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bao3bei4 · 3 years

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fan language: the victorian imaginary and cnovel fandom

there’s this pinterest image i’ve seen circulating a lot in the past year i’ve been on fandom social media. it’s a drawn infographic of a, i guess, asian-looking woman holding a fan in different places relative to her face to show what the graphic helpfully calls “the language of the fan.”

people like sharing it. they like thinking about what nefarious ancient chinese hanky code shenanigans their favorite fan-toting character might get up to⁠—accidentally or on purpose. and what’s the problem with that?

the problem is that fan language isn’t chinese. it’s victorian. and even then, it’s not really quite victorian at all.

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fans served a primarily utilitarian purpose throughout chinese history. of course, most of the surviving fans we see⁠—and the types of fans we tend to care about⁠—are closer to art pieces. but realistically speaking, the majority of fans were made of cheaper material for more mundane purposes. in china, just like all around the world, people fanned themselves. it got hot!

so here’s a big tipoff. it would be very difficult to use a fan if you had an elaborate language centered around fanning yourself.

you might argue that fine, everyday working people didn’t have a fan language. but wealthy people might have had one. the problem we encounter here is that fans weren’t really gendered. (caveat here that certain types of fans were more popular with women. however, those tended to be the round silk fans, ones that bear no resemblance to the folding fans in the graphic). no disrespect to the gnc old man fuckers in the crowd, but this language isn’t quite masc enough for a tool that someone’s dad might regularly use.

folding fans, we know, reached europe in the 17th century and gained immense popularity in the 18th. it was there that fans began to take on a gendered quality. ariel beaujot describes in their 2012 victorian fashion accessories how middle class women, in the midst of a top shortage, found themselves clutching fans in hopes of securing a husband.

she quotes an article from the illustrated london news, suggesting “women ‘not only’ used fans to ‘move the air and cool themselves but also to express their sentiments.’” general wisdom was that the movement of the fan was sufficiently expressive that it augmented a woman’s displays of emotion. and of course, the more english audiences became aware that it might do so, the more they might use their fans purposefully in that way.

notice, however, that this is no more codified than body language in general is. it turns out that “the language of the fan” was actually created by fan manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century⁠—hundreds of years after their arrival⁠ in europe—to sell more fans. i’m not even kidding right now. the story goes that it was louis duvelleroy of the maison duvelleroy who decided to include pamphlets on the language with each fan sold.

interestingly enough, beaujot suggests that it didn’t really matter what each particular fan sign meant. gentlemen could tell when they were being flirted with. as it happens, meaningful eye contact and a light flutter near the face may be a lingua franca.

so it seems then, the language of the fan is merely part of this victorian imaginary we collectively have today, which in turn itself was itself captivated by china.

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victorian references come up perhaps unexpectedly often in cnovel fandom, most often with regards to modesty.

it’s a bit of an awkward reference considering that chinese traditional fashion⁠—and the ambiguous time periods in which these novels are set⁠—far predate victorian england. it is even more awkward considering that victoria and her covered ankles did um. imperialize china.

but nonetheless, it is common. and to make a point about how ubiquitous it is, here is a link to the twitter search for “sqq victorian.” sqq is the fandom abbreviation for shen qingqiu, the main character of the scum villain’s self-saving system, by the way.

this is an awful lot of results for a search involving a chinese man who spends the entire novel in either real modern-day china or fantasy ancient china. that’s all i’m going to say on the matter, without referencing any specific tweet.

i think people are aware of the anachronism. and i think they don’t mind. even the most cursory research reveals that fan language is european and a revisionist fantasy. wikipedia can tell us this⁠—i checked!

but it doesn’t matter to me whether people are trying to make an internally consistent canon compliant claim, or whether they’re just free associating between fan facts they know. it is, instead, more interesting to me that people consistently refer to this particular bit of history. and that’s what i want to talk about today⁠—the relationship of fandom today to this two hundred odd year span of time in england (roughly stuart to victorian times) and england in that time period to its contemporaneous china.

things will slip a little here. victorian has expanded in timeframe, if only because random guys posting online do not care overly much for respect for the intricacies of british history. china has expanded in geographic location, if only because the english of the time themselves conflated china with all of asia.

in addition, note that i am critiquing a certain perspective on the topic. this is why i write about fan as white here⁠—not because all fans are white⁠—but because the tendencies i’m examining have a clear historical antecedent in whiteness that shapes how white fans encounter these novels.

i’m sure some fans of color participate in these practices. however i don’t really care about that. they are not its main perpetrators nor its main beneficiaries. so personally i am minding my own business on that front.

it’s instead important to me to illuminate the linkage between white as subject and chinese as object in history and in the present that i do argue that fannish products today are built upon.

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it’s not radical, or even new at all, for white audiences to consume⁠—or create their own versions of⁠—chinese art en masse. in many ways the white creators who appear to owe their whole style and aesthetic to their asian peers in turn are just the new chinoiserie.

this is not to say that white people can’t create asian-inspired art. but rather, i am asking you to sit with the discomfort that you may not like the artistic company you keep in the broader view of history, and to consider together what is to be done about that.

now, when i say the new chinoiserie, i first want to establish what the original one is. chinoiserie was a european artistic movement that appeared coincident with the rise in popularity of folding fans that i described above. this is not by coincidence; the european demand for asian imports and the eventual production of lookalikes is the movement itself. so: when we talk about fans, when we talk about china (porcelain), when we talk about tea in england⁠—we are talking about the legacy of chinoiserie.

there are a couple things i want to note here. while english people as a whole had a very tenuous knowledge of what china might be, their appetites for chinoiserie were roughly coincident with national relations with china. as the relationship between england and china moved from trade to out-and-out wars, chinoiserie declined in popularity until china had been safely subjugated once more by the end of the 19th century.

the second thing i want to note on the subject that contrary to what one might think at first, the appeal of chinoiserie was not that it was foreign. eugenia zuroski’s 2013 taste for china examines 18th century english literature and its descriptions of the according material culture with the lens that chinese imports might be formative to english identity, rather than antithetical to it.

beyond that bare thesis, i think it’s also worthwhile to extend her insight that material objects become animated by the literary viewpoints on them. this is true, both in a limited general sense as well as in the sense that english thinkers of the time self-consciously articulated this viewpoint. consider the quote from the illustrated london news above⁠—your fan, that object, says something about you. and not only that, but the objects you surround yourself with ought to.

it’s a bit circular, the idea that written material says that you should allow written material to shape your understanding of physical objects. but it’s both 1) what happened, and 2) integral, i think, to integrating a fannish perspective into the topic.

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japanning is the name for the popular imitative lacquering that english craftspeople developed in domestic response to the demand for lacquerware imports. in the eighteenth century, japanning became an artform especially suited for young women. manuals were published on the subject, urging young women to learn how to paint furniture and other surfaces, encouraging them to rework the designs provided in the text.

it was considered a beneficial activity for them; zuroski describes how it was “associated with commerce and connoisseurship, practical skill and aesthetic judgment.” a skillful japanner, rather than simply obscuring what lay underneath the lacquer, displayed their superior judgment in how they chose to arrange these new canonical figures and effects in a tasteful way to bring out the best qualities of them.

zuroski quotes the first english-language manual on the subject, written in 1688, which explains how japanning allows one to:

alter and correct, take out a piece from one, add a fragment to the next, and make an entire garment compleat in all its parts, though tis wrought out of never so many disagreeing patterns.

this language evokes a very different, very modern practice. it is this english reworking of an asian artform that i think the parallels are most obvious.

white people, through their artistic investment in chinese material objects and aesthetics, integrated them into their own subjectivity. these practices came to say something about the people who participated in them, in a way that had little to do with the country itself. their relationship changed from being a “consumer” of chinese objects to becoming the proprietor of these new aesthetic signifiers.

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i want to talk about this through a few pairs of tensions on the subject that i think characterize common attitudes then and now.

first, consider the relationship between the self and the other: the chinese object as something that is very familiar to you, speaking to something about your own self vs. the chinese object as something that is fundamentally different from you and unknowable to you.

consider: [insert character name] is just like me. he would no doubt like the same things i like, consume the same cultural products. we are the same in some meaningful way vs. the fast standard fic disclaimer that “i tried my best when writing this fic, but i’m a english-speaking westerner, and i’m just writing this for fun so...... [excuses and alterations the person has chosen to make in this light],” going hand-in-hand with a preoccupation with authenticity or even overreliance on the unpaid labor of chinese friends and acquaintances.

consider: hugh honour when he quotes a man from the 1640s claiming “chinoiserie of this even more hybrid kind had become so far removed from genuine Chinese tradition that it was exported from India to China as a novelty to the Chinese themselves”

these tensions coexist, and look how they have been resolved.

second, consider what we vest in objects themselves: beaujot explains how the fan became a sexualized, coquettish object in the hands of a british woman, but was used to great effect in gilbert and sullivan’s 1885 mikado to demonstrate the docility of asian women.

consider: these characters became expressions of your sexual desires and fetishes, even as their 5’10 actors themselves are emasculated.

what is liberating for one necessitates the subjugation and fetishization of the other.

third, consider reactions to the practice: enjoyment of chinese objects as a sign of your cosmopolitan palate vs “so what’s the hype about those ancient chinese gays” pop culture explainers that addressed the unconvinced mainstream.

consider: zuroski describes how both english consumers purchased china in droves, and contemporary publications reported on them. how:

It was in the pages of these papers that the growing popularity of Chinese things in the early eighteenth century acquired the reputation of a “craze”; they portrayed china fanatics as flawed, fragile, and unreliable characters, and frequently cast chinoiserie itself in the same light.

referenda on fannish behavior serve as referenda on the objects of their devotion, and vice versa. as the difference between identity and fetish collapses, they come to be treated as one and the same by not just participants but their observers.

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese?

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finally, it seems readily apparent that attitudes towards chinese objects may in fact have something to do with attitudes about china as a country. i do not want to suggest that these literary concerns are primarily motivated and begot by forces entirely divorced from the real mechanics of power.

here, i want to bring in edward said, and his 1993 culture and imperialism. there, he explains how power and legitimacy go hand in hand. one is direct, and one is purely cultural. he originally wrote this in response to the outsize impact that british novelists have had in the maintenance of empire and throughout decolonization. literature, he argues, gives rise to powerful narratives that constrain our ability to think outside of them.

there’s a little bit of an inversion at play here. these are chinese novels, actually. but they’re being transformed by white narratives and artists. and just as i think the form of the novel is important to said’s critique, i think there’s something to be said about the form that fic takes and how it legitimates itself.

bound up in fandom is the idea that you have a right to create and transform as you please. it is a nice idea, but it is one that is directed towards a certain kind of asymmetry. that is, one where the author has all the power. this is the narrative we hear a lot in the history of fandom⁠—litigious authors and plucky fans, fanspaces always under attack from corporate sanitization.

meanwhile, said builds upon raymond schwab’s narrative of cultural exchange between european writers and cultural products outside the imperial core. said explains that fundamental to these two great borrowings (from greek classics and, in the so-called “oriental renaissance” of the late 18th, early 19th centuries from “india, china, japan, persia, and islam”) is asymmetry.

he had argued prior, in orientalism, that any “cultural exchange” between “partners conscious of inequality” always results in the suffering of the people. and here, he describes how “texts by dead people were read, appreciated, and appropriated” without the presence of any actual living people in that tradition.

i will not understate that there is a certain economic dynamic complicating this particular fannish asymmetry. mxtx has profited materially from the success of her works, most fans will not. also secondly, mxtx is um. not dead. LMAO.

but first, the international dynamic of extraction that said described is still present. i do not want to get overly into white attitudes towards china in this post, because i am already thoroughly derailed, but i do believe that they structure how white cnovel fandom encounters this texts.

at any rate, any profit she receives is overwhelmingly due to her domestic popularity, not her international popularity. (i say this because many of her international fans have never given her a cent. in fact, most of them have no real way to.) and moreover, as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people?

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

i think a lot of people get the relationship between ideas (the superstructure) and production (the base) confused. oftentimes they will lob in response to criticism, that look! this fic, this fandom, these people are so niche, and so underrepresented in mainstream culture, that their effects are marginal. i am not arguing that anyone’s cql fic causes imperialism. (unless you’re really annoying. then it’s anyone’s game)

i’m instead arguing something a little bit different. i think, given similar inputs, you tend to get similar outputs. i think we live in the world that imperialism built, and we have clear historical predecessors in terms of white appetites for creating, consuming, and transforming chinese objects.

we have already seen, in the case of the fan language meme that began this post, that sometimes we even prefer this white chinoiserie. after all, isn’t it beautiful, too?

i want to bring discomfort to this topic. i want to reject the paradigm of white subject and chinese object; in fact, here in this essay, i have tried to reverse it.

if you are taken aback by the comparisons i make here, how can you make meaningful changes to your fannish practice to address it?

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some concluding thoughts on the matter, because i don’t like being misunderstood!

i am not claiming white fans cannot create fanworks of cnovels or be inspired by asian art or artists. this essay is meant to elaborate on the historical connection between victorian england and cnovel characters and fandom that others have already popularized.

i don’t think people who make victorian jokes are inherently bad or racist. i am encouraging people to think about why we might make them and/or share them

the connections here are meant to be more provocative than strictly literal. (e.g. i don’t literally think writing fanfic is a 1-1 descendant of japanning). these connections are instead meant to 1) make visible the baggage that fans of color often approach fandom with and 2) recontextualize and defamiliarize fannish practice for the purposes of honest critique

please don’t turn this post into being about other different kinds of discourse, or into something that only one “kind” of fan does. please take my words at face value and consider them in good faith. i would really appreciate that.

please feel free to ask me to clarify any statements or supply more in-depth sources :)

#x #-__- another fandom essay sorry

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desertdollranch · 2 years

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Full collection of Pauline Leung, an American Girl. 1884, Tombstone, Arizona Territory.

Here is Pauline’s entire collection!

Pauline Leung is a 10-year-old girl living in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. In 1884, the Wild West town of Tombstone is busy and bustling, made prosperous by the nearby silver mines. Pauline is the daughter of a French-Canadian mother and a Chinese father. Her family came to Tombstone hoping to make their fortune, but all seems lost when her father suddenly goes missing after receiving a cryptic telegraph. There are many other Chinese-American people already living in Tombstone, but hardly any of them are children, so Pauline is often lonely and does not feel at home. She often faces discrimination, made worse by the recent passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act that prevents anyone from immigrating to the United States from China. Pauline is not allowed to attend the local school; instead, she and her mother work as domestic servants in the palatial home of a wealthy mine owner. One of the young girls who lives there befriends Pauline, and reveals that she may be able to help her find her father. Her clues lead Pauline through haunted saloons, underground passageways, dark staircases, and rugged canyons. It becomes clear to Pauline that there is far more to the residents of this strange town than meets the eye, and she will find more adventure than she ever expected to encounter!

Pauline has six outfits in her collection, plus a pinafore and a jacket. She doesn’t have many clothes compared to my other historical OCs, but that reflects her working class situation. They’re very simple in the way they’re cut, with not much decoration. Since American Girl has never made a character from this time period, I really had to go hunting for inspiration. I ended up looking at a lot of paper dolls from pre-2000 editions of American Girl Magazine, which featured several outfits from the 1880s. Her blue and striped sailor suit was inspired by an image in a fashion magazine from that decade. The light green short-sleeved dress came from a porcelain doll my grandma was throwing out, but I sewed everything else. Her jacket and bonnet were pieces I made for Kirsten a while ago as a reproduction of her recess outfit, but she hardly ever wears it. I think it looks just as cute on Pauline.

Pauline is a Truly Me #64 customized with a wig from a TM #14. Her unique leaning-to-the-side posture makes her extra cute. I found her on Mercari a couple years ago and had her spend a while as a modern character before deciding I liked her better as a historical. I wanted the chance to explore some Wild West themes of expoloration and adventure while learning more about the immigrants and people of color who lived at that time, especially the Chinese immigrants who worked in the mines and built railroads. Tombstone was home to many of them, and had its own Chinatown during the years when the silver mines were producing abundantly. It’s also said to be a very haunted town, with plenty of spooky old buildings and abandoned mine shafts. I’m hoping to take Pauline to Tombstone this coming spring, so that will give me some more inspiration to continue her story arc.

