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full-stackmobiledeveloper · 19 days ago

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Driving Success: Essential Marketing & User Acquisition Strategies for Your New Taxi App

Launching a successful taxi app in today’s ride-hailing market is an exciting yet challenging goal. Visionary entrepreneurs invest heavily in developing robust, user-friendly apps with powerful backend systems, often integrating advanced AI and machine learning technologies to enhance ride-hailing experiences. However, building a great product is only half the battle. The real key to success lies in mastering taxi app marketing and implementing sophisticated user acquisition strategies that effectively attract both riders and drivers.

In 2025, the mobile transportation industry faces fierce competition, evolving user expectations, and the complexities of managing two-sided marketplaces. New entrants must navigate these challenges with a comprehensive growth strategy. This guide provides a strategic blueprint to help businesses transform their innovative ideas into thriving operations, covering crucial areas such as launching customized carpool software and optimizing taxi dispatch systems for peak performance and scalability in a highly competitive landscape.

1. Pre-Launch & Launch Mastery: Laying the Groundwork for Impact

A resounding taxi app launch isn't a single event; it's the crescendo of meticulous planning and strategic pre-release efforts. Success begins long before your app hits the app stores.

Local Launchpad: Mapping Your Taxi App's Initial Service Area for Maximum Impact

Choosing your initial operational territory is a make-or-break decision for any taxi app or ridesharing app. This requires more than just drawing a circle on a map; it demands in-depth market intelligence.

Demographic Research: Identify your target users—commuters, students, leisure travelers, or families—using census data, economic reports, and tools like Nielsen to understand income levels, smartphone usage, commuting habits, and public transport reliance. For drivers, analyze local employment rates, wages, and gig economy trends to develop effective acquisition strategies and make your rideshare app stand out.

Traffic Pattern Analysis: Use big data, transport authority statistics, telecom mobility data, and tools like Google Maps API to map peak travel times, busy routes, nightlife hotspots, and underserved areas. This insight helps optimize driver positioning and marketing efforts for taxi dispatch or carpool apps.

Competitive Landscape Mapping: Conduct a detailed SWOT analysis of competitors beyond just naming Uber or Lyft. Study their apps, pricing, driver commissions, reviews, and marketing to identify service gaps such as poor support or limited coverage. These insights help define your unique selling points and guide app development.

Initial Pricing Strategy: Base your pricing on competitive analysis and cost modeling. Consider dynamic pricing while complying with local regulations. Use A/B testing for introductory offers or bundles to attract early adopters. Smart initial pricing is a key differentiator, especially for Uber clone apps, and understanding taxi dispatch system costs is essential for long-term strategy.

Viral Voltage: How to Design a Pre-Launch Referral Program That Actually Gets People Talking (and Signing Up!)

Harnessing word-of-mouth before your app even goes live can generate explosive growth. This is particularly effective for ride-sharing app concepts.

Detailed Mechanics: Implement a dual-sided incentive system. For instance, both the referrer (who shares your app) and the referred individual receive a substantial benefit upon sign-up and their first completed ride. This could be free ride credits, significant discounts, or even cash bonuses. Transparency about the terms is crucial for ensuring a genuine best carpool program.

Tiered Incentives & Gamification: Elevate engagement by offering escalating rewards for super-referrers. For example, after referring 5 users, they unlock a higher discount rate; after 10, they get exclusive access to beta features or premium customer support. Introduce a leaderboard to foster friendly competition among referrers in your carpooling app.

Effortless Sharing: Make it incredibly easy for users to share their unique referral code or link. Provide readily available sharing options via social media integrations (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), direct messaging, and email. Craft pre-written, compelling messages that highlight your app's unique benefits.

Psychology of Sharing: Tap into intrinsic motivators beyond just monetary gain. Appeal to users' desire for social currency ("Be the first to share this amazing new app!"), altruism ("Help your friends save money on rides!"), or self-interest (the dual-sided reward). Create a sense of exclusivity for early participants who get to be part of something new and exciting. This strategy can be applied to any ridesharing app looking to launch your branded UberPool-like rideshare software app.

Crisis-Proofing Your Launch: Anticipating and Mitigating Common Hurdles for New Ride-Hailing Apps

No launch is perfectly smooth. Preparing for potential pitfalls can save your taxi app from early setbacks, especially for complex platforms developed by a rideshare app development company.

Technical Glitches: Conduct extensive pre-launch stress testing for your taxi booking app development. Simulate peak user loads to ensure your servers can handle demand. Thoroughly test payment gateway integrations, GPS accuracy, and real-time mapping functionality. Have a dedicated technical support team on standby for immediate bug fixes and issue resolution. Implement a robust monitoring system for immediate alerts.

PR Challenges: Develop a comprehensive crisis communication plan. Anticipate potential negative press, such as initial service hiccups, driver shortages, or aggressive competitor smear campaigns. Prepare pre-approved holding statements, designate a single, credible spokesperson, and establish clear channels for internal and external communication. Proactive communication and transparency can turn a potential crisis into a testament to your responsiveness.

Unexpected Competition: Continuously monitor competitor moves. Be ready to deploy agile marketing campaigns if a rival launches a new feature, offers aggressive promotions, or enters your specific niche, like carshare app services or even bike rental. Have a rapid response team that can analyze competitive shifts and propose immediate counter-strategies beyond just price matching, focusing on your USP.

Contingency Plans: Develop "Plan B" scenarios for critical metrics. What if the initial driver acquisition for the taxi app is lower than expected? How will you adjust your incentives or marketing spend? What if rider acquisition is slow? Consider rapid adjustments to pricing, targeting, or even a temporary shift in geographical focus. This foresight is crucial for any software for a taxi business.

2. Fueling Growth: User & Driver Acquisition (Deeper Dives)

Once the app is built and the launch strategy is in place, the real work of attracting and retaining your two core user bases begins for any software taxi dispatch system.

The Driver's Journey: Crafting an Onboarding Experience That Converts Prospects into Loyal Fleet Members

Your drivers are the engine of your taxi app. A seamless and supportive onboarding process is paramount for a driver acquisition taxi app, ensuring you build a reliable fleet and attract the best rideshare apps for drivers.

Streamlined Sign-Up: Minimize friction in the application process. Allow for quick, mobile-friendly registration. Provide clear instructions for documentation uploads (driver's license, vehicle registration, insurance) and integrate secure, efficient background check services. This applies whether they are driving for a standard taxi cab dispatch system or a dedicated driver (vehicle owner) app for a ride-sharing platform.

Comprehensive Verification & Training: Ensure all drivers meet stringent safety and legal requirements. Offer flexible training options—online modules, video tutorials, and potentially in-person sessions for practical skills. Cover topics like using the taxi driver application effectively, navigating the city, customer service best practices, and emergency protocols.

First-Ride Support: Offer dedicated support for a driver's initial rides. This could involve a mentorship program with experienced drivers, a dedicated hotline for immediate questions, or in-app prompts and checklists to guide them.

AI-Driven Driver Matching & Support: Leverage Use AI-driven driver matching to pair drivers with rides based on factors beyond proximity, such as earnings potential, vehicle type, and driver preferences. AI also provides predictive analytics, highlighting high-demand zones and peak times to optimize driver efficiency and earnings, boosting satisfaction and loyalty.

Retention Rhapsody: Leveraging Gamification and Community Building to Keep Riders Coming Back

Beyond just getting them to download, the goal is to make your app an indispensable part of their daily routine for passenger acquisition taxi apps and long-term customer retention taxi apps. This is where your taxi software can truly shine.

Gamification: Introduce elements that make using your app fun and rewarding. Implement loyalty programs with tiered rewards (e.g., earn points for every ride, unlock premium features). Introduce in-app challenges (e.g., "Take 5 rides this week, get a bonus!") that offer personalized badges or leaderboards for active users on your carpool app or ridesharing app.

Personalized Badges & Milestones: Reward users for specific actions or milestones (e.g., "Eco Warrior" for choosing sustainable rides, "Night Owl" for frequent late-night travel, or "Frequent Commuter" for daily trips). These small gestures build engagement.

