#mythical year 2020

[survivingcapitalism]

Reminds me of how the British blamed the Acadians for the Mi'kmaq resistance.

The crackdown on campuses offered a grim continuity: Police and other officials churned out all the same old excuses for quashing resistance. Most notably, their rhetoric relied on the predictable canard of the “outside agitator.” New York Mayor Eric Adams trotted it out as grounds for sending in an army of baton-wielding cops against the city’s students. And Deputy Police Commissioner Tarik Sheppard went even further on MSNBC Wednesday morning, brandishing an unremarkable chain lock — the sort of which I’ve seen on bikes everywhere — as proof that “professionals,” not students themselves, had carried out the takeover of the Columbia building. The bike-lock business quickly came in for rightly deserved mockery, but the “outside agitator” myth is no joking matter. In this current moment, the “outside agitators” conjured are both the perennial anarchist bogeymen or Islamist terror groups sending funds to keep student encampments flush with the cheapest tents available online. The “outside agitator” trope has a long, racist legacy, including use by the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1930s, the Klan issued flyers in Alabama claiming that “paid organizers for the communists are only trying” to get Black people “in trouble.” The allegation does double rhetorical harm by denying the agency and commitment of organizers themselves and suggesting that “outside” support from beyond a given locale or institution is somehow a bad thing. More recently, the canard has been hauled out in defense of movement repression in Atlanta, against Stop Cop City protesters who had made a national call for backup. And it was a common refrain for politicians nationwide during the 2020 uprising, as well as discourse around the earlier Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson after police killed Mike Brown. Blaming outside agitators or interests always was a propaganda ploy and remains so now. The idea that Palestinian liberation struggle is a mere proxy for Iranian interests repeats the delegitimizing logic of the past. In fact, the Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses are student-organized and led, with Palestinian students at front and center, and a disproportionately large presence of Jewish students too. It is students, over 1,000 of them, who have faced arrest. It also happens that millions of people have called for an end to Israel’s genocidal war, and support for Palestinian liberation is not and must not be limited to the mythic and maligned terrain of campus activism.

[o0o0thorn0o0o]

Late, I know, but…! Only by two days, so I’ll still label/tag it:

Ichihime Week, Day 7: Mythical Lovers / Rainbow

I was planning on adding in magpies in the background this time, but I was getting lazy, and it’s already late, so maybe next time ^^;

(Also I was thinking of making a rainbow version, but it didn't come out as I would have liked? Idk. I still think it’s cute, though, so I put it under the cut)

Alrighty, listen: I really didn’t mean to wait this long to post. But, like, very shortly after Eid, my iPad’s storage filled up, like, to the point I couldn’t even access my mail (that’s how I found out, pfft). I was wondering why I’d ever need 256 GB 4 years ago… but still, it was $100 extra bucks. Sure, it was a grad gift, but 128 GB was expensive enough—still a lot of storage, too… Not enough, clearly!

Hoarding layers (and recoloring my own art, pfft) has really caught up to me… but also, it wouldn’t help too much if I didn’t either. After deleting what I could bear to part with, that took away around 5 GB, but merging layers in other works barely made a dent.

So I’ve spent these past few weeks wondering what to do, thinking about emailing my 2019 (imported from my 5s) and 2020 works to an email I also created 4 years ago for some reason I totally forgot about and never used so that I don’t end up taking any space in my actual one and then uploading them onto two (since I really don’t want my files corrupting) USBs via my laptop, trying to get those USBs from Target (but since I was adamant this time in getting 256 GB USBs—I don’t want to have to worry about storage for a longgggg time—there were none in stock), ordering them off of eBay instead since my dad insisted on their cheapness, waiting a week for them, then transferring them to that email and uploading them onto its Google drive if the files was too big…

But that was taking much too long and still left space on my iPad while I was doing it. I managed to complete the 2019 and 2020 pieces from my iPad, but it also only ended up being around 1 GB… So, like, I need to clear more years (breaks my heart, it does ;~; Sure, I still have access to them via that email and those USBs, but it’s not convenient anymore, and there are still pieces I plan on getting back to… ackkkkk).

Contemplating it some more and discussing it with a friend, much as I abhor subscription services, I finally decided to purchase a premium membership on Ibis for that 20 GB of cloud storage. I can afford the 30 bucks a year, and I like the app anyway—serves me good—and not having to watch an ad every 18 hours to access my go-to brushes would be nice, plus having access to the other stuff, but yeah: ✋🌈✨cloud storage✨🌈 🤚

Anyway, I’m pretty sure a good chunk of what’s taking up my space is actually the cache, as I’m already more than halfway through my drawings, and I’m not sure if I’ll reach that 75 GB of storage Ibis was apparently taking up with just my drawings. So I’ll probably need to download everything, then delete the app and redownload it ‘cause stupid IOS doesn’t let you easily clear it 🫠

Anyway, I really thought I’d be done by now, but am not—that said, I managed to clear out around 10 GB off of Ibis (not my iPad; I somehow managed to gain back 5?? Somewhere?? I’ve no clue; I don’t see it), which is wayyy more than enough to get one drawing done for IH week, so I paused the whole storage thing for now. I actually tried to get day one’s drawing done on the 6th, but I’m dealing with perspective that’s hurting my brain, so I decided to get day seven’s done instead, ‘cause I thought I’d be on time…

Me? On time? Man, who knew I was so funny… 😒

But yeah, day seven is done! I’ll definitely revisit that day one drawing in the future, but not anytime soon. As if I wasn’t backed up already, this whole storage mess has backlogged even further, and there are other dates coming up 😮‍💨 And, y’know, gotta finish the storage transfer, too… Ahhhhhhhhhh!

Anyway, on a more positive note, gradient maps are actually very neat to use—had a little too much fun, eheh. I won’t confess how much time I spent testing it out on this piece, but here be my favorite:

They’re so golden <3 ☺️

[manny-jacinto]

MYTHIC QUEST (2020-) #03.09 'The Year of Phil'

[talonabraxas]

Mount Shasta

There’s a well-known legend that says that somewhere deep beneath Northern California’s 14,179-foot-tall Mount Shasta is a complex of tunnels and a hidden city called Telos, the ancient “City of Light” for the Lemurians. They were the residents of the mythical lost continent of Lemuria, which met its demise under the waves of the Pacific (or the Indian Ocean, depending on who you ask) thousands of years ago. Lemurians believed to have survived the catastrophe are said to have settled in Telos, and over the years their offspring have been sporadically reported wandering around the area: seven-feet-tall, with long flowy hair, often clad in sandals and white robes.

Lemurians aren’t the only unusual figures said to inhabit this stand-alone stratovolcano, easily seen from Interstate 5, about 60 miles south of the Oregon border. Mount Shasta is believed to be a home base for the Lizard People, too, reptilian humanoids that also reside underground. The mountain is a hotbed of UFO sightings, one of the most recent of which occurred in February 2020. (It was a saucer-shaped lenticular cloud.) In fact, the mountain is associated with so many otherworldly, paranormal, and mythical beings—in addition to long-established Native American traditions—that it’s almost like a who’s who of metaphysics. It has attracted a legion of followers over the years, including “Poet of the Sierras” Joaquin Miller and naturalist John Muir, as well as fringe religious organizations such as the Ascended Masters, who believe that they’re enlightened beings existing in higher dimensions. What is it about this mountain in particular that inspires so much belief?

“There’s a lot about Mount Shasta, and volcanoes in general, that are difficult to explain,” says Andrew Calvert, scientist-in-charge at the California Volcano Observatory, “and when you’re having difficulty explaining something, you try and understand it.” Calvert has studied Shasta’s eruptive history since 2001. “It’s such a complicated and rich history,” he says, “and Shasta itself is also very visually powerful. These qualities build on each other to make it a profound place for a lot of people—geologists, spirituality seekers … even San Francisco tech folks, and hunters and gatherers from 10,000 years ago. It’s one that can have a really strong effect on your psyche.”

Mount Shasta is one of the most prominent of all the Cascade volcanoes, an arc that runs from southwestern British Columbia to Northern California, and includes Washington’s Mount Rainier and Oregon’s Mount Hood, among others. “It’s so steep and so tall that it even creates its own weather,” says Calvert. This includes the spaceship-looking lenticular clouds that tend to form around the mountain, created, he says, “by a humid air mass that hits the volcano, and then has to go up a little bit to cool off.” But they only contribute to Shasta’s supernatural allure, along with its ice-clad peak, steaming fumaroles, and shape-shifting surface that’s being constantly broken down and rebuilt by ice, water, wind, and debris. The mountain also sits about 15 miles or so west of the standard arc line of the other Cascade volcanoes—a move that took place about 700,000 years ago. “We don’t really have a good explanation for why it moved out there,” Calvert says, a statement that seems to make Mount Shasta’s mysteries appear more otherworldly by the minute.

The Mount Shasta spiritual legacy goes far deeper than contemporary myths and sightings. For Native Americans in particular, the mountain is a sacred place, straddling the territories of the Shasta, Wintu, Achumawi, Atsugewi, and Modoc tribes, which can date their lineages back to a time when eruptions actually took place there. (Its last eruption, says Calvert, was a little over 3,000 years ago.)

There’s Something About Mount Shasta

[utilitycaster]

Dimension 20's Failed Genre Experiments

(This is the "Has Dimension 20 lost its touch?" post I’ve alluded to; please enjoy some genuine criticism masquerading as a riff on those sorts of articles for other shows.)

Dimension 20's debut and flagship burst onto the scene with a simple and elegant premise. What if a John Hughes movie were set at a high school for D&D adventurers? Its next full length pre-recorded season was the similarly strong urban fantasy The Unsleeping City, which in turn was followed up by the channel’s most ambitious outing yet: the Game of Thrones in Candyland mash-up, A Crown of Candy. 

Widely considered to be a watershed moment for the show, A Crown of Candy explored darker themes on a famously comedic platform, was the first on the channel to have permanent player character deaths, added new mechanics and limited what the players could choose to fit the world to support this more serious tone, and on a structural level, was a welcome departure from the prior rigid alternation between episodes of combat and episodes without. It was filmed prior to the pandemic but went to air in early April 2020, when many livestreamed actual play shows were on pause and even some podcasts were scrambling to figure out remote recording. D20 introduced their talkback show as a way for the cast to hang out remotely and chat about each episode, and Adventuring Party has remained a companion to the main show. The channel had hit its stride.

Its House of the Dragon sidequest, The Ravening War, aired three years later. Despite a complicated reaction to its announcement, it was a well-received outing, but one on what had by that time become a noticeably bumpy road.

Sidequests like The Ravening War are what D20 calls its shorter, 4-10 episode seasons that do not feature the main “Intrepid Heroes” cast in full nor necessarily feature Brennan Lee Mulligan as DM. We've seen everything from the perspective of the villains in both a Lord of the Rings clone (Escape from the Bloodkeep) and a Dracula homage (Coffin Run); to a Regency romance in the Feywild (A Court of Fey and Flowers). In addition to Mercer, Jasmine Bhullar and Gabe Hicks have each run a sidequest, and Aabria Iyengar has run three. And while the Intrepid Heroes' only venture outside D&D so far is the D&D-inspired Star Wars 5e, sidequests have been run in various Kids on Bikes hacks and Hicks' own Mythic system, as their shorter format makes it even easier to experiment with the parodies, pastiches, and mash-ups the channel is known for.

There have however been two notable failed experiments, and their close proximity (both released within the past year) could be a hiccup, or could be a sign that D20’s ambition, while admirable, could use some serious reining in. They are Neverafter and Burrow's End.

Marketed as the horror season, crossed over with fairy tales, Neverafter started out strong. Only three episodes in, there was an unprecedented (for D20) total party kill. The subsequent episode is the zenith of the season, in which each character is brought back, most of them changed and twisted by the experience, playing out an analysis of their role as an archetype within these stories: Sleeping Beauty and the classic roles of The Princess (introducing such NPCs as Cinderella and Snow White), for example; or Puss in Boots as The Trickster.

Unfortunately, the quality dropped soon after. It was revealed that the darkness spreading across the fairytale multiverse was due to the influence of The Authors, and the story began to be one about the concept of stories...while still trying to incorporate not only the plotlines of the fairy tales the main PCs were from, but also an intertwined conflict between the fairies and the princess NPCs. With this, the horror, with a few exceptions, melted away: violence and monsters are standard D&D fare, and when heroes race to save the world and victory seems not only possible but likely, any distinction between horror and a typical D&D heroic fantasy is lost.

It’s not the first overstuffed campaign, but it certainly is the first one that fails to land on several levels. Starstruck Odyssey is similarly chaotic and rushed at times, but it consistently sticks to a broad message of personal autonomy and freedom within late-stage capitalism. Mulligan is famous for his capacity to spin endless dense lore off the cuff, and if it at times overcomplicates the plot of the packed and colorful comedic space adventure, at least it contributes to the baked-in excess of the setting. But Neverafter's postmodern flourishes against a horror backdrop desperately needed an injection of sparseness and silence it never received. 

This is enhanced by the nature of actual play: with a few exceptions, even when filmed and even with the elaborate production values of Dimension 20, it is first and foremost primarily an auditory medium. We only know what is narrated to us. Neverafter did not permit its audience the time and space to fear the unknown. The existential horror of the metanarrative, of being a character doomed to a specific ending, while touched on by some of the cast (particularly Siobhan Thompson’s Sleeping Beauty), took a backseat to models of giant spiders and tales of undead dwarves. The story lacked the room to build real tension, but also failed to adequately create the claustrophobia of being truly trapped within its narrative. It feels more stuffy than unsettling.

Burrow's End is far less airless, but profoundly disjointed. Neverafter thought it knew what it was, but Burrow's End went through multiple identity crises by the halfway mark, and the marketing for the series reflects this.

The initial trailer makes it seem like a cute if dramatic story about a family of stoats - think Redwall, think Wind in the Willows. The first episode was excellent, however, and sold many who had been unimpressed by the trailers on the series, with its well-played setup of the clear Watership Down/Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH parallels with a unique twist in the form of The Blue.

