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sparklyjojos · 6 years

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--[Disco Wednesdayyy 24/?] The brave new world is made out of closed rooms, or are we really switching the genre over 1000 pages into the book? Okay then. [tw: csa, child abuse, brief gore]--

Last time, Disco arrived at the World’s End, accidentally jumped to the year 2019, and discovered that a company called Styron Japan built themselves a nice new skyscraper in Chofu. As soon as Disco enters the building, a bunch of company vicepresidents introduce themselves and tell him JJ Styron is already waiting. Judging by their quick explanations, JJ naturalized himself through marriage with a Japanese woman and was planning on spreading his influence to Japan.

JJ welcomes Disco with tea and sweets and says he’s been awaiting this visit for years. He looks startingly young for his 38 years, but asked about it claims he’s just taking good care of himself, since it’s not like he can jump in time or something, haha! Already unsettled, Disco asks about Sharon Styron’s death.

“Ah, yes, she’s dead.” JJ answers casually. “I killed her. Drugged her so she couldn’t move and cut her to pieces while she was still conscious.”

“...Why?”

“Why? Because she betrayed me, of course! The only thing she cared about was protecting you. I’ve been trying to find you and your family, and she refused to give me any information. She claimed you were an orphan.” So she must have sincerely believed the lies Disco told her about his identity... “Well, but it turns out she wasn’t lying... Mr. William Eady.”

Completely confused, Disco looks at the documents JJ shows him. A birth certificate. ‘William Eady’, ‘orphan’, a slightly different day of birth, ‘St. Paul’s Church in New York’ as the place he was found in. Everything exactly like in the made up story he told Sharon. ...If emotions can take external shape, can imagination, fiction? But then Disco notices the documents were ‘found’ by the law office in which the real William Eady is employed, so it’s likely that the lawyer forged the certificate to protect Disco.

“What were you going to do to me when you found me?”

“Kill you, if you went in my way. But now that the company is big enough to no longer be threatened by you, I don’t really care. And you know what? I can’t help but feel deep respect for you for doing your best to solve the mystery. Which is why I’d love for you to become the sales promoter for our wonderful Kozue Method! I can vouch for its effectiveness -- why, I’m my company’s client as well, and look how youthful I am. Well, my body is physically 11, haha!”

He spreads a variety of pamphlets on the table.

“You’ve heard about using stem cells acquired from clones to grow organs and such, have you? The Kozue Method is bolder! You can exchange the entire body at once! It’s perfectly possible, since the personality of a person is tied to consciousness, and not their physical body. Of course, we cooperate with the Blackswan company, who’s the patent holder for the Main Child treatment and for thouroughly preparing the Jacket, that is, the vessel Sub Child. It’s the single greatest development in the world’s history, and it’s all thanks to you, Disco!”

The Kozue Method involves the following procedure. The client -- the Main Child -- is given horrible abuse, so just like it was with Kozue parts of themselves split off and take over fetuses still in the womb, pushing the original souls out. These split off parts -- the Sub Children -- are born and raised, then mysteriously disappear one day, and the empty bodies (the ‘Jackets’, as JJ calls them) are used as new vessels for the Main Child.

That’s not all. From what JJ says, it seems the global consciousness, humanity’s emotions and will, can now be curated -- after all, there’s a way to get negative emotions and violent thoughts quite literally out of you, and apparently resentment will vanish with ‘split personalities’ too. This resulted in a clean, shiny, perfectly peaceful world with apparently zero creativity, to the point that no new fictional media is really made. [I’m... honestly confused as to how this exactly works, especially considering some later parts. Maybe JJ is just overexaggerating.]

“It really is all thanks to you! You found Kozue and the six others, managed to connect them back together, and the news spread all over the world. You’re a hero, Disco!”

“...How many kids did you... did you sell?”

“In the last 10 years it’d be, hm, two hundred millions? Now, now, I understand you have reservations. There’s a little guilt involved, but it’s not like people don’t live with many little guilts on their backs anyway. We’re improving the procedures, too! We already established that sexual abuse makes the job done the quickest, and hey, the faster it is, the shorter it hurts! The kid will just forget it anyway. The Blackswan guys are true specialists, they can do a lot in just one tiny moment. In a single second the child gets, what did you call it? ‘Abuse’, and in the next, the memory has already been moved to the other personality. It’s good that the parents don’t have to see it, since nobody likes to live thinking their children are being hurt.”

Blackswan. The company’s logo on the pamphlets looks familiar.

[The name Blackswan (or Black Swan? I’m not sure of the spelling here) may be a reference to Project Bluebird, which -- at least according to all the conspiracy websites out there -- involved among other unethical experiments trying to induce DID in healthy subjects.]

“You may think: what about the parents of the Sub Children?” JJ continues. “Aren’t they angry? Here’s where one of our big achievements comes into play. You’ve heard about the vanishing twin phenomenon, right? Of course you have, you met Daibakusho Curry. It happens a lot in nature. The strongest survives. What we’re doing here is just giving the poor weak kids a chance! We retrieve and raise them, so they can get a go at living before... being reused.”

How can this future be avoided?, Disco thinks. Is the Black Bird Man involved? Maybe if Disco finds and defeats him, all this can be fixed. But no, he can’t change the future in any way... so what can he do? Find children. Somehow protect the Main Children from abuse, so this entire system breaks. So twins no longer vanish, just like he promised to Run Run -- oh God, if Run Run can speak and act like a human, does this mean...?

Disco asks JJ if Run Run was a victim of their experiments too (maybe they tried to transfer human souls into animal bodies at first?), but JJ seems to genuinely have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Ah, whatever,” JJ says, waving his hand. “You don’t seem convinced, and I’ll forget everything that happened here anyway once you leave.”

