Neon Shin

Pedro Edogawa sits on top of a red Asahi beer crate across from the Roku-Za Cabaret in Asakusa. He flips open a note pad stolen from Muji in the days just after the war and begins to write on the charred and blackened pages…

Most of his writing lately has been devoted to a E-Cinema script called The Kaminari-Monster, about a war between Shinto and Buddhist deities fought for control of a Meiji-era sukiyaki shop built on ancient and powerful lay lines. The second idea is called Serpico in Asakusa which is just what it sounds like…a bad idea.

Only the highest-ranking members of the Espionage Rejects are currently allow access to ESPACE. It’s been discovered that there are two Col. Baldwins, one in captivity and the other missing in action, presumably operating from within the Overtones. And until the exact motives and minds behind the two-Baldwin plot can be discovered, there’s not much to do but wander in the rubble of Tokyo2 (“2 Our Future!! Too Much of Everything!”) and dream, dream, dream.

When Pedro isn’t hung-over, or donning a wig and Sailor fuku to sneak into the Gal Circle events held in the MYLORD building, he’s been sleeping in the Hanayashiki amusement park. The swaying sofa of the Bikuri House doubles as a cozy place to rest his head, and there’s always some tekiya nearby willing to cook up some meat (no one asks one kind anymore and just presumes it to be Gerotan in origin) so he’s not losing weight. Not much, anyways.

The world around him couldn’t be more real and over-detailed. Yet still, Pedro thinks of home when he’s asleep.

Last night, he dreamt he was married to the whitest white girl in the world and they lived together in a giant hollowed-out tree. Her entire family planned elaborate musical numbers, complete with costume changes and choreographed dance, to welcome him home. But the joy, which was genuine in most respects, was short lived.

Gyaku-ESPY agents had traced him down using the spaces in-between the Overtones and great and terrible wars were fought in a starlit nighttime garden with hoes, pitchforks, and little shovels.

Then he wakes up with morning wood. It can’t be helped and should be interpreted as a good sign. The other guys down on Roku-za dori have them too. The rest of the city smells like burning shoes, hair wax, plastic accessories, and buildings that used to belong to the Government of Darkness. But the Shitamachi is going to pull through OK.

It always has.

Comments

[Carl Horn]

Today I had my first Hi-Lite in a while; no one really seems to carry them in America. That Lotte Black Black gun that's supposed to keep you awake for hours, sure, but not Hi-Lites, each of which is rolled with 1.8 mg nicotine and 17 mg tar. The last pack had been out of the machine in the lobby of the Hotel Edmont—cruel, like many Japanese hotel lobbies are, with their wide open spaces giving no indication of the warrens that await you above. Since then Hi-Lites have acquired dire health warnings that fill up half the wrapper.

God knows what G13's Parliaments must look like now. He would surely need one after reading "Horibe Masashi, Japanese Martial Arts—Hakukotsu style founder/master" in the back of Vol. 05, speculating that "Attacking the groins would be sure to work," before going into detail that is literally quite excruciating: "I have a friend who lost his testicles in a fight. His life was saved, but his appearance has changed, and he is a calm, docile, completely different person. So the testicles are absolutely necessary for a man to live."

[school]

I've just been staying at home waiting for something to happen. I just don't have much to say right now, but so it goes. I've basically been doing nothing to speak of, but shrug. Today was a loss. I don't care. That's how it is.

[alarm]

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