#In four days the last volume will be available in my country... When I finally get it I shall probably give the whole thing a reread

[just-like-playing-tag]

I wasn't that pissed with TPN S2 in the beginning and had a lot of faith in it. Then it all started going down and I just let out all the salt I was keeping when ep8 released. I then now decided that I'm going to just re-read the manga and now bought volume 9 and 10. Atleast this circus wreck was able to make me see TPN in a newer perspective from all the ranting people do. And your posts were really helpful with that and I just loved every point you made.

Let's all just join together as one and re-read the manga to relieve ourselves from this pain and enjoy the happy things in life (◡ ω ◡)

Awww thank you so much Anon this was so sweet 🥺🥺🥺

Yeah I totally agree!!! Manga is 184 chapters long, that is still a fair amount of content to enjoy. And then there's fanfictions, and then there's fanarts!!!! Edits and gifsets!!!!! And then there's me who has yet to finish their tons of unlikely AU posts!!! We may not get weekly content anymore, but I believe there still is lot of content to enjoy. There's the repeatedly teased Ayshe chapter!!!!! The novels (like the Gilda and Don novel everyone????)!!!!! I have a feeling the special exhibition chapter will be unofficially made public soon and I can't wait for everyone to see it, and to spam Ray's angelic smile everywhere like for real look forward to it that is the best smile Posuka Demizu has ever drawn and I'm not even exaggerating. Demizu's occasional Twitter sketches!! Plus I hope Shirai will eventually reveal the Lambda escape plot line in some way, I know he has it there somewhere.

What I'm saying is that as long as the series gives you happiness, there's still plenty of ways to enjoy it. Let's all have lots of fun while we're together in the fandom!!

#I really should reread the manga... I've wanted to do it for the longest time (╥﹏╥) #Can you believe I've read it only once??**I** can't believe it. #In four days the last volume will be available in my country... When I finally get it I shall probably give the whole thing a reread #But actually I'm just waiting for the novels to come out where I live (╥﹏╥) #Today I edited anime Lambda Norman character design to be Lambda Ray and I'm very satisfied with how it turned out!!!! #No I'm not back from the hiatus and I won't be for another while #But I've decided I won't come back to the normal schedule until I've finally written down all my major ideas + done editing what I want! #And most importantly: answered all of the asks because man those 28 people need some answers :') #What I'm trying to say is: I know people are upset with the anime #and the consequences it had on the fandom (like... Pushing away tons of people I guess) and that's extremely valid #But also it doesn't necessarily mean tpn is dead you know? There's still you! And me! #And a bunch of other people who loves the (manga) for what it is!!!!!! #So yeah let's just have a good time :) #I don't really know where I was going with this but Anon left me flattered ahah #I've got quite a bit of followers now and yet every time somebody says they like my posts I'm like “You like???? What????? Wow. ( ꈍᴗꈍ)” #tpn #the promised neverland #people asks me stuff #I'd say something like “let's all do a manga reread together” but also like I'm the kind of person who reads one chapter per day and- #that's it so I don't think I'm the most indicate person to reread the manga with XD

[ohkiyo]

characters: shiratorizawa team, reader, sakusa kiyoomi, and komori motoya. (quick appearance)

warnings: none, just some good ‘ol fluff.

word count: 5.1k

a/n: this is like a peace offering for not posting any content for the last two or three weeks (?), I also did not intend for this to reach over 5k+ words lol, so hopefully you won’t get bored reading this one. I also gave up editing this somewhere in the middle, so yeah that’s that hahaha. XD

anyways have fun and enjoy! :D

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    shiratorizawa navigation || stth navigation

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“We’re going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship, zooming through the sky! Little Einsteins~” both you and Goshiki bounce on your seat at the back of the bus, singing the theme song of the cartoon you two watch for fun a few days ago. “Climb aboard, get ready to explore there’s so much to find little Einsteins~”

“Aren’t they excited?” a fond smile made its way into Semi’s face as he watches the two first years belting their hearts out to a song made for children. Tendou and Yamagata joining the two, causing the overall noise inside the bus to increased in volume. Their English pronunciation was horrible, but it didn’t stop them from sharing their – talent.

Kawanishi, who was two seats away from the four was also humming along, snacking on a chocolate bar, his phone on his hand capturing it all on camera, probably for future blackmail material. While Shirabu who was seated beside him, continues to sleep, unbothered by the ruckus happening inside the bus.

“This is their first time going to Tokyo after all” Reon answered, before he tilted his head to the side when they switch to a different song, this time, it was Tendou’s famous baki baki ni ore. “Since when did Satori taught them that?”

“Probably since the moment they joined”

They were currently on their way to Tokyo for a practice match with another college volleyball team, the colleges that they use to play against in Miyagi were coincidentally busy with academics, something about an upcoming exam that they need to prepare for so they had to cancel.

Fortunately, with Shiratorizawa being a powerhouse school, Coach Saito and Washijou-sensei had connections to institutions outside of Miyagi. So they called up a friend who’s currently handling a college volleyball team and requested for a practice match.

The singing lasted for another thirty minutes before they eventually fell asleep, the bus now quiet. Washijou-sensei who was seated up front, let out a sigh of relief, thankful for the silence, something that Semi and Reon didn’t fail to notice. The two chuckled, as strict as he may be, Washijou-sensei knows when to let his players have their fun, he isn’t exactly a killjoy like some had thought. He’s actually very nice, once you get to know him of course.

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“You’re allowed to go sightseeing but please always bring a buddy with you, to prevent anyone from getting lost” his eyes landed on the older members, silently asking them to keep a close eye on their two first years. “Washijou-sensei and I will be meeting up with Coach Sasaki, so be back before 11”

Everyone nods their heads at his words before the two finally entered the elevator once it reaches your floor. The hotel you were staying at was a bit high class, you don’t know how the club’s fund covered it, but you weren’t complaining.

Each one of you had your own separate room, each guest had three food slips with, one was a free access to an eat-all-you-can food at the dining area’s buffet, while the other two were for a free breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

“So...” Tendou turned around, a grin plastered on his face as he held up the food slip the receptionist gave earlier. “Let’s go fill up our belly and enjoy Tokyo’s nightlife”

With that all nine of you piled into the elevator and press the button for the ground floor, the space a little too tight for your liking. The elevator stops at another floor, two new people entered, resulting in them moving backward to create a space for the newcomers, leaving you to press yourself to the wall.

“Sorry (Y/n)” Ushijima whispered, after accidentally stepping on your foot, he looks over his shoulder as you gave him a thumbs up. Your face now buried on his shirt, his perfume entering your nostrils.

He sure does smell nice, no wonder the girls are after him.

Luckily, for you, your struggle did not last long because finally, the elevator reaches the bottom floor. You swore you almost past out because of how cramp that space was, you feel like you were starting to develop claustrophobia because of it. For a fancy hotel, they sure have very small elevators.

Your group weaves through the other guest inside the hotel, some of them going back to their rooms; some were going the same way as you all were, while the others were going out to enjoy whatever Tokyo has to offer.

“Tokyo hotels are on another level” you whispered, following after them as they went over to where the eating utensils were placed. You carefully scanned the foods displayed, cuisines coming from different countries were all too delicious-looking, you feel like you want to have a plate of each.

“You’re drooling (Y/n)” you heard Shirabu say as he walks past you, the person that was standing behind the counter chuckled as you rub the spit that unknowingly trickled down your chin.

“Sorry”

“It’s fine” she laughs again before she suggested the lamb meat for you to taste. You haven’t tried lamb before so you accepted her offer, watching as she threw in a bunch of slices into the grill. “Well done or medium?”

“Well done please” she started tossing the meat around the steel griddle, the wonderful smell reaching your nose. It smelled so delicious, as the meat slowly turns to that familiar charred look of a well-cooked meat. Once she was done, she places it on your plate as she suggested for you to drizzle it with some of the sauce near the grills.

You moved from one area to another, filling your plate with foods before finally taking a seat on the table they occupied.

“Now we know who are the best people to bring to buffets” Yamagata mused, eyeing yours and Goshiki’s plate filled with different kinds of food, not only that, there were at least one or two more plates on the side also filled with foods.

“They’re big eaters”

Kawanishi took a piece of meat from your plate, exchanging it with a fried dumpling that he accidentally dipped in a spicy sauce. He can handle his spice, however, this particular dip was so spicy his mouth was burning from it.

“Kawanishi-san why…?” you took the glass of cold water Ushijima offered you as you drank it all. It didn’t help though, your mouth was still burning, so Semi fed you a spoonful of chocolate ice cream, the dessert finally easing the flames in your mouth.

“Sorry (Y/n)” Kawanishi bit his lip to stop the smile threatening to come out, secretly sharing a low five with Tendou from under the table. However, that didn’t go unnoticed from Semi’s watchful eyes, stepping on the red head’s foot, Semi shoots him a pointed look as Tendou tries to remove his leg.

“Ow, ow, Semi-Semi that hurts”

The setter didn’t listen to him and continued eating his meal, they all ate in silence after that. Too hungry to strike a conversation with each other, their attention focus on the food in front of them.

Dinner went by fast, once they had finished their food they went out of the hotel and walk through Tokyo. The streets are a little too crowded than the ones they’re used to in Sendai, passing by different kinds of coffee shops, restaurants, inns, and hotels. The choices were endless, it all depends on where you all plan to go.

“Let’s go there first, I want to buy some manga” Tendou pointed at a rather large book shop just across the street, customers walking in and out of the store, wrapped packages in hand.

The inside was filled with rows and rows of shelves full of books, such as novels, textbooks, and of course, manga, on the sides were a section for school supplies and other similar materials. Tendou looks like he’s in heaven because the store offers manga that wasn’t available in Sendai. The moment his foot steps inside the store, he immediately disappeared behind the shelves where the manga was displayed.

“Wasn’t this the book Yato-sensei told us to buy?” Shirabu opened the textbook, skimming through its contents.

“Its ¥2,000” Kawanishi taps the price tag of the same book he’s holding. Shirabu pinches his lips together, closing the book and putting it back to where it belonged.

“Nope, I’ll just borrow from the library”

They move to the end of the aisle to see you holding a basket filled with different kinds of stationeries, Reon and Ushijima also going through the pens and notebooks they had on display before dropping it inside the basket you were holding.

“That’s a lot of pens (Y/n)” Goshiki drops a couple packs of sticky notes in your basket before grabbing a pen and examining it. The little penguin at the top sparking his curiosity as he clicks it, the ball-point emerging from the bottom part of the object.

“My pen’s keeps on disappearing, along with my highlighters and I don’t know who’s taking them” Goshiki stayed quiet at your reply, blinking at you, once, then twice before he slowly returned it in the basket. Reon let out a quiet laugh, fully aware that it was Goshiki who keeps taking your school supplies and not returning them.

Goshiki grabs three more pens and two more highlighters, the exact number of stationeries he took then dropping it in the basket. “I’ll buy these for you (Y/n)-chan”

You smiled at him in gratitude, standing in line at the cashier. “Thank you ‘Tomu-kun”

After paying for the items, you were once again back to the cold street. Aimlessly walking towards your next destination.

“Let’s go to a karaoke bar” Yamagata suggested, zipping up his jacket as the cold had become a little too much for him. Letting out a shiver from the cold air.

“Sure” they located the nearest karaoke bar, entering the establishment. They paid for the amount required for a one-hour session, before entering an empty room. Semi, Tendou, and Yamagata going for the songbook and choosing what song they’re going to sing, while you, Goshiki, and Ushijima went through the menu instead.

“So who’s first?” Tendou’s hand shot up as Yamagata gave him the mic, pressing his song’s code as the title flash on the screen.

“You’re singing Lion King?” Semi laughs watching as Tendou dance around to the song’s opening beat.

“The song has been stuck in my head for a long time now” the redhead cleared his throat before he started singing the first verse.

“There’s a Japanese version of that song?” Kawanishi whispered in surprise, Tendou’s jolly voice and merry demeanor fitting so well with I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’s upbeat tune. It was as if the song was made for him.

10:15pm.

There were only 15 minutes left before the one hour expires, Shirabu was singing some sort of heartbreak song, while sitting on top of Kawanishi who was laying sideways munching on some chips. Totally unbothered by the weight on top of him.

The setter ends his song, a cue for everyone to start packing their stuff and go back to the hotel before Coach Saito and Washijou-sensei catches them still walking around after curfew.

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It’s been three hours since you went to bed and unfortunately not once were you able to get a wink of sleep, nightmares were plaguing your mind. Two people, you’ve never met before constantly visits you in your dreams. It was a man and a woman, you couldn’t see their face but their voices you could hear.

They sometimes try to talk to you, asking how you were doing, if you were alright, or simply saying words of encouragement whenever you were feeling down. Sometimes they were accompanied by another girl, a teenager, who looks like the 15-year-old version of your aunt.

Once again, you turned on your side, pulling your blanket a little closer, screwing your eyes shut. However, it wouldn’t work, so you sat up, and check your phone.

1:30 am.

You chewed on your bottom lip, contemplating whether or not you should bother one of your teammates. They had a game tomorrow and you don’t want to disturb their sleep, but you were getting restless, and you’re afraid that you might not be able to fall asleep at all.

Finally making up your mind, you got up from your bed, grabbing your phone, key card, before exiting your room. Walking down the hallway towards Goshiki’s room, you have a feeling he’s still awake since he likes to play games until the wee hours of the night.

Standing on his door, you knock twice, pulling at the bottom of your shirt as you look left and right. The empty hallway looking a little too creepy for your liking, you knock again and this time it finally opened, a half-asleep Goshiki greeting you.

“(Y/n)?” he rub his eyes as he opened the door wider, letting you inside. “Did you have nightmares again?”

You nodded your head. “Can I sleep with you?”

“Sure” you followed him to his bed as he took the other side and you on the other. Both of you laying under the covers facing each other. “Better now?”

“Yes, thank you” he gave you one last sleepy smile before closing his eyes. So far, Goshiki was the only one who knows of your nightmares, after he discovered you one time during your first training camp crying under a table.

He was the one who comforted you and offered to let you sleep with him, it somehow became a routine and whenever you would knock on his door, he immediately knows what’s wrong.

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The door to Goshiki’s room burst open as a group of panicked Shiratorizawa upperclassmen barge into the room. Goshiki having heard of his door nearly tearing off its hinges, sat upon his bed. “Senpai?”

Semi marches over to him, grabbing his shoulders and basically shaking him awake. “(Y/n)’s gone, she’s not in her room. We can’t find her anywhere”

“What?”

“Oh man, oh man. If the coach finds out we’re screwed” Yamagata and Tendou grips their hair in frustration, as Reon and Ushijima discuss the possibilities of your disappearance. Kawanishi and Shirabu though were the only ones calm in this situation. 

“Huh?” Goshiki’s brain still wasn’t working though as he still sat there in a daze, unaware of the growing problem his upperclassmen were having.

Kawanishi ruffles his hair as he looks around the room, shifting from one foot to another, before his eyes landed on a lump he failed to notice before that was beside the first year. He taps Shirabu on the shoulder then pointing at the said lump, who was starting to move, leaning dangerously close to the edge of the bed before falling off and landing on the floor with a thud. Bringing the blanket along with them.

“What?” they watch as you continued to snore away on the floor, the fall clearly didn’t affect you in the slightest.

Shirabu shots Goshiki a look of suspicion as the rest shakes you awake. “Why is (Y/n) sleeping with you?”

He didn’t really get any answer because Goshiki just looks at him, still half-asleep.

A scandalized gasp left Tendou’s lips as he points a shaky finger towards the spiker. “Did you and (Y/n) do something? You’re only first years, wait until you’re in college!”

“Satori, what are you talking about?”

“Tendou, I think you took this the wrong way” Ushijima’s hand landed on Tendou’s shoulder, as the redhead whips his head to the captain.

“But Wakatoshi-kun you can’t be too sure!”

“(Y/n) probably got scared and went to Tsutomu for help” Reon started pushing them all out of the room. Semi carrying you, still wrap in Goshiki’s blanket, leaving the first year still sitting on his bed. Once his door clicks shut, he fell back on his bed and went back to sleep.

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“Let’s have a good game!”

You carefully arrange the water bottles and towels on the bench as your team and the college team had their match. Diligently doing your duties as a manager.

“Hello” you look up to see your opponents’ manager standing there, giving you an easy smile, stretching out her hand for you to take. “My name is Mikana Ritsu, nice you meet you”

“(L/n) (Y/n), nice to meet you too Mikana-san” you answered, grasping her hand and giving it a firm shake.

She took a seat on the spare bench, with you taking the place beside her. “I didn’t know they had a manager, are you new?”

“Yes, I’m a first year. I started just a few months ago”

She let out a hum in response as the both of you observe the game in silence, leaving your spot once in a while to assist your respective players before sitting back down again and watching the game. From beside you, Mikana lets out a long yawn as she covers her mouth with the clipboard she’s holding.

“Are you tired Mikana-san?”

She nodded, another yawn leaving her lips. “I had to stay up very late last night for my research paper” she chuckled. “Sleep is very hard to come by when you’re in college”

You turn to look at the older girl, a question forming in your mind due to your curious nature. “Mikana-san, how is college like?”

She taps her chin for a moment, looking up at the ceiling to figure out the best answer for your question. “It’s an emotional roller coaster you know? One moment you’re smiling, then the next you’re crying your eyes out”

She turns her body to look at you. “I remember during my first year that my history teacher vowed to fail all of us because the school has enough students already”

You look at her incredulously, surprised at what she said.

“She made her exams and quizzes very difficult, and her projects were also very ridiculous” she huffs in annoyance, bad memories resurfacing. “We didn’t understand at first why she was doing it, but eventually we found out that she was having problems with her dissertation and she’s taking out all her frustrations on us”

You stared at her wide-eyed, your mouth open agape. The fuck? “We all passed though, so suck for her”

“That was just mean”

“I know right?” she lets out a sigh, before standing up from her seat and re-wrapping their setter’s fingers with tape. Tying it to his preferred tightness before she went back to her spot and him going back into court. “Then we have our thesis”

“Oh yeah, I sometimes see students having breakdowns because of it. Is it really that bad?”

“The process of doing it is very hard, because not only do you have to choose your own topic, you have to choose a very specific one and one that has a lot of references available” you nodded your head, listening to her every word. “Getting rejected is fairly common, so you have to go through the process again and then present it to your panelist”

“When you do your defense, is it scary?”

She laugh at your choices of words, but she can’t really deny it though, because she did felt scared whenever they had a defense. “It’s nerve-wracking honestly, you have to prepare an answer for every possible question or else they’ll reject your paper”

“And you have to repeat all over again” she nods. “That’s so tiring”

“It is, but we have to comply or else we’ll never graduate”

“True”

You both talk throughout the game, until the final whistle was blown and the match finally ended, your team winning the match.

“Shiratorizawa High is still as strong as ever I see” she mused, watching as both teams gave each other a bow. “Congratulations (L/n)-chan”

“Thank you Mikana-san”

You both went on your separate ways, tending to your own players. Giving them their towels, and water bottles along with their snacks. After your final goodbye, you all entered the bus, driving back towards your hotel. It was still early, 3:00 pm in Tokyo is still very lively compared to in Sendai. Most people prefer to stay indoors due to the intense heat, however, a bustling city will always be busy no matter what time of the day.

“We’ll be leaving early tomorrow, so if any of you have anything buy. Souvenirs and other things, you can do so right now. But as always, bring a buddy with you and be back by 11” Coach Saito reminded one last time, before he and Washijou-sensei went inside the hotel, probably to rest and get some sleep before they go out again.

“I actually have some things to buy at the mall” Semi started adjusting his bag on his shoulder.

“Me too” Yamagata said, rummaging through his bag to find his phone, he almost started panicking when he didn’t saw it, but immediately let out a relieved sigh when he saw the device hiding under his sweaty shirt.

“We saw some souvenir shops a few blocks away from here, we’ll be over there”

Once everything was settled and everyone had decided where they want to go. You all separated, Semi, Reon, Ushijima, Yamagata, and Shirabu going to the mall to buy the things they needed while you, Tendou, Kawanishi, and Goshiki decided to walk around instead.

Going through the various shops that were selling different types of souvenirs from shirts to mugs, to keychains and other kinds of stuff.

“(Y/n)-chan, do you have my phone with you?” Goshiki patted his pockets as he looks for the said device.

“It’s in my bag” to patted the backpack you were carrying, adjusting it on your shoulder before letting out a groan at how heavy it is. “Kawanishi-san can we exchange bags? This one’s very heavy”

He nodded his head, pulling the strap over his head as you exchange bags, you let out a sigh of relief, thankful that the strain on your shoulders are now gone. The smell of freshly cook taiyakis catching your attention as the four of you speedwalk towards the stall making it, the food still hot and fresh.

“Ah, hot, hot, hot” Tendou rapidly let out a breath of air to cool down the burning of his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Not expecting for it to be too hot.

You gently blew on your taiyaki, waiting for it to cool down, before you started taking small bites. As your group resume walking along the streets, you spotted a shop filled with trinkets, calling for their attention you all entered the store.

They had a wide range of displays, and although some were a bit expensive, it wasn’t stopping you from buying what you want. The allowance your Aunt gives you every week could literally last you a month, and so any extra money you had, you deposit it in your bank account and wait for the time when you have to use it.

Walking over to Kawanishi, you took your wallet from your bag before you walk off to where they had plushies on display, that dolphin plushy the only thing on your mind right now. Taking the dolphin from its spot on the shelf, you examined it, before looking at a similar one but this time it was a bit bigger. Not too much, so you were contemplating which one to buy.

“The big one looks very comfy though” Goshiki appears beside you, holding a scarf, a cap, and a sweater. “You can snuggle it to sleep”

“Yeah, but don’t you think it’s a little too big?”

He observes the two carefully taking in their size, but still, he preferred the bigger one, so you followed his suggestion.

“Oh! Why not take this one too?” he grabs a tomato plushie of the same size. “Tomato-chan~”

You flick him on the forehead. “I can’t believe you’re sticking with that nickname”

“It’s funny though” he grinned at you.

“Tsutomu, (Y/n) let’s go” the both of you didn’t hear Tendou called you out, as the two of you stayed there. Goshiki insisting that he buys the tomato plushie for you, while you immediately denying his offer because it was already too much. It cost about a thousand yen, and he still has the items he’s holding. Not only that, you still remembered how he bought you those pens and highlighters last night.

The bell hanging at the top of the door rang as the two middle blockers left the shop, unknowingly leaving the two of you behind.

They cross the street, turning a few more corners. Before they were back to the same book store everyone went to last night. Tendou wanting to buy a few more mangas, then Kawanishi forgot he needs to buy a new calculator because he broke his old one. He could just buy one in Sendai, but why wait when he could just do it now?

“(Y/n) can you get my wallet? It’s in the-“ Kawanishi turns around, but no signs of the two first years. He looks from left to right, thinking that maybe they’re just around the corner, but alas, there were no Goshiki, and (Y/n).

“Uh… Tendou-san” Kawanishi tugs on the red head’s jacket as Tendou turns around.

“Hmm, what is it Taichi?”

“(Y/n) and Tsutomu are gone”

Tendou’s eyebrows furrowed as he looks behind the second year, thinking that maybe he was just pulling a prank on him, but still, like before, no first years in sight.

“Oh dear”

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“I can’t believe you actually bought the tomato plushie” you stared at the red-colored plush inside the bag you were holding. Both of you exiting the shop.

“Told you I’d buy it” he looks proud though, you don’t know why, but you’re very grateful for the gift. You note to yourself to get him something in return in the future. “Are Tendou-san and Kawanishi-san still inside?”

“Maybe” he went back inside the shop, as you waited outside the door. When he went back out, he looks worried, which also made you worried.

“Something wrong?”

“They’re not inside”

Your eyes widened. “What?”

He rub his arms, as he went back inside again to check. But still, they weren’t there anymore, walking back out, he shook his head.

“Did they just left us?”

“Probably”

“Should we go find them?” you started fidgeting on your spot, before you remembered, you had Kawanishi’s bag with you. Opening his bag you located his phone only to be left disappointed when you find out it’s dead. “Great, now we can’t contact them”

“Should we go back to the hotel instead?”

“I don’t even know which way our hotel is”

Both of you shared a heavy exhale, retracing your steps to where you both felt your hotel was located. However, you both accidentally took a wrong turn and were now in a different part of the city.

“I knew leaving that place was a bad idea”

“Oh. Aren’t you two from Shiratorizawa?” you saw two persons walking over your direction, wearing a light green and yellow track jacket and track pants.

“Yes” you answered, the one who was currently talking looks nice, you don’t know about his companion though. Even with half of his face covered with a mask, you could still feel the intensity of his stare.

“Ah. I’m Komori Motoya, and this is Sakusa Kiyoomi” he pointed to his friend. “We’re from Itachiyama, we went against your school before”

Itachiyama, the school is familiar, but these two? Not very much. However, they seem nice.

“Are the others with you?” Komori looks around the vicinity. “I don’t see them”

“Uh…”

“You got lost didn’t you?” it was Sakusa who asks this time and Komori let out a laugh.

“We can’t contact them because this phone is dead-” you showed them Kawanishi’s phone. “-and it’s also the only one we have right now”

Komori turns to look at Sakusa. “You have Ushijima’s number right? Why don’t you give him a call, they might be worried right now”

Wordlessly, Sakusa fished his phone from his pocket and dialed your captain’s number, pressing the loudspeaker button. It rang a few times before Ushijima finally picks up.

“Hello?”

“We found your stray” Sakusa answered before putting the phone in front.

“Ushijima-san!”

”(Y/n)? Goshiki? Where are you two?”

You both look at the two, but Komori answered for you. “We’re in front of the Kamakura coffee shop, where are you?”

“In front of the Marimo bookstore [1]”

“Alright stay there, we’ll be there in ten minutes”

“Alright”

The call ended and the four of you made your way towards the bookstore, Komori was the only talkative one between the two, instantly befriending the both of you. Although Sakusa would sometimes participate in the conversation, majority of it, he prefers to listen.

“So, what are you doing here in Tokyo?” Komori questioned.

“We had a practice match with a college team today” Goshiki answered, holding your hand to avoid getting separated from the group, his initial fear from when he discovered you two got left behind still present.

“Are teams in Miyagi too weak to handle Shiratorizawa?” Sakusa’s eyes momentarily shift in your direction before focusing forward.