The promotion took a strange turn, however, with the second episode and its infamous bear carcass battle map. It was hyped as uniquely horrifying, with a teaser video posted of the cast shrieking as the map, unseen by the audience, was wheeled past them. This seemed rather cavalier of the channel once the episode was posted, accompanied by a gore content warning covering a period of well over an hour...which was then further undercut by an exquisitely crafted, but ultimately rather tame display of a bear's innards. It was left out on the table during Adventuring Party as well, further reducing the idea of any meaningful shock factor (or any attempt to accommodate those in the audience who were triggered). The combat this map was for was a creative one, and the episode itself high quality, but it furthered the sense that Dimension 20 itself was unsure of what they were trying to get people to watch.

The series continued on with two more excellent episodes as it reached Last Bast, a clearly man-made structure full of thousands of stoats, with a strong dash of the police state. The actors immediately clocking the flaws of this society, but their stoat characters having no similar sense, led to a fascinating tension. However, the Blue (called the Light in Last Blast), previously described as some animating force and driver of magical power, and mysteriously concentrated in the brain of the dead-but-animated bear, was then revealed to be ionizing radiation.

At this point, the details of my own life become relevant. My career is in the field of health physics. I hold a master’s degree in this specialty and have served as a radiation safety officer, though not at a reactor. I don’t think that this background is a requirement to understand the structural issues of this season; but it certainly made me particularly attuned to the flaws.

Before you claim that this is just a show and who cares: In addition to my love of actual play, I am also a fan of comics and all sorts of speculative fiction. I am well aware that Spider-Man’s “radioactive blood” would not realistically grant him spider powers; I know that going into a high radiation field would not create Doctor Manhattan; I know that Superman does not actually have ‘x-ray vision’, and I know that radiation creates neither kaiju nor rad roaches. This is fine. In comics, radiation is a shorthand for “mad science” or “mysterious powers” with a sense of the lethal and the eldritch and the hubristic. The story is not so much about the source of these powers, but rather the great responsibilities they require. Godzilla, meanwhile, is clearly a metaphor for the very real nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Fallout is an anti-proliferation and anti-war message with nuclear annihilation as the set up for its post-apocalyptic setting. These works understand that radiation is a limited-use plot device, and, wisely, they keep it simple.

Burrow’s End, by placing radiation front and center, has lost the message. The themes of the story are irretrievably muddled: what seems like a tale of family displaced by human intervention now positions a man-made hazardous material as both sinister corruption and divine boon, and engages neither with a fitting narrative of both the pros and cons of technology, nor of human and animal symbiosis. The finale establishes the latter in a rushed cut scene reliant on a single persuasion roll, and the two episodes prior to that meanwhile establish that while the humans first introduced radiation to the ecosystem, the first five stoats were the ones who sought it out and disseminated it and built the police state, and their true nemesis was Phoebe, one of their own. This culminates with Phoebe, the previously unseen fifth of the first five stoats (who have by now already been killed by the heroes), piloting the body of a 20-years-dead human, threatening to somehow cause global radiation contamination as her grand Evil Scheme. Unnecessarily, from a narrative perspective, I might add; this occurs after the final combat has already begun and she is magically controlling two of the party members. They’re already going to kill her. It’s a hat on a hat on a hat, and the humans are incidental.

When I was a child, I was enamored with the sort of stories in which children are sent to another time or place and then return with seemingly no time passing, and at one point excitedly told my mother I had an idea for a story, of what happens back while you’re time traveling. My mother, a fan of speculative fiction herself, and never one to coddle, told me “nothing, honey, that’s the point.” I wonder if something similar happened here; an attempted deconstruction of those radiation-granted superpower tropes, focused so hard on being clever it overshot into something anything but. Other elements of the story - particularly the weak pun of “copper” to hammer home the already obvious theme of population support being the arm of the police - make me think this was indeed an attempt at cleverness that missed the mark.

I am happy to elaborate on the flaws of the science elsewhere but I think the most succinct way to put it is that while the biology and habits of stoats sans radiation has been considered with what seems to be at least a modicum of love and care (their use of pre-existing burrows, Viola’s pregnancy), the radiation science/understanding of recent nuclear history can only be described as abysmally neglectful, in and out of game. They let a Loss of Coolant Accident go on for three days with a remarkably casual attitude? This disaster was sufficient to result in what appears to be an exclusion zone (of which there have been three, ever, in human history; two of which are the immediately recognizable Chernobyl and Fukushima) and yet it isn’t being monitored closely enough for someone to notice that there’s been penned animals next to the building for years (let alone that the building itself is teeming with stoats)? For that matter, they’re opening the site only twenty years later? After the “radiation dust”, apparently present on the fully maintained roads by the reactor, but neither within nor in front of the reactor, just now made 14 people bleed out (not how Acute Radiation Syndrome works; also 14 deaths from ARS in 1982, when the series is set would in fact be an unprecedented disaster. In our world, Chernobyl - which had not yet happened in 1982 -  is the only nuclear accident that exceeds that ARS death toll.)

Radiation becomes an all-purpose plot engine with no internal consistent logic: it kills humans swiftly and brutally (though based on statements by Dr. Tara Steel and the fact that she seems fine in only a hazmat suit - which shields from contamination but will stop neither gamma nor neutron radiation - only via inhalation). But it infects chipmunks and bears with corruptive and bizarre neurological effects, turns wolves into horrifying but loyal hybridized monstrosities, and conveys to stoats not just human intelligence, but mastery of human language, magic spells, and the ability to come back as a revenant through force of will…though it also can immediately kill them, but also extend their lifespans, but also cause them to slowly mutate into wolves (but not through DNA splicing transfer, that would be silly). It kills 14 humans nearly instantly with off-site dust, but another survives a fiery attempted core meltdown with no apparent ill effects.

There is an excellent and thoughtful story about family, generational trauma, and political structures somewhere under here, and the incredible cast does its damndest to sell it, but it is all but lost beneath a sci-fi whodunnit that would make Ed Wood cock a skeptical eyebrow.

Neverafter and Burrow’s End’s respective collapses under the weight of ambition coincide, perhaps unintentionally, with some of the more dubious film editing choices on Dimension 20. Filmed actual play can be visually unexciting, and Dimension 20 has used simple shot/reverse shots, as well as some sound effects (notably for critical hits and fails) throughout its run to break it up. Neverafter, however, is marked by deliberate hisses and glitches, fractured split screens, echoey vocal effects, and nails-on-chalkboard screeches. This did not add to the atmosphere as intended; at best they were irritating and for many made it actively harder to hear key dialogue. Burrow’s End’s editing has been simpler, mostly relying on some, to be fair, well-placed cuts to black and voice distortion to indicate taped or radioed segments; but a key moment - Jaysohn’s potentially fatal rush into radioactive waters - is undercut with a frankly cheesy montage. Others I spoke to compared it to Indian soap operas, 1960s Doctor Who, The Oscars In Memoriam video, and reality show farewell reels. It takes what could be a tense potential character death - something D20 already handles wonderfully with their iconic Box of Doom - and makes it cheap and tacky, particularly jarring given the beautiful and haunting shadow puppet animation the season had previously delivered to convey the stoat creation myths. (And then, when Ava falls into the waters herself saving him, she merely comes back as a revenant with no ill effects. The stakes were never there to begin with in this smoke and mirrors season.)

Praise for Dimension 20 often hinges on its original innovative structure; most actual play shows skew towards more longform storytelling. However, the short format comes with a price. The fixed length of D20 seasons and the elaborate, custom made maps require a deft GM that can guide players to the exact right place without it seeming forced. Threading the needle is harder than it looks; even the otherwise iconic Fantasy High debut season stumbled towards the end when the players were too good at uncovering the mystery, and Mulligan had to place their characters in an inescapable prison in order to pad out a pre-scheduled episode before the finale. Perhaps the strain of this constant need to live up to a reputation as high-concept innovators, rather than simply create something good and cohesive, is beginning to show. The higher production values in Neverafter and Burrow’s End cannot hide their messy plots and confused messages, and indeed only highlight them. One interview said that for Burrow’s End, Iyengar wants the audience to trust her; after Burrow's End, I can’t say I do.

The next Dimension 20 season after Burrow’s End is a long-awaited return home to the flagship: Fantasy High Junior Year. Let’s hope this reminds the channel where they came from, and what magic they are capable of making when they keep it simple.

[writingmochi]

cast: trainee!niki ✗ seatmate!fem.reader (ft. &team's taki (takayama riki), p1harmony's soul (haku shota), niziu's nina (makino nina), and xg's cocona (akiyama kokona))

synopsis: graduation is such a melancholic concept, happy to finally be able to escape school, but sad that people will separate to their own road. it is no different for riki. on his graduation day, he spends one last day with his seatmate of three years before he pursues his career across the sea

genre: melancholia, hurt/comfort, coming of age, slice of life, trainee au, high school au, fluff, angst

based on: music hindia's "besok mungkin kita sampai" (2019) (genre: indie pop)

word count: 13011 (13k)

warning(s): blood, some curse words, mention of bruises, pretty heavy life stuff even for a high school age

message to the moon: remember that this story is fiction and do be careful and read the warnings at the top. all the idols mentioned here are not what they are in real life. (y/f/n) = your full name!

i had to open up my japan 2020 trip memories to remember the whole atmosphere + adding a bit of my knowledge and experiences too. i have to post this in april since it is the right momentum for it and riki’s graduating class is THIS YEAR! i wanna thank @oiwxa for her insight into a japanese high school graduation and its rituals (especially since you rb the og riki as a regular hs student hc like that is very useful) and my friends who indulge in japanese culture for helping with additional insights :D this is also part of my milestone now closed collab "discover: 200" which you can check out! hope you enjoy!

masterlist

what does one think about when they hear the word “foam”?

a child will imagine a white porcelain bathtub, the one they are sitting in with most of their seated body underneath the water that fills from the bottom of the tub. bubbles made from the mix of the running water and the poured liquid soap to create a magical concoction of science. more and more fill the tub until it overflows and splashes outside, landing on the tiled floor. one can pick up childish giggles as the bubbles caress the skin before it pops, creating a ring of soap on the skin nearest to it. one could imagine their parent beside them following their giggles, helping wash them up after playing in a grassy park and falling on the dirt patch chasing a squirrel. but the child was having too much fun trying to make their hair stand up from their scalp to care about the suds that clean away the dust and soil.

a person who visits a beach will be reminded of the white foam that flows to the coast, pushed by the tides to escape the blue waters. froths created from the combination of nature’s rhythm on the breaking of seawater and dissolving salt or tiny planktons. one can walk to the edge where the land meets the sea and meet the foams by themselves, letting their leg submerged into the wet sand before the incoming wave tries to push you away with its natural force. the water tickles above the ankle as foam created from the physics of it before receding into the ocean along with more grains of sand. the image of it pairs with the familiar crunchy sound of the waves that instantly show up in the head and from the popping of the tiny bubbles.

for riki, it was both of them and one more.

his hand is full of white fluffy foam. the boy's eyes stare at it before turning to the mirror in front of him. he sees the visual of a makeshift white full beard made from the tiny bubbles on the surface of his skin, all of them spread out to the jaw, cheeks, and even around the top of his neck, making him look like a younger version of father christmas if he ever goes to meet the children in spring—a season too late for the tradition and years too old for him as he knew about the truth of his parents being the “mythical man” that gave him gifts by the bed. the boy opens the tap.

the water runs down and cleans his hands, letting the residue drain down the hole before he picks up the item that he’s been learning and still is learning to adapt to at his age. the shaving razor he had that is in the same color as his toothbrush.

the razor glints under the lights beside the mirror. his hand grips its handle, following the steps his father had taught him. the older man told his child that facial hair grows in different ways depending on where they’re located, and how he has to shave it the other way for the most efficient result.

“if it’s on the cheek, then you have to shave it diagonally downwards to the corner of the lips. if it’s above the upper lip, then you have to shave it outwards from beneath both nostrils.”

riki recollects the words accurately as he imagines the visual vividly. how he can see himself in the mirror as his father when the boy remembers he stood beside him, a razor in his own hands as he teaches his son how to shave the facial hair he might not want to own—right in front of the same mirror he stood across now.

shaving your own facial hair seems to be a rite of passage for a boy who is nearing the end of his puberty days. their growing plates are still growing as riki still remembers how he was slightly shorter than his father when he was taught his first lesson in shaving facial hair. now he is taller than his father, either from how many times he has to jump along with the moves of a choreography or run along with a rolling ball on a grassy field.

riki can definitely feel and see the difference. his lanky body now shows more prominent muscles from the physical activities he does, notably his bigger calves from moving on his feet so much. the baby fat on his face has burned enough that his bone structure sticks out as he notices the apples of his cheekbone protruding on his facial features. his voice also deepens as he can still remember how itchy it is, dropping step by step until he can perceive the vibration of his neck’s skin from the moving larynx; a voice that screams baritone or bass, even reaching vocal fry level if he wants to learn the technique.

all of that happens in the three years of high school. if middle school him could witness him now, he wouldn’t believe that that is what he’s going to look like. so many things happened in the past three years that month by month—even day by day—he can feel himself changing physically and mentally.

and today, his three-year journey in high school ends. his graduation day from being a high school student. also, his last day home before pursuing his dream in seoul, south korea.

riki has always been an active kid, but there are two constants throughout his activities in his 18 years on earth: soccer and dancing. one may look at both of them differently, but he has always found a resemblance between the two. the agility of dancing helps control the ball if it’s in his possession. the stamina training he had done to run from one side of the field to another helped him practice longer, thus making him learn the choreographies faster than the other kids.

his hopes and dreams are tied between the two of them. he even wants to continue it to his adult. many of the kids were always asked “what you’ll be when you grow up?” and their answers will be different years later. yet, riki’s stayed the same. always between the two of them.

but he has to choose one to pursue even further, to focus on even in the hardest times he might get in his life.

after seeing korean idols on stage performing in front of thousands of people, he chose to dance. he wants to be like them one day.

yet, that doesn’t mean he’ll let go of soccer that easily.

soccer is still there for riki as a hobby. but he decides to push his dream of being a soccer player behind to train more for his dancing: learning between the street dances and contemporary ones he is still lacking in, yet determined to improve on. it sacrificed him hours of rest time to nail each of the basics in each study, peaking his figure to one of an all-rounder dancer who learned multiple branches of the certain performing arts.

his fruit of labor comes at the right time and moment when he joins an open audition for a big label in south korea that is hosted near here. riki rubs his hand on his pants as he sees a tv playing in the waiting room of a live performance he watched with his own eyes. his figure between all the visible moving lightsticks that decorated the arena, resembling a starry night. they all gave their best to show their craft on stage where people had encouraged them so much to achieve their dreams until that level. it tugs little riki so hard on his heartstrings that he can’t think of his other activities that can bring him the same sense of joy and pride at the same time. soccer seems to be the nearest one but what if he falls out of love and wants to retire early? being a performer means he could also explore other avenues of performing arts if he wants to experiment. though there is a school for it, art is the outlet for human creativity. and each person has their own way of interpreting what they want.

the audition process was nerve-wracking for him; fear flew and crowded the room as riki saw the people he had to compete with. getting tunnel vision from his anxious self, all he could think about when seeing them was how better they were compared to himself. even the lone camera on a tripod makes him nervous as he knows the implications of the recordings being sent to the highest of the higher-ups who have the choice to make his life change forever. as the person before him steps aside, he takes their place and introduces himself like what he practiced. the words flowing out of his mouth smoothly before he let his mind back to when he was alone in the dance studio he called his second home: his actual home is the first and the school’s soccer field is his third.

the fluidity of his body lets him perform the routine he practiced countless times, a routine he trained with his dancing coach that highlights his greatest strengths in performing arts. riki feels how his eyes droop down, letting his movements and muscle memories do the work for him, something he allows as he has been practicing with the lights out.

