knock down a rural cottage wall. The image has been crudely colorized. A vulture looks on from the right, wearing a top-hat. The battering ram bears the WSJ logo.]

[mariocki]

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)

"Come children, Uncle Alan's going to curdle your blood."

"Uncle Alan already does. Turns my stomach, too."

[starrysharks]

zombie wanting to eat the flesh of their loved ones as a way of showing affection ‼️‼️

[strawberrybyers]

realizing i’m so funny and talking a lot and making a million plans right now is not because i am healing for a new year new me era but because i am entering a state of ✨hypomania✨

[angeltannis]

obsessed with Sasha deciding to dig up Gaige’s rotten moldy dad’s corpse to try to revive his decomposed remains with her Anahatium shard. Girl this is how you get The Walking Dead

[sanchoyo]

i start that new job tomorrow 😶 ...

[hq92]

I had a dream that I was a survivor in a zombie apocalypse scenario. Me and a group of survivors were holed up in a house, someone compromised our location, the hoarde surrounded us and we had to get out safely yadda yadda.

While we were on the streets again a courier found me and asked "Are you so and so?" And I replied "Yes, that’s me."

He handed me a letter addressed to myself and I got teary eyed. Was it a note from my parents? My sibling and his kids? My husband or a long lost friend?

I gingerly and tearfully tore open the envelope, my pulse pounding with excitement:

"Dear So and So,

It's been 10 years since your last payment on your student loans. The appropriate 9% interest has been calculated for that amount of time and your new balance is listed below. Please make arrangements for prompt payments at your earliest convenience."

[birdstooth]

Hair stuff

Omg my olaplex 2 came!!! It cost so much but whatever. #no regrets #only debt

Still don’t get why u need a cosmetology license to purchase it directly tho bc 1.) it’s not more toxic than any of the other olaplex products and 2.) it’s not illegal for cosmetologists to sell it to a third party (like me) so… what’s the deal?

Anyway, I’m not sponsored or anything but this stuff seriously works. I am a true 1 on the hair colouring scale and I’ve been bleaching it to around a 9/10 level for the past few years

It’s incredibly damaging and I’m not kidding when I say I’ve had my hair literally disintegrate like cotton candy in water after over bleaching.

I’ve only used the olaplex no 3 in the past bc it’s the most concentrated solution available to consumers, and it made a huge difference.

Tbh if your hair is lighter tho idk if u need it… I do at least 4 bleaching sessions with 30 vol developer (if you’re tempted to use 40… don’t do it brother), with a couple weeks in between each. That gets my hair light enough to pick up pastel colour dyes, but if I want to go silver/grey, I need 5-6 sessions 😬

[miammey]

Everyone's just talking about how hot Lighter is, and yeah he's attractive, but he has such a painful story and barely anyone is mentioning it??? I haven't even finished all his hangout stuff yet, but already I can tell that he's still extremely troubled by what happened in his past.

During the film we watch with him he wasn't scared of the blood and gore, mainly since there wasn't as much as expected (and he wore his glasses so he wouldn't faint), but he was scared about what one of the characters did that caused a disaster, something he relates to in a sense, saying that even if he looked calm his hands were shaking. I wanted to tell him that he can stay and calm down all he wants, give him a more relaxing movie to watch free of charge, because to me he felt so uncomfortable after watching the movie because he didn't expect it to hit so close

And don't get me started on this man's physical injuries. He's covered in MASSIVE scars, realistically, if we were to map out how they got there, he would've nearly had his arm cut off or just be cut in half. He mentioned that another reason he wears sunglasses is because of an old injury, even tho it's basically already healed he just no longer feels comfortable going out without them. He mentioned his neck and legs weren't what they once were, and judging by his backstory that's mainly because he's always fighting. He's the type to strain himself to whatever extent necessary do get the task done

He also is just genuinely so attached to his gang and so scared of losing them, but even then he stays strong because others need him to. He also saw Caesar almost die, his leader and a good friend, and yet he stayed strong for Lucy. He goes off by himself to deal with things because he doesn't want to get others in the gang involved, and he's just so genuinely earnest. He's caring and awkward and bad at hiding it, but he's still that Champion, a position he takes pride in because it means he's succeeding at protecting his loved ones, something he failed to do in the past

Speaking of the past, back to him being self-sacrificing, he went into debt and basically signed his life away to pay it off after his group all died all to make sure their families were taken care of. He knew that businessmen were greedy and there's a good chance it would take decades for him to pay them off, if he ever would, but he still did it. He described himself as a zombie back then, and only until after he got comfortable with the gang did he break out of that state

I know people gawk over attractive characters, I can't say I don't as well at times, but every time he's on screen and anything even remotely seems to upset him I just wanna make him comfortable. He's relaxed, but not comfortable, and I don't think he's been comfortable for a very long time. He says everything's in the past, but I'm pretty sure he's still trying to convince himself of that, because what happened in his past had such a big impact on his future that it's still in the back of his mind day in and day out

[luminique]

saw a japanese tweet about lighter during his underground fighting days and i am absolutely distraught. don’t treat this as canon though, they only used info in game to help build their own understanding of lighter.

they said that in his ep, he seemed to be someone who was constantly winning. but if you look at his story in the game, he mentioned having losses. a little headcanon that they had was that it wouldn’t be fun/entertaining if he always won his matches. you could put him against anyone and he’d honestly win against them so there were some match fixings and unfair advantages to his opponents to give the audience a ‘real’ show.

another thing that was mentioned was how he told us during the tour de inferno how he could just lower his head and bend his knees a little and he’d get money. this isn’t solid proof of anything but many do think that he may have been forced to provide extra services, considering the fact that he is canonically handsome (claims from bellum and other npcs have complimented him too).

then we learn that he felt like a zombie during his time in those fighting rings. opponent after opponent, his body deeply bruised and wounded, unable to look at his own reflection in their eyes. he had only done it for the money, to compensate for his actual losses in his life but then he was turned into an object for entertainment.

he was just a young man, he also had hope and ambitions. then it was ripped out of him starting with the deaths of his comrades, followed by his exploitation in those matches and the underground fighting rings. even though big daddy had paid off his debts, his ‘mistake’ as a leader didn’t disappear, the scars and marks on his body didn’t disappear, his own habits of self sacrifice and suicidal thoughts didn’t disappear.

we don’t actually know what went down during his days in the ember arena. personally, i would be more than fine if he chooses not to tell us the full details. i just hope that the game story treats him with care and we don’t have to consistently make him relive those days.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When private equity destroys your hospital

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 9-10), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

As someone who writes a lot of fiction about corporate crime, I naturally end up spending a lot of time being angry about corporate crime. It's pretty goddamned enraging. But the fiction writer in me is especially upset at how cartoonishly evil the perps are – routinely doing things that I couldn't ever get away with putting in a novel.

Beyond a doubt, the most cartoonishly evil characters are the private equity looters. And the most cartoonishly evil private equity looters are the ones who get involved in health care.

(Buckle up.)

Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tcacik details a national scandal: the collapse of PE-backed hospital chain Steward Health, a company that bought and looted hospitals up and down the country, starving them of everything from heart valves to prescription paper, ripping off suppliers, doctors and nurses, and callously exposing patients to deadly risk:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-27-scenes-from-bat-cave-steward-health-florida/

Steward occupies a very special place in the private equity looting cycle. Private equity companies arrange themselves on a continuum of indiscriminate depravity. At the start of the continuum are PE funds that buy productive and useful firms (everything from hospitals to car-washes) using "leveraged buyouts." That means that they borrow money to buy the company and use the company itself as collateral: it's like you getting a bank-loan to buy your neighbor's mortgage out from under them, and using your neighbor's house as collateral for that loan.