But before Disco can actually leave, JJ turns on a futuristic screen and shows him a documentary called LAMIA SYNDROME (2019), sponsored among other by Styron Japan. “Just so you know I’m not lying to you,” JJ says.

The documentary states that 4- to 8-year-old children have been disappearing all over the world since autumn 2006 in a phenomenon called Lamia Syndrome. A few parents talk about how their children suddenly vanished even under close supervision. We see a recording from a mall security camera showing a little girl holding her grandfather’s hand one second and disappearing the next. The footage is then repeated frame by frame. Just before the girl vanishes, another man shows up in the frame.

It’s not the Black Bird Man.

It’s future ‘Disco’. He looks around sixty and seems very happy about something. Looking straight into the camera, he gives it a thumbs up, and with the other hand holds up a sign with a single sentence:

THE WORLD IS MADE OUT OF CLOSED ROOMS

The documentary has a literary critic explain that “this is the title of Ehimegawa Juuzou’s 1996 novel, the 7th book in the Runbaba series. In it, a criminal called the Locked Room Billionaire announces that he’s going to kill a billion people in locked room situations in just ten years. Even if people may try to avoid going inside buildings or returning home, they’re nevertheless trapped in the locked rooms of their own fear.”

[Lore note: this is not even remotely what Maijo’s 2002 novel The World is Made out of Closed Rooms is about. Instead, it seems to be a combination of Seiryoin’s Cosmic and Carnival, with the main villain’s name and modus operandi being a mix of the Locked Room Lord and the Billion Killer. 1996 is when Cosmic was first released, too. I honestly wonder how different JDC is in Disco-verse if Mitamura could get away with this.]

“The crowded mall situation seems similar to one from the book,” the critic continues, “although there’s no proof that the same locked room trick was used. This time, there’s just an evil man at work. He seems similar in looks to Disco Wednesdayyy, a detective and one of the 31 people who disappeared in the Pine House case, which concerned Ehimegawa Juuzou’s death. The same man was involved in finding Yamagishi Kozue, the origin of the Kozue Method. Closed Rooms predicted our current situation in which children are sent to shelters in order to protect them from the Lamia Syndrome. Maybe by using the book’s title, the man is trying to say that he, a great detective, will eventually open the locked room... that is, bust open the shelters and kidnap the children.”

(Disco’s like, no, no, I’m not even a great detective, I’m a hardboiled detective! I don’t know shit about locked room tricks! I haven’t even read Mitamura’s books! [You know, you probably should, Mitamura seems to have put a lot of useful hints in those.] And all this must be a mistake, it’s not like I’d ever start kidnapping children... right?)

The documentary then shows an interview with the only survivor of the Pine House -- Dezuumi Style, now much older, who isn’t sure whether the man in the photo really is his friend Disco Wednesdayyy (and aw, he really refers to Disco as his friend, even if they hardly ever talked). From the interview we learn that this new world doesn’t need writers or great detectives anymore; no locked room murders or tricky false alibi cases or anything similar ever happens anymore. Dezuumi believes that ‘Disco’s’ Closed Rooms message is sarcastic, to show that “in a stiff world without different points of view or creativity, instead of people being closed in locked rooms in mystery novels, it’s now human emotions, ideas and values that are closed in new locked rooms...”

“But isn’t it right to stop the unwanted thoughts and focus on the useful ones?” the interviewer asks.

“No. People should be always thinking about new topics and coming up with new inventions. They should dare to break things. Trying to keep everyone’s thoughts perfectly ordered is terrorism.”

Next, the documentary shows Iwasaki Kousuke, the taxi driver from Nishi Akatsuki, who also isn’t sure if that’s Disco in the photo. When the interviewer brings up that Iwasaki’s family defeated cancer thanks to Kozue Method and that the idea of ‘a lifespan’ may soon be irrelevant to humanity, Iwasaki says that he’s still not sure if that’s a good thing. Death is a fact of life, after all, and we should be grateful for happiness and sadness.

The documentary then says the whoever the mysterious man is, he has kidnapped close to three hundred million children since 2006...

JJ stops the movie, saying that what he wanted Disco to see is that there really is only a tiny group of people in Japan standing against him, and the rest of the world is pretty much his. “But do you understand now why I have respect for you? Three hundred millions! For the first two years, we could hardly ever find the kids, since you hid the majority of them! I thought that maybe killing your family would lure you out, but that plan didn’t work out... and it’s not like the Blackswan guys haven’t already killed you seven times.” The time fold effects must have protected Disco from permanently dying in the future.

Three hundred million kids?! That’s be over 60 000 a day! You’d need an entire organization of space-jumpers to pull off something like this... or thirty one people from the Pine House. Did ‘Mercury C’ prevent everyone from leaving because they were meant to form a group, and their mysterious disappearance meant they simply moved to the shadows? Have the others spent years and years helping him hide the kids from Styron and recruit new space-jumpers?...

But where do you even hide three hundred million kids? They could probably warp any small space to accomodate even that number, and since they could jump in time they’d just make it so a child stays there for merely a second before it’s returned to their parents once the world becomes safe. But would they ever return them, considering that Styron won the battle for the world?...

Disco asks if JJ hurt the families of Disco’s accomplices, to which JJ claims he wanted to take down Disco first, so he didn’t bother yet. But anyway, JJ really wants Disco to stop this whole children kidnapping thing, because can’t Disco see how much the parents are hurt by his actions~? [You’re one to talk, buddy.] He resumes the documentary to show one last scene.

19-year-old Kozue says she’s not sure if the man in the photo is Disco. “I feel sympathy for the affected parents, and I think it'd be best to return the kids to them. The Disco I knew wouldn't do something horrible like that. Are you sure it's not someone else?” Then, as she’s leaving the shot, she looks back at the camera and yells that maybe it’d be better if she had never gotten involved with Disco at all.

