“We’re not going to find them here.” I said, just as darkness sliced through the gay bar.

“Put your hands together for our first act: Darling O’Daymin!” The emcee roared.

The crowd, seated at various tables around us, began to cheer. It felt wrong to hold my hands silent beneath the table. I stared down at the condensation on my glass of fizzing diet soda. Diet because Willow couldn’t have sugary soda, so neither could we.

Willow isn’t here…

A magenta light flashed and spun until it hit Darling: a tall, sparkling figure clad in a dazzling gold velvet dress with a slit up to one hip. A set of glorious metal fairy wings reflected the light in swirls of gold. Completing the ensemble was an intricate, filigreed mask over a painted white face.

The first lighthearted chords of a familiar jazzy tune slunk through the room. Darling walked into the crowd, microphone raised. Her voice was soft and low as she began to sing…

You are my sunshine,

my only sunshine…

She was a long way from our booth in the back of the club.

I wanted so badly to sink into the melody of the song, to let the flash and bang of the show to soothe me.

Dandelion had to yell over the music. “They might be here. We could be missing the most obvious place to find them.”

You make me happy,

when skies are gray…

 Darling was coming this way. My stomach roiled. I loved Darling O’Daymin’s acts – her soothing voice and saucy costumes, which ranged from slinky old-school gowns all the way to neo medieval.

I scanned the room – no Willow.

You’ll never know dear,

How much I love you…

Tears sprang to my eyes. If Dandelion had wanted to watch a drag show, they could have come alone. I leaned into their ear, “I’m going.”

“Thorn, wait.” Dandelion hopped off the stool at our high table and followed me through the crowd. While the people around us were dressed their best in gowns and colourful button-ups, I felt out of place in my scruffiest jeans and t-shirt, along with a raggedy red hoodie that had faded to a dull pink over the years. Dandelion was dressed in much the same.

 Behind us, Darling’s voice rolled through the room, becoming nothing but a faraway memory as I opened an exit door and left the act behind.

I crouched against the wall and gulped the air, desperately trying to force my breathing to slow and relax.

“One, two, three,” Dandelion crouched beside me and breathed in as they counted, then breathed out with, “four, five six,” as they rubbed my back. They continued to count and breathe in and out, in and out. Slowly, my own breath became longer and slower until it matched theirs.

“I’m sorry. It was a bad idea, okay? I just thought…” They sighed, “Maybe Willow left because they wanted to. And then… well, they wouldn’t miss their favourite drag queen.”

“They’ve never left this long just because of a fight.” I argued.

“They’ve been overwhelmed, lately. We all are.”

 “No. Not like this. They wouldn’t be on the run with no contact for three weeks. They’d at least talk to me.”

Dandelion’s hand pulled away from my back. “I’m sorry, okay?” They rubbed their shaved head.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Look, as soon as we find Willow, I’ll tell them I’m out. I’ll find a place of my own where I can’t fuck it all up.”

“Dandelion, no.” Tears made my voice croaky and hoarse. I leaned against them. “We’ve talked about this. You’re not going anywhere, okay? Or we’ll find you and bring you back.” I let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t think this is normal. I think something happened to them. Something like…”

“The kind of thing that happens to people like us?” Dandelion asked quietly.

I nodded. “Maybe we should be checking dumpsters, not drag shows.” More tears spilled over my cheeks. I wiped them away on my sweater.

“Okay.” They shrugged.

We both looked up at the one down the alley from us, dark and green and filthy. God, Willow could be in there as well as any place…

I shot to my feet and strode to it, lifting the lid and staring into the shadowed depths. I let the lid fall with a loud clang.

Dandelion joined me and ripped the lid upward, clambering upward and into the metal bin.

“What are you doing?”

“Come on, you barely checked. We need to get in under all of this garbage or it’s gunna haunt us.”

“I don’t… Dandelion, I was being more hyperbolic than anything. I don’t really… oh god, what if they-“

“I’m checking.” Dandelion kicked a bag to one side of the pile.

“Wait!” I searched around the alley until I found a stick that had been swept in from the sidewalk. Reluctantly, I looked at the filth covering the dumpster, then threw the stick in and followed it unceremoniously. I was too late with the stick – Dandelion grunted with disgust as they hauled a bag from the top of the pile and threw it over the edge of the metal bin.

Still, I used it to help sift through the layers of trash and poke for any signs of a… our friend.

It took us several minutes of grunting and grimacing before we were done. By the end, bags of garbage littered the alley. Only the scraped-up bottom of the dumpster stood beneath us.

Without a word I began climbing out of the dumpster.

“Yo, what the fuck?!” Our heads snapped upward toward a person illuminated by an open door.

We froze.

 “Run!”  Dandelion yelled, half-hazardly vaulting out of the metal bin.

I stopped for them, making direct eye contact with the irate employee behind us before beginning to run.

When we were halfway to our place, we stopped to catch our breath.

I looked over at Dandelion, whose eyes were wide. All at once a smile broke out over my face. I tried to fight it, but laughter soon followed.

Dandelion joined me. “Willow’s going to think we’re freaking crazy!”

“I can already picture their face as we tell them we’re banned from Azure!”

“Well, it’s their fault. Fuck, I bet they’re shacked up with some hot older guy. Remember the dude they met at church?”

I nodded “I remember.”

“I bet he made them say “oh god,” a lot.” They grumbled.

“Dandelion!” I admonished, but my lips twitched into another smile.

“What! They deserve this! They have us worried!”

I sighed. “Leave their sex life alone.”

We walked a few more blocks in silence.

I reached out for Dandelion’s hand, only to draw back in disgust when I realized how sticky it was. “Ugh, what were we even doing? We should let the police do this kind of stuff.”

“The police don’t give a fuck.”

“I know.” I agreed quietly. We’d been calling them every few days, but the clerk we’d spoken to on speaker phone had been bored at best and irritable at worst.

We were quiet the rest of the way. When we finally turned down the alleyway with the back door to our apartment, something seemed off. It felt like… someone was there.

“Hello?” I called. Something stirred down the alley. “Willow?” hope effused me.

“Get out from there.” There was a strange edge in Dandelion’s voice as they took a step forward.

Fear,  I realized. They were posturing. Sure it could be Willow - or it could be whoever had attacked them.

A dark shape shot out from behind a dumpster and ran at Dandelion. I screamed as it tackled them to the ground.

Dandelion’s hands shot outward to its head, its jaws snapping inches from their nose.

I was frozen in place. All I could do was stare.

Dandelion screamed – the thing had bit into their arm and was savaging it.

On instinct, I kicked it, almost tripping in my haste, then managed to catch myself and boot it again. Hard.

The thing turned to me – white face, black hair, snarl curling its lips and wrinkling its nose.

It’s a person, I had a moment to think, then I ran.

Behind me, the thing screeched in rage.

I didn’t look back, but I knew it was following me.

I stomped down the alleyway and threw myself into the street.

A bright light.

Tires screeching.

A revving engine.

I cringed away from the vehicle as it slammed the brakes.

The creature was still growling  behind me. I ran into the next alley, but there was a chainlink fence in front of me.

The creature was there, standing back, watching me wearily.

Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Dandelion talking with an edge of panic in their voice.

My knife -  I kept a pocket knife on me at all times just in case. Mostly, I used it for opening boxes or slitting mail.

I hurriedly pulled it out, almost dropping it as I worked to open it.

I brandished it at the thing – it didn’t like that, its lips pulling back so that it could hiss.

A shiver went up my spine.

I was going to die.

This person was sick. Dangerous.

And they were going to kill me.

And I might have to hurt them.

I might have to stab them.

They needed help and all I could do was stand here with my tiny fucking knife and try to kill them before they killed me.

The thing lunged, but I swiped at it with the knife.

It dodged.

Suddenly, the alley was alight with golden light, somewhere right in front of me, something was shining like a flashlight, then the alley was bathed in the stark white light of some sort of vehicle.

The creature turned and hissed again.

“Thorn, it’s Willow!” Dandelion screamed.