Once the buyout is done, the PE fund pays itself a "special dividend" (stealing money the business needs to survive) and then starts charging the business a "management fee" for the PE fund's expertise. To pay for all this, the PE bosses start to hack away at the company. Quality declines. So do wages. Prices go up. The company changes suppliers, opting for cheaper alternatives, often stiffing the old company. There are mass layoffs. The remaining employees end up doing three peoples' jobs, for lower wages, with fewer materials of lower quality.

Eventually, that top-feeding PE company finds a more desperate, more ham-fisted PE company to unload the business onto. That middle-feeding company also does a leveraged buyout, pays itself another special dividend, cuts wages, staffing and quality even further. They switch to even worse suppliers and stiff the last batch. Prices go up even higher.

Then – you guessed it – the middle-feeding PE company finds an even more awful PE bottom-feeder to unload the company onto. That bottom feeder does it all again, without even pretending to leave the business in condition to do its job. The company is a shambling zombie at this point, often producing literal garbage in place of the products that made its reputation. Employees' paychecks bounce, or don't show up at all. The company stops bothering to pay the lawyers that have been fending off its creditors. Those lawyers sue the company, too.

That's the kind of PE company Steward Health was, and, as the name suggests, Steward Health is in the business of stripping away the very last residue of value from community hospitals. As you might imagine, this gets pretty fucking ugly.

Steward owns 32 hospitals up and down the country, though its holdings are dwindling as the company walks away from its debt-burdened holdings, after years of neglect that have rendered them unfit for use as health facilities – or for any other purpose. Tcacik's piece offers a snapshot of one such hospital: Florida's Rockledge Regional Medical Center, just eight miles from Cape Canaveral.

Rockledge is a disaster. The fifth floor was, at one point, home to 5,000 bats.

Five.

Thousand.

Bats.

(Rockledge stiffed the exterminators.)

The bats were just the beginning. One of the internal sewage pipes ruptured. Whole sections of the hospital were literally full of shit, oozing out of the walls and ceiling, slopping over medical equipment.

That's an urgent situation for any hospital, but for Rockledge, it's catastrophic, because Rockledge is a hospital without any hospital supplies. Steward has stiffed the companies that supply "heart valves, urology lasers, Impella catheters, cardiac catheterization balloons, slings for lifting heavier patients, blood and urine test reagents, and most recently, prescription paper." Key medical equipment has been repossessed. So have the Pepsi machines. The hospital cafeteria had its supply of cold cuts repossessed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1agc1j4/comment/kolicqo/

It's not just Steward's nonpayments that reek of impending doom. Its payments also bear the hallmarks of a scam artist on the brink of blowing off the con. The company recently paid off a vendor with five separate checks for $1m, each drawn on "a random hospital in Utah" (Steward recently walked away from its Utah hospitals; its partners there are suing it for stealing $18m on their way out the door).

This company – which owns 32 hospitals! – has resorted to gambits like sending photos of fake checks to doctors it hasn't paid in months as "proof" that the money was coming (the checks arrived 22 days later).

Steward owes so much money to its employees – $1.66m to just one doctors' group. But the medical staff keep doing their jobs, and are reluctant to speak on the record, thanks to Steward's reputation for vicious retaliation. Those health workers keep showing up to take care of patients, even as the hospital crumbles around them. One clinician told Tcacik: "I watched a bed collapse underneath a [patient] who had just undergone hip surgery."

Rockledge has nine elevators, but only five of them work – the other four have been broken for a year. The hospital's fourth floor has been converted to "a graveyard of broken beds." The sinks are clogged, or filled with foul gunk. There's black mold. Nurses have noted on the maintenance tags that the repair service refuses to attend the hospital until their overdue bills are paid. The fifteen-person on-site maintenance team was cut to just two workers.

Steward is just the latest looting owner of Rockledge. After the Great Financial Crisis, private equity consultants helped sell it to Health Management Associates. The hospital's CEO took home a $10m bonus for that sale and exited; Health Management Associates then quickly became embroiled in a Medicare fraud and kickback scandal. Soon after, Rockledge was passed on to Community Health Systems, who then sold it on to Rockledge.

Steward, meanwhile, was at that time owned by an even bigger private equity giant, Cerberus, which then sold Steward off. That deal was performatively complex and hid all kinds of mischief. Prior to Cerberus's sell-off of Steward, they sold off Steward's real-estate. The buyer was Medical Properties Trust, who gave Cerberus $1.25b for the real-estate: three hospitals in Florida and three more in Ohio. Steward then contracted to operate these hospitals on MPT's behalf, and pay MPT rent for the real-estate.

This complex arrangement was key to siphoning value out of the hospital and to keeping angry creditors at bay – if you can't figure out who owes you money, it's a lot harder to collect on the debt. The scheme was masterminded by Steward founder/CEO Ralph de la Torre. De la Torre is notorious for taking a massive dividend out of the company while it owed $1.4b to its creditors. He bought a $40m yacht with the money.

De la Torre was once feted as a business genius who would "disrupt" healthcare. But as Steward's private jet hops around "Corfu, Santorini, St. Maarten and Antigua" as its hospitals literally crumble, he's becoming less popular. In Massachusetts, politicians have railed against Steward and de la Torre (Governor Healey wants the company to leave the state "as soon as possible").

Florida, by contrast, is much more friendly to Steward. The state Health and Human Services Committee chair Randy Fine is an ardent admirer of hospital privatization and is currently campaigning to sell off the last community hospital in Brevard County. The state inspectors are likewise remarkably tolerant of Steward's little peccadillos. The quasi-governmental agency that inspects hospitals has awarded this shit-and-bat-filled, elevator-free, understaffed rotting hulk "A" grades for quality.

These inspectors jointly represent a mismatched assortment of private and public agencies, dominated by a nonprofit called Leapfrog, the brainchild of Harvard public-health prof Lucian Leape, who founded it in 2000. Leapfrog likes to tout its "transparent" assessment criteria, and Steward are experts at hitting those criteria, spending the exact minimum to tick every box that Leapfrog inspectors use as proxies for overall quality and safety.

This is a pretty great example of Goodhart's Law: "every measurement eventually becomes a target, whereupon it ceases to be a good measurement":

https://xkcd.com/2899/

But despite Steward's increasingly furious creditors and its decaying facilities, the company remains bullish on its ability to continue operations. Medical Properties Trust – the real estate investment trust that is nominally a separate company from Steward – recently hosted a conference call to reassure Wall Street investors that it would be a going concern. When a Bank of America analyst asked MPT's CFO how this could possibly be, given the facility's dire condition and Steward's degraded state, the CFO blithely assured him that the company would get bailouts: "We own hospitals no one wants to see closed."

