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[i'm saying it's saturday now, congrats
we cannot break into the cars, sadly, but we can try to fight them and lose, so that is precisely what's happening here. fei du will come across shenhe out in the middle of the street facing down cars, weaving her hands in an elaborate fashion - she keeps trying to summon ice, but it just isn't happening. instead, fire comes from her hands, in the form of a flamethrower, a sword, and - right this second - a tornado that she sends at a car.
enjoy the burst of heat that screams past you, fei du. hello.]
we cannot break into the cars, sadly, but we can try to fight them and lose, so that is precisely what's happening here. fei du will come across shenhe out in the middle of the street facing down cars, weaving her hands in an elaborate fashion - she keeps trying to summon ice, but it just isn't happening. instead, fire comes from her hands, in the form of a flamethrower, a sword, and - right this second - a tornado that she sends at a car.
enjoy the burst of heat that screams past you, fei du. hello.]
[good morning, we are outside the ikea. shenhe is sitting on the curb, looking down at her phone. she seems to have gotten past the This Has A Demon In It phase, and is very slowly pecking out a message with an expression of great concentration.
when she senses fei du, she looks up at him.]
The one percent of what? [great opener, this is how we talk to people]
when she senses fei du, she looks up at him.]
The one percent of what? [great opener, this is how we talk to people]
[ that sure did happen
well, it's fine. fei du looks decidedly less yucky than he did in the bowling alley, at least, though to the discerning eye... he looks a little pale, still, even as he's scrolling his phone to look at the evidence photos. ]
What a strange sight that was. [ everything's fine ]
well, it's fine. fei du looks decidedly less yucky than he did in the bowling alley, at least, though to the discerning eye... he looks a little pale, still, even as he's scrolling his phone to look at the evidence photos. ]
What a strange sight that was. [ everything's fine ]
[ whew what a trial
after all of that, fei du can be found in the ikea. he's sitting in a chair tucked away a bit, a green jacket slung around his shoulders, and most importantly, there's soft music playing from his phone that's sitting on his lap.
his eyes are closed, but, at least it doesn't look like he's asleep or anything. he does look much less green than earlier so there's that but whew. ]
after all of that, fei du can be found in the ikea. he's sitting in a chair tucked away a bit, a green jacket slung around his shoulders, and most importantly, there's soft music playing from his phone that's sitting on his lap.
his eyes are closed, but, at least it doesn't look like he's asleep or anything. he does look much less green than earlier so there's that but whew. ]
[ fei du is sitting in a gondola today!!! he looks perfectly at home in his new little outfit, vibing in the canals like he's been here before - and when he spots shenhe, he gives her a wave from the boat. ]
Good afternoon, Shenhe. Enjoying the sightseeing?
Good afternoon, Shenhe. Enjoying the sightseeing?
[hello, it is post event!
shenhe is sitting outside her warehouse, slowly but surely brushing out her hair with a small white-jade comb. it seems... methodical. like a form of meditation, almost. it's probably the most relaxed he's seen her like, ever.]
shenhe is sitting outside her warehouse, slowly but surely brushing out her hair with a small white-jade comb. it seems... methodical. like a form of meditation, almost. it's probably the most relaxed he's seen her like, ever.]
[good afternoon fei du
shenhe is sitting in front of a car that has clearly had the absolute shit beat out of it. her stop sign is next to her, and she is trying to braid her hair, but - it's tangled, and she keeps getting frustrated and undoing it.]
shenhe is sitting in front of a car that has clearly had the absolute shit beat out of it. her stop sign is next to her, and she is trying to braid her hair, but - it's tangled, and she keeps getting frustrated and undoing it.]
[ well
fei du's out here. he's at the park, sitting on a bench, holding a mug of something in his hands. occasionally, sparks flicker across his knuckles. he is absolutely still disassociating out of his fucking mind
hi. ]
fei du's out here. he's at the park, sitting on a bench, holding a mug of something in his hands. occasionally, sparks flicker across his knuckles. he is absolutely still disassociating out of his fucking mind
hi. ]
[good morning fei du, we are outside the Sears. a person is talking to her, and she looks like she's about to commit violence because this person is trying to sell her avon products and she's just. not having it.]
I don't understand. No, I don't need that, it smells awful.
I don't understand. No, I don't need that, it smells awful.
