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You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...
Obviously Japanese drama/sentai has eaten my brain. I have had dreams of talking to Abe Hiroshi/Jiro Ueda about how he was or was not a fictional character. I've also had Miho Kanno hug me in a cute big sister way and wondered if she was going to turn into Sadako from "Ringu." Which leads me to believe that watching "Saimin" and "TricK" and "Shinsengumi" (No one told me Koizumi was playing Souji, I would have been obsessively watching the show for that alone!) before sleeping produces strange, strange things. Still bitter Inagaki Goro didn't show up.
This also produces strange inspiration considering I'm in a writing slump. So this is my writing slump, an introduction to a TricK episode based on the Eagles' "Hotel California." Yeah, I thought it was weird too but at least I got most of the impetus to write it out of me. Minus the Ishinara in the hot tub scene, which is very entertaining to imagine writing...
Obviously, this is the part you skip over because you're not familiar with my strange fandoms.
“I can’t believe you dragged me along on one of your trips, again,” Naoko Yamada whined, more annoyed with herself than with the man sitting beside her, chauffeuring the two of them to their destination his little compact car.
That’s not to say she wasn’t plenty annoyed with him.
“It was either that or explain to your landlady why you’re four months behind in rent,” the tall man responded with a knowing smirk. It was the kind of smirk that would have looked really intimidating if he didn’t have to duck his head in order to keep from knocking himself unconscious on the roof.
Naoko wanted to respond with something witty and clever, but she was tired from the trip and the quick escape. Instead she crossed her arms and muttered, “Last time I at least got a trip to an onsen out of it.”
“We’re here,” the man announced.
The car stopped abruptly, and Naoko jolted forward in her seat. She was still busy trying to readjust her scarf and hair when Ueda opened her car door and prompted her to get out. Naoko didn’t see his gesture as chivalrous, mainly because he was doing it to usher her confused huddled mass out of the car as quickly as possible to bask in...
“The Hotel California?” Naoko said dubiously, reading the neon pink and yellow lights.
They both paused and let the tackiness of the building set in. Plastic palm trees, a sad attempt at 1920’s Spanish-tile roofing that somehow turned into pagodas, an affect that would have Mann’s Chinese Theater wincing its pillars from the relationship. There were tiles with strange English writing in it that looked more like a calligraphy course in pavement cracks. Somewhere Naoko could have sworn she heard an acoustic guitar making mellow rifts, but she shrugged it off to the massive amount of karaoke places nearby in a district like this.
“The manager has been complaining that his guests are terrified of being haunted. Things moving in the rooms where no one has touched it, shadows in the night...” Ueda explained as he trailed off each phenomenon. “It’s gotten to the point where the guests refuse to leave.”
Naoko was taking in his description with perfunctory nods before stopping. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-what? Why wouldn’t they leave?”
“Ah, that’s the puzzle you see,” Ueda said, not bothering to make eye contact as he took his arm in Naoko’s and picked up their luggage to rush inside. “Because he told me over the phone that once the guest’s go in they aren’t physically able to get outside of the premises. If they try, they either come back to the hotel room alive or...dead.”
“Ueda-san!” Naoko screeched loud enough to echo in the deserted lobby. When they both looked around to see what attention they had drawn, Naoko tugged Ueda’s arm to bring his face down to her level so she could hiss, “I should have known when you offered to pay my months of back-rent.”
“That’s not true,” the physicist protested as he tried to unclench her fingers from his arm.
“Howdy, howdy! Aren’t you just a couple of fine and dandy newlyweds!”
The initial greeting was a horrible butchering of English, sounding more like the appropriate hade, hade(gaudy, gaudy) than anything else, but before Naoko could make a good pun she heard the term “newlyweds” and immediately spun around to declare loudly that his perceptions were as hideously deformed as his accent.
However she had turned right into Ueda’s large hand, which effectively clamped over her mouth as he proceeded to greet the man. “Hello Mr. Wayne. You remember me, Jiro Ueda, from the university.”
“Well pickle my insides and stuff it like a weasel, you actually came,” the man said admiringly, wiping back the stray wisps of a bad comb-over. Despite his accent trying very hard to sound American, he was obviously born and bred Japanese, especially considering the way his accent would suddenly drop. “And what’s the name of this purdy little slip?”