That's the thing about PE and health-care. The looters who buy out every health-care facility in a region understand that this makes them too big to fail: no matter how dangerous the companies they drain become, local governments will continue to prop them up. Look at dialysis, a market that's been cornered by private equity rollups. Today, if you need this lifesaving therapy, there's a good chance that every accessible facility is owned by a private equity fund that has fired all its qualified staff and ceased sterilizing its needles. Otherwise healthy people who visit these clinics sometimes die due to operator error. But they chug along, because no dialysis clinics is worse that "dialysis clinics where unqualified sadists sometimes kill you with dirty needles":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood

The bad news is that private equity has thoroughly colonized the entire medical system. They took hospitals, fired the doctors, then took over the doctors' groups that provided outsource staff to the hospital:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

It's illegal for private equity companies to own doctors' practices (doctors have to own these), but they obfuscated the crime with a paper-thin pretext that they got away with despite its obvious bullshittery:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

The financier who decides whether you live or die depends on an algorithm that literally sets a tolerable level of preventable deaths for the patients trapped in the practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

Private equity also took over emergency rooms and boobytrapped them with "surprise billing" – junk fees that ran to thousands of dollars that you had to pay even if the hospital was in network with your insurer. They made billions from this, and spent a many millions from that booty keeping the scam alive with scare ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

The whole health stack is colonized by private equity-backed monopolies. Even your hospital bed!

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/05/hillrom/#baxter-international

Then there's residential care. Private equity cornered many regional markets on nursing homes and turned them into slaughterhouses, places where you go to die, not live:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

The palliative care sector is also captured by private equity. PE bosses hire vast teams of fast-talking salespeople who con vulnerable older people into entering an end-of-life system before they are ready to die. Thanks to loose regulation, the nation is filled with fake hospices that can rake in millions from Medicare while denying all care to their patients (hospice patients don't get life-extending medication or procedures, by definition):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

If you survive this long enough, Medicare eventually tells the hospice that you're clearly not dying and you get kicked off their rolls. Now you have to go through the lengthy bureaucratic nightmare of convincing the system – which was previously informed that you were at death's door – that you are actually viable and need to start getting care again (good luck with that).

If that kills you, guess what? Private equity has rolled up funeral homes up and down the country, and they will scam your survivors just as hard as the medical system that killed you did:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/09/high-cost-of-dying/#memento-mori

The PE sector spent more than a trillion dollars over the past decade buying up healthcare companies, and it has trillions more in "dry powder" allocated for further medical acquisitions. Why not? As the CFO of Medical Properties Trust told that Bank of America analyst last week, when you "own hospitals no one wants to see closed." you literally can't fail, no matter how many people you murder.

The PE sector is a reminder that the crimes people commit for money far outstrip the crimes they commit for ideology. Even the most ideological killers are horrified by the murders their profit-motivated colleagues commit.

Last year, Tkacic wrote about the history of IG Farben, the German company that built Monowitz, a private slave-labor camp up the road from Auschwitz to make the materiel it was gouging Hitler's Wehrmacht on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Farben bought the cheapest possible slaves from Auschwitz, preferentially sourcing women and children. These slaves were worked to death at a rate that put Auschwitz's wholesale murder in the shade. Farben's slaves died an average of just three months after starting work at Monowitz. The situation was so abominable, so unconscionable, that the SS officers who provided outsource guard-labor to Monowitz actually wrote to Berlin to complain about the cruelty.

The Nuremberg trials are famous for the Nazi officers who insisted that they were "just following order" but were nonetheless executed for their crimes. 24 Farben executives were also tried at Nuremberg, where they offered a very different defense: "We had a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to maximize our profits." 19 of the 24 were acquitted on that basis.

PE is committed to an ideology that is far worse than any form of racial animus or other bias. As a sector, it is committed to profit above all other values. As a result, its brutality knows no bounds, no decency, no compassion. Even the worst crimes we commit for hate are nothing compared to the crimes we commit for greed.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/retaliation#charnel-house

[snivyartjpeg]

Yuma Month Day 26 - Role Swap

god i was excited for this one. it first started off as a joke, but the more i thought about it, the more interesting this swap became. so here's my massive lore dump of changes that'd happen in the story beneath the cut (spoiler warning):

i think, fundamentally, yuma and yakou are very similar characters. they're both very protective and kindhearted, with a strong sense of justice and a penchant for attracting terrible luck. because of this, some things would remain the same, such as the NDA's dynamics with their doormat chief as well amnesia!yakou's massive unpaid intern energy. i think yakou would be pretty similar to how he behaved in the light novel- a bit more optimistic and naive, like yuma. but there are two key differences between them that'd make this a different story, especially in ch 4: yuma has a forte, and yakou is very selfish. so here's some changes:

yakou's wife is his shinigami now, as you can see, while shinigami is yuma's dead wife. i think mrs furio would act cooler than shinigami. she'd still be playful, but she takes her job more seriously. also she hands yakou the solution keys normally without throwing up. they still have to do the dance and mouth sword thing tho. and the other stuff. that's just death god protocol

shinigami (or in this case the unnamed Mrs. Kokohead but i will still be calling her shinigami for convenience sake) was a scientist at amaterasu who studied forensics and thanatology instead of regenerative medicine. this also means that the pill she gives zombie yuma is not going to bring him back, but instead grant the zombie homunculi a peaceful, painless, but permanent death

speaking of zombie yuma, he's the homunculus now! yakou is 100% human and also doesnt have a forte. he's still number one, but instead of having a forte he's just that good at solving mysteries

yes this means makoto looks like yakou now. sorry makotoheads. i think he'd have really long, shaggy hair dyed to be like. idk. black or something. also he's more clean shaven bc stubble with a mask on is a sensory nightmare

yuma still cant cook. he subsists entirely on takeout, meat buns, black coffee, and beer. he's still in a lot of debt and under a lot of stress and his personality is essentially "what if canon number one just gave up"

he doesn't smoke though. he tried once and got into the worst coughing fit

imma say it right now. kurumi is not a love interest. yakou likely disguises himself as a faculty member instead (also i think one of the teachers gets a crush on fem yakou bc i just know she'd be hot)

ANYWAY what about chapter 4? im SO glad you asked! because here's where things get spicy!

so, lets start with the dead wife. shinigami catches onto huesca's inhumane research and she's just as adamant about bringing the truth to light as she always is. she blows the whistle, so he blows her up. yuma investigates, but they dont let him look any further, yada yada, yuma stews in his misery for five years

yomi sends in the evidence to motivate yuma to kill huesca, and makoto lets it happen because a dead huesca would be convenient. he even introduces the hitman, fully expecting yuma to make use of him

yuma doesnt. in fact, he wants to kill huesca with his own hands. and now that these detectives are here, he can do it and even return alive. the thing is, he doesn't want to put them in danger, so he chooses to do almost everything alone (sound familiar?)

his plan is simple:

ask desuhiko for a peacekeeper uniform. desuhiko trusts him enough to take "i want to investigate kanai ward's ultimate secret by infiltrating their ranks" as an answer. he does, however, let yakou know about this as an offhand comment before the mystery ever begins

hold fubuki's hand. it doesnt really matter how. she'll gladly allow it because she's fubuki. he stores her time powers and heads out the sub. yakou also learns this as an offhand comment played off as a joke (maybe fubuki affectionately comments about how she never expected the chief's hands to be so soft... idk. there has to be some way for yakou to have this as a future clue)

use his peacekeeper status to sneak into amaterasu HQ and demand a functioning ama-pal from that one creepy researcher

use ama-pal + fubuki's borrowed powers to bypass huesca's security. sneak the bot past the hard-of-hearing doctor and press the button to shut off security

this would probably alert huesca, but since the doctor never received a warning, yuma has enough time to rush in and stab him before he realizes what's going on

leave HQ while still in uniform, dispose of the disguise once he's safe, and return to the NDA like nothing happened. success!