Community Features: While not for all apps, consider light community features like an in-app forum for carpool-and-ride-sharing-app users or localized social media groups where users can share experiences and offer feedback. This fosters a sense of belonging and strengthens your user engagement strategy.

Proactive Engagement: Use AI-driven user engagement to send personalized notifications for upcoming events, personalized discounts based on past ride history, or reminders about loyalty points.

De-Risking the Ride: Building Trust Through Transparency and Safety Features in Your Acquisition Messaging

Safety and trust are paramount in the ride-hailing industry. Make them a cornerstone of your taxi app marketing and core to any taxi booking app development company.

Communicate Protocols Clearly: Be transparent about your rigorous driver vetting processes (background checks, driving record reviews), regular vehicle inspections, and comprehensive insurance policies. Feature these prominently in your marketing materials, on your website, and within the app.

Highlight In-App Safety Features: Promote critical functionalities such as

SOS Button: Instant access to emergency services or support.

Trip Sharing: Share live ride status with trusted contacts.

ID Verification: Secure logins via multi-factor or facial recognition.

24/7 Support: Help available anytime, day or night.

Transparency in Pricing: Be upfront about surge charges and fare calculations to build trust.

Visual Trust Signals: Use testimonials, top driver ratings, and security badges to build trust. Employ AI-driven fraud detection to keep the platform secure, ensuring safety for both users and drivers—a vital feature of modern taxi software.

3. Digital Powerhouses: Key Marketing Channels

Beyond general strategies, specific digital marketing for app channels will be your workhorses for ride-hailing app growth.

Beyond the Click: Optimizing Your Landing Pages and Conversion Funnels for Paid Taxi App Campaigns

Your paid advertisements, whether Google Ads for taxi apps or Facebook Ads for taxi apps, are only as effective as the conversion path they lead to.

High-Converting Elements: Landing pages must be lightning-fast, mobile-responsive, and have a clear, compelling call to action (e.g., "Download Now," "Sign Up to Drive"). Use concise, benefit-driven headlines, persuasive imagery, and social proof (testimonials, trust badges). Minimize distractions.

Conversion Funnels: Map the entire user journey from the initial ad click through app download, sign-up, and the first completed ride. Utilize analytics tools to identify bottlenecks or drop-off points at each stage. A/B test different versions of your landing pages, ad creatives, and even in-app onboarding flows to continuously optimize conversion rates.

Retargeting Strategies: Don't let interested users slip away. Implement retargeting campaigns to re-engage individuals who visited your landing page but didn't download the app or who downloaded but didn't complete their first ride. Personalize these retargeting ads based on their last interaction. This is key for any rideshare app development company.

The Power of Local SEO: Dominating Google My Business and Local Listings for Taxi App Visibility

For a location-based service, appearing prominently in local searches is paramount for organic user acquisition strategies.

Google My Business (GMB) Optimization: This is your digital storefront. Claim and fully optimize your GMB profile with accurate business hours, phone number, website, and a compelling description. Upload high-quality photos of your vehicles and team. Actively utilize the GMB Q&A section and post updates about promotions or service changes.

Local Listings & Citations: Ensure consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information across all major online directories (Yelp, TripAdvisor, local chambers of commerce, industry-specific listing sites). This is vital for any software taxi dispatch operation.

Review Management: Actively solicit and respond to all reviews on GMB and other platforms. Positive reviews significantly boost your local search ranking for queries like "taxi near me" or "ride-hailing [city name]." Address negative feedback professionally and promptly, demonstrating your commitment to customer satisfaction.

Visual Storytelling: Crafting Compelling Video Ads for Your Ride-Hailing App on Social Media

Video content is highly engaging and perfect for showcasing the user experience on platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube.

Compelling Hooks: Capture attention in 3 seconds with a relatable problem and solution.

Concise Messaging: Keep videos 15-60 seconds, highlighting 1–2 key benefits with text overlays.

Clear CTAs: End with strong calls to action like “Download Now” or “Sign Up.”

Platform Adaptation: Customize format, music, and messaging for each social platform and target audience.

4. The AI Edge & Expanded Mobility: Driving Smart Growth

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a luxury but a fundamental necessity for competitive ride-hailing app growth, transforming every facet of marketing and operations. Beyond AI, the mobility sector is expanding rapidly into diverse solutions.

Personalized Marketing AI: AI in taxi apps analyzes vast amounts of user data (ride history, preferred times, locations, device type, past promotions engaged with) to create highly granular user segments. This enables personalized marketing AI to deliver hyper-targeted promotions, notifications, and ride suggestions ("50% off your next ride from work," "Exclusive weekend discount to your favorite restaurant"). This level of personalization significantly boosts conversion rates and fosters AI-driven user engagement.

Predictive Analytics for Demand: Leveraging machine learning for ride-hailing, your app can process historical data (time of day, day of week, weather, local events, public holidays) and real-time inputs (traffic, current driver availability) to predict demand surges and lulls with remarkable accuracy. This allows smart dispatch systems (a crucial AI application and part of the best taxi dispatch software) to proactively position drivers, offer dynamic incentives to drivers in low-supply areas, and manage surge pricing intelligently.

AI-Powered Driver Matching: Beyond simple proximity, AI-powered driver- matching algorithms consider a multitude of factors: the driver's current rating, historical performance, vehicle type, estimated earnings for the driver on a specific route, and even driver preferences (e.g., avoiding tolls). This optimization leads to faster pickups, more efficient routes, and higher driver satisfaction, directly improving overall service quality. This sophisticated matching is a hallmark of any truly intelligent rideshare matching system.

AI for Dynamic Pricing: Sophisticated AI for dynamic pricing models can adjust fares in real time. These models factor in demand, supply, traffic conditions, competitor pricing, and even weather. This ensures optimal revenue generation during peak times while maintaining competitiveness during off-peak hours. Clear communication about surge pricing, potentially justified by AI solutions predicting high demand, is crucial for user acceptance.

Data Science for App Growth: The immense data generated by a taxi app is a goldmine. Data science for app growth teams, armed with AI solutions, can conduct advanced A/B testing, identify high-value customer segments, predict user churn, and uncover unexpected correlations that inform marketing strategies. This data-driven approach allows for precise marketing budget allocation for maximum ROI.

AI-driven Fraud Detection: AI algorithms constantly monitor transaction patterns, ride behaviors, and driver actions to identify and flag suspicious activities (e.g., unusual ride cancellations, payment fraud attempts, account sharing). This robust security infrastructure builds immense trust among both riders and drivers, a key factor for customer retention in a taxi app.

4.1. Expanding Horizons: The Mobility Ecosystem

Beyond traditional taxis and ride-hailing, the mobility sector is diversifying rapidly.

Super Apps: The future sees mobility services integrating into a super app—a single platform offering a multitude of services. This could include not just ride-hailing, but also food delivery, payment solutions, and other daily necessities.

Micromobility: This growing segment includes solutions for bike rental and scooter sharing. Developing apps for micromobility services caters to short-distance travel within urban environments.

Car Sharing System Enhanced: Beyond simple rentals, advanced carshare app Platforms offer peer-to-peer car sharing or corporate fleet management, blurring the lines between rental and sharing. This often involves intricate car rental software.

Specialized Dispatch & Logistics: The principles of taxi dispatch software extend to other logistics. This includes trucking dispatch software for freight management and shuttle software for corporate, campus, or airport shuttle services.

Intercity and Outstation Services: The need for long-distance travel is also being addressed. Solutions for intercity ridesharing and outstation carpooling cater to users seeking affordable and convenient travel between cities.

Build Your Brand: Whether you create your own rideshare app from scratch or launch your branded UberPool-like rideshare software app, the emphasis is on establishing a unique brand identity in this competitive market.

5. Measuring Success: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

To ensure continuous ride-hailing app growth, rigorous tracking and analysis of critical taxi app KPIs are non-negotiable. This data informs every strategic decision and helps refine your user acquisition strategies.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Cost to acquire riders/drivers per channel; keep it low for profitability.

Lifetime Value (LTV): Total revenue per user; should exceed CAC for sustainable growth.