The documentary ends by stating that the global birth rate is drastically falling, since women are afraid to bring children into the world in which the Lamia Syndrome runs rampant. It’s predicted that by 2080 the human race will stop procreating except for the purpose of prolonging their immortal lives.

“See? If you keep going, you’ll be the one responsible for the destruction of the human race,” JJ says. “Don’t you feel bad about it?”

But all Disco answers with is “Thank you for the movie, JJ. It was quite illuminating.”

“Huh? That’s not just some movie, that’s reality! Don’t you feel bad? Angry?”

“Not really. All it did was prove me that I’m right. Have you ever seen the kanji for ‘lifespan’ (寿命)? The first one (寿) may mean ‘congratulations’, ‘celebration’, ‘being happy with life’. There would be nothing to ‘celebrate’ if there wasn’t a finite ‘lifespan’. You really aren’t naturalized yet if you don’t get it. Japanese people understand why there would be no charm in making sakura trees bloom all year long.”

“Well, clearly Japanese people are mistaken. You can’t look at kamikaze pilots and tell me there’s nothing wrong with their heads!”

“You really don’t get sacrifices for a great cause, JJ. While kamikaze sacrificed their lives, they yelled ‘banzai’, which means ‘ten thousand years of life’. Not death, but life. You saw me smile in that photo in the documentary, did you? That smile is my banzai. If the future can’t be changed, then all this movie proves is that my future is bright: every single day spent fulfilled as I’m protecting children.”

As Disco sets to leave (again), JJ pulls out his last trump card and calls his Japanese wife to the room.

It’s Norma Brown. Or rather, Fuyuno Norma Brown. JJ’s new name is apparently Fuyuno Shinji.

Norma is overjoyed to see Disco and sweeps him in a hug, saying that she’s been looking for him all this time. She’s different than he remembers. Sure, she has the same personality, but she looks Japanese, which overall makes her the spitting image of Norma-faced Koeda.

“Do you not like this body of mine, Disco?” she asks seeing his reaction. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t obtained from some poor child! Shinji, haven’t you explained that to him yet?! The method has been improved, Disco! The Jackets are now cultivated in artificial wombs. No more pushing out souls out of the original to obtain a Subchild! After birth, they’re raised by good volunteer mothers. In addition, we discovered that stimulus other than ‘suffering’ works for inducing new personalities. Children aren’t hurting anymore, Disco!”

“It’s useless, honey,” JJ says. “This isn’t the Disco you knew. He no longer protects children.”

Norma tries to persuade Disco to stop taking children away, but he still won’t budge. She has a little exchange with JJ who seems to be seriously jealous (”Do you love me like you love Disco?”), and assures JJ that of course she loves him, Disco starts considering to bring out one of his hidden knives and attack JJ...

But before Disco can make a move, something explodes. It takes Disco a few seconds to realize that while he’s still holding Norma in his arms, her lower half was blown off by a small bomb hidden inside her body, much like the one Disco once pulled out of Nils. Her last words are, “You’re my hero, Disco.”

Disco desperately puts her body back together, trying not to ‘run away to the Pineapple Home’ [I like that this became a metaphore for withdrawing into your mind from shock]. But no matter what he does, she doesn’t come back to life.

“This isn’t her original body,” JJ says. He looks almost as shocked as Disco by what just happened. “The soul can’t return to it, and the original body is already gone...”

“But there’s a spare one, right? There must be!” Disco yells, mortified at his own response. Would he really sacrifice a child for her?... “No, wait... If I just return to the past, all will be undone. She’ll be alive again--”

“No. Norma is dead,” JJ says. “She’s going to be dead in every possible history from now on. Sure, this is just an imaginary, fictional future... but she wasn’t. She came from the past. We met in 2003, and the Blackswan guys helped arrange it so that she’d be taken to 2008, and then we’d get married. Now that she’s gone, her research will disappear too. She was the one who came up with all the new projects, so our progress will be lost... according to plan. Of course! The Blackswan guys must have swindled me again! She’s been kept here all this time for the sole purpose of being killed in front of you! It’s your fault!”

Was it really his fault?... No. Everything's already decided. Every attempt to change history is already contained in that history.

While JJ is still blaming him, Disco doesn’t take that shit and asks “JJ, what was the phrase activating the bomb? It was the question you asked her, wasn’t it?”

[Wait, those bombs are phrase-activated. Which means Nils openly opposing JJ Styron while in a conversation with him was even more awe-inspiring than I thought. DAMN, kid.]

Disco puts the bomb back together, slam dunks it into JJ's body, and starts the last barrage of questions.

Why isn’t JJ busy with drug cartels anymore? Apparently the Blackswan guys managed to somehow remove the hallucinatory effect of drugs, since it could destroy their idea of perfectly managed global consciousness.

So there’s peace in the world, but no new media is created, no Spielbergs or Hendrixes? Maybe so, but hey, even Disco’s beloved San Diego is now clean and pretty! (Disco finds this fact hard to imagine and honestly quite disturbing.)

What was going on with that case with JJ’s seven underlings, why were they all hanging by just one leg? “I don’t know, have you tried asking that kid that should be in the Pine House, Nils Mikami?” [Yeah, you better remember his name!]

Does JJ know about the Pineapple Home? No clue what that even is.

Alright. As Disco prepares to leave (for the nth time in this sequence), JJ says, “If you go back to the past now, the childless method Norma invented would cease to exist too, you know.”

“No. Norma was a great person, but not a unique one. There are many others like her who can come up with it.” [I assume that since the future is unchanging, somebody else really will come up with it.]

“...in the end, I’m weak and you’re weak. No matter the time or place, the weak are an easy target. No, maybe we just have different kinds of strength. After all, you didn’t run away even as Norma was dying in your arms. ...you know, she didn’t answer my question properly. She said that she loved me. But my question was... Do you love me like you love Disco?”