“when you lose one of your senses, another sense grows to complement it,” his coach reminded him.

riki didn’t even break a sweat when he listened to the unfamiliar song. he just freestyle danced to the rhythm as best as he could to the song he used as a lesson. one has a faster bpm than the other, so he has to adapt with how many milliseconds he has to let his arm stay in the air. in his consciousness, he is confused as to why none of the judges stopped him like the other contestants. many of them were better but stopped earlier that they didn’t even reach the end of the choruses for songs, making his eyes tremble more behind his eyelids. yet, he continued until something stopped him. well, the music does as it fades away.

the process was rigorous when he had to sing and do body shots in another room—alone from the other contestants with people he assumes are higher in the recruitment process. when the papers of the contracts were placed in front of riki, he was halfway through his high school career. a contract to be a trainee in south korea, the place where the performers he saw reside. the headquarters of the leading asian pop culture in the world. riki has to be there to feel it himself.

he had his mom beside him as she read through the contract, a small smile on her face as she tried to understand the best of the contract with the formal and legal lingo that is used alongside the translator they hire for this and her family member who is a lawyer. he had already met up with the trainers before—the judges he auditioned to and more through video calls—and they agreed that riki has the potential to be something more.

he signed the paper that seals the next chapter of his life, agreeing to move to korea when high school ends.

riki returns to the mirror when his hand is unconsciously shaving the foamy area; following a set routine of the parts he has to shave and what section is next. that’s when he sees the thin foam turn pink. eyebrows raised, the sting comes too late as the soapy substance meets his open wound. he instantly flipped the tap open and cupped the water in his palms, brushing the soap substance away as fast as he could, gritting his teeth when he felt the cold liquid caressing his skin. blood flows along with the water as he smoothes the skin down, not recognizing any more slippery base substance when he gently dries his wet area. turning his face, he sees the long thin slit on his clean cheek, right under his cheekbone and going horizontal above the jawline, almost like a secondary of it. the razor he holds is placed under the running water when he sees the translucent crimson color flow down the drain hole.

placing the razor away, he opens the cabinet door for the first aid kit he had always picked up. being such an active kid doesn’t mean that he is immune to injuries. open or close wounded, he has scars of his injuries all around his body. the nasty scar on his right kneecap from when he tripped on himself while playing soccer on an asphalt road, bruises on his forearm from when he slammed himself too hard on the dance studio’s floor, and many more. he once feared that red color flowing on his skin layer, but seeing it so much and its purple-ish-blue companion, he throws that fear away and lets it sink into the ocean that is just a walking distance from his abode.

the first aid kit is filled with the most essential items riki uses to heal himself. his mom always told him to treat his injuries as soon as possible so no nasty virus or bacteria could infiltrate the atoms that encompass his functioning body and destroy it from the inside. and make him worse instead. he always thought the scars he got litter on his skin would disappear one day. time goes on as it denies his assumption. he learned this from biology class where the teacher mentions that the cell tissues of skin cannot get rid of scars because the injuries are being repaired by the same cells that create a scar. the cells in those areas are ever-healing; never going to stop healing because it has been injured before.

another scar to tell, i guess. he sighs as he dabs the wound with the red-brownish antiseptic on cotton all along the opening before he grabs the bandage and sticks it on the wound. pressing it down gently, the bandage nearly blends in with his skin color as it creates an abnormal diagonal patch on his somewhat clean yet acne-scar-filled skin. a minor bump rising because of the white pad on the sticky side. brushing his black hair away from its place that fallen on his forehead, he closes the distinct naruto-themed bag of his first aid kit and brings it to his room.

the navy graphic t-shirt he wore has droplets from the water but not of the blood from the small rectangle mirror sticking on his wall. on his bed lays the final piece of his gakuran as he picks up the suit jacket. riki pushes the golden buttons through the holes in an order, leaving the last button open right at the top so that he looks cooler—and so that he doesn’t get easily choked. his eyes scan his nearly clean room where items are still cluttered here and there. that is until he sees the large suitcase at the leg part of his bed. all the clothes and essentials he has packed to be used in korea are already in there. his flight is tomorrow morning; flying from haneda airport. the open duffel bag of his is still on his bed as he puts the naruto-themed first aid kit inside.

“riki!”

“yes?” his hand on his chest from the surprise calling of his name passing by the barrier of the wall.

“we have to go. we don’t want to be late.” his mom’s voice calls from outside the room. the boy lets the bag rest on the mattress before he picks up his trusty backpack and saunters to the door of his room and opens it, seeing his mom cleaning the dishes and dad slurping on a cup of ramen on the small dining table after leaning almost half of his body. both of them are in an outfit he isn’t used to seeing. only in times of graduations, weddings, or funerals.

“i made one for you.” riki followed his mom’s eyesight to the steaming cup of ramen across from his dad. “your sister has left for school earlier, but you don’t want to be late for your assembly.”

the boy’s long legs reach the seat where the cup of ramen is. its familiar smell enters riki’s senses as he picks up the folding plastic fork and scrumptiously enjoys the hot noodles. he felt the tangled noodle warming up his esophagus while his dad was pouring a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. as riki looked at his dad, he could see himself in him. his dad’s feline-like eyes—combined with his mom’s—make riki’s signature aggressive-looking eyes, like a leopard ready to pounce on its prey. his sisters are also like him but softer as how biology designs feminine features. but, all of them didn’t expect riki’s growth to spurt as he entered high school. he definitely thanked his genetics but also the nutritious homemade food mom made for him full of the omega-3 of fish and the glutinous yet small grains of cooked white rice.

the sunlight enters through the window of the dining and kitchen area where he sees a small garden that is full of little plants and flowers. the beam highlights the light brown of the wood from the last time his family renovated the house fully. small, quaint, yet architecturally smart; with hidden compartments for storage and changing furniture. he can describe his newly renovated home as one of the best things japanese architecture offers. his father learns so much about architectural innovation from watching renovation shows while his mom has the say in interior designing—picking the type of wood to use, placement of the furniture, and others. his new room became his favorite place in the world, with the floor-to-ceiling cabinet and wardrobe combo to put his childhood things he couldn’t bear to let go. though small, he’ll miss his room and the window that overlooks the small one-lane road filled with houses of neighbors he knows.

his nimble fingers expertly pick up the narutomaki along with the noodles from his seafood cup noodles with his chopsticks. the orange-reddish broth colors the inside of the cup as he stares at his phone, scrolling down the news of his favorite player transferring teams—a player exchange that costs millions of US dollars, a japanese player. the player was pretty new for his time, but riki can relate to him so much as the player enters such a big league at such a young age. in a way, riki lives his soccer player dreams vicariously through him. now, as he sees the familiar name transferring from playing in the Premier League to La Liga, his lips pursed as he can imagine the player playing in matches with the likes of many of the skilled players he idolizes in his life.

cupping the cup, he drinks the remaining broth as it warms his stomach, accidentally burping as his dad lets out a giggle in front of him. both of them wait for mom as she finishes up and walks to the shoe cabinet. riki picks up his beaten shoes—his favorite shoes since he bought them in his first year of high school. he remembers how his father agreed to pay him for the pair of shoes before realizing that it’s too big for his feet. yet now, his feet are grown to match their sizes, making them fit him perfectly. he uses those shoes all the time, especially for dancing and soccer. he wore the exact same pair of shoes when he auditioned. but now, he looked at its battered shape with seams ripping from the sole. nevertheless, he wore it to celebrate his and his shoes’ journey every day from when he went to school and the dance studio. riki rather see these shoes break because of his activities than never use them all because of their fragile state.

something he also has to let go like the life he has here to continue to live.

-

climbing up the last stair to the train platform, riki could see the coastline of the beach that is a five-minute walk from where he is. there’s a chugging sound of the moving train from the rails behind him going in the opposite direction of where he will go. behind the curtains of the three and more story high-rises, he can see the light yellow patch of the beach before gliding his eyes to a long grey platform of the small harbour. even with the distance, he can hear the sound of the crashing wave meeting the land. his eyes slowly relax as he stares at the neighborhood and city he calls home and the ocean in its background. the ultramarine spectrum healing his vision along with the lightly cloudy sky as specks of black dots are far at the edge of the horizon. the fishermen fishing for the catches to then be served in the most fresh condition possible in a large franchise sushi restaurant of a small mom-and-pop sashimi booth. the small taste of saltiness in the air because of how close he is to the source.

even with the small islands in his view, he still couldn’t believe that the body of water he was seeing was leading to the largest ocean on this blue rock. how the nearest landmass from japan is the united states with hawaii placed near the middle of the pacific. it always blew his mind whenever he realized how big the world is when he always saw the scaled-down version of it in a map app. he didn’t realize how big japan is when he realize that sapporo is near russia and the western and southern parts of okinawa is nearing taiwan or the phillipines. maybe, the vastness of the unknown world beside his city, the cities he visited, and the little buildings where people he knows do their activities is the one making him rub his palm on his pants so much.

the walk to the train station was short as he viewed people living their lives behind his parents’ footsteps on the clean sidewalk. entrances to office buildings opening one by one, the large signages of buildings that house pachinko machines stay idle as the mini convenience store below it shuts much of its fluorescent light after leaving it on for the night, and sparse numbers of motor vehicles running down the two-lane streets as bicycles are being dominated by workers. riki also found kids his age roaming the sidewalk to their nearest school. some of them wearing their uniforms just fine, while others were still shivering from the leftover winter wind—wearing puffy jackets to conceal them. he could recognize students from the neighboring schools just from the uniforms they were, some wore gakurans but others also used a more modern prep school uniform he has seen looking like the korean ones he found on the internet.

the sound of the distinct train station melody flies through the air as he watches the chugging commuter train on its way to the platform. his head stands out of the crowd as his height helps with easier detection when he identifies the small sliver of color that corresponds with the train line it is. from the outside, he catches a faded reflection of himself with a few people inside; people wearing masks to cover themselves from the flu because of pollen and the cold while others let their faces open as they can smell and inhale the clean spring air. the white LED lights illuminate the train car as he steps in—ducking his head cause he feels like he could slam into something hanging on the ceiling anytime. he turns to stare at himself from the glass’ reflection, how the corner of his mouth turn a bit downwards, which created a slightly intimidating frown. riki knows about what his friends call his resting bitch face, so he mostly gives a small thin smile after wetting his lips, which he did when he notices it on the reflection. his fingertips rubbing against each other to warm himself up before touching the backpack that is hanging by the straps to keep it safe in his arms.

the train is chugging down on the rail as the view outside moves with relativity. riki sees the familiar passing billboards he has seen time to time, changing its every advertisement from new ramen flavors to new animation movies to new j-pop album releases. yet the distinct enormous billboard hangs near a pedestrian crossing of a larger station that he always goes by. people walking about to their destination as the melody sounds every time the train stops at the station, spoken in both english and his native japanese. riki’s being is alert as the sound calls the name of the station near his school, eyes looking at the screen on top of the door as the train stops at another elevated station. the boy could sense how the train wobbled beneath him as he and the others stepped out of the cart. tapping his card at the gate, riki strides along the familiar pavements towards school.

approaching the building complex that has housed him for three years, riki sees the recognizable sailor uniform the girls wears—the same uniform hung outside of his room for his little sister to bring into her room—as he steps forward with every step. calls of names are spoken between one another as he walks closer, some are calling his name which he gives different greetings while others are gathered with each of their friends. in a cautious state of mind, his eyes scoured around to see the groups of parents crowding around their children; some stood up like skyscrapers compared to them. he sensed the bandage on his skin a bit heavier than before when he turned to face his dad, who was staring at him. mom is out of his sight as he watches his father’s hand caressing his injured cheek.

“from shaving…” riki replies after letting out a light hiss, widening his eyes so he wouldn’t turn away. his dad lets out a small giggle as he pats his cheek, making riki actually retreat and copying him with his own giggles. the smell of the distinct flowers and leaves crowds around him as the sakura petals fall down on the paved road of the school that is surrounded by cherry blossom trees. but different flower species are also showing up in the number of bouquets the graduating class has on their hands. the sakura pinks being the background contrast with the whites and yellows in the bouquets. that is when he found a single person who has purple flowers in their bouquet. lifting his head to see the owner’s, the corners of his lips rise just from identifying the familiar face.

you are clutching the ends of the bouquet your parents have surprised you with. your own backpack hangs on your shoulders as you hug your father, seeing a little red panda wearing a graduation cap on the top as your mother asks one of the parents to help capture the picture. posing in between your parents, you let out a wide smile as you hear the familiar clicking sound a few times before you drop from your tippy toes—something you always unconsciously do when taking a picture. you admire the way the white and purple flowers makes the bouquet looks grand yet still screams you—purple has always been and will be your primary color.

seeing the bouquet and the many students makes you wonder if your friends are here or not. you raise your head and chin up, curiously looking at the stream of students and parents gathering at the front of the gate and school buildings before the graduation ceremony begins. that’s when you see the familiar tall boy who was always sleeping on the table beside yours whenever both of you were in class.