Willow? I thought numbly. Then I recognized the grungy hoodie, what used to be Thorne’s favourite shade of blue. The slim build and long, tangled black hair. It was Thorne.

“What’s wrong with them?” I yelled.

Dandelion ran forward, casting a shadow in the light. “Willow, it’s okay. It’s okay.” They were cradling their injured arm, hunched in on themself.

Thorne snarled and backed up toward me a bit, then seemed to realize they were penned it. With a final screech they turned on me.

On instinct I cringed and held the blade out.

Felt it sink into something.

Heard the thing inhale sharply.

Heard Dandelion scream.

I opened my eyes.

The knife was gone from my hands - it was sticking out of Willow’s stomach.

They touched it, then looked at me with shocked eyes through the tangled mess of their hair.

“Willow?” I whispered.

They let out a caterwaul of rage and ripped the knife from their body, then lunged at me again.

Dandelion screamed.

I closed my eyes.

A brilliant golden light filled my vision, then I heard the rattle of the chainlink fence behind me, and something running.

I opened my eyes.

Willow was gone

“Thorn, are you okay?” Dandelion was in front of me.

“I stabbed them,” I said in a small voice I didn’t recognize. “I stabbed Willow.”

I collapsed to my knees.

Dandelion managed to catch me, wincing at the pain.

I heard them grunt from it, then all was dark.

For context, this is a fantasy story about a young man joining a prominent adventurer party, The Sweeper's, this well into the story after he is an established member and is doing his first big job, inspecting an old dungeon where an evil mage captured a princess from another country.

This scene takes place after a battle against a very powerful minotaur and one party member died, and so after the dust settles, the scene begins:

Deep into the Fire Temple, The Sweeper's find themselves at low point, they have beaten the Minotaur but at what cost?

Mary is completely exhausted of both her stamina and mana, Mic is practically down with severe headaches, Antunes is riddled with a lack of remaining resources... The Morale is about as low as it could be.

Tacat and Rucker are setting up camp in the arena while Blu tends to the tired trio as she prepares food, cold towels, medical care, but Plínio? He is distraught, he sits near the edge of the arena in his usual crisscross, staring at the various marking on the wall, scars from a fierce battle to took itself beyond the circular metal platform and into the very air, above massive pit of lava in total defiance of gravity.

His eyes fly across the mural thinking of memories, the pain, the noise, the blurs. "That hole... It could have been me" he mutters to himself, despite having said that he was fine, Her death was still on his mind.

"Why? Were we not good enough for you? Hell, why was that thing so powerful? Nothing before it was this strong, I couldn't do shit against it! Nobody could. Well, Mary could... And she revived everyone too, she revived me... I DIED and didn't even notice it." These thoughts were flowing through his head at fast pace...

What were just 10 minutes of reflection felt like forever, the guilt, the shame, the jealousy the self pity. All circling like an old washing machine, noisy, bumbbling, sometimes one ever wonders it will break from its wild motion. As the feeling flows, the senses distort, the view into the cracked walls blurries, the sensation of heat fades, the noise of his teammates ceases, there is nothing... Complete void in both mind, body and heart for an eternity.

And cheerful voice slowly reaches "Hey! HEY!" His body jitters, as it notices the sound. "Plínio! Get back here, Mic is grilling that salamander again, I know you want it!" Mary's voice echoes through his mind as a bit of noise comes from him "heh, yeah I'm coming" his own voice reverberating through him yet too low to be heard as his mouth was still shut.

Het gets up, while facing the wall and the lava one last time, his foot takes one step while he thinks to himself "well, that's enough thinking, I will just turn aro-" and suddenly, a chain circles his body aggressively, Blu with all her might yanks Plínio back into the middle of the arena.

Landing on what felt like soft cloth, Plínio barely has any time to process what just happened, just as he thinks about raising his voice, he is enveloped by a pair of arms covered in blue cloth, he looks up and takes witness to those unexpressive thick lenses and face coverings, as if he could see right through them.

He looks around and sees all faces staring at him, Mary and Mic speak up in synchrony "dude, are you alright? Wanna talk about it?" They don't take notice of the coincidence, Plínio saw everyone's worried expressions, "what? You guys..." He raised his left forearm and clutches Blu's right arm "did you all really think I was about to..." His grip on her arm tightens "I was literally think about turning around!" He says with a big smile.

Sighs of relief are heard from everyone, "Sorry man, you had us scared for moment lets just eat, its on me this time" Mic says while offering a perfect grilled fire salamander skewer.

As his body leans foward and his right hand reaches for his prized meal, that comforting embrace turns into forceful pull "I am taking one fourth of that" as Blu defiantly lands her chin on his forehead, hugging his entire torso, "oh, right... I did take a bite out of your rations yesterday" he said with an annoyed expression that bears a faint mischievous smile.

Even while grieving, the Sweeper's enjoy a mean with smiles and plan out their next course of action.

The little bell above the door rang.

That sound always felt like permission to leave the day behind.

Mama didn't ask how work had gone. She never did. She simply placed a glass of Harper bourbon in front of me.

The ice clinked softly.

"Kenichi."

Taka looked up from his phone with the expression of someone who had stumbled across something too strange to ignore.

"Can I ask you something?"

"When have you ever waited for permission?"

He grinned.

"I found a school rule online. Apparently there's a school where students are only allowed to wear a scarf if they're wearing a coat."

I stopped halfway to taking a sip.

"So... what happens if it's cold but you aren't wearing a coat?"

"Then no scarf."

"Interesting. I didn't realize cold weather cared about dress codes."

Taka laughed.

I did too.

But only for a moment.

It was easy to laugh at rules that made no sense.

It was much harder to know which rules only looked pointless because we'd forgotten why they existed.

I'd seen that happen more than once at work.

A procedure everyone complained about would finally disappear—only for us to discover a month later that it had been quietly preventing a problem nobody remembered anymore.

Other procedures survived for decades while accomplishing absolutely nothing.

The difficult part was telling the difference.

"So it's a stupid rule, right?"

"I think it probably is."

"I knew you'd say that."

"But that doesn't mean schools shouldn't have rules."

Taka tilted his head.

"You think they need them?"

Tom raised his whiskey.

"Any organization needs rules."

"Even the police?"

Tom laughed.

"Especially the police. Uniforms. Reports. Crime scenes. If everyone makes up their own way of doing things, somebody gets hurt."

"So schools are the same?"

"I've never worked in one," Tom said. "But when you're responsible for hundreds of kids every day, I imagine chaos isn't much of an educational philosophy."

That sounded reasonable.

Schools aren't just classrooms.

At least, not in Japan.

They teach math and literature.

But they also teach children to greet people properly.

To arrive on time.

To clean their own classrooms.

To eat lunch together.

To wear a uniform.

Somewhere along the way, schools became responsible not only for education, but for raising children into members of society.

Maybe that's what school rules really are.

Not just restrictions.

A visible outline of where society expects schools to take responsibility.

Which only made the question harder.

"Tell me something."

I rolled the ice around my glass.

"What exactly is a school supposed to do?"

Taka blinked.

"What do you mean?"

"Is it there to teach subjects?"

"Well..."

"Or is it there to raise people?"

Neither of them answered immediately.

Companies teach people how to work.

How to solve problems.

How to treat customers.

But nobody expects a company to teach someone how to become a decent human being.

Schools are different.

Or at least, Japanese schools often are.

They've gradually been asked to carry responsibilities that once belonged to families, neighborhoods, and communities.

If that's true...

Then maybe the endless list of school rules isn't simply the school's fault.

Maybe everyone else quietly handed those responsibilities over.

"It's still true that some rules don't make sense," Taka said.

"I agree."

"And schools should rethink them."

"They should."

"But..."

I nodded.

"They're probably not the only ones who should."

He frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"We've gotten comfortable asking schools to solve problems that belong to all of us."

The words surprised even me.

It was easier when somebody else made the rules.

Easier when responsibility belonged to an institution instead of individuals.

Teachers probably felt the same pressure.

Changing a rule isn't difficult.

Living with everything that changes afterward is.