Disco instantly pulls the bomb out of JJ’s body and tosses it through the window, where it explodes at a safe distance. Not ouf of mercy or anything, just because fuck you, you slimy bastard, you’re not getting off that easy, and Disco will be sure to think of a much, much worse punishment later. [HELL YEAH]

Leaving the room (and pretty devastated looking JJ), Disco happens to glance at the sweets he was welcomed with, and notices the logo of a shop called Makuri-ya. ‘Makuri”... “Mercury”? Mercury C did say he was the owner of a traditional Japanese confectionary shop in Chofu...

It may be a good time to go shopping for some explanation.

#sparkly reads disco #maijo and jdc stuff #long post #I still have no idea how this entire system works tbh this was... a confusing chapter #also are there really TWO female characters who solely exist in this book to get fridged for manpain. seriously maijo what the hell

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flyingdyslexic · 5 years

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A night scene

I could hear every lonesome echo of my movements as I released the ice into the glass I could hear it’s cries for help as it clinked to the bottom. I poured the cheap old scotch in. It began to drown the ice. At first it was as if a gentle play, the relationship between ice and scotch. The liquid danced over the ice playfully and teasingly. It was only a lie. It was not kind. It’s intentions were not playful. It was no longer a play between friends. It was a surprise attack, an army against two stranded, helpless soldiers. All that was left to be seen of the ice was the top of their pyramidal corners. The lunar light glisened off them representing their last glimmer of hopes, dancing in desperation to be noticed, but it was too late the ice he been defeated. I held the glass in my right hand as it swung at my side. Only my thumb and two fingers had a grip of the rim of the pathetic Ikea glass. She wouldn’t let me buy nice ones. The taunting pictures on the shelf were mocking me. Only choosing now to tell me truths. Her eyes stalking me as I walked. I took one of the false photos of a happy couple from this ignorant shrine of a non existing love. I held it in my left hand. I ran my thumb along the ridged edge of the frame. I wondered if her smile was false. When she laughed at his jokes her smile used to run from ear to ear, her eyes would beam and sparkles, wrinkles would appear at the corner of her eyes. Making her otherwise flawless skin crinkled, but here it was small and delicate. To someone who had never seen her laugh, they would have thought, just as I did, that this pathetic smile was genuine. I released my grip and let it fall. It did not have far to go before I heard the crash. I did not flinch nor care.

I opened the French doors, the lunar light beckoning me to enter the night scene. At first I thought there was no sound. I was mistaken. The cool autumnal, light wind briskly lifted each strand of my hair on my head. It was as if my woes were being taken off on the back of the wind. As I stepped through the doors the world around me transformed, it was no longer lonesome. I could hear each cheep and mutter, each step and pitter patter, each yelp and cry. The night was alive. My lonesome heart lifted ever so slightly.

I dared not sit in the grotesque, wicker chairs on the porch that her ignorant mind thought were beautiful. I lent stiffly against the neglected wooden banister. There were green specials of moss on the ridged. I trailed my finger nail along, cleaning it off. It had aboard some moisture following the damp day, it was selfishly stealing it from the wood. Beyond the banister was an even more so neglected garden. It represented more of a field. She never did have a green thumb. Most women plant beautiful and colourful flowers. She did not. I gazed dreamingly across the obscene field. This failure of an attempt to create a home. As the realisation of how little she had tried to turn this house into a home overwhelmed my thoughts. I could feel my finger nails dig deeper into the palm of my sweaty hand. When quite abruptly something broke my fixed gaze into nothingness. Directly central of the field a grey ball caught my attention. The ball moved and became a figure. Two long ears, stood tall and proud. Twitching with anticipation to catch a sound. They were mostly grey apart from sittings of white. They moved around like satellites, trying to catch a signal. At the bottom of the ears was its grey head, amongst this condensed sea of grey were two beady eyes, with a moon in each featuring in their blackness. Slightly below his eyes but directly between was a pink suggestion of a nose. Hitting out from either side of the pink dot were a selection of thin, shiny, wirery whiskers. Almost invisible. I could only see a them because I knew they were there. I became uninterested in my dull drink. Still in my right hand only now It was close to my face, with my elbow leaning on the banister. Scotch never was my colour. She loved the smell of it. I sat it down beside my left arm, it made an almost inaudible clink. Was the brutally murdered bodies if ice hit off one another. The satellites that were attached to The rabbits head most have been finely tuned, as they heard this suggestion of a sound from the corpses movements. He was spooked. He lifted off the ground. His hind legs came to meet his front and he began to fly like a dart. I could not see him now. I returned to staring aimlessly at the stars in the sky, holding the drink. Pretending I could be a man she would want to be with.

To me there seemed to be billions of those twinkling lights in the sky. They reminded me of her room in college. All the walls were littered with fairy lights. Little faux stars. In the dark winter months, when they sun would say good bye to the world at 5pm and it was socially acceptable to hide in bed at an infant’s bedtime. Those false stars created the illusion of a perfect clear autumn midnight. Now I have the real thing. In front if me. The scene perfectly laid out just for me. It was not perfect. Despite it best efforts. Maybe because it was real and not an illusion. The sky was a clear stage for the stars to dance upon. There was nothing disrupting their performance . However, without her it was not perfect. I began to count the shiny dancers. Their dance was not a big display only a constant twirl in place. As if the opening scene of a play. Despite their imperfection they were still mesmerising. They shone their beauty and brilliance. However there was something sitting front stage, begging to steal away my attention from the tiny dancers. They slowly faded away to make space for this participant. He did not dance, only sat. He shone brighter then they others and his features were more distinct. He looked as of he had a peaceful, sleepy face. He illuminated my disgraceful field. His light casted shadows from the trees bordering it. Any thing of light colour was immediately brought to my attention. The tiny white flowers speckled across the ruin of a hedge wall. They glistened so much so that a uneducated child would mistake it for the morning winter first. As my eye slowly wander along the field edge, I filed everything I saw in my mind office. Rotting apples that were slow to fall, the oranging leaves that had been quick to fall, and a flick of a white tired tail of a juvenile fox. It hesitated at the boarder of the wood and field. It lurked, stalked and pried all without moving. She had spied her unassuming victim. I followed her face until I too spotted the satellites jutting out if the untamed grass.