‘Stuffed weasel?’ Naoko was mouthing in shock. Her facial expression was still mostly hidden behind Ueda’s hand, but the look of horror was apparent in her eyes.
“Her? Oh she’s just a tagalong assistant, really not helpful except she does jobs whenever I’m too busy...” Ueda started and pulled his arm back for fear that she might bite it.
Despite her initial shock at “Mr. Wayne” and his rather strange appearance, Naoko instinctively snapped back, right where Ueda’s thumb was only a moment before, “Excuse me?”
“Sure enough is polite too,” Mr. Wayne chuckled and snatched her hand to pump it up and down a few times. “Welcome Miss...”
“Yamada,” she ground out and withdrew her hand with a tug. “I am not his assistant, and I am not some helpful little one piece. I was paid to come here and-”
“So I’ve set up your suite,” Mr. Wayne continued on as he guided them to the check-in desk. He proceeded to scribble out a few lines over one small book and a few other slips, paying absolutely no attention to Naoko’s glares of death except when he looked up, “How does the ‘Casa de Los Angeles’ sound?”
“Like they’re in the middle of a monsoon season,” Naoko blurted out. (Casa sounds like kasa, or umbrella)
“Idiot,” Ueda chastised, “it’s a Spanish name for the room.”
“In a faux American hotel?” Naoko shot back dryly, before turning back to Mr. Wayne. “Look, whatever. Just give me my key and we can deal with his later.”
“I already have Miss Yamada. ‘Taint no more.”
“What?”
Ueda quickly clasped the pink key holder under his palm, wishing he could do any kind of magic trick to make it disappear and make Naoko a few dozen kilometers away for a good running start.
“I didn’t get my key,” Naoko persisted.
“That’s because Mister Ueda has it already,” Mr. Wayne explained, completely oblivious to the fact he was assisting a homicidal rampage.
“You paid me four month’s rent...” she trailed off. Her mind was already working at deducing exactly what this meant. Good start for a murder mystery. “You paid me for THIS?!?!”
Mr. Wayne stepped back and chuckled softly, “Now, I didn’t know any of this kinda stuff would be going on. We may be a kind of RabuRabu Hotel, but not-“
Of course neither of them were listening to him anymore.
“There was only one room for free!” Ueda whined softly, “You’d think I’d really want to be stuck in the same room-”
That certainly didn’t help his case, as Naoko’s indignant rage showed. “New room! You pay! Now! Or I want my slip back.”
“There aren’t any more rooms! And what do you mean ‘slip?’”
“Mister Ueda? Miss Yamada?” Mr. Wayne ventured, waving his hands in front of himself to protect any flying projectiles and draw their attention with his cheap “dolex” watch flashing back and forth. “We might have two small single rooms to trade...the other guests arriving don’t want those.”
“Done!” Naoko said triumphantly, slipping out the suite key from practically thin air (in all honesty she had just pick-pocketed Ueda on the way to his pocket) and setting it down on the counter.
Ueda made to protest, because, after all, he was looking forward to the Jacuzzi and vibrating bed they provided. Of course he neglected to mention that to Naoko, in neglecting to mention they’d have to share the bed...but really, what did she expect?
No sooner than Naoko Yamada returned with two dingy room keys then a hand shot out and picked up the stray pink “Casa de Los Angeles” key right from Mr. Wayne’s hand.
“Ani! I got it!” the newcomer crowed enthusiastically.
“Hey, hey, wait just a-“ Ueda’s mouth dropped slightly. “Ishihara?”
The hyper policeman jumped up from the noise, then jumped back again and did a double take. “Sensei! What brings you here?”
He was looking directly at Naoko when he said that, which made her wonder whether or not to be grateful for his utter lack of a follow up line, or insulted that it flew over his bleached head like so much information did. She instead grimaced and retorted, “Hey, what are you doing here is more the question.”
“Oneesan!” he greeted just as enthusiastically. “What brings you here?”
Obviously he used extra strong bleach this week.
“That’s a mighty fine impression you got there of Keanu Reeves, mister,” Mr. Wayne said helpfully after giving Ishihara the sign-in papers.