"So..." Taka asked quietly.

"Do schools need rules or not?"

I couldn't answer.

Rules matter.

That doesn't mean every existing rule deserves to survive.

More freedom might encourage children to think for themselves.

Or it might simply reward the loudest voices.

Strict rules can suppress individuality.

They can also create a place where everyone starts from the same line.

Neither answer felt complete.

"In the end..."

I set my glass down.

"...what kind of adults is a school trying to raise?"

Adults who follow rules?

Adults who question them?

Adults who preserve society?

Or adults who change it?

A society can't survive if nobody respects rules.

But it can't grow if nobody challenges them either.

For a while, only the sound of ice filled the room.

Then Mama smiled.

"I think..."

The three of us looked toward her.

"...the best schools raise people who can explain the extraordinary using common sense."

Silence settled over the bar again.

Not people who reject common sense.

Not people who blindly obey it.

People who understand it well enough to translate something unfamiliar into words everyone else can understand.

I couldn't help smiling.

"That sounds difficult."

Mama placed another polished glass back onto the shelf.

"That's why it takes years."

I finished the last sip of Harper.

The ice gave one final, quiet clink.

Sometimes the purpose of rules isn't to stop people from thinking.

Sometimes it's to teach them enough about the world that, one day, they can decide which rules are worth keeping—and explain why.

Outside, the night carried on as if nothing had changed.

Inside Bar Aoi, I wasn't so sure.

It is titled “Brotherly Love” and it is based on the biblical story of Cain and Abel.
Genres: literary fiction, psychological horror/tragedy
TW: some gore and violence, mild swearing
Description: this is a story of twin brothers following an action that one of them did that neither can forgive.
Word count: 1640

I don’t want to spoil much just please give me feedback :)

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/10xAHOBjziDakiTEVJ8TOKWVRF0rk22fpb8jbCG\\_lgp4/edit?usp=drivesdk\](https://docs.google.com/document/d/10xAHOBjziDakiTEVJ8TOKWVRF0rk22fpb8jbCG_lgp4/edit?usp=drivesdk)

It is titled “Brotherly Love” and it is based on the biblical story of Cain and Abel.
Genres: literary fiction, psychological horror/tragedy
TW: some gore and violence, mild swearing
Description: this is a story of twin brothers following an action that one of them did that neither can forgive.
Word count: 1640

I don’t want to spoil much just please give me feedback :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10xAHOBjziDakiTEVJ8TOKWVRF0rk22fpb8jbCG_lgp4/edit?usp=drivesdk

TW: Domestic Violence

Dear Mom,

I love you because my first memory is of you carrying me away. I’m under your arm, silently confused. I look up at your face and a bolt of shock goes through me: it’s covered in rivulets of blood. They mix with your tears and drip to the ground. You’re staring ahead, sniffling.

I look behind us. My father is pacing like a dust devil forward and back across our bottom-floor balcony, a flat rectangle of concrete behind which looms the blue apartment building that must have been our home. He’s saying things I don’t understand in a voice that scares me. He picks up a heavy glass bottle and throws it toward us. It twirls in the air before landing several feet short and bouncing in the grass impotently.

That’s the end of the memory.

When I got older, I realized I should have never been there in the first place. To hell with you carrying me away – why was that man in our apartment?

And why had you had kids with him?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-hyWfpmWP2tLDETttwNUAZwDQK6UTUOBeFu3AC7GVJQ/edit?usp=sharing

Hello all! This is a small excerpt from a longer short story I am writing. It's a Lovecraft-inspired story about grief and learning to let go. It takes inspiration from the Dunwich Horror and The Fisherman by John Langan. I'm worried the pacing isn't great and that it's a bit of an information dump towards the end of the segment.

Self-annihilation has begun to resemble paradise. Within a padded cell whose walls stink faintly of bleach and mildew, I await either release or execution. The physicians who attend me speak in whispers just beyond the door, as though I were already a corpse laid out for examination. Perhaps I soon shall be. They believe I am a danger to myself. In truth, death would be kinder. There are worse ends than madness, and worse things than death, waiting beyond the threshold of memory. Freedom may only place me again before the thing that strips flesh from bone. I set this account to paper in the event that I do not survive what follows. Let no man say I have succumbed to merely guilt or madness.

The beginning of my ruin lies several years behind me. My wife, Ella, and I had only recently returned from our studies abroad. She was with child and wished to be nearer to our families before the birth. She came from Danvers; I from Essex. We settled for a time not far from Salem. We had first met during an especially bitter Summer. Occultism had become more fashionable among certain academic circles. Ella and I treated it as a little more than an intellectual diversion. We attended lectures, purchased obscure texts, and spent long evenings wandering Salem‘s narrow streets while the sea fog rolled between the old buildings like drifting specters. I remember her laughter more clearly than her face now. There was a warmth in her presence that made even that melancholy town seem almost alive. Looking back, I think I loved her from the first time we spoke, though at the time I just took the feeling of familiarity as though some forgotten part of me had suddenly returned.

However, at the time that life only existed as a dream. I will never get to touch her skin or hear her laugh. Nor will I ever know the comfort of a whole family. Ella and our baby died during childbirth, leaving me alone with an overwhelming silence. Our home itself seemed altered by their absence. Its halls stretched emptier than before. The floorboards creaked through the night with a peculiar complaint of an old home, settling in age; every room carries the sensation of abandonment. I became another ghost inhabiting its halls.

Robert, Ella‘s brother, visited often following their deaths. Always with a sense of determination to pull me from the pit I had no intention of leaving. Drink became my sole companion at first. Later came morphine. It dulled thought itself. Its warmth softened the corners of memory and made the hours pass with less resistance under its embrace. The house became almost tolerable. Its empty halls were less accusatory. Even though I prayed each night. I prayed that Ella would return to me, that she would step through the front door as she once had, our child clenched in her arms. But no answer ever came. Nothing except the low groans of settling wood in the hollow sounds of a dying home.

Months passed in this manner until Robert arrived, one evening, carrying a bundle of cheaply printed pulp magazines, poorly made, and filled with forgettable stories from equally forgettable authors. I would’ve cast it aside. Had one title, not caught my attention. The Necronomicon… to most men it would’ve been meaningless-a bit of lurid fiction intended to provoke nonsense. Yet, I had encountered the name once before during my years at Cambridge, spoken only in passing by certain scholars who took care never to discuss it openly. They were rumors then. Rumors of surviving copies hidden within restricted collections. Aleister Crowley had sought the text and emerged from the attempt profoundly altered. At the time, I dismissed such stories as academic superstition. Later, I became less certain.

Crowley had written, though always indirectly. That the book contains text capable of disturbing the boundary between life and death. He warned that such knowledge shattered the minds of ordinary men. Yet there were passages in his account, suggesting something far worse. Broken minds did not always shatter further, but instead found some sense of clarity. At the time, there were three surviving copies of the Necronomicon were rumored to exist. One had supposedly vanished into the possession of Crowley or the remnants of the Golden Dawn. The other rested within the restricted archives of Miskatonic University in Arkham. The final was at Cambridge.

I do not recall when the thought first entered my mind. Only that, once conceived, it’s ceased to loosen its grip upon me. If even a fragment of that account were true, death itself was not final. Ella and our child were not beyond reach. The grave was not a boundary, but a veil thin enough, perhaps to be pierced by those willing to surrender themselves. What shames me now is not that I believed in such madness. It is the idea that appeared perfectly reasonable to me. I abandoned prayer soon after. The God of modern man had remained deaf to my suffering, and I found myself turning instead toward older and less merciful powers. Before doubt could reclaim me, I departed for Arkham

The journey lasted nearly two days and exists only in fragments now.
I remember the endless rain, the hot breath of my horse against the freezing wind, and the gray Massachusetts coastline fading beneath the sea fog. The towns I passed through have long since blurred together in my memory.

When the first day gave way to night, moonlight alone guided the road before me. By then, it no longer felt as though I traveled toward Arkham, but rather that something had begun drawing me there.
As the night deepened, the insects and muffled rhythm of hooves against dirt slowly gave way to something else.