#historicaloc #pauline leung #handmade doll clothes

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translations-by-aiimee · 3 years

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Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 35

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter Index

Chapter 35

The bungalow was surrounded by aged trees, blocking the sunlight year-round. A chill ran through his body as he walked into the building. The faint musty smell and moisture in the air reminded him of a basement filled with children's toys. Lin Yan followed the Zhongshan man into an office with an old-fashioned wooden table. On the table, there was a large stainless steel thermos. The desktop computer occasionally made some buzzing noises. The office was close to the toilet. It didn't take long for the smell of amonia to rush into his nose.

"Sit down, Lin. I'll grab the contact information of the recent archaeologists that were there. It's still locked in the cabinet." The Zhongshan suit man said as he poured Lin Yan a glass of water in a disposable paper cup. "The files on the table are more than 20 years old. They were just transferred out of the archive room. Feel free to look through them."

"Thank you for your help." Lin Yan said politely.

"No, it's no trouble at all. It's great to see young people so active nowadays. We all heard about what happened with the porcelain appraisal. That was really something. Professor Chen wouldn't stop bragging about it when he got back." The Zhongshan suit man chuckled. He placed a bowl of melon in front of Lin Yan then grabbed his key and left.

Lin Yan sat at the table and waited. The office decoration was old but good quality. The real leather swivel chair was comfortable to sit on. The shade of leaves outside the window blocked the sunlight. A sparrow leaped lightly among the branches. It flapped its wings and flew away.

There were a lot of files about the Ming tomb on the table, sorted into vellum envelopes. Lin Yan flipped through them. They included a large amount of background information on the time period, project approval forms, equipment rental statements, reimbursement vouchers, and so on. An envelope labelled 'Staff Information' caught his attention. Lin Yan brushed off the dust and opened the envelope. There were several smaller envelopes inside with labels written in faded ink. The top one was labelled "1987 Shanxi Archaeological Team Payroll", followed by several others, such as rosters, contact information, etc. The bottom one was marked with the word 'important,' written in red, and the label read: List of work-related casualties and compensation details.

Casualties? Lin Yan picked up the envelope. It was very thin. It was almost like there was nothing inside. The glue on the seal had expired and could be opened just by a light tear. The brownish-yellow paper had become hard and brittle after not being handled for a long time. Lin Yan carefully slipped his hand in. The envelope was empty. Only after fumbling inside the envelope for a while did he find a small thin piece of paper. The hand-drawn table lines were smudged at the top. At first glance, he knew that whoever wrote it had drawn it in a rush. The ink hadn't dried before they dragged the ruler across the page.

A series of footsteps echoing in the hallway approached. Lin Yan jumped, instinctively shoving the paper back into the envelope. it took him a second to remember that he had been given permission to go through the documents. The old information always gave him an anxious feeling, like he was intruding. He felt like a thief, fleetingly travelling back in time from modern times.

The footsteps moved further away. Lin Yan carefully examined the paper in his hand. Everything had also been written in pen. The names, reasons for compensation, amount of money compensated and other items were divided into columns. Lin Yan skimmed over the columns, heart bursting with fear

"Li Erzhuang, hand fracture, compensation of 30 yuan for medical expenses, collected and signed for."

"Sun Dapeng, psychosis, compensation for medical expenses of 150 yuan, collected and signed for."

"Wang Aiguo, psychosis, compensation for medical expenses of 150 yuan, collected and signed for."

". . ."

All the remaining reasons for compensation written in after the names were for psychosis, but the diagnosis details are all blank. The signature on the back was pretty crooked, too. Some of the ink was written so lightly that it was barely visible. Back then, villagers weren't very educated and many could only write their names. He glanced at the page filled with awkward handwriting. When he reached the last two lines, the signature column was blank. After a double-take, the column for the reason for compensation was listed as 'dead'.

"Jun Xiangdong, Jiang Ying . . . did these two die?" Lin Yan gulped. He carefully flattened the paper and muttered: "Compensation of one thousand yuan . . . Hey, that's weird, for these two people. How come it's written that their compensation hasn't been claimed? A thousand yuan was considered a huge sum of money in a village at that time . . ."

Lin Yan confusedly opened the envelope containing the staff list. He pulled out a stack of yellowed paper, flipping through each of them. Besides the detailed information of the students sent by the university who participated in the excavation of the Ming Tomb, the rest were locals. Most of the villagers were uneducated. They only filled in their name, age, gender and village name. Lin Yan counted them. There were 13 people in total. The oldest was only 24 years old, and the youngest was only 16 and 17. Eighteen-year-old children make up the majority. Lin Yan recalled what the professor said and let out a sigh. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like for those children to be haunted by illusions and see their friends die in front of them in such a strange way.

It was too much to think about. Lin Yan glanced back at Xiao Yu. The ghost was standing leisurely by the window with his arms crossed, looking at the scenery, as if this had nothing to do with him.

When turning back to Jun Xiangdong and Jiang Ying's forms, Lin Yan was surprised to find that the information left by these two people was almost blank. Compared to the information awkwardly filled in by the other villagers, only their villages and names were listed. Written next to them in black pen were the words "wage uncollected".

Lin Yan stared at the list of villages and frowned. He mumbled: "They're all foreigners? No wonder no one got any money after they died . . ." As he turned over the page of information on the two, there was only one last name at the bottom. The name on this page was Wang Zhong. Similar to Jun Xiangdong and Jiang Ying, there was almost no information is almost blank. He also wasn't a local. Written in big black letters in the upper right-hand corner was: "Wage uncollected".

"Wang Zhong, Wang Zhong . . . This person isn't on the compensation list." Lin Yan glanced through several forms and muttered: "Was he so afraid that he ran away without even getting paid?"

Lin Yan was immersed in a few old documents when, suddenly, the office door squeaked open. Zhongshan suit guy rummaged through the file in his hand as he walked in, muttering to himself: "What's going on . . . "

Hearing his voice, Lin Yan hurriedly put down the files and stood up. Zhongshan suit guy stepped in and waved his hands: "Sit down and sit down. My memory's not what it used to be. Obviously, I put it all away before I went on a business trip. Why can't I find it? "

"What can't you find?"

"Professor Chen said you are looking for the staff roster from the Ming Tomb archaeological expedition in Shanxi. I purposely found it and put it together. The cabinet was opened just now and everything else was there. The fortune-teller's information is the only one that's gone." Zhongshan suit guy shoved everything back into the folder and said to Lin Yan: "Look, everything is numbered. Everyone has one. I filled it out when I joined the team. I kept a copy of it for payroll statistics."

Lin Yan flipped through several forms, each of which was detailed with the staff’s name, ID number, telephone number, address, working hours and position, etc. Indeed, like Zhongshan suit guy said, the number between No. 34 and No. 36 was missing. But the information from the 30th onwards was very brief, some even only listing names and phone numbers. Those people are temporary workers. No. 34 was hired to drive a tractor. No. 36 and 37 were temporary cooks. The form ended on No. 37.

No. 35 should be the mysterious fortune teller.

"This man wasn't part of the team. He came to watch over things with a feng shui compass. He stayed to explain his plan for the excavation then left. He negotiated the price with me and said that he would wait to get paid until his method was proven useful. We had the money ready to go but he never came to get it, otherwise, the financial account would have been recorded."

Everything was done so neatly. Lin Yan stared at the extra space between No. 34 and No. 36 and furrowed his eyebrows. He didn't even want the money? What was he after?

"Please think it over again. Did you take it out before and put it somewhere else?" Lin Yan was a little impatient. "Or did another colleague take it away?"

Zhongshan suit guy rubbed his hands and stroked the key in his hand in confusion: "Impossible. I'm the only one with a key to the cabinet. I had organized everything and locked it in the cabinet before I left on the trip. It was gone as soon as I got back."

Lin Yan's heart skipped a beat. This seemed too coincidental. He glanced back at Xiao Yu. The ghost was staring at the door with furrowed brows and didn't respond to him.

Seeing that Lin Yan's screwed-up expression, Zhongshan suit guy picked up the paper cup on the table and filled it at the water dispenser. He put it back in front of him and comforted him: "It's okay. You sit and drink some water and eat some melon. I'll keep looking for it. I remember when that man first came and spoke in a mysterious way, no one believed him. He left a phone number and address, saying we would definitely have to call him again. And he was right."

"Where did I put it . . ." Zhongshan suit guy talked to himself while fiddling around in the office. Lin Yan wanted to help but was pushed back into the chair. He was forced to stare at the desktop screen saver. A bright, shimmering mass of lines shifted on a black background. Green, red, and blue lines slowly changing, becoming larger and smaller, rolling into a big mess. He couldn't make sense of it.

"Today isn't a good time. If you come at another time, you could ask someone else. Actually, today is our day off so the whole building is empty. I'm the only one who came here for a reason."

Lin Yan smiled embarrassedly: "That's too much trouble for you." Then a thought struck him and he casually mentioned: "There are still people here. I just heard footsteps in the hallway. They just passed by but didn't come in."

Zhongshan suit guy was washing his hands in the washbasin by the door but abruptly stopped when he heard this and looked up: "Impossible. There's no one in the building but flies. There are only three offices, I just checked them and no one's there."

Lin Yan took a sharp breath. He looked towards the dark corridor in the doorway and suddenly felt an ominous feeling.

Maybe it was just him passing by to check the information, Lin Yan reassured himself. When the sun changed its angle, a few loose beams of light penetrated into the room through the gaps in the leaves. The soft yellow light peaked in. The dust dancing in the light fell onto the dark brown tabletop. Beams jutting to the side illuminated a cactus that had been watered too much, its petals hanging down limply.

"Hey, I remember, wait a second." A hint of excitement flashed through Zhongshan suit guy's voice. In the lower part of the glass cabinet, he pulled out an old jacket and searched through the pockets. He fished out a crumpled note from a small pocket in the lining. He fumbled with the crumbled note, studied it over, muttering: "Right, right, this is it."

Zhongshan suit guy slapped the note down in front of Lin Yan's eyes: "The address and phone number."

Lin Yan's expression relaxed.

By noon, the weather was getting hot. Zhongshan suit guy turned on the fan. The buzzing of the fan blades and the rustling of the papers being blown rang out incessantly. Lin Yan put the phone up to his ear and held a pen in his other hand, scribbling on a notepad, the tip of the pen trembling slightly because of the anticipation.

"Beep . . . beep . . ."

". . . The number you have called is temporarily unavailable."

The voice of the phone message came four times in a row. Lin Yan and Zhongshan suit guy exchanged a glance. He dropped the receiver and languidly stretched. Looking at the lower part of the note, the address handwritten in pencil looks familiar. Where had he seen it? Lin Yan tugged at his collar. He wanted to unbutton it to get some air, but he suddenly remembered the string of hickeys on his neck and he hurriedly buttoned it back to the top.

There was a splash of water from the water dispenser, followed by a series of gurgling noises. A thought flashed through his mind. Lin Yan froze in place with his cup in his hand, like the solution had smacked into his brain like a hammer strike.

"Mr. Chen, what does the fortune teller you mentioned look like?"

Zhongshan suit guy thought for a moment and recalled: "It's been a long time so I don't remember clearly. He looked like he was in his 40s or 50s. He's about the same height as me, and his hair is very short."

Lin Yan gulped and entered the address into his phone's GPS. The green route map was displayed, extending all the way to the northwest.

That's it. Lin Yan stared at the red dot indicating the destination in the upper left corner and quietly thought to himself: I found you, temple master.

#dig a grave to dig out a ghost translation #dig a grave to dig out a ghost #danmei novel #danmei #chinese bl #bl novel #english translation #yaoi novel #yaoi

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yeojaa · 4 years

Text

in the night, ii.

read part one! dedicated to my beloved wofe @periminkle because she loves assassin!kook and so do i. i honestly dunno how many parts to this non-couple couple i’ll do but ... i cannot resist them. oops.

pairing. jjk x reader. rating. ... general? tags. soft romance in the form of: pining, cuddling, playing chess like losers, using a hotel room for the lamest reasons. maybe a very lil bit of angst if you squint at the right times. it’s just them being... them? ig. wc. 1.8k. beta reader. @hobi-gif 💛

“You know, when you asked me to meet you here, this isn’t what I had in mind.”

He can’t help but laugh, the sound teetering off his tongue into the tepid lake of espresso sitting in his cup. You’re glaring down at the board, hand poised at your side. You’re so focused - more so than when you’re stitching him up.

He wonders, idly, whether that should worry him. It won’t.

“You’re not having fun?” He hums, the slyest smile passing over the rim of ceramic, a certain twinkle in his stare. It’s possible he’s overtired - he hasn’t slept in what feels like ages - but there’s something awfully amusing about the sight of you, brow knit and mouth pursed into a grimace he seldom sees. “Got something else in mind, Doc?”

You don’t humour him with a response, advancing your king to C7.

“You sure about that one?”

“Yes.” It snaps past your lips like cinnamon bubble gum.

Seeing you so riled up - not quite irritated but overly competitive - makes Jungkook snort, setting his cup down with a soft, drawn out sigh.

“Come here.” It isn’t readily clear where he means but he leaves it up to you, watching you keenly.

You’re having none of it. “Make your move.”

“Come here,” he repeats, just that bit harder. The edge doesn’t reach anywhere but his words; his eyes are still a little tired, half-lidded and dreamy. They pair nicely with the full of his cheek, how it ticks rounder and reveals a singular dimple. Your weakness - or so he’d like to think.

It’s with a surprising amount of dramatics that you remove yourself from the opposite seat, folding yourself into his lap with only a handful of movements. He welcomes your weight, curling an exhausted arm around the shape of your waist.

With your back to the arm rest, you settle with your head against his shoulder, nose cold against the column of his throat. He can even feel the steel of your glasses, gold-rimmed and delicate.

“Bored?” The tone of his voice is lilting, teasing, dressed up with laughter. It disappears into your crown of velvet, loosely braided and knotted behind your ear in your signature no-fuss fashion.

“No.” But it isn’t very believable because you certainly sound unenthused.

He tries again, with fingers that flex into the soft, bare flesh of your thigh; his other hand guides your chin, drawing your attention fully from the abandoned chess set. “Want to order room service?”

It’s the least he can do, he figures. Something to ease whatever mocking resentment seeps out of your skin - much like his had only hours earlier.

Note to himself: pick up some new clothes.

“I want every dessert on the menu,” you finally relent, with a terribly serious set of your jaw and intensity in your eyes.

He snorts, again, squeezing the yielding softness of your hip in his broad palms. “I’ll call down and order. You go take a shower or something.” It’s not as dismissive as he means; the blouse you’d worn over is stained red, the colour bleeding garishly over cream silk. It even marks your skin now, caught beneath your nails and over your wrists.

“What - it’s not a good look on me?”

Your feigned affront is addictive, coaxing in a way he’s utterly defenceless against. Still, Jungkook rolls his eyes - an exaggerated reveal of bright white sclera - and levels you with a look that might serve him better than the gun that rests on the coffee table. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Doc.”

“But you do stupid things all the time.” You’re not wrong and if there’s anyone worthy of calling him out in this same way, it’s you. Doesn’t mean he takes it any more kindly, glowering at you so heavily he thinks you might be enjoying it.

“Name one time,” he retorts, fully on the defensive. Even though he knows you’re right. Even though he could list off just five things since last night.

Getting ambushed in his own home

Cracking some not-so-poor guy’s skull on the corner of his Nakashima dining table

Asking for you to make a home (or rather, hotel) call

Asking for you at all

Asking you to stay

He hopes you won’t catch onto the last three.