soooo.... yakou, on that same day, decides to investigate amaterasu HQ with makoto

all the while, vivia has his suspicions about yuma's actions and keeps an eye on him in spectral mode. he... basically witnessed the whole thing, so he gets up off his ass and decides to follow yakou to the lab because he has a Very Bad Feeling about this

just like canon, he senses the death god and deduces that our protag has been killing off murderers, and so he wants to protect his chief as well as his peace and quiet (his dynamic with yuma would be the same as his dynamic with yakou, since it's entirely believable for yuma to treat vivia with the same kindness yakou did)

yakou tries to speak to huesca, but surprise! security is disabled and he's dead in the lab! no one else at amaterasu liked huesca enough to check on him, so yakou and makoto are the first ones at the scene of the crime. yakou, of course, decides to start investigating this murder

vivia somehow sneaks into the lab (dont ask me how) and confronts yakou, threatening him with his boxcutter and adamantly imploring him to stop pursuing this particular mystery in the same way he did yuma in canon. unfortunately, this attracts attention, and now they're in trouble (maybe even yomi's there to fetch his files). at this point, yakou has enough solution keys, so he panics and goes right into the labyrinth (and maybe others can enter for another reason that isnt coalescence idk)

so... they go in the labyrinth... vivia tries to stop him every step of the way, until the answer is right in front of them

yakou kills yuma with his own hands. there's no stab wounds or toxic gas to leave any doubt. yakou begins to question what good his justice really does. it doesnt even save them from their predicament, just like the other deaths. instead, makoto ex machina comes in to save them, and hands yakou a small black box

when they return to the agency, everyone is heartbroken over their chief, who seemingly died out of nowhere. fubuki tried rewinding time, but to no avail. halara tried everything to wake him up, knowing it's futile. desuhiko stood aside, feeling completely helpless. and yakou and vivia return looking like they just came back from hell

they barely get the chance for a funeral before the knockout gas trap activates... you know the rest

AAAAND SCENE! so that's my extremely long winded lore dump about this au. i thought about it Way Too Much but god it's so interesting to me. i love these characters and swapping them was immensely fun

[lilmarshie]

Hi! can you write about Gi Hun's reaction if the reader dies during one of the games pls?? Thank you💞

Gi-hun Reacting to Your Death During the Squid Games

A/N- This is very angsty and depressing. Please don’t read if easily triggered by sad situations or mentions of death. This does not have a happy ending. Reader does die in this drabble.

Gi-hun had never expected you to join him through his perilous journey into the Squid Games. He had heard about the so called games from people who had met a man they called, the Salesman. The Salesman tricked people into thinking he was doing them a favor. In reality though, they were just given a death sentence. And little did he know, that he had fallen right into the Frontman’s hands.

You were eager to pay off your abundant debt and decided that you wanted to challenge yourself by joining the games. Gi-hun was eager to help you in anyway that he could. He was very protective over you during the games. You easily made it through some of the first couple of games and Gi-hun was proud to see you move forward.

The third game, Marbles, was a seemingly innocent game. One that you had spent years perfecting and playing with your friends during school. You were paired with Gi-hun, the one who you believed would help you, overcome the challenge that lied ahead.

You both decided on a quick and easy game of shooting each other’s marbles out of a ring drawn in the dirt. Whoever’s marble made it the farthest from the ring won the game and it was best out of three turns. You quickly knocked out Gi-hun’s marble out of the ring within the first round. He chuckled at your speed and agility that you used to make his marble fly out of the ring.

“You’re on now, sweetheart!�� Gi-yun, said with a smirk as he lined up the marble that quickly attacked your marble making it fly out of the ring. “No fair, Gi-yun! I helped you with that one!” You say, with a smile and a wink. You grabbed your final marble and moved to line it up with Gi-yun’s as you get ready to claim a victory.

You line up your shot and let the marble go. But you stared in shock as it veered off and flew the opposite direction and stopped short of its goal. “Oh no.” Gi-yun stammered out hoarsely. His voice strained and he began to panic. “No…no…no. I-I-give me one more chance. Please!” You say, as you turn to the pink hooded guard that was now standing over you. The guard shook their head slowly and looked at you dead in the eyes. The blank, mask covered stare making your blood run cold.

“Player 94, you have been eliminated due to losing the game.” The guard said, with a coldness that made Gi-yun’s whole body shake violently. The guard then raised their firearm and pulled the trigger hitting you squarely in the forehead. The shot killed you instantly. “NO! Y/N! NO! WHY? NO NO NO. THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENED. PLEASE NO.” Gi-yun cried out in pain as he flung himself over your slowly dying body. Your eyes fluttered closed and your arms grew limp in his embrace.

The guards rushed over to pull Gi-yun off of your cold, lifeless body and flung him against the nearest wall. Gi-yun groaned in pain and slumped against the wall. His eyes were fading in and out of consciousness due to the force of being thrown by the guards. Gi-yun tried so desperately to keep his eyes open but they shut automatically and he couldn’t seem to keep them open.

A couple of hours later…

Gi-yun woke up back in the sleeping quarters his head throbbing in pain. He looked around the room for you before realizing what had happened. Gi-yun looked up at the scoreboard with the remaining players and he knew that you were gone. He was devastated. Gi-yun begged the guards to let him see you even if it was seeing you for the last time. But of course the guards wouldn’t allow him to see you again.

For the next few hours, Gi-yun felt a cold chill that couldn’t be contained. It consumed his every move and he was almost zombie like in his actions just stumbling to the next destination. Gi-yun was a shell of his former self due to losing the one that he loved. He collapses to his knees, tears streaming down his face. The weight of the situation hits him hard, and he feels a deep sense of loss and helplessness for the days to come after your death.

After your passing, Gi-hun starts to remember all the moments you shared together. He recalls your conversations, your laughter, and your support during the games. These memories bring him both comfort and pain, as he knows he'll never experience them again. But he holds these memories close to his heart.

As the games continue, Gi-hun finds strength in thinking about what you would have wanted. He imagines you encouraging him to keep going, to fight for survival, and to make it out alive. This thought gives him the determination to push through even the toughest challenges that lie ahead.

[misskaorii]

Janitor ai bots

⛧°。 ⋆༺♱༻⋆。 °⛧

Hii! I’m Miss Kaori on Janitor Ai, I do Gyutaro bots cause this man needs love, I already posted two and they are doing so well!! But now I have so many in private and they are so interesting! I’ll just put them all here and feel free to ask me to release the ones you like!

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

: ̗̀➛ Gang boss

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Gyutaro is the boss of a renowned Gang. In this RP you both are in a big gathering you will choose to be his wife, his +1 or even be in another gang (well there are many possibilites really..)

: ̗̀➛ Best friend

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Here Gyutaro is your lifelong best friend, you two are chilling in his room while he is scrolling through his phone.

: ̗̀➛ Arranged marriage

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘪ô 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤Gyutaro had always struggled with love all his life.. He his the disappointment of his familly as he is not yet married nor have offsprings until he is called to the livingroom and sees you and your father talking with his.

: ̗̀➛ Original

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘪ô 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ What would happen if you decided to hunt down the demon who killed your family? What would happen if this very demon took interest in you the first moment you tried to attack him?

: ̗̀➛ University

╰┈➤ You and gyutaro are in university, he is a derenged man, always agressive and violent toward everyone..

: ̗̀➛ Drug dealer

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤You and Gyutaro are ex because of many things.. his addiction for drugs and the fact that he sell those are on of the reasons.