Her voice.
Low and gentle, yet unmistakable.
Ella whispered to me through the darkness, assuring me that I was saving them. Whatever uncertainty remained within me died upon hearing those words.
Even now, I cannot fully dismiss the memory of seeing her figure standing wherever the moonlight touched the road most clearly. Whether it was the morphine, the liquor, or something far worse, I cannot say.

I reached Arkham near noon the following day.
The town itself lay buried beneath an oppressive fog. Narrow cobblestone streets glistened with rainwater, bordered by sagging storefronts and condemned buildings left to decay beside the shore. The air carried the stench of mildew, saltwater, and rotting fish.
No voices drifted through the streets.
Only the sound of my horse echoed through the mist.

Taka sat at the end of the counter, flicking through his phone with restless fingers.

"No way. This is amazing."

His voice wasn't loud, but there was an unmistakable excitement in it, sending a small ripple through the quiet air of Bar Aoi.

Tom sat in his usual seat, lazily rolling a glass of I.W. Harper between his fingertips. Ice clicked softly against crystal.

His eyes weren't on Taka's phone.

They were somewhere around the old clock hanging on the wall.

I took a sip of my whiskey, letting the warmth settle in my throat before looking over.

"What've you found?"

"It's this article. Somebody made an Evangelion pilgrimage tour. You visit Hakone and Misato greets you. At the end, some ridiculously muscular foreign guy dressed as Rei Ayanami welcomes everyone."

He turned the screen toward me.

The text was too small for eyes that had started losing arguments with age.

"They really went through all that trouble?"

"That's exactly why it's great. Total commitment. You know, the people who buy twenty copies of the same CD just to support their favorite idol? I kind of get that."

He wiped his hands with the wet towel the bartender had left.

His tone was as casual as ever, but underneath it was something quieter—something that sounded like someone remembering what it felt like to be obsessed with something.

"You used to lose your mind at GLAY concerts."

Taka scratched the back of his head.

"...Okay, you got me."

Then I shrugged.

"These days I can't even tell those giant idol groups apart anymore. BTS, whoever else... they all seem to have more members than my old project teams."

It came out sounding more bitter than I intended.

I watch anime.

I wait for new seasons of SPY×FAMILY. I still get excited every time another Space Battleship Yamato remake is announced.

But compared to people who pour every ounce of themselves into what they love...

Compared to someone whose passion borders on obsession...

All I can think is:

Sorry.

I consume one interesting thing after another until the next one comes along.

Maybe I'm not hungry anymore.

Maybe I'm just numb.

Tom set his glass down.

The thick base touched the wooden counter with a quiet tok.

"You can't tell them apart because you're getting old, Kenichi."

"Fair enough."

"But the system itself is fascinating."

He paused.

"It's a perfect idol machine. Different from the days when Seiko Matsuda defined an entire generation."

He said nothing more.

Whenever Tom stopped himself like that, it usually meant he'd seen something ugly before.

I had learned not to ask.

"An idol machine..."

I stared up at the ceiling.

Something sat heavily in my stomach.

"When we were young..."

I smiled to myself.

"Chicago. TMN. We'd wear cassette tapes out listening to the same album over and over again."

"It just sounds like nostalgia."

Taka grinned.

"I wasn't thinking that deeply."

Of course he wasn't.

But somehow...

He looked like he understood anyway.

No one ever said the important part out loud.

We were all just throwing little fragments of ourselves across the counter.

Somehow, the spaces between those fragments fit together on their own.

"What about you, Mama?"

Taka looked toward the other side of the counter.

"What did you listen to growing up? Hikaru Utada?"

She stopped polishing a glass for a moment and smiled.

"I listened to her a lot."

"Favorite song?"

"Flavor of Life."

She laughed softly.

"My friends and I used to sing it at karaoke."

Mama never said more than she needed to.

That was simply who she was.

"But when I listened to her..."

She looked down at the glass in her hands.

"...it always felt like someone was quietly telling me..."

"You'll be okay, even when you're alone."

That was all.

But somehow, those few words carried the loneliness of a generation that had grown up connected to everyone, all the time.

Maybe...

The struggle had simply changed shape.

We wanted to be alone.

They don't want to be alone.

Thinking about it that way...

Everything suddenly made sense.

"...Maybe."

I lifted my glass.

"That's just how it looks to me."

I wasn't trying to convince anyone.

I certainly wasn't claiming to understand younger generations.

I only knew that somewhere inside me...

The loneliness I had searched for back then had quietly brushed against the loneliness they were trying to escape now.

Taka raised his own glass.

"As long as people still have something they're willing to chase..."

He smiled.

"...they'll be okay."

"If you can still laugh, you can still take the fall."

Tom didn't answer.

The corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly.

For him, that was agreement.

Mama quietly placed a small plate of pickles on the counter.

The air inside Bar Aoi stayed exactly as it always had.

Neither warm nor cold.

Just a place where people could return, each carrying a different kind of loneliness.

​

The cat crossed the wall of the bakery just as the first tray of bread came out. He did know of this and just felt the warmth escaping the vents. The pigeon landed nearby with a chest puffed outward. It took three seemingly important steps, found nothing and took three more. The cat walked on. The pigeon was still working on the same patch of roof when he dropped in the garden. The grass was wet near the fence. he went around it. Fence, stone, gap, wall. Somewhere past the houses the black dog was barking as usual. The cat stopped hearing it as something that meant nothing.

At the park the fence post leaned the way it always does. He stopped, put his head down and breathed in past the wet wood, earth and something sweet. She came most afternoons he would find her near the post. She would crouch down and he would let be held, something he wouldn’t let most things do. He knew her the way he knew the wet patch by the fence. The sound of her running which was different from other children. The warmth of her coat. Whatever she had eaten.

When she left each day she stayed in the post. He checked it every morning. She was always there.

Then she came less. He still came by. She was still in the post. That was the same thing, near enough. The gaps between afternoons became large enough to notice. Then occasional weekends. Then not very often.

He never waited for her. That wasn’t what it was. Every morning he put his head down and she was there and he went on with his route The pigeon still crossed the same roofs. It simply spent longer deciding they were worth crossing. The bark began arrived later each morning. The route stayed the same but took longer, the way it does when you are the one that has changed and not the route.

Then one morning the grass was long around the post and he breathed in and found rain, soft wood, earth, a squirrel from the day before. He checked around him. The stone the grass at the base. A breeze came and then he waited. Nothing. For the first time knowing wasn’t enough to make him leave. The blackbird went on. Other children crossed the park. The light touched everything equally. The post ,the path the oak, all of it the same. He got up after a long time and checked again.

Wood. Rain. Earth. Then he sat back down. Then he spotted her. Taller now sitting at the bench on the far end of the park. She sat there at the edge as if she arrived before deciding to stay. He crossed the grass without deciding to. After closing the gap he almost moved away. The scent was wrong. Then her fingers found the place behind his ear. Exactly there. Not near it. Not after searching. There. He closed his eyes. For years he had trusted scent because scent remained. Yet the scent had vanished from the post. The rain had taken it. The years had changed it. This remained. The hand was different. The scent was different. The touch was not.

After a while she stood. He dropped to the grass. She went to the gate and through it without looking back. He watched until the gate had more of her than the park did. He went back to the post and put his head down. Rain. Wood. Earth. He waited put his head down again. Rain. Wood. Earth. Then underneath

Himself.

Fur ,dust, sunlight, the bakery and the wet grass and every wall and every morning still on him. He had never smelled that before. He stood there a while. Then turned and went home, the long way.

McCann slid into the back seat and closed the door. He said nothing. The chauffeur simply pulled away into the night. A few blocks later, as the vehicle drifted to a halt at a red light, the situation turned grim. In the heavy silence of the cabin, the driver was neutralized without a word. No hesitation. No loose ends. Yet…

He left the luxury sedan in a vacant parking lot, ensured the vehicle would not be recovered, and stepped out into the rain. He wrapped his old service pistol in a tatter of withered newspaper stashed inside his trench coat pocket and made his way toward Sandy Morrone’s bar, The Whitesnake. Sandy Morrone was a local mob enforcer for ‘Lucky’ Jack Martinez—or as McCann knew him, a certain Lieutenant Jack Haigh.