[ here we go time for hugs
where's shenhe!!!! fei du is coming to find her once he's not like, disassociating out of his body. where's my bird ]
where's shenhe!!!! fei du is coming to find her once he's not like, disassociating out of his body. where's my bird ]
[ well fei du must have just slipped away.
he's outside, at the park. sitting on a bench, hands in his lap, holding the little blue egg in his lap. there's no music playing today. he's just here.
hey, ]
he's outside, at the park. sitting on a bench, hands in his lap, holding the little blue egg in his lap. there's no music playing today. he's just here.
hey, ]
[ hello shenhe!! how did you make your way to the racetrack? i guess it doesn't really matter.
if she's just standing by or watching or just like, in the area, shenhe will hear a sudden rev of an engine, and then a motorcycle comes zooming down the stretch of the racetrack at top speed, the rider wearing a helmet obscuring their face. it's not coming towards her but also ... nyoom.... ]
if she's just standing by or watching or just like, in the area, shenhe will hear a sudden rev of an engine, and then a motorcycle comes zooming down the stretch of the racetrack at top speed, the rider wearing a helmet obscuring their face. it's not coming towards her but also ... nyoom.... ]
[i'm gonna say she piggy back carries him out of the jail place because i think it's cute and i like it. she's going to just piggy back ride him off to somewhere less filled with rotten meat and horrible wall men.]
You weigh nothing. [she grumbles, hoisting him up a little.]
You weigh nothing. [she grumbles, hoisting him up a little.]
[At least the trees that line the side of the park are lovely at this time of year. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom... and coating all the benches with their petals. The good news is, it hides some of the graffiti! The bad news is "some".
this is her favorite part of the whole dedaland, so. here! here she is! she is either holding his hand or carrying him piggyback depending on how much he whines.]
You named your duck after me.
this is her favorite part of the whole dedaland, so. here! here she is! she is either holding his hand or carrying him piggyback depending on how much he whines.]
You named your duck after me.
Edited 2023-07-16 22:20 (UTC)
[ let's say that fei du and shenhe are back in their room now that they have one after a nice, warm bonding session. everything is great. surely nothing could go wrong here. surely that isn't a pig
anyway you know what this is already ]
[ when the memory ends, fei du is gasping like the ring is still around his neck - coughing, violently, his composed expression completely shattered, collapsed into the closest wall. ]
anyway you know what this is already ]
[ you have been watching him.
it's been nearly six months of watching fei chengyu's every single move. your father disappears down to the basement in your home often. he takes you down there sometimes. he takes your mother down there, too. it's not important, right now, but you know this - you have to get in there. you have to do something.
you've been watching, and calculating. you're a smart kid, at ten years old. you have a tiny strip of paper hidden in your school pencil case, and there are three strings of numbers on it - combinations. you want into that forbidden room, locked with a digit combination lock, and you collect every code fei chengyu uses when you see them. his phone. his computer. his bank card, said once over a phone call. anything. anything. you know if you put in the wrong code, it will trigger an alarm, and it will be over for you, that fei chengyu will know, that you can't let that happen. you've narrowed it down through careful analysis to three possible combinations, and you're mulling them over today, on a day home sick from school, when your door opens.
you immediately hide the paper in your pencil case, look up, and make eye contact with your mother. she's a windswept, gloomy woman, thin and pale, and she's silent when she comes to your bedside holding cold medicine. she changes the towel on your forehead - scalding hot from your fever - and wipes your face gently with a clean, cold towel. it's methodic and robotic, and she won't look you in the eye. she hardly ever looks you in the eye. it's as if one false move, one look for too long, will make you both shatter, and you want to call out to her, but the words die in your throat. you open your mouth. say something, fei du. just say something.
nothing.
the woman, your mother, finishes, and seems a little brighter than before now that she's helped you. you want to talk to her, you want to say something, anything. when she starts to leave, you panic, hastily reach out and grab her arm - and when you do, you jostle your unzipped pencil case, and the strip of paper with the codes flutters to the floor.
the air seems to solidify.
after a good while, the woman bends down and picks up the pencil case and the little slip of paper. you hold your breath and clutch at your quilt, and the woman - she looks at you. she actually looks at you, with a facial expression that is so complicated you cannot even begin to start to analyze it. your mouth feels dry.
will she tell your father? will she suddenly go mad?
apprehension grips you, but - the woman, as if she hadn’t understood, puts the slip of paper back into the pencil case and gently puts it back in your lap, kisses the top of your head, then turns and leaves.
when the door shuts, you pull out the paper, hesitant - and there is a tiny fingernail mark under one of your three codes.