Conversion Rates: Track funnel stages from download to repeat rides; fix drop-offs.

Retention Rate & Churn Rate: Measure how many users stay or leave after the first ride.

Driver Utilization Rate: Percent of time drivers are active; higher means better profits.

Acceptance Rate: Share of ride requests accepted; low rates signal supply issues.

Ride Completion Rate: Percent of booked rides completed; shows reliability.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) / Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): Direct feedback from users to improve service quality.

Conclusion: Your Blueprint for Market Leadership in On-Demand Mobility

Launching a taxi or mobility app in 2025 demands more than great development—it requires data-driven marketing, rider and driver balance, and AI-powered insights. By carefully planning your pre-launch, leveraging digital channels, and optimizing with KPIs, you can stand out in a competitive market. Strategic execution, continuous learning, and smart decision-making are essential to build scalable, successful rideshare, carpool, or dispatch software that thrives in the evolving mobility industry.

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unimaktechnologies · 1 month ago

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oprezoindia · 2 years ago

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago

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After nearly 15 years, Uber claims it’s finally turned an annual profit. Between 2014 and 2023, the company set over $31 billion on fire in its quest to drive taxi companies out of business and build a global monopoly. It failed on both fronts, but in the meantime it built an organization that can wield significant power over transportation — and that’s exactly how it got to last week’s milestone. Uber turned a net profit of nearly $1.9 billion in 2023, but what few of the headlines will tell you is that over $1.6 billion of it came from unrealized gains from its holdings in companies like Aurora and Didi. Basically, the value of those shares are up, so on paper it looks like Uber’s core business made a lot more money than it actually did. Whether the companies are really worth that much is another question entirely — but that doesn’t matter to Uber. At least it’s not using the much more deceptive “adjusted EBITDA” metric it spent years getting the media to treat as an accurate picture of its finances. Don’t be fooled into thinking the supposed innovation Uber was meant to deliver is finally bearing fruit. The profit it’s reporting is purely due to exploitative business practices where the worker and consumer are squeezed to serve investors — and technology is the tool to do it. This is the moment CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been working toward for years, and the plan he’s trying to implement to cement the company’s position should have us all concerned about the future of how we get around and how we work.

[...]

Uber didn’t become a global player in transportation because it wielded technology to more efficiently deliver services to the public. The tens of billions of dollars it lost over the past decade went into undercutting taxis on price and drawing drivers to its service — including some taxi drivers — by promising good wages, only to cut them once the competition posed by taxis had been eroded and consumers had gotten used to turning to the Uber app instead of calling or hailing a cab. As transport analyst Hubert Horan outlined, for-hire rides are not a service that can take advantage of economies of scale like a software or logistics company, meaning just because you deliver more rides doesn’t mean the per-ride cost gets significantly cheaper. Uber actually created a less cost-efficient model because it forces drivers to use their own vehicles and buy their own insurance instead of having a fleet of similar vehicles covered by fleet insurance. Plus, it has a ton of costs your average taxi company doesn’t: a high-paid tech workforce, expensive headquarters scattered around the world, and outrageously compensated executive management like Khosrowshahi, just to name a few. How did Uber cut costs then? By systematically going after the workers that deliver its service. More recently, it took advantage of the cost-of-living crisis to keep them on board in the same way it exploited workers left behind by the financial crisis in the years after its initial launch. Its only real innovation is finding new ways to exploit labor.

#uber #gig economy #silicon valley #paris marx #taxis

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fuck-customers · 6 months ago

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My city has incredibly dangerous road conditions this weekend. Due to extremely slippery icey roads and pavements and parking lots, emergency vehicles weren't even able to safely get to some people apparently. An ambulance got in a ditch.

Customers were falling in the parking lot and getting injured and mall security was walking around manually dumping salt and sand around the entire place and it was still dangerous.

So tell me why customers were coming in and short/rude with US. No, they weren't blaming us for the weather but they were taking out their bad moods on us. Which pissed us all the fuck off because guess what Karen WE have to be here but YOU don't so stay the fuck home like the local police have been begging ppl to do because emergency services are overwhelmed. Like WE should be mad at YOU not the other way around so ffs don't take ur bad mood out on us because some of us were trying to figure out how tf to get home because not all of us have cars. Buses got canceled and "Lift" and "Over" app prices were skyrocketed (fair enough they'd be taking a huge risk). A couple of us were originally getting a ride home from a friend, but mine couldn't safely leave their driveway and my coworkers roommate wasn't gonna risk it either.

I had to walk home. Two hours. In the slippery conditions. In the dark. Fucked up my back even more (was already bad) and now my foot too.

I stg if any customers r rude today I'm going tf OFF at them 😅😭 they could be at home but they CHOOSE to do non essential shopping and then be a bitch abt it to the ppl who have no choice. Fuck customers and fuck this job and fuck the shitty ppl in this g*dforsaken red-ass town

Posted by admin Rodney

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beardedmrbean · 2 months ago

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A 16-year-old Missouri girl who had been missing since December was found alive nearly 700 miles away in a registered sex offender's home.

Officers from the Fort Collins Police Department were led to a Colorado home April 15 after receiving a tip through the missing teen's Instagram account, which had been dormant since she was reported missing Dec. 6, 2024, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by 9NEWS.

On April 16, investigators determined her account was accessed from an IP address at a home where 44-year-old Maximilian Bondrescu lived.

Due to Bondrescu being a registered sex offender, investigators got a warrant and went to his home April 18, officials said.

Bondrescu denied to officers that there was a girl inside the home, but she was later found hiding in a closet, the affidavit said.

"The house was searched, and the missing juvenile was located inside. Bondrescu is currently a registered sexual offender," police shared in a news release on their department Facebook page. Police confirmed Bondrescu was booked into Larimer County Jail and is facing a number of charges, including the following:

Class 2 Felony – 2nd Degree Kidnapping – Child

Class 3 Felony – Sexual Assault on a Child – Pattern of Abuse

Class 4 Felony – 2nd Degree Assault

Class 5 Felony – False Imprisonment – Minor Locked in Room

Class 1 Misdemeanor – Failure to Register as a Sex Offender – Incomplete Registration

Class 2 Misdemeanor – Child Abuse

Class 2 Misdemeanor – Harboring a Minor

Class 2 Misdemeanor – Obstructing a Peace Officer

The victim was 15 when she was initially reported missing outside Columbia, Missouri, when school officials notified her father that she was not at school that morning, the affidavit says. He told police that when he got home from work, she was still not home, and he was unable to reach her by phone.

Students at the school had reported the teen had talked about running away to Colorado, according to the affidavit.

The victim, who was not identified due to her age, told investigators she began communicating with Bondrescu in November 2024 on an app called "Boo" but then moved their conversations to Snapchat.

Police said the "investigation revealed that Bondrescu rented a vehicle to drive to Missouri where he met with the juvenile female and then drove her to Colorado."

According to the affidavit, Bondrescu picked her up in the middle of the night and "took a route that avoided any toll roads."

When they arrived in Colorado, the victim told police, Bondrescu wrapped her in a blanket and carried her into the house "so no one would see her." Bondrescu also made her dye her hair and wear a mask and sunglasses if they ever went out, the documents state.

Police added that the victim reported to investigators that she was held against her will, but Bondrescu would sometimes take her out and make her work for his snow removal company, FoCo Sno GO.

While she was forced to work for Bondrescu's company, police said, she was also required to wear a mask while shoveling to conceal her identity and age.

Police are asking any customers who used this company to contact Det. David Guy at 970-416-2026.

"The importance of the work done by the Fort Collins Police Cyber Crime Unit and similar units across the nation play a vital role in helping to keep our children safe," Fort Collins Police Assistant Chief Kristy Volesky said. "Had it not been for the diligent work of these detectives, the juvenile could have continued to be victimized. Our investigators will now work closely with the district attorney’s office to ensure justice for this child."

Bondrescu is being held on $500,000 bond with his court date scheduled for Monday, May 5, according to Larimer County Jail records.