But that was a lifetime ago. Rain gathered in oily puddles outside the warped wooden entrance, reflecting the neon serpent coiled above the door. A white shimmer, emanating from its gem-encrusted eyes, flashed across McCann's glasses. He stepped up the decayed staircase toward the entrance, where a lone bouncer blocked the doorway.

“Name?”
“Tom Caine,” McCann replied.

The bouncer jerked his thumb toward the birch-wood panelled door. Inside, a cluster of card games flanked an alcohol-stained bar lined with mahogany benches and burgundy seat covers. McCann took a seat at the high-stakes table, lifting a highball glass of rum and cola to steady his nerves. At the centre of the blackjack tournament sat Sonny Morrone. He was dressed in a pressed white shirt and slacks, a heavy overcoat draped over his broad shoulders. Win the game, reap the rewards. The current stakes stood at half a million dollars, but McCann wanted to test the waters.“I’ll buy in," McCann said, leaning forward. "How does twenty thousand sound?”For a rigid moment, sneers rippled through the small crowd. It was an insultingly low amount for this table, but it caught the eye of Morrone, who chuckled softly.

“Are you a man of your word, sir?” Morrone asked, addressing his new challenger.
“I tend to be. I like to live dangerously.”

McCann took a sip of his drink. The raw alcohol burned his throat, forcing a slight cough. As he pulled a fraudulent, bad cheque from his pocket to hold their attention, his other hand slid the newspaper-wrapped pistol onto his lap. The dealer began to shuffle the deck, sliding the first round of cards across the green felt. McCann lit a cigarette and exhaled the harsh smoke. Two minutes, he thought.The game of blackjack began well enough. He played his part, keeping his eyes on his chips, though the money meant nothing to him anyway. Just as he was about to make his next move, a muffled roar rattled the building. Outside, the sedan had finally been consumed by flames, sending a wave of panic and confusion through the room. It was always good to have a distraction.

The card game halted instantly. The minuscule crowd abandoned the table, crowding the frosted windows to gawk at the growing chaos outside. Now, only Morrone remained, seated at the opposite end of the felt-lined table. McCann took another calm drag of his cigarette, washed down the smoke with a sip of his drink, and leveled the newspaper-wrapped weapon beneath the mahogany. He leaned in, pressing the cold, silenced tip of his pistol directly into Morrone's groin.

“Do not look at the window, Morrone. Look at me.”

The patron let out a nervous dry laugh. “Aren’t you the callous one Mr Caine? I thought better of you. At least let me have one final drink before I kill you mysel…”

The agent fired two subsonic rounds into his lower abdomen. The shots instantly making the man slump over the cards counter, his eyes rolling into the back of his head, ending the game before his last word, the confrontation subdued by the commotion outside. The weapon discarded across Sonny’s limp thighs. Standing up, he left a bloodied scrawl on the back of a playing card, and gathered his winnings.

‘you know where to find me Haigh’

https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/the-mannequin/list?title_no=1127931

10 minutes from the capitol, I draw shapes with my eyeliner. I add color and glitter. I flip over cards, I say "red or black". The day before, the capitol condemned everyone in this room. I say "higher or lower". My friend places a plastic cup beside me and we play pop songs from 2015. I say "in between or outside". My friend dances with his hips. I say "take a shot!"

3 hours from the capitol, I sit on my porch. In the breaks of conversation, I read a poem asking to feel safe holding hands in Texas. I turn it face down, turn to the girl I kissed in high school, and talk about jewelry and growing up. The cicadas fill any quiet, and she tells me about her mother. I say I had to scare a coyote last time I dyed my hair. She says she's scared of college. I tell her to give it a shot.

8 minutes from the capitol, we get to the party. Last month, the capitol told our teachers what to say. We disappear in front of the band and yell too loud about everyone's piercings. We tell them we love their dyed hair. We bum cigarettes and hits of joints and take the shots hidden in our jacket pockets.

3 hours from the capitol, I drink stale coffee from a paper cup. My phone preaches the horrors of religion, of religion in this state. A woman a decade older than my grandmother asks me how I like school. The priest laughs when she sees my friends, said we all scattered years ago. I know, technically, I could not get married in this building. A kid runs by, and the bells tole. Someone says I heard the new bishop is better, let's give him a shot.

20 minutes from the capitol, I open instagram in my room. Someone posting a video from Boston tells me: don't ever go to Texas looking queer- you'll get shot.

I didn’t include any huge details about the middle/end of the story but I want some opinions on it. Sorry I rushed to make the summary so the format isn’t perfect but if any clarification is needed I can oblige :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/158ytcxa9IlvoUTS1i57E5XbLk57eJPrG0wJIBw7LPzo/edit?usp=drivesdk

Bar Aoi Stories — Choosing Not to Think

Clink.

The little bell above the door chimed.

Funny how a simple sound could tell me the workday was finally over.

Without asking a question, Mama set a glass of I.W. Harper in front of me.

Ice settled with a quiet click.

"Kenichi."

Taka sat across from me, staring at his phone with the kind of expression that usually meant trouble.

I liked that about him.

Curiosity had a habit of dragging him into places most people never bothered to look.

"So," I said, lifting my glass, "what did you discover today?"

He hesitated.

"What do you think is really happening in Xinjiang?"

My hand stopped halfway.

"I don't know."

His eyebrows rose.

"You don't?"

I smiled.

"I don't know what I don't know."

"I'm no all-knowing sage."

"I've never been there."

Tom laughed quietly.

"Neither have I."

The former detective lifted his gin.

"I never investigated it."

"I never collected the evidence myself."

"I'm not good enough to pretend certainty where I have none."

Taka looked disappointed.

Poor kid.

There was something burning inside him.

A stubborn sense of justice.

Admirable.

Dangerous.

Necessary.

"But everyone online sounds so sure."

"That's the internet."

I couldn't help smiling.

"The people speaking with the greatest certainty are often the ones standing farthest away."

Mama had been polishing a glass.

Only then did she speak.

"But you know..."

The three of us turned.

"History rarely stays hidden forever."

Silence settled over the bar.

"Rwanda."

"Bosnia."

"Cambodia."

She spoke the names softly.

No drama.

No anger.

To me, it sounded like someone reading names from old gravestones.

"When those things were happening..."

"Many people said, 'That can't be true.'"

"They called it exaggeration."

"They doubted."

She placed the glass back onto the shelf.

"And years later..."

"New witnesses appeared."

"New evidence surfaced."

"The world looked back..."

"...and saw those events differently."

Tom took a slow sip of his gin.

"Cases are like that, too."

"You rarely see the whole picture while it's happening."

"Sometimes it takes years before all the pieces fit."

He looked into his glass.

"But the victims don't get those years back."

I took a sip of my bourbon.

"You know..."

"I used to think the stories about Xinjiang were probably exaggerated."

Taka looked at me.

"I kept asking myself..."

"'Would a country that powerful really do something like that?'"

"So..."

"What do you think now?"

I shook my head.

"I still don't know."

"I don't know exactly what's happening."

"I can't honestly claim that I do."

"I've never seen it with my own eyes."

Taka relaxed a little.

"So maybe..."

"...there's no point thinking about it."

I laughed.

"That's exactly where I disagree."

The ice clicked softly.

"I've never liked pretending I know things."

"But refusing to think..."

"...just because I don't have every answer..."

"That isn't how I live."

The room grew quiet again.

"The world's full of things that aren't black and white."

"If we stop thinking..."

"Someone else will gladly do our thinking for us."

Tom nodded.

"Thinking isn't about rushing to a conclusion."

"It's about refusing to stop asking questions before you've earned one."

Mama smiled.

"History always asks the same question."

"When this was happening..."

"What were you thinking?"

I looked into my empty glass.

"I'd like to answer that question..."

"...in my own words."