“I guess so” you shrug your shoulders, you were told no high schools in Miyagi wants to have a joint practice with your school anymore, and you don’t really know the reason behind it. So you can’t really say they’re all weak.

Thankfully ten minutes later, you arrive at Marimo Bookstore to see your seniors waiting in front of the building in worry.

“(Y/n), Tsutomu. There you are!” Tendou was about to give you two a big hug, but Semi beat him to it by bonking the two of you on the head.

“You idiots! What did I say about wandering around?!”

“We weren’t wandering around! We were just inside the shop when Tendou-san and Kawanishi-san left us!” you replied with a pout, rubbing your head as Semi shot the two a glare as they both look away. Kawanishi casually whistling a tune whilst Tendou rocks himself back and forth on the soles of his feet.

“Well, we’ve delivered the package. We have to go now, see you guys next time” Komori wave your group goodbye as Reon and Semi said their thanks.

Sakusa gave Ushijima a nod before turning around. “See you at nationals Wakatoshi”

“Of course”

They both left, their tall figures disappearing into the crowd, as your group went back to your hotel. Upon arriving at your lodging, you stumbled along with Coach Saito and Washijou-sensei near the entrance, the two older men inquiring of your shopping spree. Everyone answered the question as honestly as they could, leaving out the details of yours and Goshiki’s little accident.

Satisfied, they both left while your group went back to your own room to enjoy the rest of your stay, and to avoid any more mishaps.

«──────────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ────────────»

[1] anyone here who also watches sekai-ichi hatsukoi?

a/n: the idea from the college convo between Mikana and reader was inspired from a conversation I had with a mutual hehehe, though not word per word but just the overall gist of it. Dear, if you’re reading this you know who you are. ;)

also, my team stories aren’t suppose to contain any romance, yet here I am lowkey shipping Goshiki and reader.

#haikyuu!! #haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu oneshot #shiratorizawa #ushijima wakatoshi #semi eita #tendo satori #yamagata hayato #ohira reon #shirabu kenjirou #kawanishi taichi #goshiki tsutomu #sakusa kiyoomi #komori motoya #shiratorizawa x reader #hq x you #hq x reader

[what-a-treat-nz]

World Book Challenge: China

Officially, the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.4 billion. It covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, and is officially divided into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

The areas in dark green are under direct Chinese control; the areas in light green (Tibet and Taiwan) are contested. For the purposes of this challenge, I’m treating China, Tibet and Taiwan as three separate countries. Because I can.

Number of Chinese people in New Zealand: As of the 2013 Census, there were 163,104 people of “Chinese (not further defined)” ethnicity in New Zealand - 10,008 of those were in Wellington City.

Have I been there? Yes! I visited Shanghai with my Dad in December 2011. I bought a really nice coat, had tea that tasted like warm Fanta (it was oddly addictive), and got hugged by Dave Grohl. So, the usual Chinese experiences, really.

I also had Peking Duck for the first time in my life, and holy hell I didn’t know what I was missing. I’ve tried to make up for it by eating copious amounts of it since.

The books

For “China” on my reading challenge, I read three fantasy novels - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, and the final two books of the Poppy War trilogy (The Dragon Republic and The Burning God) by R. F. Kuang, a Chinese-American author.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (魔道祖师 / Mó Dào Zǔ Shī)

(Book 30 of 2021)

Given the fact that I have an entire subsection of my blog about how much I love the live-action TV show based on this book, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that I had Mó Dào Zǔ Shī at the top of my list of Chinese books to read.

Mó Dào Zǔ Shī tells the story of Wei Wuxian, a loathed cultivator of dark and demonic arts who resurrects 16 years after his tragic death. His return to the world brings him to reunite with the people in his first life, including his soulmate, the honored Lan Wangji (who mourned him for 16 years, during which he branded himself with the same mark as Wei Wuxian and kept his memory alive and I’m okay, I promise). Wei Wuxian then begins to remember his time before his demise 16 years ago, from his beginnings as a young cultivator to his descent to dark magic. Together, they solve a mystery linked to a dark tragedy from Wei Wuxian’s first life, then live happily ever after.

This novel was originally published on the Chinese web novel site JJWXC from October 31, 2015 - March 1, 2016, with additional side stories that continue to be released sporadically. The revised version of the main story was later published online until September 7, 2016. A paperback version was released on December 12, 2016, with a total of four volumes in traditional Chinese. The first of three planned volumes in simplified Chinese, titled Wuji, was released in 2018, but release of the following installments has stalled after the locking of the novel on JJWXC since January 2019.

Mó Dào Zǔ Shī isn’t officially available in English, and given that it depicts an explicit danmei relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, I don’t think we’ll ever see an official version. Though there are official translations into Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Russian, Japanese, and Burmese, and the tour for the TV traveled to Toronto, Los Angeles and New York, so maybe one day there will be an official translation.

For now though, you can read the entire novel for free at Exiled Rebels Scanlations, where it has been translated in full by a then-highschooler called “K-san”. It’s hard to actually judge the merits of the writing of the original novel, given I was reading an unofficial translation, but that was actually half of the sweetness of it. It was kinda rough - K-san tweaked the terms they used as they gained more confidence with the translation, and I enjoyed reading the translator and editor notes that accompanied most chapters - especially notes such as “we’re translating as fast as we can, stop asking for faster updates!”. It felt really organic and friendly, and the story is good (though much gorier than the TV show and good god boys, learn what lube is, it’ll make your lives better I promise).

I read the book more as a companion to the TV show though, rather than a novel on it’s own merits, so I’m not sure I can judge it as a novel on it’s own merits. Though the book did teach me one very important piece of information: Lan Wangji canonically smells of sandalwood.

Would I read it again? If an official English translation comes out, I’d probably read that. I’m more likely to watch the TV show again, or dive into one of the sesquillion Untamed fanfics on AO3 ( Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn was the most popular ship on AO3 in 2020, with 12,878 new works about these characters being published that year).

The Dragon Republic and The Burning God

(Books 34 and 35 of 2021)

I read The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic back in September 2019 (when I wasn’t counting how many books I was reading, but I did have a record of them), and I decided to re-read The Dragon Republic because I couldn’t exactly remember where the story was up to.

And it’s a good thing I did, as something I thought happened at the end of The Dragon Republic actually happened at the end of The Poppy War, so oops?

The Poppy War trilogy is a grimdark fantasy novel set in fantasy China, with a Chinese protagonist and written by a Chinese-American author. It’s spectacular. The trilogy draws its plot and politics from mid-20th-century China, though it’s atmosphere is more inspired by the Song dynasty. The conflict in the first book is based on the Second Sino-Japanese War (though this time, it’s the Chinese empire against the Japanese empire), in the second on the start of the Chinese civil war (Chinese empire against nascent Republican movement), and in the third on the end of Chinese civil war (Republicans versus not-Republicans).

It’s a massive trilogy. It’s incredibly complex, with a huge scale and massive numbers of characters, though the fact it’s all seen through Rin’s eyes (with the occasional first and last chapter from the point of view of other characters) helps.

The story follows that of Fang Runin, better known as Rin, a poor war orphan in southern Nikara who trains in secret to test into the elite Sinegard Academy. Throughout the trilogy she deals with racism, sexism, elitism...most of the isms, really. Author R.F. Kuang said that Rin's life is meant to parallel the trajectory of Mao Zedong, and I had fun trying to match events in Chinese history to the events in the book (the easiest ones to spot are the Rape of Nanjing, the nuclear bombing of Japan and the Long March).

I don’t remember Mao Zedong having the power to call on a fire god, however. It’s probably a good thing that’s not something that happened in real life China, as Mao’s policies killed enough people without him literally being able to spit fire.

I described the first book as “If Kvothe from The Name of the Wind was female, Chinese, and allowed to say fuck.” Those two books felt really similar to me - they’re very much your “outsider is accepted to elite academy, winds up pissing off most of their classmates and chooses an obscure major to specialise in before being thrown into a conflict they are key to winning.” But honestly, I preferred the Poppy War trilogy, even if the final book did get super dark.

Rin is a really refreshing character, and the world seen through her eyes is a very different place to one I’m used to reading about. Kuang said that she "chose to write a fantasy reinterpretation of China's twentieth century, because that was the kind of story I wasn't finding on bookshelves", and I’m so glad she did. The world needs more books like this. I’m as pasty and as white as they come, and I loved reading a book where the heroine was authentically Chinese. This isn’t a pakeha author trying to fit themselves into someone else’s shoes - this is someone with a deep understanding of Chinese military history and collective trauma using that understanding and pain to build a new fantasy world.

I loved it, and if you can stomach war scenes, I recommend this trilogy.

Will I read the Poppy War trilogy again? I might do. It’s a bit darker and more desperate than I usually read - particularly The Burning God - but I did enjoy them. So that’s a firm “never say never”.

Bonus book! 

These Violent Delights

I read NZ-Chinese author Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights earlier this year (book number 20 of 2021), before I set myself this challenge, so it doesn’t technically count as an entry for “China” in my book challenge. But it is amazing, and I love it, so I wanted to give it a quick shout out here (because if we’re talking fantasy reimaginings of Chinese 20th century history by Chinese diaspora authors...).

These Violent Delights relocates the story of Romeo and Juliet to 1920s Shanghai, casting the two leads as the heirs to rival gangs. It’s brilliant, it’s beautiful, there were sentences that made me stop and gasp for the sheer delight of having read them, and there’s a monster made of bugs driving the citizens of Shanghai insane. The way Gong has woven the characters from the play into their 1920s counterparts is delightful (I say this as someone who’s never actually read the play, though I think I saw the Leonardo DiCaprio movie because it was difficult to be a tween in the late 90s and not be exposed to his films).

15/10, would definitely read it again, it’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks for a very, very good reason. Stop reading this blog and go get a copy. Now.

The feast

I admit, using China as my first country may have been a bit of a cop out, given my familiarity with Chinese food - though, living in a Western country, I’ve probably eaten more Westernised Chinese food than authentic Chinese food.

Which is why I was chuffed to learn that spring rolls are, actually, authentic Chinese food. I always thought they were a Westernisation, like sweet and sour pork or fortune cookies.

For my Chinese feast, I turned to The Woks of Life, a delightful Chinese cooking blog that I can’t open without being inspired to cook like 9 million things.

When I started this project, I originally was only going to cook one dish from each country. I figured I’d go easy on myself for China, and make 花生酥 (hua sheng su), a traditional sesame peanut brittle.

It’s something I’ve made before - I make little bags of it for my colleagues each lunar new year.

I don’t follow the Woks of Life recipe exactly - for example, I’ve never once roasted and shelled my own peanuts. I tend to use a mix of blanched and pre-roasted peanuts in my 花生酥, and I think it comes out okay. Next time I’m going to increase the amount of sugar I use - I find that 270g of rock sugar is not quite enough to cover the peanuts totally. Which is a pain. Next time I think I’ll use 300g, and turn the heating on in my kitchen so it’s warmer, to stop the brittle from hardening before I can properly get it into the tray to cool.

But then I changed my mind, and decided to throw a full on feast.

For the feast I threw, I made two more dishes from the Woks of Life - Easy Peking Duck with Mandarin Pancakes, and 年糕 (nian gao), or stir-fried rice cakes (though I did them with chicken, not pork, as that’s what I had in my freezer). I also cooked up some spring rolls, as I had them leftover in my freezer from my housewarming (for which I over catered, because I cannot do anything but over cater any event I throw). I should have marinated the duck longer. That one was on me.

I also made some 核桃酥 (he tao su), walnut cookies, which were delicious and I definitely want to make again. I think I’ll add some hazelnuts in as well for additional crunch, and make them slightly smaller - they were 12 very big cookies.

But delicious cookies.

Kisu was most distressed that we did not feed her anything from this feast.

The Playlist

I ended up finding this “Chinese Indie & Rock” playlist on Spotify, which I really enjoyed. I could understand none of the songs, but I enjoyed the heck out of a lot of them. I’ll probably keep listening to this playlist - they were definitely my sort of jams.

#China #PRC #Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation #mo dao zu shi #mo xiang tong xiu #the poppy war #the dragon republic #the burning god #r. f. kuang #book review #world book challenge #rf kuang #these violent delights #chloe gong #the woks of life #hua sheng su #sesame peanut brittle #he tao su #chinese walnut cookies #walnut cookies #nain gao #stir fried rice cakes #peking duck

[symphonicscans]

Fujimi Orchestra - Wandering Violinist (Book 2, Part 1)

Author: Akizuki Koh   Illustrator: Keiko Nishi (Read Book 1 Here)

Content Warning! 18+ Yaoi/BL/Soft Noncon This volume doesn’t have rape per say, but there are references to what happened in the first volume, so just in case I’m still providing a warning. Nothing is super explicit. Also, if you want to start with this book there is plenty of recap throughout the book to catch you up on characters and situations.

And we’re onto book 2! This book also has two parts, so hopefully I’ll have the second done in the next few weeks.  If you want to read on Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSuh6ZZf--fQVn8mkSKkovlnZgIfKcD0vL1dmNRBBo2xVNMPw3EHBpNChs0vW4zq5qymXWQcZsvZmib/pub#ftnt1

Part I : Wandering Violinist

I have no apartment… no roost… not for tonight. I looked around in the hot and humid summer night; I couldn't even mumble because I was completely stunned by the situation. If I had to guess at the statistics, I’d say that the Fujimi-cho neighborhood -- where 80% of the residents live in apartments -- is like a ghost-town every year around this time. This is because there are many brave people who insist that they celebrate the ‘Bon Festival in my hometown,’ undeterred by the hustle and bustle of expensive flight tickets or the hellish rush to return home. It kills two birds with one stone: they make their dutiful family trip, and they don’t have to pay for accommodations when they get there. 

Actually, I — Yuuki Morimura — was one of those people. The reason I say ‘was’ is because I had just returned to my dear home-town after a two year absence on one such obligatory trip. I’m 23 years old and a music instructor at a public high school, as well as a violinist and concertmaster of the Fujimi Citizen’s Philharmonic, also known as the ‘Ni-chome Philharmonic’ or just ‘Fujimi.’ I seem to be considered a quiet and serious person because of the glasses I’ve worn since junior high, and often mistaken as younger than my age thanks to my slim body and feminine face (that I’m not so pleased with); I actually think I’m a pretty assertive person. I moved to Tokyo for music school, and then Fujimi-cho, which has become my second home ever since. 

Since my mother passed away, Fujimi feels even more like my second home. So as I returned from my three-day ‘homecoming’ trip and smelled the familiar scents of Fujimi, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I arrived before Fujimi’s rehearsal day, just after nine o’clock in the evening. Many of the shops in Fujimi Ginza around the small train station were already closed, each shutter with a sign on the door that said they were closed for tomorrow’s Obon holiday; well, as far as the rest of the country is concerned, tomorrow is the real Obon holiday. I took advantage of the fact that I work at a school with summer vacation to beat the rush of people returning home. This was always my trick that I used in the summer when I would go back home to the country. I would take care of my obligations before the proper Bon Festival and spend the three days when Fujimi-cho was quiet, playing the violin in my empty apartment building. It was the only thing I enjoyed in the summer, as I don’t have any other hobbies.

Now the steel frame of the building was exposed to the sky, and underneath my feet was rubble that seemed to be made from the collapsed walls, along with black trash that must have been furniture. I had entered the alley and turned the corner as usual, and saw the scene that was now in front of me; it was a total loss fire. Both my building and the one on the other side of mine were at least 80% burnt down. I scratched my head and turned to the right. The liquor store on the corner was still open.

“Excuse me, good evening!” A lady came out while using a fan. She looked me up and down and made a sympathetic face. “Ah, the Miyajima apartment building over there burned down yesterday evening, I heard about it on the NHK news,” she said.

“I didn’t hear anything about it, I was back at my parents’ house.”

“Oh, you lived there?” The woman scratched her cauliflower-like permed head with the handle of her fan, probably because she was uncomfortable dealing with a person she didn’t know. “That’s terrible. The fire spread quickly and the firefighters didn’t show up for a while because it was right in the middle of rush hour, you know.”

“Um, did anybody...die?” 

“It was a blessing that you weren’t there, the people who were left were burnt to a crisp. They were all dead by the time the firemen got there.”

“I see…”

“I heard it started from tempura oil. Yamamoto-san on the first floor was the origin of the fire. His wife always looked very careless.”

“Ah...Thank you,” the lady seemed like she wanted to keep talking, but I hadn’t recovered enough from the first round of information to keep up with more rumors. I bowed my head and left the store. The only question for now was where I could sleep tonight… I wondered if there were any hotels in this town. I remembered seeing a few love hotels, but as I walked towards the station I realized I needed to find something else: money. I didn’t have any. 

I put down my travel bag and violin under the streetlight and checked my wallet. No matter how many times I counted it, there was only 3,000 yen. Naturally I didn’t have much left, since I had given most of my money to my sister when I left my parents’ house. It was only fair since I stayed for three days at the place she was living with four children and a husband on the salary of a civil servant, while also maintaining a large country house and fields. I wanted to be considerate, and also make a small gesture since I was now a salaried employee, so I left her with enough money for a meal. But now…

“The bank won’t be closed even on Bon holidays,” I said to myself. No — tomorrow is Saturday! No, wait, I can still withdraw money, my card is in my wallet. So in the morning I can get money. I picked up my bag and case, which was now all I had to my name, and started walking. Oh yeah, my scores, my CD player, the CDs themselves, my clothes, my wardrobe, my futon, my toaster… all burned. Everything, everything…! I was hit with the sound of an oncoming car and rushed to get out of the way. As I looked at the red glow of the receding tail lights, I thought of the word ‘penniless.’ I have a violin, an ATM card, and a few clothes for the time being, so I’m not completely broke, but I’d be grateful if I could at least talk to Ishida-san, the caretaker of Fujimi, who I know I could rely on. But he’s on his usual week-long summer vacation. His whole family left for Hokkaido in the country on the same day that I left, and of course his coffee shop Mozart is also closed.

There were only two other members of the orchestra who knew where I lived: Natsuko Kawashima, a flutist, and the conductor, Tounoin. I had been in love with Kawashima for three years, even proposed to her, but we finally settled as friends in the orchestra. And Tounoin… well, I thought about going to him. He would be more than willing to let me stay, but that ‘willingness’ was the problem. He was gay, fell in love with me, and raped me — though the rape was an accident, as Tounoin had thought I was also gay and that I wanted to have sex with him. I respect Tounoin as a genius conductor, and I also think he’s a very good man, as he was willing to give up his affections towards me and not bring that kind of trouble into our relationship as musicians. 

That’s why… I don’t think I should go to his place to stay. No matter how much help he offers or how strong his willpower is, I don’t want to give him the opportunity to spoil me. He’s a human being too, and you never know when his self-control might slip… I don’t want to ruin the friendship we’ve established. I couldn’t impose on him like that, but I also couldn’t think of anywhere else that would let me stay. The list of Fujimi members and school staff had burned to ash in the fire, and there were a lot of people that I couldn’t remember their full names to look them up in the phone book.

I was flipping through the pages of the city phone book, trying to find a hotel, when I heard the sound of rain. It started raining. Then it was pouring. It seems like bad luck was following me like a bad smell. I took out ten yen from my wallet and picked up the phone.

“Hello, do you have any rooms available? Yes, for tonight. Oh, that’s great. Where are you located?” I thanked them, hung up the phone and wondered out loud, “Yeah, that’s pretty far. The cab fare alone would wipe out all my money. I wonder if they would let me stay without a deposit?”

I heard a noise and looked outside. A soaking wet businessman was waiting, so I opened the phone booth and said, “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” and dashed under the eaves of a building to avoid getting wet. I hurriedly wiped the drops of water from my violin case. I decided to wait for the rain to let up and then walk to the hotel; since I only had 3,000 yen I really couldn’t spend it on the cab. But the evening downpour, which I assumed would stop if I waited it out, did not let up even after an hour. I waved my hand at the approaching lights of an empty cab and repeatedly counted the contents of my wallet in my head.

---

After going through 5 other hotels, the sixth hotel receptionist — my last ray of hope in the whole town — was a gentle, motherly woman with a pleasant appearance and tone of voice… “Oh, that’s the thing, isn’t it?”

I said quickly, “I have an ATM card, so if the bank is open tomorrow morning, I promise I can get the money! I know you have a rule that you have to pay in advance, but I won’t cause any trouble!” Needless to say, I’m not very good at this kind of negotiation. But there was nothing else I could do. I was so embarrassed that my forehead broke out in a cold sweat, but I persisted desperately. “I’m begging you. I can’t stay out in the open in this rain!” The woman, who seemed to be going through hardship of her own, looked down with a troubled expression. ‘One more push,’ I thought.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but if there’s any way…”

“Well, let me have your driver’s license.”

“Oh, that’s —“ I was sure that I had finally found a solution. “I don’t have it.”

“You don’t have a driver’s license?” It was heart-wrenching to see her face, which had finally softened somewhat, switch back into cold rejection.

“...my insurance card was burned. But..!” I pulled my ATM card out of my drenched back pocket. “I’ll leave this with you!”

The woman shook her head apologetically. “That doesn’t prove your identity, does it?”

“But if you look up my card number…”

“Can you prove it’s yours?” I was about to open my mouth to argue against her rude suspicion when the sound of rain started up again.

The easy-going face of welcome had turned into a cruel mask when she looked back at me. She said quietly, “Anyway, we don’t accept single guests.” Basically, I was interfering with their business, so get out of here.

“Ah, I see. Thank you.” Apparently this is the way the city is. I thought I could handle the love-hotel atmosphere, but I was naive. I gave the guests that had entered behind me some space so I wouldn’t have to look at them, but it seemed to be an unnecessary precaution.

“Oh, let’s take this room!” I heard the excited girl’s voice behind me as I walked out, not feeling the least bit guilty about being in a love hotel. This was the last of my hotel choices, and I had run out of ideas. I wondered if the heavens had come to regret their cruelty to me, as it was raining lightly when I went outside. But the situation wasn’t any better just because the rain was lighter.

“Police, maybe?” I had heard of something called ‘tiger boxes’ that were used to protect drunks, but I wondered if they would have anything for a lodger like me. ‘It’s all so bad!’ I thought, but that was the only option I could think of at this point. However, the police station was behind the Fujimi train station, which took me 20 minutes to get there by car, and now I had to walk back... “I’ve got 820 yen in my pocket, so I have no other choice.”

The problem was the violin, which could not get wet. I decided to put it in my travel bag, and used my summer jacket as a furoshiki for my overflowing clothes. I walked out into the rain, which was cold on my already soaking body. There was nothing else I could do.

—

“Achoo!” I sneezed, waking up. I was greeted by masculine-smelling air and unnecessary air conditioning. It seemed that I had caught a cold. I put my glasses on and looked at the round clock on the wall; it was barely 7am… I had stumbled into this police station a little after two in the morning, managed to get them to understand my situation, and they let me stay in the dormitory nap room.

“Achoo!” I guess it’s time for me to leave. After all, the air conditioning was too cold in here. I folded the blanket I had borrowed and left the dormitory room. I looked around for the middle-aged policeman that had helped me earlier, but maybe his shift had ended. I turned around and saw a policeman who looked younger than me.

“Oh, you must be Morimura-san.”

“Yes, I was staying here. Thanks to you, I was saved. This is for the person who helped me last night,” I offered him a box of sweets that my sister had given me to take home, “It’s a little wet from the rain, but inside is manju.”

“Oh no, that’s too much.”

“No, I’m really grateful.” As I was saying this, my nose started to itch again. I sneezed and bowed.

The city was already hot and humid, so I was grateful for the chills that were creeping into my body. I bought the cheapest lunch at a convenience store in the middle of the street and headed for the bank. It was 7:24am on August 13th, and in 30 minutes I would be able to say goodbye to the miserable feeling of having just 500 yen in my pocket. But I didn’t know… I didn’t know that today is the day the door of hell would be flung open.

It’s hot… the cicadas are so noisy. And… there was no money. The lack of money I thought I had was extremely shocking, there must have been some mistake. I’m sure it was just some small clerical error, like a paycheck failing to transfer. I did buy a new suit for the school year and paid for it in one lump sum with my bonus, but that should have gone through in July… but the ‘balance of 2,637 yen’ on the statement the cashier spit out was an unquestionable fact from the employee that was working that Saturday. He told me to come back on Monday for more details. The bank book, which was supposed to be a clue to solve my money question, had been reduced to ashes along with my personal seal and ID card. And the only thing that could guarantee that I am Yuuki Morimura was an ATM card, which could be stolen or picked up…

If it had been the bank where Kawashima-san worked, she probably would have taken care of it. Fujimi’s most beautiful flutist, Natsuko Kawashima, who had rejected my desperate proposal, was the type of person who would be strong in an emergency situation like this. But she’s not here, and anyway as a man I couldn’t just go to my girlfriend’s workplace and cry to her. For an hour I was at a loss for what to do, wondering what the hell I did to deserve this, envying the heavens and cursing my fate. Maybe I was stupid to have left with only my violin and a few changes of clothes. But! I had taken proper precautions against fire, and I was only gone for three days. Usually you don’t have to think about the possibility of your apartment burning down in such a short amount of time. 

The sun was shining on the benches, and shadows stretched out over the ground. I was craving grilled fish… but what was I supposed to do now, when it’s two more days until Ishida-san comes back? I was able to withdraw 2,000 yen from my credit card, but with a grand total of 2,511 yen it was barely anything. I pulled out the notepad I kept in my pocket. I knew I had only Mozart, Kawashima-san’s house, and the number of the school staff room written down. The school was closed for the Bon holiday and there was no answer on the phone. Kawashima-san was the only one who could help me. But… I said to myself, ‘Is it really worth it to go through all this?’ Of course, I wanted to just wait it out, but if I had to… if I did, I’d have to stay out in the open for two more nights. The policeman last night was kind enough to help me, but the way he acted made it clear that the police were not a hotel, and I was already feeling sick from my search for shelter in the rain. My pride as a man wouldn’t let me rely on Tounoin. 

As I soothed my dry throat with lukewarm water from the park fountain, I made up my mind. By the time I found a phone booth, I had sweated out more than I had drunk. I wondered if Kawashima-san would be at work or if she was off? In this case, I could barely spare even ten yen. In a desperate mood, I figured that she would have gone to work, so I looked up the number of her workplace in the Town Pages, which I was grateful to have even if it was in tatters.

The reply on the other end of the line was, “Kawashima-san is off today.”

