The Forever
Brother

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August came with overbearing heat just before a long drought in Essex. When Russell stepped up to the gated entrance, engraved with the GORILLAZ logo in warped steel, he noted the rancid stench of something rotting emanating from behind the graveyard site in the fields of KONG.

Perturbed from his stay in America, Russell found it best to return to his former partnership – if he can still understand if it can be called partnership – and travel back to the studio.

Now the building was bigger than he remembered. As he walked into the lobby, he just barely had to turn to the side to enter the elevators and corridors. Perhaps it was the larger interior. Perhaps he had actually lost some of his extra weight.

Russel didn't remember staying in KONG long enough in the past, since the band was always on the go with gigs, tours, interviews, and whatnot. Therefore, he couldn't remember some of the rooms, whether or not they had always been there, or if they have just been renovated. The building had been nearly empty. It seemed vacant to him; there were no sound of life when he entered this afternoon.

As he entered the Kitchen on his room floor, he didn't expect to see a lot of newly purchased food, a few frozen human fingers with eyeballs in zip-lock bags, and a cabinet filled with instant ramen.

Taking a napkin from the kitchen, Russel wiped off the bloodstains from the door handle in the hallway that lead to Noodle's room. The large man slowly opened the door to the Japanese girls room to find it newly renovated and totally redecorated: the walls were covered with posters and calendars, the floors messy with clothes and unlabeled tapes and videos, a lonely mahjong game was left fully set up next to a futon. As he stepped in, his head clanged against the pink paper ceiling lamps that hung a bit too low, making a tiny sound that Russell immediately hushed to make sure he wasn't disturbing anything else.

Noodle, sitting on her knees at the low table next to her MAC, scratched her fingernails on the tabletop. She readjusted her head that lay on her folded arms when she thought she heard a shudder in her room.

Russell opened the partition slightly, but didn't move; he didn't want to ruin Noodle's floor mats with his messy shoes.

She heard his clothes rustle, and tossed her head up in the door's direction.

"Noodle-girl?" He said so sweetly.

Noodle blinked the sleep away from her eyes and tapped her feet on the floor to keep them from falling asleep. She pushed herself from the table and sped to his direction.

"Russeru-niisan…"(1) she said in her broken English, she voice trembling slightly when she collided in a hug with her friend.

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Notes:
1) "Niisan" is an affectionate term for "big brother" in Japanese.