Mama quietly poured another measure of Harper.

The ice chimed again.

As I listened to that familiar sound, a thought crossed my mind.

Maybe thinking isn't about finding the right answer.

Maybe it's about refusing to hand someone else...

...the responsibility of thinking for you.

Clink.

Hi, it's my first-time attempting creative writing. I have a background in science and education.

I love philosophy and have been exploring themes by writing character development and origin stories about the early Cynics, however it's turning into an ​epic undertaking of historical fiction.

My objective is to map the origins of Stoicism by exploring philosophy through the Cynics.

​I am open to any type of collaboration: co-author/critique or accountability partner. As long as you love exploring philosophy.

This is my first fantasy romance. This isn’t the full first chapter as I’m still writing, but would like feedback on what I have so far.

Oh Goddess, give me peace! The incessant giggling of the drunk Friday night college co-eds coming in for matching tattoos to commemorate friendship. A friendship that will undoubtedly disintegrate in the pounding haze of sobriety. If not for the thoughtful art I put on my clients, I'd question my career choice.

" Vee! You've got a request up front. He's asking for you by name. And when I say name, I mean full government name."

" Thanks Jay, give me a minute to clean up from my last client, then I'll be up."

That's concerning. I've done everything I can to bury Raveena Vaelaris and her trauma. The last thing I need is some dumb ass resurrecting her bullshit. I asked Brigid for peace, not a spoon to stir the pot of shit that is my past. I just want to focus of my art, make enough money to get away this hell hole I call home, and maintain my peace.

Walking out to the lobby, the only person I see is a light skinned man with short, curly hair. I can tell he's an enthusiast by all the large tattoos I see covering his arms and calves, but I don't recognize this man at all.

"Hi, I'm Vee, you were asking for me?"

"Uh... yeah, I'm Terran. We haven't actually met, but I've heard of you and your specialty in the occult."

"It's nice to meet you Terran, come on back and we'll talk about what you're wanting to get done."

As Terran approaches to follow, I notice his tattoos are a blend of celestial and elemental. His left arm is a sleeve of the night sky with the constellation of Taurus over a dark forest. He's conventionally attractive in that frat boy kind of way. He's wearing short chinos and a green tank top. His neatly messy hair sits on a symmetrical face and hazel eyes.

"Alright Terran, come on in and have a seat. Did you have something specific in mind, or are you wanting a custom piece? I assume it is related to the occult, since you mentioned my specialty."

"I do have a specific design I'm wanting to get done. There has been talk around the academy of a prophecy that is soon to come to fruition. It's of a powerful witch that has the ability to wield all five elements. I want to add her representation to my back piece."

"Well, take off your shirt and let me see what I'm working with."

His back is beautiful, the art is enchanting. I can't tell where it starts, the four scenes in front of me all flow together seamlessly, with only a two inch by twelve inch vertical section of untouched skin down the middle of his back, over his spine, from the nape of his neck to the bottom of his shoulder blades. On the upper left of his back he has the sky with clouds and wind blowing to rustle the leaves in the forest sitting atop a cliff on the opposite side of his back. Below the cliff was the ocean crashing into lava from the erupting volcano spilling smoke and ash into the sky. All four scenes blend to purple behind a pentacle in the middle, at about waist level.

"I can do it now if you'd like, but your back is a hymn to Danu and this feels like the final verse. Why not have the original artist do it?"

"It is the final verse, it's powerful, and needs to be done by a powerful witch, and that witch is you Raveena. I can taste it in your aura."

Yeah... this man is crazy!

"You do know that the magic I practice is not the magic where I summon a fireball in my hand, right? I'm no more powerful in my intentions than the next witch."

"Oh, but Ravee-

"Vee! My name is Vee, or you can call me Rae, but never call me Raveena, that bitch has been buried and I'd like to leave her that way, please and thank you!"

"Okay, okay, Vee it is. But you are a powerful witch, and you can summon a fireball in your hand if you want to. You are not of this realm. And this is not your home."

"If you say so Terran. I don't know who you are or where you're from, but if you want me to do this tonight, let's get to it. The shop closes in an hour, and I would like to make it home before last call."

Chapter One — The Job

Marshal Cole Brannick saw the settlement from three thousand meters up and already knew how the job would go.

Forty structures spread across a flat basin of red-brown dust, anchored by a landing pad on the eastern edge and a cluster of service buildings on the west. One road in, one road out, and nothing between the settlement and the horizon but the mining camp and the pale smear of mountains that didn't look close enough to matter.

"Setting down east side," Birch said from the pilot's seat, his hands working the Nightfall's controls with the easy precision of long practice. The cockpit's glow played across his broad, dark face: deep brown skin lined from decades of squinting into foreign suns, a close-cropped cap of gray hair that he still cut to something approximating military regulation, and a nose that had been broken at least twice and had healed both times without medical attention, leaving it with a slight lateral drift that he considered character rather than damage. He was wide the way loading docks and Marine rifle companies made men wide — not fat, not gym-built, just dense, compacted by thirty years of hauling heavy things and heavier responsibilities. His shoulders strained the seams of his coat and his hands on the controls looked like they'd been designed for a species slightly larger than human.

The settlement's layout was already on his screen, a schematic pulled from the Freehold's public registry, which was about as reliable as anything the Freehold published, meaning it was probably close enough. "Main strip runs north-south. Bar's on the west end, looks like. Repair shop next to it. Everything else is residential or storage." He glanced over at Brannick. "Forty structures. Maybe forty-five people on a good day. This is the kind of place where a sneeze makes the news."

Brannick was pulling on his coat, the weathered brown one with the Marshal's badge in the breast pocket and the cut that hid the holster on his right hip. The coat was the color of dust and old leather, and it hung on his lean frame as if he'd lost weight he hadn't gained back. He checked his sidearm by feel—the grip, the powerpack cylinder, the emitter alignment—then slid it back into the leather holster.

"He'll be in the bar."

"Probably." Birch brought the corvette down smooth, the landing struts finding the cracked pad with barely a shudder. He powered down the mains but left the auxiliaries running. He always left the auxiliaries running. A habit from the Marines, where a ship that couldn't lift in sixty seconds was a ship that might not lift at all. "Back door?"

Brannick nodded. "Give me sixty seconds to walk in the front. If he runs, he runs toward you."

"And if he doesn't run?"

"Then you're having a quiet morning."

Birch allowed himself a small, dry sound that might have been a laugh from a less economical man. His smile surfaced and vanished like a signal flare, quick and lopsided, warm in a way that made people forget they were talking to a man who could break them in half without adjusting his breathing.

Brannick followed him into the armory. The compartment was tight and ordered. Weapons lined the port bulkhead according to Birch's idea of order: sidearms by caliber, long weapons by application, every rack labeled in the same precise block lettering.

Against the starboard wall, standing in their cradles like sentinels from another life, two suits of Castalan Marine surplus power armor.

The armor was old but maintained. Birch had acquired the suits the same way he'd acquired the Nightfall: military surplus, auction or connections, rebuilt with care.

Brannick looked at them for a moment. The suits stood shoulder to shoulder in their cradles, headless and empty, the chest plates open like ribcages waiting to be filled. There was something both reassuring and faintly unsettling about their presence — the ghosts of the men he and Birch used to be, preserved in composite and servomotors, ready to be resurrected if the situation demanded it.

"Not today," he said.

Birch was pulling his sidearm from the rack. He glanced at the suits and shook his head. "One man, one warrant, forty people in a settlement. We show up in combat armor, we're not Marshals anymore. We're an invasion. Probably scare the target to death before we get a chance to read him his rights, which would be efficient but unprofessional."

"Agreed."

They left the armor in its cradles.

Brannick went down the ramp.

The heat hit him immediately, dry and granular, it coated the inside of your throat and made your eyes narrow before they adjusted. He could feel it on the exposed skin of his forearms and the back of his neck, the fair complexion already beginning its familiar protest against a star it hadn't evolved for.