#nunyas news

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hoemainexpansion · 27 days ago

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Chapter Six: Do You Have A Lot Of Boys In Your Room?: You've moved back home after what Suguru deemed a potential threat, Satoru uses his powers to check your home, and you run into your ex boyfriend.

Also on AO3

⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

“We should have had sex when we were still at your apartment.” Fucking Satoru.

“Why does the location matter?”

“You won’t be able to keep yourself quiet. I’d hate for your parents or sisters to hear.”

Just like a man.

It’s been about a week since you’ve been back at Suguru’s house and let’s just say that security was kicked the fuck up to an insane degree.

Not only did everyone have to get together to make sure the tracking app on their phone was working, you also had to download two extra ones in case one malfunctioned when it’s necessary. Makes sense since that happens with security cameras every time they’re needed.

Suguru put discreet trackers on everyone’s vehicle that way if someone was taken in their car and their phone was thrown away by the abductor, the car could still be located.

It was also the Buddy System everywhere you went with no exceptions. Even when Manami was just going grocery shopping, somebody had to go with her even though she usually did that by herself. However, you were excluded from the list of companions, for your own protection, he said.

There have been at least two squad cars watching the home at any given time and they switch out every few hours so it’s not like you could even sneak out if you wanted to. It’s been a week of you and Satoru mostly hanging out in your room watching television, playing games, or you reading books to him. Technically he can read himself, but he just likes you reading to him.

Sweet baby.

Since it seems like there might be a chance that you’re being targeted, you haven’t been allowed to leave the property at all. You ended up taking a few days off of work because of the situation and thankfully your boss was super understanding.

However, if you have to stay in this house indefinitely, you’re going to go fucking crazy.

You begged Suguru to let you go back to work, at least once a week, which he was completely against and you can’t argue that you don’t understand why. But after a few days of begging, he finally caved. But that wasn’t without you agreeing to a few things first.

First, you can’t leave without a police escort but that didn’t really surprise you. However, them sitting outside the car for your entire shift did, but Sukuna even agreed to that as long as it didn’t look like a traditional cop car to scare the customers away.

Second, you have to keep your phone on you at all times, even when you’re on the floor in case something happens and you don’t have time to get to your locker to retrieve it.

Third, you have to check in at regular intervals and if you’re late, he’s sending someone in to check on you. So you made sure to set alarms so as to not worry everybody.

Fourth, you now have to carry a pocket knife just in case something happens.

The last caveat was something else that Sukuna had to agree to which was just making sure that there were eyes on you the entire time you’re in the club and making notes of anyone who looks suspicious. He assured him that either Yaga or himself would watch over you and then finally Suguru agreed to let you go back to work, but you know he’s still not happy about it.

But here’s your biggest issue, what the fuck do you do with Satoru for the time being?

You can’t take him in the club due to the ‘no boyfriends allowed’ rule due to many men getting in fights with customers ogling their girlfriends. You can’t dress him up as a customer and send him in there as a random patron because Sukuna met him at your birthday party. You can’t leave him at home because that’s just not going to fucking happen. The club is further from the house than your apartment was and he was struggling with that distance so there’s no way you can be apart from him for five hours. But you also can’t have him just turn invisible because your family will question why he’s been disappearing for a few hours and don’t want suspicion to fall on him.

Fuck.

“What are you stressing about now?”

“I don’t know what to do with you while I’m at work,” you take a seat on the bed and sigh.

“Why can’t I go with you?”

“The boyfriend rule.”

“I forgot about that.”

You were thinking of having him take the car somewhere to just wait for you a block or two away so that he’s still close, but you already told Detective Kong that he doesn’t drive and that would look suspicious if he suddenly did.

Damn these fucking police escorts everywhere you go.

You may have to go without him.

He can’t sit in a restaurant for multiple hours because that looks crazy. He can’t go to a gym because he has no identification for a membership. He could go sit in the park a few blocks away for a while but that may also look weird. Ugh.

But maybe you can give him something to do.

You haven’t been back to your apartment since Suguru woke you up that night so maybe he can take a look and see if it’s safe. Then you can go back to trying to figure things out on your own.

“Satoru, I have an idea, but you probably won’t like it.”

“What?”

“What if you ride with me to the club, and then take an Uber back to my apartment?”

“Why the hell would I do that? You’re going to be at the club.”

“With multiple levels of protection.”

“Protection that isn’t me is weak.” Cocky.

“I get it, but you can feel my fear right? Even with a little distance, I imagine everyone else would be good enough until you could get back to me. Being able to teleport is a nifty little skill to have.”

“Flattery gets you nowhere.” Yeah right. He loves that shit.

“Suguru and company haven’t been able to get a search warrant because the judge doesn’t feel that there’s enough probable cause which means that all the csi stuff they want to do, they can’t. But you can.”

“Why can’t Suguru just look around anyway? He’s your dad, just let him in.”

“If they have to take something to court, it may not hold up. That’s why I was thinking you could do some searching.”

“You think I’m fingerprint chalk?” He’s so cute.

“Dust. No. But you can see and sense things that others can’t, even with their technology. If you can return and take a look around, you’ll be able to determine if it actually is safe for us to go home and then I’ll come up with a story to get us out of here.”

“Why do you want me in an Uber then?”

“Appearances. It’ll look weird if you ride with me to the club and then just disappear in my car, especially since I’m being watched. You can ride with me to the club, Uber a few blocks back towards my apartment, teleport inside, and look for anything suspicious. Hang out for a while and come back before I get off work so that we can come back together. I’ll even leave you spare car keys so that you don’t have to wait outside.”

“That seems like a lot just so that you can return to work.”

“Well, Suguru only agreed to one day thus far. We’ll worry about another plan next week.”

“Fine. But I want something from you.” Here we go.

“Okay, what?”

“I want you to put on one of those cute little outfits and do a dance for me.” What. The. Fuck.

“You’re kidding.”

“Afraid not my dear. Back in my day, a woman would get flogged for showing an ankle, but now there seems to be less rules. So I would like for you to show your appreciation for my beautiful face and how I put it in danger for you.”

“Isn’t that your job?” He pouts. “Fine, I’ll do it. But I don’t own one so I don’t know how soon this’ll happen.”

“That’s fine, I have nothing but time to look at that beautiful figure that you like to hide behind jeans and sweaters.” Good grief.

Who knows, maybe that’ll actually be fun.

Knock. Knock.

“Yes,” you call out.

“I’m going to run to the store, will you two be alright here by yourself?”

“I assume the cops are still watching the house.”

“They are.”

“Then I’m sure we’ll be fine. I’ll use Satoru as a human shield if I need to.”

Manami laughs and doesn’t at all sense that you’re serious.

“Okay, don’t get into too much trouble, you two,” that’s the last thing Manami says before closing your bedroom door.

“Did she just insinuate that we’re having sex?”

“See, even your mom thinks we are! We should do it so that we don’t make her a liar.”

“Sir… what?”

And that’s how you learned not to refer to him as ‘sir.’

He stands up, walks around the bed to your side, grabs your chin, and forces you to look up to him. “If you don’t want to have sex, you shouldn’t call me names that are going to make my cock hard.”

Damn.

“Duly noted.”

You expect him to walk away after saying that, but instead he pulls you closer, holding you tight against him with one hand on your lower back, and the other still holding your face. He leans his face down to brush his lips against yours, not kissing, just teasing before putting his face in the crook of your neck and sniffing.

And he fucking moans. “You smell so good.”

Don’t get wet. Don’t get wet. Don’t get wet. Don’t get wet. Don’t get wet. Don’t get wet.

That’s all you can think because he can apparently feel every fucking thing that you can feel which means he’d probably notice that too.

This sexually frustrated virgin thing is really starting to annoy you. Especially since you left your apartment so fast you didn’t get to pack any vibrators.

Eventually, he pulls away and returns to his side of the bed and you’re just standing there, frozen in shock, or arousal, or both. You hate how turned on you are by that and the fact that he probably knows without you having to say or do a thing.

“So, what are we going to do today?” He asks in the most jolly voice like he didn’t just fucking break you.

“Huh?” You can barely get that out.

You haven’t even been able to masturbate in at least two months and even though you’re trapped in the home due to a potential threat, you are trapped inside. Is it the worst thing to indulge in such things to pass the time?