I took my wallet out again… oh, ten-yen coins, you are valuable after all. I dialed her home number, and the voice that answered was that of a mother.

“I’m Morimura of the Fujimi Philharmonic. Is Natsuko-san at home?”

“Ah, the concertmaster. Thank you for always taking care of my daughter,” said the warm voice. I felt the dark clouds in my chest clear. Thank God. 

“Oh, of course. So, where is Natsuko-san?”

“This morning she went scuba diving in Izu with a friend. She’ll be back the night of the 15th.”

I couldn’t remember if I had said a proper greeting when I hung up the phone… as I exited the phone booth I felt that my last hope was gone. I’m finally going to have to live on the street. But… but… what the hell am I supposed to do? I asked myself over and over, and reluctantly arrived at the answer I already knew, the only solution. I have no choice but to go to Tounoin. Go to him… I’ll just borrow some money. As long as I have money I can do whatever I need to do; get a hotel room, ask the principal for a new ID when school resumes after Bon, go to city hall to get a certificate of seal impression, and then take it back to the bank. It’s just a debt, I will owe him a favor, but I can pay him back as much as I borrow. 

I walked, keeping my face down from the sun that was beating down on me. I was sweating profusely, yet an inexplicable chill ran down my spine. I put my hand to my forehead, which wasn’t even hot, but I felt like I was having a heat stroke. I need to borrow money to buy some cold medicine...a hotel… a cool room… I should have called Kawashima-san last night instead of trying to be proud and stick it out on my own. But it was so late at night… and either way it was too late now.

—

The Telephone Pole Mansion was silent and open as usual. On the wall opposite of the door to apartment 11 there was a row of mailboxes with numbers from 11-71 on them, and on box 71 was a handwritten name: “Kei Tounoin.” There was an elevator door next to it, and in front of the door an abandoned tricycle with the name ‘Mamiko’ written on it in permanent marker. I pushed the trike aside and pressed the button. I got off at the fifth floor — which was the end of the line — and climbed the remaining two floors, breathing hard. They say only idiots catch colds in the summer, but I felt myself getting more and more sick. But I had to act cool in front of Tounoin. He’ll probably tell me to use his place instead of a hotel, but I don’t want to accept a favor I can’t return. I had rejected him. Actually, he really wasn’t the kind of guy I could borrow money from, either… I finally managed to get to the apartment, and was anticipating getting to change clothes since the ones I had been wearing were soggy from being worn since yesterday. I put my hands in my pockets — I just remembered, I don’t have the key…

I usually have the key to his place. It was the middle of last month when Tounoin offered me his apartment, since mine didn’t allow the practicing of musical instruments and I had no other decent place to practice. At the time, we were still like a rabbit and a wolf, and I was the rabbit running away. I resisted and resisted, not wanting to be lured into the wolf’s house by some kind of trick. But then we developed a proper relationship as friends, and I decided to accept that his offer was out of kindness, not a trick. Since then, I’ve practiced here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night, and Sunday afternoon. I have a duplicate key because Tounoin’s apartment is soundproofed, and he plays music so loud that he doesn’t hear if somebody knocks. He gave me the key so I could come in on my own, but I had left the key in my apartment. On the morning I left, I put it in a bag of rice in the kitchen, along with my personal seal, bank book and other valuables… 

He had no doorbell. I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I knocked a few more times, then thought to put my ear to the door, but it seemed to be silent behind it. Just to be sure, I looked for a window, but there was not a single window on this side. I went to the edge of the aisle and looked, but no, there was no window on that side either. There was a window across from the door inside… but regardless there was no sign of anybody being in the apartment. 

“He’s finally away…” did he go to his parents’ house, or on vacation, or just out shopping? No matter what Tounoin was doing, my situation was simple: I had no other place to go, no other option. As long as I had the key, I could go in; Tounoin wouldn’t mind if I came in when he wasn’t home. It would be much easier to wait in an air-conditioned room, and I would without hesitation, but without a key… it’s metal, so there is a possibility that it didn’t burn up in the fire. But to find it, I would have to go back down the stairs and walk for twenty minutes in the hot sun. Then I’d have to dig around in that pile of rubble, and what were the chances of finding it? Even if I did find it, it might be useless, and either way I’d have to come back here… by then, Tounoin might have returned. So I decided to just wait. Fortunately there was a roof over the passage, and the elevated location allowed for good ventilation. I sat down in the aisle with my violin case beside me on the concrete, which was cool and pleasant in the shade. Looking through the bars of the railing, the city was the color of scorched gold in the midsummer sun. I’ll wait here until it cools down in the evening, and if he doesn’t come back I’ll go look for the key…. but what if the key doesn’t work? Whether it’s there or not, I’ll have to come back, but what if Tounoin doesn’t come back tonight?

Then I’ll just spend the night here outside. No one but Tounoin comes up here anyway, and it’s summer so it shouldn’t be a problem to sleep overnight… but what if he’s on vacation? I haven’t heard anything about that. He’s probably shopping or something, he’ll be back in the evening. As I stared blankly at the scenery thinking about this, I began to feel sleepy. To tell the truth, I didn’t want to move anymore. The sooner I went to look for the key the better, and the sooner I could take some medicine the better. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but I was thirsty and I knew I could get a cold drink at the convenience store downstairs. But once I was sitting like this, I didn’t feel like getting up again. I felt like I didn’t actually sleep much at the police dormitory, and yesterday was still yesterday…

I had helped Mimiko with her farm work in the morning, took my nephews to the town swimming pool, and taken a six-hour express train ride home, and then when I was feeling relieved to be home, the apartment was gone. And all that time I wasted looking for a hotel… after all that, it’s not surprising that I didn’t get a good night’s sleep. In other words, I was utterly exhausted. And to top it off, I was coming down with a cold. I laid down with my bag as a pillow, just to give my body a rest. After a short nap I would take a fever reducer… and then go find the key… I laid down, staring at the concrete ceiling of the aisle and the blue sky beyond, thinking about the pile of scores I had that were now burned. I hadn’t finished learning more than half of them, maybe I should have brought at least those with me… I couldn’t help thinking about it now. 

...I opened my eyes with a start and realized I had fallen asleep. My body ached all over, probably from lying on a concrete bed. But I didn’t feel like waking up, I was feeling very sluggish, as if I were being held in a metal box. I wanted to look at the time, but I couldn’t lift my arm to put on my watch. ‘Never mind,’ I thought, ‘This is the top floor, and the only room up here is Tounoin’s, so I can afford to take my time. I’m sure he’ll have something to say when he gets back, and there’s no need to move when it’s still so hot…’ With this thought, I was sucked back into the darkness of sleep. But it was a sleep that I shouldn’t have fallen into, like what people experience when they’re in distress on snowy mountains.

I was burning hot when I woke up again. I forced open my heavy eyelids. Through the bars of the railing, at the same height as I was lying, the orange sun was blazing, and I was basking in the west sun. I tried to get up, but my body felt like a bag of wet sand. If I stayed here, I would dry out in the sun. I managed to crawl up on all fours and move to the little remaining shade by the top of the stairs. As I let my head fall limp, I thought of something. The violin! I shouldn’t have left it in the sun like that… I crawled back to the apartment door, grabbed the violin case, and went back to the shade. The coldness of the concrete made me feel uncomfortable, like a myriad of worms were slithering under my skin. Chills kept running down my spine incessantly. I was already starting to doze off, thinking of how awful this was. The sound of cicadas chirping somewhere in the distance was becoming more and more faint. Water… water… when it gets cooler, I’ll have to go to the convenience store… barley tea, juice...water...water…. I found myself depressed. When I came to, it was pitch black. I felt cold, and when I moved my entire body was filled with aches and pains. My head also felt like it was going to crack open, and the breath on my lips was hot. I felt like I couldn’t get up, but I managed to do so because I knew I was in danger of dying out here. Going down the stairs, however, was even more dangerous. My legs were unreliable, and my hands were shaking as I clung to the railing with what little strength I had. Still, I somehow managed to reach the elevator and descended to the ground floor. 

I staggered the 30 meters or so to the corner store and went in. The brightness of the white lights hurt my eyes.

“Excuse me,” I said, leaning against the register, “Do you have any fever reducers?”

“No, we don’t,” the cashier replied, “But there’s a pharmacy a little bit down the street.” He seemed kind. 

“How far is ‘just a little bit…’” It was too far for me now. “Could I have a bottle of Pocari?” The clerk asked me which one. “No, a large one.”

“Two bottles are six hundred and eighteen yen.” 

With trembling fingers I took the change and the heavy package and left the store. I didn’t have time to go looking for the keys. I literally crawled back to Tounoin’s front door on the seventh floor, relieved to see that the violin I had left behind was still there, and then I completely ran out of steam. I would fall asleep intermittently, waking up with chattering teeth, and then fall asleep again only to wake up drenched in sweat… each sleep and awakening had a similar sense of torment and nightmares, and time passed slowly. Every time I woke up, I would first check to make sure my violin was safe, then take a sip or two of Pocari, touch the violin case again and fall back into another painful sleep. 

I felt like my beloved instrument, which was ‘only two million yen’ in the eyes of musicians, was still very precious to me even at this moment when I felt on the brink of death. When I was a student, quite a few of my friends had instruments worth 2 million, and some played on ones worth 3 or 5 million. I wondered how they managed to squeeze that out of their parents. The violin is a small but expensive instrument, with the best ones like Stradivarius costing hundreds of millions of yen. Because of their nature, being made with wood, the sound gets better with age, so the 300,000 or 400,000 yen new violins lined up in the window of a music store are only considered entry-level instruments. When I was a student, I used a brand new violin that cost 700,000 yen. My mother spent all of her savings to buy me the best one she could find in the country, and that was how much it cost to get the violin and the bow as a set. The sound is somewhat proportional to the price, so no matter how hard I tried my instrument could not match that of a 3 million yen instrument. That’s why when I got out of college and started a temporary job, the first thing I did was buy this violin. I had already given up being a professional, but I really wanted an instrument that had a better sound; it was the culmination of around four years of frustration. I sold my 700,000 yen set for 600,000 yen, keeping the bow, and then added 1.4 million yen of my own from a personal loan to purchase my current instrument. I was really happy at the time, and now with only one more payment, my beloved instrument will be mine in both name and reality. Then, I will buy a suitable bow for it… probably something around 500,000 yen… with a loan again, but I will do it to get a new bow. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to afford it. And then I wished I could play the violin just one more time before I died, if this was to be my last moments…. when I think about it, I was being as sentimental as something you’d see in a shoujo manga, and later I blush when I recall being like that. I’m proud of myself for being a violinist, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have ever thought of pawning my violin for money. But I’m a fool, and in some way it’s more manly to be foolish.

That was what I was thinking about when I absentmindedly changed thoughts to the man who seemed to not be coming back, no matter how long I waited. I thought I heard footsteps, but figured it was just another hallucination. But the sound was getting closer… a white object appeared on the stairs, quickly turning into a Panama hat with black eyes under the brim. As I was lying on my concrete bed, all I could see was what came into my field of vision from the other side — a man with only a head, then a neck… his eyebrows were tight, the eyes underneath long and narrow, with a well-defined nose that even from the front you could tell was high. 

“No way,” the lips murmured. Then the shoulders appeared under the man’s neck, and a hand came up and lifted the Panama hat, which he fanned his face with. The man’s dark hair was long and full, tucked in tightly from the hat; it didn’t look rude or obnoxious because the style suited him. “Morimura… san? What are you doing here…?” With a clatter of footsteps the whole body appeared, a solid 190cm tall body in an elegant linen suit. He was holding a trunk that had customs stickers in one hand. Had he been traveling abroad…?

“Hey,” I smiled, or at least I thought I did. It was Kei Tounoin, the 22 year old unknown genius conductor who had dropped out of the Music Department of the National Fine Arts University — which he was accepted straight into — because he had ‘nothing more to learn’ after one year, and then he studied abroad in Germany and Austria. His present status was as the permanent conductor of the 2-Chome Phil, or Fujimi Orchestra, an amateur ensemble of people who love music. “I’ve been… waiting for a while…” I said in a raspy, shrill voice. Before I realized it was me speaking, I was folded into the chest of the suit that had quickly appeared. 

“Morimura-san! What’s going on? What the hell are you doing in a place like this?!” 

I was going to answer, but I lost consciousness…

--

When I woke up, I was in the water. At first I just felt vaguely cool and comfortable, when I heard a chuckle in my ear. My face was wiped with a cold towel dripping with water, and I opened my eyes. 

“Oh, you noticed,” The one who said this in a very relieved voice was Tounoin, who was looking right into my face from above. I tried to sit up, as I was using his arm as a pillow, but I heard a bang and realized I was lying in a Western-style bathtub filled with water. Completely naked.

“Wha-ah…” I jumped in shock.

Tounoin said in a serious voice, “I had to hurry to lower your temperature, it was over 40ºC.” I was relieved to hear that, but then my eyelids began to feel heavy… “Wait! Just one sip before you go to sleep,” he said with a panicked voice, and his arm snatched me up in a hug while he placed something hard and cold to my lips. A cup…? “You’re dehydrated, just drink as much as you can,” he said. Adam woke up and took a bite of the apple, but when I covered my crotch with my hand I felt even more embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said and shoved a thin object into my mouth. “It’s a thermometer,” he told me.

When he saw the temperature dropped to 37º he let me lean back into the water. I noticed that the sleeves and chest of his expensive linen suit were soaked from where I was leaning against him. “I’m sorry… I feel lost… put it on…” when I mumbled with the thermometer in my mouth, Tounoin smiled.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I was scared because I was afraid he was going to kiss me. But he only leaned in to read the thermometer. The door behind him slammed open, and he murmured, “It’s about time he got here.”

“How is it? Has it gone down a bit?”

“Seven degrees in one minute. I’ll move him to the room. Oh, can you get a bath towel for me from the cabinet over there? Two or three for the bed.”

“I should have brought a nurse,” said the man, opening the cupboard as he thrust his stethoscope into his pocket. Tounoin tried to pick me up, but I said I could walk myself. Both of them got irritated at me, thinking that I was just embarrassed. But the problem was the bed that I was brought to… two months ago, I was raped in this bed… but I couldn’t very well say that to Tonouin, who had taken care of me like a mother, nor to the doctor. After all, I don’t have a place to go home to, and I can’t look for an apartment until I get better.

“I’ll give you some glucose. You can still give him water. Basically the only medicine he needs is water and rest. Let him have some porridge when he has the energy to eat. I’ll come back tomorrow to see how it goes,” said the doctor, who left quickly after finishing his diagnosis.

I had enough energy to talk, “Are you related to that doctor?”

“He’s my uncle,” was the reply. I tried to tell him that there were pajamas in my bag, but he ignored me.

Instead, he pushed the dial button on the phone he pulled out from under the bed, but I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. “Hello, this is Kei. No, from Fujimi… please tell him it will be a little while before I can come back. No, I have a guest.” As I listened I felt his voice soften, and it occurred to me that he had a family, too. I hadn’t thought about it before…

When I woke up after a good night’s sleep I felt much better. I put on my underwear and pajamas, went to the bathroom on my own, which also made me feel better. My precious violin had been placed on the shelf above the audio components. When I told Tounoin about my unfortunate situation, he expressed his deepest sympathy and said I could stay in his place for the time being.

“I can’t annoy you any more than I already have,” I said. He had taken care of me and slept on the floor so I could use his bed.

“I see…” he said, his tone of voice sounding slightly angry. “I don’t think it’s annoying.”

“Well, I think it will still be two or three more days until I can get everything sorted out. So I’m sorry for that.”

“Yeah. But there’s no rush, you can stay here until you have the energy to play the violin. Conductor’s orders.” I laughed, and Tounoin laughed too. He’s a handsome man, but with his usual expressionless face he looks dour and misanthropic. However when he smiles, he looks very youthful and friendly.

—-

It was the third day I had occupied Tounoin’s bed. I had been thinking that tomorrow I could go out and look for an apartment, but I fell asleep… I woke up in the middle of the night because of a faint sound of music, just a murmur. 'That is… that’s Tannhäuser,' I thought, the song that filled up this room when it was at full volume on the night two months ago, when Tounoin forcibly embraced me! ‘Oh my god!’ I thought, and felt like jumping to my feet. But my body stayed still like it was bound up by rope. No, I was holding my breath like a rabbit who had heard the snort of a wolf, who was stalking him. I stifled a gasp, then fearfully opened my eyes. 

The room was dark, illuminated only by moonlight streaming in through the window, where the blinds were lowered… Tounoin was in his usual place, looking like his usual self on the other side of the room: facing the console cross-legged with his back to the bed. The sound of Tannhäuser was leaking from his headphones. The broad shoulders of his back made me wince, and inwardly I took an escape stance. Tounoin raised his arms and folded his hands behind his neck, then slowly curled his body forward. He stayed like that for quite some time. I could only see his curled back as I secretly watched him, fighting the memories that came back to me no matter how hard I tried to push them away. I don’t want to remember, but why is it that inconvenient memories are so vivid? I was attacked and raped while this song was blaring at maximum volume… the feeling of his thing going into me, the pain of it tearing my ass and the sensation of my internal organs being pushed out of my mouth when he was penetrating me. The uncountable minutes of humiliation, feeling crazy, embarrassed, terrible… I felt unbearably miserable, I really want to be able to erase this from my memory! Of course I didn’t want to do it… but I had gasped and moaned, and he was saying, “I love you”... no way! I wish I was lying, but the facts are what they are. 

I don’t know why he’s listening to that song, but before I knew it the sound stopped, and the silence made me choke up even more. The sound of my heartbeat throbbed in my ears as I pressed my head into the pillow, and I was worried Tounoin would hear it. I swallowed hard… how long was the silence going to last? Tounoin, motionless as a stone, murmured faintly, “Yuuki… Yuuki…” in a piercing whisper. Then he took off the headphones and stood up. I shut my eyes quickly. I felt a presence approach the side of the bed, and the raggedness of his breathing was stifling. I tried my best to pretend to be asleep. Tounoin seemed to be staring down at me. “If… if he’s willing…” he said quietly.

I decided what I would do and how I would do it, but I was confused. If he comes at me like he did that other time, I’m going to punch him in the face and run away, but… can I do it? ‘I will!’ I shouted at myself. Tounoin is a good man, and he saved my life, but that’s one thing and this is another! It has to be different! Tounoin was still standing there. The tension in my throat was so great that I felt my face begin to flush, thanks to the struggle to stifle screaming and the feeling of wanting to leap out of bed. 

I thought I had reached my limit when I heard his baritone voice say, “I’m sorry…” and he softly ruffled my hair. I opened my eyes when I heard the footsteps move away from me and the sound of blankets being spread out. Tounoin was lying with his back to me on a blanket on the wooden floor, instead of his bed that he had given up for me. He knew. He knew that I was awake, that I was curious about him. He knew I was afraid that he might do something, even though Tounoin had sworn never to force me and was keeping his vow. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but I was scared to do that because it would give him hope… if I made him want to try again, when he was trying to give up like a man…. well, honestly I was afraid of Tounoin. Our friendship was built on the thin ice of his self-control, and if I take one careless step and it cracks, I will be swallowed by the flames of his passion that are still burning underneath. I knew that for sure from that afternoon in July.

 I also knew that I couldn’t allow myself to succumb to pleasure in the arms of a man; I couldn’t forgive myself after my body confessed itself unintentionally. He had hugged me with arms that were free of lust and apologized. I had said ‘I understand, but I’m not going to be in a romantic relationship with a man no matter how much he loves me.’ He accepted it when I said those words, and then we settled down into the normal friendship I had hoped for… but the way Tounoin was fighting with himself now, the bitter battle between his true feelings and the pretense he showed me tonight, that was the truth. He only put on the ‘just a friend’ act for me, a false image that twisted his true feelings. I knew I had to snap out of it with an ‘I’m sorry,’ which I was able to say by pushing down my emotions through reason, but it was much more painful than I had expected. He said that we would go find an apartment tomorrow, and that was the scream of his suppressed emotions. I knew I shouldn’t have stayed here… I like Tounoin as a person, but I can’t accept him the way he wants me to. I’m like a fish laying in front of a cat, ready to be eaten. I can’t let him do this to himself anymore.

The next day we took a cab to the real estate office. I said we could walk, but Tounoin was adamant, so we drove. We actually went to four real estate agencies, but couldn’t find anything that I liked so decided to try again another day. While we were out I also went to the school I worked at, which was two stops away by train. The vice principal was there, and he expressed his deepest sympathies for my situation and gave me a new ID card after I had requested him to reissue it over the phone. I immediately went to the city hall, got my seal registration card and went to the bank. Tounoin asked the branch manager to check my bank account in a calm and unobtrusive tone, and got the answer that I should wait for a few days. The bank book with a balance of 637 yen was quickly reissued with a single three-sentence stamp, since he showed his passport and acted as my guarantor. It seemed my body was still not up to full condition since I fell asleep in the cab on the way home, which worried Tounoin a little. 

As soon as we got back Tounoin pushed me to go to bed, and then Ishida-san came to visit suddenly. It seems that Fujimi’s caretaker was very worried about me, since I had been missing since the fire. He said, “Well, I got a call from my landlord as soon as I came back from my vacation. He asked me if I knew where you had gone, so I called your family but they replied that you left them on the 12th. I didn’t say anything about the fire, I just told your sister that I had urgent business for Fujimi. Since the police assured us that nobody died in the fire, I didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily.” 

Come to think of it, Ishida-san was my guarantor for my apartment contract. “Thank you for everything,” I bowed my head from the bed. “I was going to call my sister after I found a new apartment,” I added, “But Tounoin didn’t think I should mention the mishap with the fire. It’s not really a nice thing to talk about, after all.” Ishida-san nodded in agreement. 

“It’s a good thing you have shelter right now. How is your cold?”

“I'm getting better. I’ve been troubling Tounoin-san a lot.”

“So, are you going to find an apartment?"

“It’s hard to find a cheap place where you can also practice violin.”

Ishida laughed, “I hope the landlord decides to rebuild, but he is getting old. I did hear that he will be compensated for the spread of the fire."

“That’s right, even though the landlord didn’t start the fire.”

“Well, that’s about it. So…” Ishida-san rummaged through the bag he brought with him. “There’s not much in there, but be careful when you open it,” he said, placing an envelope next to my lap.

“Oh no, no, you shouldn’t have.”

“It’s not much, just a gift. This is the kind of situation for it, after all. And you don’t need to give anything back in return; we’ve known each other for a long time, even if it doesn’t feel like it.” He smiled at me and sat up. “Are you going to stay here until you find an apartment?”

I was about to reply ‘no,’ but Tounoin said “Yes.” 

“That’s good. I’ll see you later, then. Is rehearsal still off for tomorrow?”

“No, I’ll go.”

“Oh, yes. Well, we can’t have rehearsal without Morimura-chan, and Tounoin-kun isn’t going to attend either. You don’t have to force yourself.” 

After Nico-chan left, looking busy, Tounoin and I had a disagreement about where I would stay until I found an apartment.

Tounoin said, “I’ll be staying at my parents’ place from tonight, so you can take your time finding an apartment.”

“That’s…! No, I’ll go to a hotel.”

“That would be a waste of money,” I choked up… it’s true that if the bank doesn’t figure out my situation, I’m penniless.

“But I can’t just kick you out of your own place…”

“It’s okay, I should be dutiful to my sponsors sometimes, after all.”

“Where’s your hometown?”

“Seijo.”

 Wow, a high-class residential area! “But then, won’t it take you nearly two hours to get here?”

“Well, yes.”

“I can’t bother you like that.”

“I told you, it’s not a bother.”

“But it’s definitely inconvenient.”

“It’s about time I slept on a decent futon anyway.”

“Well, let’s switch. I’ll sleep on the floor tonight.”

“You’re a sick man.”

“I’m better now!”

“Then why don’t you go for a run around the town?”

We were dancing around the subject, he knew it and I knew it. Tounoin wants to get out before his emotions get the better of him. I can’t make the man who saved my life leave his own apartment. But to hold him back would be to continue tormenting him… 'Oh, righteousness or humanity!' I thought, and then I realized that it wasn’t out of duty or courtesy that I wanted to keep him around, is it? It’s just my stubbornness, and that I don’t want to admit that I’m actually afraid of him….

“Okay,” I said. “I feel really bad for you, but if it makes you feel better…” 

Tounoin laughed with a huff, “I’m telling you that I don’t think you can sleep well with me around, so I’m removing myself.”

I was pissed off that he pointed out the truth so bluntly, “I trust you, don’t I?”

“Do you?” 

Now I was really annoyed, “So why don’t you sleep with me tonight?” I thought I’d lost it as soon as the words came out of my mouth, but I couldn’t unsay it. “If you don’t want to sleep on the floor, then sleep next to me. I don’t mind,” I told him, confident he would refuse.

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” he said with a sly smile.

“Then let’s go with that.” He smiled at me as I looked up at him, feeling like I had dug my own grave.

“I’m a better sleeper than Morimura-san.”

—

… Tounoin’s daily routine is that of somebody who is young and doesn’t have a regular job (I think, I never asked him about it), but is very precise. He wakes up at seven in the morning and has bread and coffee for breakfast. Then, he runs the washing machine and cleans the room with a rented mop. When he's done, he takes out a book or two from the cabinet full of scores, spreads them on his knees and studies them. He wasn’t playing recordings this time, but apparently just reading the music in his head; I had heard that only geniuses of Seiji Ozawa’s level could do that sort of thing without the assistance of an instrument. Usually you play piano or something at least. Conductors use the score, a book of music that contains all the parts of the orchestra (brass, woodwinds, strings, percussion), and each page has all the staves needed for the instrumental parts. The conductor’s job is to understand the flow of each part and how it interacts with the harmony in the complex combination as a whole. To be blunt, it was a task that my mind could never handle, but Tounoin apparently can construct it completely in his head. I knew he was a true genius. But of course, he didn’t seem to be doing it effortlessly either. He was doing it in his usual manner, with the score on his knees, but the level of tension and concentration was completely different from when he was reading with the recordings. He doesn’t talk to anyone, but I feel like I need to refrain from even breathing…

He does this from around eight o’clock, sometimes until the afternoon, without taking a break, and then would take a nap. After sleeping like a dead man for an hour, he would put on recordings in addition to reading the scores. Then he had dinner delivered from a restaurant (today while waiting for the food, he remembered the laundry and went to put it in the dryer), and after he finishes eating, goes back to playing recordings and score study.  He finishes up around twelve o’clock, takes a nightly bath, and goes to bed. He doesn’t have any sort of nightcap or alcohol; he was a man who lived a life completely immersed in music. 