The landing pad was a slab of cracked ferrocrete baking in the light. Weeds, or whatever passed for weeds on a planet with marginal soil, had pushed through the cracks in places, tough and colorless, the botanical equivalent of the people who lived here. A cargo hauler sat on the far side of the pad, old and blistered, its registration numbers half-obscured by dust that had accumulated in the recessed lettering like sediment in a riverbed.

Brannick crossed the landing pad and stepped onto the settlement's main strip. Calling it a street was generous. It was dirt packed and wide enough for two ground vehicles, lined on both sides with prefab structures that had been left to weather.

The strip smelled like machine exhaust and the faint, sweet rot of organic waste from a recycling system that wasn't keeping up. Underneath that, the mineral tang of whatever ore this planet produced carried in the dust and the clothes of the people who extracted it. Brannick had smelled a hundred variations of this smell on a hundred frontier worlds.

Two men sat on crates outside a storage unit, watching him with the flat attention of people who noticed strangers because strangers were either opportunities or problems. They were miners, by the look of them: heavy boots, thick hands, deeply tanned, hallmarks of the physical labor they performed each day.

Brannick gave them a nod that was polite without being friendly and kept walking. He could feel their eyes track him — the coat, the long stride that looked casual from a distance and looked like something else entirely up close.

The bar was exactly what he'd expected. Single story, prefab walls reinforced with welded plates that had been applied in overlapping sheets, giving the exterior the rough, scaled look of a reptile's hide. A door that had been replaced at least twice based on the mismatched frame, the current version heavier than the original — solid metal, hinged to swing inward, with a handle worn smooth by years of hands pushing through it.

Brannick pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The temperature dropped ten degrees in two steps. The interior was dim, cooled by a ventilation unit that hummed somewhere behind the walls, and the air smelled of recycled atmosphere, cheap alcohol, old sweat, and the staleness of a room where the same air had been breathed and rebreathed until it carried the memory of every conversation that had ever happened in it.

The bar was along the left wall, made of the same welded plate as the exterior reinforcement, its surface scarred with the circular ghosts of a thousand glasses and the occasional deeper gouge where a tool or a fist or a bottle had made contact with more force than the metal was designed for. Behind it, shelves of bottles, some labeled, some not, arranged in whatever order the bartender had deemed acceptable.

There were four people in the bar. The bartender, a heavyset woman with short gray hair and arms that suggested she handled her own security — the kind of arms you got from moving kegs and occasionally moving unruly customers. She stood behind the bar, cleaning a glass with a cloth in the universal gesture of bartenders who were watching without wanting to look like they were watching.

Marcus Decker.

He looked older than his warrant photo, which wasn't unusual. Running aged people in ways that years alone didn't. His hair was longer and unwashed, hanging past his ears in greasy strands.

He'd seen the coat. He'd seen how Brannick moved. And he knew.

Brannick walked to the bar. Not toward Decker.

"Morning," Brannick said.

"Morning." Her voice was flat, noncommittal, the single word carrying both an acknowledgment and a boundary. You can talk, but don't expect warmth.

"I'm looking for a man named Marcus Decker. Felony warrant out of the Castalan Republic. I’m a Marshal" He said it quietly, pitched for the bartender and no one else, though in a room this small and this silent the words carried further than that. He didn't reach for the badge. Reaching made people nervous — both the person you were showing it to and the person at the back table who might think you were reaching for something else. He'd learned that in his first month as a Marshal, when a fugitive on a station near Kolben had drawn on him because Brannick's hand moved toward his coat and the man couldn't tell the difference between a badge and a sidearm. Nobody died that day, but the lesson had been learned.

The bartender's eyes didn't move toward the back table. She was better than that.

"Don't want bounty hunters in my place, all they do is bring trouble" she said.

"I’m not a bounty hunter, I’m a Marshal. And I’m not looking for trouble or to be insulted, I’m just looking for a man.”

She didn’t seem to care for the distinction.

Brannick turned from the bar and faced the room. The two locals had gone still, their drinks forgotten, their attention fixed on the middle distance in the way of men who wanted to be invisible. They'd be talking about this in an hour, telling anyone who'd listen about the tall red-haired Marshal who walked into The Well and took Decker. But right now they wanted no part of it.

Decker was still in his chair. His right hand had moved below the table.

"Marcus Decker," Brannick said, his voice carrying the same calm, level tone he'd used with the bartender. "I'm Marshal Cole Brannick. I have a warrant for your arrest issued by the Third Circuit Court of the Castalan Republic. Charges are armed robbery and aggravated assault. The warrant specifies alive preferred, which means you and I both have a reason to keep this simple."

The room held its breath.

Decker's jaw worked. His deep-set eyes moved from Brannick to the door behind him — the front door, measuring the twelve feet between his table and the exit. Then to the hallway at the back, the dark narrow corridor that led to whatever was behind the bar.

"I didn't do what they said I did," Decker said. His voice was rough and dry, he clearly hadn't spoken to many people recently.

"That's between you and the court. It's not between you and me."

"I'm not going back."

Brannick studied him. Decker's hand was still below the table.

"You've got a weapon under that table," Brannick said. "I can see it in your shoulder. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to put that pistol on the table, and then you're going to put your hands where I can see them, and then we're going to walk out of here without anyone getting hurt. The warrant says alive preferred. I prefer alive. But the word that matters in that sentence is preferred, and I need you to understand what that means."

Silence.

The bartender had moved to the far end of the bar, putting distance and solid metal between herself and whatever was about to happen. The two locals were frozen. The only sound was the low hum of the ventilation system pushing stale air around the room and the distant, almost subliminal thrum of the settlement's generators carrying through the walls.

Decker's eyes went to the back hallway one more time.

The back door opened. Not kicked in, not slammed — just opened, steady and unhurried, a statement that said rushing wasn't necessary.

"Morning," Birch said, addressing the room as if he already owned it.

Decker's head turned from Brannick to Birch and back again. Front door and back door.

The compact pulse pistol came up from under the table — slowly, held by the emitter end between two fingers, presented rather than aimed. Decker set it on the table with a sound that was louder than it should have been in the quiet room, metal on metal, the finality of a decision made. Then he put his hands flat on either side of it and sat very still.

Brannick crossed the room in four steps. He took the pistol off the table, thumbed the release, and pulled the powerpack free in one practiced motion while his other hand moved Decker's wrists together behind the chair. Restraints came out of his coat pocket — lightweight, polymer-bonded, strong enough to hold a man twice Decker's size. They clicked shut with quiet authority.

"Stand up."

Decker stood. He was shorter than his file suggested, or maybe he'd just shrunk into himself over the months of running.

Brannick walked him toward the front door. Birch fell in behind them without a word, holstering his sidearm and taking a position two steps back and to the right — close enough to react, far enough to have options.

"Quiet morning," Birch said as they stepped into the light.

"Quiet morning."

They walked Decker across the settlement toward the landing pad. A few people watched from doorways and windows, the invisible audience that every small community produced when something happened. A woman paused in sweeping her threshold. A child pressed against a window and was pulled back by a hand that appeared from inside. Nobody intervened. Nobody spoke. A Marshal taking a fugitive was frontier business, common enough to be unremarkable, interesting enough to watch.

The Nightfall sat on the pad with her ramp down and her auxiliaries humming, and for a moment Brannick saw her how a stranger would, how Decker was seeing her right now.

She looked like what she was. A decommissioned Warden-class patrol corvette, Castalan Republic Navy surplus, that had been ridden hard and maintained by skilled hands on a thin budget. The hull plating was milspec so it was thicker than anything a civilian ship would carry, designed to absorb impacts that would breach a commercial vessel, but it was scarred and mismatched in places where repairs had been made with whatever was available.

Birch took Decker up the ramp while Brannick did a last visual sweep of the landing pad and the settlement beyond it. The two men on the crates were still watching. One of them, the one with the utility knife, raised a hand. Not a wave, exactly. An acknowledgment. You did your business and you're leaving. No complaints.

Brannick returned the gesture and walked up the ramp.