“riki-chan.”

he can follow your mouth’s movement, grinning when he picks up even a small sample of your voice on the other side of where he is. your voice calls to him like a siren as he takes one step forward. that is when he felt a hand slapping his back as riki could already guess who it might be.

“shota! i almost choke.”

riki hears shota’s infamous giggle as he turns around, finding him with his eye smile as he wraps his arm behind the boy’s back, “come on, niki. don’t be so serious. we’re graduating today.”

“i know,” he replied. he wanted to return to your presence once again when he let his eyes squint and something flinch to grow on his lips. riki watches his father approaching him with his mother as he takes a peek at the yellow-flower-full bouquet she is holding, knowing that it will be for him as he sees his parents trying to conceal it—even though they failed by how flustered they are to see their son already has his eyes on them.

“ta-da!” his parents proclaimed as he saw the bouquet in close detail, seeing a few white petals scattering the bouquet as the yellow slowly became softer in his eyes. creating a more pastel yellow than the ones that shock his eyes with how bright the yellow is.

“thank you, mom and dad,” he replies as he carefully picks up the bouquet and cradles it in his arms. his father greets shota as he asks the boy questions on where his parents are while his mother finally notices the bandage on his cheek, hearing her clicking her tongue as she tries not to laugh at how clumsy her son was.

shota helped in taking photos for the family, even though his sister is there but it was so hard to reach her when she was already with her friends. he glances at the clock on top of his screen after seeing his chat with his younger sister when he realizes it’s almost time for the graduation ceremony. riki reminds his parents of where the parents will gather as he slowly places the bouquet under the care of his mother. waving and saying a “see you later”, he and shota go to the crowd where the graduating students are—dividing into each class crowd as he is letting the memories of the graduation ceremony replay in his mind from the rehearsals..

shota greeted most of the class students as riki stayed behind, letting the guy feel the fame once more as he couldn’t help but grin at seeing another boy in their usual circle of six—walking towards them with his own grin on his face.

“taki-chan.” riki calls for taki as he did their bro hug. his hand playfully ruffled his dyed locks as he commented, “you’ve already bleached your hair?”

“yes, let’s just say that it’s my graduation gift from my parents. i have to look stylish when i moved to germany for university. how about you, niki? why do you even have a bandage on your face?” taki playfully poked riki’s face as he turned his head, wanting to bite the finger like it was a clawing game for making him sense the reminder of the pain of the cut skin.

his circle of six has two rikis in them. so, to differentiate them, they use their first syllable from the last name as their new nickname during their high school: creating the unstoppable taki-niki duo. taki is also part of riki’s dance studio, but he’s doing it more as a hobby than a career like what riki is doing. shota, on the other hand, frequents the arcade during their high school times. in the nearest arcade from school, he has a high score in playing the arcade’s taiko no tatsujin; even having a pair of specialty gloves he said could help with the grip of the drumsticks. his love for rhythm gaming also shows in school when shota showed riki his device when he plays osu!—the game that successfully gets taki actually after he is numb to it by dancing to hip-hop and b-boying.

“there you guys are!”

the three boys all glanced to the side to find the three girls had completed their circle of six. kokona stands in the middle as he catches her pouting face with her hands on her waist; one part of her hair is already highlighted and even riki can notice she is wearing a slight faint of eyeliner on her eyes. beside her, he sees you with your wide eyes-small smile combo, and nina who is playing something on her phone.

kokona is the musician of the group—"a born-to-be musician" as she likes to call it—as riki has always found her making lyrics upon lyrics, from the most poem-like to outward disses as he knows she can beat him in a rap battle if he wants to. nina is the brains of the group. having mixed parents like shota makes her able to speak in four different languages, but she is also academically smart as she is always representing the school for a social science olympiad and she spearheaded the economics club in school. and, you. you are the artist of the group. every time riki meets you in class, you always have a manga on one side and your sketchbook on the other as you try to read and draw at the same time, making the characters in the manga you are reading on the sketchbook in your own art style.

riki is lucky to have his circle to be as creatively well-versed and supporting each other’s endeavors. they were the first ones to know that riki is now a trainee for a label in south korea. and they couldn’t have been more proud as shota even gifted him his old korean language 101 books for him to start his language learning early; even adding a few korean terms the boy learned from his mother as riki tried to familiarize himself with them.

his homeroom teacher, mister terada, reminds them to stand in line according to their last names instead of seatmates, making all six of you scattered as riki stands with a boy in front of him and a girl behind him. he could hear the coordinator’s voice slowly letting the classes in one by one into the hall where he has seen his parents are in—seating at the bleachers at the top that are lining around the open middle area. riki could sense his legs being numbed as he didn’t know how long he had to stand up when he felt your touch on his wrist as your line was beside his, holding him up as you let out a pout. when it’s his time to enter the hall, he basks in the large space to see the parents sitting in the bleachers surrounding the students. said students all sit at their assigned seats from the rehearsals as riki recalls his path when he'll be walking to the stage to get his diploma.

the assembly finally started and both the boy and girl beside him started to chuckle when he had to cover his mouth to let out a huge yawn. the tiredness of packing his stuff for his later flight last night got into him as he just wanted to be his class’ turn so he could get his diploma and maybe take a few minutes of a power nap. he could hear nina asking for him a few seats away, watching her discreetly pushing her hand out. he reached his own as he felt something on his curled palm. opening it up, he found a small wrapped mint candy that he recognized as a staple of nina's as their “awake pill”. the spicy mint taste makes his nerves alive and aware as he sees the first few classes already getting their diplomas. he had to remind himself of all the rehearsals he had done after the exam for the past two weeks—the correct place to stand while waiting in the line, the etiquette and who to shake hands with, and where you pose for your graduation photo.

riki graciously stands up and stretches his tired body from sitting too long as he walks to the path he had track with his eyes and is currently in the line awaiting his turn. he spots kokona already sitting down with her diploma and also shota who is walking to sit down on his seat. step by step as more and more names are being called, he is now one step away from the short flight of stairs to getting his diploma.

“nishimura riki.”

his name is called as he puts out a smile he has been learning while walking across the stage, bowing deep and shaking the hand of the principal before meeting mister terada who he gives another bow to before he receives the diploma with both of his hands. he turns towards the end of the stage and poses for the camera at the end before sitting down, looking up at the bleachers as he can catch his parents’ voices, cheering for him.

yet, for him. finally, it was time to get a nap as he awaited the last homeroom of his high school career.

-

thud.

thud.

thud.

that’s what riki picked up before he leaned down to grab his usual drink from the vending machine’s slot at the bottom. his backpack has been placed once again on his back after he met up with his parents when the assembly was done. he really had a pretty good nap before the boy beside him shook him to wake up when the ceremony comes to an end with the last hurrah from his juniors—seeing his younger sister too as riki chuckles when they both catch each other’s eyes. too many people were crowding the floor when the mc said it was over over, but he knew he will reunite with his friends once again after fulfilling the parchedness of his esophagus.

straightening his back, he felt the weight of the bouquet fall down and rested on the bottom of his bag alongside his diploma as he awaited for the final things to do here: cleaning up his shoe locker and one last meeting with the homeroom teacher about his career sheet. his parents had long gone home and he had already done the nearly complete family photo with his younger sister. riki glanced at the view behind him as he saw a few kids playing soccer in their 30-minute recess time—he could see himself in them as he either helped in attacking towards the goal or defending it against his friends. 30 minutes that seemed like a lifetime when he was there to feel it himself now appears so short as he sees it from an outsider’s perspective.

“boo!”

riki turns around in a whiplash, almost spilling his drink from the bottle before he pauses and calms himself to stare at you. your purple backpack sways alongside your own movement as you laughed—even making you nearly folded yourself to get a grip on your knees because he was too funny. your laughter dies down as flip your backpack around to put your diploma inside the main pocket.

“thought you’d be here,” you mumbled, pulling out your wallet from the bag as you approached the vending machine. the backpack hangs only on one shoulder as you plunge the coins in and press the button of the drink you want.

“you always get a drink when you’re sleepy.” you then added, making riki chuckle.

it’s a habit of his he had always overlooked but, somehow, you remember. once in class, he had been taking a huge nap during japanese history class as he let the thick textbook cover him. he had a very late practice session for a choreography because he hadn’t nailed each move—maybe because it was near the exam time or whatnot. yet, no one seems to wake him until the end of the period. lifting his head up groggily, he looks at his classmates who are eating or talking with each other. that shock coming from him made the thick book fall as he heard a snicker coming from one of the crowd. riki sheepishly smiled as he wanted to crouch down to grab the book when he finally noticed the light-colored soda on the edge between his and your desk. the brand is his favorite, yet he thought it might be yours. but with the way the bottle sits behind the line between yours and his desk, he knew that it must be for him as he unconsciously swallowed his saliva; picking up and cracking the bottle lid open as he sipped the soda before going to his usual hangout place with the rest of the six.

he picks up the familiar set of thuds as you lean down and grab your purchase—the same brand yet different flavors. he watches you as you playfully shake the bottle, seeing the foam forming from the chemical reaction as he remembers what you say: “i like the soda fizzy.” but it is also like you that you are not careful when you open the bottle, seeing the pastel-colored foam flowing out of the cracks and landed on the pavement before you instantly gulp nearly a third of the bottle.

you let out a huge aahhhhh as you felt the coldness of the soda trailing down into your stomach, looking behind the color-glazed bottle to catch riki with a small smile on his face, but no movement in his eyes, gazing at you—making blood flow towards your cheek.

“hello? riki-chan?” you waved your sticky soda-stained hands in front of riki’s face before he seemed to snap out of it. that’s when you finally notice the little bandage on his cheek, spread wide right underneath his eye and cheekbone.

“what happened?” you softly poke your finger against the bandage, making riki back off as he looks away, eyes moving so rapidly before he lets out a small smirk.

“pressed my shaving razor too hard. it bleeds, so… yeah. gotta have to be reminded of that whenever i see my graduation picture now,” he told you in such a nonchalant manner, making you let out your own chuckle.

“you look like those bad boys i’ve seen on high school animations… you just need your lollipop and done!” you tuck the closed soda bottle beneath your armpit right after you say that.

“aren’t i a bad boy, though?” he raised his eyebrows, mimicking those bad boys you described by poking the tip of his tongue towards the inside wall of his cheek—as if there is a lollipop there.

you scoffed, “you? nishimura riki? a bad boy? bah…”

laughter falls out of you because you can’t seem to see him in the bad boy role. sure, he being a former soccer player and a dancer makes him popular with other people. you remembered near valentine’s day this year that many girls—including your juniors—asked you about his favorite candy or chocolate brand and flavors so that they could give that to him. some even leave gifts to you so you can give them to them and you are obliged to give them because you don’t want to experience the wrath of a teenage girl; you know that feeling too much yourself. yet, riki seemed to be more nonchalant about that, dividing the chocolates into the rest of his circle and not really giving anything back on white day—except for giving you, nina, and koko-chan different popin’ cookin’ sets you recognize costs money.

maybe he is a bad boy after all because of that. but, to you, that is his charm. riki doesn’t seem to be someone who is trying to please what society asks of him. he should’ve felt proud to get so many gifts for valentine’s day, but he doesn’t, and he is not afraid to show it. he has this sense of agency in him to know of what he is seeking even at such a young age, and to him, it is dancing.

“we don’t want to be late.” you get a last glance at him when he nods his head, brushing his bangs away from his forehead as he leads the way toward the locker area.

riki views some students replacing their outside shoes with their indoor slippers as he had done the same, tucking in his battered-up shoes inside his locker as he had to remind himself to bring the slippers home instead of putting them in the locker. or maybe it can be a gift for the first-year junior who is going to be assigned his previous locker for their shoes. that’s for him to think more about because he still sense he has time to think about it—the day felt both fast and slow at the same time.

the hallways are as clean as ever as he and you climb up the flights of stairs toward your homeroom class. his eyes gaze at the ever-changing properties hanging on the wall, yet he can definitely remember what it looked like when he was first here.

the newly painted wall now has chips of paint fallen off to show the dried concrete. the bulletin board where each club is advertising their project changes with every new administration. some plants he had first seen as sprouts now grow into a beautiful shrub. with a few of the existing shrubs died because of various reasons. yet, the look of the hallway still is the same as he could pinpoint places he had touched before: he had leaned his body against those set of windows, he had taken a peek inside one of the classrooms as he awaited taki to come out of the class, and he had also sat down on the floor there with his circle to their bento boxes because their usual hangout place is being renovated.

riki reached the handle and slides the classroom door as he is greeted by some students already sitting there, hearing the same roar as you step inside behind him. his eyes landed on the seats where you and he had sat for the past year, empty and inviting to both of you as you gazed at your classmates with their own bouquets (if they have one) and definitely their own diplomas as you watched them still admiring it. your eyes gazed to see the rest of your circle already in the classroom as you placed your backpack to hang on the seat and immediately walks towards nina, asking if she has any wet tissue.

“what took you so long?” riki heard shota’s scolding from the seat in front of him as he placed his own backpack beside his desk.

