2025-07-29: It was the Grimace
- Log: It was the Grimace
- Cast: Myunghon Yeo, So-young Park
- Where: The Cardboard Dragon
- OOC Date: July 28, 2025
- IC Date: June 17, 2012
- Summary: can you guess which fast food mascot Sudou is (he's not the grimace)
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon's been scarce since Kaneshiro dropped by on the Cardboard Dragon. A couple of times, it's just been Gumiho (a blue-haired, 15-year old girl with a bit of a temper) manning the store, saying the boss' gone out somewhere. Today, though, they're in again, and the store's in closing hours and the last of the Gamers are trickling out. The sun is setting, and Myunghon's already busy on their laptop again, having taken a folding chair to perch on like they're the world's strongest cockatoo. The act of contortionism required to fold your knees up to your face and still have perfect reach of the laptop for typing is no small feat.
"Mm. Mmmm," Myunghon groans to themself. The corkboard is there again, full of red string and pictures and names like Myunghon's doing the meme. Upon closer inspection, though, the pictures are of... there's a clown with a cloud of red hair, a girl with pigtails, a ghastly purple menace, a gentleman from Kentucky...
????
How's the Colonel involved in the Joker killings???
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
So-young has shown her face at the Cardboard Dragon a few times since her initial visit, undeterred by Myung-hon's absence when she can get just as much fun out of poking the bear that is Gumiho instead. She's referenced having to return to Tokyo for work, but always seems to be ready to hop onto a train and over to Sumaru on any given day, sometimes early and sometimes late.
She's humming something to herself as she slips in the back entrance as if she owns the place, the fancy-looking bag on one shoulder and the chic dress contrasting with the dangling wires leading up to the cat-ear headphones she's wearing.
Without any preamble, she leans in over one of Myung-hon's shoulders to peer at the corkboard, quite certain that the other woman already knows she's there. There's a tinny sort of 'doof-doof-doof' bleeding from her music as she slips the headphones off, except instead of the expected electronic music there's what appears to be a lot of xylophones...?
After a moment of staring dully at the board, she speaks: "Being hungry is not, technically, a conspiracy by Big Stomach."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Gumiho is incredibly adorable and really fun to tease. She talks a lot about how she wants to be a Kool Boss at Kasu High, but she hasn't won a single fight yet. Soon, though, soon! She's figured out the secrets of stretching and warming up before a fight, and the Thorn Boss better watch out!
"No..." Myunghon remarks, their eye drifting off towards nowhere in particular. The bleed from the headphones, however slight, seems to be making their spine shiver. "Three more in the last week..." They rise, gangly-like, lifting several pins to poke at the corkboard. Yumezaki. Aoba. Yongen-jaya. They've got the Colonel on the ropes. Soon, they'll get the proof they need, and not even your eleven herbs and spices can hold up before a jury peer.
"I have to apologise for the other day. No one should be left feeling unsafe in my shop. That's not a regular occurrence, as much as it might seem otherwise."
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
So-young stares at the whiteboard like it might hold the secrets to Kaneshiro's interest in the Cardboard Dragon. She doesn't pry out loud, if only because she doubts that Myunghon would tell her anything, but her eyes graze over the red lines as if trying to figure out a puzzle. Unfortunately, she's not all that equipped for puzzles when she can just lean on people instead.
"Then there's nothing to apologize for," she grins in return as she straightens up, cocksure but also full of faith. "Since I can't particularly say I felt unsafe at any point. Rather, I think you had quite a few customers that were more at risk than I was. And quite a few that would pose quite a risk back, in turn." Her expression sours just a little as she folds her arms. "Besides, I've met plenty of his type. Bending over backwards for them usually just breaks your spine."
"Still, you do get... quite the mixed bag of customers here," she adds. So-young is absolutely terrible at trying to be subtle.
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
"Hmm. I'll take that customer feedback into account."
Myunghon's eye is elsewhere at this point - staring off into some faraway distance that can't be seen by the naked eye alone. They walk back towards their folding chair and climbs over the back and continues to perch, in a slightly different way that nonetheless must cause a lot of pain for the ankles.