It is not my job to stop nature’s course. These thing are cruel and had to watch, but they are what needs to happen. The predator must hunt to stay alive and the prey must be hunted upon. The strong must attack the weak. Superiority must be shown. It is the circle of life. We do not know how much time is left in our present realities.

The orchestra of the night scene was about to begin their overture, now that the opening dancers were finished. A baritone line sets off the story. A low humming of life, and introduction of all the creatures in the play. The soprano line taken by the fighting gale, using her voice to dance the plot line into our hearts. Our main character, the predator, the villain, takes her quay at the edge of the stage. Her foot steps blending into the alto line with the other nocturnal wanders. Our protagonist sitting centre stage, blissfully unaware of how this play will end. The soprano and altos stop, leaving the two note drone of the baritone line. Tension raises. The entirety of the audience is on edge. Something is about to happen. We know in our hearts what It is but we choose to ignore it. We hope that we are just presuming to much. Our villain takes his place on stage. Stalking slowly. She is covered by the long grass. She is crouched and hidden. Taking unheard steps. There is a new alto singer. An owl. Singing her verse from where she is perched in the trees, giving the illusion that all is normal and calm. The villain luring enclosed. She is downstage on the right. Still unnoticed. Our protagonist enjoying his woeless life, ignorant to what is about to become of it.

This is the thing. We don’t know. We will never know, we are incapable of predicting what is about to come. We do not know when someone is about to attack. Leaving us left for dead. All so they can better their own lives. For those like me we often choose to remain blissfully unaware. It is far better to remain in ignorant bliss while you can. Everything inheritably goes to shit anyways. Why not try and enjoy what little hope is left. Everything is fleeting. Time will always move. There is no avoiding what us going to come, so why not remain blissfully unaware like our protagonist in this nighty scene.

I sympathise with the with the protagonist. He can’t help that he wishes for the best. He thought it was safe so he let his guard down. Oh he could not have been so wrong. The juvenile fox is now close enough to do harm. She dangled security in front of him. Lured him into a sense of safety. The full orchestra is now silent. Waiting, watching in anxious anticipation. Silently begging for the protagonist to be aware of his changing surroundings. To notice that not everything is how it seems. He has time to stop it. For the love of god look around and notice. It’s too late. Our two ain characters are now glaring face to face. The young fox taking pride in informing the ignorant rabbit of how much he had missed, while he was ignoring the obvious. It was over for him now. He did not put up a fight. Just let It happen. His once impressive satellite like ears dropped. The lack of fight seemed to displeased her. So she left. She did not fully kill him, but instead left him hurt and begging for death. Unable, incapable of movement. Too weak to fight. She strutted away teasingly. Tail held high in pride. Off to find someone who would entertain her in a more pleasing fashion. A lonesome violin cried from the orchestra pit. This scene was over. The moon was hanging low, and the sombre colours in the sky were fortuitously hinting at a new start. I now know better then to believe such teasing.

I returned inside. Dragging my feet. They felt so heavy. As if everything was drained from me. I had nothing else left with in me. Any, everything was gone. I scaled the stairs. I made my way to our room, my room. I looked now to see it for what it was. We had a grotesquely expensive t.v. mounted on the wall opposite our bed. What for? Both of us worked such long hours that we never had every to do anything but sleep. I do not remember anytime where we spent a time alone to do nothing but watch tv. Underneath that was an equally ubiquitous fire place. Which she had filled with decorative candles, as there was no need for a real fire. Adjacent to this was a purely glass wall, where streams of the sunrise leaked in. There were grey velvet curtains hanging either side which she begged for. I still remember the girly giggle and little dance she would do when I would so easily give into her pleedings and hand her my wallet. The bed was placed on a risen platform with luxurious bed clothes and multitudes of pillows scattered amongst it. I walked absently across to what was her side of the bed. There was a door on the wall opposite. I knew what I would find on the inside but hoped I would be wrong. I hoped I read the letter wrong. Hoped that she was only gone for a little while. I opened the door slowly. Listening to each creek of a hinge I never had time to fix. The last remenance of hope torn from my life as I gazed upon the empty room. Draws had been opened and their condense were taken in a rushed manor. The rows of poles that ran from wall to wall, that I spent a full weekend putting up those years ago, which used to display an obscene amount of unnecessarily expensive clothing, which ranged in colours from psychedelic pinks to morbid blacks, from light producing sparkles to bull fabrics, all gone. Empty.

#night #short story #creative #books #bookshelf #description #descriptive

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timelordthirteen · 6 years

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Handprints - Part 11 (Complete!)

Mr. Gold/Belle, G

Summary: Set almost two years after the events of the first chapter, Gold and Belle get their happy ending.

Notes: It's been a ride. Once again a one-off random prompt turned into a THING because of the prompts and love of its readers. I adore all of you, and thank you so much for all your support. There will be a couple ficlets in this verse that are separate from the main fic, probably coming in January.

[AO3]

2 years later...

The stately Victorian was in an older, quieter part of town, away from the city center and the gleaming highrises that had become so familiar to them. Gold had been unsure of keeping the rather pinkish salmon color at first, with its odd green trim, but after nearly everything else about the place had been redone or restored, it seemed fitting to keep the cracked and slightly peeling exterior for another year or two.