“That time I told you to not overextend yourself after you cracked three ribs and you came back the next day complaining because you’d piledrived a guy through some scaffolding but, and I quote, ‘it wasn’t a big deal’?” Okay, you have him there. “Or the time I told you to take the pills in the left drawer and you took the ones from the right and ended up passed out on my floor for twelve hours?” Another solid and mildly embarrassing example. “Or—”

“Okay, okay.” A single hand held aloft in the universal sign of stop; the other remains comfortable around your waist, digits tracing figure eights over the porcelain skin beneath your top. “I get it.”

You’re undeterred, pushing forward with abandon. “Or inviting me to a hotel to not only stitch you back together but also play silly children’s games?”

“Hey - chess is fun!” And so were Gin Rummy and Speed, the other two activities he’d foisted upon you post-sewing session.

“You’re an idiot,” you state, with a surprising amount of affection. He doesn’t mind when it comes like this, dipped in honey and rolled in fairy floss. It satisfies his sugar craving, filling the spaces between his molars with cavities.

“You still came,” he challenges.

“Just adding it to the dozens of favours you already owe me.”

He grins, roguish and far too handsome for his own good. Even tired, with lurking shadows beneath his eyes, he’s unbelievably bright - like it’s radiating out of him. It’s quite funny when he’s speckled in gore, blood tainting tanned skin and reminding you that he’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

“How will I ever pay you back?”

You’re close - far too close, even sat in his lap. Jungkook can see every freckle on your face, every lash that frames the prettiest stare he’s ever seen. He has to remind himself he’s waiting for an answer; it’s hard when all he wants to do is kiss you.

He thinks you must want it too, by how the silence stretches on, catching the pair of you like a Chinese finger trap.

“Doc?” Barely a word, made in a whisper.

Can you feel how his heart beats, trips and fails to right itself when you’re so close he can smell the coffee on your breath? Is it your medical training that gives him away? Or maybe just the fact that you’re attuned to everything about him because he’s, well, him?

Your big stupid idiot, for all intents and purposes.

He wants to ask. He wants to kiss you. He wants a hundred mundane things (like playing cards and eating sweet treats) only with you.

You tear it all away with a pat to his head and a wicked smile. “With all the dessert in the world.”

He scowls then, the expression wolfish and touched with agitation. It presents in the narrowing of his stare, his sharply set jaw. “Sounds like pretty lame payback to me.” Can you hear the edge of petulance, how it colours syllables the faintest shade of goblin green?

“Got something else in mind, Jeon?”

Having his words thrown back at him only makes him laugh. It reverberates out of his bare chest, filling the quiet of the luxury suite; it bounces around just as you do, leaping to your feet with a grace he can’t mimic. He’s mesmerised, as he always is, gaze trained on you - your loosened bun, the curves of your back, how you look in the jeans that look nearly painted on they fit you so well.

“Grab a bath, Doc,” he returns - less of a suggestion and more of a demand.

“Better have those desserts once I’m out.” A threat rather than a joke, though you’re far too unassuming with your old lady glasses and wide, expressive stare. For your sake, Jungkook crosses a heart across his chest and nods solemnly, earning him a devastating grin that works far better than your intimidation.

“Have I ever let you down?”

You’re already gone, a trail of your clothes left like breadcrumbs. He still hears you. “I mean - you did bring a knife fight to my door.”

“We don’t talk about that!” He calls back before the sound of running water takes over, distorting your laughter. Neroli and cedar wood comes - your signature scent. He can’t help the way he inhales deeply, satisfied, as he plucks the room phone from its holder. It’s an addiction, a second nature action that he can’t help, whether you’re curled in his arms or tending to his broken, bleeding body.

It’s dangerous, he knows.

His old mentor would tell him don’t get involved, Jeon. That living a life like this came with sacrifices. Things he’d never really cared for - at first. But now?

He daydreamt about them more often than he should, in all the quiet moments in between. They painted the prettiest pictures in his mind, wishful thinking in the form of everyday occurrences: coffee in the morning, you in his (unstained) clothes, drives in the countryside, a bed shared at night.

All because of you and your healing hands. He’d never thought you’d be so good at your job, stitching him up inside and out.

It’d be better if he left, packed his ruined clothing and stopped appearing on your doorstep. It’d keep you safe - and him, too. Relationships meant weakness and in his line of work, weakness was something to be exploited, like an open wound with a thumb pressed into it.

Instead, he waits until the cart of desserts appears - lemon tarts and basque cheesecake and a dozen other things that scream diabetes! - and wheels it right into the bathroom, closer to you, because he always wants to be closer to you.

“These don’t look like apples, Doc,” he hums, settling himself on the back edge of the tub, careful not to dislodge the towel that’s folded beneath your neck. The wet of your hair seeps into the material of his pants, sticking cloth to sinew and brawn.

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away but a tray of desserts will keep me here forever.”

“You planning on living here?” Quipped with an offering - a cocoa masterpiece of four layers, held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.

“Might as well milk it,” you tease, accepting the bite with love in your eyes and a tongue that sweeps, just barely, over his suddenly electrified skin. He knows what you’re doing just as well as you do; it’s next to impossible not to lean into the desire, slide the digit home and press down into muscle until you’re drooling around it.

“Might as well,” he echoes, those same fluttering pink hearts reflected in his stare.

tag list. @neverthefirstchoice @youwannabelostandnotbefound

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eryiss · 3 years

Text

Chapter Five - The Cut

Summary: Freed and Laxus live incredibly different lives. Freed is a corporate lawyer in the capital city, and Laxus works as a handyman in a countryside hotel. Despite their differences, their lives collide when Freed inherits a house in Laxus’ village, and hires him to make the derelict building liveable. But the closer they get, the more they seem to offer each other. [Fraxus Multi-Chapter]

This was written as my admission for Fraxus Day 2020, hosted by @fuckyeahfraxus. Hope you enjoy it. Also, this chapter has mentions of bullying and descriptions of blood,

You can read this under the cut, on Fanfiction, or on Archive of Our Own. You can find the chapter masterpost here.

Chapter Five – The Cut

Melancholy wasn't the word. It wasn't.

Freed wasn't the type of person to get melancholy, he had never been governed by his emotions at all. He didn't look back on things fondly, nor did he feel a sense of sadness when parts of his life were over. Yes, of course things did make him emotional, but he was by no means the type of person to feel sad because something was over. Life moved on quickly, and so must he. It was the rational way to live his life.

It was a mantra he found himself repeating over and over again, as he walked through the house.

The nearly finished house.

The place was by no means a model home, but it worked as it needed to. Windows had been fixed, plumbing and electricals repaired, and structure reinforced. Walls were still stripped with remnants of old-fashioned wallpaper sticking to it, and the floorboards were bare, but it was a house again. It needed love, attention, and upgrading for anyone to actually want it. But it was liveable. Exactly what Freed had wanted. So, following the logic he lived his life by, he should want to sell the place instantly and get back to Era and work on his next case. It was the next logical step, and exactly what he should be doing.

Of course, he wasn't. Because despite it being in contrast with how he'd always lived, Freed felt an odd sense of reluctance to leave. He found himself more than once hovering over the call button on Gildarts' phone number, only to return his phone to his pocket with a muttered complaint of annoyance at himself.

It was pathetic really.

He tried to rationalise it, give his feeling a pragmatic explanation. He said it was because the house was an achievement for him. Something he had done with his hands. A practical achievement that stood out to him because most of his notable work was with the mind. And why would he want to leave something like that? It was a monument to what he could do when he put his mind to it, and he was proud.

But that was a lie, he knew that. The real reason he didn't want to sell the house was because it was the only thing tying him to Magnolia. And he wasn't ready to leave it yet.

Yes, of course he didn't need to own a house to visit the town. He had gained a solid friendship with Laxus, and had gained acquaintances with Laxus' own friends, and so he could justify visiting them from time to time. But the issue lay in that he didn't really want to come back from time to time. He'd gotten used to visiting for the weekends, and he didn't want to stop.

And he couldn't do that now. Not without everyone in the gossiping village knowing why he returned. Because they would, they'd see through it like glass, and Freed wasn't able to deal with that.

He wasn't good at being embarrassed. Never had been.

There were few situations in his life where he had actually been embarrassed, something that happened by design. There had been a few unfortunate instances in his teenage years that find themselves replaying in his head on random nights. So he had made a conscious effort to avoid any situation where embarrassment might occur. It was working well, all in all, and yet this village had this effect on him that made him question the choices that had kept him sane so far.

Freed shook his head. He wasn't getting melancholy, and he certainly wasn't getting self-reflective.

It did nobody any good.

He took a small sponge and slowly wiped down the table in Albion House's kitchen. It had been there when Freed had inherited it, and after Laxus had sanded it down and polished it, it was as workable as the rest of the house. Tonight was the first time the table was going to be used for its actual purpose. He and Laxus were going to have a meal together.

That didn't help the situation.

Because, clearly there was something more. Magnolia was a nice town, and the people in it were good to Freed, but nobody got that sentimental over a collection of buildings. People did, unfortunately, get sentimental about other people.

And annoyingly, Laxus was a good person. He was snarky, and had a bite to him, and he could challenge Freed without blinking. But he was also kind, and helpful, and when he was teaching Freed how to wire a socket or plumb in a toilet, he was patient and made sure to keep the mood light; particularly when Freed was on the edge of smashing the porcelain bastard with the wrench. He was a good man, and seemed to know how to handle Freed in whatever situation he was in.

Also, he was beautiful. Freed had withheld that admission for a while, but since they would likely part ways soon he wanted to be honest. Broad shoulders, a thin waist, striking blonde hair and bright eyes. Evergreen had been right; he was an Adonis.

It didn't help he had a rustic charm that attracted Freed more than it should.

Perhaps it was for the best that they wouldn't see much of each other. Freed wasn't the romantic type, he had more important things to do. And his attraction was born out of proximity. Laxus was an attractive man, but he was just a man. In one years' time, Freed would have forgotten about him, and his life would be normal again.

And hopefully those occasional dreams would pass too. Be them the disgustingly sweet, or the more… intense ones.

"Hey," A voice snapped Freed out of his thoughts. "I think it's clean."

Freed frowned, then looked down to the table he was cleaning. One particular part of the table in particular was shining more than others. Freed's hackles rose slightly at the teasing tone in Laxus' words, but he scolded himself in his head. Laxus hadn't known what he was thinking about, all he'd seen was Freed washing a table for far too long.

"Out of interest," Freed said, cautiously. "How long have you been here?"

"Fifteen minutes," Laxus grinned, raising the two pots of Chinese food. "Food might be cold."

"Fifteen minutes!" Freed exclaimed, almost horrified.

"It was like half a minute, moron," Laxus smirked, walking to the table, and placing their take-out on the table. "What were you thinkin' about that hard?"

"A case," Freed lied. He didn't have an active case at the moment, but he was probably going to be helping with one soon. When he went back to the city. Permanently. "It's nothing too troubling, really. It's actually quite an easy case really, but our client is high profile, and they might use our services again should they need it. So we need to be litigious and cordial."

"Can't imagine you enjoy being cordial," Laxus smirked. "Probably out of practice."

"And for that, I don't think I'll pay for my half of this," Freed said, reaching over and taking the pot of food from Laxus' hand.

"Kinda proving my point there, ain't ya?"

Freed smiled a little as he brought the chopsticks to his lips. They were having a meal together as a sort of goodbye evening – not helping with Freed's refusal to be melancholy about the situation. Because not only did it force him to confront the fact he's leaving, he has to do so with the man who's making it a lot harder to do so. Worse still, Laxus had looked so damn charming with a tediously honest smile when he'd suggested they eat together. It had sent a little jolt through Freed.

Bastard. Maybe he was doing it on purpose.

"I saw Cana while I was waiting for the food," Laxus spoke again, garnering Freed's attention again. "She mentioned that her dad's looking forward to seeing what we've done with the place, apparently he's been excited about it."

"Is he interested in buying it?" Freed asked, frowning.

"He's your estate agent, Freed," Laxus said in a deadpan voice, though he was clearly fighting a smile. "You should know that. It worries me that you don't know that."

"Gildarts is Cana's father?" Freed frowned further. "They have different surnames?"

"Fuck, sometimes I forget you ain't from here," Laxus laughed loudly, leaning back in his chair and grinning. "There's a hell of a lot you don't know, isn't there? Well, guess the best place to start is with Gildarts, ain't it. Or I guess a more accurate name is Gildarts, Man-Whore Extraordinaire."

And thus, Laxus began to tell the rumours and stories about what Gildarts was like when he was younger – he really did seem to earn the title Laxus had given him – before trailing off to the other stories about Magnolia. He spoke about his hometown with a level of enthusiasm that Freed enjoyed watching, and found himself getting enveloped in the worlds that Laxus was describing. Though he might not be quite as eloquent as Freed was, he certainly made up for it with boisterous laughter and an odd amount of glee at exposing his friends embarrassing stories.

It was almost enough to distract Freed from what Laxus had said. 'I forget you ain't from here.' It was a little sentence, probably a throwaway thought to Laxus, but it made Freed feel oddly comforted. As if he had been accepted into this little community.

A ridiculous idea, really.

He blinked to stop that train of thought, and focused on the story about Elfman. Apparently he had been dragged into some comic book convention by his sisters and had been forced to dress as a monster from a book series. He apparently hated every moment of it, and Laxus had spent the years following showing the pictures of him in the costume at every opportunity he could. To prove his point, Laxus had pulled out his phone and showed Freed.

It was a better costume that Freed expected. But it revealed far too much for the shy, younger version of Elfman that Laxus had described.

Freed did find himself distracted by Laxus, thankfully. But it wasn't quite enough, because as he listened, he absently lowered his left hand under the table and started to swirl his finger against the palm of his hand. Perhaps he wouldn't have noticed the return of his nervous tick, had it not been for the raised scar that he grazed lightly.