I looked at the clock every five minutes, waiting for midnight to come. Well, maybe waiting wasn’t quite the right word, it was more like being in a state of trepidation. It was a little past midnight when Tounoin took off his headphones and turned the components off. He turned around to see if I was asleep (of course I pretended to be), turned off the light and walked past my side of the bed to the back door. Incidentally, this apartment is very well designed, except for the fact that the room isn’t square in shape. The first thing you see when you walk in is the audio equipment with five speakers that look like they cost a million yen. When you remove your shoes, you can see a large window at the other end of the room, and when you step inside the flooring is cork. The bed is at the far end of the room, and next to the double-sized bed there is a row of doors on the wall. The three closest to the entrance are cabinets full of musical scores. The fourth one leads to a cabin in the back, which houses a bathroom with a Western-style toilet, a storage area with laundry facilities, and a dining/kitchen area, all crammed into one functional space. 

After finishing his nightly studies, Tounoin went into the captain’s room for his usual bath, but he didn’t come out for a long time, while I waited and waited pretending to be asleep. He usually doesn’t take long baths, but it was over thirty minutes at least. Tired of nervously waiting, I actually dozed off instead of pretending, waking up when I felt the bed sink. Tounoin had laid down in the empty spot by the wall. He fidgeted a bit behind me with his back to me, but he soon quieted down. Then came the sign of someone who was satisfied with the comfort of sleeping. I couldn’t help but listen attentively to the sound of Tounoin’s breathing less than a meter away. If it didn��t switch to the sound of deeper sleep, I wouldn’t be able to sleep peacefully myself… but it wasn’t long before I started to hear his breathing slow and fall into a regular pattern. For now I was relieved, and was ready to fall asleep too. But… my mind was still racing and I couldn’t quiet it. It wasn’t that I wasn’t tired, but I hadn’t been out of the apartment in days, and even if my body is tired my mind is so sharp that it refuses to sleep. And then the more impatient I am to sleep, the more I hear Tounoin’s sleeping breath, the smell of his shampoo, and other things poking at my consciousness that brought back memories from that night and afternoon. This man who suddenly revealed himself as a passionate person, who attacked me and stole me away, when I had only known him as an impudent and calm conductor… this man who plucked my pride and twisted my flesh into a type of affair I’d never known… this man with wide shoulders, a broad chest and strong arms, that held me captive and dominated me, stopping me from challenging him with his strength…

For a moment, I remembered the feeling of something thick and hot ramming into my ass. I twitched, and at the same time I realized that my penis was on the verge of rising. Why is my body in such a state of rebellion against my will? How was it that a  single, forced experience made me a homosexual who wants a man? But… but… smelling Tounoin’s scent… his presence… is what causes this change in my body. He already understood, I convinced him that I can’t be his lover, and he has not laid a finger on me as promised. I...I...I… stiffened at the sound of a sigh behind me.

“What’s wrong? Can’t sleep?” The sleepy voice had a faint hint of a teasing smile. The bed creaked as he turned over, and then Tounoin fell asleep with a swoosh. 

‘Damn it!’ I thought. I was supposed to be worried that he would break the chains of his reason! Yes, I was. He really wanted to have sex with me, but out of concern that he couldn’t keep his vows he was going to stay at his parents’ house. Because I hinted at that, his vain counterattack was this accusation that I didn’t trust him. The rest was just saying words for words’ sake, but… okay, I’ll buy it. I’ll buy it. I’m determined to see how much more of this you can take, until you give up! But if you lose it and come after me, I’ll laugh my ass off and ask what happened to your vows! Yeah, that’s right, I’m going to laugh about it. Once my mind was made up, all I had to do was sleep. Oh yeah, I’ll laugh it up. He’s going to get a real good night’s sleep…

I woke up twice in the night. Why is that? ‘I’m a better sleeper than you…’ get out of here with that kind of joke!

—

I woke up in a daze. It was cool and chilly, and I nuzzled my nose into the warmth in front of my face. I heard, “Good morning.”

“Mmm…” I replied softly. Huh? 

The warmth was the chest of Tounoin’s pajamas, and I had slept hugging him! I tried to sit up, but he pulled my head back and said, “Now do you understand? I have confidence in my ability to reason,” reminding me of what I had thought before I fell asleep. I steeled myself to prepare for an escape. 

“Yes, but you’re not a good sleeper, are you?”

 Tounoin laughed, “I’ll be as careful as possible.” Now I’m sure you’ll be sleeping with me as long as I’m here. Don’t start barking now that your tail is out, wolf… I’m perfectly fine with it. But the AC is so low in this room that it feels good to be together… I’m in trouble… I fell asleep again and was woken up for lunch, and I felt embarrassed. 

In the afternoon the two of us went out to look for an apartment again, but we didn’t find anything that day either. I withdrew my requirement for being able to practice the violin. I was satisfied with my modest request to be able to afford the rent, and making sure it was in Fujimi-cho, not too far from the station. But I couldn’t even find one that would satisfy those modest wishes. Most of the apartments in Fujimi-cho are bedroom-focused, and the emphasis on family units seemed to be a bottleneck. I didn’t mind living in an apartment with one or more baths, but the rent was accordingly expensive…

 I had a Fujimi rehearsal in the evening, but I was tired from visiting real estate agencies. But I had promised Ishida-san that I would attend, so I started preparing in the evening. I realized that if I don’t play for a day, I can’t move my fingers the following day. Aside from the right hand that uses the bow, the left hand has to play on the strings almost of its own accord. To make up for a week’s absence of practicing, I spent three hours before heading to the Civic Center. But… fuck! This is just Allegro! Why can’t I move my fingers better than this?

“Morimura-san.”

Oh, I’m depressed, I missed it again. And it’s in such an easy position…

“Morimura-san!” He shouted in my ear. I looked up to see Tounoin looking down calmly. 

“Go ahead, I’ll be on my way shortly.”

“Are your clothes OK? If you want to change…”

“No, thank you. It’s fine, it’s fine.” I only had two sets of clothes in my travel bag, and the ones I was wearing at the moment were procured by Tounoin because he thought it would be inconvenient to keep wearing the same clothes. He has good taste.

“So, we should leave soon. We can stop at Fujimi on the way home for dinner.”

“Yeah,” I nodded and thought to myself, is he acting like my guardian? Yeah… he is.

—

Fujimi’s summer vacation lasted ten days, and I returned on the second rehearsal after the vacation. I was escorted (or so it appeared) by Tounoin. We stepped into the main conference room of the Civic Center and got down to business as usual. I took out the folding chairs from the storage area and arranged them, took out the folding table and arranged it, then the tuner and checked the batteries… Tounoin helped me quietly, and when he was done he disappeared to somewhere else. 

The first person to arrive was Ishida-san with his double bass, “Well, you’ve come out after all.” Apparently he had come to set up the venue in my stead. Everybody else seemed to come very quickly as well, and when they came up to talk to me they all knew about the fire in my apartment. I shouldn’t have felt annoyed that they were worried about me, but I also felt embarrassed, so I just said, “Thank you” and “It’s okay.” Kawashima-san also came to give her condolences.

“I was worried when I heard from my mother that you called me. Where on earth did you go…?” as she said this, the beautiful flutist looked at me with a puzzled expression. She knows about my relationship with Tounoin, except she stopped short of saying anything out loud.

I took the initiative, “Yes, actually, I’m staying at Tounoin-san’s right now,” Ishida-san knew about it, anyway. I added firmly, “In a clean and respectable way, as a housemate.”

Kawashima ran her white fingers through her pretty hair, “So are you still following the trend?”

“Of course not! I’m not gay!” 

Kawashima-san cut me off, chuckling, “I’m sorry, I have to admit I have a little grudge against you, so I felt like teasing.” It was a one-way love triangle between me, Kawashima-san and Tounoin. I was in love with Kawashima-san, she fell in love with Tounoin at first sight, and Tounoin fell in love with me… then I was dumped by Kawashima-san, she was rejected by Tounoin, and of course I have no intention of becoming a lover to a man. But it was a joking manner of resentment. After all, she’s the one that keeps trying to get me and Tounoin together. She seems to think homosexual couples are ‘trendy,’ but you know… a man and a man bedding together is just an awful sight. 

That evening we were supposed to be finishing up Finlandia, which we’ve been working on since last month… I took a break, and hadn’t touched my violin for a week. I looked at Igarashi-kun, the student cellist, and thought, ‘Well… let's see.’ I clapped my hands to get his attention. “Since everybody seems to be ready, can we try playing the part together? Strings, let’s do all the strings together and all the winds together. Timpani, please join the winds. Kaizuka-san, please take the lead of the wind section.” 

The principal oboe raised her hand to gather the other winds, and I joined the string group, taking advantage of the rattling and rearranging. “Ichiyama-san,” I called the second violin leader. “I’m sorry, but I need you to be the leader today.”

“But Concertmaster, why are you stepping down?”

“I haven’t played for a week, so my fingers are completely rusty. I want to get back in shape before Tounoin-san gets here. Sorry to be so selfish.” Ichiyama, who was an accounting manager of a construction company in the next town, nodded seriously. 

“I heard you were sick in bed with a cold. How are you feeling now?”

“Better, thanks.”

Igarashi-kun smiled at me as I joined the circle. He was especially happy, but everyone was already tired of practicing the monotonous long notes. The winds began to play and Ichiyama-san frowned. “I can’t hear very well,” he said. For the next forty minutes, until eight o’clock, we concentrated on uniting the string section.

“Stop, stop! We have to listen to each other more. If the string parts are not played like a single instrument, it will be more disjointed when we put it together with the winds. Then, let’s take it from bar 32.” The group with the timpani added to the woodwinds and brass seemed to be working hard to create the right harmony, playing and stopping. Playing and stopping. I had been able to instruct them on the right way to practice.

“Sorry,” said Nico-Chan, scratching his head. Ishida-san, who held the title of ‘Fujimi Citizen’s Symphony Orchestra Caretaker,’ had been sentenced by his wife to have his instrument taken away when he almost destroyed his main business, Mozart coffee shop, because he was so devoted to Fujimi. As a relief measure for the situation when we lost our bass player, we won her pardon so he could return to playing after almost ten years of being benched. He couldn’t help that he couldn’t produce a solid sound, but Ichiyama-san had been a friend of Ishida-san’s since the formation of Fujimi, and therefore had a relationship that allowed them to complain freely. Ishida-san apologized and tried his best to meet the order of playing ‘crisply’ in a serious manner. This was one of the things I liked about Fujimi, how in the family-like atmosphere warnings and advice were exchanged very naturally. We were all getting better together while having fun.

“Morimura-chan,” Ichiyama-san’s voice made me turn around. “You’ve got a lot of tension in your shoulders.”

“Oh, yes,” I lowered my violin and did some exercise with my shoulders. I’m getting really stiff.

“So, let’s start at measure forty-eight,” It’s really wonderful to have such colleagues, I thought. Oh, I’m in tune… yes, it’s going well. Eventually, at exactly the right time, Tounoin walked through the door after his five-minute observation and climbed up on the podium. I wondered where he had gone off to; I had thought he was going to be there for the earlier part of the rehearsal since he came over with me. Then I realized something: could it be that he did it for me? I didn’t mind at all, but it's true that I didn’t want it to be obvious that we had come to rehearsal together. 

—

I was packing up to leave after Tounoin’s usual, ‘We’re done’ when Igarashi-kun came up to me, looking like he wanted to talk. 

“So I heard that you were laid up for a while,” Igarashi is a current student in the cello department of the local music university, who started school the same year I graduated. He’s a cute guy who looks up to me for some reason. He’s talented, motivated, and cheerful, and also tends to be the ‘mood-maker’ in Fujimi.

“I caught a cold when I got stuck without a place to stay,” I replied, “But I’m all better now. Why?” I opened the floor for him.

“Actually…” he scratched his head, “The thing is… I’ve been ordered by the orchestra director to transcribe some music. It’s for a program in next month’s school festival, and it’s due tomorrow. I gathered my friends and we worked hard, but we still have a third of the score left to do.”

“Haha… what’s the piece?”

“A symphony composed by Kitagawa, a senior student in the composition department. It’s long and complicated.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come to rehearsal tonight.”

“If I didn’t take a break from it, I’d be dead by now. I’ve been up all night for two days and still haven’t finished.”

“So are you trying to get another cat’s paw?” Igarashi rubbed the back of his head as I talked.

“Sempai, please. I’ll get you midnight snacks and breakfast!” 

Transcribing music is literally copying music, but not the easy way with the photocopier. What Igarashi and his friends were doing was creating parts from the conductor’s score, the music that represents the entire piece. However, for each player in the orchestra the score is inconvenient, since all the notes of the instruments are written in the music, and each page only consists of four to six measures per page, requiring frequent page turns. So for the performers, a part must be made from the score, a transcription of the part from the general score, and it must be done for each instrument; for first violin the first violin part, oboe for the oboe, percussion for percussion. Of course, for major works by popular composers such as Mozart, Beethoven and Toshiro Mutsu, the publishers give you both the score and parts if you buy them (or if there are copyright restrictions, you can rent them for a fee) — or copy them if you can get away with it. However, the ones that Igarashi and his colleagues are working on are by a student composer, with only the original score to work with…

In other words, the only option was to take the score and write out the parts, which I had done many times. The ‘Freude Orchestra’ was formed as a music college club, and had a tradition of playing newly composed pieces by fellow students mixed in with regular concert programming. In Fujimi, whenever I needed to make my own arrangements for missing parts, I was the one to do the transcribing (Nico could do the arranging as well, but as a busy coffee shop owner he usually didn’t have time to do it). So I know firsthand the difficulty Igarashi and the others are facing. 

“Okay, I’ll help you out,” I answered. “Where have you been working on it?”

Igarashi looked relieved, “In my apartment, we only have the string parts left to do.”

“Is it a good piece?”

“It’s not bad. Mayuzumi said it was a great work, but…”

“Hahaha!” I realized that the only people left in the practice room were me, Igarashi and Tounoin, and everything but the chair I was sitting on had been put away. I told the tall conductor, “I’m going to go with Igarashi-kun to help him with some transcribing right now, so please go home first.” He stared at me for a moment and nodded. He quickly left the room. “I’m staying with him for right now, since I haven’t been able to find a reasonable apartment,” I explained.

“Oh…” Igarashi nodded. After that, I felt like he was secretly biting back a laugh, but that was probably my paranoia. “Well, you really saved my life. I was wondering what I would do if Morimura-san refused me.” 

I finally escaped, didn’t I? But while listening to Igarashi’s smiling voice, I was thinking of how Tounoin’s back looked somewhat depressed as he walked away. It’s not a bad feeling to have somebody worry about you, but he’s being overly protective. I’m a full-grown man, I can take care of myself. I don’t need a guardian anymore.

—-

Igarashi’s apartment was on the third floor of a newer reinforced concrete building, just a few blocks from my old place that had burned down. The room, which was about six tatami mats with a kitchen, was fairly clean, and two exhausted-looking coworkers were waiting for Igarashi to return with his helper.  The windows were open and the air was a bit stuffy, but there was no fan running. A pile of staff paper scattered about the room was the reason why they couldn’t have any inadvertent breeze.

“This is Kikuchi on clarinet and Oyama on piano.” Kikuchi was a small man with pouty lips that looked like the type of person who would play clarinet. Both of them were dressed in running shirts and pants, and their eyes were red, their faces full of stubble and fatigue.

“I’m Morimura. How many more pages do you have to do?” The symphony, titled Yuguna, is a large work with a performance time of fifty minutes, filled with waves of sixteenth notes mixed with thirty-second notes in modulation after modulation, a characteristic of modern music. I could tell from a glance of the score that it was a difficult piece. However, I could see a glimpse of talent in the unique melodic quality of the phrases, which was probably why it was chosen as the piece for the Freude Orchestra’s regular concert. But...I put my face close to the handwritten copy. Is that a C? Or is it a D?...D apparently… it’s hard to tell.

“It’s hard enough to read, isn’t it?”

“I think you should probably re-write the whole score while you’re at it,” I said, and the atmosphere quieted down. I realized that I had lost my mind. Damn it, these people…

“Well, I guess Kitagawa-kun will conduct, so I’ll just leave it at that.”

 I tried to recover my position, but then one of them said, “Yoshida is the senior in the conducting department, he’s going to conduct it…”

“So…”

“I’ll take care of the conductor’s score.” Igarashi’s face lit up as I said it with a sacrificial look of resignation.

“I’ll do the second violin,” Kikuchi said, “Who’s gonna take cello?”

“I don’t mind doing the cello part,” Oyama said, staring at the copy of the score, “Just the cello.”

“How much time do we have?”

 I flipped through the part, trying to assess how long I thought it would take, when Igarashi said in a small voice, “I promised to have it done by nine o’clock…”

“... in the morning, right?”

“Hahaha, well…”

“So we’ve only got ten hours! What are you waiting for? Staff paper! Pens!” There was no point in transcribing music if you can’t make it accurate and legible. And most of the time, you have to race against the clock.

I started with the first violin part, one of the two that I had been assigned. There is only one conductor’s score, but there are eighteen violins in a full orchestra. Priority was given to the many. I wrote in the note heads as fast as I could, going back and adding the stems after I had written a few measures' worth. Then I wrote the accidentals as needed — oops, it’s in B-flat from here. Damn it, I don’t want anybody to get keystroke from… for moving chords around so much. It’s a six-bar break, not five. Oh, is it natural or sharp? No, it’s natural. Hey, is that an E or an F or… uh… 

“Igarashi-kun,” I called out to him from halfway across the table, where he was focused on his own work.

Without looking up, Igarashi placed something in front of me. It was dice.

“Is this..?”

“If it’s an even number, it’s E.”

“So you want me to roll the dice to decide which pitch it is? That’s random…” I mumbled, and began to examine the chords to try and draw a conclusion from their spelling.

“Iga, give me the dice,” said Kikuchi, who was behind me using a beer container as a desk. Igarashi tossed him the dice.

“I need them too,” said Oyama, who was also using a makeshift desk next to me.

“What, you’re all doing it that way? You’re lousy transcribers, aren’t you?”

Kikuchi muttered to me as he rolled the dice for Oyama, “I’m sure Morimura-san will figure out why soon enough.”

I knew that if I had to guess and interpret every chord, I would never make the deadline in time. Damn it, if it’s difficult, it’s probably a great piece. I don’t get this music at all! I started working on it about ten o’clock, and it was past midnight when I finished the violin part with the measure numbers written in. I skipped checking the music at this point and started transcribing the whole score. If there were any mistakes, they could find them in rehearsal and if not, then it’ll be what it is. After all, I had to finish this thick book of sheet music by eight o’clock at the latest… But let’s be real, this is impossible! It’s physically not possible to do in seven hours what it would take three people like Igarashi and his team two days and nights to do. But we had to get whatever we could done. As I wrote the names of the parts on the second sheet of the score, I called out to Igarashi, “The piano parts are done. I can’t finish the score by nine o’clock, but I’ll do as much as possible.”

“You’ve finished the violin part already?”

“Really? Wow, that’s fast!” Igarashi picked up the completed part. “I can’t believe this is handwritten! Morimura-san, you could make a living as a transcriber!”

“What? Which one? Wow, that’s great.”

“That’s true, the first violinists are lucky.”

“Ah…” I didn’t have time to be happy even if they praised me. Okay, brass is done. Next is…. but it’s so hot, even with the windows open, because there’s no breeze coming in. The rest of them were wearing only their underwear; they had told me to take mine off too, and I would feel better. So I took my shirt off, though I wasn’t wearing underwear so I was only naked on top, but it’s only guys here anyway. 

I was writing out the harp section on page 43 when I heard, “Oh, it’s finally done!” Oyama exhaled a deep breath and suddenly fell back onto the tatami floor. “It’s already four o’clock and I’m starving,” he said and rummaged through the bag from the convenience store that was left there.

“There’s a ramen if you want it,” replied Igarashi, still moving his pen.

“If you make it for me, I’ll eat it.”

“What about you, Morimura-san?” He asked me. I was about to answer ‘no’ when I remembered that I had skipped dinner, and I was almost at the limit of my energy with my stiff shoulders.

“I’ll eat. I missed dinner.”

“So you want me to make two?”

“No, just one.” I quickly sipped the cup of ramen while reading the rest of the score, and returned to my writing. As I started the fiftieth page, Kikuchi announced that he was done with his work. As soon as he finished his ramen, he flopped down beside Oyama, who had fallen asleep, and he did the same.

“So depressed that they’re done already,” muttered Igarashi. Oyama was snoring, Kikuchi had a peaceful sleeping breath, and the sound of Igarashi and my pens running on the paper… the smell of ramen and the sweat of tired young people… I noticed a cool breeze coming through the window, and when I raised my eyes it was light outside. I breathed in the brief freshness that comes between the tropical night and a hot day. Now only a hundred pages to go.

When Igarashi packed his and the other’s finished bunches of parts into paper bags and left the apartment, I was still wrestling with a job that would take another six hours. The sun was on the way up. The hot room was somehow even hotter; sweat dripped from my hair as I bent over the staff paper, so I wrapped a towel around my head. It trickled down my bare chest and armpits, even on the back of my hand. Sweat gushes out in beads no matter how much I wipe it off, making the pen slip in my hand. I took a short break when I had just started the 100th page. In order to reduce the remaining 50 pages as much as possible, I did one more page in the three minutes I was waiting for the cup o’noodles to be ready, but it took me longer than I thought it would, and the ramen turned into udon. 

As I slurped down the bloated noodles, I thought about how I was too good-natured. I felt like an idiot for staying up all night on a job that has nothing to do with me or Fujimi… speaking of which, I wonder if Tounoin was worried about me. But at this hour, it would be an imposition to make a phone call, and I don’t even know his phone number in the first place… well, it should be ok, I already mentioned that I was doing the transcription, and he should know that it’s a time-consuming job. I finished the soup, drank two glasses of Aquarius to rehydrate myself, and took up the pen to resume work. Ahh, my hands hurt, my eyes are tired… but if I rested now, I wouldn’t be able to finish the job. Give me strength… I wrote the last symbol on the last page, and the long, long job was done. Eighteen hours of work! My fingers were so stiff they creaked when I tried to put the pen down. I took off my glasses, which felt like they were burrowing into my nostrils, and placed them on top of the finished score. I was tired~

Igarashi and his friends had not returned yet. Come to think of it, he said he had rehearsal in the evening. It’s hard for the underclassmen when they’re overworked by their seniors… I was going to just leave my score behind and go back to Tounoin’s place, but when I laid down to stretch my back — which was stiff as a board — I didn’t want to get up again. I decided to sleep while looking after the house until Igarashi returned. Feeling my tired body falling asleep, I patted myself on the back for a job well done. 

—

I smelled food and drink. The sound of voices, sometimes loud and sometimes guttural. It sounded like I was in the middle of a drinking party. I turned over in my sleep, thinking it was too noisy.

“Oh, Morimura-san, are you awake?” I heard Igarashi’s voice say, and felt him come over to look at me. I pretended to still be asleep. They were probably celebrating being done with the transcription, but right now I wanted to sleep more than drink.

“Morimura-san, we have Oden. Hey, Morimura-san.” I didn’t want it, just let me sleep.

“No, he won’t wake up,” I heard Igarashi say to his friends.

“Ah, well he’s a great person. Did you see the score? He rewrote it down to the last page. I admire him,” Kikuchi replied.

“He’s a very serious person, he never makes mistakes on the violin. He practices like a pro, I bet.”

“And he’s cute, too…” Oyama’s voice said, “I didn’t notice it until I saw him sleeping just now. So amazing.” His speech was slurred, so clearly he was drunk.

“Hey, Oyama, don’t be weird,” Igarashi said with a laugh.

“What do you mean ‘weird’? Beethoven and Karajan had male lovers. Genius lives in homosexuality,” after making this startling counterargument, he seemed to stand up.

“Hey Oyama, sit down,” Igarashi said.

“Hehe, just look at him,” he said, and inwardly I frowned as I felt liquored breath on my face. “The more I look at him, the more attractive he is… so cute. Haha, he has such a beautiful chest… and smooth skin… and perky nipples.”

“Hey if Morimura-san wakes up he’s going to kick your ass!” Kikuchi yelled. Oh, I’ll kick his ass alright.

“Beethoven, Karajan… why are you making up that kind of bullshit?”

“Someday you’re gonna get killed, saying that kind of stuff.”

“It’s not bullshit, and I’m a genius. When I see a guy like this I get so horny… he’s so sexy...” The reason I didn’t take action until the person speaking slammed into me was because I was just too tired to bother moving.

“Whoa!” It wasn’t me who screamed, but Igarashi and Kikuchi. My mouth was blocked by the boozy lips stuck to my face. As I struggled, Oyama gasped and said, “You look so sexy, ahh…” as he groped my chest and stomach.

“You idiot! Stop it! Stop it!”

“Oyama, goddamn it, stop!” The two of them were yelling and trying to pull Oyama off of me. 

I twisted Oyama’s ear, which he grabbed with his struggling hand, then I slapped him as hard as I could in the face.“You perverted son of a bitch!” I shouted and glared at him. 

Oyama looked at me soberly, “This… you! You hit me! I’ll fuck you up!!”

“Oyama! That’s enough!”

“I’m sorry Morimura-san, so sorry!”

“Dammit, let me have a shot at him!” Oyama yelled, and still tried to grab at me while being pinned down by Igarashi and Kikuchi. I almost punched him, but I thought twice about it when I noticed a poster of some chamber music group on the wall behind Oyama. That’s right, I’m a violinist, and my hands are my most important tool. I looked around and saw a bottle of wine. I grabbed it in my other hand and swung it over Oyama’s head; he thought I was going to crack his skull, and Igarashi held up his hands in surprise. But what I threw at his head was… alcohol. After I emptied the contents of the bottle on Oyama’s head, I threw the bottle down.

“There, I’ve cooled you down a bit, asshole!” I spat at him between my clenched teeth. I glanced at the three rigid men and put on the clothes I had taken off. Damn it, if I had known I’d get mixed up in something like this, I wouldn’t have agreed to do anything. I stepped into my sneakers and opened the door.