"I didn't think you dealt with a lot of criminal types in your line of work. I'm impressed. What's your secret? Or does Cheolje just beat them up for you?"
Tap-tap-tap. Clatterclatterclatter. They've become obsessed about seeing how many nuggets they can place on one order before the online ordering system throws an exception at this point.
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
"Criminal?" There's a lift to So-young's voice that suggests that might be the first time she put real stock in that possibility, rather than just imagining it with a film noir filter over her minds-eye replay of the scene, but she barrels on regardless. "Not at all. But people who cannot resist throwing their standing and monetary worth around to bully others, absolutely."
She seats herself on the couch. "I have never asked Cheolje to beat anyone up, thank you. I'm sure he would, but I'm just as sure he'd look at me with reproach while he did it, and that might just shatter my poor self-confidence."
There's a pregnant pause, and then So-young's brow furrows and a note of concern reaches her voice. "... is this place truly at risk? You sounded like you had a plan of attack, but I do get the feeling the presence of a police officer isn't going to have meant much."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon wonders for a moment how staged this musician thinks the whole event might have been. Is it just them? Are they playing it up even now, with after-care? Is there still some sort of game here, someone like So-young being sent here to throw them off? Kaneshiro did cast a long glance So-young's way. Was that communication? No, Kaneshiro hates the Zainichi, and Koreans along with it -- it'd be above him to have a plant like this...
"Hmmm. I did wonder if he was more violent elsewhere," Myunghon does admit. "Talk more about your time with him. I'm curious. He's very distant with me." Is there a note of reproach there?
"Me? Hmmm. Well, I'm in a right pickle, that's for sure," Myunghon remarks on the topic of whether this place is at risk, a thumb planted into their mouth in thought. "Sergeant Suou's doing his best, but his hands'll be tied in a situation like this. He's already suspended from work for being..."
There's a shadow of a smile.
"Being just, I suppose. No, I'll have to put in extra hours on--"
Click.
"They won't send me the nuggets."
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
"You probably haven't met the minimum order amount. Try adding more," So-young says blithely in response without batting an eyelid, before frowning to herself.
"Even if you ask me that, I'm not really certain where to start. He wasn't around often, but he did give me little souvenirs of where he'd been. He was the one who first told me what Japan was like when Mother went over there, he helped push me to study music rather than acting. But whatever you're imagining, it's not as if he's all smiles and laughter with me either. He's just... him. A good listener, that's for sure."
She says that lightly, but that taciturn nature is obviously a comfort to So-young, given the quiet smile that's grown on her face. "Nowadays, we meet up for dinner every so often. I think he's just keeping tabs on me, but it's pleasant. I can watch him get completely lost as I talk about what I've been up to," she sniggers.
Rocking in her seat, So-young leans her elbow on one knee. "'Sergeant' sounds so lame. Can't he just be a 'Detective'? For the record, my bluff to buy this place was just that. I'm a musician, not a CEO."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
"You're right," Myunghon seems encouraged, even though they've actually exceeded the highest point in which an integer can be expressed at this point. The amount of nuggets can only be described as a long. "I'm disappointed in this website... won't anyone cater to me?"
Myunghon's knees pull up even more tautly, to the point where they could be a hedgehog at this point. "Hmmmm. I'm bad with listeners," Myunghon admits, which is probably incredibly unsurprising. "He's got a stony face that could mean a whole lot of different things, and is never interested in talking about himself unless he needs to. I suppose you were raised by different people as well."
So they meet up for dinner. ... that's fine, because they're acquainted in a familial sense, not a business sense.
There's a look of disappointment, though, as So-young reveals it's a bluff. "Oh. I was kind of hoping you'd pull through on the moneybags end." They get up and tear down a whole strand of string that's connected to--
To the monstrous purple menace??? Was So-young the Greemace all this time??????
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
So-young's eyebrows raise ever so slightly. "I'm not sure that anyone could ever cater to your needs," she bites, but it's a very soft bite, more playful than anything.