It was new, and when he touched it and thought back to its origin, any lie about not being melancholic was shattered.

~~~

"Shit. Fuck. Fuck."

Freed hissed, pain splitting from his left hand up into his arm. He stepped back slightly, eyes flickering to the large gash that he'd just given himself, along with the thick blood that was fighting to get from it. It was a nasty looking cut, and Freed found himself unable to look away from it.

Laxus, who had been crouching down and pushing new floorboards into place, glanced towards Freed with a slight grin. The expression fell when he saw blood drip onto the floor, and he stood up quickly and walked to Freed's side. He took Freed's injured hand in his own, and let out a small hiss of sympathy as he saw the cut. Ridiculously, Freed couldn't help but note that Laxus was holding his hand for the first time.

"That's pretty nasty," Laxus commented.

"Is it," Freed muttered. "I thought it was a papercut."

"Good, if you can be a dick then it ain't that bad," Laxus smiled. "Come on, we need to wash it."

Not removing his hand from Freed's wrist, he dragged the lawyer from the cottage's sitting room and into the kitchen. Freed didn't fight it, instead focusing on catching the droplets of blood rather than letting them land on the carpet and stain it. It was a good enough distraction from both the stinging pain that was running through him, and the presence of Laxus being so close.

It wasn't a distraction from the embarrassment of the situation. Because after being successful at almost every task Laxus had given him, he cut himself sawing off the edge of a floorboard. Out of all the tools he's used, he was bested by a sawblade.

"This ain't gonna hurt a bit," Laxus promised as he opened the faucet and dragged Freed's hand under the stream of water.

Laxus Dreyar was a lying bag of shit.

"Mother fucking crap-whore!" Freed practically yelled. There was a moment of silence, Freed almost panting with pain, and Laxus biting his lip. A second later, a loud, unabashed, raucous laughter filled the room. Laxus actually doubled over he was laughing so much, resting his hands on his thighs while Freed glared at him from the sink. "I'm glad you're enjoying this so much."

"I'm sorry," Laxus grinned, something almost akin to a giggle slipping out. "I really am."

"No you're not."

"I'm not," Laxus agreed. "It was fucking funny, man. I ain't ever seen ya acting like that. Just caught me off guard," He glanced up, met Freed's glare, and burst into laughter again. "I'll get a bandage. I'm sorry."

"Thank you," Freed muttered. "And try not to fall, impale yourself on a spike and die. That would be awful."

"Don't worry. Only an idiot could get hurt in this place," Laxus laughed again, and if Freed had something in reach, he would have thrown it at the bastard's head.

When Laxus returned to the kitchen, he was holding the first aid kit that he had insisted they keep in the house; no doubt when the humour of Freed's injury and subsequent cussing died down, Laxus would gloat about how right he was with demanding the first aid kit. He carefully guided Freed's hand out from under the stream of water, and patted it dry softly with a towel. Freed winced a little at the pressure on his cut, but didn't say anything.

Slowly, with careful and practiced movements, Laxus wrapped the bandage around his hand. He managed to avoid trapping any of his fingers. Though the white fabric did get stained slightly, it seemed to trap the blood from pouring out too badly. The pain was subsiding slightly now, too.

It allowed him to appreciate how gentle Laxus was being. He wasn't used to thinking of Laxus being gentle.

"How do you know how to do this?" Freed asked, sitting at the kitchen table.

"I used to have to do it all the time," Laxus sighed a little as he spoke, removing his hands from the bandage and inspecting his handywork. He looked up to Freed, who was frowning at him slightly. "I had a lot going on when I was a teenager, got into a lot of fights. Well, that's how I saw it. Turns out I was kind of a bully."

Freed frowned deeper. "You were?"

"Yeah. Didn't think I was, at the time, but I went to therapy for a while and she called me out on it," Laxus shrugged. "But yeah, a couple times a month I'd fight some kid. Had a superiority complex or some shit, wanted everyone to worship me and do what I want. Cringey teenager shit and a lot of aggression, bad mix. Eventually, when the guys started to fight back, I needed to learn some basic first aid."

When Laxus looked up, Freed had an expression of curiosity on his face. It clearly wasn't what Laxus had expected.

"Was it the therapy that made you stop, then?" Freed asked, and Laxus seemed blind sighted for a moment.

"Er, no. Not exactly," Laxus shook his head. "There were two kids that pissed me off more than most, don't know why. So when things were getting bad, I kinda… targeted them more than anyone else. Natsu and Gajeel, you might have met them at some point. Fireman and mechanic. But they got pissed at me for taking things too far, jumped me, beat the shit out of me, then went to the principal and told him all the shit I've done. Got suspended, thought about myself, and started meetin' with Porlyusica; she's my therapist. She basically listed all the shit I've done and made me be better."

Freed took a moment to think through what he'd just heard. It was the best thing to do, he'd found out. Sometimes people let out their biggest, darkest secrets to him – the curse of being a lawyer – and your first thoughts on the matter were often unhelpful. So he took some time, and eventually asked the question that seemed most prudent.

"Your principal suspended you without evidence?" Freed asked.

"Oh he had plenty of evidence," Laxus laughed. "Hard to get shit past the guy when he's your grandfather."

"Makarov?" Freed frowned.

"Yeah, used to be in charge of the school. Only retired because the school board forced him to," Laxus grinned. "He started working at the hotel because he found retirement boring," Laxus smiled for a moment at the memory of his grandfather's sudden proclamation he was buying the hotel, before looking back to Freed, smile drooping slightly. "I just admitted to beating up kids and being a bully, why doesn't that bother you?"

"Some of my clients intentionally lower their workers' wages to increase their own paycheque, and then laugh about it," Freed shrugged. But Laxus nudged him, sensing there was more. "Nobody was there best in high school, I certainly wasn't."

"You were a bully too huh?" Laxus laughed, joking.

"Well, not exactly, but I wasn't the most kind," Freed leant back in his chair. "I was the smartest person there and wanted people to know it. I would start discussions on test results just so I could make sure everyone knew I'd gotten one hundred percent. And there was one boy, he wasn't the smartest, who sat beside me in most classes. Alphabetised seating plans and all. I could be rather… patronising to him. I think I had a crush on him, in retrospect. It was probably a twisted way of trying to deal with it."

"You don't seem like that now," Laxus commented. "Other than when you're joking, but I know that ain't serious. What changed?"

"Evergreen and Bickslow essentially told me that if I didn't get over myself, they'd stop being my friends," Freed smiled. "Other than them, I only had my parents. I couldn't lose them."

They sat in silence, Freed thinking back to the person he was in high school, Laxus perhaps doing the same thing. It was an odd feeling, sitting with someone who somewhat understood what it was like being ashamed of the person you used to be, but knowing you've grown past them. Most people, if they did feel like that, didn't talk about it. It was nice to know that, in Laxus, he had someone he could relate to.

It was also nice to know that he had just come out to Laxus and the blonde hadn't so much as blinked.

"I would have kicked your ass if we went to school together," Laxus declared, smirking.

"You would have tried," Freed corrected, allowing the mood to be lifted. "But, as a child I was also an award-winning fencer. I would have stabbed you before you could hurt me."

"Hard to stab someone when you've been knocked out," Laxus grinned cockily, making a fist. This had the unfortunate side effect of making his bicep flex, and therefore Freed had to avert his gaze.

They chuckled together, enjoying their joke that wasn't particularly funny. It was relaxing to be around with Laxus, and Freed felt as though he could be honest with him in a way that he couldn't be with others. Perhaps that was because he was the first person Freed had gotten to know deeply since his time in school. But that didn't matter, really. Because the important thing was that he enjoyed Laxus.

"Come on," Laxus spoke again. "I don't trust my bandage work. Let's go to the doctors, make sure you ain't gonna get infected or some shit."

And stupidly, Freed's heart fluttered at that.

~~~

"You really are distracted, ain't ya?"

Freed looked up from his hand, which he had placed on the table and was fiddling with, and towards Laxus. The blonde had an expression unknown to Freed, something between being amused and contemplative. Freed frowned.

"I suppose I am," Freed agreed. "I'm sorry. You wanted to do this and I'm being terrible company. What were you saying?"

"It ain't important," Laxus gave a half shrug. "You wanna tell me what's bothering you?"

"As I said, I've got an upcoming case that could be very good for my company," Freed quickly lied, because the truth was now completely untellable. "It's getting to me a little, but it's not as bad as you might think. I just need to rationalise everything."

"Right. So when I texted Evergreen a second ago and she said you don't have anything planned at work, she was lying?" Laxus crossed his arms, and Freed's eyes narrowed.

"You and Evergreen talk?"

"You can bullshit me all you want, but I'm gonna be able to see through it," Laxus said, ignoring Freed's question. "And you don't have to tell me what's actually bothering you, because if it ain't my business then it ain't my business."

Freed wanted to snipe at him. Ask him why, if he believed his words, was he still talking?

"I'm just gonna say this," Laxus continued. "Nothing has to be done if you don't want it to be."

And, in a way, there was the reality that Freed had been hiding from. Because, as much as he didn't want to leave Magnolia behind, he also didn't want to let himself think he could stay. The hard line he had always drawn with the house was that, once it was functional and sellable, he would sell it and get back to his normal life. Not only was it a goal for him to achieve, but it had also turned into a rule he had to follow.

Because his fondness for both the town and Laxus had been gradual, and it hadn't gone unnoticed by Freed. He told himself he had to leave the place behind at some point, and doing that once the house was sold was a way of holding himself accountable. Once the building work had been completed, there was nothing else for him to do in Magnolia.

But that was a lie.

And the only person keeping him true to the rule was himself.

"I always said that I would sell it once everything was fixed," Freed stated, voice flickering into the lawyer tone he denied having.

"Then say something else," Laxus retorted, as if Freed could do that. "Look, I don't know what your life is like when you're in the city. But I know you seem to like being here. So why don't you just keep coming?"

"I-" Freed paused. He needed to think. "My real life is in the city. I can't-"

"Who says that your real life is just in the city? You've been coming here every weekend for months now, it's as much a part of your life as anything," Laxus stated, and his smile made Freed's resolve crumble slightly.

"I told myself that once the house-"

"This isn't about the house" Laxus insisted. "This is about you, fucking idiot. I think being here makes you happy. And if something makes you happy, why stop because of some bullshit rule you set yourself? That ain't smart."

Freed thought, for a moment.

It was almost nauseating to hear Laxus speaking like this, and Freed couldn't explain why. Well, perhaps he could, but the explanation wasn't something he was willing to entertain. Because the only real reason Laxus would be so insistent on Freed returning to Magnolia as he had been doing was because he wanted to keep seeing Freed. He wanted Freed to stop coming as much as Freed wanted to.

But Freed couldn't allow himself to accept that. Because if he did, he'd start wondering why. And then maybe he'd trick himself into thinking that his silly crush was reciprocated. He couldn't.

"There is… more work I could do," Freed spoke without thinking.

"I guess there is," Laxus nodded. "So you're sticking around? For the house"

"For the house."

It wasn't for the house. They both knew it.

#Fraxus Day 2020 #Fraxus Day #Fraxus #Freed Justine #Laxus Dreyar #Fairy Tail #Fanfic #Writing #Event #Multichapter #Word Count 4.1k #Fuckyeahfraxus

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pain-somnia · 4 years

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Title: What Once Was Rating: T Characters: Madara, Sasuke; background minor SasuSaku, implied GaaNaru, mentions of implied past HashiMadaMito Disclaimer Day’s Notes: hello! This was a fic I wrote for @a-year-of-naruto and I thought I had posted it but I guess I haven’t because I can’t find it. I wrote for the season of spring and this is a reincarnation AU that focuses on Madara and a bit of Sasuke. It’s still a goal of mine to do a Sasuke PoV companion piece. Warning: few mentions of violence and a corpse’s description

What Once Was

The light breeze blows in through the bars of the window, bringing the leftover chill from winter with it. The cold had been stubborn this season, lingering even as March was now reaching its end.

Yet it had never bothered Madara and he wonders to himself if it was a trait that carried on across lifetimes. Fire coursed through his blood long ago and now in a different time, his body keeps warm━scorching like fanned flames━a whisper of what once was.

The wind chime hanging off the roof sways with the breeze, singing a soft tinkle over the bustle of people walking the path from the suburbs to the city. Every day the residents would pass by his shop on their way to work or school. Sometimes they entered, sometimes they didn't, using it instead as a meeting point before moving on to their true destination.

“It’s freezing,” a middle school girl complains as she searches for something warm to drink. Tucking a strand of rose gold hair behind her ear, she gets to work on preparing a cup of hot cocoa at the dispenser near the front counter.

“It’s not that bad.”

The deeper voice has Madara shifting his gaze to the new patron entering the shop. The familiar, unruly spikes catches his attention. He has seen this boy before, not just around the neighborhood, but somewhere in a distant past.

With a slight inclination of his chin, the teenage boy bows to him as he passes the counter. He is always overly polite to his elders, he’s noticed. Perhaps raised by a traditional and strict family.

“You never get cold, Sasuke-kun,” the girl grumbles, capping a lid on her drink.

Sasuke. An uncommon name, too old fashioned for a child of his generation, but that too breached across to this lifetime━perhaps fate had his parents naming him so.

It was a different name than the one Madara had assigned to him in his mind, but a name he came to terms with years back when the boy first entered his shop in his gakuran uniform with a loud blond boy and a much quieter and sleepy looking red haired kid.

“Should I get one for Naruto?” Another uncommon name, also familiar.

“Don’t spoil him, Sakura. He’s running late, he doesn’t get a drink.”

“Not running late,” Sakura corrects him in a singsong, “he’s waiting for Gaara.”

Sasuke rolls his eyes and digs out his wallet for change, paying for her share. It’s a simple exchange, nothing out of the ordinary, but as the boy places the money in his hand, Madara is hit with the scent of smoke and the coppery odor of blood. Angry charcoal eyes flash across his vision.

“Thank you. Have a good day!” The girl━Sakura━waves goodbye cheerily, dragging Sasuke along.

And off they go, away from his old corner store. They will make their way around the bend of the street, past the small shops to their bus stop that will take them to the crowded and noisy city.

A city he escaped to get away from the ghosts of his past, only to run into another one.

Madara doesn’t see him again the following week.

He sees the sunny boy—Naruto, he reminds himself—with their red haired friend. They’re in casual clothes now that they’re on holiday. The two of them are often together as they enjoy their Spring Break.

During the school year it wasn’t a strange sight, seeing them alone. Sasuke would be traveling home either alone—carrying a sports bag and a kendo shinai—or with the girl with the rose gold hair, carrying books that could have been his but usually were not.

It’s not until near the end of March that he sees him again. It’s as Madara steps outside his shop, acrid cigarette smoke mixing with floral notes and disappearing into the white sky of the cloudy day, that he spots him in neat casual attire walking hand in hand with the same rose haired girl dressed in a pretty sundress and cardigan.

Ah. A new development, he thinks, watching them hold hands for the first time on their way home.

If he squints his eyes and forgets his name, Madara can almost picture him as a different boy, a boy raised in war. It’s easy to fall into the trap of replacing this Sasuke with his brother. Easy to imagine it’s Izuna enjoying the brisk Spring afternoon.

He subtracts Sasuke and adds Izuna into every scenario. It’s Izuna goofing off with friends. It’s Izuna falling slowly but surely in love. It’s Izuna that practices kendo and goes to cram school.

It’s Izuna living a life so carefree, free of the burdens of war. Izuna being allowed to be a child the way that Madara now knows how to be, even with his past life bridging to his current in the form of dreams and memories.

Of all his kin, why this boy? This boy━that shouldn’t even exist as long as he’s breathing━gets a new chance at a different life.

He can’t help that he’s glaring when the boy looks up and they catch each other’s eyes. The boy glares right back and, holding on tightly to his girlfriend’s hand, he picks up his pace, getting as far away as possible from his shop.

I don’t care about your hāfu girlfriend.

He remembers the Uchiha, almost as homogeneous as the society he lives in. Maybe his past self would have found it traitorous but his current self can’t summon an ounce of care to discriminate against a child born of a Chinese parent.

The memories and emotions simmer under the surface but some still feel as though they belong to someone else. And then there are some that settle as absolute truths.

Sometimes the way the smoke of his cigarette burns in his chest and up his throat feels like a katon ready to unleash. It’s as he’s sweeping the carpet of pink petals blocking his shop that Madara wishes he could still summon flames to speed up the task of clearing the sakura blossoms that cover the roof tops, the streets, and every nook and cranny they settle in after the wind scatters them.

Grunting to himself, he piles the petals in a heap before moving on to his neighbor’s little shop. She sells ceramic wares, pottery spun by her wrinkled hands, and yet cats make the shop their home. The obaasan that owns it leaves food and water out and the cats never knock over any of the clay pots or bowls. They simply laze about, only rising from their spot when a guest arrives, eager to fetch the granny like dutiful little employees.

His neighbor has watched over him ever since he took over the corner store four years ago. The old woman never asked him why a city boy would move out but still remain as close as possible, settling in between the loud city and the sleepy suburb of which families had made their home. She doesn’t care to know his story, only brings him something to eat and has him fix her up a cup of tea.

Madara knows that if she asked he would never tell her about meetings at an izakaya after work. Would never talk about the woman with porcelain skin and auburn hair or the man with chocolate brown eyes and a mouth with the ever present upturn at the corners. Would never talk about the rings on both of their left hands and how even in this life they left him behind.

His hair had been shorter then. Thick and spiked but cropped close to his head━perfect for an office worker. Crunching numbers during the day and dreaming of the screams of his enemies at night. Madara ignored the memories of his past in favor of clinging to what his life could be.

The dreams were just dreams, he told himself. They meant nothing, even in the mornings when he could still smell sulfur and feel the weight of long hair against his shoulder blades despite the absence of it when he looked at his reflection in the mirror.

But that was four years ago and gone are the days of sitting behind monitors and filing paper. It took four years and now his hair, although tied loosely, settles against his back, creeping down to his waist.

The second week of April brings gentle rains. The drops drum against the shingles on the roof above his flat. The temperature had been rising and the mellow showers are just a precursor to the ones that will fall in a couple of months.

Taking the kettle off the stove in his kitchenette, Madara is glad he got back from the bathhouse before the rain came down. He settles on the tatami, just under the window, and listens to the pitter patter melting into the babbling of a brook.