: ̗̀➛ Human

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘛𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘪ô 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Daki had never been burnt alive.. His mother died a long time ago and he works as a debt collector and he is very good at it becuse of his ugly apparence.

: ̗̀➛ Insecure and incel

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ You and Gyutaro are in a relationship but he really fails to understand what a pretty thing like you is doing with an ugly man like he is.

: ̗̀➛ Babysitting his sister

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤You're the new babysitter his mother hiered but he wasn't aware of that, so what was his surprise to see a complete stranger in his living-room...

: ̗̀➛ Teacher

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Gyutaro is a Math teacher but he hate his job.. he does it just for the money actually..

: ̗̀➛ Demon

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 fantasy world.

╰┈➤ In this world the demons live in the forest, they absolutely hates humans. demons lives in tribes and they have mates. Gyutaro is the son of the chief of the tribe.

: ̗̀➛ Brother of your bestie

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Daki and You are best friend.. her looser of a brother have a big crush on you.

: ̗̀➛ Zombie apocalypse

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ After a big zombie apocalypse you find yourself in Gyutaro's group of survivors, he is the chief.

: ̗̀➛ Naga

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Gyutaro is a naga, trapped in a zoo he is abused and forced to do trics or show himself in front of humans.

: ̗̀➛ Scp

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Gyutaro is a SCP, a bloodthirsty monster, youre the scientist assigned to feed and study this agressive and violent specimen..

: ̗̀➛ Rock star

𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘙𝘗 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘦𝘳𝘢.

╰┈➤ Gyutaro is a rockstar, he is the guitarist of his band and compared to the others he isnt famous at all..

{{the characters I already posted are underlined, just click on it}}

[barbwritesstuff]

Not and ask but I do have to say I love how you’ve played with the lore of these mythical creatures. A lot of media definitely leans more towards romanticizing being one of these creatures but you’ve given them this doomed lore. If you’re a werewolf, you will go mad. If you’re a vampire you’ll likely die early or live long enough to see yourself lose touch with the world and become a blood crazed maniac. Upon dying, you can’t ever find peace in death. Becoming a monster comes with a few shiny perks and the heaviest debt you will ever take on. It’s so tragic and I love it.

I have a name for this! I'm sure people in the literacy analysis sphere have a smarter, swankier name, but I call it:

✨The Spooky vs. Superhero Slider✨

On one hand, you have the spooky stuff. Characters who are written to have genuine curses. You've been bitten by a zombie. You will die in seven days. etc That means the slider is set 100% to the spooky side.

On the other, you have literal superheroes. They're gods, they fly around and save the day, it's awesome. You want to be on this end of the slider.

Most characters who aren't just regular humans (be they vampires, werewolves, or alien gods) are somewhere along the slider. Depending on the author, depending on the story, even depending on the character, it can fluctuate a lot.

Take Lestat and Louis from Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire for example. Both are vampires, but Lestat doesn't hate being a vampire quite as much, in fact he often has a wee bit of fun with it. Plus, he can fly. Stories from his POV are a few points more superhero than anything told from Louis' POV.

Another example, Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. They're mostly superheroes with the one big downside being their bloodlust. So, when Bella could instantly control her bloodlust, that series tipped hard into superhero. There was nothing horrific about being a vampire. It was fun. It was cool. It was... super.

It's always a sliding scale.

Personally, I prefer for that slider to remain closer to the spooky side than the superhero side. That doesn't mean I don't love superheroes. I am a massive Superman fan and wrote a whole wee story about it. But I want superheroes to be done with intentionality and I want my curses to feel like curses.

The genre of Blood Moon and Thicker Than is urban fantasy/horror.

They're not meant to be goth superheroes. They're meant to be cursed.

And that sucks for them... but it's a huge amount of fun for me, as the writer. I think it makes them much more interesting characters and makes the world way more fun to play in.

I think my werewolves have it just a tiny bit easier. They're 70% spooky and 30% superhero. The downsides are downsiding but the powers are still cool. My vampires I gave a bit of a rawer deal. They're 80%, maybe even 85% spooky. They get powers, sure, but the cost is steep.

Sorry for the long rambling response. This is just something I've thought about probably too much before.

[usedpidemo]

Knockin on heaven's door (Lee Chaeyeon)

> ​​5 minutes in heaven with chaeyeon (just something inspired by the knock mv and her being inside a wardrobe) - @idevian

——————

“God dammit.”

The worst thing about college wasn’t the outrageous student debt, nor the mountains of units and classes you needed to juggle. It was the parties. 

It was always the parties.

Not a couple of weeks passes by without some wild party hosted by some rich nepo kid. There isn’t really a reason that justifies the occasion except to celebrate for celebration's sake. An excuse to let loose and relax from the stresses of the semester; a reasonable justification—if not for the copious amount of drugs, alcohol, and sex that happens in them. Every scene plays out like a parody, an ironic twist of fate that realizes your worst assumptions and stereotypes of college after graduating high school. 

And the worst part is: no one escapes completely unscathed, not even you.

You make one thing clear: you don’t despise parties—you just didn’t want any piece of it. It stands to reason then that you usually take refuge in the many corners of the house, away from the madness and debauchery of it all. Exposure to their degeneracy proves to be near-unavoidable. You’re essentially the designated driver for your friends, who are none the wiser. Often, they’re the first ones in, last ones out. The moment they step foot inside, they basically forget your existence until dawn. They’re insufferable, but you’d otherwise remain a loner without them, for better and for worse.

In a sea of people, someone manages to spot you. It’s not the gaze of a burgeoning romance or friendship; their eyes evidently spell out drunkenness, and their zombie-like motions toward you are about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. A little push and pull. You suddenly find yourself being escorted to a huge circle that raises immediate red flags. Even the slightest whiff of the room laced with crack triggers your fight or flight impulses. Thankfully, it only takes the simplest and most cliche of excuses to create a path of escape.

“I need to use the bathroom.”

With their impaired judgment, you’ll soon be an afterthought to them—or at worse, a horde of makeshift zombies banging at the door. The bathroom would be too obvious. It was never the destination.

Sneaking around the crowd, you find a door conveniently tucked away from the madness and rush toward your freedom. On the other side lies complete darkness, and if not for a foot teetering on the edge of some hidden stairs, you’d be a dozen steps away from a concussion and several stitches. A hidden basement sealed away from the house, blocking most of the noise.

Finally, some peace and quiet.

As expected, the actual basement is nothing but clutters of dusty boxes and forgotten relics, with a few tiny windows hidden behind the piles. Little light peeks through the otherwise pitch black room, but a bit more exposure runs the risk of your retreat getting exposed. You’d more than happily sit here until you can weasel your way out in the morning, when everyone’s blacked out and completely fucked from party overdose, or when the rich kid’s angry parents find you sleeping on the floor. 

You’ve taken overnight shelter in far worse, unforgiving places. 

Suddenly, you feel a breath of warm air tickle through your ear and skin. “Guess I’m not the only one stuck tonight.”

It’s a ghoulish whisper that impulsively causes you to drop your phone while opening its flashlight. What little the light reveals is a hint of pale flesh and blonde strands covertly moving like a predator stalking its prey. You feel something on your shoulder, sending shivers down your spine. Clawlike nails thread through your hair, slowly entrapping you beyond escape. Your eyes tilt to the side, only to find the groove of lush dark lips forming a pretty smirk.

All it takes is another whisper. “Boo.”