“Who?” the policeman asked, before his attention was brought back once again to something he often paid attention to. Yabe, his partner...as a policeman.
“Did you get the suite for a good price?” Yabe asked Ishihara.
“I used your card to pay for it before they could get to it!” he responded eagerly, smiling at Yabe for confirmation of a job well done.
Yabe just hit the back of his head, “My credit card? Damnit, I told you this was supposed to be inconspicuous...Why hello there Sensei,” he glanced at the both of them as if just being caught red-handed in a crime, with his glower lingering on Naoko, “...you.”
“Thank you very much sir!” Ishihara said out of instinct before taking the time to rub his head free of the sting and then comb it back down after he rubbed it.
“Oi, Yabe,” Naoko smirked, “you here to check the case too you lazy bum?”
“Who you callin’ lazy you...” the policeman paused. “Case?”
“Ani, I want to try out the hot tub soon!” Ishihara announced and danced around, completely undermining the one alibi Naoko was so generous to provide. But that’s why she gave it to him, if only to see Yabe squirm in embarrassment.
“It figures you guys would only be here if there was some spiritualistic junk going on.”
Naoko was debating whether or not to respond with righteous fury over it, but Ueda had already picked up her luggage and carried her in tow again. An act that looked almost chivalrous if one didn’t know them. “Look, we better get unpacked,” he stated, looking at both of them like they were quarreling children, “then at dinner we can discuss everything before making our first move right.”
“Do we get time for the hot tub?” Then came the thwacking sound, and then the inevitable, “Thank you very much sir!”
Naoko huffed and shot one last dirty look at Yabe before Ueda’s pace was too strong for her to continue staring behind her. She reluctantly turned around and sunk into his arm, feeling petulant and cheated. Once again at her own fault.
“See what you do?” Ueda chastised, “Now because of your discomfort we have to take smaller rooms and I can’t put out all my things to clear up this case quicker. You prude...you, you Ayumi Hamasaki!”
Naoko flushed, trying hard not to think of the implications that would have granted them the hotel room. She didn’t even bother to ask what other foreign phrased babble he meant. Before they parted for the rooms across each other she called out to him, “Ueda?”
“What is it now?”
Naoko was still looking at her briefcase, boring holes into the latches. She looked up with a fierce kind of determination in her eyes. “You should have told me there was a hot tub in the room, you tako!”
Then she slammed the door.
P.S. Am also shamelesslylusting after fangirling Kubodera Akira.
This also produces strange inspiration considering I'm in a writing slump. So this is my writing slump, an introduction to a TricK episode based on the Eagles' "Hotel California." Yeah, I thought it was weird too but at least I got most of the impetus to write it out of me. Minus the Ishinara in the hot tub scene, which is very entertaining to imagine writing...
Obviously, this is the part you skip over because you're not familiar with my strange fandoms.
“I can’t believe you dragged me along on one of your trips, again,” Naoko Yamada whined, more annoyed with herself than with the man sitting beside her, chauffeuring the two of them to their destination his little compact car.
That’s not to say she wasn’t plenty annoyed with him.
“It was either that or explain to your landlady why you’re four months behind in rent,” the tall man responded with a knowing smirk. It was the kind of smirk that would have looked really intimidating if he didn’t have to duck his head in order to keep from knocking himself unconscious on the roof.
Naoko wanted to respond with something witty and clever, but she was tired from the trip and the quick escape. Instead she crossed her arms and muttered, “Last time I at least got a trip to an onsen out of it.”
“We’re here,” the man announced.
The car stopped abruptly, and Naoko jolted forward in her seat. She was still busy trying to readjust her scarf and hair when Ueda opened her car door and prompted her to get out. Naoko didn’t see his gesture as chivalrous, mainly because he was doing it to usher her confused huddled mass out of the car as quickly as possible to bask in...
“The Hotel California?” Naoko said dubiously, reading the neon pink and yellow lights.
They both paused and let the tackiness of the building set in. Plastic palm trees, a sad attempt at 1920’s Spanish-tile roofing that somehow turned into pagodas, an affect that would have Mann’s Chinese Theater wincing its pillars from the relationship. There were tiles with strange English writing in it that looked more like a calligraphy course in pavement cracks. Somewhere Naoko could have sworn she heard an acoustic guitar making mellow rifts, but she shrugged it off to the massive amount of karaoke places nearby in a district like this.