--
your opportunity comes three days later, in the midst of a thunderstorm.
the northern wind outside of your home howls as you look down the staircase that leads to your family's basement. on the walls, there are two massive, intricate carved dragons that seem to loom over the entrance, a marked difference from the austere decorations of the rest of your house. you descend the stairs, past the carved dragons, and you enter the code that you worked out through observation and the help of your mother - the light turns green, and the door unlocks with a soft click
your father left, for some reason. he's not home. the house smells like cleaning solution. sterile. the idea of sneaking into that basement, a forbidden place, a forbidden room, grips you, suddenly, a twin feeling of adrenaline and terror and -
the memory here is blurry. blacked out. you can hear a door open, you think, but it's - from the direction of your mother's room? it must be. you're standing in front of the door. how long have you been standing there?
it doesn't matter. you push it open, and you're faced with a room.
it's massive and exquisite, as most things in the fei home are. there's a plush carpet under your feet, and a round couch that takes up two sides of the room. a row of bookcases filled with books you can't remember the titles of go from floor to ceiling, and a blurry painting takes up the remainder of the wall itself.
a rosewood desk sits in front of the bookcases, and there are files spread out on it. papers. people you don't know, pictures, something called the picture album project and as you're combing through them - you hear footsteps. steady footsteps. someone - fei chengyu is coming.
fear grips you like a hurricane. your palms start to sweat and your heartbeat ratchets up - you back up like a panicked animal, look from left to right - under the desk, there, there's a cabinet, and you practically dive underneath it and climb into the cabinet, trembling, hand over your mouth, because you're caught, you're caught, he's coming he's coming -
and then you hear another sound. a loud crash. a clatter. fei chengyu, at the foot of the door, swears, and turns around and rushes right back up the stairs. your mother must have knocked something over - you're almost crushed with relief, and the minute he's clear, you run back up the stairs and -
no.
that isn't how it happened, is it, fei du?
let's try again.
--
the memory corrects itself, like a drifting car jerking back into a lane.
you are dragged out of the cabinet by your father, who finds you among his things and says nothing, just yanks you out by the arm and tells you to wait.
the porcelain shattering from before - it happens, you remembered that right. you look up to the stairs as fei chengyu swears and makes his way up, and then you hear your mother screaming, at the top of her lungs, fear and desperation and misery. fei chengyu grabs her by the hair and drags her across the porcelain shards on the floor - she's so fragile, so tiny, screaming as her blood flecks the expensive carpet, and drags her down the stairs to the basement. he's made you watch this so many times. he's made you watch him beat her, and instinctively, you freeze, but your flight instinct kicks in when you remember there's another man in the room.
there's another man in the room and you instinctively run - you try and hide behind his legs, hoping, praying this stranger will save you, will see what your father does, that he'll take you and your mother away and call the police or something. the man looks at you behind his legs and smiles at you. he even strokes your hair. you think, for a moment, you're going to be okay, and then he says:
"“You can’t just hide, boy.”
and you realize right then that no one is coming to save you.
fei chengyu looks across the room from where he's holding your mother by the hair and notices you, and your pupils contract, your heartbeat stops. he gets up and retrieves something, and kneels down where your mother is a wreck on the floor, then buckles something familiar around her neck. it's a white metal device, like a collar, with long wires strung out from the edge of it and another ring at the end, a small handheld device hanging down. it is a device you have seen hundreds of times, now, only this time, it's different, and you know what's coming, and -
"Darling." fei chengyu starts, knelt down from your mother, looking at you. "Who gave you the code?”
(the fingernail scratch underneath the correct code; your tireless analysis.)
you're so afraid that you can't respond. pale as a ghost, staring at the white iron collar, your heart pounding so hard you can barely hear him. fei chengyu rises, and comes to kneel in front of you.
"What did you hear?" fei chengyu asks, and his hand smells like blood when it passes by your face. he runs it through your hair. “Good children shouldn’t eavesdrop on adults talking. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. — You didn’t do it on purpose, did you?”
you're scared. you're so scared, you're so scared, that you shake your head. fei chengyu smiles, and turns his head, pointing now to the porcelain covered woman trembling across the room. “The child didn’t do wrong on purpose. If he did wrong, he must have been lured into it by an ill-meaning adult. Should we punish her, then?”
no. nononono, no, no --
you can't look your mother in the eyes, but you're forced to look at her anyway, and fei chengyu's blood soaked hands come up, beckoning you closer. you can't, no, you can't - you step backwards, backwards, until your back presses to the bookshelf, and the man whose legs you hid behind nudges you forward so you can't escape. your legs move of their own accord, like lead, as numbly, you go to your father -
and then.