“Oh, Morimura-san, please wait!” Igarashi dashed after me, but I ignored him. “Sorry, I’m so sorry! I’m really sorry this happened after you helped me so much. I’m sorry!” Igarashi was crying. “When he gets drunk he turns into a monster, but he usually doesn’t do that sort of thing! I’ve never seen him do anything like that before.”

“So are you saying it’s my fault?” Igarashi fell silent for a moment when I sprayed him with the cold anger that was inside me. I looked at him sideways. Igarashi followed me and wept with a crumpled face. I sighed and stopped. “...I know it’s not your fault. I can’t tell you not to worry about it, though.”

“I’m sorry…!” Igarashi squeaked out and sobbed. “Oh I… I can’t go to Fujimi anymore.”

“...are you saying you’re going to make the cello section vacant?”

“No, because I…”

It came out of nowhere. The blood that had been frozen in the pit of my stomach shot up to my head and I yelled as loud as I could, “Don’t be stupid! Don’t you dare waste that shit score I just transcribed for you! And now I’m repaid by getting teased by a drunk and being told that our only cello is quitting? Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Igarashi’s eyes darted as he looked up at me, mumbling, “I’m sorry...I’m sorry…”

“It’s all right, as long as you understand,” I said, and walked away. I thought how the tone of voice I used was like Tounoin’s. Come to think of it, Tounoin… is he worried? It was already night again, and I had left my watch in Igarashi’s apartment, but it was too late to go back. I hurried through the humid night, passing by the convenience store near the apartment. Remembering that I was hungry, I turned around. No, wait, I don’t have any money.  But I went ahead and took a peek at the clock at the cash register before I turned the corner again; just before one o’clock… ‘I wonder if Tounoin is asleep,’ I thought, and then I realized: I don’t have my keys. I still haven’t made another spare since I lost the last one, and the last time I left the apartment I was with Tounoin, so I didn’t realize that I would need it. I’m in trouble… guess I’ll have to camp outside of the door again…

I knocked several times, but there was no answer and the door didn’t open. I twisted the knob, hoping that it would work — the door was unlocked. It was dark in the cool, air-conditioned room, and Tounoin seemed to have fallen asleep. Feeling like a curfew-breaking teenager, I stealthily took off my shoes and entered the room, trying to dampen the sound of my footsteps. Tounoin was in the bed, asleep. I slipped my violin case on the shelf and walked quietly to open the door of the cabin without making any noise. I took a quick shower (the hot water needs some time to come out, but I didn’t want to wake up Tounoin), changed into my pajamas, and crept into the kitchen to get at least a piece of bread. I found a sandwich from the convenience store sitting on the table, a box of cup soup, a cup and a pot of hot water. As I took a bite, my heart was filled with a sincere feeling. ‘You’re a good guy, Tounoin…’ as my rumbling stomach settled down, I was ready to forget about what stupid Oyama had done to me, that damn drunk. I turned off the lights in the cabin and snuck back into the main room. I slipped into the space Tounoin had left open for me, and breathed a sigh of relief.

I heard a half-asleep voice say, “Oh… you’re back…”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Did you finish the transcription?”

“It was an all-nighter, eighteen hours of work.”

“...are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just want to go to sleep.”

“Good night.”

“Good night,” I said, and I fell asleep right away… around what seemed to be dawn I woke up because it was cold, but it was too much effort to get up and turn off the air conditioner, so I chose to huddle closer to the warmth that was near me. It was so warm… Tounoin seemed to notice and hugged my shoulder, but I was already drifting back to sleep so I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I’m not sure if it’s because I trusted that I would be safe with Tounoin, or because I believed he was different from Oyama and that narcissistic, violent homosexual Yasaka. 

—

The next day was super, as if all the bad luck I had been having was turned upside-down. It was literally my lucky day. First of all, the manager of the bank came to visit me with a gift. He told me that due to a computer processing error, my salary — which should have been deposited into my account — had been transferred to another customer’s account. The manager bowed his grasshopper-like bald head and said, “Please keep this matter to yourself.” He left me a noshi envelope with a greeting card and a brush writing on it. Inside was two months of my salary. I showed it to Tounoin.

“This is how much they gave.” 

He sniffed in frustration, “I’m not sure if that is adequate compensation for their part in causing these difficulties.”

“Well, yes, but it’s all over now…”

“If that’s what you want, then it’s not my place to tell you otherwise.”

“But I feel bad, you know… crashing in front of your apartment and all…”

“I was happy to do it,” Tounoin said, turning away from me with a sigh. I remembered that I needed to find a new apartment as soon as possible; I felt bad staying here forever. 

The second lucky break came at a real estate agency in a neighboring town, where I went separately from Tounoin.

“There’s a one-bedroom and bath for 40,000 yen, a three-year old condo on the 6th floor.”

“In Fujimi-cho?” I was about to jump for it without question, but the old owner’s eyes flashed behind his glasses.

“To be honest, it’s been hard to keep occupied. Since this past April, three people have already left within a month of each other.”

“No way… did somebody just move out again?” The realtor shook his head in disbelief. 

“The person in the apartment above play music loudly at all hours of the night and day. But you can’t complain about it, because it’s occupied by the landlord’s son, so you know…”

What? Could that be…? “Is it a tall apartment building down the corner from a convenience store…?”

“Oh, do you know it? It belongs to the bank president, so the facilities are top-notch, but just that one room on the 6th floor has been vacant since June. The floor is the only part that isn’t soundproof, and nobody could stand the ‘noise’ coming from the ceiling. So the rent has been discounted by 80,000 yen.”

“How big is it?” The realtor gave me a look like I shouldn’t ask, but told me that it was a Japanese-style eight-tatami-mat room with a four-and-a-half-tatami dining and kitchen. It also had AC and heating. “I’ll take it,” I said. “40,000 for a one bedroom with bath, AC and background music is too good to be true, I’d even put up with a ghost or two.”

“Well, if you say so…” the agent pulled out a contract with a face that said ‘Don’t come crying to me later.’ The name on the rental contract was ‘Inmitsu Tounoin.’ I thought of an old gentleman with gray hair, but if he was Tounoin’s father he couldn’t be that old. Rent can be paid via bank transfer; so, he’s the son of a banker, I knew he wasn’t a commoner. I’ve got three months’ deposit and money for the key, plus rent for this month and next month thanks to the ‘condolences’ money from the bank —but that’s a small price to pay for luck. “Ah, also I’d like you to get a guarantor.” The agent pointed to a blank space on the contract, “Here’s where your name and address are, please put your seal here.”

“Is it okay if I bring it back in a couple of days?”

“Yes, that’s fine. Here’s the address. Oh, right, you know where it is, don’t you? Now, the key.”

I took the key and asked, “Which bank president is the landlord?”

“Fujimi Bank, sir?” He looked at me like he couldn’t possibly not know the president of a long-established bank in this area. 

“Oh… and that’s located in…”

“It’s in Seijo. But I’m the property manager. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask me.” It seems that I wouldn’t have a chance to cross paths with Tounoin’s father; I was a little curious what kind of person he is. On my way home, I stopped by Ishida-san’s Mozart. 

“Oh, in Tounoin’s building?” He smiled and said, “Well, I’m glad you found a nice place.” He smiled and said, “Since you found an apartment…” he pulled out a cardboard box from under the counter. It was full of sheets, towels, tea bowls, cups, pots and pans… “Kawashima-san is indeed a solid office worker. She made a ‘list of items needed to reconstruct a house’ rather than just gathering donation money, asked people to give their unused items from their houses, and it turned out to be enough for a whole house. That was the idea.”

“She’s going to make a great wife, I’m sure.” She knew that I’d mind if it was money, so she collected practical items. The fish that gets away is always big… “Um, so, could I get some coffee vouchers?”

“You don’t have to give anything back in return.”

“Yes, but I want to give something to Tounoin-san.”

“Oh, I see. So you want some coffee coupons?”

“It’s practical, isn’t it? Please, I’ll take three books of ten vouchers.” Ishida-san smiled a little apologetically; I’m sure that he knows I’m buying them as a way to repay him for the money he gave me when he visited.

“By the way, I’d like to talk to you about something,” Ishida-san stepped up to the counter, changing from owner of Mozart to that of Fujimi caretaker, “For our next piece, why don’t we do Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto?”

“A violin concerto?” 

Ishida-san looked around quickly and whispered with conspiratorial enthusiasm, “I got the hall reserved at the Civic Center. There was a cancellation for Sunday, November 27th.”

“So… would it be a regular concert?”

“Not anymore, it would be a proper concert.”

“Oh, are you sure we have enough time to prepare?” Ishida-san nodded smugly as I was leaning over the counter.

“I was thinking that we should do it this year, now that we have Tounoin-san with us. I really wanted to do it after New Year’s, but I heard that the hall would be under renovation from January to May. I happened across that cancellation, so I jumped at the chance even though I was a bit busy.”

“Yes, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”

“So I thought I’d like to include the Mendelssohn.”

“That sounds great! But… what about the soloist?”

“There’s already one,” Ishida-san pointed at me.

“Me…? I’ll be the soloist?”

“Icchan agrees.” Come on…

“But we’ve never done a piece with a solo before…”

“So that’s why we should do it. It’s good for us to do one once and awhile.”

“But then what about the first violins…”

“We have Goto-chan, Miyake-chan, Kijima-san, Nitta-san, Yoshiko Suzuki-san, Hirota-san… why don’t you ask Haruyama-san to join from the seconds?”

“Then the second violins would be Ichiyama-san, Higashi-san, Hirai-san…”

“Seven people would be enough, right?”

“Yes, in terms of just numbers…” but when it came to balance of competence...

The door chime rang and a group of housewives walked in, and Ishida-san turned to welcome them and prepare some glasses of water. “Well, you should think about it, and discuss it with Tounoin-kun.”

“Yes, I’ve always wanted to do a concerto, but…”

“All the strings were saying that they wanted Morimura-chan to do a solo.”

“Hah...haha.”

—-

On my way home my feet were skipping lightly. ‘We can have a concert, we can have a concert. For the first time in two years, Fujimi can have a concert!’ I ran around the corner, bounded up the stairs and opened the door with my freshly made spare key. The sound of the Brandenburg Concerto hit me, but I was deaf to it today.

“Tounoin! Tounoin! I slid down on my knees in front of him, where he was sitting cross-legged in his usual spot. “We’re having a concert! November 27th!”

Tounoin made a gesture of ‘I can’t hear you, please wait’ and went to stop the music. As soon as the sound stopped, I repeated myself, “A concert has been scheduled! Sunday, November 27th, Shimin Kaikan Hall! Ishida-san was able to get a date because of a cancellation, and asked me if I wanted to play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto!”

Tounoin looked at me from in front of the console, and I realized that I was very excited in contrast to his calm demeanor. My face flushed. “No, but do you know, it’s been two years since we had a concert.”

“November?” Said Tounoin in a cold voice.

“I know it’s soon, so it’s going to be hard, but it’s at the end of the month… so it’s about three months away, right?

Tounoin’s complexion softened, “It depends on how we do it. I don’t mind.”

“Really? Great…! So…” he glanced at the envelope in my hand.

“Oh, did you get something?”

“I was kind of lucky today, I found an apartment as well.” I pulled the contract out of the envelope, and when I was about to show it to him, I noticed the look in his eyes was somewhat complicated. At once I felt something flutter in my stomach; it was the first time I felt that. “It wasn’t a bad idea to crash here, but it was an emergency situation for both of us. Anyway, the place I got is cheap, well-equipped, and convenient. I’ve already signed the contract.”

“That’s good to hear,” said Tounoin with a deep sigh. If I remained here, it would only cause more suffering… the word ‘Love’ is very similar to the word ‘Strange’...

“Well, actually, I do need a guarantor,” I opened the contract and placed it in front of him. “Would you mind?”

“Yeah, well that’s already...” he said as he picked up the contract with a hand that was trying not to show his reluctance… I froze. I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not, his normally cool, long eyes were round.

“Not bad, huh?” I asked. Tounoin secretly panicked and turned his head, pretending to read the contract. 

“...It’s okay, I guess. How much is it?”

“40,000. But it’s only a minute’s walk to the civic center. I think it’s great. Now, why don’t you say something?”

With his head down, Tounoin patted various pockets. Then, “I’ll go get a pen,” he said.

“I’ll also need your seal,” I said, starting to stand up.

“Please stay here,” Tounoin said, “...I’m afraid I’m going to have to hug you.” Then he ran off into the cabin. I laughed, I couldn’t believe that the man who sells himself on his pride and arrogance lost his nerve like that. Just because I happened to get an apartment in the same building as his, that’s all. Then I felt a stinging pain in my heart at the thought. I got up and went into the cabin, but when I saw Tounoin’s back at the kitchen table, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have the right to ask him if he wanted to continue being a snake charmer for the rest of our lives, and it’s hypocritical for me to consider his feelings when I made the decision that I wanted to be his friend and nothing more… I pulled another envelope out of my pocket and approached his back.

I was spoiled by his kindness, but that together with when he agreed to give up on pursuing me, for the time being made us even. “And also this. I don’t know if I can thank you enough, but I mean, I feel…” I put the envelope over his shoulder on the table. 

He opened it as delicately as if it were a sparrow’s tapestry and froze again, but this time he got over it in an instant. “Thank you, I’ll treat you to Mozart’s coffee for the time being.” He turned around and had put on his poker face… ha, he’s not good at accepting this.

“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll be over there to talk about everything until the performance.” Here as well.

“‘I’ll never go out with you for coffee or dinner,’' He said with a smile, reminding me of what I had told him. After all, this was the game between us. I want to make sure that we are friends, and Tounoin wants to develop into lovers. But I won’t be the one to lose.

—-

I woke up in the middle of the night after being kicked twice. The next morning, while Tounoin was making coffee and I was cooking bacon and eggs, I mentioned it to him.

“Well, you stole the blanket twice and gave me an uppercut,” he replied.

“I think even a double bed is too small for two men.”

When I glared at him, he said, “Well, it’s big enough if you’re embracing each other,” and laughed… that was the first time I ever heard Tounoin laugh out loud. The kitchen here is nice and bright. For the one in my apartment, it remains to be seen.

#long post #light novels #bl light novel #light novel translations #fujimi orchestra #fo #yaoi #yaoi novel #Akizuki Koh #Nishi Keiko #kei x yuuki #orchestra #classical music #tw: noncon

[escapingpost]

Five Things Everyone Knows (Final)

Part 1: Five Things I Know About Cho Seungyoun 

Sequel: Five Things Cho Seungyoun Knows About You

Suggestive and language warning.

The kiss in the alleyway would have been the cherry on top for this mess of romantic comedy. It would be the turning point of the plot where the next few scenes were merely a fast-forwarded, shortened down versions of what would be to come with your perfect “friends to lovers” relationship.

But, you were hit with the reminder that this was not an actual romantic comedy and reality is much harsher.

The next day, you woke up from a text from yours truly telling you that the girl he was texting ages ago finally got back to him. They were going on a date this weekend.

Your mind went through different thoughts in a span of one minute:

Were the two of you that drunk yesterday? If that was the case, you would have a hangover. And Seungyoun? You were sure he was too busy making Hangyul drunk to drink himself.

Were you just dreaming? No, your hair definitely smelled of rain water and you could still almost feel Seungyoun’s strong arms around your waist.

Then, what the hell was this?

As if answering your thoughts, Seungyoun sends another text message.

younie: I smell like sewage right now. What even happened last night.

And with that one text message, you were brought back to the reality of romantic relationships in your twenties.

Romance was dead and so were your feelings.

NOT my best friend: Dumbass, how am I suppose to know.

“I can’t believe you did that.” Woohyun was currently hovering over Seungyoun on the couch as Seungyoun holds his phone out of his reach. Woohyun gets up and dusts himself off. “Have fun being lonely. I’m rooting for Hangyul.”

“Wait, Woohyun.” Seungyoun also gets up from his couch. “I’m sorry. I just, I can’t do it.”

“Seungyoun, what do you mean, you can’t?” Woohyun says trying to keep calm. Him and the guys did the most to get Seungyoun to realize his feelings, but when he actually does, it backfires.

“I don’t want to mess us up.” Seungyoun says, avoiding Woohyun’s gaze.

“You know the feeling is mutual, so why?” Woohyun asks.

Seungyoun takes out a few crinkled pieces of paper from the small trash in his studio. He takes the first crumple piece of paper and hands it to Woohyun.

Woohyun looks at Seungyoun weirdly before unfolding it and reading his chicken scratch writing.

I wish you happiness

It's okay if it's not me

I don't think I'm good enough for you

We're so different

Woohyun takes the rest of the crinkled papers and unfolds them.

Tell me you're tired of me

Tell me you're seeing someone else

For me, even just a little bit

To hate you, just lie to me

Woohyun stops reading and crumples the paper into its original state, “This is different from the last time. You know it.”

“We’ve been best friends for years. I just can’t risk that.” Seungyoun looks down, his fringe hiding his eyes.

And Woohyun could not think of a comeback with Seungyoun looking like he already lost the most precious thing in his life.

“You know, its true what they say about musicians. You are all creative, crazy messes.” Woohyun says with a huge sigh.

Which brings us to the first thing everyone now knows: 1) Seungyoun, for a fact, has slight commitment issues.

A week passes by after the night with Seungyoun. You try your best to avoid him, but he stuck to you like nothing had happened. Sure, it was only the alcohol that made him do it and the reason why he could not remember. But, he should take some sort of responsibility, right?

The day of his date with the girl, you went to a library to study for your classes, but the silence was worse. It only made your sad thoughts louder. Letting out a deep sigh, you run your fingers through your hair and leave the quiet room.

“Hey!” Before you could start walking down the staircase to the lobby, a familiar voice calls your name.

You close your eyes. You knew exactly who it was and he was probably the second person you did not want to run into. Quickly changing your expression into a neutral one, you turn around to him, “Hey, Hangyul.”

Long story, short: You and Hangyul did go on a date. You actually had more fun than you thought and he said he would call you back, but never did. When he did end up calling you for a second date, the two of you still had unfinished business. Seungyoun crashed your second date before the two of you could talk about it.

Hangyul scratches the back of his neck, a habit of his whenever he felt uneasy. Your fake expression was apparent to his eyes, “Do you want to go to a cafe? I hated the silence in that library.”

You said yes and maybe it was the fact you wanted to show up Seungyoun for being on a date. Or, it might have been that you believed Hangyul was a nice, decent guy so he deserved some sort of explanation.

“I just wanted to say sorry for everything.” Hangyul says with a soft smile.

“Sorry about what?” The warm tea hits your throat and it calms your nerves.

“Sorry about not calling you when I said I would.”

You let out a petty laugh, “So you did know.”

Hangyul moves in closer, “Of course, I did. I was just confused and needed time to think.”

You purse your lips, “Well, I’m sorry for taking Seungyoun along on our second date.” You look down at your cup of tea.

Hangyul plays with the straw of his smoothie, unsure of what to say.

“It was a dumb decision.” You add.

“Did something happen?” Hangyul carefully asks.

You shrug, not wanting to think about it, still looking down.

Hangyul takes a deep breath and lowers his head so he was in your peripheral view, “Hey, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were actually available.”

You are forced to return his gaze, his face a little closer than a few minutes ago, “What do you mean?”

“I know you don’t have a boyfriend.” Hangyul was now staring at you intently with a soft expression, “But, on our first date, it didn’t seem like you were emotionally available.”

And that’s exactly what everyone thought: 2) No one else was really good enough for you, but him.

The guy with cute dimples? You preferred adorable rabbit teeth. The talented vocalist? A high-toned voice with the duality of IU’s ballads and Flowsik’s rapping was more your genre. The possible future president of the country? How about the person who you trust all your secrets, dreams, and inside jokes with?

As exaggerated as it was, Seungyoun just started to infiltrate your mind with no invitation.

You gulp and slowly nod your head, “Sorry, Hangyul.”

Hangyul feels a heavy weight lifted from his shoulders and he gives you an assuring smile, “We’re good.” He pats the side of your head.

You return his smile, feeling ten times better.

"I’m not sure what happened with you and Seungyoun, but if you want, I’m meeting with him later with the guys. Maybe you want to come?”

Your ears perk up at hearing his name, “Wait, Seungyoun is hanging out with you later?”

“Yeah, Seungyoun and some other people from the Taekwondo club.”

‘What about his date?’ You think. ‘Did that brat lie to me?’ You add. Did you not just have a small monologue on how great he was?

Hangyul calls out your name.

You snap back to reality, “Oh sorry, why don’t you text me the address and I’ll meet you there?”

The night was a little colder when it was predicted to be a warm summer night. Mercury was in retrograde or something along the lines of a pseudoscience explanation. 3) Everyone just knew it was going to be an interesting night.

“You like to hurt your own feelings?” Dohyun scratches his head.

“Masochism. Its called masochism.”

“Yohan, shut it. Don’t teach him that.” Hangyul rubbed his temples.

“Well, at least you’re better off than Seungyoun. He didn’t even give closure. He completely made his whole friendship awkward as hell.”

Hangyul blows out air from his nostrils. He wanted to keep it a secret and was not planning on inviting you to see Seungyoun. It was his chance to ask you out for a third date. But, taking advantage of your vulnerable state was the last thing he wanted to do.

Yohan hands Hangyul his black jacket, “Here, buddy. At least look cool while setting up the two idiots.”

Hangyul turns to Dohyon, “Don’t you dare learn from Yohan.” Hangyul moves closer to whisper in Yohan’s ear, “Yohan thinks he’s some sex god.”

Yohan has an appalled and disgusted look on his face, “A dude grinds on the floor one time and automatically becomes the icon of greasiness.”

Hangyul receives a text message alert and stops their conversation.

soju girl: Hey, I’m already here. My phone’s on vibrate so just text me when you get here! Too loud to take a call :(

“Lets go, idiot three.” Yohan puts his arms around Hangyul.

hangyul: see you soon

You bite down on your bottom lip and pull down on the short black dress that you wished did not sacrifice to cover either your chest or thighs. It was one or the other. You furiously shake your head to get some sense in you, “I need a drink.” Or not.

One drink turned into two, then three, then four and it all went downhill from there. The last sober thought you had was the fact that you could change your social media addiction and put your energy in making a blog about the wonders of alcohol.

“Close her tab.” you hear a voice and the person has reached over the counter. That was weird because you only conditioned yourself to listen to one specific voice through a loud bass of music.

“Oh? Its my best friend, Cho Seungyoun.” your voice slurs and you see he is confused because he can’t hear anything through the music and you made no effort to talk over them music. Seungyoun quickly scans your state and has you wear his oversized bomber jacket. You do not put up a fight while he quickly zips up the jacket. “Am I your date for tonight?” You say with no energy or volume.

Seungyoun gets to eye level with you and smiles, “Lets go.” He mouths.

The unapologetic smile, his eyes that assured you that your were safe, and his eyebrows that drooped in worry made you furious. The alcohol spoke and made the decision for you, “Fuck that.” You push him away and stagger through the dance floor.

And Seungyoun never felt so awkward trying to keep you away from other people on the dance floor while still remaining a sinful centimeter away from you and that miniature piece of fabric people called a dress.

His eyes darted around to catch the glimpses of other people on the dance floor to make sure they knew you were with him. Just when he thought people were getting the hint, a stranger attaches himself behind you.

He quickly snakes his hand around your waist and pulls you into a secure hold, turning your whole body like a tango move.

You continue to shamelessly dance, not giving a two coins because all you could see are the blurry lights, your mind was still buzzed, and whose ever arm was around you felt too good.

No matter how much he tried, there was only one answer to your shenanigans.

If you can’t beat them, join ‘em.

Seungyoun brings you into his chest as close as humanely possible and lays his hands on your hips as you two dance. He can only catch glimpses of your face, but when he did see you through the club lights, the look on your face got to him.

Your eyes were no longer the awake eyes that he could see from a distance away. Your eyes were half-lidded and seductive. Your baby hairs stuck to the side of your face and your cheeks flushed pink.

Then, Seungyoun’s ears were blocked as if he had water stuck in them. Your mouth was moving, but he could not understand what was happening anymore. The loud bass drowns out any reasonable thoughts.

Seungyoun did not drink any alcohol that night.

But, he got the same sweet alcohol on the tip of your tongue and caught the same alcohol buzz.

When Hangyul left the club that night and did not get to see you or Seungyoun, it was already a given: 4) The literal climax of the story that everyone would know of.

By the time you were all partied out and the two of you got to his apartment, the alcohol high wore off, but neither of Seungyoun’s or your hormones did.

The conversation was said through messy kisses, but it went something along the lines of Seungyoun apologizing for being a coward and a liar. Then, you try to say something back, but whatever he was doing down there did not help you form a coherent thought.

It was the climax that happened in Seungyoun’s small studio, both emotionally and physically.

Finally, it was the scene before everything fell into place. At least, as much as reality allowed you to.

“That dress wasn’t going to cover anything.” It was the morning after and you did not wake up glamorously. It was a good thing Seungyoun always saw you like that and nothing about his feelings changed. He laid on the couch and watched you find your stuff that was lost in the hurricane.

“Yeah, but your sweater will.” You quickly slip into it a sweater that he left hanging on his chair and Seungyoun curses in his mind for being weak to the cold.

“Wanna get breakfast?” Seungyoun sits up and also looks around for his lost t-shirt.

“Not like this.”

“I can pick something up from the convenience store.” Seungyoun finally finds his clothing piled up on the side of the couch.

You two only had to be apart for ten minutes, but Seungyoun was running back from the store like he left a stove on.

Also, you had no idea what you were getting yourself into until Seungyoun drops the food on his small desk and starts to make his way towards you. Alert, you hold him back with one finger, which stops him for a grueling second until he picks you up like a bride and lays you down on the couch.

You always thought Seungyoun looked like a rabbit with his two front teeth. Now, he looks like a tiger creeping up on his pray (read: you). You were quickly reminded Seungyoun was actually a bear because he pulls you into a warm hug as the two of you lay on his couch.

“There’s not enough space, so we have to stick as close a possible.” Seungyoun is breathing down your neck and you were not sure if it was on purpose.

You stir in his arms and he looks at you.

The images of you two playing tongue hockey in the middle of the dance floor flashes through your mind and you wanted to dig a tunnel into the couch because this time, he was there to remember it.

Seungyoun bit back a silly smile.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything?” He says with a smirk.

“Hey, we can’t tell anyone.” You are talking to his chest because you could not bear to look at him without being reminded of last night.