“The manager has been complaining that his guests are terrified of being haunted. Things moving in the rooms where no one has touched it, shadows in the night...” Ueda explained as he trailed off each phenomenon. “It’s gotten to the point where the guests refuse to leave.”
Naoko was taking in his description with perfunctory nods before stopping. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-what? Why wouldn’t they leave?”
“Ah, that’s the puzzle you see,” Ueda said, not bothering to make eye contact as he took his arm in Naoko’s and picked up their luggage to rush inside. “Because he told me over the phone that once the guest’s go in they aren’t physically able to get outside of the premises. If they try, they either come back to the hotel room alive or...dead.”
“Ueda-san!” Naoko screeched loud enough to echo in the deserted lobby. When they both looked around to see what attention they had drawn, Naoko tugged Ueda’s arm to bring his face down to her level so she could hiss, “I should have known when you offered to pay my months of back-rent.”
“That’s not true,” the physicist protested as he tried to unclench her fingers from his arm.
“Howdy, howdy! Aren’t you just a couple of fine and dandy newlyweds!”
The initial greeting was a horrible butchering of English, sounding more like the appropriate hade, hade(gaudy, gaudy) than anything else, but before Naoko could make a good pun she heard the term “newlyweds” and immediately spun around to declare loudly that his perceptions were as hideously deformed as his accent.
However she had turned right into Ueda’s large hand, which effectively clamped over her mouth as he proceeded to greet the man. “Hello Mr. Wayne. You remember me, Jiro Ueda, from the university.”
“Well pickle my insides and stuff it like a weasel, you actually came,” the man said admiringly, wiping back the stray wisps of a bad comb-over. Despite his accent trying very hard to sound American, he was obviously born and bred Japanese, especially considering the way his accent would suddenly drop. “And what’s the name of this purdy little slip?”
‘Stuffed weasel?’ Naoko was mouthing in shock. Her facial expression was still mostly hidden behind Ueda’s hand, but the look of horror was apparent in her eyes.
“Her? Oh she’s just a tagalong assistant, really not helpful except she does jobs whenever I’m too busy...” Ueda started and pulled his arm back for fear that she might bite it.
Despite her initial shock at “Mr. Wayne” and his rather strange appearance, Naoko instinctively snapped back, right where Ueda’s thumb was only a moment before, “Excuse me?”
“Sure enough is polite too,” Mr. Wayne chuckled and snatched her hand to pump it up and down a few times. “Welcome Miss...”
“Yamada,” she ground out and withdrew her hand with a tug. “I am not his assistant, and I am not some helpful little one piece. I was paid to come here and-”
“So I’ve set up your suite,” Mr. Wayne continued on as he guided them to the check-in desk. He proceeded to scribble out a few lines over one small book and a few other slips, paying absolutely no attention to Naoko’s glares of death except when he looked up, “How does the ‘Casa de Los Angeles’ sound?”
“Like they’re in the middle of a monsoon season,” Naoko blurted out. (Casa sounds like kasa, or umbrella)
“Idiot,” Ueda chastised, “it’s a Spanish name for the room.”
“In a faux American hotel?” Naoko shot back dryly, before turning back to Mr. Wayne. “Look, whatever. Just give me my key and we can deal with his later.”
“I already have Miss Yamada. ‘Taint no more.”
“What?”
Ueda quickly clasped the pink key holder under his palm, wishing he could do any kind of magic trick to make it disappear and make Naoko a few dozen kilometers away for a good running start.
“I didn’t get my key,” Naoko persisted.
“That’s because Mister Ueda has it already,” Mr. Wayne explained, completely oblivious to the fact he was assisting a homicidal rampage.
“You paid me four month’s rent...” she trailed off. Her mind was already working at deducing exactly what this meant. Good start for a murder mystery. “You paid me for THIS?!?!”
Mr. Wayne stepped back and chuckled softly, “Now, I didn’t know any of this kinda stuff would be going on. We may be a kind of RabuRabu Hotel, but not-“
Of course neither of them were listening to him anymore.