the other end of the collar is buckled around your neck and the silver wires stretch taut between you and your mother. it's metal and cold and you know it because this is not the first or the fifth or even the tenth time fei chengyu has done this with you, and it hurts, it, hurts, and it's too tight, it's suffocating you --
he places the controls in your small, shaking hands.
two rings buckled on two necks. one end would only loosen a little when the other tightened. all you have to do is squeeze.
if you only clench your fists around the control, you could escape the unbearable feeling of suffocation. you've been forced through this hundreds of times. you're being strangled - you're choking, and your mother is choking, and you've been trained what to do in this situation you have to squeeze the controls so you don't choke - you had to kill the animals you had to tighten the ring to survive you've been forced into this training over and over and you squeeze so you can breathe and the puppy and the bird they die in your hands and your mother chokes and chokes and her eyes are still so numb as she stares at you and you don't want to hurt her you don't want to hurt her you have to breathe you don't want to -
"If you want total control over them, it won’t be hard,” the other man who was supposed to help you says over the sound of your mother's choking, over your tears, over the blood in your mouth and rushing in your ears and it's just so clinical - “You know how you train a hawk? If you want to tame it, you first have to weaken it. You can’t be kind. It’s necessary to starve it appropriately.”
“Starve it?” Fei Chengyu asks. (you stop squeezing and you start to choke as your mother gasps for air and you can only do it for a second, just a second, you squeeze again she's choking you have to live you don't want to hurt her mom )
“If you overfeed it, President Fei, over time, it will become greedy. If a tool doesn’t obey, it has to be honed. What kind of knife honer is afraid of breaking the knife?” the man who could have saved you's laughter is cold and he's still talking and blurry it's blurry and you're choking and squeezing the life out of her and - ]
[ when the memory ends, fei du is gasping like the ring is still around his neck - coughing, violently, his composed expression completely shattered, collapsed into the closest wall. ]
Edited (I hope this is better bc I can’t tell shit ) 2023-07-16 23:48 (UTC)
[ happy monday. where's shenhe? maybe she's in the hotel?
there's a sound of a beep beep! that sounds like a car horn from outside. ]
there's a sound of a beep beep! that sounds like a car horn from outside. ]
[ okay well at least his stomach is empty now. but. fei du is nauseous and sweaty and trying really hard not to have human-lives-are-pieces-of-pork flashbacks, and ultimately, his urge to help shenhe dovetails beautifully with his urge for rampant self destruction. not that he's thinking about that right now. - it's kind of the opposite. all he's thinking about is wanting to help.
so, he goes to find her no matter his own feelings or sickness or anything, and thinks - if he were shenhe, running away to lick his wounds (why does everyone do this), he knows exactly where his feet would take him.
and he finds his way to the park, until he sees a familiar bundle of white. ]
Shenhe!
so, he goes to find her no matter his own feelings or sickness or anything, and thinks - if he were shenhe, running away to lick his wounds (why does everyone do this), he knows exactly where his feet would take him.
and he finds his way to the park, until he sees a familiar bundle of white. ]
Shenhe!
[she is sitting here, reading her text messages...
he can get little bursts of thoughts - she doesn't often think things other than what she says, because she's so straightforward, but today she's silent as she reads.
want to be there i miss you too. feeling this - this is like crying but i can't and oh jonas i wish i was there and peace sign]
he can get little bursts of thoughts - she doesn't often think things other than what she says, because she's so straightforward, but today she's silent as she reads.
want to be there i miss you too. feeling this - this is like crying but i can't and oh jonas i wish i was there and peace sign]
[
well.
fei du's going to be impossibly difficult to find but if shenhe is looking, she might hear a stream of absolutely fucking rancid sounding, staticky thoughts from the hotel. it's so bad that there might be other snatches of words, blurred together and mixed, but all you can really make out is
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no - no ]
well.
fei du's going to be impossibly difficult to find but if shenhe is looking, she might hear a stream of absolutely fucking rancid sounding, staticky thoughts from the hotel. it's so bad that there might be other snatches of words, blurred together and mixed, but all you can really make out is
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no - no ]
Edited 2023-07-29 01:16 (UTC)
[ cool
fei du's at the bar! he's at the bar and he is drinking and his thoughts are that vibrantly angry static again ]
fei du's at the bar! he's at the bar and he is drinking and his thoughts are that vibrantly angry static again ]
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