“Shit!” You flail your arms panickedly, swinging them around like a child with no fighting experience. You hit nothing but air. If not for the darkness concealing you, it would be a humiliating sight, the kind that gets posted and clowned upon on social media. 

The figure grabs you by the wrists, stares so sternly it warrants attention. Its tone is just as sharp, too. “Don’t get us caught, goddammit.”

You pause, take a moment to gather yourself, then another to scan the shadowy stature, looking at you now with wary and concern. Peering through the darkness, its eyes glint with a distinct sparkle. It speaks again with a more tempered voice. “You okay now?”

A silence briefly falls. You stare back to familiarize and scan the figure. A moment of clarity comes upon you. “Wait—aren’t you—”

You recognize her face plastered on the accomplishment board, primarily under athletics and sports. It simply couldn’t be anyone else but Lee Chaeyeon, a polarizing figure within the student body. You’ve heard whispers from varying accounts. For some, she’s practically the greatest athlete to ever grace the institution, a generational talent in every department she excels in. To her teachers, she barely shows up to classes because of her athletic commitments, and a peek through the records shows she’s barely holding on in her academic obligations. 

At times, she’s felt like a myth, mainly because you’d only hear her from others. You never saw her once in a school uniform. Hell, you only knew she was around because other people claimed to have seen her, but they could have been spreading misinformation.

“What? Chaeryeong?” She raises an eyebrow, puckers her lips, partially confused and mildly annoyed, while lowering your arms before finally letting them go. She knows what you said. “That’s my little sis. She’s a lot cuter than I am. You need to get your eyes checked.”

“No, no.” Blissfully unaware, you’re quick to emphasize your point. “You’re Chaeyeon, head of the dance club and athletics division.”

“No? I’m Chaeryeong, head of the music department,” she says, sarcastic, but now with a playful smile. “No shit, I’m Chaeyeon.”

“I—I never expected to meet you here of all places,” you say, awkwardly smiling and tapping your fingers together nervously.

“I didn’t expect anyone would find this spot.” Chaeyeon turns around, brushing her long blonde locks in an alluring way that leaves you awestruck. Admittedly, it’s a little bit attractive how unabashedly sleazy she looks. Even in her clean pictures, you can tell she hates the idea of looking clean. While everyone else attends these parties at their best, only to come out a complete mess, she clearly recognizes the pointlessness in such vanity. “Great timing, too. I was gonna make a run for it.”

“So, why are you here again?” 

“Boredom.” Her reply is almost immediate, flippantly delivered, that it’s convincing. She has better things to do than hang around at random parties. “I just came for the free food.” She chuckles remembering the thought, while her eyes wander around the room, searching for something, anything.

“Just like me, huh,” you respond with blind confidence, as if it’ll give you both a common ground to share, when in reality, she doesn’t care. If anything, she only amuses you because she allowed you to entertain her, and you’re doing about as good of a job as anyone when it comes to catching her attention—a.k.a failing spectacularly. 

Chaeyeon turns around and faces you again with a curious, intimidating look. “And what do you know about that?”

Gulp. “About what?”

She tilts her head and doesn't utter another word, as if expecting you to know what she means. You clearly don’t. On her lips is a dour pout, disappointed by your impulsive tongue. None of it makes any sense, and trying to figure her out seems like a fool’s errand. 

“Thought so,” is the only thing she ends up saying, and an air of awkward silence falls on you both as she roams around the basement, presumably searching for a passage out. “You wanna be useful?” she suddenly snaps at you, her stare peering through a valley of boxes.

“What do you want me to do?”

“You wanna get out of here or what?” she spits, turning to you, gaze grimacing and tone scathing. Joining her, you both take note of a narrow hatch hidden behind even more dusty packages.

—————

Well, you may have just played the most awkward game of seven minutes in heaven in your life. 

The ride home is even more unsettling.

Chaeyeon remains dead silent, comfortably slumped back against the passenger seat of your car, keeping you at arm’s length. Occasionally glancing to your side, you’re driving, focused on the road ahead. The muted sound of radio blaring through the speakers is the only thing that keeps awkward silence from permeating throughout the vehicle. 

You can’t get her to show any form of emotion other than apathy.

Wanna have something to eat? Nothing. 

Where’s your place? Also nothing.

Where would you like me to drop you off? Still nothing.

Got any friends to meet up with? Again, nothing.

Most people would have given up by now. It’s not a good look, the kind that encourages ostracizing. Patient as you are, though, you still hope she opens up, but whenever your eyes meet, she gives you the coldest shoulder imaginable. She wants nothing to do with you. The way she stares, the tiredness peeking through her brown irises, the slow, detached gaze that examines you before lightly looking away—the very idea of interacting with people poisons her, ruins her, breaks her.

You pull off at a gas station a few blocks away from your apartment. Shutting down the engine, you gently say, “I’m gonna buy a snack. You want anything?”

She slowly turns back in your direction, very disconnected from you she can’t be bothered to look you in the eye. Her lips twist, as if ready to speak her mind, but only air ultimately comes out. As you expected by now.

“Fine,” you follow, deflecting her cold demeanor back at her. “Just wait here, then.”

After stepping out of your car, right as you’re about to enter the shop, you hear a sharp thud sound. Looking back, you find Chaeyeon, also outside, rubbing her arms from the cold air bothering her, trembling nervously. 

You call out to her, loud enough to draw anyone’s attention.

“Borrow my jacket?”

She doesn’t pay you any heed.

—————

“I seriously don’t understand you,” you murmur, as if it’ll bring her out of her shell or change anything, if your previous attempts at reaching out to her in a friendly manner are any proof. It’s late at night; you’re both casually staring at your car—the only noteworthy thing in this gas station—and you couldn’t be any more different. You’ve almost emptied your little cup of instant noodles, while she smokes through her dwindling cigarette, blowing smoke in your direction, still purposefully uncaring. The vapor doesn’t make you crack, but her coldness does. “Why did you ask me to drive for you? What’s the point? I don’t know what you want.”

It’s probably not the best time to show even the slightest frustration. Then again, she’s been deliberately dispassionate the entire time. Anyone else would have given up at this point, but there’s an allure to her, you admit, that keeps you interested, and not just because she’s a known name within the student body. Popularity was never the goal, but like everyone else, you simply wanted to know who Lee Chaeyeon is. She’s one of the biggest mysteries within the school; an all-star athlete with a peculiar aura surrounding her. From what you’ve seen so far, it’s not all that remarkable. She's sassy and apathetic, dry, sarcastic humor is her primary weapon, and she dresses like an escort. Perhaps this is all just a mix up, that this isn’t really the Chaeyeon, one of the best athletes to ever grace the university.

If not for the resemblance with her younger sister, the sweet girl from the music club, they couldn’t have been any more different. Are they really from the same family?

“Much better.” She returns her cigar to her mouth, huffs another round, then releases a new wave, thankfully not in your direction this time. Facing you, she looks you right in the eye. It’s different. There’s no apathy behind them, but instead, genuine interest. “I just wanted a free ride outta there.”

“That’s it?” is your reply, confused. Maybe you’re thinking these words through a bit too much, trying to find deeper complexity from a simple answer. You’ve met more complicated characters before, and to a certain degree, you can relate to her.

“Yeah.” Chaeyeon drags another whiff, but intentionally smokes away. “People just suck.”

In a strange, twisted way, she reads through your mind, says something that, quite frankly, leaves you even more in disarray. “Don’t think hard about it.”

Wide-eyed, you try averting your gaze in a poor attempt to feign ignorance. “Think about what?”