Belle beamed at him as she bounded down the front steps to the curb where he’d parked the large moving van.

“Finally!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck. “I was waiting forever!”

Gold squeezed her, kissed her cheek, and then stepped back to give her a look. “It was barely fifteen minutes from when I texted you. Honestly, you’re more impatient than Bae.”

She laughed and clung to his shoulders. “I think I have been very patient with this whole house buying and renovation process.”

“Yes, well,” he muttered, finally pulling away from her to open the double doors on the back of the van. “If you hadn’t insisted on buying such an old, drafty thing in the first place, or doing so much of the work ourselves, it could have been done sooner.”

She rolled her eyes and then grinned. “I wanted to build our home, right here.” Then she lifted up on her toes and kissed him. “With our own two hands.”

He flashed her a smile, and then studied the stacks of boxes and covered furniture. The unpacking and arranging process appeared endless right now. There were at least four more trips like this to make before they could sleep tonight, but they would be in their own bed, in their own house. After living out of two places for the last year, nothing sounded more fulfilling than falling asleep on his feet in this ridiculous pink mausoleum, so long as Belle was by his side.

They had come a long way from a tiny rundown apartment and a stark modern condo. With Belle’s promotion to director at the museum, and the bump in pay he’d earned for managing part of the building operations, they would be just fine. There would be no more worrying about his next paycheck or wondering if he could afford enough food to feed his growing son. He wasn’t sure the newfound financial security would put a stop to his worries completely, but it was surprisingly easy to relax these days.

Well, once all the moving was done.

“Papa!” came Bae’s voice as he clamored down the steps. “Can we show Belle the secret now?”

Belle turned to look at Bae, curious, and then glanced back at Gold. “Secret?”

Gold could hardly contain his smile. “Well, I had to keep a little something for a surprise.”

She gave him a suspicious look that turned into a smile, and the three of them walked up the front steps into their new house. The wood floor creaked pleasantly under the pressure of Gold’s cane, and he smiled. He had to admit that he loved it as much as Belle did, especially now that the once dilapidated structure was renewed and ready for them to start their lives.

“Just this way, sweetheart,” he said, guiding her down the main hallway with a hand at her back. Immediately to the left off the foyer was a parlor that Belle had decided to keep as a formal living space, and across the hall was a more spacious family room where they would soon have a TV and a comfortable leather sofa. But at the back of the house was an old library.

As they turned into the room, Belle gasped and stopped.

Gold had been skeptical of the house, right up until they’d seen this space. Despite the hole in the roof right above the room and the hole that had rotted straight through the floor into the basement from the weather, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and the stone fireplace had sealed the deal. The room was like something out of a fairytale castle, a room where a wizard might work on his spells, or a princess would read by the fire. The way Belle’s eyes had lit up, he knew this was the only place they’d ever want to call home.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Roland...”

There was a long, electric silence as Belle moved into the room, taking in her surroundings, and Gold could barely breathe. The shelves were empty, save for a few books he’d brought with him last week and placed just to the right of the fireplace. The restored floors were shiny with fresh varnish, and the roof was now quite solid, but the surprise was what was attached to the shelves. Both sides of the room boasted twin floor-to-ceiling ladders with wide steps, and a railing at the top and bottom for them to slide along.

“You did this?” she asked, reaching out to experimentally slide one ladder back and forth. Then she turned and looked between him and Bae. “Both of you?”

Bae nodded enthusiastically. “Papa showed me how to use the drill to put the screws in, and I helped carry the wood, and I got to turn the table saw on and off!”

Gold put his hand on his son’s shoulder, proud of even the smallest tasks the boy had accomplished. “Do you like it?” he asked, his mouth curving.

Belle’s smile wobbled as tears welled up in her eyes. “I love it.”

He let out a light oof as she threw her arms around his neck again, squeezing him tight. Then she reached for Bae, who squished himself against her side and wrapped his short arms around both of them as best he could.

“And I love both of you,” she said with her face pressed against Gold’s neck.

“Can I bring my toys in now?”

Bae’s voice broke the sweet moment with a laugh from both Gold and Belle, and as soon as they nodded, the boy was off like a shot.

Belle swiped at her eyes and kept one arm around his waist as she looked around the room again. “My very own library.”

He hummed. “I think these ladders will be quite safe for many years to come.” Then he looked down at her, trying not to think of the other secret he had stowed away, the ring hidden in his toolbox that he was planning to give her on their second unofficial anniversary of the day they “met,” one hundred feet in the air, through a pane of glass.

“Good,” she said, smiling up at him. “Because I plan on using them when I’m quite old and gray.”

He grinned and bent to kiss her, ignoring the rather calamitous sound of whatever Bae was dragging in through the front door. Her fingers curled into his shirt to keep him close for a few seconds more, as her palm pressed against his chest. Then she pulled away and called out to Bae, hurrying through the door to see what the boy was doing.

Gold smiled and ambled after her, his chest warm in the spot where her hand had been, right over his heart.