“didn’t expect for all of you to be here already. so (y/n) and i took our time,” he answered so honestly, hearing taki’s snicker beside shota as he was eating a snack. riki sits on his chair as his hand reaches for the cupboard underneath the desk in front of him, tapping his palm against the surface to recognize if he has any leftover items he hasn’t brought home. that’s when he felt sheets of paper that were united by a paper clip. he pulled it out, seeing the dusty paper of what looked to be a musical notary for his music class exam.

he remembered it was a final group project for the music class, and he had to do it with all six of the circle. riki remembered all the music lessons he had learned from his brief training with the trainers as he helped the group create their own song. shota in the drums, taki on the bass, nina on the guitar, and you on the piano whilst kokona and riki sing along with koko who uses her lyricist prowess to make a song that is seemingly about friendship and farewells. if riki hasn’t been accepted by his south korea agency, he would definitely pitch the idea to all of you to create a band. maybe all of you can be the latest sensation japan will meet on those shibuya crossing’s digital billboards.

yet fate says otherwise.

riki’s nose itches as he dusted the paper as the specks of dust floated towards the ground, looking at the clear version of the notation and even his own scribbles as he remembered how kokona berated him for not being able to match her melody—"i’m a dancer, koko-chan. not a singer." “but you’re an idol trainee. surely, you can sing.”—before carefully tucking it into his bag as he pulled the bouquet out of the bottom and let the bag open because he just knew that his whole backpack would smell like it if he kept it close.

looking towards the surface of the desk, riki sees a shadow standing menacingly in front of his desk. the shadow slides the glico’s pocky box in his vision. his head shifts upwards as he sees nina holding two more boxes of different flavors, making him look to his side to detect both you and kokona already having your own pocky with your own differing flavors.

“my gift to you all because i know i won’t be able to see you much in america.” nina says after putting the rest of the boxes in front of taki and shota. he could hear the two boys coo and send her gratitude before grabbing the boxes and opening them to ravage them for themselves. riki finally took a closer glimpse of yours as he finally noticed how both of your boxes are green-colored.

“did she give us the same flavor?” he mumbled to himself, yet he mumbled outwardly, making you shift your head and face him.

“i think our flavors are similar, let me see.”

you gently grip the wrist he is holding the box with and bring it beside yours. riki examines how his box has a dark chocolate gradient on it while yours is fully green, trailing his eyes down to read the flavor name on the front of the box.

“see, yours says green tea while mine is rich matcha.” you say what you observed as he can’t help holding back a giggle as you seem to unconsciously play around with your lip after you say the word “matcha.”

though purple is your favorite color—matcha is your favorite flavor. you have always been seen with matcha-flavored everything if you are given a chance. matcha lattes whenever all six of you visit a cafe, matcha mochi whenever you buy mochis, or matcha roll cakes when the gang is trying to buy something inside family mart. it’s no surprise nina gives you that, but why did she give him a similar, lighter version of it?

whatever, let’s just eat-

the sliding door opens and behind it, the figure of the class’ homeroom teacher appears. everyone, including riki, is applauding him—slightly drops the box on the table as he didn’t get to rip it properly. mister terada slowly steps inside, a surprised face on his face as he slowly walks to stand by the table in the middle of the class. he is carrying a large box with both of his hands as the holler continues, which is followed by whistles before he places it down on the table. mister terada raises his hands and slowly pushes it down as the volume follows.

“settle down kids. this is our last homeroom meeting.” mister terada says as riki gazes at the open box, knowing that it’s probably the yearbook that he had shot the photos for in january. he remembered that day cause it was still cold as heck. many of his classmates brought their own properties for the shoot, yet riki only wears his gakuran with a loose button and his trusty shoes—the black and white soccer ball is being lent by the committee because he has and wants to represent soccer on some sort so that he won’t forget.

“today, i’ll be giving you your yearbooks and also recapitulate your career sheet to see how each has progressed. i’m sure by now you have picked to focus on one of the three choices you made from those you picked in your first year to pursue.” mister terada stated as he started to call each name in the student's list, starting with the class president.

the giving off of the yearbook is also followed with a mini consultation of each student's progress. yes, right in front of the class, which can lead to embarrassment if they can’t keep up. but so far, everything still goes according to their plan, some even find themselves straying from their primary focus to explore something new or getting caught in something that becomes their infatuation.

most of his friends that have come forward and got their yearbooks have spoken about the same thing that they have spoken about just between the six of you: kokona is going to music school, nina is going to america and studying macroeconomics, and shota is pursuing game development. then, it was time for his turn as he heard the calling of a certain nishimura riki.

“that’s our idol!” he picked up taki's shouted words as the rest of the class laughed. everyone knows just how much riki likes to dance. he had shown his skills numerous times in the school’s talent shows either alone or with taki as the riki duo that they are. so it isn’t also a surprise for his classmates to find out he had been accepted into a label in south korea that has been throughout his school—courtesy of taki, as he is the one that always spills it.

it even created a whole discussion on why riki picked a korean label instead of japanese one, but one thing is prevalent in the discussion: the korean idol industry will see his dancing skills as more valuable than in the japanese idol industry. it’s just the way those industries goes honestly. but riki also wants to appreciate the korean idols that inspired him to be who he is right now; especially with the existence of japanese people in the korean idol industry and how the numbers are still going up.

the class seems to unanimously sing yoasobi’s idol as riki playfully does the gesture in the viral dance challenge as he now stands in front of mister terada. bowing down to greet him, he picks up the yearbook with two hands as the teacher asks, “how is it with your idol training?”

“it’s going good. i’m actually already planning to move to seoul after graduation so i can train better and have a higher chance of debuting.” yet, riki didn’t mention he will actually move tonight.

“well, we can’t wait to see you on the world stage, riki-kun. i love how consistent you are with it and i sure hope that your consistency could also inspire the juniors to follow their dreams.”

“thank you, mister terada.” he bowed his head once again before returning to his desk as mister terada called for the name after his. he playfully opened the yearbook and skimmed it before landing on his class. his fingers flip the paper to finally open to the page where all six of his friends are—because they shoot their pictures together. riki’s photo is the one where he had all the gakuran buttons off from their respective slots and he is holding the soccer ball against his hips.

“look at that, a very bad boy of a manga.” he could hear his thoughts speaking to him in your voice as he wished you acknowledged that. he also moved to the superlative pages as he could remember his same-year peers and juniors him in the running. he didn’t expect to win most changed by his peers. maybe it is because he has his growth spurt as he could tell that he might even grow 10 centimeters whilst in high school. but also with how his voice changes because of puberty and how his style changes to accommodate his interests, including more exposed yet baggy clothing and the clip-on earrings he likes to wear.

“(l/n)(y/n).”

riki heard the scrapping from the chair beside him as he watched you standing up and walking towards the front of the class. though you haven’t fully spoken about what you wrote on your career sheet, being a mangaka is what everyone knows that you wanted to be. your illustrating prowess has always been shown in the festivals the school made yearly, whether it is when you helped with the class’ food market by creating brochures and banners or when you even opened an illustration service where you drew students and teachers alike for them to have. it seems that you’ve got your life in line alongside him. and that’s why it shocked him to listen to what you’ve answered to mister terada’s question.

“yes, my progression with my university application is great. i’ve been accepted as a student in the international relations major in kyoto.”

riki’s eyes enlarged because he can’t believe what he is hearing. he turns his head towards his friends who are also looking at each other in quick succession, all of them having confusion on their faces before returning to you who is smiling like you didn’t even feel the quake that shook your friends’ beliefs about you. as you walked to your chair and look around at each of your friend’s face, you give them a tight-lip smile. yet, all of them hesitate to ask you why you choose international relations instead of design or art school. they have to respect your choice just like any of their classmate's changes.

the revelation shocked riki the most as he thought that you had trusted him enough to tell him everything. he has been your seatmate for three freaking years and you have grown up together since the first year. he had always seen you drawing in sketchbooks you bring in class, even ignoring some lectures so you can focus on drawing and reading manga. sure, he can see you must picked studying social science for a reason but he thought that—maybe just like he is as you both are creatives—you just don’t want to do math and natural science like he is.

the number of students without the yearbook dwindles as every desk has one on top of it. mister terada stares at the group he can call his kids while mumbling, “i’m so proud of all of you. hopefully you can continue to grow and be impactful towards society-“

“wait, mister terada!” the class president shouts as she scrambles to get something underneath her desk to then watch her pick up a new bouquet. “this is our gift to you so you also have your own bouquet alongside us.”

riki remembered when the class treasurer suddenly asked him if he wanted to contribute to gifting a bouquet to mister terada during the class’ yearbook photoshoot. he gladly accepts it as mister terada is the nicest homeroom teacher he had throughout high school. some of his other homeroom teachers are unnecessarily harsh towards the students and even shamed for not following through with their career sheets—knowing that teenagers also can get stressed too in doing so. mister terada is the only teacher riki can comfortably consult about his choice of being an idol. at that time, he was contemplating if he should audition for one or just focus on becoming a professional dancer. yet, mister terada’s push also helps contribute to him filling in the audition form.

mister terada received the bouquet from the class president as he stared at it, his eyes glimmering before saying, “thank you so much. could we get a class photo with all of us?”

the students are standing up as they try to set their places. one of the student’s parents, who is watching the class outside from the hallway window, steps in to take the picture. riki stands beside you, taking a peek to see you already in your pose as he can’t help but put his hand on your shoulder. what’s wrong with friends of the opposite sex being touchy with each other anyway when he had seen all the different hugs and leaning against shoulders between the six of you?

as the click of the phone camera taking the picture rings and dissipates, it’s followed by a chorus of thank yous being thrown around as some students hug each other. he is busy too, as some of his classmates are trying to take a few last selfies with riki before he becomes famous—making the rest of the gang just snicker from the side.

“i’m going to miss you guys,” shota spoke as all six of you were huddled in the group hug. one last warm hug before all of you are going to your separate ways. riki also should go back home to rest up as he will go to haneda airport later but when the hug separates and all of you six are promising to catch up and communicate in your line group chat, he is trying to keep up pace with you who is tidying up your purple backpack.

“(y/n)-chan.”

“yeah?” you looked up from the backpack after zipping it up, wanting to grab your drink and the pocky that you know you’ll be eating on your way home. yet, with the way riki is looking at you; you know he is trying to let something out.

“do you wanna hang out on the rooftop? for old time's sake, as it is our last chance.”

you held down your smile, knowing that you also didn’t want today to end so early.

“yes. let me text the others in the group-“

“just,” his voice cuts yours, “just the two of us.”

you watched as his glittering eyes told you something, telling you to follow him as you could definitely feel that something was hanging that you had to speak about. and you knew it was about the changes in your plan for the future, especially as you confide with riki so much of your dream in creating your own manga series.

putting the straps on your shoulders, you point your chin towards the door and say, “ok.”

-

the breeze comes rushing in even if you stand behind riki’s figure, blowing your hair as his figure turns into a silhouette when meeting the afternoon sun. you step out onto the concrete ground as you glance at the half wall circling around the perimeter, seeing a few chipped-out paint coming off from said walls before you turn around to be greeted with the rooftop garden. the rooftop that you and your friends have always been on since your first year.

the rooftop is a somewhat famous destination per se, but only the people who are brave enough to trudge against the ever-changing weather could remain here even within the three terms. so that’s why only a handful of people can call this rooftop their hangout place—other than the back of the school or the cafeteria. you glance at the shorter half wall near the garden, the place you and the rest of the six usually hung out at; ate lunch at, doing homework at, and spending your free time at. you can even remember when you initiated the circle’s “logo” as you write your name in an arch, making the others write their own to create a full circle following the curve.

you’re going to miss this place when you’re in kyoto. you’re going to miss the friends that you meet here.

stepping in front of you as you follow, riki approaches the short half wall that is also acting as a multi-use bench, eyes taking a glimpse at the garden’s chlorophyll coming back after winter has frozen them up. insects that seemed to be brave enough to fly this high are visiting here, carrying the pollen for the plants to grow faster. you follow his movement as you sit beside him, gazing at the beautiful view behind the half wall of the sky as the sun is on the way to setting on the west horizon.

riki reaches for his pocky as the sound of the box ripping is heard beside you, making you take your own opened one as you finally rip the plastic packaging open that separates you from the delicious cream on a biscuit stick. yours were more green than riki’s—hence the “rich matcha” flavor nina gave you. silently, you both take a bite of the stick that you pull out. your taste buds are overwhelmed by the combination of the matcha-flavored cream with the matcha-flavored biscuit stick. you look between the front of where you’re sitting to peeking from the corner of your eyes as you see riki doing the same, making you hold back the chuckle before awkwardness comes to remind you quick, making you finish your whole biscuit as your hand reaches inside the aluminum bag for another one.

“you said you want to be a mangaka?”

the breath that you are holding is slowly dripping out, knowing that your intuition is right as to why he brought you here.

“i thought we were gonna fulfill our dreams together…” riki’s voice seemed so cold—even colder than the leftover winter wind in spring.

your facial muscles twitch, maybe it’s because of the sudden sensitivity your face felt the breeze or is the answer that you don’t wanna think about suddenly popping into your mind. yet, when you turn your head—forcing yourself to be brave—you find riki already staring at you. his piercing eyes making goosebumps rising on your skin as, even through his eyes, you can read what he is telling you. you’ve drawn and seen characters in those eyes, but feeling it in real life feels different. much more hurting. much more loathing.

you try to think of the words that you remember you discussed with your parents as you talk about the future, as they’ve reminded you of how dangerous that industry could be—"many animators are crunching their hours. we don’t want to see you like that."—and the fact that they knew, they knew you couldn’t be creative under pressure makes you rethink it. and here you are, trying to explain that to your number 1 supporter, just as you are to him in his dancer-now-future-idol career.

“i, i don’t know if it’s viable for me…” you started, glancing between the pocky box you’re holding and him as you let out a sigh.

“then choose something else other than an illustration, like, i don’t know, painting? graphic design? you like those, right?” you can hear the way riki’s throat is getting hoarse as he speaks, how he is gritting his teeth when saying those words before he takes another stick from his pocky box and takes a bite. the muffled crushing of the biscuit is much louder than when you both are eating it.

“i have to think about my future, riki. you do know i like history and geography and international relation calls to me the same time as a career as a mangaka.” you said in nearly the same tone, not wanting to hold back as you can’t believe just how one-sided he seemed to think of you. that you’re not more than just an art kid in his eyes. “just like how you pick between being a dancer and a soccer player.” you said the last sentence, voice getting lower until the sentence ends near mumbling. but you know riki’s listening.

this is now the correct time for you to pour why you hid your choice from him.