She raises a hand and shrugs impressively. It's a controlled but wholehearted action, like she's deliberately shrugging with the whole length of her arm and hand for good measure. Someone never quite got away from the actress lessons on using your full range to convey your emotions. "I remember a procession of Aunties." There's less fondness there and more obligation, though it's not said unkindly. "But there's nothing wrong with sharing a silence, even if I'm bad at it."
The musician meets Myunghon's disapproval with her own, folding her arms and looking off to one side. "Look, I'm well-off, but not 'buy a business out of the blue' well-off and definitely not 'get into a bidding war with an asshole' well-off," she notes rather bluntly as the string comes down. "I just wanted to see what would happen if someone challenged him on that which he clearly cared the most about."
She's not saying it out loud, nor even really consciously noticing it, but Kaneshiro's 'hope you have a safe journey home' did rattle her a little afterwards. Getting back to Tokyo made her let out a sigh of relief.
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon is quiet for a little while longer, as if they're obliging with sharing a silence -- or perhaps it's because they've drifted into another spiderweb of thought, the way that dilated pupil and goldfished eye of theirs is just wandering from one side to another, braincells clearly being given a workout like it's off-peak hours and electricity's cheap time to run the washer, the dryer and the dishwasher all at the same time.
"... I'm not really sure this is what I expected out of finding out I have a sister. It's nothing like a drama on television, or even fiction," Myunghon admits out of the blue. "But..." There's still a distaste, perhaps, that So-young had to experience being threatened.
"By the way... has anything else *strange* ever happened to you since coming here? In Sumaru, or in other places? We're a bunch of weirdos here, as you've noticed, so there's nothing too strange for us."
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
With a quiet hum, So-young tilts her head and offers a wry smile. "Right? You'd think I'd be used to knowing that what you see in a camera lens often isn't anything like real life, but it's still an adjustment to actually see it up close. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense that anything to do with 'family' is messy, chaotic, and underinformed, especially in our case," she grumbles. "Mother's only comment was 'god, I wish I'd been there'."
She straightens up a little at Myunghon's question, frowning as she taps at her lips. "... aside from a bunch of mafia filing into a sleepy card game store to threaten taking it over as a place of business? Or several people immediately standing up to them rather than cowering?" Despite the immediate response, she does appear to be giving it some serious thought, except...
"... I can't say that it has. Honestly, it's been rather too sleepy here," she frowns, clearly disapproving. "I did open some avenues of inquiry about Aoba Park and rental costs. That stage is begging to be used more often."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon doesn't share it, but past the initial surprise, there was a moment of... underwhelmingness, perhaps? Past the initial shock and surprise of such a thing being reality now, the reality that is that they haven't shared many experiences at all -- and are completely different people for it -- perhaps wasn't as stimulating as they wanted it to be. Knowing that mother was equally absent, in a sense, was more disappointing -- they could be more mad if they knew there was a favourite.
"Mmm. See, you say you're not made out of money, but casually thinking about renting out Aoba Park Concert Hall..." Myunghon murmurs.
So they haven't encountered any 'strangeness'. In a way, that's good, but... Myunghon is starting to get suspicious about mother's true intents now. Was there potential, and it's just waiting for trauma to be awakened? That casts a pretty miserable shadow over their mother. Would they do just that, just to have another Persona-User?
"... why don't you play? You've got your instruments with you, right? Your violin piece got interrupted by all that unpleasantness."
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
"No, no, no, no, no," So-young chatters animatedly as she waves her hand. She doesn't seem to share Myunghon's dim view of the situation, at least not outwardly in the light of day, but maybe that's just because she seems to be living somewhat in the moment. She's had her grump, and now she's moved on in a flurry of motion and energy.
"I'm not about to do it out of my own pocket. Probably. But an underappreciated audience and a underutilized stage makes for a great business pitch. I'm sure I can lean on someone at Sumaru TV to help sponsor a few performances. Don't tell me you're a small business owner who hasn't used the 'business expenses' column whenever you can get away with it."