“No. I think you should give into temptation instead of judging yourself for things that you haven’t even done yet.”

“Can you read my thoughts?!” You ask in horror.

“No. You just said it out loud.”

Okay, being in the house all the time is making you crazy.

“Hey,” he grabs your hand, his tone more serious. “We don’t have to do anything. But if you want to, you already know I’m dying for you. But even if nothing happens, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up for every little thing. You retreat into your thoughts too much and stress yourself out. What you need is less over analyzing and more stress relief.”

“Stress relief?” You repeat.

“Yes. Stress relief.”

“I guess that wouldn’t be the worst thing.” You can’t believe what you’re saying, but he’s right.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

“Can you rewind that back?” Suguru asks the officer for the umpteenth time.

He’s been scrubbing the surveillance footage from your apartment building for the past few days since it was retrieved but it hasn’t really proven useful.

He’s been able to figure out that the person who left the package at your door is probably around six feet tall based on where they come up to other things in the hallway, but due to the camera being at a downward angle, it’s not definitive.

They have a wide gait and put a bit of extra pressure on their left leg which could indicate some type of injury or medical condition. But even with information on what, doctors aren’t going to hand over patient files based on a theory. It’s hard to even get them when trying to prove your case in court.

The suspect is wearing all black from head to toe, even gloves, making it difficult to catch any portion of their skin. And as they walk, they keep their head down the entire time which shows that they expected to be caught on camera. But even being completely covered up, he can still tell that they have a bit of a muscular body type but that’s not much to go on. You do have a gym in your building but even if you didn’t, there’s one that’s not too far away.

The most frustrating part is that there’s more cameras than just the ones in the apartment's hallways, yet for some reason they couldn’t catch anything identifying about this person. There’s cameras on the outside of the building, there’s cameras in the elevators, and a fucking front desk person who’s supposed to be there twenty four seven so how the hell did they walk in and walk out unseen?

Could it be someone who lives in the building and it’s just a coincidence that you moved there? Could it be someone who moved in once they saw that you did so that they didn’t arouse suspicion if seen hanging around? Or is it someone who’s just really good at not being noticed and there’s not really a way to track them?

“Fuck. This feels hopeless.”

“I’m so sorry Detective Geto, I’ve enhanced it as much as I can.”

“It’s fine Ijichi, it’s not your fault. Could you make me a copy of this? I’ll pick it up before I leave.”

“Sure thing.”

Suguru returns to his own office to sit down and take a breather.

He’s spent the past few days reviewing your building’s footage the most because certain businesses have refused to turn theirs over with the excuse being that there’s no real crime that was committed and don’t want to get involved until then. The ones that have agreed to turn over their footage said that it would take a few days to collect it which means that all he can do is wait.

Sitting at his desk, he decides to check his email for what feels like the twentieth time today just to see if anyone has sent anything over that could be helpful. When he refreshes the page, he sees that there is something new and it lifts up his mood.

There’s a small jewelry store that’s only about a five minute walk from your building and they were one of the ones who agreed to send over what they had, and it looks like they have.

However, it’s long.

As fuck.

Long as fuck.

They sent over seventy two hours of CCTV footage just in case someone suspicious was lurking around for a while before doing what they did and was able to be captured.

He’s ecstatic.

He walks over to the coffee maker he has in his office, a gift from you and your sisters because you know how picky he is with his blends and hates getting to work to see that nothing is left, and starts up a pot. He knows it’s going to be a long night and needs as much help as he can get.

He picks up his ‘Worlds Okayest Dad’ mug, a joke gift from you, and fills it up, deciding to take it black as to not dilute the strength. He returns to his desk and takes a look at the photos he has set up across it, finally feeling a little semblance of hope. He’ll take anything that he can get, as long as he can get something.

He starts downloading the footage from his email before opening it up in his media player and making notes of anyone that looks suspicious.

“Fuck. I’m gonna be here for a while.”

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

“Fuck, you taste so good,” Satoru says he leaves kisses down your neck. All you can do is moan in response, your brain feeling dulled down by these unfamiliar sensations. “It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life… for you.”

He’s dramatic, but you’ll take it.

“No marks,” you whisper once you realize he’s pretty fixated on one area.

“Afraid of your parents seeing?” He teases.

“Hell yeah,” you can’t even lie. “Customers also make more inappropriate comments if they think you’ve recently had sex, it’s annoying.”

“I can kill them if you want,” he continues to kiss you, lower now, between your breasts. He takes one in his hand and squeezes like it’s a stress ball.

“Satoru! Are you trying to pop my tit?”

“They’re so perfect, I’ve been dying to touch them.”

All you can do is scoff because what the actual fuck sir.

You expected a being like him to be this all imposing and intimidating figure instead of this whiny mess who you’ve barely touched. You card your fingers through his hair and he moans like it’s the best thing to ever happen to him.

Just as he starts to pull your top down, your bedroom door swings open.

“Oooooohhhh!” You hear your sisters dramatically say in unison. Of course, that’s how you have to be notified that they’re back as well.

You push Satoru off of you and cover yourself back up, thank goodness your top was the only thing that was a little sloppy. You look at Satoru to see him rolling over to get off the bed and see his very obvious erection that looks about three sizes too big.

“What are you two doing?” Nanako asks with a smirk.

“Nothing! What do you want?” You’re not even going to entertain this.

“Mom wants to know what you want for dinner.”

“Anything. Literally anything. You can go now.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re desperate to get us out of here,” Mimiko speaks up now, trying your patience.

“Nothing’s happening and nothing is going to happen.”

“Mmmhhhmmm.”

Eventually they walk away, leaving your door open in the process.

“Well, that couldn’t have gone any worse.”

“Not true,” Satoru refutes. “Suguru could have been the one to walk in.”

Good point.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

You’re finally at work for what feels like the first time in years and while you’re happy to get some time out of the house to do… anything, you are more nervous than you thought you’d be since everyone spent the past couple of days putting the fear of god into you.

Everyone has welcomed you back with open arms, some people being surprised that you’re here in the first place.

You’ve been avoiding the news like the plague because you know that it’ll do you no good to constantly watch what you’re already going through. You know that if there’s anything serious going on that you have to worry about, Suguru will tell you about it so you’ve just tried to distract your mind.

You’ve spent so much time watching mindless reality tv and dealing with Satoru’s attempts to seduce you that you kind of feel weird now that you’re separated from him.

It feels weird being apart from him at all.

Lame.

But one of your regulars is here so you just try to distract yourself with that.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I came in a few days ago but I heard that you may be gone for an indefinite amount of time.”

“Honestly Ino, I don’t know how regular my shifts will be for a while. It took an act of god to convince Suguru to let me come in here for tonight so I don’t know how much he’ll agree to it with everything going on.”

“I get it, he worries, that’s what dads do.”

Takuma Ino is your oldest regular and the one that you trust the most. You don’t divulge a lot of your personal life with anyone but Utahime, but he’s probably one of the closest in that regard. You ran into him one time at a coffee shop and sat down to have a chat with him which was a first for you because you usually make up an excuse to get the hell out of wherever you are.

Thank goodness Satoru isn’t here right now.

Even though you miss your jealous demon psychopath.

You spend a few more minutes chatting with Ino before making your rounds in the club refilling drinks and setting up bottle service for the vips who just arrived.

You go to the back room with another waitress and start setting everything up because people who spend five hundred dollars on a bottle of liquor that they could get at the store for less than fifty are the ones with the least amount of patience.

Usually the best tippers though.

“So, how have things been?” Miwa asks you. She’s one of the people you know that avoids the news so you know that she has no idea what’s going on and she’s not just fishing for information.

“Uhhh, fine I guess.”

“That’s not convincing,” she responds with a giggle.

“I know. Long story short, I may have been targeted by a serial killer and had to move back home with my boyfriend to my law enforcement family.”

Her eyes shoot open in shock like she can’t believe what you just said. You were working together for about a year before she learned your backstory so you know this must have come out of left field.

“I’m surprised they’re letting you out of the house at all, I know my parents wouldn’t.”