He can feel the warmth of a sunny day on his cheeks and the roaring of laughter against his ears. Madara opens his eyes and he’s in the middle of the woods, hakama pants getting heavy from retaining water. In a voice not quite his own he shouts insults at the young man with the unfortunate haircut that had pushed him in.

Madara grabs Hashirama’s ankles and drags him down in the water with him. Laughing through his nose, he prepares himself for a retaliation that never comes. Dropping his stance Madara glances around in confusion, not understanding where his friend could have gone.

“Niisan…” a voice croaks below him.

At his feet, floats the eyeless corpse of his younger brother.

Madara doesn’t scream as he wakes up. The dream is old and although his heart is palpitating at an alarming rate, it no longer brings him the same terror it had when the memories were still fresh.

Grabbing his phone to check the time, Madara doesn’t register the hour as he’s distracted by the notifications on his screen.

His dreams had summoned the caller and looking at the number of missed calls Madara swipes his thumb on his screen to clear his notifications.

Of course that fool would call seven times.

Owning a corner store gets to be tedious. Tracking inventory and restocking use the most basic of his accounting skills. Manning the counter is a lazy task and Madara finds himself constantly leaving his shop to watch people as they pass by to keep from dozing off.

He keeps his mouth busy with cigarettes he purchases from the vending machine right outside his shop. Chain-smoking wasn’t a habit he expected to pick up but had anyway when the company he worked for merged with another.

It was the merger that changed everything.

“You can call me Hashi,” his new coworker introduced himself. The new staff had entered in the Spring, only a few months after the merger was announced, and it was the first time Madara had spoken directly to any of them.

The exchange was sparked by a request for a lighter and from then on the man had initiated a one sided friendship that quickly became mutual.

Conversations in the designated smoking room soon moved on to shared lunch breaks and drinks after work. There had been moments━Madara is sure there had been moments━and despite the awkwardness of dealing with memories in which in a past life the two of them stood on opposing sides in battle, it was the most alive Madara had felt in the longest time.

And then came the arrival of Hashi’s “Mi-chan.”

She had also called the night before. Mito had messaged him on LINE but unlike Hashirama, she hadn’t called repeatedly. She wasn’t one to do any chasing. But the message was a blunt lecture about absences and leaving people hanging.

Madara watches the sky break out in hues of pink and orange, melting into purple and navy. It’s time for the students that do not have after school activities to arrive on the bus.

And sure enough there’s a blond knucklehead gesticulating to a red haired kid holding a small potted cactus rounding the corner. They’re no longer wearing gakuran but blazers and tartan slacks, the uniform of the local public high school.

Well it is Spring, Madara thinks to himself as he takes a long drag of his cigarette. The brats couldn’t stay middle schoolers forever.

But there is one missing in the usual trio of boys. Standing taller than the other two, and usually bickering with the blond kid, Sasuke wasn’t with them.

It had been a few weeks since the new school year had started and Sasuke never seemed like the kind of person to stop going to school when it was no longer compulsory.

The granny’s cats usually are quiet as they lurk about the alley between his shop and hers. Madara will come across them when he’s making sure that the combustible trash has been sorted properly.

The brat standing in his alley is definitely not a cat.

Charcoal colored eyes glared back at him defiantly as if Madara’s fist isn’t balled up in his blazer. The neat black blazer with red trimming has the crest of a school Madara knows very well. It belongs to a school that he had sat an exam for and failed. It was a high school he had aspired to go to as a teenager for its exclusiveness. It was a rigorously structured school that boasted the best performance academically and only accepted those that were able to pass the intensely difficult entrance exam.

For a moment Madara is proud. If anyone were to get into such a school it would be his kin. Sasuke is an Uchiha through and through. A different lifetime didn’t change that fact.

That pride crumbles with the glittering of silver on Sasuke’s ears and the exhale of smoke coming out of his mouth. His descendant reborn is a delinquent.

“You’re fifteen,” Madara hisses, pushing Sasuke back against the wall of his shop.

“You don’t know how old I am.”

“Boy,” Madara grips his collar lapel and yanks Sasuke up so they’re nose to nose, “don’t try acting smart when you’re clearly wearing a high school uniform.”

Sasuke looks older than a first year, face more mature than children his age but it doesn’t change the fact that he’s a child.

“Where did you get a Taspo from?”

Sasuke shrugs which has Madara shaking him. He obviously stole the smart card for the vending machine, possibly from a relative. Or maybe he was sent by his father to pick up a carton and took the opportunity to buy one for himself.

“Come on brat, we’re going to talk to your parents.”

Sasuke pulls back, making himself heavy and refusing to budge. Madara has half a mind to tug on one of his earrings and force him to move.

“Hand it over.”

“Hand what over?” Sasuke cocks an eyebrow and feigns innocence poorly. If the odor didn’t give him away, the look of complete indifference did.

“The box of cigarettes! Don’t act stupid with me now, brat.”

Sasuke makes no move to do as he is demanded. He looks directly into Madara’s eyes unwavering and it is here that it’s even more clear to him that this boy could never be his younger brother. Their noses are different. Izuna’s cheekbones were higher and sharper. This boy’s lower lash line is slightly longer than the upper.

How did he ever mistake him for Izuna?

“There’s a woman with your face,” Madara speaks up after a beat. “I’ve seen you with her before. She goes to the city, but when she passes my shop she always stops for a chat with the granny next door.”

Sasuke narrows his eyes at the threat hidden in Madara’s words. Four years of watching all of the people. Four Springs passing by him, of course he knows at least that much about the boy from his past.

Reaching into his back pocket, Sasuke takes out a box and tosses it to the ground. He never made anything easy━not in their old life and not now. He shoves him away with a force that has Madara fumbling backwards and having to catch himself before he knocks over the bins. Without another glance Sasuke leaves the alley and if not for the carton of cigarettes on the ground it would have been as if he had never been there to begin with.

Not one to leave perfectly good cigarettes go to waste, Madara picks up the box from the ground and opens it up. The carton is half full and he pulls one out and lights it up.

Huh. Menthols.

That night isn’t the last of his run ins with Sasuke. Madara uses the evenings to stand outside and enjoy the chill of the night as the temperature drops with the sun.

He aligns his outings with the time the stragglers would be coming home from work or after school clubs. He sparks up a cigarette and watches as the teenager scowls at him before turning down the road in the opposite direction of what he knows is the path he usually takes to get home.

Some nights, Sasuke drops into the store and picks up a Pocari Sweat and mints. He has his gym bag and shinai on those nights. Some nights he’s home earlier than expected and he loiters the corner store, usually playing with a visiting cat before he makes a purchase of another sports drink and tin of mints.

“Are they helping to curb the craving?” Madara asks him one night as he rings him up.

“Gotta do something considering you’re a persistent jiji, always guarding the machine.”

“Jiji!?” Madara’s right eye twitches at the rude name he’s called. “How old do you think I am exactly, boy?”

“Forty-seven?”

“I’m thirty-six,” Madara hisses. Being called ossan would have been better. Still rude, but better than jiji.

Sasuke doesn’t apologize for his answer. He simply counts his change before handing it over. Madara eyes him before slipping the change in the till.

“Women tend to prefer non-smokers anyway,” he advises. The ghost of Mito’s voice flits around his ears, nagging him and Hashirama for their habits.

Sasuke gives him an unimpressed look. The aura of superiority around the kid grates on his nerves. He was a boy of merely fifteen and yet he had such an abrasive attitude with his elders.

What happened to the boy from a few weeks ago that would bow his head when entering his store? What changed?

“I only do things because I want to. Not for other people.”

And why would you want to smoke or pierce your ears? What’s the benefit?

Madara doesn’t voice his questions. He just does what he always does and watches him leave, his eyes following him down the street and turning in the wrong direction from the bars of his window.

The following night is one of the nights where Sasuke comes home early. Instead of picking up a sports drink like he always does he helps Madara unpack boxes of goods and shelves them in their appropriate places. Madara observes as he unflinchingly lines up sanitary napkins and tampons on the shelf and then moves on to small packages of toilet paper.

The Naruto kid had been in the store earlier and kicked out two minutes after entering for making a racket when he only saw the boxes.

“Your friend was here today.”

“What friend?” Sasuke continues stacking and if Madara wasn’t looking at him he would have believed he had imagined that Sasuke spoke at all.

“He’s loud. And obnoxious.”

Sasuke ignores him and moves over to the aisle on the other side of the shelves. He continues stacking with an unnerving focus. Madara is tempted to chuck something at him to see if he would even react to it. The kid stares into space often enough to worry Madara about his state of mind. Schools like the one Sasuke attended focused heavily on exams and it usually took a toll on the students. It was still early in the year but the shift from public school to private may have been difficult on the boy.

Especially considering that he keeps skipping cram school.

It is a few nights later that he receives an old visitor. The rose gold hair is familiar but it’s the look in her eyes that has Madara remembering a different set of determined green eyes that faced him down as he stood among the rubble and overturned earth of a battlefield.

He had stabbed this girl before.

She slides a pack of lead for her pencils across his counter and a tin of mints. The brand is the exact same one Sasuke picks up and it’s then that Madara notices she is wearing the same blazer that Sasuke wears as part of his uniform.

“Ojisan? Have you seen a boy about this tall,” the girl waves her hand several centimeters above her head, “with spiky black hair and bangs that fall across the left side of his face? I usually come in with him in the morning.”

Madara shakes his head and tells her the total of her purchase. With a sigh of defeat she thanks him and pays for her items.

He has in fact seen Sasuke. It was about an hour earlier than she had arrived from the city, most likely coming home from cram school. He usually sees her walking home alone in the evenings.

Sometimes, Naruto and their red haired friend pick her up from the bus stop and escort her while Naruto cheerfully tells her about something going on at his school. As the trio walks there’s a mindful gap, as if they are subconsciously aware of their missing friend as they head in the direction of their homes.

“Where do you go when you come home from school?” Madara asks him on a rainy afternoon. Sasuke looks around the store and back at Madara as if the answer was obvious. “Besides here, brat.”

Sasuke doesn’t respond, not that Madara actually expected him to. Talking, it seems, is another one of those things Sasuke doesn’t do unless he wants to.

He moves around the shelves slowly, taking things down that were put back in the wrong place by customers and putting them in the correct shelf. Madara told Sasuke that he wouldn’t pay him for the work, that he wasn’t hiring any part timers, but the boy continued to come back and assist him in the shop.

“My school doesn’t allow its students to have jobs,” he explained. Madara finds it curious that Sasuke obeys that rule even though he clearly doesn’t care about the restrictions on body modifications. Even the hair that falls in his face that he constantly flattens and brushes to the side is too long according to his school’s rules.

Madara watches as Sasuke continues to grab things with his right hand, never reaching with his left despite it being free and closer to items. There is a slight stutter in Sasuke’s movements when he bumps the shelves with the left side of his body as he attempts to go around a corner. He looks down at his left arm in confusion before shaking his head.

Sasuke flexes the fingers on his left hand and unnecessarily drums them along the shelves as he turns. Madara hears him muttering to himself, “It’s still here…” and wonders if he should be concerned by the strange behavior.

His reincarnated descendant is a strange one and getting stranger by the day.

“You’re avoiding something,” Madara calls after him as Sasuke moves behind shelves of snacks and out of his line of sight. “Or someone.”

“You’re one to talk about avoiding something,” Sasuke’s voice carries as he walks throughout the store. “When are you going to finally answer that phone? It only rings like five times within an hour.”

As if on cue, Madara’s cell phone rings, rattling against the old register it sits on top of. He doesn’t even need to look to know who is calling. It is around the time Madara used to call it a day and shut off his computer.

“Going to answer that any time soon, old man?”

“Out.” Madara seethes, tired of his attitude. No one talks to him in that tone, especially not fifteen year olds. “Out of my store.”

“More like your bubble,” Sasuke retorts, finally coming around from the back row of shelves. “You never leave this place. You even live right above it.”

Sasuke snatches his messenger bag from off the floor and Madara is tempted to reach over the counter and snatch him by his sweater vest. For a moment he forgets that in this lifetime he is simply a middle aged former salaryman and not the fighter he once was in a distant life.

Sasuke narrows his eyes at him and Madara expects them to bleed into the scarlet coloring he has witnessed in his dreams and almost moves himself to brace for an attack. Instead, he stops in his tracks and examines the young face of this teenage boy. The skin underneath his eyes is dark and puffy, a clear sign that Sasuke hasn’t been sleeping properly.

“Go home,” Madara mutters. He’s not what he used to be. Fighting doesn’t bring him the same joy it brought his past self.

Sasuke pulls back and brings himself to his full height. He tightens his grip on his messenger bag strap and just when Madara thinks he’s about to do as he’s told for once, Sasuke decides to have the last word.

“I would tell you to do the same but, clearly, you’ve decided that you’re already there.”

Madara throws a roll of receipt paper that Sasuke deftly avoids, side stepping and rushing to the door.

“I won’t be like you, I refuse!” He shouts behind him as he makes his exit, confusing Madara with his words.

Was there ever a chance you would be?

Madara expects him to come back after a few nights but by the end of Golden Week, Sasuke still hasn’t shown his face. Madara almost gives up on looking for him when he spots him by the corner where the bus should stop.

Sasuke doesn’t move even as it starts to shower. He opens his umbrella and continues to wait.

Madara grows tired of watching him and puts out his cigarette and heads back inside his shop. He’s sitting behind his counter and flipping open a book when he hears a familiar shout of joy before there’s a much more familiar angry retort. It’s quiet again with only the drops of rain harmonizing with the soft jingle of the wind chime.

The sound of students chatting as they walk by his shop isn’t a new occurrence so he continues reading his historical fiction, only pausing when he hears a slight knocking against the wooden bars of his window.

“Are you trying to prank the corner store jiji?” A bright voice trills. At that Madara is standing up, ready to throw anything, even his flip flop, at the brat attempting to vandalize his shop.

Madara is poised and ready when he spots the spiky dark head of Sasuke, walking underneath an umbrella with the green eyed girl, Sakura. Naruto ditches the shelter of the umbrella he shares with the red haired boy and jumps on Sasuke’s back, hounding him for answers.

“What was that about? Come on, tell me!”

“Knock it off, idiot!” Sasuke shoves him off and Naruto stumbles backward, falling into a puddle.

The two of them bicker back and forth with occasional interjections from Sakura. Despite the ongoing argument, the tension in Sasuke’s shoulders is gone and there’s a softness to his demeanor that had been missing weeks ago.

Madara watches as they round the corner and head down the street in the direction of home. Sasuke elbows Naruto the whole way as the latter continues to try and squeeze under the same umbrella as the couple and cling to the both of them.

Madara takes a deep inhale and holds it for a count of four seconds before exhaling. He’ll see what Sasuke did to his window and find him later. There was only one path to get to the bus stop and Madara can stand watch forever for the brat.

Inspecting his window, Madara finds a white handle sticking out from between the bars. Pulling on it reveals the flat, red side of an uchiwa. It was an unusual design for a fan but the message Sasuke is trying to convey is clear.

Huh. So that’s how it is. Madara shakes his head and exhales a laugh through his nose. Well, I’m not going to be shown up by a kid.

Sitting at his counter, Madara drums his fingers against the table top and eyes his cell phone. He wills it to ring but it just lays there on top of his register. He runs his hands down his face, smoothing his palms against the stubble on his jawline.

“Alright,” he mutters, swiping his phone from its designated spot. He searches his call log for a number he still knew by memory, stalling the call by as many seconds as possible. It seems like minutes have gone by before the dial tone stops and the call is picked up.

“Hello? Ma-kun?” Madara takes in a sharp intake of air at the sound of her voice, so clear even through the phone’s speaker. “This better not be a butt dial, Madara.”

Letting out a breathy chuckle, Madara greets her and in one breath Mito releases a few years worth of complaints, sprinkling in a few questions in between.

“I can tell you about the shop later,” Madara cuts in when he is given the opportunity. “You can tell Hashi that I’ll be at the old pub.”