“Why not?” Seungyoun, on the other hand, had no shame and kept his eyes on you. “I swear, I was going to post this on my story.”

“Seungyoun!”

He gives you his cheeky, smiling eyes and presses his forehead on yours, “I’m sure every already knows.”

“That’s a little bit T.M.I, no?” You ask him.

“Not with them. They know everything.”

The two of you look at each other both thinking that everyone was weirdly invested in the two of you getting together. You and Seungyoun laugh knowing the same thought went through your head.

“I like you so much.” Seungyoun unconsciously says.

“I like you too.” You say making random shapes with your fingers on his chest. “Hey, um.” You finally muster up the courage to look at him.

“Yeah?” Seungyoun gives you his full attention.

You gather your arms and push him off the couch, “I’m hungry.”

Even if you were not hungry, Seungyoun’s scent was getting to your head and all the red flags went off.

He didn’t have to know that, though.

Months pass and you two are still together and annoying.

“Can you not?” You step on Seungyoun’s foot under the table.

“What?” Seungyoun moves his hand closer to your inner thigh, but you swat his hand off.

“Can you two just stay in Seungyoun’s studio? Forever.” Wooseok pretends to barf.

“We would, but the AC is broken.” Seungyoun shrugs.

You smack him on the side of his head.

“I don’t even want to sit on that damn couch now.” Seungwoo slowly shakes his head.

“Maybe it was better for you two to stay single.” Yohan taps on the table.

“Hey, I’m all for that.” Hangyul chuckles as he opens a bag of chips.

Seungyoun’s neck almost breaks turning to Hangyul, “If you eat chips like that, your fingers are going to stain.”

“Well, I’m gonna eat it with chopsticks.” Hangyul retorts.

“Where are the chopsticks, genius?” Seungyoun mocks Hangyul’s matter-of-fact tone.

Hangyul’s eye darts back and forth, until he sees you slipping him the chopsticks. “Here.”

Seungyoun makes a face at you, “Whose side are you on?”

You give him a chaste kiss and the self-proclaimed all rounder turns into one thing and it was the fifth and last thing everyone knew.

5) “Whipped.”

#cho seungyoun #seungyoun #seungyoun scenarios #seungyoun imagines #x1 scenarios #x1 imagines #x1 #Hangyul #lee hangyul #hangyul scenarios #hangyul imagines

[wiccantree]

Holly and Oak

I stare through the windshield, skeptical. Arthur says, “You wanted a castle.” Getting out of the car to better look at the hotel a breeze sends a chill down my spine. The name ‘Hollyoaks’ is on the side of a turret in large red letters. I turn to the woods the hotel backs onto after a twig snaps. I feel eyes watching from the trees and I stare back. I snap to reality when Arthur shuts the trunk. He passes me my duffle. “It’s not a real castle anymore, just the facade. But it is one of the oldest in the country. It was a monastery or something, repurposed a century ago.” He side-hugs me as we look it over again before whispering conspiratorially, “There are even tales of people being eaten by the forest.” “Uh-huh, probably bears or wolves if we’re talking settler-times.” He jabs me with his elbow. “It’s perfect,” I whisper to his temple. “Look, Pat. Solstice decorations. A Krampus, and there’s a Yule Cat,” he points out as we pass a row of pine trees. As we make our way to the lobby, I keep having to duck tree branches. Once we’re through the front doors, Arthur plucks a twig from my hair. “Friendly trees they’ve got here,” I mutter to myself. The receptionist chuckles before Art takes over dealing with our reservation. I tune out the conversation as I look around. Moving away as he deals with some inconvenience, I notice small plaques under the large displays hanging around the lobby and get lost in reading about the place. It was, as Arthur told me, an old monastery converted from a manor house, built by an eccentric affluent noble that sailed here on one of the earliest voyages after Europe learned of the New World. The nobleman even built some stone follies that a maintained trail near the hotel goes through. An ancient-looking mummers costume stands in a case surrounded by pictures and newspaper articles from the local town telling of their history and traditions. I'm reading about their upcoming Solstice parade when I hear Arthur. “Here you are.” He hugs me from behind, head on my shoulder to look at what has my attention. “Sorry to take so long, Ah, that would be the holdup.” He points to the solstice article and settles his chin. “Seems no one noticed our room was double-booked because of their midwinter festival. It’s all sorted out now and we have a larger room on the ground floor at the back.” “That’s fine. I really just want some time with you, Art.” I lean into him. “Well then, let's go get comfy, order some room service, and finally enjoy a vacation together.” I hum, “Together.” Our schedules never match up on time off. This is our first vacation together in years. I’m determined to enjoy it as I follow him through the labyrinth of halls. “And here we are.” He smiles, turns the actual key, and pushes the door. My spine tingles as we enter. Passing an immaculate modern bathroom, I stop in my tracks at the end of the small hallway and stare at the dark, wood-paneled, medieval-themed room. A large wooden four-poster bed is against the far wall; the posts carved to look like trees. Everything is colored evergreen and white with pops of red scattered about. Heavy velvet curtains are pulled back to showcase an elaborate stained-glass window made to look like trees filled with frosted and cut glass leaves. “Damn!” Art drags out the word. “This is… Wow! If only all our mixup/upgrades were this spectacular, right?” “I love it,” I say, and Art smiles. I kiss him. “Love you. Now, I believe there was mention of ordering room service?” “Yes, my liege,” He bows, making me laugh, “Now, where is that menu?” I turn on the television to see what is available. It blares onto the weather report and I hastily turn down the volume so Arthur can order. When finished, he hangs up and we just stare at each other. I’m startled by a tapping on the glass behind me and almost let out a curse. Arthur moves past me to the window and looks outside, unsuccessfully. “Ah-ha! Here we go,” he says and I hear a click. The tree in the center of the window splits and both halves swing in to reveal a small terrace bordered by a fence on one side and a low hedge of holly bushes and two robust oak trees around the rest. One tree has a low bough, swaying in the breeze, which taps on the window again. “Just a tree.” I sigh. Arthur walks to the edge and looks along the flank of the hotel, where I join him. There are bright ribbons in the tree branches and pine boughs decorating the lamp posts that light up a trail that passes right by our room. “Away from everyone is right. We snagged the last free room. The rest are supposed to fill up over the next few days.” “For their festival?” “Yeah.” “I think it’d be nice to check it out. What do you think?” “Patrick, babe, this entire trip is about spending our time together. And I kind of only figured out the hotel part, so whatever you want to do, I’m game.” A knock on our door interrupts him as our food arrives. While he takes in the trays, I look around the terrace and the woods again. Another chill creeps up my spine and the feeling I’m being watched returns. I move the tree branch near the door to rest over the fence blocking our neighbors’ terrace, then close the door. I find the latch and click it shut, and lower a security bar before closing the sheer curtains in a rush. Turning on the lights, the feeling ebbs when Art looks at me and asks, “You okay?” “Mm-hmm. Just felt like I was being watched,” I admit. “Oh good, it’s not just me.” His shoulders sag. “Here, let’s close these ones too.” He pulls loose the tiebacks on the heavy velvet curtains which swing shut. “Ah, much better. Now let’s eat and get ‘reacquainted’.” He wiggles his eyebrows. I smile in spite of myself. “You’re on!” # Solstice, a few days later, starts with our going to the in-house restaurant for breakfast. We are at ease in a way we haven’t been in months. The weather channel, which seemed to be the only channel unlocked, forecasts an appropriate drop from mild to seasonal temperatures later in the day. The quaint surrounding town is littered with more of the same decorations as the hotel. We agree to split up for an hour to get each other midwinter gifts. I find a perfect red and white flannel scarf with holly embroidered on both ends, for him. The shop wraps it in plain craft paper and ties it with green and red ribbons and a holly sprig in place of a bow. We meet up in the town square, which is set up as a winter festival, literally bumping into one another in front of a hot cocoa stand. We order some and wander the festival. We finally stop next to a small park set up to be an ice rink. “Here, they were able to wrap it for me,” I say, handing him his gift. “Ditto.” He smiles and hands me a silver paper bag with blue and silver curlicue ribbons stapled to the top. We both tear into our gifts and I’m entranced by mine. It’s a scarf too; light green with ribbons of darker green yarn woven through it. Embroidered along one edge in a repeating pattern are silver oak leaves. “I love it,” we both say in stereo. We laugh and wrap ourselves up in them just as the bells of a nearby church start chiming. The parade is due to start soon. By happenstance, we are in the perfect place to watch everyone gathering. Drums start pounding, joined by tambourines, and people make a spectacle of dressing in sackcloth and bundles of sticks and placing straw heads over their own. A whimsically dressed woman with an old rusted loud-horn begins calling out directions and asking for volunteers to be the Oak and Holly Kings. “I’ve been reading up on that,” admits Arthur. “There's a really old story about the personifications of summer and winter who battle for control of the forest throne, and with it, the seasons. From mid-winter through mid-summer is the Oak King who rules. And the other way, mid-summer to midwinter it’s the Holly King.” “And what about you two gentlemen?” the eccentrically dressed woman asks. It feels like more than everyone is looking at us. “What would we have to do?” I ask the woman. I can feel Arthur’s fist pump beside me and I quickly squint at him. “I haven’t said yes yet,” I whisper. “But you haven’t said no either.” He smiles back at me. The woman lowers the funnel. “It’s all good fun. We have costumes behind the stage at the other end, eh?” she points. “And you come out in them and parade through the town. Then a little play where you pantomime the eternal battle and whichever of you is wearing the Oak King gets the throne.” “Alright, I'm in,” says Art before I can decline, but I shake my head at his enthusiasm and reluctantly agree. The wind suddenly picks up and snowflakes bluster about as a cheer rises from the crowd. We are pulled towards the gazebo-stage-contraption set up at the end of the square. As we are getting into the outfits, a quick rock-paper-scissors wins me the Oak King, one of the twigs on my costume scratches my cheek, and Art pricks his thumb on his. “These should come with a warning.” “Or gloves.” He laughs Another woman, this one in all black and a walkie-talkie on her hip, apologizes profusely explaining they’re usually easier to adjust. The coordinator for the parade comes over and explains everything to us again. We are given staves and shown the rudimentary “fighting” we are to do at the end. Art is having a blast. The drums rumble a warning before the costume tech comes by and hands us our ‘heads’ wishing us, “Good luck.” The parade is a blur of cheers and waving. During the pantomime, I step the wrong way and Arthur overcompensates and we end up actually hitting each other. I stumble back just as a light flashes and smoke billows up from nowhere. I lose sight of Arthur in the commotion, and the people cheering for the new king is intoxicating. The throne is weirdly warm for stone in winter. There's so much noise and I’m pulled around by so many revelers, I lose count. At some point, a foul-smelling beer is poured down an opening in the top of my crown. I almost retch. It’s suddenly sunset and where the hell is Art? Everything moves slowly. I ask where I can take off the costume and am pointed in a direction, I walk where I'm pointed for I don’t know how long, Abruptly, I recognize I’m on the trail that passes the hotel and can see our room. The lights are on. The party sounds distant, and since I'm here, I might as well get into some clean clothes; I can bring back the costume tomorrow. I step over the hedge leaning on one of the oak trees and lose my balance before the tree catches me and pushes me back up. I mutter a “thanks” and move to the door which opens just before I can knock. Arthur looks pale and angry. “About time!” “Sorry?” “You disappeared at the parade. They said you’d be on your way shortly. I came back here to wait for you and that was hours ago.” He backs up when I lurch into the room. “Help me get this off, no one would help me.” He continues to glare at me. “Please, Art. This thing is starting to hurt. I think they slipped me something.” I tug at the neck and start to fall when Art is right there to catch me. “Alright. But I’m still mad.” He reaches back and pulls the cord I couldn't reach. The suit opens and clatters to the floor. “Ugh, this is heavy.” I try pushing the head off and it doesn't move. “Ow, uh, Art? Help” “Really? You can’t-uh-okay.” He tries to pull with no effect. He reaches in and underneath and I feel his fingers brush over my face before the head twists and comes off. I take several deep breaths. “Thank you.” He places the head on top of the stick suit on the bed before turning back to me. “What’s that?” he asks. “What?” He looks closer, “You have a twig.” He reaches out to brush off my face. “It must be glue or something,” I say when it doesn’t move. “Let me go wash it off.” “Yeah, and you’ve got some twigs in your hair too,” Art says with a chuckle as I go into the bathroom. “Man, this stuff is tough.” The face wash isn't doing anything besides stinging. I lean in closer to the mirror. “What the fuck? Art, come look at this, I think it's growing out of my cut.” There in an instant and looking close, he twists my head into the light. “The hell?” “Can you pull it out?” I close my eyes for a second feeling him touch it. I open them when he says, “Okay, on the count of three. One, Two-“ He rips it out. A tendril of sinew I can feel slide inside my cheek comes out of the cut with it. I call out in revulsion and proceed to wash the cut again. The stinging subsides as I inspect my face in the mirror. “Let me see?” Art moves closer and once my face passes his inspection he smiles and kisses me on the cut. “All better.” There is a rattling from out in the bedroom that sounds like the tree branch on the window again. “Ugh, I must have knocked the branch loose when I came in.” “I’ll get it. You finish cleaning up and then we’ll pack up. This place was sweet but that was just too weird for me. We’re going home.” I sigh, “Yeah, okay. Let me just…” I gesture to my hair and he nods before leaving. “Fuck! Art?” I call out, hands in my hair. “Maybe later. “ He chuckles,” What the-” Whatever he was going to say is tuned out as I stare at my reflection. The sticks in my hair won’t move; they made a crown of green shoots that will bend and flex but not come off. I take a deep breath and pick one and pull hard. It pops out like the one in my cheek with a sick sliding feeling as another tendril of roots slide out. I throw it on the counter and shudder. ”Gross.” I make quick work of pulling the rest just as harshly. I grab a small towel and soak it in water. I can hear the rattling again. Rubbing my face with the cloth, I walk back to help with the packing. I trip over Art, landing on my knees. He is lying on the floor beside the bed, a red line across his temple. Standing in the doorway to the terrace is the Oak King, head under one arm. The other pulling open the window. The trees outside our room bend over and their branches hold the doors. Muttering a litany of curses, I crab-walk backward towards the door to the hallway. I twist to get up and slip on something before I slam into the wall. Thin, rough iron-strong fingers grab my shoulder and pull me back. I fly through the air and land on the bed. Loud creaking from the trees in the doorway pulls my attention and their bark twists into grotesque grins. A rattling sound from the other direction has me staring back at the Oak King. Vines grow from the bedposts and wraps around my wrists and ankles. They pull tight and it is nowhere near as fun as when Art did it to me the other day. The suit rattles and hobbles towards me. The front of it buckles, snaps, and opens wider. It reaches for me and presses on my arms as it straddles me. It bends forward and the opening where the head should have been is right at my face. A warm breeze billows out of it smelling like summer flowers. My stomach turns. I thrash around and the suit's arms rip and scratch, tearing my shirt. It reaches for the scarf I am, somehow, still wearing, but pulls its ‘hand’ back, hissing a putrid honeysuckle. Both arms rise above its headless body and I shut my eyes. I expect pain with the crunching noise but instead, the pressure is lifted off of me and my eyes open. The suit is crumpled in the doorway and being picked up by the trees. Huffing and holding a staff is Art. “Sorry, Oak King. This time, Holly wins.” He swings the staff again and knocks the suit out onto the terrace before rushing to the doorway and swinging the staff once more, cracking the tree branches holding the doors. He shuts them, flicks the lock and slams the security bar in place, stepping back as the door rattles in its frame. He turns to me, “Time to go!” He moves to the bed and begins pulling at the vines holding me. Cursing, he turns and grabs a knife left from his dinner and cuts one. After the vine snaps, the rest tremble and let go. He pulls me up and I kiss him before we turn and run from the room. We are near the end of the hallway when we hear the terrace doors hit so violently, the glass shatters. The scratching and rattling of tree branches on the floor fill my ears. We run through the lobby ignoring the receptionist’s call, Art grabs my hand and pulls me toward the entrance. “Fuck it. Let’s just go.” We are out the doors and in his car in the blink of an eye. He starts the car and pulls down the drive. It starts snowing and the wind picks up. I can feel the forest on either side of the road watching us. “Art?” “I feel it too.” He stomps on the accelerator. The falling snow fills the headlight’s beams. Tree branches bump and tap on the car from either side. A dark shadow darts in front of us. Art hits it and sticks fly everywhere as we skid to a stop. The outline of another shadowed figure detaches from the trees and steps closer. It is the Holly Suit staff in hand. The snow hovers as the moment stretches. The Holly King moves to where we hit what must have been the Oak King. It turns back towards us and raises its staff. I hit Art’s shoulder and hiss, “Drive!” We start moving forward again and the snow engulfs the Holly King. For the next twenty minutes, Art drives, white-knuckled, and silent. I reach for the climate controls to warm us up. “That…really happened, didn’t it?” I ask, holding my hands at the vent. “Mm-hmm.” He nods. The snow lets up as we near the city, its lights painting the clouds orange. When we get home, I rush to my laptop. “What are you doing?” Art asks. “I’m looking up whatever the fuck that was.” I toss my scarf on the table. He shrugs. “I’m going to shower, then bed. Don’t take too long, babe, there’s always tomorrow.” I've lost myself down a rabbit-hole of fables, allegories, and history by the time he’s back. And none of what I’ve read makes sense. “You’re late. Come with me?” Art extends his hand to me. I smile at him and sigh into a yawn, “You’re right.” I take his hand and am pulled into a hug. His skin is warm and hard. “I love you.” I pull back to kiss him but his arms are a vice. His fingers are digging into my back. “Art?” His back is rough under my palms and I twist to see our reflection in the slowly lightening window, next to our open door. His spine looks like bark. Something sharp is digging into my hip and his fingers are piercing. “Arthur?!” I smell flowers. Wood creeks in my ear as he turns his head and whispers, with not Art’s voice. “The battle goes until dawn.”

#my writing i hate the ending and should have stopped in the car rejected anthology submission figured it should go somewhere #tw horror short story #oh dear GODS i tried writing again #writing

[pcttrailsidereader]

Journey on the Crest

Originally published in 1987, Journey on the Crest is Cindy Ross’s story of her PCT hike, begun in 1982 and completed in 1984.  Her hike nearly ended with a near-fatal fall on the icy slopes of Sonora Pass (a story that was posted on January 7 and January 10, 2013). Her initial intent had been to finish the trail in 1983 but it turned out to be another heavy snow year. She told me that she elected “to wait another year and complete the second half in 1984.”  Hers is a powerful PCT story.  The account of her final four days on the trail as she and her husband, Todd Gladfelter, push through early snows to reach Manning Park is included in the Oregon/Washington volume of The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader.

With the resurgence of interest in the PCT fueled by Wild, this wonderful book, Journey on the Crest, has been reprinted and is available.

Sonora Pass

By Cindy Ross

To a young woman in her early twenties, a long walk on the Pacific Crest Trail seemed like a luxury. But today, we live indoors, have become addicted to screens and technology, and use our thumbs more than our legs. Depression and discontent have become commonplace; hiking a long trail has become a necessity.

The PCT gave me a blueprint for my life. It gave me a life mate, Todd Gladfelter, a man who shares my same loves and obsessions. Together we designed a simple life living as close to that trail as we could. We built a log home from scratch, grow much of our own food, raise animals, and live in synch with nature’s rhythms. Having two children did not hold us back from the adventuring life but instead enhanced it, including leading them along the Continental Divide Trail on llamas. The PCT also gave me a fantastic occupation as a travel writer and photographer, one that has taken me to dozens of countries in far-flung corners of the world on all sorts of exciting outdoor adventures.

The PCT teaches how to live authentically and responsibly. It Is not the weather nor the trail conditions nor the blisters that determine whether we are happy or not. Our attitude is a choice we make. No school, no curriculum, or wise sage can deliver lessons the way a long hike can, for the long trails teach through experience. The PCT also taught me that if I want something badly enough, possess the passion, and am willing to work hard, there is no need to see limits. This is timeless trail wisdom.        

All people who hike the trail will uncover their own personal story of self-discovery. The trail will shift their thinking, broaden their mind, smooth out their stress, and illuminate their path. They will be positively affected by the experience for their next thirty years and beyond. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail will never be dated. Long distance hiking will only grow more critical as the decades pass.  

I admit, I am not the normal mother, but a Triple Crowner who took my children across the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail when they were youngsters (the subject of my book, Scraping Heaven- A Family’s Journey Along the Continental Divide). They grew up with a hunger and a need for wilderness adventure. Our destination last March was camping and hiking in Anza- Borrego Desert State Park and Joshua Tree National Park. As we drove, we kept a constant lookout for where the PCT crossed the roads and for days I had memories flood back to me of my first weeks on the PCT as a thru-hiker. I told Bryce story after story as he learned about his Mom before she was a mother. When we spotted the trail crossing a road, I jerked the rental car immediately off the road and had to hike down it with my son.

"There’s the trail up there, see it snaking around that mountain on a contour!“ I told Bryce. "It was so crazy to be out here in 6-7-8,000-foot mountains and have nothing growing higher than your knee. Back home in Pennsylvania, our Appalachian Mountains peak out at 1600 feet with towering trees.”

Bryce gazed up to that trail and thought about his mom 30 years ago, hiking her first weeks as a thru-hiker. Thirty years passing is a big deal to a 21-year old. It is to a 57 year old too. At times like that, I marveled at the speed of time, how much has occurred since then and how eternally grateful I am for having the Pacific Crest Trail impact and change my life.

I also marveled over the fact that I have a son who chooses to go on outdoor adventures with his mother. His fellow students talk about going on a trip, but never do. Bryce was raised in a family that believes in “epic” when it comes to adventures. For example, when their father, Todd Gladfelter, and I suggested going to the Everglades last winter, Bryce’ s sister Sierra said, “Ok, but let’s do something epic. Let’s paddle the entire length of the Everglades from top to bottom on the 100-mile Wilderness Trail."

"OK,” we said. We’ve never been one to choose creature comfort over real-life adventure. And so our children have come to expect and need that deep relationship with the wilderness too. It reminds me of a Walt Whitman quote,

“Now I know the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”    

Being back on the PCT with my son, 30 years later, reminded me that as a mother, I must have done something right.

[thebibliomancer]

50 More Days of Comics! 37/50: Dark Horse Presents #137 (1998)

An anthology! I love an anthology! Ask anyone!

Apparently Dark Horse Presents was the first comic published by Dark Horse. Which is fair enough. And it ran from 1986 to 2000 when it was cancelled. And then volume 2 of Dark Horse Presents ran from 2007-2010 and was published on MySpace!

Wild.

Anyway, this comic has the Predator fighting Nazis so it must be exceptional.

So the first of the three stories is Predator: Demon’s Gold.

The story is narrated by an Ecuadorian remembering back to when he was a child. The Nazis came and burned his village and killed everyone in it except for him. Him, they needed.

Narrator: “They wanted the same thing white men have always wanted from my land: silver and gold. They wanted what was hidden high in the Llanganati Mountains, the secret my village had kept so long.”

And they tell him they’ll let him live if he leads them to it.

Something I learned while googling the Llanaganati Mountains to try to find out where on Earth this was set is that the Treasure of the Llanganatis is a pre-existing legend and not something this comic made up.

Per the legend, it was the gold and silver and platinum and assorted other treasures hidden in the mountains by the Incan general Rumiñahui. He had been gathering it as a ransom for King Atahualpa but when conquistador Pizarro just went and had Atahualpa killed anyway, Rumiñahui hid the treasure and never revealed where it was.

Except in this story where he told somebody who passed it down to a nameless village and a nameless narrator.

Knowing that actually adds to the story weirdly enough.

When frightened boy Narrator leads the Nazis to the “sweat of the Sun, tears of the Moon” treasure, they plan to kill him anyway.

And like in the legend, if you renege on a promise to let someone live in exchange for two rooms full of treasure, you don’t get the treasure.

Because as the boy prays to the Inca gods, his prayers are answered in a way.

I don’t know why he was there but a Predator was there and he starts murdering the Nazis in his gruesome Predator way. 

Narrator: “These men who had butchered my village, they were ripe corn before the harvest blade.”

He kills the Nazi leader last, pulling his spine out by his head, like some kind of Mortal Kombat.

The boy assumes the Predator, who he thinks is a demon because sure, will kill him last “would demand one more sacrifice in return for protecting the sweat and tears” but with a swipe of his wrist blades, he cuts Narrator’s bonds and walks out of the cave.

Narrator: “But it spared me. And vanished back to whatever pit had given it birth. That was long ago: I’m an old man now. My own death draws near. You ask me where the treasure is? That secret I take with me.”

There’s so much intriguing potential here. Who was he telling the story to? Was this like a Titanic the Movie setup? Why was the Predator guarding Incan treasure? But alas, as far as I know, they remain mysteries.

STORY 2! My Vagabond Days.

Set April 4th, 1968 and centered around a boy named Martin who is generally unenthusiastic about school. But his teacher talks about Apollo 6 and tells the students to write three paragraphs on “What Would I Like to Accomplish.”

Martin and his friend Jerome already know they want to be astronauts!

And later at dinner, Martin tells his parents about his assignment, his mom noting he sounds excited considering he doesn’t usually do his homework without a spanking.

Martin: “I am! ‘Cause I know exactly what I want to be!”

Dad: “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

Martin: “I’m gonna be ‘n astronaut!”

Dad: “Ha! Oh you are, are you? Is that what you think?”

Dad: “Astronauts get good grades, and they don’t get caught stealing an’ lying all the time. So where does that leave you, spaceboy?”

And Martin runs to his room to cry. Mom berates dad because this is the first time she’s ever seen him excited about his homework but dad says Martin will be lucky to get a job at all the way he’s going.

Later, Jerome calls Martin out to climb to the roof of their building and use binoculars to look at the moon.

They obviously don’t see astronauts on the Moon with binoculars.

Jerome: “So, what do you think you’ll accomplish in your lifetime, Martin?”

Jerome: “Martin?”

Martin: “... nothin’.”

Jerome: “No, I’m serious.”

Martin: “Yeah... Me too...”

Kids internalize stuff, parents!

This was kind of a bummer after seeing the Predator fight Nazis. Kind of jerking my emotions around, Dark Horse Presents.

Last story: The Ark Part Four

The last part of a multiple part story? You fooled me, Dark Horse Presents! Uncool!

Anyway, near as I can gather, there was an alien spacecraft that got shot down and unleashed a bunch of alien monsters who seem animalistic and not gleep glorp take me to your meepmorps.