“Trust me, Suguru was not enthusiastic about it, but I just needed some time out of the house. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to come in because of it.”

“There’s worse people you could be trapped at home with than Suguru,” she says with a wink.

“Eeeewwww, I can’t look at him like that!”

“But I can!” This girl. “So, you finally got a boyfriend?”

“Yeah, he’s a fucking handful,” you tell her and she laughs. “He’s a sweetheart, but he needs a lot of attention and hates the idea of me interacting with other men for any reason.”

“Got a picture?”

“Actually, I do.” Satoru has decided that instead of just looking at your photos you’ve already taken, he wants to take them himself and he’s been loving it. He’s probably taken hundreds in just the past couple of days so you saved some of them to your phone. You show her one of the two of you laying in bed with your head on his chest, covering your face. But he has a big smile with those bright blue eyes and you swear you see hearts in hers.

“He’s a cutie pie! Why do you need to interact with other men again?”

“For work?” You laugh.

“If I had a boyfriend who looked like that, I’d just get used to staying home and being pregnant.” She’s silly, but sweet.

“Note to self, keep Kasumi away from my man,” you say and the both of you laugh.

Eventually, the individuals who rented out the back room start to come in and something about them feels familiar. But it’s not until you see the last person in the back that you realize why…

It’s your high school boyfriend Choso and the rest of his band.

“Oh my god, that’s my ex-boyfriend.”

“Oooh! Oooh! Which one?”

“The tired eye looking one with the red shadow and the pigtails.”

“Your taste is all over the place,” she says in the most monotone voice you’ve ever heard from her.

You just hope that he won’t remember you.

But then you hear someone call your name and you know that that idea is out the window.

This is like when you say, ‘at least today can’t get any worse,’ and then it fucking rains. Well, the sun comes out in your case because you hate the sun and love the rain but that’s besides the point.

Fuck, you mutter under your breath before turning around with a smile on your face and walking over.

“I thought it was you,” Choso says with a soft smile on his face. He stands up to hug you and you feel like a teenager all over again.

“Hi Choso, how are you?”

“Good, how are you? You look incredible.” You’re sure the dark red lingerie has nothing to do with that… not.

“Thank you. You’re all grown up now, but you still look the same.”

“Sit. Can you sit? Or do you have to run around a bunch?”

“I can take a few minutes.”

The two of you walk over to an empty table and when you sit down, he pulls a chair around to sit right next to you.

“So, how are Choso and the Kamo’s?” The two of you share a laugh. “I still can’t believe you’ve all kept that name this whole time.”

“The guys thought it was funny then, and they think it’s funny now. What have you been up to, besides being the most beautiful woman in this club,” was he always this forward? Who cares, you love it.

“Uhhh, nothing quite as exciting as being a band with sold out tours.”

“Try me.”

“Well, I got my own place.”

“That’s great! Why do you downplay that like it’s a nothing accomplishment? I’ve met Suguru, I’m surprised he let you out of his sight, let alone here.”

“He hated Mr. Sukuna at first, but he watched over me so he eventually chilled out about him. And it took me showing him listings to twenty apartments which he vetoed before finally agreeing to the last one we saw of the day because it has the best security system.”

He laughs because he knows how extreme he is but that it’s because he cares and not because he’s just a controlling dick bag.

Even though your parents approved of Choso, that didn’t mean that your new family did. He had to go through the whole ‘what are your intentions with my daughter’ thing for a second time and you know that it was brutal. But Manami liked him a lot, so she got her husband to chill out.

“So you basically had to move into a police safe house?” You throw your head back and laugh because in all seriousness, that might be where you’re going next. Ugh, the irony. “So, Eso caught the news recently, is everything okay?” His tone turns serious and you were hoping to avoid this in order to not bring down everyone’s mood.

“I had to move back home a week ago and be put on twenty four seven police surveillance. I’m not allowed to leave the house without police escort and I’m still not allowed to have boys in my room with the door closed.”

His cheeks turn red after you remind him of the day Manami walked in without knocking and caught him underneath your skirt. It was the closest you’ve ever come to having sex and that scared you out of it. But Suguru never yelled at you about it or removed the locks from your doors so you’ve just assumed that she never told him.

Shoutout to the real mvp.

“Do you have a lot of boys in your room now?” He asks in a whisper.

“Only one loudmouth who tries to seduce me every chance he gets and I think both my sisters have a crush on.” You didn’t notice it at first, but after catching Satoru all over you that day, they blush every time he talks to them.

“Well, if you ever need a break, I’d love to have dinner sometime. I’m in town for the next few weeks and I’d like to spend some time with you.”

“Choso, I have to be honest,” you take a deep breath before continuing. “I’m not officially taken, but it’s not not nothing either. I just want you to know that before you waste your time.”

“I don’t consider anything about you a waste of time. Nothing has to happen, I’d just like to catch up.”

You agree and exchange numbers.

It’s so weird how you can have dated someone for so long and then feel so awkward around them after the fact.

Just then, Sukuna comes into the room and says that he needs an additional waitress on the floor due to the influx of customers so you agree to go. Miwa looks like she’s having the time of her life with the band and you don’t want to take her away from that. You give Choso a hug before returning to the rest of the club.

“Boyfriend?” Sukuna asks you.

“Ex. From high school.”

“Your taste is all over the place.” You start to laugh because what the fuck? Is that phrase floating around in the air or something? “That’s what Kasumi said.”

“She’s not wrong. But she also doesn’t know that your frosty haired maniac exudes jealousy like radiation flows from a war zone. Can’t let him find out you interacted with another man, he might lose his shit. He’ll probably lose it if he found out you were talking to me.”

“Oh don’t worry, he will,” you respond and he chuckles.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

It’s finally the end of the night and you’re ready to clock out and go the fuck home.

While you’re grateful that you were able to get out for the night, having so many days off in a row before coming back made your social battery drain extremely fast.

When you get to the dressing room to get changed, you text Satoru to see what’s going on.

You : Are you close?

Satoru : With you, baby? Always.

For fuck’s sake.

You : To the club.

You : You fucking pervert.

Satoru : According to your electronic map, I’m about five minutes away.

Satoru : 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

Ever since Satoru discovered emojis he’s been living his best afterlife.

You : Call me when you get here. I’m getting dressed right now.

Satoru : Sure thing, babe. I can’t wait until we get home and right as I’m about to taste you, one of your relatives comes in the room and blocks my cock.

You : It’s cockblock Satoru.

Satoru : That too.

Satoru : What’s yours?

You : What’s what?

Satoru : The vagina equivalent of cockblock?

Oh goodness.

You : I don’t think there is one.

Satoru : Clam Jam?

Satoru : Taco Blocko

Satoru : G Spot Me Not

For fuck’s sake

You : I’M GETTING DRESSED I’LL SEE YOU WHEN YOU GET HERE

Satoru : I love you so much

Satoru : Here’s seven more hearts for my loveeeeeee 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

If you’d known the demon you summoned was going to be such a fucking handful, you would have just let the lord take you.

After getting dressed, you return to the bar to wait for your ridiculous companion and your walk out.

As you’re sitting around and chatting with the bartender, you look to your left and see Choso and the rest of the group finally coming out, him with a girl hanging all over him. You shouldn’t feel jealous, at all, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t just a little bit. A part of you is like, ‘this is my high school ex boyfriend and you bitches can’t compare,’ but you know that that’s not right.

Ugh, you can’t wait for Satoru to get here.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

If Satoru’s being honest, he fucking hates the fact that you had to separate tonight. But he chose not to throw a fit over it the way he normally would because he knows that you’re already going through a lot.

His Uber driver is a young woman and everyday, there’s something new about this world that surprises him.

Back in his day, women would never be the driver of a carriage, if their family could even afford one. Now, women can buy all these things for themselves and do basically any job that they want. He can’t imagine being one on one with a man like this though, simply because he’s known some monsters throughout the years, but she seems fine.

“So, how was the club?” She asks from the front seat.

“I actually didn’t go inside. I just rode there with my girl and I’m just catching a ride back home.” He can see a half a second falter in her good mood at that admission but she returns to normal rather quickly.