#madara uchiha #uchiha madara #sasuke uchiha #sasusaku #day!fics

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bernaerts-highlights · 4 years

Photo

A pair of Chinese export famille-rose 'arbor' pattern plate circa 1740

Estimate: €3000 - €4000 Result: € 2600

Sale December 8-9: Winter Tales pt. 1, Old Master Paintings & Antiques

In the fourteenth century, Europe is introduced to the Chinese porcelain craft. The objects are seen as pure luxury: they’re pricey, rare and artisan-made. By the sixteenth century, the Portuguese establish a direct sea-route to the Far East, around the Cape of Good Hope. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, some 300 million works of Chinese porcelain reach Europe. Encouraged by the blooming trade routes to Europe, Chinese craftsmen begin producing porcelain aimed solely at the European consumer. The objects are still made in the Chinese way, but in a more western fashion of style and decorative value.

These two plates are ordered by the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie. It’s one of four commissioned designs after drawings by Dutch draftsman Cornelis Pronk between 1736 and 1739. The plates are a clear example of the hybrid nature of Chinese export-porcelain. The central scene hovers between Chinese and chinoiserie. The decorated border fuses Chinese and European elements: flowers and butterflies combined with a shell-patterned background. The so-called famille rose-glazing technique has European roots and was introduced to the Chinese by the Jesuit missionaries. The Chinese however perfected the technique, and as a result the Chinese famille rose-porcelain was the most artistically refined work in eighteenth-century China.

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imagineclaireandjamie · 5 years

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Please more of artist Jamie!!! So beautiful!

Follow up to this story

January 1976

Elias Pound had known Mandy MacKenzie for all of fourmonths – but he already knew he’d gladly follow her anywhere.

So when she proposed they spend an evening at a downtownart gallery – in a neighborhood she called SoHo (“But we have one of those inLondon,” he had protested – and she’d replied “This one has a capitalized H,silly goose”) – he immediately leapt at the chance to be with her. Even if itmeant following her on the subway (“Don’t you have one of those in London?” shehad teased), gaping at the half-beautiful, half-terrifying graffiti scrawledover the walls and seats and windows and exterior of the cars, stepping around thegarbage and panhandlers on the platform at Times Square and Grand Central whenthey transferred from the 1 to the Shuttle and then to the 6.

Once above ground at Spring Street, he thought she’d madea mistake – for the neighborhood appeared to be stone dead, even at arelatively early hour.

“Where is everybody?” Elias dug his hands into thepockets of his peacoat, pulse rocketing from a mix of fear and sheer joy asMandy slipped her mitten-clad hand through his arm.

“Barely anyone lives down here,” she explained, lookingboth ways before stepping off the curb. “It’s mostly artists and galleries.They love the big old buildings – fantastic twenty-foot ceilings in the rooms.”

A cab appeared out of nowhere, horn blaring. Mandy tuggedhis arm to stop – and the cab squealed by, the driver hurling obscenities.Calmly Mandy kept walking down Broadway, turning right onto Prince Street.

“And how did you find out about this exhibit?”

His eyes darted over to her; she just smiled and keptwalking.

“Here we are!”

And they were – for in the first sign of life since they’dleft the subway, a line snaked out of an industrial metal doorway and aroundthe corner. Elias could only see a tiny sign above the door – The Broch Gallery – and a burly man outfront, clearly the security guard.

Elias steeled himself to wait outside in the cold –regretting he hadn’t brought his knit cap – but then Mandy marched right up tothe man at the door.

“Hi – I’m Mandy MacKenzie,” she explained. “Elias here ismy guest. I should be on the list.”

The man fished in his pocket and produced an index card;he squinted, looked up at Mandy, and nodded. “All set, miss. Coat check is onyour left.”

“Thank you,” she smiled sweetly, taking Elias’ hand anddrawing him inside.

A woman wearing black took their coats and handed themeach a small booklet. Before Elias could even glance at the cover, they turned anothercorner and came face-to-face with a panel of text on a gallery wall.

JAMES FRASER: ART WITHOUT LIMIT, 1920-1975 – A RETROSPECTIVE

Elias could see several dozen people milling around in atleast six adjacent galleries, sipping champagne, studying the walls intently.

“Who’s James Fraser?” he whispered.

Mandy looped her arm through his. “Someone I’ve admiredmy whole life. You’ll see why. Don’t bother reading the labels – I’ll be yourtour guide.”

And she was.

The first gallery displayed small pastels and watercolorsof New York City street scenes in the 1920s – old cars rumbling down widestreets, women in elegant dresses pushing old-fashioned baby carriages onsidewalks, children playing tag on a gorgeous summer day in Prospect Park, ruddy-facedmen toasting their joy in cavernous long-gone beer halls.

These were interspersed with photographs. A combinationof society portraits and even more street scenes.

“Is that the Flatiron Building?”

“It is. Can you believe that it wasn’t yet twenty years oldwhen this photograph was taken? Even then it was still so controversial.”

Elias tilted his head at a series of three of formal,posed paintings of different women. “Who were they?”

“Wives of wealthy businessmen and lawyers.” Mandy noddeda thank-you to the woman who offered a tray of snacks. “He made a good livingas a portraitist. Back in the day, that was a way for men to show how muchmoney they had – by paying an artist to paint their wives. Even after photographybecame popular – they still insisted on it.”

Elias chewed thoughtfully. “I’d think it still is a wayfor men to show how much money they have. Someone I went to school with – I rememberthere was a painting of his mother in the house. I never quite understood it.”

Mandy led them to the next room – and Elias’ jaw justabout dropped.

It was another portrait – but so radically different fromwhat he had just seen.

A beautiful woman – her curly brown hair rioting aroundher ethereal face – wearing a dress that could only be described as anincredible shade of electric blue. Surrounded by sumptuous plants andblue-and-white Chinese porcelain. Strongly, confidently facing the viewer – a hintof mischief evident on her perfect lips.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Mandy squeezed his hand. “Thiswas the first work that truly got him noticed.”

“I should think so,” Elias breathed. “She’s – she’s so alive. So much more alive and presentthan in what we saw in the other room.”

“The artistry is without comparison,” Mandy agreed. “But thescandal that surrounded the painting made it even more notorious.”

“Scandal? What scandal? It’s a modest dress.”

She shook her head. “This portrait was commissioned byFrank Randall, on the occasion of his wife Claire’s thirtieth birthday, in thefall of 1925.”

“Frank Randall? As in Randall Steel? That Randall?”

“The same,” she grinned. “Anyway – Claire Randall wasvery famous in New York society at the time for throwing very grand parties attheir townhouse on East Sixty-Eighth Street. Somehow James Fraser got aninvitation to one of their parties – and once Frank learned he was an artist,he commissioned him to paint Claire.”

“I don’t see what’s so scandalous about that.”

Mandy smirked above her flute of champagne. “Well – you canimagine that Claire got to know the artist quite well as he painted herportrait. So well that when the painting was delivered to the Randalltownhouse, she told Frank she was leaving him, packed her bags, and moved inwith Jamie.”

“Oh my God!” Elias exclaimed. “Did she take the portraitwith her?”

“Of course! It hung in Jamie’s studio on East TwelfthStreet for many years.”

“And did they stay together?”

Mandy set down her empty flute on a passing waiter’s tray,and took Elias’ half-empty flute. “See for yourself.”

The next gallery was full of Claire Randall. Oilpaintings of her draped in a Japanese kimono. Pastel drawings of her reclining nudein bed, surrounded by rumpled sheets. Striking, black-and-white photographs ofher hands forming different shapes, and the curve of her spine, and the back ofher neck.

“She was his muse,” Elias murmured.

Mandy nodded. “My favorite is right over there.”

It was a small photograph – just about as big as aletter-sized sheet of paper. At the bottom right of the frame was a reflectionof the old-style camera; at the middle of the frame was Claire caught mid-laugh;and peeking over her shoulder was a man – hair parted down one side, eyescreasing with laughter.

“It’s called Joy;he took the photograph on their wedding day,” Mandy whispered. “In a publicbathroom at City Hall. Probably ten minutes after they exchanged vows.”

Elias swallowed, his heart soaring at the explosion oflove and adoration captured so simply and elegantly in the photograph.

“I’m surprised Randall gave her a divorce.”

“Apparently she threatened to go to the papers with proofof all his affairs. My understanding is that it was settled quite quickly.”

He wanted to know more – so very much more – but sheushered him into the next gallery.

Here the artist’s style had clearly matured; thecityscapes were bolder in outline, brighter in their use of color.

“He immigrated from Scotland as a very young man. But NewYork City has always been his home. His art documents what it’s like to livehere.”

It did – subways, and buses, and even photographs ofairplanes landing at Kennedy or LaGuardia. Interspersed with photographs ofClaire as she got older – still smiling, now in color – in what appeared to bethe same East Twelfth Street studio.

Before he knew it, they were in the last gallery. Whichheld a single artwork – another painting of Claire, posed almost identically asshe had been in the scandalous portrait. Surrounded by ferns, and Chineseporcelain; wearing another electric blue dress. Her face had more wrinkles, andher hair was gray – but she was still so vibrantly alive.

Mandy withdrew her arm, but he didn’t realize she hadcompletely left his side until an unfamiliar voice spoke beside him.

“Personally I prefer this one to the older one.”

“I’d have to agree,” Elias remarked, turning to his newneighbor. “In fact – ”

He froze.

“It’s you,” he croaked.

Claire Fraser – hair still curly after all these years,wearing a bright green dress and gorgeous silver jewelry – smiled.

“It’s me,” she agreed. “Jamie painted this one to commemoratemy eightieth birthday last October – and, of course, the fiftieth anniversarysince the first one.”

“Oh my God,” Elias breathed. “I – you – um, you are verybeautiful.”

Then Mandy appeared, and slung an arm around Claire’sside. “Are you flirting with my grandma?”

“Grandma?”

“Come on, Mandy – you’ll make the poor man suffer a heartattack right here. I thought you told me you liked him.”

Stupidly Elias stuck out one hand. “I’m Elias Pound.”

Claire laughed. “Yes, I know. Mandy’s told us all aboutyou. You study engineering together, right?”

“Always had a head for numbers, that one.” An older manappeared beside Claire, and kissed her cheek. “Just like our daughter – her Mam.God knows where she got that from.”

Claire nodded at Elias. “Jamie, this is Elias.”

Elias gulped. “H-hi,” he stammered.

“Ach, no need to be shy, lad! I dinna bite.” Jamie Fraserheartily clapped Elias’ shoulder. “So – do ye like the paintings?”

“Be honest,” Mandy teased.

Elias cleared his throat. “I – um – yes. I’m stillgetting to know New York, and it’s so interesting to see how your workdocuments how the city has changed.”

Jamie looked over at his granddaughter, one still-redeyebrow raised. “Very astute observation. Good that he appreciates things thataren’t numbers.”

Mandy groaned. “Be nice, Grand-da. We go to museums allthe time – we get in for free with our student IDs.”

Elias cleared his throat. “Also, sir, your work is one ofthe most honest and pure representations of love that I’ve ever seen. I – I can’tquite describe it, but I can just feelit pouring out of the frame. It makes my heart race. And that’s something thathasn’t changed – am I right?”

Jamie and Claire and Mandy – she had Jamie’s eyes, herealized – looked at him, eyes wide. Quietly Mandy stepped forward to take hishand, squeezing it. So proud.

“Thank you,” Jamie whispered, drawing Claire to his side.“You understand. She’s everything.”

“Yes,” Elias agreed, looking at Mandy. “She is.”

#;mod gotham #this is the best way i can think of to tell the rest of artist!jamie and claire's story #all of the artist aus

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frederator-studios · 6 years

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Tiya Zhong: The Frederator Interview

vimeo

Tiya Zhong, known to the interweb as Addictiya, is an animator, illustrator, designer and doll artist still brushing off glitter from her graduation just a few weeks ago. Her final film as a student of Sheridan College’s Animation program, “Lost, Stolen, Dropped,” is an autobiography of her daily struggle. It is also among the most relatable, inspired and squishy 2 minutes of animation I’ve seen in a good long while. Enjoy the short above, then read on for Tiya’s journey from schoolgirl doodling in her textbooks to professional artist!

Did you always want to be an animator or artist?

I discovered my passion for drawing when I was 4 years old, and I have always loved doodling figures on my textbooks, reading comics, and watching animation. When I was little, I never thought about becoming an artist - I just thought it would be fun if I could draw forever. In high school, I wanted to be a comic artist, but I became fascinated with making characters come to life. Animation was even more vivid than comics, which is why I chose to major in it.

How did you decide to move from China to Canada to attend Sheridan?

I grew up in China, so at first I planned to attend a university in Beijing that features the best animation program in China. In an extra-curricular art school where I was studying to pass the university’s entrance exam, I met a substitute teacher who'd studied abroad. Talking with him made me realize how many opportunities and great artists are out there. That’s when I started to research animation schools in North America, and got to know Sheridan.

What did you like best about studying at Sheridan?

I learned a lot at Sheridan. The school has great, experienced teachers. But I learned the most from my peers, who are all amazing artists. Being in that group gave me no choice but to improve. What I enjoyed most is how free the environment is, compared to the one I’d been in. I also had a lot more resources at my disposal. Being at Sheridan really helped me discover my own art style.

Did you work any jobs during your time in college?

Since high school, I have always worked on stuff for conventions: things like zines, charms, and commissions. During college I actively kept my eyes on the industry and started to take freelance jobs. I’ve done character illustrations for games, art for a published illustration tutorial, design work, and more commissions, mostly with Chinese companies. I think it’s really important for artists to have at least some experience working with partners or employers before finishing school.

What are your favorite techniques, considering you've worked in both 2d and stop-motion? And those are just the two I know for sure!

Yes, I’ve done a little bit of 3D for assignments, but so far I’ve only worked in 2D and stop motion. I love both techniques equally! They are two different forms of art and each has stunning aspects. I love how free 2D can be, and how much you can play with crazy distortions, squash and stretch. I also love the process of crafting puppets and sets and being able to hold them in my hand.

What inspires you and your work the most?

Japanese anime definitely influences my work. They are my childhood and what made me keep the pencil in my hand! In the process of creating, I also look for references in many forms: live action movies, fashion, short films, photography. Anything related to art.

Is there anything that comes up in your work over and over?

I built my interest in life drawing while studying at Sheridan. Now, emphasizing the beauty and curls of human bodies has become a core part of my drawings.

How was the experience of creating "Quarters" in a team of 9 animators?

Creating “Quarters” with 8 other amazing artists was a really great experience! It was our first try, but there were no conflicts and everything went smoothly. Everyone pitched an idea for the film and we voted for the ‘four neighbors’ idea, which became “Quarters”. I worked on layout designs, prop and sets fabrication, shooting area setups, animation, and some post-production color corrections. We spread the work pretty much equally to everyone, so that we could all gain experience in every stage of creating a stop motion film.

vimeo

What inspired you to create "Lost, Stolen, Dropped"?

I had two other ideas for my final film before “Lost, Stolen, Dropped,” but they didn’t feel authentic to me. Personally, I prefer telling stories on subjects that I’m knowledgeable about, or have experienced myself. So one month into my 4th year, I gave up my first idea and all the storyboards I’d done for it. I thought, “What subject am I really familiar with? Is there anything that I know better than anyone else?” At the same time, I lost my brand new Cintiq pro pen. Not long before then I had lost my wallet. Aaaand my portable hard drive. My roommate commented that losing things is my everyday life. That’s what inspired me - I am really good at losing things! So I decided to make a film about that.

Love it. Do you often pull from your own life in your stories?

Actually, I can trace it back all the way to primary school! I used to draw comics as my diaries. With four panels comics, I’d record anything that happened in my life that I found fun. By the end of grade 7, I had a whole sketchbook of my personal life. I only showed it to my closest friends.

What were the biggest changes you made to "Lost, Stolen, Dropped" while working on the film? What were the biggest challenges?

I made a big change in the story. At the end of the first version, I made lots of copies of the main character, which came from all the different scenarios or timelines. They all appeared in her messy room, staring at her and guiding her to find her phone. That ending had a very dark and absurd feeling to it. The problem was, in order to explain that story and deliver the right feeling, the film would need to be a lot longer. And so, too much work for me. In the end, I changed lots of things and compressed the storyboard so I could finish it.