She breaks off into a surprised but very genuine smile. "You liked it? You should have said something! It's scientifically proven that career musicians can eat for a week on a good compliment," she adds as she sets her case down. The violin is not fancy by any means, kind of beat up and clearly well-loved. "Actually playing isn't strictly my forte, but when you work in this industry you just sort of collect a bit of everything. Just like your stacks of books," she adds thoughtfully as she raises the brace to her chin. "I'll bring something weirder next time."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
"I'm not sure what your image of properly utilised is if Aoba Park counts as underutillised..." Myunghon sounds a little agog, but music types can be very weird -- even weirder than them -- at the best of times. Then again, the way they just naturally trickled into their cosplay stage suggests that any stage that isn't being used at any time is an underutilised stage.
"Hmmm. I suppose so," Myunghon is a little coy about it, because they probably are just in full tax evasion mode rather than leaning on the deductibles column. There is a long stare at So-young as they get animated about their performance again. Yes, this is classic Myunghon, getting them started about their own interests and values.
"I would daresay a conductor that does not play at all is lacking a perspective they should have," Myunghon ventures a guess.
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
"It could be so much more, though!" So-young sounds delighted at the prospect, and maybe Myunghon's deduction isn't too far off the mark. "The acoustics of playing to an open-air crowd are always a little suspect, but there's a freshness to it that can feel good. And you can usually convince some unusual acts that you wouldn't be able to get through a concert hall's door, so it's a good opportunity. I'm doing something similar in Shibuya already."
She draws her bow carefully across the strings, frowning in concentration as she tunes the note, stopping occasionally to sing a flat note in comparison with the sound of the violin. "This part, in particular, I'm much too slow at," she admits.
"You're not wrong, but you'd also be surprised. It turns out a conductor has to be an empath, a historian, a mind-reader and a grand visionary," she whines like she doesn't have the biggest grin on her face despite the mournful tone. "I miss just bobbing my hands along to the music. What made you start collecting so many old books?" she adds, almost out of the blue - but it's like tennis, batting the ball back and forth.
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Acoustics are definitely out of Myunghon's element, but in a way, they can appreciate how it must change the sound of a given performance. It's not hard even for someone uninitiated to know how sound bounces off a closed room as opposed to an open-air park. "Hmmm. There are a lot of spaces in Shibuya, it's true... do you perform for the younger crowd?"
Everything about So-young screams 'Classical's BACK, baby'.
"Is slow... bad? I didn't think you wanted to rush music," Myunghon ventures their next guess. But then it's their time to get the tables turned on them. Why old books? There's a mild reticience there for a time, as they pick away at their laptop, seemingly waiting for some kind of signal.
"I like... authors, I suppose. And the further back I read, the more I realised everyone's brains are infected in the exact same way."
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
"Mm! The Shibuya Afternoon Concerts. It's not strictly meant to be for the 'younger crowd', but it does end up that way just from the area you're in. I tend to keep my eye open for guest performers to invite to join. Heh heh, you should have seen people's looks I got when I got a steel drum duo to join us, but they couldn't argue with the results." She's swelling with pride a little at the thought, for her team's sake as much as her own.
Her tongue is dangerously close to peeking out the corner of her mouth in concentration as she ever so carefully turns a knob a little bit more. "... oh, yes. 'Don't worry, So-young. You can take your time, So-Young. I only went and tuned three violins while you're still on your first, So-young,'" she whines. "Some day I'll force her to play so loud her strings snap."
When her attention is called back to Myunghon, it's the use of the word 'infected', and the musician can't help but smirk. "Oh no. Is this philosophy? The needs of the self over the needs of the many, or something like that? You're pretty close to being bohemian, but I think the rules say you need to wear a ratty trenchcoat to get full points." She draws her bow across the strings again, finally satisfied. "You mentioned fiction earlier. My first impression was that you were one of those detectives who lives at right-angles to the world."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon doesn't really understand what a steel drum duo is or how that's sacrilegious or transgressive, but steel sounds... transgressive. Somehow. Classical is soft. They didn't invent steel back then, did they? "I don't like hasty people," Myunghon just speaks in turn about the violins. Well, that's incredibly unsurprising, given how they appear to enjoy just disappearing into their own brain for large stretches of time.
Philosophy?