“don’t you know just how dangerous the animation scene in japan is? people are overworked to churn out season upon season nearly every year. being an independent mangaka is also hard when you have to fight against the big guns in the industry. though i’m good at drawing, i don’t know about my writing skills-“

“you’re writing skill is perfectly fine.” he cuts your tangent, pivoting his head back towards you, still not stopping you from continuing.

“okay, but people are suffering there and if i join that system, i know i’ll be suffering too.” you rub the bridge of your nose near the corners of both of your eyes, pressing down on it as you don’t want a single tear out. not right now when you are trying to defend your choice. you’re willing to let out different words just to try to make him understand.

“and if i’m going to school in international relations, that doesn’t mean that i’ll be giving up on drawing. maybe i could join an organization or event there that needs someone to illustrate stuff. maybe i could try doing freelance whilst also working part-time in some convenience stores near tourist spots in kyoto. that doesn’t mean i’m going to easily give up on that dream, it’s just i’m taking the longer way.”

riki held his breath as he heard your reasoning, the way the look of your eyes seemed to dwindle but also increased in sparkles as he couldn’t figure out what feelings you were trying to say. anger? sadness? satisfy?

but when he felt your hand reach to hold his, he knew that you now want him to, at least, believe in you.

“you don’t know just how frustratingly messed up my thoughts are when you said you are accepted to a korean label and to fulfill your dream as a k-pop star.” your thumb caressed his pinky finger, “because i know that it’s going to be hard for me or for anyone in our circle to reach your level of success this young and to talk to you in general because you’re either going to be in korea all the time or you’re going to be layers behind bodyguards when you’re not there.”

you gulp down your saliva, “i’m glad one of us is going to fulfill our dreams faster.”

the last sentence hits riki so much that he has his life’s perspective turn in some random of degrees. he had heard of his parents talking about his older sister who is now in university, about just how different her childhood dream is compared to what she pursued whilst growing up. the same goes for riki, who wanted to be a soccer player before becoming a professional dancer and now being an idol. you must be facing the same thing. he recall how you mentioned you wanted to be a chef during your childhood, how it changed to your love for drawing, before seeing yourself as a diplomat, yet that could definitely change given you have four years of university.

life is definitely much more mysterious than what riki has been accepting. people’s wants and needs change given the situation, from the farthest to the nearest. dedicated people are there but the environment and instinct seem to tell them to change paths. he definitely realizes more that one person doesn’t have a definite answer to what is their purpose in life. is it like him to perform on stage? is it like what he thought you’d do in making a best-selling manga? all of that is a possibility, but that is not definite.

now he knows that the purpose of life is to live. every change of heart is there for a reason that is at the same level as every dedication. that, in life, anyone can define themselves as plural, like his mother who is also a businesswoman, and his father who is also an engineer. like you, who may become a diplomat and an artist. or even maybe him, who can be an idol but likes to play soccer. he had felt that he was erasing one dream for the next. but actually, he is just changing priorities to the one he is focusing on. that is his idol career for him and the international relations major to you—because that dream is still there, now lying dormant.

“you can fulfill your mangaka dream too, (y/n).” your ears perked up at what he was saying. your hand rests and is idle on top of his as you can feel his hand underneath yours flipping unto the other side. “what you said is true. that you can still have drawing as a hobby to help relieve you from school stress, that you can make pocket money out of it. that the place is still there for you even if you change your destination to try something else. and i’m sorry for not realizing that.”

his fingers move to be in between yours before curling in, making you look down at them before at his face, “i don’t know when we will arrive at the place that we want to go. maybe never. maybe someday. maybe even tomorrow.”

riki let out a tremendous sigh.

“but i believe that you can still get there. i believe that you, me, and our friends will eventually reach there,” he spoke his mind, making him turn away his head because of how his hand is randomly holding onto yours.

before he turns his back, he felt your fingers also curling to meet his hand, locking both of your hands as the sky is turning from a blue to an orange, letting you know just how much time you have with him as he had told you, and only you, that he’ll be leaving tonight.

“thank you.” your sentence of appreciation is enough to lift a smile on his face as it reflects on yours.

the scribble on the half wall remains there as you hoped some school officials wash it or paint it some months after today. the sunbeams shining through the window to the hallway where students are finishing cleaning up their class so they can return home. the green grass on the field creating short shadows beneath them as the sun starts to sink. your hand remains in riki’s as you both step out from the school gate for the last time—seeing your juniors, giving you a sad look to see you for the last time, but also a cheeky look after finding your connected hands.

you and him stood in front of the gate as you faced each other. both of your houses are on separate ways as you slowly let go of his hand, letting out a shrug whilst also having a small pout on your face.

“so, this is a goodbye, then? i can’t even contact you anymore because you’re going to be busy,” you spoke out the truth—knowing that k-pop trainees aren’t also allowed to have their phones most of the time.

“more of like a see you later because i know that i’ll be giving you and the rest of us six tickets if i someday hold a concert here,” he replied, holding onto the strap of his backpack as you find his pocky box peeking out from when the water bottle is supposed to be placed—mirroring your own self.

riki’s eyes seemed to glimmer with something as he reached to the buttons of his gakuran, tracing his fingers on the thick gold button as he reached the second from the top, easily popping it off as he pushed it towards you. you looked down and up at his face, not wanting to show the shock on your face as you reached for the button, pinching it between your fingers before you placed it on your palm and instantly curled it up to keep it safe.

his body got knocked back as he felt the arms wrapping around him. his arms are in a pause before he naturally lets go, raising his hands to rest on your back as he tugs you in closer. his mouth beside your ear.

“promise me you’ll remember me,” he whispered, sending chills running down your spine.

“i promise and i hope you do the same,” you replied, sensing a single tear falling out of your eyes as you wiped it away with his uniform.

“of course, i do,” he spoke back. his body seemingly not wanting to let go of you as you pull yourself back, feeling him holding onto your upper arms as you let out a tight-lip smile.

“go on. you have a flight to catch,” you smirked and took a few steps back when you sensed his grip loosen. your curled hand with the button in the grip is resting by your heart while you see riki’s wide smile as he steps backward opposite to where you are going. flailing his arms as a wave of goodbye as you just want him to go back fast so you can finally shed the tears that are wetting your eyes.

you raise your own hand as you wave a goodbye when riki looks at your figure getting smaller and smaller with every step he takes backwards, wanting to run back to you to give you one last hug because he knows he’ll be missing you so much. he hopes that you’ll arrive at your dream tomorrow, but he will always give a word of encouragement to you in his mind even if he is training in the dance studio in seoul starting tomorrow.

he hopes you keep and take care of his second button, just like how you have supported and encouraged him to pursue his dream. and he is now more determined than ever to make you and everyone who knows him deep down proud as he closes this chapter of his life and opens up the next.

taglist: @raeyunshm @leilasmom @evidive @boba-beom @kwiwin @heesw1fe @aloverga @endzii23 @fluffyywoo @camipendragon @hiqhkey @wccycc @cha0thicpisces @y4wnjunz @yeehawnana @beansworldsstuff @kimipxl @blurryriki @amazzwon @reallysmolrenjun @stealanity @deobitifull @gandaengene @beomgyumineiro

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[cant-get-worse-than-this]

Introduction post!

Basics

Hi!!!

My name is Kesar (or any other variant of the name Caesar is fine to call me!) and I am 14. I am neurodivergent. I am an Asian-European (India and Sweden!), Hindu, and my pronouns are he/they!

Interests and Likes

I have a hyperfixation/special interest (I don't know which to use because I'm in denial about being autistic LMAO) of the Mediterranean, mostly Italy and Spain but also France, Portugal, Egypt, Greece, etc!

Languages

Due to my interest, I have taught myself Italian all on my own and I study Spanish at school since 2020, so I can speak them both at a good level.

All of the languages I speak as well as some more info on my history with them:

Swedish, I speak it every day and a bit at home

Hindi, I speak it every day at home with my family

English, I speak it here and I consume a lot of English media. Also I went to an international school for a couple of years.

Spanish, I've been learning it at school. Ever since I started learning it I've been the best in the class (this is very much a flex, I am very proud of the fact). I speak it at a very good level but I'm not close to fluent.

Italian, I am very proud of that I speak it because I learnt it all on my own using primarily music. I started learning it in 2021 but then took a LONG break for almost 2 years and in 2023 I got back on track and learnt it so well I'm almost at the same level at it as I am at Spanish hahaha

French, as I speak Spanish and Italian it wasn't that hard for me to get a grasp at French. I'm definitely not good at it and am best at written French, not spoken, but I understand enough to say I know it. Also, I can carry a conversation in French so. Yeah. I also really like Lupin.

Urdu, as I speak Hindi I understand Urdu well. Of course there are words I don't know, but since I understand so much of it and I speak it better than I speak Spanish or Italian I had to include it.

Music

My favourite song artists are Marco Mengoni and MIKA. They are my top 2. I love them so much.

I also listen to Mahmood, Måneskin, Queen, The Lonely Island, Lady Gaga, Kali Uchis, Megan Thee Stallion, Veronica Maggio, Shreya Ghoshal, and a lot more.

Apart from that I like English music from 2000 to the late 2010s. I also like Hindi music, rap (i listen to a LOT of Megan Thee Stallion, she's such a queen), Eurovision (although I am not supporting them this year due to them including Israel, Free Palestine🇵🇸), Hispanic music, Francophone music, Italian music and Swedish music. I also enjoy classical, both South Asian and European.

TV

I love TV! My favourites are dramedies. I like comedy a lot. My favourite type of show would be sitcoms because I understand them and I grew up with them and I like their humour. Here are TV shows I very, very strongly like in no particular order:

Psych, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Community, 1899, Mythic Quest, Lupin, Monk, and probably more that I just don't remember right now.

I have also watched a lot of other things, but this is all that comes to mind.

There are films that I really like, and most of them I have watched more than a few times. Like there were literally periods when I would just keep rewatching these:

The Kung Fu Panda film series, The Hotel Transylvania film series, The Lorax (specifically the Italian dub), The Shrek film series, and once again probably many more.

Other stuff I like:

Doraemon, Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse & Across The Spiderverse, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhaan (2020), Smiley (2022), Saiki K (TV series, I haven't been able to read the manga :/), etc.

Books

Mostly I read fact books, in middle school the librarian hated me for (metaphorically) eating up all the books on ancient Egypt, but I also have a few books I really like!

I love Rick Riordan. My favourite from him is definitely The Kane Chronicles but I also like PJO. I'm TKC all the way, though.

I also like Geronimo & Thea Stilton as well as Diary of a Wimpy Kid. They give me comfort.

I have a lot of queer books I bought for the sole reason of them being queer but I haven't read them yet hahahaha. I'm almost finished with Friday I'm In Love by Camryn Garrett!

I am also reading Babel by R. F. Kuang and Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón!

Playlist time!

My Marco Mengoni playlist:

My Brad Bakshi playlist:

My Trobed playlist:

My Braddavid playlist:

My StottleMonk playlist:

That is all I can really come up with right now, but I will probably edit this soon! I'm not very good at stating what I like and all of that because I'm always scared I'm not telling everything or that people won't understand how I like it and stuff LMAO so don't be surprised if I take this post down :( I'm trying to get better though, so I'll keep it up!

[queenhawke]

the thing about apple tv+'s non-hit show mythic quest (2020-?) is that: is it good? who's to say. but goddamn if that larp episode didn't completely break my brain and now i haven't stopped thinking about it for two straight years

[zheniakirsikkalove]

Interview with Lee Dong Wook for GQ (11/2020)

During his interview, the actor spoke about wrapping up filming for his latest drama “Tale of the Nine-Tailed.” His character Lee Yeon is a male gumiho (a mythical nine-tailed fox) and a former mountain spirit.

Lee Dong Wook shared, “He’s cool. He’s also very talented. However, I think his heart is much cooler than his physical appearance. This can sound cheesy but a regular personality cannot become a mountain spirit. I think of him as a character with a strong inner self.”

In a previous interview, Lee Dong Wook had explained that rather than specifically preparing for his role in “Hell is Other People,” he acted more on the spot. He talked about using this method again while filming “Tale of the Nine-Tailed,” commenting, “Thankfully, the director gave me the green light. I was able to freely act with regards to the setup of the situation, the details, and the lines. Actually, about a third of my lines were improvised.”

Lee Dong Wook continued, “This was the same for ‘Goblin‘ but I believe that the core of fantasy is the extent of your freedom in the world that the writer has created. It’s not like you can interview monsters or a gumiho so there’s not a lot that you can prepare. You just have to freely let it flow it on set.”

The interviewer mentioned a comment that Lee Dong Wook frequently makes about how being an actor is a career where one needs to be selected and needs to receive recognition. Adding that Lee Dong Wook does not seem to ever have been lacking either, they asked what he thinks is the most important factor in “being selected.”

Lee Dong Wook answered, “You obviously have to be good at acting and being diligent is important. People ask how I’ve worked for 21 years straight without resting but I just worked hard when people sought me out. Now I believe people view me and think, ‘Lee Dong Wook doesn’t take shortcuts.'”

As he’s acted in many fantasy works, Lee Dong Wook was asked what kind of fantasy world he typically dreams about. He revealed, “One of my fantasies is being the frontman of a global rock band. I am so jealous of people who can sing well. I also get curious how it would feel to radiate sexiness while singing on stage.”

He continued, “I also have these fantasies. To become a famous athlete and put on a big celebration after scoring a goal or throwing my bat after hitting a home run. One day, I’ll play one of these roles.” Lee Dong Wook then jokingly added, “Oh, I can’t. If I were an athlete, I’d be at the age where I have to retire.”

Bouncing off his dream of becoming a musician, Lee Dong Wook also talked about his favorite songs of the year. He shared, “These days I’ve been really into DAY6. I especially like the song ‘You Were Beautiful.’ When I hear the lyrics ‘You were beautiful, your eyes that looked at me, your voice that called out to me,’ I think about the heartwarming story between Lee Yeon and Ji Ah.”

source

[kafus]

if you ever feel up to it, i'd love to hear how you got the mew. hearing stories about people and their pokemon is really fun.