What do you plan to do now that you've graduated? Sorry to ask that question, I know it's the worst for new grads, haha.

Haha, I was so lost on this before, but now I kind of have a blueprint! The very first thing I want to do is find a job that I like, start saving, and get my PR (permanent residency) here in Canada, which is very realistic. I'll use my savings to go to grad school or take online classes: anything to improve my skills and broaden my perspective. Eventually, I want to work on personal projects without having to worry about financial issues.

Do you have a favorite cartoon, film, or artist?

Different films have been my favorite at different times in my life... I just love work that has great stories or strong emotions. I can’t really pick one film as my favorite, but Masaaki Yuasa is definitely one of my favorite directors! What I admire most about his films is how the abstract parts serve the expressive storytelling, and the drawings are always loose. That’s what I need to learn!

What's your biggest dream?

My biggest dream used to be becoming a zoologist! That was when I was 8. Now, my dream is to connect with great artists and studios over the world. To learn from them, work on fun projects, live a happy, healthy life, and occasionally go on vacations so that I can work on my other hobbies!

What are your hobbies outside of animation?

I’m interested in a wide range of things! Biking, gym exercise, photography, choreography, sculpting, sewing, leathercraft. But my greatest interest, outside of animation, is dolls and puppets! I love all kinds of dolls and toys. Different doll artists always make dolls with different characteristics, and that self-expression element is what appeals to me. I want to be able to create my own porcelain or resin doll one day. I am working hard toward that goal! ❀

Follow Addictiya on Instagram

Thank you for the interview Tiya! Love your work and am so looking forward to seeing what you do next. Enjoy home and your summer vacation pre-Adulting, you’ve earned the heck out of it!

- Cooper ❀

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queenwinwinie · 6 years

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Russian Roulette (NCT Fanfic) mafia/spy AU!

Chapter 1 - Personality Crisis

Akina sat up straight in the uncomfortable, red leather chair examining the large room quietly. The table she was sat on was crowded with rich old men throwing away their money like trash on some complicated game, while young women in slinky expensive dresses hung off them left, right and center. She sneered quietly in disgust at the sight. Whilst trying not to get too involved and distracted by the game, she slipped out the crumpled piece of paper out of her designer purse that the office lent her, to look at the details of the man she was searching for. Akina quickly examined the paper under the table trying not to look too suspicious and tucked it away rapidly. It said: Male, name unknown, age about 18-25, South Korean, scar under his right eye and his height was around 174cm. Looks as though no-one knows much about him. The report also included a small, blurry picture of what is suspected to be him however it doesn’t seem very helpful. The smell of perfume was overwhelming and beginning to give her a headache, also the amount of noise and bright lights made it worse, so she slipped away from the heavily occupied table to the bar and requested a sake. Once it arrived she swigged it quickly with a paracetamol and continued to scan the room in detail but it was too cramped to see anything just standing still, so she began to move and observe in detail for the mysterious mafia man.

All around the room all Akina could see was old, sweaty men sitting and swearing at each other and women huddled close to them. The women all looked so gorgeous, it was such a shame to see them wasting their potential on filthy men like them. She was starting to feel sticky and wet from the humid casino room and jam-packed people but she continued to work unsuspiciously. After about an hour of walking around endlessly in hope of the man miraculously appearing in front of her, Akina decided she had to have some sort of technique or way of singling him out. The vast majority of men in the room were over 30 so Akina had to pick out younger suspects, secondly he was Korean and a lot of the men are Westerners visiting to play in Macau. And finally he had a scar under his eye, this should make it easier for her. She was starting to find it easier as she picked out individual people who could be possible suspects, however they were not of any asian ethnicity or had a scar under their eye. “How hard can this be?” Akina complained to herself exasperated, “he has to be here somewhere.” She slouched heavily into another red leather chair, tired and hot and decided to just watch a game of poker. Akina sat up in her seat remembering her role and watched the game eagerly, she didn’t think that it would be as interesting as it was, “now I understand how people become addicted,” Akina said openly and a couple of women nodded in agreement. She moved over to get a different perspective of the game and saw that the man she was leaned over had winning cards, no-one else had a chance. He slammed his remaining cards on the table and proclaimed the mens chips. A roar of angry men burst out at the scene and all the women raced to congratulate the winner. Akina stood back as the women pounced in front of her, all she could see was a large pile of money stacked on a thin metal tray being passed to the man by the card dealer and everyone's eyes light in amazement or jealousy. The winner snatched the money greedily off the table and shoved it into the hands of a broad dark haired man next to him. The man bowed to him and walked in the direction of the exit with the pile of cash. The man who won stood abruptly and calmly turned away from the attached women and angry, shouting elders.

Akina caught a glimpse of the man, he had pale, clear, soft skin and dark red hair which lied messily on a side part on top of his head. His ears were covered in many types of earings which made him look trendy and fashionable, he was very young compared to the men he was playing against and had 2 scratches on his left eyebrow. His dark eyes pierced right through Akina as their eyes connected and it felt like time had frozen. She stood still for a moment as she took in his beauty but she had began to realize something as she snapped back to reality… he was Asian. Akina blinked, this man was the only one in this room who was young and Asian, this fitted her description quite quickly. Except she only had one more criteria for him to fit her description; a scar under his right eye. Instead of rushing up to him admiringly like the other women (as that would probably chase him off) she decided to give him a kind smile from across the room. She smiled cheerfully but making sure not to make it look too forced and he looked confused for a moment… then smiled/smirked slightly back.

Although he was extremely handsome, she reminded herself what she was here for. He was bad news and now was her chance to finally trap him. He strolled over to Akina while pushing past anyone who got in his way. His presence was strong and Akina could feel his power as he distanced closer to her. The atmosphere felt tense for a strong second as his broad yet frail figure stood in front of her, she met his eye and although he was scary and fearful, she blinked and smiled innocently like a child at him. He arched his eyebrow slightly at her but she ignored it and scanned over his perfectly proportional face. There it was; the scar under his eye. After leading Akina to the busy bar he turned to her, his face stern and serious, “So what brings you here?” He asked studying Akina’s expression. “My father brought me here, I’m not usually a fan of this kind of thing,” she falsely confessed. The man looked around the room briefly, “where is he then?” he questioned unconvinced. “He’s a busy man,” she lied, “he dropped me off and left to do some business with his organization.” Akina’s face stiffened as the man glared at her sharply. “I forgot to ask what your name is…” stuttered Akina while awkwardly shaking her glass looking down. “TY” He replied stubbornly.

‘Mission success!’ Akina thought to herself, although it probably wasn't his real name at least she managed to squeeze something out of him. She remained her expression blank as they continued the boring conversation. He fiddled with her purse as though he was inspecting it, “So what do you work as?” He asked uninterested. “I don’t work, my father is a mob boss for a Japanese organisation so I don’t get much freedom. I’m actually here attempting to find a suitable husband for me.” TY widened his eyes in disbelief and gasped in shock, “what mafia may I ask?” geez this boy has so many questions, she thought “Redflag, I hope my dad doesn’t get angry about me telling you haha…” Akina laughed bitterly. “Oh?” said TY sarcastically. Could he tell this was all fake and set up? Akina queeried herself, she thought it was going okay to be honest. TY turned back to bar, sipping on some sort of expensive whiskey. Akina looked around the room anxiously and couldn’t help but notice the many men in black suits surrounding the area TY and herself where in. “If you’ll excuse myself I’m just heading to the restroom,” she said nervously, she couldn’t handle the tense atmosphere in the room. TY just nodded without facing her as she quickly moved away from the bar into the sleek, clean restrooms. She sat there for a moment to calm herself down then quickly whipped out her mobile phone from her purse and contacted the office. “Hello, yes this is Akina… I have an update. I have found the suspected man and he confirmed to me that his name was TY, yes, nothing else. I told him I was a mafia daughter however I’m not sure he believed me. I will contact you if I have any other details or concerns. Thank you, bye.” After quickly turning off her phone again, she slipped it back into her purse and cleansed her hands, then silently left.

The conversation got boring and sadly ended and there was an awkward silence that followed between the two. “I guess it’s time for me to leave,” Akina checked her wrist to see that it was 11:46pm. “Yeh okay.” replied TY unbothered. Akina turned away humiliated at his disinterest and headed towards the elevator in order to leave. Grasping her purse in her hand she entered the lift to see another Asian man already in there. He had golden, honey like skin and dark brown hair. He was taller and much broader and muscular than TY and had a black suit on. Once stepping inside the elevator Akina realised that this was the man TY had given the money to after he won poker. She made an awkward eye contact with him and gave a small smile to him after she clicked the button to go to the bottom floor. She was so thankful she was leaving. A stiff silence filled the small room and it felt so tense, Akina could feel the dark haired man's eyes on her as she faced the elevator doors eagerly to escape. The whole time, the man kept his eyes on her porcelain figure as she stood motionless in front of the metal doors. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the ding of the doors echoed in the small elevator and the doors creaked open slowly. Without hesitating Akina quickly left the awkward lift and marched rapidly to the main reception in order to leave this mysterious casino.

She didn’t think much about it at the time, however there was something weird about this place. The luxurious casino was located in Macau, China, but there were so many foreigners - people from America, India, Europe and Russia. However very few Asian/Chinese people themselves. It was strange however she didn’t focus about it too much as it was a iconic place where people worldwide came to play. She hastily left the rich, modern building and turned left into a narrow alleyway to make a short phone call with updates about the suspect. Before she even took her mobile out of her purse, she heard a crunching sound from nearby. Akina lifted her head up and quickly examined the area to make sure no-one was there or listening to her conversation. After looking she took out her phone and dialled the office’s number. “Hello this is Akina speaking… yes I have an update… TY has dark red hair, 2 scratches on his right eyebrow-” Before she could finish, a strong hand grasped her wrist harshly, “ow!” she shouted aggressively as her phone slipped out of her hand. Looking down she saw a large foot slam down against the phone and she could here the cracking of the glass. She gasped in horror and tried to escape the heavy grip that ached her wrist but struggled due to the overwhelming strength of the person that held her down. Akina looked up angrily and started to scream, “who the fuck are you? What are you doing?” then stopped when she saw who it was… The dark haired man on the lift who was staring at her, also the man TY handed his money to. “I see how it is,” he stated bluntly, “you’re no mob daughter… You’re just some stupid detective trying to get our mafia into trouble.” The broad man laughed cold and bitterly as you stared frozen into his eyes. Damn, I’ve been found out, she thought to herself.

Another bitter silence consumed the narrow alleyway as the man pinned Akina back harshly. “Stop! You’re hurting me!” She shrieked at the man, however he clasped a hand over her mouth, only using his other to effortlessly press her against the wall. It’s no use… she thought to herself, I’m totally screwed. A minute later, a few other dark silhouettes dawned closer to her and the man. “You got her?” said a recognisable voice, but Akina couldn’t see who it was. As the figure drew closer to the dim orange light she could see very clearly who it was… TY. Shit, she gasped shocked. TY smirked evilly at her innocent, horrified face as the man took his hand off her mouth, still pinning her to the cold brick wall. The other 2 men behind TY edged closer too, so that a small circle formed around Akina, she faced down but quickly TY grabbed her jaw with his index finger and lifted her face back up again. “I’m not stupid,” he stated irrelevantly, “all these spies trying to get us locked up. Do you even know what we’re doing?” He looked Akina dead in the eye as he said this. “No,” she admitted truthfully, “but by the looks of this report, I’m not sure it’s for a good purpose…” TY let out a brief unsatisfied chuckle, then quickly flung his hand to meet Akina’s cheek. A loud slap echoed through the dead alley and Akina let out a small cry of pain.One of the men who was stood next to TY snatched Akina’s purse off her and quickly searched inside. “Hey! What do you think you’re doi-” Again she was cut off with another sharp slap to her face. “If you speak, I’ll hit you again.” TY remarked. The man who snatched Akina’s purse tipped it upside down so all the contents would fall out but alongside all of the papers and reports she was carrying, a small device came out too. She stared confused at the item and TY noticed where her eyes were facing, “I put that there in case you wondering, you’re so uneducated for being a spy. If a man you think is a suspect is touching your bag, surely you would tell him to stop or confront him about it.” Akina stopped for a moment and tried to think… ‘That’s right, he was fiddling with my purse earlier. Shit… That’s how he heard everything - it was a microphone’ she discovered. The group of men laughed at her stupidness and read through each piece of paper. She was still pinned to the wall as the men quietly discussed something. “Seems as though you know too much now,” said one of the men, “we can’t let you run away since you know us.” Akina gulped at the man’s words. “Well,” huffed TY, “Guess we’ll either have to kill you… or come with us.” The broad man who was holding her slowly took a metal item out of his pocket and pointed it directly at Akina’s temple. It was a gun. ‘They weren’t kidding about murdering me’ she cried to herself. The metal felt cold against Akina’s skin and she quivered in fear.

“So…” muttered the leader as he came closer to Akina’s face, “what do you pick: death or to help us.” The bold statement made her scared and she wanted to fight back, she’d never help those criminals. But it was either that, or death. Akina sighed and stammered sadly, “I’ll join you but please, just don’t kill me.” The dark haired man lowered the gun from her temple and placed it to his side. All four of the men turned to each other and shrugged. “Fine then,” replied TY eventually. He and the 2 men turned away and starting walking to the main street out the alleyway. Akina took a breath of relief and fell to her knees against the wall. She forgot the man with the gun was still stood next to her and his dark shadow leaned over her. He quickly put a cloth filled with disgusting smelling chemicals and held it over her nose and mouth, Akina struggled and tried to break free from his embrace but failed as the strong scent made her dizzy, weak and restless. Suddenly her eyes drifted shut and everything was black, she couldn’t remember a thing. The man dragged Akina’s unconscious body over his shoulder into a black audi alongside TY and the 2 other men and they set off to an unknown location in the dark misty night…

#kpop fanfiction #kpop imagines #kpop roleplay #kpop #kpop reactions #nct fanfic #nct imagines #nct 2018 #nct taeyong #lee taeyong #fanfic #writeblr #writing #writers #art #aesthetic #love you guys #like4like

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vaellv · 6 years

Link

Find the list here to understand what i’m rambling about

Everything looks so complex but honestly it's just because the fashion dialect loves obscur terms. Anyway I made some inspiration moodboards and I will explain briefly each theme of the challenge, if you have a few minutes to read them! (only in english because i’m tired sorry ;-;)

1. I pay a tribute to the traditional and modern Chinese style of fashion when in

2. I explore the impact of Chinese aesthetics (art, pattern, porcelaine, calligraphy, movies, architecture etc etc.) on Western fashion.

3. well you know, cubism. Geometrical stuffs, Indeterminate forms, collage, that dude Picasso

4. think of a fashionable Android, high tech stuff, Metahuman, cyberfashion and new materials

5. I stick to the theme a bit more, it's like, what if I can embroider leds on a dress (think of claire danes sparkly dress at the gala in 2016) or making lace with carbon fiber, 3D print mesh clothes idk idk

6.I'll take this one very literally, because the exhibition was about “diverse clothes, mostly non-European, folded and draped on the human body rather than cut and seamed”

(This is a tribute to McQueen but you don't have to do outfits “a la McQueen” since the real subject is “Savage Beauty”. Find some inspiration here, the other galleries explored the romantic mind, the romantic nationalism, and romantic exoticism in Mcqueen works.)

7. so yeah Victorian Gothic, let's go for the inhumane and curious and also strange and ethereal)

8.(not a big fan of the term primitivism but I didn't create the names in the exhibit.... Think of wild stuffs, prehistoric fashion rebellious and raw, bestial, royal and noble, the untamed state of nature that kind of aesthetic)

9.(this one is a bit tricky since in the exhibition it's was about natural inspiration meet technology, so idk, my take is strange alien fashion, high tech organic, extraterrestrial stuff, untouched by the man, glorious and scary )

10. Poiret: art nouveau to art déco, no more corsets, a lot of draped fabric, new forms of clothing and also Orientalism sorry

11. the fashion's take on the costume, equipment and/or superpowers of superheroes and superheroines. Mine for day 11 is“Batman but make it fashion.”