“Why didn’t you just drive back?”

“I grew up on a religious compound and never learned to drive,” he decides to keep up with that story.

“Oh! Like the Amish?”

What the fuck is the Amish? “Sure,” he responds hesitantly.

“It must be exciting entering the outside world, being able to ride in cars, watch movies, go to concerts, eat at restaurants, take showers,” she trails off and all he can wonder is what fucking lifestyle that is where they’re more limited than his previous life where he didn’t even have access to those things? He likes these conveniences and he definitely doesn't want to lose them.

“Yeah. I didn’t know what a phone was until I met my girlfriend,” he chuckles.

“Well, it must be a lot of fun experiencing those things together!” She’s enthusiastic. “You should go to karaoke!”

“I have no idea what that is but I’ll add it to the list.” She just giggles and continues to list off fun things to do. But all Satoru can think about is you. You’ve been apart for like five minutes and he’s already over it. “You could even go to a concert,” he catches once he remembers that she’s talking.

“Ha! There’s no way her parents will agree to that. I already know that they’ll say it’s too dangerous.”

“I guess I can’t blame them with everything that’s been going on in the news lately. But you can’t live your entire life in fear. Y-O-L-O.”

He doesn’t know what the hell a yolo is either but he knows that he’d rather spend every night in the house instead of something bad happening to you. But he agrees with her because he wants to keep the peace and doesn’t want to divulge your personal information.

Finally, they reach a business that’s a few blocks away so that he can make himself unseen without being caught on your building’s footage.

“Uh, thanks for the ride,” he says awkwardly, not really knowing how to end this.

“Oh wait!” She stops him. “Let me give you my number in case you need another ride,” she reads off her number and then he enters it into his phone. He doesn’t understand why he’d need to do that since you said it’s all set up by the app but whatever, he doesn’t want to be rude. Once they’re done with that, he thanks her again before exiting the car.

He walks a little bit before he sees an alley that looks like there’s no cameras in it or facing it and deems it perfect. He walks down it until he gets to a dumpster where he ducks down on the side of it and makes himself invisible. It’s been a while since he’s done this since you just always come up with an excuse for him to always be around.

He was going to just teleport inside your apartment, but he decides to just continue the walk. Not only does he have a few hours before he has to meet you so this will give him some time to kill, but it’ll also give him the chance to see if someone is lurking around without being seen.

‘There’s something for everything these days.’ he says to himself as he continues to walk.

There’s that waxing shop you told him about that he still can’t understand why you put yourself through that. He sees two bakeries, one for various types of bread and then the other mostly for sweets and some candies. There’s a little jewelry shop that looks like you’ve been to it a lot based on how similar it looks to what he’s seen you wear. There’s a store that looks like it’s full of snacks and alcohol, that’s convenient. There’s another building that he can’t figure out what it is. The blinds are closed and the sign just says ‘Statefarm,’ but it’s clearly too small for a farm to be there, there’s no land to do so.

He continues the walk to your apartment and although he gets the ick from a few people he’s passed, they don’t match the energy that he sensed at your family’s home or on the box outside your apartment. It makes him wonder if the murderer has an accomplice because he usually has no idea sniffing these people out. But this time, he’s struggling to find the correlation and it’s bugging him more than he bothers to let on.

When he finally reaches your building, he walks through the gate and starts going over to the front doors to the lobby. He doesn’t see anyone in the parking lot and even though he knows the culprit wasn’t going to just jump out of nowhere, he keeps hoping that it would.

He walks through the doors leading to the lobby and sees that guy speaking to the woman behind the desk again. He can’t remember his name, but he remembers not liking him because something about him just gave him a bad vibe. He can’t tell you that though because he’s already shown his jealousy too many times and you’ll probably just brush his concerns off. But something about him bothers Satoru a lot and he’s just glad that he’s here to protect you.

Once he sees that there’s nothing standing out, he teleports upstairs, into your apartment to see if anyone’s been here. First, he just stands by the front door with his eyes closed to see if he can feel another presence and he can’t. He decides to activate his six eyes and start walking around the apartment, hoping to find something.

He starts in the kitchen first and the only energy in here is the residuals from when you opened the package, so, no luck. He goes to your bedroom next and again, he only senses the energy belonging to the two of you. Just to be sure, he checks your bathroom, closet, and even drawers just in case someone has been in here and gone through them himself.

His curiosity is peaked when in the drawer that contains chargers, hair clips, a piggy bank etc., he finds a little black box and is desperate to know what’s inside. He removes the lid and inside is a black item sitting in a box lined with what feels like crushed velvet. He pulls it out and starts looking at it all over, but he still can’t tell what it is. Finally, he finds a button and presses it, turning it on, and it starts to vibrate in his hand.

First, he’s startled and drops it on the floor. But then he realizes what it is and picks it back up so that he can turn it off. But it requires him pressing the power button five more times because the strength just continued to increase. Finally, he’s able to get the damn thing off and he puts it back in the box and inside the drawer, hopefully the way he found it.

‘Oh my princess, you do have a naughty side, don’t you?’ He thinks.

He kind of wishes that he never found it because now he’s desperate to use it on you. He really hopes that one day you’ll want him the way he wants you, even if it’s only just once.

Oh well, back to the task at hand.

The only places left to go over are the living room and the additional bedroom which turn out to be a bust anyway. He’s relieved to know that nobody has actually been in your home, but it does still raise concerns. Why would someone just leave a package that could be traced back to them? Ugh.

He’s supposed to bring back some of your stuff so he returns to your bedroom and grabs one of those campy weekend bags that you love so much.

‘What the fuck is a Mystery Machine? ’ he grumbles as he grabs a light green bag.

He grabs a few pairs of jeans, a couple sweatshirts, and then goes through your work drawer and pulls out multiple sets of lingerie. He doesn’t know what your favorite is for work, but he knows what he’d like to see you in so he just goes by that. Then he gets some of those tiny tank tops that you have and more panties, stuffing them in the bag. But he decides to give into temptation and stuff a pair in his pocket. He grabs a pair of light blue panties with strings on the side and hanging from the side is a little heart charm on both sides. They’re perfect, he thinks and he hopes that you don’t get mad at him if you notice.

He grabs your straightener from the bathroom because he knows that you’ve been wanting that and then goes back to the kitchen. There’s a bowl of candies on the counter that you got for him once you realized he had a sweet tooth and he decides to just grab the entire bowl.

You’re the best person that he’s ever been attached to.

He’s had to do a lot of things for previous masters and while some weren’t a big deal, there were a few that weighed on his conscience. He’s had to take lives that he didn’t feel were necessary to get the job done, just orders born out of greed, but masked as fear. He’s had to do disgusting or degrading things just to prove that he had to obey his masters and that makes people drunk on power. One time, a previous master made him eat a rock. A fucking rock. Just because they wanted proof that he had to do whatever he said. Thank goodness for his ability to heal himself because he’s been forced to harm himself a lot for other people’s amusement.

But not you.

You’ve never given him a direct order, instead, you negotiate with him. You get things for him, you look nice for him, and you thank him for whatever he does for you even though it’s his job. You make him feel like he’s a person again and like he’s able to experience the things he missed out on in life because he was too busy working to support his family. He can’t tell if you’re just super nice or if you genuinely feel things for him, but he hopes that you do because he feels the same way. You even send him lingerie photos in his favorite sets of yours just because you know that he loves it!

He laughs to himself in the kitchen at the fact that he’s a demon who’s desperate for the love of a human. But he can’t lie to himself, that’s how he feels.

He checks the time and decides to start walking back to the club. He knows that you wanted him to Uber back because you didn’t want him walking that far, another reason why you’re so sweet, but he could use the time to himself to clear his head. Plus there’s still a little while before you get off, so this gives him something to do.

He teleports back to the alleyway where he started and once it looks like the coast is clear, he reveals himself and starts the walk back to meet up with you.

“Why are there so many Starbucks?’” He mutters to himself once he realizes that he’s seen three in a six block stretch.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

You’re trapped in a crushing hug from Choso as he says goodbye for the third time.