SOMEONE TOOK THE BAIT LET'S GOOO i wanted to talk about thisSDFFDKS

anyway i got my hadou mew through basically a miracle encounter - back in 2020 i was buying a lot of older pokemon games to fill holes in my collection, either games i never owned or games that i lost over the years from childhood, and as for my missing gen 3 games, i ended up going for japanese copies of firered and sapphire instead of english because having foreign carts is neat but mostly they're just a lot cheaper. buying secondhand pokemon games is always fun because often times the seller doesn't wipe or even check the save file and especially if the save file has a lot of playtime, they're like time capsules from a stranger right. so both games come in and the sapphire has nothing interesting but i'm perusing the boxes of this firered and uhhh

LMAO my initial reaction says it all, i literally just found this thing on a completely random firered cart i bought! it was not advertised to have mew in it on the ebay listing, in fact the seller i bought from sells a LOT of imported japanese pokemon games (and other gba titles) so i imagine he just has a pile of these and he picked out a random one to mail me without so much as checking what was on it.

of course mythical pokemon on gen 3 carts are dubious, it's not like it's particularly hard to gameshark a mythical pokemon, especially considering that i've gotten a secondhand file before with shit like a box full of Deoxys caught at level 2 on the first route in hoenn LOL... so i was pretty serious about checking for legality on this thing as best i could - backed up the save file and inspected it in pkhex, all data was 100% accurate to the event and also reasonable RNG wise, like normal random IVs and stuff... checked for archived versions of this event mew, none of them were identical to online injectable ones, which means the owner couldn't have downloaded and injected it... and most of all, context clues

here's ancient pictures of this mew traded to my english leafgreen so it's readable for everyone - i had not done anything with this mew yet so it's completely untouched from how i found it here. we can tell from looking at this that whoever owned this mew was training it with the exp share as its still holding it and is level 23 despite being met at level 10, and the moveset... solarbeam, mega punch, dragon claw?? very random moveset that i can only imagine a child using. this mew looks like it was played with by its owner legitimately. additionally not shown here, the firered cart had a lot of playtime and like 2/3 of the dex complete, the boxes were full of pokemon that the owner had been breeding and a few unhatched eggs, like i hatched one and it was a completely normal eevee so they may have been getting extra eevees for pokedex purposes etc.

basically i cannot 100% confirm this mew was obtained legitimately without teleporting back in time and getting that japanese movie preorder bonus myself, but there is literally nothing strange about this mew and the save file it comes from is well loved and appeared to be played by a child doing normal pokemon stuff. so for all intents and purposes, this mew is definitely legit to me. actually insane happenstance. i have never gotten anything this crazy from a secondhand file before

think of it this way. some japanese kid in 2005 preorders a pokemon movie > he goes to the store to redeem it for a mew in person. in 2005. in japan. > he plays with the mew a bit > at some point he stops playing pokemon > he sells the game to some random american seller after never wiping the save or removing the mew > the american seller buys jp pokemon games in bulk to resell on ebay so he has a ton of them and probably doesn't check them for what's on them or the old save files > when i order it from this random ebay listing, the american seller picks a random fire red cartridge out of his bulk stash and mails it to me > it ends up in my hands 15 years later after the kid first got this mew

like holy shit it's a small fucking world huh

another old convo from the RM discord because i'm nostalgic about it, i had just started talking here at the time... i'm gonna be honest the ribbon master challenge and the people i met through it genuinely changed my life and this mew came into my life at the perfect time so it means a lot to me on top of being insanely cool

anyways i went on about that longer than necessary but yeah bless my mew i love him

[head-post]

China to launch mission to moon’s “hidden” side

China would launch a robotic spacecraft on a round trip to the back side of the moon in the coming days, Reuters reported.

The journey will be the first of three technically challenging missions paving the way for the first landing of a Chinese crew and the establishment of a base at the lunar south pole.

Since the first Chang’e mission in 2007, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, China has made great strides in lunar exploration, narrowing the technological gap with the United States and Russia.

In 2020, China brought back samples from the near side of the moon for the first time in over forty years. The mission verified that the country could safely return an unmanned spacecraft to Earth from the lunar surface.

China is expected to launch Chang’e-6 this week using the 2020 mission’s backup spacecraft and collect soil and rocks from the moon’s back side, which is permanently facing away from Earth.

With no direct line of sight to Earth, Chang’e-6 will rely on the recently launched relay satellite orbiting the moon. The same satellite will support the unmanned Chang’e-7 and 8 missions in 2026 and 2028 respectively, when China will begin exploring the south pole in search of water and building a rudimentary outpost with Russia.

China aims to send its astronauts to the moon by 2030.

Read more HERE

[justforbooks]

Sir John Boardman

Archaeologist who became a leading authority on the history of Greek art, with a particular interest in gems and finger rings

As a student, John Boardman, who has died aged 96, was able to recite by heart texts in Attic Greek, the form of the language used in ancient Athens. But while studying classics at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he encountered two archaeologists whose work encouraged him to apply that flair to the study of classical objects: Charles Seltman showed him coins, and Robert Cook vases.

To these he added carved gems, sculpture and architecture, on all of which he became a leading authority, and the author of more than 30 books.

On graduating in 1948, he took Cook’s advice not to study for a doctorate, but to go to Greece and do some research there. At the British School in Athens for the next two years, as well as travelling to destinations including Crete and Smyrna, he worked in the depths of the Athens National Museum on vases from the island of Euboea (the modern Evvia).

The diagnostic pot shape that he identified enabled later archaeologists and historians to track the paths of Greeks and Greek culture to the east – Al Mina in Syria – and the west – Pithecusae, today’s Ischia, in the gulf of Naples – and at many points between.

The Greek islands and the diaspora around the Mediterranean came to be recurring themes in Boardman’s work. In 1964 he published two books, The Greeks Overseas: Their Early Colonies and Trade, and Greek Art, both of which went on to further editions.

On his first visit to Greece he met Sheila Stanford, an artist, and after he had completed his national service in the Intelligence Corps (1950-52) they married in Britain. He then returned to the British School as assistant director (1952-55), and was given his own dig, on the island of Chios.

His party of excavators and helpers there included Michael Ventris, the architect who shortly aftewards announced his decipherment of the Linear B syllabic script as an early form of the Greek language, and Dilys Powell, the eventual film critic of the Sunday Times.

Back in Britain, Boardman served as an assistant keeper at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1955-59). Its Cast Gallery, containing plaster casts of some 900 Greek and Roman sculptures, became his preferred academic home base, and he published a catalogue of its Cretan collection (1961).

Working on another, private, collection of art objects in the 1990s gave him ideas about world art, its interconnections and aims. This led him to distinguish three main “belts”: a northern one, running from Siberia to North America, where nomads favoured small items, often depicting animals; an urban one, from China to central America, more given to monumental architecture; and a tropical one characterised by human forms, notably of ancestors. He explored these ideas in The World of Ancient Art (2006).

Other publications included Greek Gems and Finger Rings (1970); handbooks on Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases (1974 and 1975); a lecture series given at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and published as The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity (1994); Persia and the West (2000); The Archaeology of Nostalgia: How the Greeks Re-created Their Mythical Past (2002); numerous catalogues, particularly of gem collections, including the royal one at Windsor Castle; and excavation reports from Chios and from Tocra, in Libya.

After the Ashmolean appointment came university posts at Oxford, as reader in classical archaeology (1959-78) and then Lincoln professor of classical archaeology and art (1978-94). As professor emeritus, he continued to work from offices first in the Ashmolean and subsequently the classics faculty’s Ioannou Centre.

In 2020 he produced his autobiography, A Classical Archaeologist’s Life: The Story So Far. The last of its three parts focuses on a field of “minor” art that he showed could be anything but: Greek and Roman gems and finger rings. Called simply “Gems, Bob and Claudia”, it details the work that Boardman did first with the photographer Bob Wilkins and later an archivist of the Beazley Archive, in Oxford, Claudia Wagner. With her he co-authored Masterpieces in Miniature: Engraved Gems from Prehistory to the Present (2018).

Born in Ilford, Essex, John was the son of Clara (nee Wells), who had been a milliner’s assistant, and Arch (Frederick) Boardman, a clerk in the City. The family was not academic, but John was impressed by what he saw at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum when he visited them with his father, who died when John was 11.

While at Chigwell school, John experienced second world war aerial bombardment, of which he later had vivid memories. He found the study of Greek to be “magical”, and the school’s headteacher encouraged him to apply for a scholarship at his former Cambridge college.

Though his own career developed at a time when a doctorate was not obligatory, Boardman went on to supervise vast numbers of graduate students, scattered over several continents. He had an extraordinarily acute and retentive visual memory, was prodigiously efficient and well organised in his teaching – his lectures on Greek architecture and sculpture were a revelation – as in his research and writing, and welcomed the assistance provided by digital technology.

I first met him in his Ashmolean office, in 1969, keen for him to be my doctoral supervisor. Almost the first word he uttered was “Sparta”: not long before, he had published an account vastly improving on previous understanding of the sand, earth and relative dating of the artefacts found at the Artemis Orthia sanctuary site there. Like many others, I appreciated his meticulous standards of archaeological observation and historical interpretation.

Boardman once wrote that he felt more at home intellectually outside Oxford, indeed outside Britain, and he was involved with and recognised by institutions in Ireland, mainland Europe, the US and Australia. For almost three decades he was on the board of the Basel-based Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (1972-99).

His activities in Britain were still considerable. He edited the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1958-65) and was a delegate of the Oxford University Press (1979-89). At the Royal Academy in London from 1989 onwards he occupied what had originally been Edward Gibbon’s seat of professor of ancient history. He was made a fellow of the British Academy in 1969, and knighted in 1986.

While ready to express a view in serious academic controversies he was resolutely apolitical. Nonetheless, he took the view that Lord Elgin’s dubiously acquired collection of sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures in Athens purchased by the UK in 1816 should remain in its entirety under the curation of the British Museum Trustees.

He received a lot of support from the publishers Thames & Hudson, and his very last publication came in the month of his death, in their Pocket Perspectives series. John Boardman on the Parthenon is a lightly illustrated repackaging of the lively text he had composed to accompany the black and white photographs of David Finn in the same publisher’s The Parthenon and Its Sculptures (1985).

Sheila died in 2005. He is survived by their children, Julia and Mark.

🔔 John Boardman, archaeologist and classical art historian, born 20 August 1927; died 23 May 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[jasminewalkerauthor]

2024 writeblr introduction

About me: Hi! I'm Jasmine, I'm a ya indie author entering her second year of publishing. I am currently halfway through my high fantasy series 'The isles' that I started writing towards the end of 2020 inspired by a dnd campaign I made for my friends. Outside of writing I am an aspiring engineer.

What genres/tropes do I write?: -Fantasy -Dark academia -Mystery -Found family -Rivals to lovers

Previous works: - Chronicles of the isles: book one of my high fantasy series following a pirate crew in search of magical artefacts with the hopes of stopping the return of a cursed god. Available here -The house of hidden miracles: A standalone dark academia book following a boarding school student as she attempts to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of a secretive family that used to live on school grounds. Available here

Current wips: - Memoriam Status: pending release (october 27th 2024) Plot: After Eleanora Green inherits her mothers hotel she quickly finds that it is far from natural. -Isles prequel project Status: Planning Plot: a prequel of 'Chronicles of the isles' detailing the lives of the mythical guild of divine and the mythology of the isles

Links: Buy me a coffee Wip/project masterlist Linktree

[louisupdates]

[Translated into English]

Louis Tomlinson, the 'British' note of the Arenal Sound of Burriana 2024

The British artist, who stars in a successful solo career after his time at One Direction, will present his latest album 'Faith in the Future'

Nico Cruz | 01·12·23|12:11

Louis Tomlinson is the last confirmed artist, to date, of the next edition of Arenal Sound. MEDITERRANEAN

It was to be expected that the poster of the Arenal Sound of Burriana of next 2024 would add to its poster an international English-speaking artist. Said and done. Louis Tomlinson, who was one of the members of the now mythical group One Direction, has been confirmed by the organization through its social networks.

With Tomlinson, the artist list adds the British note to a roster that, for the moment, is characterized by male presence, with the exception of Aitana and Lola Índigo, the only two women who for now will perform on the stage of the Arenal beach from July 30 to August 4.

From the most successful 'boy band' to his solo career

The British singer made the leap to fame in 2010 after his participation in The X Factor and the formation of One Direction, the most successful boy band of all time. Since then, his career has been unstoppable. Walls, his first solo work, was published in 2020 and reached number 1 in 50 countries. In October 2020, eight months after its release, it reached number 1 on the charts again.

Recently, the artist announced his second studio album, Faith In The Future, which was released on November 22. Bigger Than Me has been the first preview of this new work that he will present next year in Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona and... Burriana.

Whatever Louis Tomlinson's future, one thing is for sure: his projects will be characterized by his tireless work ethic, his creativity and a unique vocal and lyrical style.

[natureismynature]

What is idwtkoh?? Tell me your propaganda

Oh my fucking god anon hello and THANK YOU for giving me the opportunity to talk about THE most amazing webtoon I have ever laid my eyes upon. Get ready cuz I'm gonna be insufferable-

OKAY. So, 'I don't want this kind of hero' is a Korean webtoon (manhwa) made by Samchon. It became popular in 2010 and the english translation ended in 2020. It has 290 chapters when I say every single chapter is top tier, I MEAN IT.

First of all, the artsyle is SO GOOD. It's so fucking charming and so BADASS when it wants to be, a perfect balance. Idfk why some people get turned off by the artstyle?? Like???

This is the first ever panel and it already looks SO GOOD WDYM. And the character designs??? THE CHARACTER DESIGNS OH MY GOD. You can take one look at any character in this series and you'll have the basics of their personality just like THAT. It's so obvious but subtle at the same time??? I can't explain. Just- the character designs are AMAZING. I want to post every single character in the series just to prove my point but that'll be overkill, take this group photo instead-

SPEAKING ABOUT THE CHARACTERS.

