Winner Takes Eight K

Note: This probably won't be very understandable to Americans. It's based on a popular British gambling game, and includes a stupid Peter Kay joke.

Further Note (these will stop soon, promise!): For those who don't know, –sama is a Japanese suffix of the highest highest highest respect – for example, 'Kami-Sama': 'God'. I couldn't think of an English equivalent that would sound right, so it's there.

Corn was, almost uncharacteristically, you might say, in a very good mood – Japan had recently started its own version of the British National Lottery (because let's face it, any excuse to get cute girls in swimsuits playing with balls is a-OK with the Japanese), and Corn, who put one bar on a week for shits and giggles, had just won 100,000 Yen on it.

Finding out this had been rather amusing. He had checked, checked again, checked again just for good measure and then, sure he'd got it right, jumped up in the air, screaming like a maniac (scaring every punter in Dogenzaka Mall, may I add) and forgetting that he was in fact perched on a stair rail while checking his numbers – he fell over backwards only to get himself stuck between the rail and the wall, to be helped out by a hysterically laughing Renegade who happened to be passing.

Of course, he'd had to scat the kid out of his territory before doing anything else.

Now. He could just spend all the money on a new pair of skates or summat... or a new pinball machine... or even some new clothes or a haircut (he was starting to look like a little blonde hippy – yeuch) – but he was entirely too nice, so each GG got... Err, wait a minute, some simple arithmetic required... -- 8000 Yen each. With enough left over for a celebratory takeaway.

Ah, yes. Life was good. Corn liked gambling – a healthy way of encouraging healthy risk-taking, he thought (he had completely forgotten that upon wasting 100 Yen on a duff bar last week, he had called gambling the vice of Satan).

Telling the guys would be easier than telling the girls, he'd thought to himself on the Sunday (no wild squealing and bear hugs – he hoped) – so he'd tell them first; it was so damned hard to get all eleven of them in one place at one time that getting them into gender groups and doing it that way was just so much less of a headache for him.

So, Sunday afternoon – Rhyth and Boogie out window-shopping, Gum and Cube out making out somewhere and Jazz probably, dunno... looking for shapes in the clouds or whatever it was she did in her free time – and the GG males were gathered in the Garage, grumbling about missed tagging time and making mumbled plans to lynch Corn if this was even slightly less important than he'd said it was, the lying little... Yeah.

"Guys..."

Building up the tension. Always a good thing.

"We've won the lottery."

"Fuck off, no we haven't." That was Clutch, one skate on, one skate off and looking like he'd been dragged through a bush backward.

"OK, Piss-kick Peg, whatever you say. Now... will I keep your 8 K share or will the lesbian brass band get it?" Corn pulled out a wad of cash for emphasis. The other six glanced at each other, grinned wildly and cheered so loudly and suddenly that Corn fell over backward, swearing all the time.

"Whoa whoa whoa... We only get 8 K each?" Clutch asked, as soon as the noise died – Corn was starting to get the feeling that Clutch just didn't want a reason to take things out of shops legitimately.

At this, Yoyo jumped forward and clamped a hand over the redhead's mouth, saying quickly,

"He doesn't mean it really, Corn-sama, he's just playing, yo!" He hissed in Clutch's ear, obviously thinking no one could hear him (they all could), "We ain't gonna get the money if you insult him, yo-ow!"

Clutch had bitten the hand covering his mouth. Hard. This left Yoyo nurturing a bleeding finger, muttering something about possible salmonella contamination.

"Shut up, the pair of you. Here," Corn said, after a few moments of wondering what possessed him to let those two into the gang – he pushed 8000 Yen at each of them and shoved them both toward Shibuya Terminal.

Yoyo quickly got over his sore finger and took off, yelling something as he did that most of them didn't hear. (Clutch half-walked, half-rolled in the general direction of the half-pipe.)

"Did he say 'coffee creams'?" Soda asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I think he did." Garam shrugged. The pair of them glanced at each other and shrugged.

"You know somethin'?" Combo said mock-sagely, "Candy says many things 'bout people."

"Yup. It says 'Yoyo's a fucking head-case'." Beat muttered, grabbing his 8000 Yen and taking off toward the roof to plan what to do with it in peace.

Corn thought about this for a minute, and then shouted up at Beat, "Shouldn't it tell us something we don't know?"


In Death
Hallowe'en Drabble

"Trick or tre-eat!"

"Fuck off!"

Slam

Clutch's simple, no-hassle way of dealing with the little kids: roaring expletives at them, slamming the apartment door in their faces and hoarding the candy. Delightful. Rhyth grimaced as Clutch threw another handful of sticky red stuff into his mouth and continued to vegetate on the beat-up sofa.

The apartment? A little winter hideaway. Like they were going to sit in the open-air Garage and freeze their skates off all winter? No way. The very thought made her feel cold!

She glanced around the small, crowded main room; Yoyo, Beat and, surprisingly, Jazz were concocting come kind of plan involving Hayashi's force car, a lot of toilet paper, a tampon (for tying to the car aerial, you understand), some red lipstick ganked from Gum (perfect for writing 'Hayashi: camper than a field full of Boy Scouts' on the windscreen) and a lot of fake blood (spray it everywhere for shits 'n' giggles, naturally).
Corn and Gum were in 'deep conversation' about something - probably how to get squatting rights on the apartment or some such thing.
Soda, Clutch, Cube and Combo were sharing candy and vegetating.
Garam was out (probably egging those unlucky enough to walk past him).
Boogie was painting her nails.

And her? Staring out the window, watching the children in their little costumes and half-heartedly counting the stars - what little she could see of them.

Should she just go join the others? Help play nasty tricks on people? Pig out on disgusting sugary stuff? Do something silly like give herself a pedicure or talk about apartments? Pfft. No, thanks.

Wasn't Hallowe'en supposed to be about... you know, remembering the dead? Warding the evil spirits, remembering those who have passed on, that kind of thing. When did it turn into - she glanced at the sofa as Clutch burped loudly - this?

She, Rhyth, used to remember her relatives on Hallowe'en. First her Grandma - a woman she barely remembered, but they always did things like put candles out for her (did any other family do that?... She didn't know) and remember her.

Then her great aunt Korin, a scary old lady who spoke like a man and walked on a knobbly stick like a witch. She had made Rhyth giggle, but not when they were in the same room - and certainly not when she died, lying pale and cold in the coffin, dressed in black and holding some kind of flower.

Only eight at the time - Rhyth hadn't realised that this was death. Death, before then, had been some kind of distant thing that she didn't have to think about; you thought about it in a sort of detached way at Hallowe'en, but it just didn't fit into every day life, did it? But then Obasan... lying there like she was asleep, little Rhyth peeking over the edge of the coffin as if the old woman would wake any second and glare at her with those beady little eyes...

Again, she looked at the GGs - the candy was finished, so the four on the sofa seemed to have dropped into sugary almost-sleep dozes. Everyone else was gone, save for Boogie, who was reading a manga almost gingerly.

To them, death seemed about as likely as pigs flying - it was some kind of abstract concept that happened to other people, but never them; an affliction you didn't get if you were smart.
As for Hallowe'en? Well, you played tricks on people and ate candy.

Why would a group of people determined to pretend death didn't happen bother to celebrate it?