never have that recipe again | Glowfic Constellation

nightmare_material

The cultural gulf between the East and the West is very wide. Even though Jaeha—no, Jake, he needs to get used to calling himself that in his own head—even though Jake had a lot more contact with the West than most of his classmates, he still did not actually expect that kids daring each other to go visit haunted houses after dark was, like, a thing. It sounded too much like made-up ragebait for teen flicks, you know? Like, who would do that? It's so—undignified.

But here he is, undignifiedly recording himself on his phone to prove that he did, in fact, come to the haunted house. He's still not steady on his social feet, and it was not hard to see that actually most of the other kids at his new school were in actual fact terrified of the haunted house and even the ones who claimed they'd come didn't, actually. So here's a way for him to acquire some cred and get taken more seriously despite being foreign.

He's also got to act for the camera, though, and he knows exactly how to act.

"And here we have the so-called 'haunted house'," he says in lightly- but noticeably-accented English. "So terrifying, I'm shaking in my designer shoes," he says dryly, pointing his camera at his shoes that are just regular Nike sneakers and not designer at all. Camera back to his face, an artful eyeroll and a smirk. "Now why don't I enter and find the ghosts? Sounds like a wonderful opportunity to me. I'll make sure to draw a lot of attention to myself so we don't have to waste any time looking for each other, why don't I?"

(There could be living people here, who could be a lot more dangerous than ghosts, and that is where his nervousness lies. But he's got a butterfly knife he knows how to use and self-defence training so unless someone uses a gun on him he can hold his own.)

(He hopes no one has a gun. That'd be a really stupid way to die, and Westerners are crazy about guns.)

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and-I-will-lose-it

Twenty minutes later he's still out there.

nightmare_material

Jake... is not sure if this is enough time...

...he'll set up some of the lights he got around the house and then if Jeremy is still not back he'll go looking for him.

and-I-will-lose-it

Yeah no, he's still in there.

nightmare_material

Alright, then, creekwards.

and-I-will-lose-it

He doesn't seem to notice Jake approaching. There are like, rocks and sticks around, if he wants to try getting his attention without getting wet.

nightmare_material

He also has, like, a voice. "Jeremy?"

and-I-will-lose-it

nightmare_material

He'll get as close to the creek as he can without getting wet then crouch down and hug his knees. "Jeremy?" he calls again.

and-I-will-lose-it

He sits up. He's not wet at all, though he does look kind of—dazed, dissociated.

nightmare_material

"I got you some gifts. Wanna come see them?"

and-I-will-lose-it

"........Yeah." He floats up to follow Jake.

nightmare_material

Cool! So he's already set up some lights around the house, but everything else is in Jeremy's bedroom.

It includes: several notebooks as well as sheets of paper, ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils, an iPad (booting up) and a stylus, another stylus for use with the iPhone, several battery packs for both, a battery-fuelled USB speaker, a battery-fuelled MP3 player, tons of batteries, a laptop that Jake's gonna use to download music into the MP3 player, and a CD reader to connect to it since modern laptops don't have those anymore.

and-I-will-lose-it

"Oh, wow. This is—thank you so much—"

nightmare_material

"Of course. I'm gonna see if I can get all—" He pauses, looks at how extensive Jeremy's collection is, and amends to, "or at least some of your CDs in the MP3 player but we can probably get a lot of new stuff, too. ...hmm, I wonder if it'd be easier to just take a picture of all of the CDs and see if we can't get some AI or something to find and download the songs for us, there might be copyright issues that makes that more effort than doing it manually but it might be quicker overall..."

and-I-will-lose-it

"...What?"

nightmare_material

"Uh, I could have, like, some artificial intelligence thingy scan a picture of all your CDs to find the track listings of all of them and then maybe it would be able to download them all into the computer and store it in the MP3 player? Finding the track listings it definitely can do automatically, it's the fetching the songs online that might run into issues."

and-I-will-lose-it

".....I will take your word on that."

nightmare_material

"I feel like a different kind of person would be a lot better at explaining what's all different since thirty years ago. Sorry you're stuck with just me."

and-I-will-lose-it

"It would be nice to understand what you're talking about, but I already don't deserve this, so—if you can make it happen automatically or manually or whatever, I don't care, I'm already—overjoyed."

nightmare_material

"I can try to explain some stuff, just, I'm—you know, kind of stupid, I have no idea what the world was like in '97. —oh, by the way, I had that idea, how do you feel about that thing I said about me not being allowed to come until you do?" He didn't come, himself, this time, either, after all.

and-I-will-lose-it

"—Oh my god, I forgot, I, I just left you, I'm sorry, are you okay, it...

"Maybe you're okay, since, uh, you just suggested. Uh. That. .....You... Really?"

nightmare_material

"It would definitely make me very, very desperate to help you get off."

and-I-will-lose-it

"It really sounds like you like that idea but I don't, uh, get. Why," he tries.

nightmare_material

"...well, I like feeling horny. And I like it when—someone else gets a say in how horny I am. I find it really, really fun to, to—

"—you know how I said that some people do ruined orgasms on purpose? It's a lot of fun to get driven absolutely wild with horniness and be at someone else's mercy and have to do everything I can to please them."

and-I-will-lose-it