“Please. Please. Please. Let’s do something while I’m in town.”

“Of course, but I don’t know exactly what can be done since I’m basically on house arrest,” you respond with a laugh.

“I’ll do whatever you want, even if it means just having lunch with your parents.” He’s so sweet.

“I’ll make time, I promise,” you tell him and his eyes light up. He leans down to kiss you on the forehead and you swear you see the girl he was previously with, glaring at you. “Your girlfriend is staring at me like she wants to kill me,” you attempt to whisper to him.

He turns around to see her expression and she immediately breaks out into a smile. Goodness.

“She’s not my girlfriend, just a fan of the band.” Groupie, got it.

Just then, your phone vibrates and it’s a text from Satoru.

Satoru : Your handsome escort is waiting outside to take you home.

Satoru : And then spend fifteen minutes with you before we’re forced to return to separate rooms.

Satoru : But I’ll take that over nothing.

You : Sweet talker.

Satoru : I bet you’re the sweet one. 🍭

Satoru : I wouldn’t mind eating fruits out of your…

Satoru : Palm of your hand.

Satoru : Bet you thought it was going to be something dirty.

You : I have a feeling that something dirty is still coming.

Satoru : Just like you when I get you home. 😉

You just roll your eyes because you walked right into that.

“Your boyfriend?” Choso asks.

“My… something. He’s actually here so I guess I can finally head home.” It feels so awkward saying that to him.

“I’ll see ya when I see ya,” you tell him as he pulls you into another hug, you forgot how lovely dovey he was. But then he gives you a kiss on the temple and you finally turn to walk out with your boss.

“That maniac you have on a leash is going to lose his mind,” he says and you just laugh because honestly, he’s not wrong. You’ll probably have to come up with a creative way to do damage control.

When the doors to the club open, Satoru looks up at you and smiles a smile way too big for someone who just saw you a few hours ago. He starts walking over to you and you both meet halfway where he hugs you tight.

Fuck, you’re stressed about tonight.

“Alright, you kids get out of here,” you hear come from your boss behind you.

“I don’t know when I’ll be back because of–”

“Suguru’s Law?”

“Ha! But you’re not wrong.”

“Well, just let me know when you think you can and I’ll rework the schedule.”

“Thank you!” Both you and Satoru get in your car and when you drive off, you see that Sukuna is still standing by the front door of the club, making sure you drive off safely.

“So, how was your night of filthy men ogling you?”

“Not any different from any night that I spend with you,” you tease and he laughs. “It was fine, but it was definitely a lot after being gone for so long. My longest regular came in and tipped me enough that I don’t have to worry about rent on the apartment that I probably won’t be able to keep for much longer.”

“We’ll work that out. I’m getting tired of having to wait until morning to see you. But we’ll come back to the apartment. I wanna know why you’re drenched in another man’s energy.”

There it is.

“Most of the customers are men.”

“I know, there’s a mix from what I assume are the customers, but then you’re covered in someone else’s. It’s overpowering the rest of them.”

Damn. He’s good.

“My ex-boyfriend from high school came in tonight with his band and some friends of said band. He gave me a few hugs, exchanged numbers, and that’s all.”

“Hmmm. Okay.”

Just… okay?

“That’s it?”

“What?”

“You’re not going to throw a fit of jealousy?”

“Normally, I would. But whatever happens with him, I just have to remember that no one has the relationship that we have so… fuck them.”

Well, alright. That’s growth.

“Well, I’m happy to hear that you’re not going to kill him just because he wants to catch up.”

“Naw, it’s fine. But if you decide to have sex with him, I will critique how terrible he is at it the entire time.”

All jokes aside, that sounds hilarious.

“Because you’re a sex god, Satoru?”

“I am a demon, I have very few limits.” That gives you a lot of ideas. You wonder if you can get this demon on a leash and have him eat food out of your hand. “Anyway, I looked over your apartment.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

“I searched the entire place with my six eyes, including under furniture, in drawers, cabinets, everything. The person who left the box has never been inside your apartment.”

Thank fuck.

“Oh, that’s great news! Now, how can we calm down Suguru to convince him that I can go back home?”

“I don’t know, but we need to figure something out because I’m starting to have withdrawals.”

“Withdrawals? From what?” You didn’t know demons could experience that.

“You.” Of course.

You giggle because of course he’d view you as everything good and bad in the world that people want.

“We’ll spend the night tonight and try to come up with something for tomorrow. It’s been a long day and I just want to sleep.”

“And I can’t sleep, so I have to spend hours waiting for my queen to awake,” he fake cries and it’s so silly.

As you continue to drive, you notice that something is off but it takes you a minute to place it.

It’s then that you notice that the officers who are supposed to be escorting you to and from your home are nowhere to be seen. Is it possible that they’re a few cars behind? Sure. But you also didn’t notice them in the parking lot when you came out and that’s odd.

“Satoru, could you text Suguru for me?” He pulls out your phone and gets the message ready. “Just tell him that we’re on the way home but we don’t see the officers who are supposed to be watching me.”

Your phone goes off and it’s a response from him that came in so quickly, you’re surprised he had the time to read the first one let alone compose another.

Suguru : Just drive straight home. There’s other officers there who can make sure everything is alright and I’ll figure out what’s going on.

“Alright, straight home we go.”

“Oh, you didn’t wanna stop by the local opium den first?” Satoru jokes.

“I don’t even know if they still have those,” you giggle.

“Then what drugs do people use these days?”

“People have tried everything from Nutmeg to Meth so it’s really all over the place. People have even used markers to get high.” The look on his face is one of complete shock.

When you finally pull up to the house, you see the car with the other officers outside and it makes you feel a little safer. Normally you wouldn’t panic too much, but knowing that those who were watching you sends a bunch of thoughts racing through your head. You just hope that they had something else to do and not that they disappeared investigating something with you.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

“What the fuck, Shiu?!” Suguru yells in the other man’s office.

“It’s a waste of money.”

“How is my daughter's safety a waste of money?”

After receiving your text, Suguru immediately started asking questions as to why the cops who were supposed to be watching over you disappeared without reason.

“There’s no proof that anyone is after her. We can’t just blow through our resources on a hunch.”

“Everything about being a detective starts with a ‘hunch.’ How is receiving a package from a fucking serial killer just a ‘hunch’ and doesn’t require any protection?”

“Because nothing has happened,” Shiu says as he sits down in his office chair.

“Her address isn’t public knowledge and somehow the killer knows where she is and delivered a package to her front door in an apartment building with hundreds of units. That’s not a coincidence, that means she’s being watched.”

“Look, if she’d been attacked, I’d understand all the precautions, but she wasn’t.”

Suguru starts to see red after that comment and he works hard to calm himself down before speaking again, “by the time she ‘gets attacked,’ it might be too late to protect her.”

“She doesn’t need eighty six cars following her every move, Geto.”

“That’s an overreaction, I have two cars watching the family.”

“And two cars means four officers. We don’t need four officers for a package, especially when she was the only one who received one.”

“Fine, then why did you remove the officers who were supposed to be watching her at a job that attracts a lot of crazies? Why wouldn’t you remove the car from the house?”

“I heard from the officers watching her that her boyfriend was with her and I assumed that he could protect her.”

Suguru’s fists clench at his sides because that’s one of the dumbest fucking things he’s ever heard in his life.

“He’s her boyfriend, not a trained officer. He can’t legally take down someone doing suspicious shit. He can’t question anyone and he’s not trained to notice anything weird. If you want to remove one of the cars, then fine. But I’m keeping at least one on her at all times. If you have an issue with it, I’m sure the higher ups would love to see you again,” with that, he turns and walks out of the room.

One of the things Detective Kong neglected to tell him was that he didn’t feel they needed to waste resources on his daughter because he feels like he already knows who the killer is. It may be a risk if he wants to bring him in since there are a few alibi’s for certain things, but not for everything.

But you know what they say, it’s usually the one closest to you.

And if they're in a relationship, it’s probably their significant other.

Why does yours have no identity?

He’s tried background searches and nothing has come up.

Does he have something to hide?

Like the fact that he’s a serial killer?

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°