12. The Mutant Body was one topic of the exhibition, it may be a bit redundant with some other theme of this month, maybe the other ones will inspire you (link)

13. hmm, well, the spirit of Mme. Merteuil possess a richly crafted baroque rococo chair and

14. A lot of white and beige and folded and draped fabric and translucide mousselines, some neoclassical art, influenced by colorless marble sculptures

15. Now it's your time to draw the actual reincarnation of an important Greek goddess (with more color than white and beige) with a focus on the symbolic objects associated with the deity (you can guess that I chose Hera)

16. A nice transition with the previous theme, it's a tribute to the exuberant brand, the vivid colors and patterns that is its signature

(Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between. this theme looks complicated but it is not. I think? It's just...abstract themes lmao, pick two contradictory notions like she did (link), and “breaks down the imaginary walls between these dualisms, exposing their artificiality and arbitrariness“. Be free.

17.I choose then/now because it's can be a journey between "old self" and "new self". The impermanent state of the self. birth, live, and death that kind of thing.

18. For Self/other it can be an introspection/outrospection, cultural differences, being stuck between tradition and modern world, if this help to understand.

19. I don't know yet for clothes/not clothes. Don't ask me. Don't forget to be exuberant! It's fashion but it must be MoMA worthy

20. This one is easy I guess. The irony of a democratic, do it yourself and anti-establishment way of life seeing through the fashion industry

21.Glam and sparkles and diamonds, an hommage to the icons of the 40's-50's Hollywood, fur, feathers and velvet dress, beautiful women and handsome men! and vice versa

22. retro Hollywood x retro Bollywood, Hollywood glamor and Indian elegance in a shiny shimmering opulent rendezvous

23. melancholic red flower on a black background, very severe, very spanish but nostalgic, somewhere between the og Cristobal Balenciaga and the actual ugly shoes Balenciaga

(Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination i know this is the theme that everyone's waiting! Or not. You don't need help to understand these concept thank to the heavily presence of Christianity everywhere but anyway)

24. The Mom of Jesus and other blessed women

25. Fashion inspired by colorful glass and gothic architecture

26. Fashion inspired by religious objects also mosaics

27. a break ! Bakst and Diaghilev influences, Theatrical and exuberant dance costumes, art nouveau to art déco and also Orientalism but this time with a more, Russian and Balkan influence in the design and patterns

28. Angels and demons (a classic dualism you can also do just one of them)

29. A bit of a catch-all term, can focus on the very pious people or their struggle with the lost of faith and all the temptation in this lost world *hellfire by Frollo starts playing*

30. a chill and irreverent member of the clergy, who likes opulence. It’s like Jude Law in that show, the young pope (i didn’t watch it but he looks cool)

31. It's almost over! The art of Fashion illustration, engraving and photography, reinvent the ancient French fashion reviews, channel the spirit of Poiret, Erté, Gruau, Brissaud and more, it’s a stylistic exercise so you can take one of your previous creation and do it in the style of a fashion illustrator.

#Inktober #Inktober 2018 #inktobermetgala #vaellV #VaëllV #a very long post!#a lot of links!#but if you don't want to read it's ok you can just look the moodboards ;-;

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greegorygrimlee · 3 years

Text

A Little Journey

By RAY BRADBURY

There were two important things—one, that she was very old; two, that Mr. Thirkell was taking her to God. For hadn't he patted her hand and said: "Mrs. Bellowes, we'll take off into space in my rocket, and go to find Him together."

And that was how it was going to be. Oh, this wasn't like any other group Mrs. Bellowes had ever joined. In her fervor to light a path for her delicate, tottering feet, she had struck matches down dark alleys, and found her way to Hindu mystics who floated their flickering, starry eyelashes over crystal balls. She had walked on the meadow paths with ascetic Indian philosophers imported by daughters-in-spirit of Madame Blavatsky. She had made pilgrimages to California's stucco jungles to hunt the astrological seer in his natural habitat. She had even consented to signing away the rights to one of her homes in order to be taken into the shouting order of a temple of amazing evangelists who had promised her golden smoke, crystal fire, and the great soft hand of God coming to bear her home.

None of these people had ever shaken Mrs. Bellowes' faith, even when she saw them sirened away in a black wagon in the night, or discovered their pictures, bleak and unromantic, in the morning tabloids. The world had roughed them up and locked them away because they knew too much, that was all.

And then, two weeks ago, she had seen Mr. Thirkell's advertisement in New York City:

COME TO MARS!

Stay at the Thirkell Restorium for one week. And then, on into space on the greatest adventure life can offer!

Send for Free Pamphlet: "Nearer My God To Thee."

Excursion rates. Round trip slightly lower.

"Round trip," Mrs. Bellowes had thought. "But who would come back after seeing Him?"

And so she had bought a ticket and flown off to Mars and spent seven mild days at Mr. Thirkell's Restorium, the building with the sign on it which flashed: THIRKELL'S ROCKET TO HEAVEN! She had spent the week bathing in limpid waters and erasing the care from her tiny bones, and now she was fidgeting, ready to be loaded into Mr. Thirkell's own special private rocket, like a bullet, to be fired on out into space beyond Jupiter and Saturn and Pluto. And thus—who could deny it?—you would be getting nearer and nearer to the Lord. How wonderful! Couldn't you just feel Him drawing near? Couldn't you just sense His breath, His scrutiny, His Presence?

"Here I am," said Mrs. Bellowes, "an ancient rickety elevator, ready to go up the shaft. God need only press the button."

Now, on the seventh day, as she minced up the steps of the Restorium, a number of small doubts assailed her.

"For one thing," she said aloud to no one, "it isn't quite the land of milk and honey here on Mars that they said it would be. My room is like a cell, the swimming pool is really quite inadequate, and, besides, how many widows who look like mushrooms or skeletons want to swim? And, finally, the whole Restorium smells of boiled cabbage and tennis shoes!"

She opened the front door and let it slam, somewhat irritably.

She was amazed at the other women in the auditorium. It was like wandering in a carnival mirror-maze, coming again and again upon yourself—the same floury face, the same chicken hands, and jingling bracelets. One after another of the images of herself floated before her. She put out her hand, but it wasn't a mirror; it was another lady shaking her fingers and saying:

"We're waiting for Mr. Thirkell. Sh!"

"Ah," whispered everyone.

The velvet curtains parted.

Mr. Thirkell appeared, fantastically serene, his Egyptian eyes upon everyone. But there was something, nevertheless, in his appearance which made one expect him to call "Hi!" while fuzzy dogs jumped over his legs, through his hooped arms, and over his back. Then, dogs and all, he should dance with a dazzling piano-keyboard smile off into the wings.

Mrs. Bellowes, with a secret part of her mind which she constantly had to grip tightly, expected to hear a cheap Chinese gong sound when Mr. Thirkell entered. His large liquid dark eyes were so improbable that one of the old ladies had facetiously claimed she saw a mosquito cloud hovering over them as they did around summer rain-barrels. And Mrs. Bellowes sometimes caught the scent of the theatrical mothball and the smell of calliope steam on his sharply pressed suit.

But with the same savage rationalization that had greeted all other disappointments in her rickety life, she bit at the suspicion and whispered, "This time it's real. This time it'll work. Haven't we got a rocket?"

Mr. Thirkell bowed. He smiled a sudden Comedy Mask smile. The old ladies looked in at his epiglottis and sensed chaos there.

Before he even began to speak, Mrs. Bellowes saw him picking up each of his words, oiling it, making sure it ran smooth on its rails. Her heart squeezed in like a tiny fist, and she gritted her porcelain teeth.

"Friends," said Mr. Thirkell, and you could hear the frost snap in the hearts of the entire assemblage.

"No!" said Mrs. Bellowes ahead of time. She could hear the bad news rushing at her, and herself tied to the track while the immense black wheels threatened and the whistle screamed, helpless.

"There will be a slight delay," said Mr. Thirkell.

In the next instant, Mr. Thirkell might have cried, or been tempted to cry, "Ladies, be seated!" in minstrel-fashion, for the ladies had come up at him from their chairs, protesting and trembling.

"Not a very long delay." Mr. Thirkell put up his hands to pat the air.

"How long?"

"Only a week."

"A week!"

"Yes. You can stay here at the Restorium for seven more days, can't you? A little delay won't matter, will it, in the end? You've waited a lifetime. Only a few more days."

At twenty dollars a day, thought Mrs. Bellowes, coldly.

"What's the trouble?" a woman cried.

"A legal difficulty," said Mr. Thirkell.

"We've a rocket, haven't we?"

"Well, ye-ess."

"But I've been here a whole month, waiting," said one old lady. "Delays, delays!"

"That's right," said everyone.

"Ladies, ladies," murmured Mr. Thirkell, smiling serenely.

"We want to see the rocket!" It was Mrs. Bellowes forging ahead, alone, brandishing her fist like a toy hammer.

Mr. Thirkell looked into the old ladies' eyes, a missionary among albino cannibals.

"Well, now," he said.

"Yes, now!" cried Mrs. Bellowes.

"I'm afraid—" he began.

"So am I!" she said. "That's why we want to see the ship!"

"No, no, now, Mrs.—" He snapped his fingers for her name.

"Bellowes!" she cried. She was a small container, but now all the seething pressures that had been built up over long years came steaming through the delicate vents of her body. Her cheeks became incandescent. With a wail that was like a melancholy factory whistle, Mrs. Bellowes ran forward and hung to him, almost by her teeth, like a summer-maddened Spitz. She would not and never could let go, until he died, and the other women followed, jumping and yapping like a pound let loose on its trainer, the same one who had petted them and to whom they had squirmed and whined joyfully an hour before, now milling about him, creasing his sleeves and frightening the Egyptian serenity from his gaze.

"This way!" cried Mrs. Bellowes, feeling like Madame Lafarge. "Through the back! We've waited long enough to see the ship. Every day he's put us off, every day we've waited, now let's see."

"No, no, ladies!" cried Mr. Thirkell, leaping about.

They burst through the back of the stage and out a door, like a flood, bearing the poor man with them into a shed, and then out, quite suddenly, into an abandoned gymnasium.

"There it is!" said someone. "The rocket."

And then a silence fell that was terrible to entertain.

There was the rocket.

Mrs. Bellowes looked at it and her hands sagged away from Mr. Thirkell's collar.

The rocket was something like a battered copper pot. There were a thousand bulges and rents and rusty pipes and dirty vents on and in it. The ports were clouded over with dust, resembling the eyes of a blind hog.

Everyone wailed a little sighing wail.

"Is that the rocket ship Glory Be to the Highest?" cried Mrs. Bellowes, appalled.

Mr. Thirkell nodded and looked at his feet.

"For which we paid out our one thousand dollars apiece and came all the way to Mars to get on board with you and go off to find Him?" asked Mrs. Bellowes.

"Why, that isn't worth a sack of dried peas," said Mrs. Bellowes.

"It's nothing but junk!"

Junk, whispered everyone, getting hysterical.

"Don't let him get away!"

Mr. Thirkell tried to break and run, but a thousand possum traps closed on him from every side. He withered.

Everybody walked around in circles like blind mice. There was a confusion and a weeping that lasted for five minutes as they went over and touched the Rocket, the Dented Kettle, the Rusty Container for God's Children.

"Well," said Mrs. Bellowes. She stepped up into the askew doorway of the rocket and faced everyone. "It looks as if a terrible thing has been done to us," she said. "I haven't any money to go back home to Earth and I've too much pride to go to the Government and tell them a common man like this has fooled us out of our life's savings. I don't know how you feel about it, all of you, but the reason all of us came is because I'm eighty-five, and you're eighty-nine, and you're seventy-eight, and all of us are nudging on toward a hundred, and there's nothing on Earth for us, and it doesn't appear there's anything on Mars either. We all expected not to breathe much more air or crochet many more doilies or we'd never have come here. So what I have to propose is a simple thing—to take a chance."

She reached out and touched the rusted hulk of the rocket.

"This is our rocket. We paid for our trip. And we're going to take our trip!"

Everyone rustled and stood on tiptoes and opened an astonished mouth.

Mr. Thirkell began to cry. He did it quite easily and very effectively.

"We're going to get in this ship," said Mrs. Bellowes, ignoring him. "And we're going to take off to where we were going."

Mr. Thirkell stopped crying long enough to say, "But it was all a fake. I don't know anything about space. He's not out there, anyway. I lied. I don't know where He is, and I couldn't find Him if I wanted to. And you were fools to ever take my word on it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Bellowes, "we were fools. I'll go along on that. But you can't blame us, for we're old, and it was a lovely, good and fine idea, one of the loveliest ideas in the world. Oh, we didn't really fool ourselves that we could get nearer to Him physically. It was the gentle, mad dream of old people, the kind of thing you hold onto for a few minutes a day, even though you know it's not true. So, all of you who want to go, you follow me in the ship."

"But you can't go!" said Mr. Thirkell. "You haven't got a navigator. And that ship's a ruin!"

"You," said Mrs. Bellowes, "will be the navigator."

She stepped into the ship, and after a moment, the other old ladies pressed forward. Mr. Thirkell, windmilling his arms frantically, was nevertheless pressed through the port, and in a minute the door slammed shut. Mr. Thirkell was strapped into the navigator's seat, with everyone talking at once and holding him down. The special helmets were issued to be fitted over every gray or white head to supply extra oxygen in case of a leakage in the ship's hull, and at long last the hour had come and Mrs. Bellowes stood behind Mr. Thirkell and said, "We're ready, sir."

He said nothing. He pleaded with them silently, using his great, dark, wet eyes, but Mrs. Bellowes shook her head and pointed to the control.

"Takeoff," agreed Mr. Thirkell morosely, and pulled a switch.

Everybody fell. The rocket went up from the planet Mars in a great fiery glide, with the noise of an entire kitchen thrown down an elevator shaft, with a sound of pots and pans and kettles and fires boiling and stews bubbling, with a smell of burned incense and rubber and sulphur, with a color of yellow fire, and a ribbon of red stretching below them, and all the old women singing and holding to each other, and Mrs. Bellowes crawling upright in the sighing, straining, trembling ship.

"Head for space, Mr. Thirkell."

"It can't last," said Mr. Thirkell, sadly. "This ship can't last. It will—"

It did.

The rocket exploded.

Mrs. Bellowes felt herself lifted and thrown about dizzily, like a doll. She heard the great screamings and saw the flashes of bodies sailing by her in fragments of metal and powdery light.

"Help, help!" cried Mr. Thirkell, far away, on a small radio beam.

The ship disintegrated into a million parts, and the old ladies, all one hundred of them, were flung straight on ahead with the same velocity as the ship.

As for Mr. Thirkell, for some reason of trajectory, perhaps, he had been blown out the other side of the ship. Mrs. Bellowes saw him falling separate and away from them, screaming, screaming.

There goes Mr. Thirkell, thought Mrs. Bellowes.

And she knew where he was going. He was going to be burned and roasted and broiled good, but very good.

Mr. Thirkell was falling down into the Sun.

And here we are, thought Mrs. Bellowes. Here we are, going on out, and out, and out.

There was hardly a sense of motion at all, but she knew that she was traveling at fifty thousand miles an hour and would continue to travel at that speed for an eternity, until....

She saw the other women swinging all about her in their own trajectories, a few minutes of oxygen left to each of them in their helmets, and each was looking up to where they were going.

Of course, thought Mrs. Bellowes. Out into space. Out and out, and the darkness like a great church, and the stars like candles, and in spite of everything, Mr. Thirkell, the rocket, and the dishonesty, we are going toward the Lord.

And there, yes, there, as she fell on and on, coming toward her, she could almost discern the outline now, coming toward her was His mighty golden hand, reaching down to hold her and comfort her like a frightened sparrow....

"I'm Mrs. Amelia Bellowes," she said quietly, in her best company voice. "I'm from the planet Earth."

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