The characters in this are all SO GOOD. And I'm not even being biased about it I swear- I mean, I don't like main characters often, in fact, I can count in two hands the number of main characters I actually like from ALL the stuff I've watched over the years, and Naga is in that list. Naga is the main character of the series and that boy owns my HEART. He's the most powerful person in the world, he goes through a lot of shit, he canonically has depression, he had so many opportunities to take a life and get away with it because it would have been JUSTIFIED, but he still finds it in him to be the kindest person out there. He can be selfish, he can be childish, and he is unapologetically FLAWED in more ways than one, he messes up and sees the world for what it is, but he learns and he grows but he will never be perfect and that's what makes me love him.

And it's not just Naga who's amazingly written. ALL the characters are unique and complex in their own ways. I can go through every single one of them, from the heroes to the villains to the people caught in the crossfire- I can make ESSAYS for everyone. Why they act the way they do, why they did the things they did, how the circumstances that they went through made them who they are. The dynamics between the characters themselves are so amazingly done as well, it's so origanic, in a way.

Oh my god if you love women, you'll LOVE this series because lemme tell you, the women in this are amazing. 100/10 would recommend. They're not sexualized in any way, they get as much character development AND exploration just as much as the men do and no one is there to purpose as the mc's love interest. The ladies as fuckin BADASS and cool and beautiful and the villains!!! HOLY SHIT THE VILLAINS LADIES. They are so evil and flawed and I adore them so much- the hero ladies too AUGH- (makes sense cuz the author is a woman)

But yeah, I talk about heroes and villains a lot bc this is a story about heroes and villains and a world with powers and animal hybrids and mythical creatures-

AND THE STORY. THE FUCKING STORY. IT'S SO GOOD.

I won't go into details because that'd be spoilers in case you wanna read it (PLEASE READ IT ITS SO GOOD) but I can tell you this much- it's a perfect balance between humor and action and tragedy. It starts of light and funny, but the story gets a darker edge as time goes on, I know that's a deal breaker for a lot of people, but it's actually done in a way that makes so much sense that you realize in your second read that it's ALWAYS been a much darker story. The cruelty of the world has always been there, the racism, the unforgiving circumstances, the perversion of the world, the pain and the grief and the misery- it's always been there.

Only, we were seeing the world through Naga's young and naive perspective. He was new to the world of heroism, he's just a kid that didn't know any better. He was never arrogant about his powers, he never bragged about it, didn't even want the attention it brought him, but he unknowingly got too confident in his abilities to keep him sheltered. As time went on and as more fucked up shit he goes through, he sees more, understands more, and suddenly everything's too dark because that's ALL he sees now.

The story shows us how the world is not black and white but instead a multitude of the shades of gray. And it doesn't shy away from exploring those shades. It DIGS into those shades of gray, makes you question the justice of a character's actions, makes you wonder if things would have gone differently if this or that happened instead. Even goes deep into the psychology of the characters, both heroes and villains alike.

And the main villain? OH THE MAIN VILLAIN. Baekmorae is SUCH a top tier villain. I HATE HIM. I hate how much I love him. He's so- he's insane. He's crazy. He's unhinged. I want to put him in a blender, turn his bones into powder and feed him to the fishes. He's so well written it HURTS.

Oh and this series gets dark. Like DARK dark. It's like if you mix One Piece, BNHA, Mob Psycho, and Saiki K together, you get this. And if you know me, you know I ADORE all four of those, so this series owns my entire being-

Augh, as much as I want to keep going, this is getting longer than I expected it to be. Well, that's a lie, I wanted it to be longer but I also want you to read the entirety of my propaganda and having this stretch out longer might turn you off so I'll stop here kfvekdvs if you want to know more PLEASE don't hesitate to slide into my inbox I'll be so freaking happy to talk about this more <3

TLDR: idwtkoh is freaking amazing from start to finish you should go read it it's amazing, BYE!

[boonesfarmsangria]

If you spoke to Yannis Philippakis over the past seven years, chances are he would have mentioned a mythical, long-rumoured collaboration with the late, great Tony Allen. “I wanted to find a way to say goodbye to him within the music. It’s what felt right to do” 

“I would play the music at parties late at night,” the Foals frontman tells Rolling Stone UK from his Peckham studio, a cosy room packed full of synths and guitars that has birthed large parts of the new EP and countless Foals tracks. “My friends were sick of hearing it unfinished, but then after everything that happened… I felt a duty to finish it.” 

In late 2016, Philippakis had just come off a lengthy and draining tour behind Foals’ fourth album, What Went Down, the record that solidified the Oxford band as one of the most important UK guitar acts of a generation. As soon as he stepped off the plane, the opportunity was then presented to him to collaborate with the legendary Allen, an Afrobeat icon and close collaborator of the great Fela Kuti. 

“I went to Paris reluctantly because I’d been broken from this tour, and I’d done enough collaborations with people to know that it can often be quite a deflating experience that leaves you feeling quite cold,” he says. “The fact that this wasn’t the case with Tony was really, really exciting. There’s something that did just click in the room.” 

The trip to Paris was framed as Philippakis being one of a group of collaborators to go and work with Allen for an album where every track was a collaboration with a different musician. “I’d be like, ‘When’s Kevin Parker coming over?’” laughs Philippakis. “But I stopped asking after a while.” The pair ended up writing three tracks on the first day they were together. 

“I wasn’t really sure what would happen, and then the idea of this broader collaborative record stalled, but we were getting on well and wanted to do more,” he remembers. While the pair realised they wanted it to become a bigger project, Philippakis’ commitments with Foals and other projects stalled the pair’s progress. Then the pandemic happened, and it wrangled with Philippakis’ “fear of things remaining unfinished”, which he describes as “such a disappointing place for something to reside”. 

The idea of the project remaining unfinished was then amplified by the shock death of Allen in April 2020 from an abdominal aortic aneurysm at the age of 79. “It brought a whole other barrage of emotions to deal with,” reflects Philippakis. “It felt like this music would remain a myth for a long time.” 

Kit Monteith

Four years after the death of Allen, this much-teased and near-mythical music was finally announced in the form of Lagos Paris London, the debut EP from Philippakis’ new project Yannis & The Yaw. The five tracks on the EP are an irresistibly funky delight, bringing together two instantly recognisable musicians with no compromise from either. 

Even before Philippakis’ one-of-a-kind vocals come in on opening track ‘Walk Through Fire’, you know it’s him through the choppy, unique guitar tones that have defined Foals since day one. Behind him, Allen’s outstanding rhythm is equally identifiable. “The way that I play the guitar is a bit of a giveaway,” laughs Philippakis. “You can hear Foals’ DNA in this music. Because of my limitations as a guitarist, I play a certain way. Then obviously Tony. Tony plays like Tony. There’s only one Tony Allen.” 

Of the special and almost unexpected creative alchemy between the pair, Philippakis adds, “We’re both in the room and both dancing with each other, but there’s no necessity to dilute the intensity of each of the presences.” It’s heard on the slippery, dramatic ‘Night Green, Heavy Love’ and euphoric ‘Clementine’, the latter in particular serving as a delicious burst of pure joy. 

After Allen’s death, the feelings of grief and work on another Foals album kept the collaborative music in a box only brought out to tease friends with at parties. As time went on, though, the niggling feeling of dissatisfaction at leaving this music unfinished — as well as a desire to let the world hear some of the last music Allen worked on — led Philippakis to pick the project back up. 

“There had been a sense of duty to finish it anyway, but once he passed away, I realised that it really needed to be.” This sentiment was matched by a genuine excitement from the musician about what he had created with Allen. “For people who are fans of Tony’s, it’s an exciting collaboration to hear. You hear Tony Allen in a way that is different to his Afrobeat records, it’s different to the Jeff Mills stuff, it’s different to The Good, The Bad & the Queen. It’s some of the heaviest and angular stuff he’s been on. 

“It was an exciting, amazing thing that happened, and nobody had got to hear it,” Philippakis says. He remembers thinking, “We should put this out, partly to celebrate how versatile and amazing Tony is, but also to show this strange coupling of two people you wouldn’t necessarily predict, writing from different stages of their lives and from different cultures.” 

Ed Miles

Lagos Paris London would have never been completed, according to Philippakis, without the assistance of Allen’s engineers Vincent Taeger and Vincent Taurelle, affectionately known as The Vincents. Taeger served as the musical director for a number of memorial concerts for Allen, and they both play an ongoing role in the drummer’s legacy. 

After work on the music restarted following Allen’s death, the duo proved a vital connection between Philippakis and his late collaborator, as he explains. “I couldn’t have done it without them, and I wouldn’t have wanted to. They knew him intimately and acted as a bridge for me to be able to get on with Tony. I don’t even feel like he was super aware or particularly buzzed that I was there when I first arrived. I think somebody had talked to him about [Foals] in order for him to agree, but once we started playing, he started to get it.” 

While the basis of the music was already laid down from Philippakis and Allen’s short time together in the Paris studio, much of the production and the mixing of the songs was still to be completed. He particularly credits The Vincents with assisting him on mixing tracks and editing Allen’s drum parts. “It felt like quite a delicate thing to do,” says Philippakis. “It needed to be done correctly and with respect, but they also simply knew how Tony would want things to sound.” 

Philippakis says he didn’t feel he needed permission from The Vincents to finish and release the music — the initial ideas were brought into the studio by him — but felt a warmth and encouragement from their enthusiasm about sharing it with the world. “It made me feel like we were doing it for the correct reasons and that it was being finished in the right way,” says Philippakis. 

While much of Foals’ music features emotional and autobiographical lyrics from Philippakis, he wanted to take the opportunity to present a different slant on his storytelling with this music. At first, he expected to just be playing guitar and welcoming guest vocalists, but eventually got drawn towards the mic. 

“It didn’t feel like this record with Tony was the vessel for a personal, emotional kind of investigation,” reflects Philippakis. “When I had the first stab at doing the vocals with Tony there, there was definitely a dialogue between us about where the lyrics should live. It wouldn’t have felt right to be combing the detritus of my private life in these songs. There was a shared idea of where they should be.” 

These conversations led to lyrics that Philippakis doesn’t consider overly political, but to be “engaging outwardly with social issues, and what it means to be somebody alive in a city, in a society, in a population”. At the time of recording, Paris was experiencing a wave of industrial action, and Philippakis remembers walking to the studio past “huge mounds of rubbish everywhere”. “You had people very elegantly trying to sway through all this trash,” he says. “The juxtaposition of those two things and trying to write a record in the midst of it made me feel like these could be the lampposts for where the lyrics should be — out of one’s own mind and in the streets.” 

If one piece of introspection makes it into the album’s lyrical content, it’s in ‘Under the Strikes’, a song led by a giddy and fantastic horn line. Philippakis was finishing the track after Allen’s death and wanted the instrumentation to melt away and just leave Allen’s drums on their own “as a coda or farewell to him”. 

“I once thought we had time to spare,” Philippakis sings in lyrics he wrote after the passing of his friend as those unquestionable drums continue to rumble on. “I wanted to find a way of saying goodbye to him within the music,” he says. “It’s what felt right to do.” 

Yannis & the Yaw is, Philippakis is quick to point out, not the start of a solo career for the musician. What began as him working on Allen’s record ended up morphing into a more collaborative process, with Philippakis leading the songwriting. “There could have even been a world in which it would have been Foals featuring Tony Allen. It was open-ended, but quite quickly we realised it was a shared endeavour. If Tony was around now, maybe it would be called something slightly different, but it’s hard for me to know how he would have wanted it.” 

Lagos Paris London exists in the world as a five-track EP, but Philippakis says the excitement and creativity was there to make an entire album with Allen. It is being released as Yannis & The Yaw as an acknowledgement of the collaborative process with Allen and The Vincents, and to leave the door open for another collaborative project under the name with different musicians. 

Yaw is defined as a ‘swerve’ or ‘twist’, and Philippakis sees it as a signifier of the “orbiting collaborators” that birthed this project and will likely do so again in the future. His potential ideas for the future of the project include working with musicians from his native Greece, as well as something with Malian musicians he’s in touch with. “My listening habits in the last few years haven’t been that aligned to contemporary Western music or pop or indie music,” he explains. “I’m much more interested in learning about music from other cultures.” 

The release of the collaborative EP with Allen arrives during a time that Philippakis refers to as a “fallow year” for Foals, who last released an album in 2022 with Life Is Yours. Though he yearns to return to the road at some point, he is currently gaining excitement from tending to his garden at home in south London and writing music for musicals and plays. Upcoming projects include a score for The Other Place with playwright Alexander Zeldin, who he worked with last year on theatre piece The Confessions. “I get to write really heavy, savage, melancholic, ambient pieces,” he smiles of the welcome change of pace. 

For Foals, he sees their break as an opportunity to not slide into complacency and re-tread their steps. “We’ve been so productive and a victim of our own success,” he says of his band. “I find it baffling how productive we’ve been with Foals considering the touring. It’s been constantly fertile since we were 19. I am excited to do more but it’s important to have this brief inhalation and to look around and find out where we’re at.” 

Ed Miles

For now, the release of Lagos Paris London serves as the closing of a chapter in Philippakis’ creative life that has spanned a decade and is intertwined with memories, grief and joy. It’s released in memory of the incomparable Allen, a drummer and musical pioneer whose genius is written all across these five songs. 

“The first people that told me the news were The Vincents,” remembers Philippakis. “It was sudden. He hadn’t been ill; it just happened in a day. Even though he was old, it was surprising.” Even more than the sudden impossibility of finishing this music and losing a dear friend, Philippakis mourned the inability to go on tour with Allen around the music’s release, something the pair discussed animatedly while writing together. 

“We got on well in a gig environment. Whenever he’d play in London, I’d go and see him and we’d drink whisky,” he remembers with a smile. Philippakis will play a trio of shows in Amsterdam, Paris and London with the Yaw later this year, featuring musicians from the Lagos Paris London sessions and others from his wider creative orbit, all in service to the memory of his collaborator. 

“He was a larger-than-life character,” he says of Allen. “It was galvanising in the sense that we had to finish this music. We made something beautiful and imperfect and unfinished. If anything good was going to come from this, we had to finish it.” 

Taken from the August/September issue of Rolling Stone UK – you can buy it here now. 

Interview || Rolling Stone UK || Will Richards