“There was only one room for free!” Ueda whined softly, “You’d think I’d really want to be stuck in the same room-”
That certainly didn’t help his case, as Naoko’s indignant rage showed. “New room! You pay! Now! Or I want my slip back.”
“There aren’t any more rooms! And what do you mean ‘slip?’”
“Mister Ueda? Miss Yamada?” Mr. Wayne ventured, waving his hands in front of himself to protect any flying projectiles and draw their attention with his cheap “dolex” watch flashing back and forth. “We might have two small single rooms to trade...the other guests arriving don’t want those.”
“Done!” Naoko said triumphantly, slipping out the suite key from practically thin air (in all honesty she had just pick-pocketed Ueda on the way to his pocket) and setting it down on the counter.
Ueda made to protest, because, after all, he was looking forward to the Jacuzzi and vibrating bed they provided. Of course he neglected to mention that to Naoko, in neglecting to mention they’d have to share the bed...but really, what did she expect?
No sooner than Naoko Yamada returned with two dingy room keys then a hand shot out and picked up the stray pink “Casa de Los Angeles” key right from Mr. Wayne’s hand.
“Ani! I got it!” the newcomer crowed enthusiastically.
“Hey, hey, wait just a-“ Ueda’s mouth dropped slightly. “Ishihara?”
The hyper policeman jumped up from the noise, then jumped back again and did a double take. “Sensei! What brings you here?”
He was looking directly at Naoko when he said that, which made her wonder whether or not to be grateful for his utter lack of a follow up line, or insulted that it flew over his bleached head like so much information did. She instead grimaced and retorted, “Hey, what are you doing here is more the question.”
“Oneesan!” he greeted just as enthusiastically. “What brings you here?”
Obviously he used extra strong bleach this week.
“That’s a mighty fine impression you got there of Keanu Reeves, mister,” Mr. Wayne said helpfully after giving Ishihara the sign-in papers.
“Who?” the policeman asked, before his attention was brought back once again to something he often paid attention to. Yabe, his partner...as a policeman.
“Did you get the suite for a good price?” Yabe asked Ishihara.
“I used your card to pay for it before they could get to it!” he responded eagerly, smiling at Yabe for confirmation of a job well done.
Yabe just hit the back of his head, “My credit card? Damnit, I told you this was supposed to be inconspicuous...Why hello there Sensei,” he glanced at the both of them as if just being caught red-handed in a crime, with his glower lingering on Naoko, “...you.”
“Thank you very much sir!” Ishihara said out of instinct before taking the time to rub his head free of the sting and then comb it back down after he rubbed it.
“Oi, Yabe,” Naoko smirked, “you here to check the case too you lazy bum?”
“Who you callin’ lazy you...” the policeman paused. “Case?”
“Ani, I want to try out the hot tub soon!” Ishihara announced and danced around, completely undermining the one alibi Naoko was so generous to provide. But that’s why she gave it to him, if only to see Yabe squirm in embarrassment.
“It figures you guys would only be here if there was some spiritualistic junk going on.”
Naoko was debating whether or not to respond with righteous fury over it, but Ueda had already picked up her luggage and carried her in tow again. An act that looked almost chivalrous if one didn’t know them. “Look, we better get unpacked,” he stated, looking at both of them like they were quarreling children, “then at dinner we can discuss everything before making our first move right.”
“Do we get time for the hot tub?” Then came the thwacking sound, and then the inevitable, “Thank you very much sir!”
Naoko huffed and shot one last dirty look at Yabe before Ueda’s pace was too strong for her to continue staring behind her. She reluctantly turned around and sunk into his arm, feeling petulant and cheated. Once again at her own fault.
“See what you do?” Ueda chastised, “Now because of your discomfort we have to take smaller rooms and I can’t put out all my things to clear up this case quicker. You prude...you, you Ayumi Hamasaki!”
Naoko flushed, trying hard not to think of the implications that would have granted them the hotel room. She didn’t even bother to ask what other foreign phrased babble he meant. Before they parted for the rooms across each other she called out to him, “Ueda?”
“What is it now?”
Naoko was still looking at her briefcase, boring holes into the latches. She looked up with a fierce kind of determination in her eyes. “You should have told me there was a hot tub in the room, you tako!”
Then she slammed the door.
P.S. Am also shamelessly