Also they’re fairly resistant to bullets.

There are several convicts from the nearby prison and some prison guards or cops? who are with them and worried that the prisoners will attempt to escape in the confusion and then there’s a main guy maybe called Guidry.

He has the idea that since the town of Pruitt has been evacuated, they can vent the natural gas pipes underground, saturate the town, and then drop a match. Boom, no more alien monsters.

On his way into the sewers, Guidry cautions everyone not to take up smoking.

Jonas: “No problem. I’ve got a rule about cigarettes. Only after sex... Or when somebody punches up Leann Rimes on the tavern’s juke box.”

Guidry, later: “I’d like to buy her a carton of Marlboros, and I don’t mean for some country-pop listening party...”

Once the gas has been vented, the group runs into another problem. Somebody has to set it off. And there’s a monster now between them and the manhole.

Then somebody steps up to take the sacrifice.

Narrator: “I don’t know what prompted Dylan to do what he did. Was it out of some suddenly-discovered sense of obligation? I doubt it. Serial arsonists rarely undergo that sort of epiphany. But I can’t help remembering the look on his face. He wasn’t thinking of the pain, or the finality of death. He was looking for the cleansing embrace of the flames. I only hope it was all he had ever dreamed.”

And then the town blows up.

And all the monsters blow up. Except for the biggest and meanest of them. And now its pissed.

The four survivors flee the surviving monster and wind up back at the prison.

Guidry: “Guns, grenades, hell, Warden Moeller probably keeps whips and leather in the basement -- That doesn’t work, we can throw cafeteria food at the thing till it pukes to death--”

Hah.

The warden won’t let them in, even though one of the survivors is Sheriff Hiatt from Pruitt. So Jonas just kicks a prison bus open and drives it through the fence.

Jonas tells Warden Moeller to stfu and the prison guards open fire on the monster, to no avail.

Guidry has one last plan though and tells Jonas he’ll need her help.

So he aggros the monster to chase him through the prison -- and holy crap, this thing is tearing through prison bars like they’re twizzlers -- and all the way to the electric chair room.

He dodges behind the chair to trick the monster into skewering it with its claws and then Jonas turns on the power.

The monster is finally dead. And Guidry voluntarily turns himself in to serve out the remainder of his prison sentence because Pruitt (the town that’s currently on fire and flattened) is his entire life and home and between another six months in jail vs never seeing it again? Easy decision.

Plus, he’s also sweet on Jonas and she seems to be into him too. “I’m a firm believer in rehabilitation.” So, yeah, that’s disciplinary action waiting to happen.

#50 more days of comics! #Dark Horse Presents #the Predator #internalized feelings of worthlessness the story #and giving an alien the electric chair #what a grab bag of whimsy

[rhotdornn]

Fennel: For a drabble about my muse being strong in a way that they usually aren’t. (Ahtun-Swars)

Long had the day grown, and longingly so did it stretch into the evening… For even as the crown of the honeyed sun spilled across the horizon, streaks of light would not be permitted passage; nay, the thick, obscuring, hallowed waft of smog and ash crept up from the riled tide, crawling its ghastly path across the hull of a battered vessel, now rolling upon the seething current. Torn sails snapped harshly against the furling gale, as it harrowed the blackened heavens above–the crackle of aetherial tension swelling with thunder within the rolling blanket of clouds. The waters portended naught but death, for beyond their surface lurked an eerie, unbecoming, inky coat–swallowing any and all trace of turquoise and emerald that oft sloshed vibrantly through Aerslaent’s crystalline Seas. It had always been the same, sonorous song that flirted with the wind, and carried low upon its brow, across every nook and cranny it could flit through. 

“Undulávë ilyë…Tier lomé…Ar caita mornië…”

The bark of the ship once shone with the splendour of ivory, of a great bark of gray make, now tarnished and consumed by dust and smolder as the plumes of hearty flames gnawed away upon its beauty, leaving behind naught but debris and ash to honour its lost memory. At the very front of the vessel’s bow, a majestic figurehead still stood to endure, fashioned in the likeness of a queenly swan with folded, pristine wings of white.

“Sindanóriello…I falmalinnar imbë met…Oialë…” 

Despite the calamitous winds that ailed the waters on low and skies on high, only but one voice lulled throughout the catastrophe, lingering with a harmonic drift of the mirth it incurred. Upon the very shipdeck, a sight that rivaled such tranquility had danced between each flick of ember, and every breath of fire that scorned the planks around it. A male, crimson-crowned Sea Wolf knelt at the mercy of the elements, both of his wrists snared within the malicious grip of two ropes. The light within his infernal hues had long since dissipated, and the breath once filling his leonine breast had long since departed, robbed by the crestfallen Wolf’s own, waning hope. Upon his brow sat naught but dismay–dismay, and a welling fount of anguish and agitation, festering all the deeper as his irises strove upwards, offering little more than seething daggers towards the culprit of the song.

Long, pale legs moved to sweep noiselessly across the charred trail, tactfully slow, and woefully bright. In the heart of this surreal darkness, the figure before him shimmered with an ephemeral gleam. A gown fitted with an opalescent plumage rolled past its shoulders, its waist and knees–yet further than it fell the specter’s keen, twin-blades–light, Elven blades fastened with a disciplined grip within each palm. The glint of their razors saw them tipped low, and their approach tantalized him further, for it had been slow, drawn out and scathing upon his mind. A searing, incandescent spectral luminosity swept across their metal, bathing them in the silvery sheen of the Moon–despite its presence on that eve.

“At the edge of darknessHope is whispering still…Tender, unerringGently stirring…”

Where the lips of the feminine voice bespoke hope, his own brows would feel the encroaching twitch of irritation spur them lower, his own voice bellowing out in a resentful concession of victory.

“…Aye. AYE. I may not remember your ilk, or the song–but by now, Althyk knows I may recite it by heart. Ever the same… Withered song… Upon the same, blackened waters… Lulling the same, demolished ship…” Try as he might, further focus would ill avail him–for the radiance of her cloaked garments dazzled with the glint of stars, sewn within each strand and thread of her armaments. “Always the same withered song. Always the same ending… Yet both of us know how this dance closes… How this nightmare, like so many afore it, meets its end.” Long were the nights of robbed sleep, and numerous inbetween–for in the realm of reality, nary a wink of sleep could he at certain nights obtain–and on such nights, the full Moon would strike out across the celestial stardom, spreading its enthralling shimmer across all creation it touched.

“Memories unfurling in the mindWarm wind from a far, forgotten country…”

The star-embellished mistress would see her step come to a halt, as her blades stilled but a few ilms before the Sea Wolf; the edge of the right razor slipping beneath his sweat-addled neck–as if to beckon his attention upwards in a twisted fashion.

“…Long left behind.”

Those last few sentiments… This haunting dreamscape would, unlike those that preceded it, stand apart from the rest. The harmonic song… For a miracle, he finally understood it–for he lingered in a dream, and now only did his mind grow aware of it. And as he came to, so too would a spark of memories ignite his spirit–where he once felt resentment’s sting and guilt’s pang, now he saw far more clearly; as if the fog grew thinner between her and him, and the ash fell back in disarray at the first tuft of the zephyr that rose to greet the vessel.

“Wandering the empty roadIn twilight’s silver shade…”

The twin blade of the blinding shade rose in tandem, yet with a promise far more malicious–akin to every dream, it meant to struck as the last verse dispersed from her lips, in an effort to strike the bound Rainlander low, and cast him away from the reprieve of sleep’s hold, once more. And again. And again.Until no more sanity remained, and he wholly surrendered to his grief.Until his days were fully spent, and his mind lost to madness, spurred by the decree of insomnia.Yet, at last, he finally saw clear.This had never been a song wholly about him.

“Following the hidden paths…Lonely and afraid.”

And as her merciful blade fell in a swift, traverse cut, ribbons of sanguine would splatter from the Wolf’s husk…

…Yet not from his throat, into which the specter sought to sink her steel.

The binds that held his wrists at bay just now fell to the wasted floorboards, with a dull, lifeless ‘thump.’ Within his left palm would he clutch her moonlit blade, and within his eyes would he brandish a mounting, volcanic flare. The moment she sought to assert her other blade fully into his neck, it would find no purchase–for his right hand had already laid claim to the wrist which commanded it, driving it ever so further away.

Her last verse–the last hint of the song she’d always torment him with ere finishing his voyage within sleep’s embrace prematurely, had now been sung… Yet the only bleeding fell in rivulets from the palm which clung to her weapon.

For now it had been his turn. And his booming, proud bass would thrum away with a quiet, low in volume yet poised in the notes it carried across the four, scattered winds. The dread that once swam before his eyesight now rolled back akin to a fragile curtain, and dead in her eye would he strike out his stare.

“…Let the sunlight free the heartForever bound to roam.”

The hand which gripped her wrist offered a far shorter kindness in turn-for in the aftermath of its toppling strength, the specter would gasp at her own palm twisting–and him commanding her own blade into her abdomen in no more than one seamless motion–and clean cut.

In the aftermath of it all, only a single twinkle flirted with his attention–a bright, illuminated trinket that shone with an auburn light, fading away as she did–in a swarm of depleting, cascading starlight, rolling away along the shipdeck–and plunging peacefully back into the calming waves beneath. Their slosh and tossing would cease, for the waters once more flourished with a pristine clarity, drawing unto their surface more vibrant hues of aquatic green and blue.

As he perched his glare upon the cloud-veiled sky, the pallor of starlight would answer his gaze; for the skies began to drive back the tides of blackened clouds, and before him, under the muster of the zephyr, a wholly familiar, once-forgotten star would become known. Perched upon the highest vault of the heavenly abode, it shone with only four tails, and vied with none for dominance of the skies; for its light blazed ardently, and its radiance shone the brightest.

The Nortyrstyr. The Northern Star of Hyrthyml, rumored to make itself known to those that sought it out without malice seducing their intent, or rotting away their hearts.

And under its hallowed gaze would his nightmare-turned-dream come to a close–and when he arose, his limbs would not betray him to fatigue, nor would his mind be addled with a longing for succor and reprieve. No, hurriedly would he disembark from the safety of his bedside, sorting through his armaments–yet as he browsed his wardrobe, he’d briefly cease, as his palm wound up against his aged, weather-worn leather jacket–only to harshly shove it aside, despite the small wrinkle of a frown it instilled his sweat-laden visage with–and retrieve his blade, tucked away within a hidden compartment in the closet.

He had finally claimed that which he clung to–which he sought after without knowing it all along.

He had finally come to make peace with himself, and drew upon enough strength in a way he never could on his own, once upon a time.

He had finally forgiven himself.

And for that, the spoils of his rewards counted his resurfacing, mending memory once-fractured… As well as the true, final verse of the song.

“…And let the waking morning findThe weary traveller returning home.”

[A-spicy drabble prompts, mama mia!]

#asks #answered #ahtun-swars #thank you for the ask! #Anonymous

[ruminativerabbi]

An American Hero

John McCain’s death was hardly a surprise. (The announcement at the end of last week that the decision had been made to discontinue medical treatment was certainly a clear enough indicator that he was coming to the end of his days.) I admit that the national wellspring of emotion the senator’s death brought forth from political fellow travelers and opponents alike, even leaving the President’s belated and begrudging response out of the mix, caught more than a bit off-guard. But it was Senator McCain’s posthumously-revealed wish that he be eulogized in a bipartisan manner both by Presidents George Bush and Obama that made the strongest impression on me. That these were the two men who the most consequentially thwarted his own White House aspirations—the former by defeating him for the Republican nomination in 2000 and the later by defeating him in the presidential election of 2008—also impressed me as a sign both of humility and magnanimity. The funeral is this Saturday, so I’m writing this before knowing what either man will say. But my guess is that both will rise to the occasion and pay homage to the man, not for holding this or that political view, but for having the moral stamina to move past his own defeats at both their hands to return to the Senate to continue his life of service to the American people.

Senator McCain was a complicated figure and hardly a paragon of invariable virtue. He himself characterized the decisions that led to his involvement in the “Keating Five” scandal the “worst mistake of my life.” (The fact that he made that comment after the Senate Ethics Committee determined that he had violated neither any U.S. law nor any specific rule of the Senate itself speaks volumes: here was a man who could have gone on to crow about his innocence—or at least about his non-guilt—yet who chose instead publicly to rue the appearance of impropriety that he feared would permanently attach itself to his name.) He owned up publicly to the fact that, at least in the context of his first marriage, he was not a model of marital fidelity. He was in many instances a party-line guy, going along with the plan to invade Iraq without stopping to notice that there was no actual evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed the weapons of mass destruction President Bush was so certain had to exist and in fact going so far as to refer on the floor of the Senate to Iraq as a “clear and present danger” to our country without pausing to ask himself how he could possibly know that in the absence of evidence that Iraq possessed actual weapons capable of reaching these shores.

On the other hand, his more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese—the beatings and the torture he endured, his refusal to accept the early release offered to him because the military Code of Conduct instructs prisoners to accept “neither parole nor special favors” from the enemy, his two years of solitary confinement—speaks for itself. (And the phony “confession” he signed at a particularly low point when his injuries had brought him to the point of considering suicide does nothing to change my mind about his heroism. In the end, he defied his captors in every meaningful way and was momentarily defeated by them only once.) As does his lifetime of service to the American people, one given real meaning specifically by the fact, as noted above, that he specifically did not abandon his commitment to serve merely because he was twice thwarted in his bid for the presidency and instead simply returned to the Senate, following the admirable example of Henry Clay, who lost the election of 1824 to John Quincy Adams and then, after serving as the latter’s Secretary of State for four years, returned to the Senate where he served as Senator from Kentucky for two non-consecutive terms and died, like McCain, in office.

But it was McCain’s posthumous letter to America that I want the most to write about today. Lots of literary masterworks have been published posthumously—all three of Kafka’s novels, for example, came out after he died in 1924—but most have been works that their authors for some reasons chose not to publish or were unable to get published in their lifetimes, not letters that their authors specifically wished to be publicized after they were gone from the world. That concept, however, is not unknown…and the concept of creating what is called an ethical will in which a legator bequeaths, not physical possessions or money, but values and moral principles to his or her heirs is actually a Jewish practice that has its roots in medieval Jewish times.

There are early examples of something like that even from biblical times—the Torah contains the pre-posthumous blessings that both Jacob and Moses left behind for their heirs to contemplate and to allow to guide them forward after Jacob and Moses were going to be gone from the world. (When the New Testament author of the Gospel of Matthew portrays Jesus as doing the same thing, in fact, it is probably part of an ancient author’s effort accurately to depict Jesus as a Jewish man doing what Jewish men in his day did.) But the custom reached its fullest flower in the Middle Ages—the oldest extant ethical will from that period was written by one Eleazar ben Isaac of Worms in Germany and dates back to c. 1050. After that, there are lots of examples, many of which were collected and published in two volumes back in 1926 by Israel Abrahams under the title Hebrew Ethical Wills and still available for a very reasonable price. There is even a modern guide to preparing such a will to leave to your own descendants in Jack Riemer’s Ethical Will and How To Prepare Them: A Guide for Sharing Your Values from Generation to Generation, published in a revised second edition just a few years ago by Jewish Lights in Woodstock, Vermont.

And it is in that specific vein that I found myself reading Senator McCain’s letter to the American people: not as last-minute effort to make a few final points, much less to get a few last jabs in at specific, if unnamed, opponents. (The Bible has a good example of that too in David’s last message to the world, which includes a hit-list of people David hopes Solomon will find a way to punish—or rather, to execute—after David is gone from the world and Solomon becomes king after him.) The McCain letter, neither vengeful nor angry, is not at all in that vein. Nor is it particularly soothing: it is, in every sense, the literary embodiment of its authors hopes for the nation he served and his last word on the course he hopes our nation will take in the years following his death. To read the full text, click here.

Senator McCain identifies the core values he feels should lie at the generative core of all American policy: a deep dedication to the concept of personal liberty, an equally serious dedication to the pursuit of justice for all, and, to quote directly, a level of “respect for the dignity of all people [that will bring the nation and its citizens] happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures.” Furthermore, he writes unambiguously that, in his opinion, “our identities and sense of worth [are never] circumscribed, but enlarged, by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.”

He characterizes our country as “a nation of ideals, not blood and soil.” And then he writes this: “We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world.” But his tone is not at all self-congratulatory. Indeed, the very next passage is the one that seems both the most filled with honor and trepidation: “We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down; when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.” It is hard to read those words without reference to the current administration, and I’m sure that McCain meant them to be understood in that specific way. But the overall tone of the letter is not preachy or political, but deeply encouraging and uplifting. His final words to his fellow Americans are also worth citing verbatim: “Do not despair of our present difficulties,” the senator writes from the very edge of his life. “We believe always in the promise and greatness of America because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit, we never surrender, we never hide from history. We make history. Farewell fellow Americans, God bless you, and God bless America.”

I disagreed with John McCain about a lot. We were not on the same side of any number of the most important issues facing our nation, but those divisions fall away easily as I read those final words. Here, I find myself thinking easily, was a true patriot—a flawed man in the way all of us must grapple with our own weaknesses and failings, but, at the end of the day, a principled man and a patriot. His death was a loss to the nation and particularly to the Senate, but the words he left behind will, I hope, guide us forward in a principled way that finds in debate and respectful disagreement the context in which the American people can find harmony in discord (which is, after all, a peculiarly and particularly American concept) and a focused national will to live up our own Founders’ ideals.

In the physical universe, energy derives from tension, friction, and stress. In the world of ideas, the same is true: Socrates knew that and developed a way of seeking the truth rooted not in placid agreement but in vigorous debate. That concept, almost more than anything else, is what shines through Senator McCain’s literary testament to the nation. He notes wryly, and surely correctly, that we are a nation composed of 325 million “opinionated, vociferous individuals.” But he also notes that when debate, even raucous public debate, is rooted in a shared love of country, the result is a stronger, more self-assured nation, not a weaker one enfeebled by conflicting opinions. I think that too…and my sadness at the senator’s passing is rooted, more than anything else, in that specific notion.

John McCain’s life was a gift to our country and his death, a tragedy. May he rest in peace, and may his memory be a source of ongoing blessing for his family and for his friends, and also for us all.

#John McCain

[wandaterrell]

ZIP4 Codes The Last 4 Digits of ZIP Code

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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What are ZIP+4 Codes?

If you have ever tried sending direct mail to someone, you have likely come across the term ZIP+4 code (ZIP Plus 4 Codes). The origin of the ZIP code dates back as far as 1963. It was introduced as a solution to make mail travel faster. During its inception, the ZIP codes only consisted of 5 digits but, as the mail system grew bigger and more complex along with the growing population in the US, the 5-digit ZIP codes were no longer doing the job good enough. Hence in 1983, the USPS introduced the ZIP+4 codes, which are also known today as “+4 codes,” and the purpose of this ZIP+4 code is simply to add more precision to the standard five-digit ZIP codes.

In a nine-digit full ZIP Code, the first five digits represent the specific delivery area or post office of an address, whereas the last four digits of the ZIP code indicate the delivery area down to a few blocks radius or specific delivery area. The entire nine-digit ZIP code, in effect, streamlines the delivery process for the USPS and ensures that your direct mail is sent or received with minimal delay. So it doesn’t matter whether you are sending mail or receiving one. It is important to know your ZIP+4 code so that the package can easily be delivered to its destination.

What are the Last 4 Digits of my ZIP code?

Many people are often unaware of their ZIP code’s last four digits, and their number is surprisingly high. Apart from this, most people are unaware of the full 9-digits ZIP code for the direct mails they send out. Although the post can be sent without the ZIP 4 code, it would be considered slow to move along and can take a while before it reaches the recipient. The ZIP code or Zone Improvement Plan was something the USPS came up with to make the postal service easy and quick across the country. The ZIP codes divide the country into different zones enabling the USPS to accelerate their postal sorting and delivery process effectively. Therefore, it is always best to provide the full 9-digits ZIP code if you want the letter or package delivered sooner rather than later.

The question now becomes how do I find the full ZIP code to the address I want to send a direct mail to. When it comes to businesses that send out regular direct mails to their customers, this question is even more crucial because they often work on deadlines. When working on a deadline, speed is vital, and the post reaches the customers even more urgently. Hence, businesses must turn to advanced address verification tools like PostGrid that can provide a complete address, including the full 9-digit ZIP codes for your address database. What makes it even better is that you are able to do this in a matter of seconds, and it only takes you a few clicks. There is no need for carrying out a ZIP 4 lookup for each and every address, all you need is a CSV file, and you can easily get the data you need with a few clicks.

Benefits of ZIP+4 Codes

When it was first launched, the five-digit ZIP code was a revolutionary step for the US postal service. It significantly simplified the way the USPS functioned and streamlined its operations. The ZIP 4 code was brought in later to accommodate the growing population. However, that’s not all the ZIP 4 code does. According to a recent study by the USPS, about 40 million Americans move every year, that is, 40 million address changes every year and potentially 40 million undelivered letters/packages every year. Although 40 million may not be the real number of undelivered mailings, it is safe to say that a large number of mailings may not be delivered or shipped to the wrong address if it wasn’t for the ZIP 4 code.As per the data from USPS, out of a whopping 158 billion mailed items in 2013, only a mere 4.3% of them were marked “Undeliverable as Addressed (UAA).” Had it not been for the ZIP 4 code, this number could have been a lot worse. The role of the ZIP 4 code doesn’t end there either. It further goes on to boost the delivery speed and accuracy of the USPS mailing significantly. This is evident from the one or two-day deliveries made by the USPS. 

But perhaps what can be considered the most significant benefit of the ZIP 4 code, especially for businesses, is that the ZIP+4 codes require address validation. In other words, in order to get the ZIP+4 code of an address, it must first be standardized and validated to exist. In Layman’s term, an address with a ZIP 4 code can be sure to exist and also deliverable. And the cherry on top for the businesses using the ZIP+4 code is that they can help with getting your business bulk mailing discounts.

How are ZIP Codes Used

The 9-digits full ZIP code works in parts. For example, consider a direct mail is sent to New York City from Dallas, the carrier that first receives your mail from Dallas need not know the exact delivery address of the recipient. The mail first needs to be forwarded to the appropriate mail carrier, which in this case is the state of New York. Now, here is where the ZIP code comes into the picture for the first time during the travel of your direct mail. As mentioned before, the ZIP codes are assigned to post offices all around the country by USPS, and each posy office has at least one ZIP code assigned to it. In case the post office handles postal services to more than one ZIP code, it will have more ZIP codes assigned to it.

The first five digits are used at this stage to ensure that the direct mail is sent to the correct post office. At this stage, there is no point bothering with the ZIP 4 code at this point. Once the direct mail reaches the destined post office, the first 5-digit of the ZIP code becomes practically irrelevant other than cross-checking the address. Once the direct mails are received at the relevant post office, the ZIP 4 codes can then be used to figure out where the mail is delivered. The ZIP 4 code allows assigning the right person for the delivery based on their delivery route, thereby streamlining the entire delivery process.

USPS Five-Digit ZIP Codes

Now that we have an overview of the two parts of the 9-digits ZIP, we can now discuss how exactly the ZIP code helps identify your most accurate location. The best place to start this is the USPS five-digit ZIP codes that we are all familiar with. Like we discussed before, they are most commonly used to indicate the post office that will take it to its final destination. However, most of us don’t know that each number in the five-digit ZIP code is significant to its destination. The first digit of your five-digit ZIP code signifies the national area, while the next two digits signify the sectional center or large city post office. The last two digits of the five-digit ZIP code give the associate post office or delivery area, thereby giving the people at USPS a comprehensive idea of the postage destination.

Furthermore, the ZIP codes allow the postal worker to effectively deliver as many postages as he/she can in a day. In essence, you may treat the five-digit ZIP code as the post office’s address, and although some post offices deal with posts with more than one ZIP code, normally, each post office has just one ZIP code. Do not imagine the ZIP codes as “boundaries,” but rather think of them as delivery routes that are not constrained by any geographic or administrative boundaries. They may cross city, state, or even country lines. In a way, you may even say that they are governed by where the delivery truck goes.

It should come as no surprise to you that there are certain special ones even among ZIP codes. “Military” ZIP codes are one of the special ZIP codes, and they can be used for everything from military bases, domestic or otherwise, to battleships. These are unique codes and serve a specific purpose of being individualistic from the standard ones to avoid any form of confusion. It is also possible for businesses and organizations to get their own ZIP code due to the high volume of mail they receive every day. This is very practical for both the business and USPS. The business usually has an internal mail department that can presort mail before distributing it inside the company. Similarly, the direct mails sent out from the company are also presorted. Furthermore, these firms also enjoy the benefit of bulk mailing discounts thanks to their internal mail department.

ZIP+4 Codes – The Last 4 Digits of ZIP Code

If you want your direct mail delivered the fast and most accurate way possible, you’ll need to provide the ZIP+4 code and the normal five-digit ZIP. However, the ZIP 4 code is only available for the addresses that are standardized and validated to be real. The ZIP code’s last four digits indicate a very specific delivery route that includes the mail truck’s actual path taken for travel in a single drop-off. Typically this route consists of ten to twenty homes/locations. Sometimes the ZIP 4 codes are also given to PO boxes. They usually get their own ZIP 4 code that more often than not matches with the box number.

 Also Read: What are PO Box-Only ZIP Codes?

 Also Read: ZIP Code API

Since the ZIP+4 code digits are based on delivery routes rather than permanent boundaries, the last four digits of ZIP codes can often be subjected to change. Although the five-digit ZIP code also changes from time to time, their changes are far less frequent as compared to the ZIP+4 codes. In fact, it is unlikely that the five-digit ZIP code of a place will change while you are still living there as they remain the same for most of the time. On the other hand, the ZIP 4 code can change much more frequently and may sometimes change once a month based on a number of factors. These factors include the number of postal employees working, the route taken by the delivery truck, etc.