Inside, the Nightfall was cool and familiar. The recycled air carried the lived-in scent that every ship developed over time: machine oil and cleaning solution and coffee and the faint ozone residue of charged powerpacks stored in the armory and the indefinable smell of a space that two men had been occupying long enough to make it theirs.

Birch had already taken Decker down to the brig on the lower deck via the aft ladder. Brannick could hear the muffled sound of the reinforced door closing — a heavy, definitive thud that carried up through the deck plates — followed by Birch's boots on the ladder rungs coming back up. He appeared in the corridor a minute later, brushing dust off his sleeves. Birch liked things clean and orderly.

"Fed and secured," Birch said. "Gave him water and a ration bar. He ate the bar in about four bites, which tells you how long it's been since he had a real meal." He shook his head. "He's not going to be a problem. Man's too tired to be a problem."

Brannick nodded. He moved forward to the cockpit and settled into the co-pilot's seat, looking out through the viewport at the settlement baking in the orange light. Forty structures. A bar called The Well. A man who'd run as far as he could and found out it wasn't far enough.

Fourteen thousand credits, minus fuel and docking fees. Another job closed.

Birch dropped into the pilot's seat and started the pre-flight sequence. His broad hands moved across the controls with the same practiced ease he brought to everything.

"Kessler Station for the drop-off?" Birch asked.

"Kessler Station. Should be a sixteen-hour run."

"Sixteen hours and change." Birch brought the Nightfall off the pad, the settlement falling away below them as the corvette climbed through the thin atmosphere. Through the viewport, the dust basin shrank and flattened, the strip narrowing to a pale line, the buildings to specks, the landing pad to a gray square on a canvas of red-brown earth. The mountains resolved into a range that stretched across the northern horizon, their peaks catching the orange light and holding it like embers. Then the sky darkened, orange to copper to purple to black, and the stars emerged, and Charon’s Settlement or whatever it called itself was behind them and below them, already beginning to feel like a memory rather than a place.

"You want to eat first or check the board?" Birch asked.

The warrant board was the encrypted network where active warrants were posted, bounties listed, and Marshals browsed for their next job. It was the rhythm of their life. Finish a job, collect the pay, check the board, pick the next one. A cycle that had sustained them for two years and showed no signs of changing.

"Eat first," Brannick said. "Board can wait."

Birch nodded and set the autopilot for Kessler Station. The Nightfall climbed away from the planet's gravity well, and the stars came out in their full depth, cold, clean, and infinite, layered from the bright foreground points to the faint dusting that hung in the black like spilled powder.

It wouldn't always be that way. They both knew it. But today it was, and today was enough.

Brannick unbuckled from the co-pilot's seat and headed aft toward the galley to make coffee.

basically the title, a teenage who was kidnapped by a fake orphanage for her magic and then sold off to the rich. she initially was going to be used for her magic for things like making portals, entertainment, boasting, just to show her off and use her magic for themselves. but after she "misbehaved" (she was too tired and her magic stopped working), they ended up beating her and then assaulting her. she was in this house for three days, being assaulted over the course of said days before she was rescued by a gang of kids.

The little bell above the door chimed.

Mama greeted me with the same quiet smile she always wore and set a glass of I.W. Harper in front of me without asking. Ice settled against the crystal with a soft clink. Before I could take my first sip, I noticed Taka staring at his phone with the kind of expression detectives usually reserve for unpleasant discoveries.

"You look troubled."

"Do I?"

"If a detective is glaring at his phone, I doubt it's good news."

He laughed and turned the screen toward me. Every recommendation looked almost identical. One video blamed politicians. Another mocked an entire country. Others insisted that young people were ruining society, or old people were, or men, or women. Apparently the world had become crowded with enemies while I wasn't paying attention.

"My feed is full of this stuff lately," he said.

"You watched one."

"Just one."

"That was enough. The algorithm decided you liked it."

He scrolled a little farther. More outrage. More villains. More certainty.

"These videos get a lot of views."

"Of course they do."

I took a sip of whiskey.

"They come with an enemy."

He frowned.

"An enemy?"

Before I could answer, Tom wandered over from the other end of the bar carrying his own drink.

"What are we discussing tonight?"

"Why people seem to need enemies."

"That's a heavy topic for whiskey."

Mama quietly placed a glass of water beside him.

Taka rested his phone face down on the counter.

"Do people really want enemies that badly?"

I thought for a moment.

"I don't think they want enemies."

"What do they want?"

"They want companions."

Tom nodded.

"We're social animals."

"Exactly."

I watched the ice slowly rotate in my glass.

"The strange thing is that there aren't many reliable ways to create a strong group. Two of the strongest are surprisingly simple. You either share an enemy, or you share a hardship."

Tom smiled.

"A common threat or a common problem."

"Right."

People can become friends because they enjoy the same music or drink the same whiskey. That happens all the time. But if you want people to think in terms of 'us,' something stronger usually appears. Either there is someone to stand against, or there is something difficult that everyone must overcome together.

"Maybe that's why different societies developed differently," I said. "In some places, neighboring tribes were the greatest danger. Conflict was always close enough to become part of daily life."

Tom shrugged.

"History certainly gives us enough examples."

"But in Japan," I continued, "there may have been something even harder to negotiate with."

Taka looked at me.

"What?"

"Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Volcanoes. Typhoons. Fires."

"You can't argue with those."

"Exactly."

Nature doesn't listen to apologies. It doesn't accept money. It doesn't care who was right.

When disaster strikes, there isn't much point in searching for someone to blame. You rebuild houses. You clear roads. You share water. You help the neighbor because neither of you is getting through it alone.

"Are you saying that's why Japanese people cooperate?"

I shook my head.

"Nothing that simple. Disasters don't magically turn everyone into saints. People can be generous. They can also be selfish. We're still human."

Tom chuckled.

"I've seen both."

"So have I. Still, I wonder whether living with hardships that no one could defeat left some trace in the culture. When the problem isn't another person, cooperation becomes more valuable than victory."

Taka sat quietly for a while before picking up his phone again.

"So social media works the other way around."

"How do you mean?"

"It gives us enemies instead of hardships."

"Maybe."

Finding a villain is efficient.

That politician.

That generation.

That country.

That ideology.

The moment everyone agrees who the villain is, an 'us' appears almost automatically. We become the reasonable ones. The informed ones. The people standing on the right side.

"Enemies are convenient," I said.

Taka looked puzzled.

"Convenient?"

"They save us from thinking."

The real world is complicated. Most problems don't disappear because one person leaves or one group loses. But if you can point at a single enemy, complexity collapses into a simple story.

Get rid of them.

Everything gets better.

Tom slowly nodded.

"Investigations can work the same way. Decide who the suspect is too early, and every piece of evidence starts pointing in the same direction."

"And the evidence that doesn't fit?"

"You stop seeing it."

Taka turned off his phone.

"So the algorithm encourages that."

"I don't think it creates it," I replied. "It simply delivers what we're already willing to consume."

Another enemy.

Another reason to be angry.

Another chance to feel certain.

It doesn't force us to hate anyone. It quietly offers someone we can hate together.

After a long silence, Taka asked the obvious question.

"So what do we do instead?"

I didn't answer immediately.

Maybe work used to provide that answer.

Broken systems.

Impossible deadlines.

Machines that refused to cooperate.

Those weren't enemies. They were hardships people faced together. Sometimes the coffee you shared after surviving a difficult day tasted better than anything you could buy.

Life has become more convenient since then. Problems are solved before we notice them. We work remotely. We rarely need strangers to help us through ordinary days.

Perhaps the more convenience we gained, the more tempting it became to build communities around enemies instead.

"That's not a very satisfying conclusion," I admitted.

Mama smiled.

"That's unusual coming from you."

"I never said I had the answer."

She looked around the counter.

A retired detective.

A systems engineer.

A young private investigator.

People with different lives, different experiences, and different opinions.

"No common enemy?" she asked.

I lifted my glass.

"We have whiskey."

Tom raised his.

"And conversation."

Taka laughed.

"Is that really enough?"

"I hope it can be."

Outside, someone was still offering enemies.

Inside, Mama quietly poured another drink.