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #belle x mr. gold #spinner!rumple #modern spinner!rumple #handprints #fic #ficlet #I FINISHED ANOTHER THING

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idolizerp · 5 years

Photo

LOADING INFORMATION ON MAYDAY’S MAIN VOCAL SERENA MOON…

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 21 DEBUT AGE: 18 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 15 COMPANY: Midas ETC: She won an MSG sponsored vocal competition and was signed thereafter

IDOL IMAGE

serena moon’s image came to midas media like a vision.

she had traipsed on stage with the grace of a newborn deer, eyes wide and thoroughly in awe of every little thing, trembling slightly under the too-bright stage lights. her voice wasn’t made for such a huge stage ( granted, the competition venue was scarcely larger than the choir section in the korean church her family frequented in london ), and serena effectively hid behind the looming figure of the grand piano, her preferred place of comfort. but msg had saw her then, with her slow, accented voice and her occasionally sweet smile, they painted an image of your neighbourhood virtuoso: artistic, shy, and sweet. her soulful voice had been a happy coincidence, an added layer – they were convinced that they could extract the typical ‘girl-group’ sound from her before long.

it helped that she was a pretty teenager with naturally long limbs and a sufficiently tight waist.

they called her their little virtuoso, an intelligent edge to an otherwise pretty package. an innocent girl next door who sang like an angel that could tell you exactly why the chord progression of the song mimicked the feeling of falling while maintaining hope, and for the most part she had taken to the image with ease. it wasn’t too far from her own personality, of which she was lucky for she wasn’t that much of an actor. with the forming of the trainee group that became mayday, the company had instructed her to stay quiet, stay stereotypically innocent and thoughtful as was befitting of her artistically ‘elegant’ image. the measured and contemplative frame of the group’s pretty picture.

( “they aren’t just pretty and sweet, they’re also intelligent! what a well-rounded group” )

how perfect was she! the hardworking not-so foreigner with the lovely voice and thoroughly flawless dancing, the image soon became a larger-than-life pair of shoes that she could never truly fit into. serena would lay awake at night, the stress of not fucking up and the threat of being cut down even before taking flight prevalent with every dream.

many who knew her would laugh a little under their breaths and said conspiratorially: ‘you’re lucky that you look so sweet and innocent!’, for they knew the truth. her personally had been far too rough around the edges, far too brash with her words and a little too cool to be part of the country’s new little fairies. being silent had ensured that her personality stayed secret, and with her little smiles the public might be lulled into the image of quiet dignity, the shy loveliness that might lay beneath.

what they didn’t know was that she stayed aware with her watchful eyes, smoked her cigarettes by the open window of the dorms as she tinkered with the keyboard in her room. dreaming up songs that she probably wont ever sing.

IDOL HISTORY

the concerto of serena moon in g minor 1st movement, vivace

joohyung “james” moon had been a businessman with big dreams in his mind. lee mihyang had fallen in love with him and had no choice but to follow him to the ends of the world. he had studied in london and brought her with him, believing in his prowess like a mantra he wont let go. he had promised her a charmed life: a little flat that would house their growing family in the middle of the city, a growing business that would gain their children entrance to elite schools and circles, a climb that was so far above the struggling lives of their countrymen – riddled with unfair advantages for the rich. in the western world, he had assured her, one could succeed with hard work and be accepted with open arms.

however, the tiny flat was on the outskirts of town, and business turned out to be a small grocery store nestled between rundown shops that hardly scream english refinement. but james stayed positive, and mihyang was blinded by love – thus resulted in four lovely bundles of joy: amelia, twins charlie and serena, and little oliver, rounding up the litter.

the children did not attend prestigious schools, for they had too many mouths to feed, but they flourished nonetheless, their childhood as happy as any.

serena moon was first placed in front of a piano when she was seven. the family was in a nondescript strip mall on a saturday afternoon with the children amusing themselves by the display of second-hand pianos for sale, while john and mihyang strayed towards the booth nearby. they halfway negotiating a deal for a used station wagon when they heard a bubble of laughter and a familiar voice singing out a tune of aladdin’s ‘a whole new world’ along a simplified piano accompaniment.

“that’s cute, did you enrolled serena in piano lessons? is that where our money went the past few months?” “i didn’t… don’t they learn instruments in music classes at school?” “not piano, we bought all of them recorders for school last week.”

a pause, widened eyes. john and mihyang moon abandoned their negotiations and bought a rickety old piano instead, setting it in an already crowded corner of their flat. the little girl played whenever she had a moment to sit down for weeks to come, to the point that had her siblings rolling their eyes when the novelty ran out. mihyang took up a position as a receptionist in a nearby dentist’s office to send their little girl to a prestigious conservatory near the city centre. amelia had muttered to her little sister, not unkindly, that “it was good (she) found something that (she) did well, it wasn’t like (she) could get a scholarship for anything else anyway”. serena blinked and let the jab slip off of her like it was nothing – and dutifully took the tube down to the conservatory every tuesdays and thursdays.

2nd movement, andantino

by the time she was ten serena was considered impressive, but hardly the best.

the problem with being uncommonly gifted was that when the novelty wore off, there was hardly any merit left. at ten years old, she was playing circles around her same-aged counterparts but still falling behind the older, more experienced students. she loved playing the piano, that much was true, but it became evident that in her inquisitive mind that she loved the attention that her parents gave her because of it even more.

what she passionately loved even more was singing.

serena had asked her mother once, just out of curiosity, if she could perhaps join the vocal class in the conservatory along with her piano classes. her mother had looked at her with astonished eyes, as if she was unable to believe her ears, and asked if her younger daughter was feeling the least bit ill before coming into the conclusion that she only felt that way due to the lukewarm response to her latest recital. serena never asked again, but hid away in the spare rooms of the conservatory to play pop & jazz songs while singing along, for she was allowed hobbies and interests, wasn’t she?

on the eve of charlie and serena’s thirteenth birthday, the comfortable balance was soon disturbed. her father’s failure to provide for the family could no longer be ignored, and under the guise of dealing with sick relatives ( that amelia, now sixteen and a grown up who could understand grown up problems, had explained in hushed tones to her younger siblings ) the family was to return to seoul. so serena played one last mournful minuet on her first piano as her family packed up their belongings, their decade-and-a-half long existence in england fitting into eight suitcases and flew into a country the children hardly knew a thing about.