“You know,” she says, songful, gives you a rather taunting stare, eyebrows raised, as if expecting you to understand what she’s on about—deep down you know what that is—while flicking the ashes of her cig down on the table. Admittedly, it’s somewhat cute. Smirking, she adds, “Do I have to make it obvious to you, bird brain?”

“Fuck off.”

“There you go.” Chaeyeon leans back, chuckles, takes delight in making you look like the bad guy, that wicked, mocking grin on her lips a few inches wider than before. Only now do you perceive the true predicament; both of you secretly playing mind games, examining each other, trying to get on the other’s nerves until they eventually break. “I guess I win.”

“Win? We’re not playing games.”

“I got you to drop the nice guy act. I won.” 

Another huff, another smoke.

“That doesn’t mean much.”

“That’s what every loser says. Remember what I said? People suck.”

“We just met a few hours ago, and you’re telling me I suck?” Your volume grows slightly louder.  “After giving you a free ride out of that party?” 

“And who got you out of there first? Hmm?” Chaeyeon’s driving you mad, but now for a completely different reason. “Let me make it clear: I knew about the secret passage even if you hadn’t stumbled your way inside that basement. You were just lucky to find me at the right time.”

“Forget about the basement!” You find yourself slowly unraveling, slowly coming undone, your screws on the brink of loosening. She licks her lips, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

It’s sudden, it’s loud, it’s sharp. The words reverberate around the shop resoundingly that in any other setting, it’s what incites a public incident, gets both of you expelled and shamed in school. Maybe just you, knowing there’s a high likelihood of preferential bias the faculty may have for one of their most accomplished pupils. Regardless, you find yourself covering your mouth, as if you’ve just spoken some unspeakable destruction into existence. Even she ends up speechless.

The next moment is even more destructive: Chaeyeon’s lips suddenly cover yours.

—————

“Fuck, that’s good,” mutters Chaeyeon, between a shower of seemingly endless kisses on your lips, shoving you against the wall of the bathroom beside the convenience store. The doors are locked, with not a single soul’s around to interrupt you. Either way, she proves to be too much—too much to fight, with both words and actions, that you quickly give in, much sooner than she expected.

It’s not that you never considered the thought of kissing Chaeyeon—at times, they were a little tempting if not for the fact that she’s a smoker—but rather how delectable her lips are, even with the tainted scent of smoke etched on them. She passionately makes out with you, drives her tongue between yours, drives the wedge that seemingly kept you both apart, and no amount of self-righteous character can bury that want, that craving for affection—and sex.

“You do this with every man you meet?” You forcefully rip yourself from the kiss, only to find your lips dragged back in almost immediately. She knows it’s a futile effort to gain control, something you never had right from the start. 

“Fuck no,” she mouths between even more pecks. “Consider yourself incredibly lucky.”

She’s tugging on opposite ends of your shirt, threatening to rip them apart, something you recognize. Even as you continue to make out, with your hands exploring and marking new territory in the form of her divine figure, you make time for her, letting her freely own you by lifting the obstructive clothing over your head before she promptly tosses it aside in return. Her lips gradually slide down and make themselves familiar with you; your neck first, then your collarbones, smiling to herself as she marks each part as hers with her teeth, while creating more friction by palming your bare chest.

“Finally, someone who’s actually hot,” she quietly mouths to herself, though you can hear her loud and clear. You’ve got a response, a retaliation, but you choose to bask in the moment, acknowledge how good she already makes you feel in the form of a light groan.

Her hands slide down the steep hill that is your torso, until they find more difficult fabric. Locking eyes with yours, she works on your pants, keeping you suspended as she figures out how to claim her rightful prize. Behind those brown pupils is a burning lust, a raging flame consuming her from within, eager to take what she wants; it’s not the same cold stare from before. 

“How long have you wanted me?” she asks, followed by the gentle whir of your zipper as she slides down your pants and boxers in one swing. Before you can formulate a reply, you suddenly release an airy gasp—your only response—caught unaware by her deft, silky hand pressing on your balls and your raging cock. Her smirk widens, amused and absorbed by your electric reaction. 

She continues to fiddle with your cock, giving it one slow, but delicate pump after another, as you fall under her dizzying spell. Forget about the question; the answer is quite clear, based on the stickiness slowly building up between her hand and your cock. Pleasure begins to spike all over your body, and almost single handedly ends you, if not for her other hand keeping you steady against the wall. It’s a little too soon—a little too much for your brain to comprehend.

Her gaze lingers on yours, watching you gradually crumble in real-time; you’re no better than anyone else in this situation. It’s amusing, gets cute, sweet, playful looks that seemingly brighten her day after what seemed to be an absolute disaster. She knows what she’s doing and she loves it. Your hands cling to shoulders, feel the softness of her skin, and it sparks a fire in her eyes, quick to spread and consume.

“Tell me how long you’ve wanted me,” she repeats herself, the bright glint in her eyes and her grin more mischievous than serious. Determined to get the answer out of you, she tightly cups your balls, drawing out a deep groan. “I know you’ve been staring at me since we met.”

She’s not entirely wrong. Even in the darkness of that desolate basement, you knew she was drop-dead gorgeous. It became clear under the pale moonlight that she was even hotter: a black crop that teased the subtlest of cleavage, exposed her toned midriff, and jeans that accentuated her shapely ass. Yes, even when you thought she wasn’t interested, she knew your stare never departed. 

“Since always.” Not the best answer; you both literally just encountered each other earlier that night, but it’s the most logical. Not a single girl in college made you hot and heavy like this. Sure, some of them were cute, her sister included, but none of them had that appeal, that love at first sight attraction that Chaeyeon carried. 

Her free arm reaches up to the zipper of her shirt, presses her cleavage together a little. There’s amusement on her features watching in your eagerness to watch them slip. She contemplates the thought, painfully stalling the inevitable by a few precious seconds, then she unzips her top down. One side of the sleeve slides down her shoulders, then the other, until only a matching black bra remains. 

It promptly joins the other clothes on the opposite end of the bathroom, completely irrelevant. 

You and Chaeyeon make quick work of her jeans before you’re quickly drawn together like magnets, feeling each other’s hot, sweaty skin, entangled like a complete puzzle making out against the walls. It’s an intense back and forth, a tug of war as you both desire complete ownership of the other’s body. Each torrid kiss screams of desperation, not intimacy, to be used, to be consumed. 

Spacious as the bathroom is, you can’t seem to find common ground. One moment you’ve got her pinned against the furthest stall, the next she has you fastened in another, until you eventually acquaint yourselves with all three cubicles. Both of you know where this is going and where it should lead; you just don’t know how you can get there. There’s plenty of distractions in front of you, mainly Chaeyeon’s perfect naked figure, a leg wrapped around your hip, and the gleam in her eyes wanting and yearning. It’s dangerous; temptation lurks everywhere you look. If not for the arms wrapped around your neck, occasionally dictating that you only look at her lust-filled face between kisses, the rest of her body would earn your worship. 

Chaeyeon moans, writhes in your grasp, slowly relinquishing control over to you. From her bottom lip, you slip them down to her neck, and she trembles, clings tighter, feeling weak. Her hands pinch the back of your hair, mouth mumbling airy, faint words. It’s passionate, sinful, and tender—something you never expected with an otherwise rough woman like her.

“God, you’re so hot—” you hiss, gasping as her touch arouses you. “Mmm—”

She suddenly regains composure, stops you a breath away from her chest, then pulls you back toward her face. Another deep kiss. “Enough. I’m not in the mood for love making tonight.”