Full Zip Code Lookup

Businesses who want to optimize their direct mails, whether it be for a campaign or for sending out important documents like bills, need to include a full ZIP code on the posts they send. The full ZIP code of a mailing address ensures that your post reaches its destination fast and efficiently. The full mailing ZIP code of an address also offers much higher deliverability because these addresses are standardized and validated to be real. Therefore, the more accurate and efficient your address verification system, the better your direct mailing process will be for your business. The best way for you to carry out a full zip code lookup for business purposes would be to use advanced address verification tools such as PostGrid. With an bulk address verification, like PostGrid, you can easily upload your address database, small or big, as a CSV file and you can easily get the verified version of your address database. Not only does PostGrid verify the address for you against the official postal address database of USPS, but also it fills in missing data, including the full 9-digit zip code for every address. You can even use PostGrid’s Address lookup API for implementing an address autocomplete feature on your website that would let you type in their address and generate their full address. The autocomplete feature can come in handy for your other marketing efforts, such as landing pages, by providing a convenient way for the user to type in their details and, in effect, encourages conversions as they make the desired action (Filling the form in this case).You can take it a step further by fully automating your business’s direct mail process by using PostGrid’s fully-documented REST API to send out personalized letters, checks, or postcards to your target audience. You can either send the direct mails on-demand or at scale, depending on your requirements. With a deliverability rate of 99.99%, PostGrid’s print and mail API and platform automate, optimizes the entire process involved in direct mailing, saving you valuable time and effort, which can now be utilized for the more important aspects of your business.

Full ZIP Code Lookup for Offline Communication and Cross-Channel Campaigns

Once you have a full 9-digit ZIP code added to your database’s addresses, you can significantly improve your offline communication capabilities. You can further use this data for your cross-channel marketing campaigns. It is evident that the full zip code lookup can greatly help businesses and marketing domains in many ways. They also come with certain limitations. Before you can employ advanced automation tools for your business’s offline communication and cross-channel campaigns, you should consider its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of Full ZIP Code Lookup for Offline Communication

The shipping quality of the offline communication methods is greatly improved when you carry out a full ZIP code lookup and use the ZIP+4 code, and it ensures the offline communications are delivered in a single drop-off. Another advantage of a ZIP+4 code lookup is that the addresses are subjected to a standardization process. Then the standardized address is subjected to validation with the official postal address database of USPS. This makes sure the address is deliverable, reduces your return rates, and effectively improves the ROI (Return of investment). 

The USPS encourages using ZIP+4 codes for bulk mailings by offering discounts because the ZIP+4 codes give USPS valuable information that will help them sort through their mails more efficiently. As a result, the USPS only has to spend minimal resources to mail pieces to their destination. Offline business communication is thus made not only more time-efficient but also cost-effective. By doing this, companies can optimize their operational expense and further contribute to a higher ROI.

Another aspect of your offline communication affected by the utilization of full ZIP code lookup is the speed. Throughout this article, we have mentioned many times how the full nine-digit ZIP code enhances the speed of operation and speed of delivery of the post. The ZIP+4 code enables the USPS to direct mail much faster, which is ideal for businesses that want to send out important documents such as invoices, bills, or bank statements. The documents reach their destination in the shortest possible time and minimize the risk of late delivery, which effectively improves your customer service quality.

Disadvantages of Full ZIP Code Lookup for Offline Communication

Although the full ZIP code lookup tools significantly enrich the customer data and are invaluable in terms of efficiency, there is a risk of it integrating poorly with an automated mail printing and delivery system. Unless the solution of your choice is fully automated, like PostGrid, that allows you to carry out a full ZIP code lookup and have them printed and mailed to the right destinations, you may end up hiring a separate team to handle the offline communications. Such a measure could affect your budget and keep your staff away from doing the more important work than organizing mail fulfillments. Similarly, not having a fully automated system like PostGrid can become a nightmare if the offline mailings are managed poorly by the team that takes care of them. There will always be the scope of human error in your offline communication system.

Advantages of Full ZIP Code Lookup for Cross-Channel Marketing

Using an advanced address verification tool like PostGrid for a full ZIP code lookup allows you to get a more comprehensive and data-driven idea about the geographic area your target audience lives in. You can use this to collect additional demographic data of the target audience. Once you get your hands on this type of data, you can then utilize it to learn the average household income, median age, and other such nifty details through governmental bodies’ official statistics. This kind of data can be a treasure trove for a capable marketing team. They can use it to come up with personalized advertising for the target audience through numerous marketing channels.

The channel used for the purpose could be anything from billboards to regionally-relevant, personalized postcards. Once you are able to relate to a specific customer or even customer group to their daily route, the marketing team can select the ideal product to be advertised based on the new data obtained. In effect, a full ZIP code lookup can lead to enhancing the marketing campaigns and their overall quality despite which marketing channel you decide to use. Furthermore, the accuracy of your cross-channel marketing is greatly improved through a full ZIP code lookup. This can be better utilized by companies or businesses that do not have extensive data on their customers and are constrained by their marketing budget to invest in advanced methods for collecting more data on their leads or customers.

Disadvantages of Full ZIP Code Lookup for Cross-Channel Marketing

As far as cross-channel campaigns are concerned, their effectiveness is to a great extent dependent on automation. The effective implementation of cross-channel is not feasible unless automated to get you the best possible result. The full ZIP code lookup offered by the USPS is not equipped with the advanced capabilities that are needed for the marketing automation of medium to large size companies. The USPS services offered for a full ZIP code lookup are pretty rudimentary and with limited data enrichment capabilities. For a business, it is highly impractical to use legacy solutions provided by USPS for determining the extended ZIP code of addresses in your database. As a result, your cross-channel marketing campaign may suffer.

Therefore, you need two things to get the desired result from your cross-channel marketing efforts: a marketing automation software and an advanced tech solution. This is where an advanced, fully-automated print and mail API solution like PostGrid comes into the picture. As tools like PostGrid are advanced and can be integrated into your website using API, it allows for complete automation of your direct mail campaigns. PostGrid’s capability to integrate to your business website along with its superior analytics makes it a one-stop solution for streamlining your cross-channel marketing efforts.

 Also Read: What is a postal code?

Conclusion

As we’re near the conclusion of this article, we find ourselves facing the best way to implement an extended ZIP code lookup for businesses. It is evident that, at a time when the competition is now harder than ever, businesses need to have an edge through reliable methods like cross-channel marketing and even offline communication through posts. Unlike the use of ZIP+4 codes by individuals or even small-scale businesses, companies with a fairly large address database can not afford to stick with traditional solutions.

Traditional solutions like USPS extended ZIP code lookup are not the right match for businesses regardless of size. It is, therefore, necessary for businesses to adopt a more simplified, accurate, and well-organized solution. Even partial automation, including address verification, may not get you the results you hope for. By using advanced tools, like PostGrid, you can streamline the entire process of cross-channel marketing. It can also save you valuable resources, which you can use for the more important goal of growing your business.

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Via https://www.postgrid.com/zip-4-code/

source https://postgridplatform.weebly.com/blog/zip4-codes-the-last-4-digits-of-zip-code1399005 source https://irenejvines.blogspot.com/2021/09/zip4-codes-last-4-digits-of-zip-code.html

[orson-hill-realty-blog]

Is Colorado Home Inventory Ever Going to Ever Pick Up in 2021? Good News - It Already Is

Is Colorado Home Inventory Ever Going to Ever Pick Up in 2021? Good News - It Already Is

It has been a rough year for buyers buying homes in Colorado. Inventory has been lower than it ever has been. Areas like the Denver Foothills have had low inventory and sky rocketing home values for a year now. Things are already looking better for buyers in Colorado and the Denver Foothills to be specific. They are still pretty low but the trend is improving for buyers.

Colorado Home Inventory is Picking Up

What is a good inventory level?

For most of 2016, the Colorado real estate industry was in a holding pattern. Sales and prices were sluggish with buyers starting to feel the effects of the lower oil prices. Sales fell and prices rose and people began to think that the market had peaked and was slowing down. The new Trump administration, the rising costs of home building materials and labor and the rising mortgage rates all added fuel to the slow moving fire. Starting in January of 2017, sales and prices started to climb again. There has been a lot of buying and selling over the last four months and prices are also finally starting to creep up. Right now, the Denver Foothills have a very low inventory of homes available for sale. According to a new report by Reverse.

How do I know if my house is overpriced?

Click to Enlarge (Source: Author generated from my excel data) I created this graph for you. It looks at the housing prices versus the estimated housing inventory levels. I added the estimated housing inventory in 2016 and 2017. Notice that home values continue to rise faster than housing inventory. It is time to be excited. I think that home values are going to continue to rise in Colorado over the next few months. Low inventory coupled with rising prices. How can you add to the buying/selling pressure for your home? The very first thing you can do is make your home look better. Paint your walls, clean your gutters and do any other maintenance work you can do yourself. Make your home look like a home. There are also professionals who can help.

The Colorado Home Inventory Problem

Colorado's home inventory is so low that it is not even considered a strong seller's market right now. Some areas of the state are considered very bad seller's markets. This means that homes are going into foreclosure faster and it is taking a longer time for homes to sell. People are starting to believe the crisis is over for them. Most people that buy homes aren't going to be in a panic and rush to buy one. They are going to be more cautious. The problem is it is going to take sellers that don't mind a little risk. Those that are getting homes foreclosed on are just like buyers. They are going to buy something with less risk and more value for their money. More Home Sales That is where buyers are going to come in. They are going to get more aggressive.

How will things get better for buyers?

No doubt there are challenges for buyers in 2019. These include higher mortgage rates. But in 2021 we will see a more positive development for buyers. The single largest factor that is responsible for Colorado inventory not picking up is price increases. As the price of homes continues to increase it is pricing out more people from the market. The next year you will start to see that cause the inventory to begin increasing again. Right now it is just a trickle. But in 2021 we will see that trend increase. How can you benefit from this? If you are a first time home buyer you will have a chance to purchase a home in 2021. It will be a good time to buy because the price is rising but it will be difficult to get a loan.

What is Colorado Home Inventory?

Colorado currently has a lot of homes for sale compared to past decades. With that said there is a lot of competition for a limited amount of homes. Investors are driving up prices for homes by offering cheap loans, refinancing old mortgages, and selling their current home to buy a new one. This is pricing potential buyers out of the market and lowering inventory. Colorado is not alone in having a low inventory. Across the country home buyers are struggling to find homes. If you’re planning on moving this year don’t delay! You should be able to find the home of your dreams. What is Denver Home Inventory? Denver is a hot market. For many people, this is the only market they will buy in. The increased price makes it more expensive than most people will be able to afford.

Is Colorado Homes “Out Of Inventory”?

It’s a catch-22. Low inventory has lead to higher prices. Both inventory and prices are down across the state but in some areas, like the Denver Foothills, inventory is now up by over 30 percent since last year. That is a big difference and a promising trend for buyers who have been shut out of the market for the last year. Inventory is important for everyone and is a big factor for the economy. If there is a low supply and no activity, it is not only costing money to try to buy a home, but it’s hurting home values in the area. When inventory goes up, the opposite happens. Inventory: Is it coming back? It looks like it. According to Realtor.com, the Denver Foothills is getting a big boost in inventory.

Why is there a shortage of inventory in the Denver Foothills?

When there is less inventory, prices go up. If more homes are on the market than homes for sale, buyers compete to buy homes that are priced higher than they should be. It's a "perfect storm" for prices to increase quickly. Who is going to help the buyer's market out in 2021? An influx of jobs, millennials, and empty nesters. More jobs, like in Colorado, also mean more supply. New construction will be higher and higher until it reaches a point where prices begin to decrease. Not everyone will be able to find that perfect home but prices will be falling. When the home inventory is low, there is plenty of competition to buy. When more homes are for sale than homes for sale, you get price increases in some areas and sales volume drops in others.

What are the lowest days on market in Colorado and why does it matter?

The best way to figure out a reason for a low inventory of homes for sale is by looking at the lowest days on market. The data is from Denver Metro Inventory Report from Trulia and Morningstar. The Denver Metro Inventory Report shows the lowest inventory on the market for Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins. Here are the last year’s median home values along with the days on market, all of which are part of the Denver Metro Inventory Report. Denver Metro Median Home Values The median home price for the Denver Metro is $374,000 with homes listed for just under 100 days on the market. Riverside Median Home Values The median home price for the Riverside metro area is $453,000 with homes listed for 93 days on the market. What is the relationship between housing inventory and home prices?

Historical trends

It's no secret that the Colorado economy has been struggling. Sales are down, inventory is low and prices are increasing at a much faster rate than the amount of people actually buying. As the market in the state of Colorado and Denver Foothills has gotten worse it's definitely contributed to the drought in homes in the area. According to the Denver Business Journal, data from real-estate market analyst CoreLogic showed that the number of homes sold in the state decreased 10 percent in September. CoreLogic shows that 4,309 homes were sold in Colorado which is the fewest number of homes sold for that month in the last 5 years. The problem here is the lack of inventory. It is way lower than it was just a few years ago.

Conclusion

The improving trend in home inventory in the Denver Foothills and its surrounding areas could mean that buyers will have an easier time finding a home to buy in the future. Additionally, the improving trend in home inventory means that home values will also start to improve again. Because of this trend and the current low home prices in the area, it is not a bad idea to start looking for your next home right now. Click the link below to read more about the state of the Denver Foothills market. Read the full article

#Colorado #Inventory #LowInventory

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Rural Ambulance Services Are in Jeopardy as Volunteers Age and Expenses Mount

DUTTON, Mont. — Vern Greyn was standing in the raised bucket of a tractor, trimming dead branches off a tree, when he lost his balance. He fell 12 feet and struck his head on the concrete patio outside his house in this small farming town on the central Montana plains.

Greyn, then 58, couldn’t move. His wife called 911. A volunteer emergency medical technician showed up: his own daughter-in-law, Leigh. But there was a problem. Greyn was too large for her to move by herself, so she had to call in help from the ambulance crew in Power, the next town over.

“I laid here for a half-hour or better,” Greyn said, recounting what happened two years ago from the same patio. When help finally arrived, they loaded him into the ambulance and rushed him to the nearest hospital, where they found he had a concussion.

In rural America, it’s increasingly difficult for ambulance services to respond to emergencies like Greyn’s. One factor is that emergency medical services are struggling to find young volunteers to replace retiring EMTs. Another is a growing financial crisis among rural volunteer EMS agencies: A third of them are at risk because they can’t cover their operating costs.

“More and more volunteer services are finding this to be untenable,” said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association.

Rural ambulance services rely heavily on volunteers. About 53% of rural EMS agencies are staffed by volunteers, compared with 14% in urban areas, according to an NRHA report. More than 70% of those rural agencies report difficulty finding volunteers.

In Montana, a state Department of Public Health and Human Services report says, about 20% of EMS agencies frequently have trouble responding to 911 calls for lack of available volunteers, and 34% occasionally can’t respond to a call.

When that happens, other EMS agencies must respond, sometimes having to drive long distances when a delay of minutes can be the difference between life and death. Sometimes an emergency call will go unanswered, leaving people to drive themselves or ask neighbors to drive them to the nearest hospital.

According to state data, 60% of Montana’s volunteer EMTs are 40 or older, and fewer young people are stepping in to replace the older people who volunteer to save the lives of their relatives, friends and neighbors.

Finding enough volunteers to fill out a rural ambulance crew is not a new problem. In Dutton, where Greyn fell out of the tractor bucket, EMS Crew Chief Colleen Campbell says getting people to volunteer and keeping them on the roster has been an issue for most of the 17 years she’s volunteered with the Dutton ambulance crew.

Currently the Dutton crew has four volunteers, including Campbell. In its early days, the Dutton ambulance service was locally run and survived off limited health insurance reimbursements and donations. At its lowest point, she said, her crew consisted of two people: her and her best friend.

That made responding to calls, doing the administrative work and organizing the training needed to maintain certifications more than they could handle. In 2011, the Dutton ambulance service was absorbed by Teton County.

That eased some of Campbell’s problems, but her biggest challenge remains finding people willing to go through the roughly 155 hours of training and take the written and practical tests in this town of fewer than 300 people.

“It’s just a big responsibility that people aren’t willing to jump into, I guess,” Campbell said.

In addition to personnel shortages, about a third of rural EMS agencies in the U.S. are in immediate operational jeopardy because they can’t cover their costs, according to the NRHA.

Slabach said that largely stems from insufficient Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. Those reimbursements cover, on average, about a third of the actual costs to maintain equipment, stock medications and pay for insurance and other fixed expenses.

Many rural ambulance services rely on patients’ private insurance to fill the gap. Private insurance pays considerably more than Medicaid, but because of low call volumes, rural EMS agencies can’t always cover their bills, Slabach said.

“So, it’s not possible in many cases without significant subsidies to operate an emergency service in a large area with small populations,” he said.

Slabach and others say sagging reimbursement and volunteerism means rural parts of the U.S. can no longer rely solely on volunteers but must find ways to convert to a paid staff.

Jim DeTienne, who recently retired as the Montana health department’s EMS and Trauma Systems chief, acknowledged that sparsely populated counties would still need volunteers, but he said having at least one paid EMT on the roster could be a huge benefit.

DeTienne said he believes EMS needs to be declared an essential service like police or fire departments. Then counties could tax their residents to pay for ambulance services and provide a dedicated revenue stream.

Only 11 states have deemed EMS an essential service, Slabach said.

The Montana health department report on EMS services suggested other ways to move away from full-volunteer services, such as having EMS agencies merge with taxpayer-funded fire departments or having hospitals take over the programs.

In the southwestern Montana town of Ennis, Madison Valley Medical Center absorbed the dwindling volunteer EMS service earlier this year.

EMS Manager Nick Efta, a former volunteer, said the transition stabilized the service, which had been struggling to answer every 911 call. He said the service recently had nine calls in 24 hours. That included three transfers of patients to larger hospitals miles away.

“Given that day and how the calls played out, I think under a volunteer model it would be difficult to make all those calls,” Efta said.

Rich Rasmussen, president and CEO of the Montana Hospital Association, said an Ennis-style takeover might not be financially viable for many of the smaller critical access hospitals that serve rural areas. Many small hospitals that take over emergency services do so at a loss, he said.

“Really, what we need is a federal policy change, which would allow critical access hospitals to be reimbursed for the cost of delivering that EMS service,” he said.

Under current Medicare policy, federally designated critical access hospitals can get fully reimbursed for EMS only if there’s no other ambulance service within 35 miles, Rasmussen said. Eliminating that mileage requirement would give the hospitals an incentive to take on EMS, Rasmussen said.

“It’s a long haul to do this, but it would dramatically improve EMS access all across this country,” he said.

A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pilot program is testing the elimination of mileage minimums for emergency services with select critical access hospitals.

The rural EMS crunch puts a greater burden on the closest urban ambulance services. Don Whalen, who manages a private EMS service in Missoula, the state’s second-largest city, said his crews regularly respond to outlying communities 70 miles away and sometimes across the Idaho line because local volunteer agencies often can’t answer emergency calls.

“We know if we’re not going, nobody is coming for the patient, because a lot of times we’re the last resort,” he said.

Missoula EMS is responsible for calls in the city and Missoula County. Whalen said Missoula EMS has agreements with a couple of volunteer EMS agencies in smaller communities to provide an ambulance when volunteers have difficulty leaving work to respond to calls.

Those agreements, on top of responding to other towns where 911 calls are going unanswered, are taking resources from Missoula, he said.

Communities need to find ways to stabilize or convert their volunteer programs, or private services like his will need financial support to keep responding in other communities, Whalen said.

But lawmakers’ appetite for finding ways to fund EMS is limited. During Montana’s legislative session earlier this year, DeTienne pushed for a bill that would have studied the benefit of declaring EMS an essential service, among other possible improvements. The bill quickly died.

Back in Dutton, the EMS crew chief is thinking about her future after 17 years as a volunteer. Campbell said she wants to spend more time with her grandchildren, who live out of town. If she retires, there’s no guarantee somebody will replace her. She’s torn about what to do.

“My license is good until March of 2022, and we’ll just see,” Campbell said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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[stephenmccull]

Rural Ambulance Services Are in Jeopardy as Volunteers Age and Expenses Mount

DUTTON, Mont. — Vern Greyn was standing in the raised bucket of a tractor, trimming dead branches off a tree, when he lost his balance. He fell 12 feet and struck his head on the concrete patio outside his house in this small farming town on the central Montana plains.

Greyn, then 58, couldn’t move. His wife called 911. A volunteer emergency medical technician showed up: his own daughter-in-law, Leigh. But there was a problem. Greyn was too large for her to move by herself, so she had to call in help from the ambulance crew in Power, the next town over.

“I laid here for a half-hour or better,” Greyn said, recounting what happened two years ago from the same patio. When help finally arrived, they loaded him into the ambulance and rushed him to the nearest hospital, where they found he had a concussion.

In rural America, it’s increasingly difficult for ambulance services to respond to emergencies like Greyn’s. One factor is that emergency medical services are struggling to find young volunteers to replace retiring EMTs. Another is a growing financial crisis among rural volunteer EMS agencies: A third of them are at risk because they can’t cover their operating costs.

“More and more volunteer services are finding this to be untenable,” said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association.

Rural ambulance services rely heavily on volunteers. About 53% of rural EMS agencies are staffed by volunteers, compared with 14% in urban areas, according to an NRHA report. More than 70% of those rural agencies report difficulty finding volunteers.

In Montana, a state Department of Public Health and Human Services report says, about 20% of EMS agencies frequently have trouble responding to 911 calls for lack of available volunteers, and 34% occasionally can’t respond to a call.

When that happens, other EMS agencies must respond, sometimes having to drive long distances when a delay of minutes can be the difference between life and death. Sometimes an emergency call will go unanswered, leaving people to drive themselves or ask neighbors to drive them to the nearest hospital.

According to state data, 60% of Montana’s volunteer EMTs are 40 or older, and fewer young people are stepping in to replace the older people who volunteer to save the lives of their relatives, friends and neighbors.

Finding enough volunteers to fill out a rural ambulance crew is not a new problem. In Dutton, where Greyn fell out of the tractor bucket, EMS Crew Chief Colleen Campbell says getting people to volunteer and keeping them on the roster has been an issue for most of the 17 years she’s volunteered with the Dutton ambulance crew.

Currently the Dutton crew has four volunteers, including Campbell. In its early days, the Dutton ambulance service was locally run and survived off limited health insurance reimbursements and donations. At its lowest point, she said, her crew consisted of two people: her and her best friend.

That made responding to calls, doing the administrative work and organizing the training needed to maintain certifications more than they could handle. In 2011, the Dutton ambulance service was absorbed by Teton County.

That eased some of Campbell’s problems, but her biggest challenge remains finding people willing to go through the roughly 155 hours of training and take the written and practical tests in this town of fewer than 300 people.

“It’s just a big responsibility that people aren’t willing to jump into, I guess,” Campbell said.

In addition to personnel shortages, about a third of rural EMS agencies in the U.S. are in immediate operational jeopardy because they can’t cover their costs, according to the NRHA.

Slabach said that largely stems from insufficient Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. Those reimbursements cover, on average, about a third of the actual costs to maintain equipment, stock medications and pay for insurance and other fixed expenses.

Many rural ambulance services rely on patients’ private insurance to fill the gap. Private insurance pays considerably more than Medicaid, but because of low call volumes, rural EMS agencies can’t always cover their bills, Slabach said.

“So, it’s not possible in many cases without significant subsidies to operate an emergency service in a large area with small populations,” he said.

Slabach and others say sagging reimbursement and volunteerism means rural parts of the U.S. can no longer rely solely on volunteers but must find ways to convert to a paid staff.

Jim DeTienne, who recently retired as the Montana health department’s EMS and Trauma Systems chief, acknowledged that sparsely populated counties would still need volunteers, but he said having at least one paid EMT on the roster could be a huge benefit.

DeTienne said he believes EMS needs to be declared an essential service like police or fire departments. Then counties could tax their residents to pay for ambulance services and provide a dedicated revenue stream.

Only 11 states have deemed EMS an essential service, Slabach said.

The Montana health department report on EMS services suggested other ways to move away from full-volunteer services, such as having EMS agencies merge with taxpayer-funded fire departments or having hospitals take over the programs.

In the southwestern Montana town of Ennis, Madison Valley Medical Center absorbed the dwindling volunteer EMS service earlier this year.

EMS Manager Nick Efta, a former volunteer, said the transition stabilized the service, which had been struggling to answer every 911 call. He said the service recently had nine calls in 24 hours. That included three transfers of patients to larger hospitals miles away.

“Given that day and how the calls played out, I think under a volunteer model it would be difficult to make all those calls,” Efta said.

Rich Rasmussen, president and CEO of the Montana Hospital Association, said an Ennis-style takeover might not be financially viable for many of the smaller critical access hospitals that serve rural areas. Many small hospitals that take over emergency services do so at a loss, he said.

“Really, what we need is a federal policy change, which would allow critical access hospitals to be reimbursed for the cost of delivering that EMS service,” he said.

Under current Medicare policy, federally designated critical access hospitals can get fully reimbursed for EMS only if there’s no other ambulance service within 35 miles, Rasmussen said. Eliminating that mileage requirement would give the hospitals an incentive to take on EMS, Rasmussen said.

“It’s a long haul to do this, but it would dramatically improve EMS access all across this country,” he said.

A Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pilot program is testing the elimination of mileage minimums for emergency services with select critical access hospitals.

The rural EMS crunch puts a greater burden on the closest urban ambulance services. Don Whalen, who manages a private EMS service in Missoula, the state’s second-largest city, said his crews regularly respond to outlying communities 70 miles away and sometimes across the Idaho line because local volunteer agencies often can’t answer emergency calls.

“We know if we’re not going, nobody is coming for the patient, because a lot of times we’re the last resort,” he said.

Missoula EMS is responsible for calls in the city and Missoula County. Whalen said Missoula EMS has agreements with a couple of volunteer EMS agencies in smaller communities to provide an ambulance when volunteers have difficulty leaving work to respond to calls.

Those agreements, on top of responding to other towns where 911 calls are going unanswered, are taking resources from Missoula, he said.

Communities need to find ways to stabilize or convert their volunteer programs, or private services like his will need financial support to keep responding in other communities, Whalen said.

But lawmakers’ appetite for finding ways to fund EMS is limited. During Montana’s legislative session earlier this year, DeTienne pushed for a bill that would have studied the benefit of declaring EMS an essential service, among other possible improvements. The bill quickly died.

Back in Dutton, the EMS crew chief is thinking about her future after 17 years as a volunteer. Campbell said she wants to spend more time with her grandchildren, who live out of town. If she retires, there’s no guarantee somebody will replace her. She’s torn about what to do.

“My license is good until March of 2022, and we’ll just see,” Campbell said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Rural Ambulance Services Are in Jeopardy as Volunteers Age and Expenses Mount published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/