( perhaps it was fortunate then, that lee mihyang had insisted that the children spoke in full korean at home )

now seated in her uncle’s spare apartment in yongin district, serena stared, open-mouthed in wonder, at a group of beautiful girls singing about ‘being a genie for you boy’. she had asked her brother if she was pretty enough to be on television like them, charlie had replied: “it doesn’t matter, you sing better than the lot of them anyway.”

cadenza: a pause before the resolving chord

serena loves her twin brother so, one could not ask for a more supportive force. he was the one who took her to karaokes, letting her sing to her heart’s content – he was the one who linked her to korea’s wealth of underground artists. they would take the long way home after school, stopping by the buskers in hongdae and noting the various late-night shows by indie bands. they would sneak out after curfew by fifteen, slipping past the bouncers with their fake-ids that charlie got from a particularly wily classmate.

it was him who pointed at a particularly shiny poster for a singing competition, and strongly suggested that she might destroy the competition after a verse.

3rd movement, the minuet & trio, marcia moderato

serena moon joined the competition without telling her parents, and prepared a performance of haru haru by tashannie – a song she could sing perfectly with her eyes closed. so she practiced on her electric piano in her room, with the earphones plugged in, only humming in soft tones to the melody. on the day of the competition there was only charlie and oliver in support of the girl that went second-to-last. their parents would undoubtedly think that the whole thing was a farce, a ‘step-down’ from a prestigious career as a classical pianist educated by the royal british conservatory, and amelia, was far too much of a tattling bore to support something she shouldn’t.

but the whole business of keeping it all a secret was taken into question when serena won, against all odds – a surprise to everyone involved. the moon children, how utterly good their sister was even with the standards of industry bigwigs, and midas media, of which the whole competition was sponsored by, that a scarcely vocally trained girl with an accent had blew the competition away. they were so impressed, in fact that along with the ₩1,000,000 prize money, she was to be offered a training contract with the famed entertainment agency.

there was no keeping it hidden now, and sensible charlie had explained it all to their parents. serena kept quiet, knowing full well that if they knew the extent of her preparedness to defy their orders anyway and fake their signatures for the contract no matter what, they’ll lock her up in her room with no way of escape. so with charlie’s smooth words, john moon and lee mihyang had no choice but to take the prize money and agreed to sign away their daughter into the system.

serena had cried with happiness at their assent.

soon after, she was whisked away to after school lessons in the company, finally receiving the vocal training she had so desperately wanted for years on end. the trainers had gone hard on her, only showing a moderately pleased expression at her raw talent once, before swiftly moving on. she needed to work on her breathing, so they sent her to swimming sessions at dawn every day, she needed to sustain with more power, so they sent her to the company gym to work on her core strength. the young girl was pliable, and so thoroughly willing to make all the changes that it was hard to reprimand her. serena had also been intensely trained in dance into exhaustion, her limbs barely making it up and down the stairs of the subway for her commute home every night. the natural progression of her training meant that she was going to be moved out of her parents home and into the trainee dorms, a common way for management to keep an eye on the their trainees’ individual character.

so she left her home at dawn one day, sending a text to her parents and siblings, and only receiving a reply from two out of five. the pretty little thing did not lament at the loss of interest from her parents, for they had three other children who had climbed gracefully into the prestigious space she had created. amelia at this point had been admitted to seoul university medical school, and their parents wasted no time in showering her the attention that she had so wanted since their childhood. serena did not mind, she was singing now and was praised for it, her trainers seemed to be more invested in her development than her family ever was. she must be grateful that anyone would care at all.

4th movement, allegro

mayday was a gift that she did not expect to receive.

after spending almost four years training with girls that came and went, serena slowly shared their desperation to debut. the old serena had been grateful for a place to sing, a place to create, no matter how hidden or secretive, but the new serena had started to seek the validation of strangers, started too wish for more moments on stage. she became most greedy, the way most trainees were, and the dangling promise of a debut had only made her all the more so.

her image was set from the very moment midas scouts had laid eyes on her, and in her eagerness to step into the spotlight she had forced herself into the role of the quiet artist. despite being one and not the other, serena had smiled through most interviews, letting her members speak for her – even when she wanted nothing more than to speak her mind. she became beloved by the fans for her beautiful voice ( still a little too dark a timbre for a typical girl group, but msg had not been named ‘experimental’ for nothing ) and her hardworking, quiet image.

sometimes, in an occasional fan-meeting or a particularly ‘unscripted’ v-live broadcast, the fans would get a swift glimpse of the girl she truly is: a carefree city-girl who took music lightly, and made decisions with her gut feeling above all else. they had praised her for being both light and dark, a mess of contradictions that make up a human– simplifying her complexities and branded her as their little ‘girl of reversals’: someone who looked quiet and soft on the outside, but was actually a nonchalant city girl on the inside. serena didn’t have the heart to correct them that the only thing sweet and soft about her was the way her smile looked under stage lights.

mayday grew in unprecedented speed, and the young girl almost hurt herself from the whiplash. from loveable nobodies to the nation’s little sisters – or something to that effect – mayday had the whole country screaming cheer up! or TT! serena could only imagine how her sister might feel, undoubtedly having to hear mayday’s tracks in various coffee shops around seoul. charlie and oliver had sent reaction videos the first few times it happened, before the novelty ran out. for serena, it was fascinating, and thoroughly rewarding to hear her own voice played back to her – and she enjoyed the feeling of success, basking in it’s light until it wont be enough.

coda: an ending, unresolved

for now serena moon endures, for she still had a long way to go. mayday’s success almost felt like a promise that was granted, and despite so, she kept her head down to compose, create a sound that was less mayday and more serena. she started a youtube channel, the identity of which was part british vlogger - part musician, a soothing balm of a temporary fix, while she’s looking for something far more permanent. a green leaf in years and in her career; only time could tell if she would shudder and rebel, or sink into the cartoonishly unattainable image of perfection.

#id.bio #id.midas #id.mayday #id.lee saerom

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