Regretfully, she removes herself from your clutch, pulling you by the hand instead to lead you to the bathroom sink. Every time she kisses you, her lips smell of alcohol and lipstick, and it never gets old. You wonder if she simply likes kissing or if she’s conveying some kind of message that you somehow have to decipher. She notices the curious expression on your face, lets out this droll laugh that gives off the assumption you’re onto something, when really, she’s as unpredictable as ever.

There’s nothing funny, nor is it supposed to be, but it makes no sense, perfectly in line with her character.

Before the awkwardness looms over you again, she grabs you by the waist, pushes you forward to impale her. Her back arches against the sink, perfectly spaced between her torso and legs. She spins around, flaunts her shapely curves that immediately capture your attention—and your hands. Ignore her steely glare that pierces through your reflection in the mirror; her flesh melts, molds comfortably in your grasp, as if they were tailor made for you. 

She grunts, loses control again, but it’s only momentarily. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Even though you’ve seen her look vulnerable, her sharp attitude keeps you on edge, stops you from committing a sinful act. Your cock is in the perfect position to ruin her, break the facade and the space between you, but it’s not a fight worth contending, especially when she follows up with a dagger that almost pierces your heart. “Keep it between my legs.”

You immediately knew what she meant. To be quite honest, it’s a little disappointing. All that preamble, pleasantry, the tease of something more, only to be shot down before it even starts—it’s almost disheartening. Of course, you had no room to complain, not when she’s splayed out in her barest, practically giving you free reign over every other part of her, but something feels—off, incomplete.

Chaeyeon spreads her legs wide, gracious to space your cock right in its center. Her cunt is on full display, ripe and ready to be used, to be fucked. Unfortunately, you won’t get to have any piece of it without her word. It’s near-impossible to look away, spellbinding you with an unforgettable mental image. The thought of—or the lack thereof—filling her pussy torments you. Even as her smooth, perfect thighs sandwich your cock, the notion poisons your mind, leaves you wandering and aimless, until the perfect amount of friction strikes and—

“Fuck.”

It’s smooth, suffocating, devastating. Now you truly have nothing to whine about, except to whine about how tight her legs feel around your cock, rubbing and stroking yourself between her thick thighs. Barely hanging on, you press your hands on her shoulders, losing yourself in the pleasure quickly. Thanks to the little flecks of precum from before, sliding between her heat proves to be much easier. 

Slowly but surely, you grow accustomed to her asphyxiating warmth, unable to process anything beyond the slickness and powerful sensations around her flesh. Eyes closed, you moan in prolonged, deep spurts, resting your head beside hers. Her feelings don’t matter at this moment, only yours. You don’t realize her hand is gripped to your thigh, only that it amplifies the surge of pleasure coursing throughout your body. A possible reminder to keep your cock away from her cunt, but you didn’t need it anymore—her thighs are more than enough.

“Yeah. Fucking enjoy it, horny bitch.” Chaeyeon’s tone and expression seemingly derives no enjoyment from watching you lose it, as if it’s only an obligation and not something both of you share pleasure in. She moans, but it’s faint and weak. “That feels good, right?”

“It does,” you blurt, trapped in the heavenly bliss between her legs, loving every little motion. “So good, Chaen, holy fuck—”

She sees you visibly struggling and helplessly trying to gather air, smiles and laughs at your predicament. It’s a mess; it’s her schadenfreude. Delightful, she thinks to herself, now playing along with her lewd expressions plastered on the mirror. Unconvincing, if not a bit too much leaning towards parody. She’s waiting for the opportunity to get the edge over you, the killing blow. 

Tightening her grip around your cock, her toned legs collapse, and you can feel the fire in your loins gradually building and hurling toward a calamitous explosion. There’s nothing you can do to stop—not that you ever want to, watching your cock slide in and out her thighs at a perfect rhythm is its own reward—only praying that the moment lingers a bit longer. You’ve got both hands pinched to her taut nipples, thankfully unresisted, kissing around her collarbone and ear, trying in vain to stifle the endless string of curses and moans leaving your lips.

It doesn’t help that her voice is seductive, downright merciless, repeatedly goading you into submission, staring at your reflection expectantly. “That’s it. Cum for me, bitch. You won’t ever get this kind of opportunity with anyone else but with me. No one else will ever make you feel this good. Just cum, and cum, and cum—”

The word rings in your head, hypnotic, borderline leaning toward brainwashing. It isn’t gaslighting when she has a point; she feels so fucking incredible, so tight and hot and suffocating—no one else can possibly compare. Then again, ecstasy is the only thing running through your head, clouding your better judgment. You’ve got a hand digging through her endless sea of blonde locks, pumping between her thighs, each thrust sorer than the last, like you’ll regret the action in the morning. 

“I’m so close, Chaen. I’m going to cum,” you say desperately. 

There’s that familiar twinkle in her eyes, and a mischievous grin forming on her lips. Troubling. “Say it.”

“Say what?” you say, your cock aching painfully between her wet, toned thighs. 

“Please.” 

“Please!” you shout, teetering dangerously close to the edge, threatens you and Chaeyeon. Again, slowing down proves to be impossible. You’re so far gone.

“Please what?”

“Please let me cum! Please let me cum, Chaen, oh God.”

“That’s it. Cum—”

As soon as she lets that word out, the lights immediately turn green. Releasing all your inhibitions, your eyes widen, pumping your cock hurling to that oh-so deserved orgasm between her legs. Her thighs receive every last shot, every single drop. You both moan into each other’s ear, with Chaeyeon finding comfort and satisfaction from feeling the warmth you’ve given her. 

She throws her head back, cranes her neck, brushes a hand around your hair while you pump through your climax. Eventually, your cock slips, winds down to a complete halt. You find your lips returning to her collarbones, taking solace on her sensitive flesh as you remain intimately attached together for a little while longer.

“Shit.” You look down, past the curves of her chest, see the puddles and drops of slick on the floor. She mirrors your gesture, checks the damage between her legs, and it’s a disaster: her thighs are dripping with cum down to her feet, with two noticeable blots parallel to the other. 

“So needy.” Chaeyeon says with a laugh, caressing your cheek, her voice a temptation in your ear, goading you for more. “Not lucky with the ladies, hmm?”

Wistfully, you reply, “Yeah.”

Chaeyeon slowly releases your chin from her hand, slips from your clutch to grab a stream of tissue rolls to clean herself up. You cling to the sink with wobbly legs, staring down at the basin, overcome by a wave of both regret and exhaustion. Unwelcome thoughts creep in. A lack of protection, a return of her dour persona, and your reputations at stake—you’ll entertain them all in the morning, when the honeymoon period ends.

When you look up, you see Chaeyeon in the mirror, almost finished dressing up, fixing her cleavage before zipping up her crop top. She stares back, grinning. “You know you still have to drive me home. So when you’re done pining over not cumming in my pussy—”

“Where? Where's home?”

“Yours.”

—————

(A/N: Finally got to one of the four selected requests! I'm sorry this one took a lot longer than expected, but what can you expect from me XD I still have PCD as I write this down and no amount of copium can help me recover haha. I loved the request as it gave me the perfect excuse to write Chaeyeon again; she's an underrated hottie and I'm glad she (1) quit Queendom Puzzle instead of pushing through and (2) Knock became a surprise hit. It's only a matter of time before her star rises even further. Thank you for reading!)