"Mmm.... this jacket is not that ratty, is it?" Myunghon draws the long suit jacket that they've got draped over their shoulders at all times, like it were a security blanket. Their form is a lot more gaunt and wiry without it, like a wizard without a cape to swallow them. "I do keep it clean..." Excessively clean, even. They stink of bleach half the time.
How do you clean a black jacket with bleach?
"Detective? No... I'm not a detective. Detective Suou is," Myunghon advises. "But maybe... .... ... it's comforting to read the thoughts of someone who died a hundred years ago. There's no way I can affect what they say, at that point. We might as well have lived on different planets."
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
"Oh no," So-young says again when Myunghon says they don't like hasty people. At the very least, the musician is self-aware enough to know that she earns that particular label half the time. "I think you'll be fine. Besides, I'm just joking. It's not like I want to attach labels to anyone if they don't want them."
Carefully, So-young launches into a slower version of the solo she was playing at the cosplay event. It doesn't seem right, in this quiet place, to go for something full of verve and energy. So-young might embody a certain vibrance, but it's just as important to her to match her music to its setting, and so the notes are drawn-out and languid. She's on the cusp of freestyling it, playing what feels right by instinct in a long and meandering session.
"Is that because you don't want to influence what other people might say? Or because if they were alive today you'd feel a need to call them on it?" she wonders during one lull. For So-young, 'comforting' is an odd way to put it, but she's not nay-saying the idea so much as she looks genuinely curious about the answer.
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
Myunghon isn't sure whether So-young ended up taking it like they're saying she's hasty. Well, it's okay -- sometimes they do miss cues. "Where did you go to school?" Myunghon ends up asking, since they're somewhere down memory lane... someplace. "Sometimes I wonder what it's like over there..." Being hated for being part of a country you've never seen or been to or been a part of.
There's no particular reaction that Myunghon has to music, positive or negative. It just... seems to be, in a sense. But they're not bristling at it, so it must be doing a net gain, right? But then So-young says something that makes the white-haired person nod.
"Yes. Even now, you and I, talking like this, we're influencing each other. It's impossible to have a conversation with a living person without pushing and pulling on them," Myunghon suddenly sounds a bit more animated. "My opinion of steel drums probably changed from when before we started this conversation. Or Aoba Park's utilisation. Even a book written a hundred years ago was influenced by the pressures and challenges and desires of the zeitgeist. It's not perfect. But... it's a bit better. Everyone hides a bit of their feelings in their written words."
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
So-young's answer to Myunghon's first question is to look comically glum. "Ugh, don't ask me that. It was depressing. I was depressing," she adds quickly. "Leave that terrible place buried in the past. Er-- the school, that is, not the country," she corrects herself quickly, then looks lost for words. "It was... nice? It's home, good and bad. ... it may mean a lot more to you than it would to me, I suspect."
At the very least, So-young is fairly sure that Myunghon would spend a lot more time thinking on it than she would or ever has. Still, she's doing her best here - she plays for an unbroken while, mulling over the things that Myunghon is saying to her, turning them over in her head. She's not good at this, but it makes for an interesting distraction as she plays, and it's an unexpected subject to draw a flicker of life out of Myunghon.
"... I was going to ask if you disapproved of other people's thoughts intruding on yours, but I'm not sure that's it," she ventures a guess after a while. "It sounds more like you're approaching it like a scientific method. Observe, but don't interfere? But at the same time, you clearly have enough people on your side that I can't quite think of you as a solitary person. But... well, evoking a feeling is what my work is all about, I suppose."
<Pose Tracker> Myunghon Yeo has posed.
.... it's true. And yet, at the same time, untrue. Myunghon has always postured a kind of self-importance about being Zainichi, in part because they got heavily radicalised after reading up on their family's 100-year history here. Not belonging to Japan, nor South nor North Korea. It feels impetuous and rebellious, perhaps almost for its own sake, but not for nothing's sake either.
Does So-young have a stronger sense of home than they ever had? They seem more comfortable in their own skin. And they have all their skin. They're not a half-dessicated, flayed, debrided mummy. Then again, they hated the conventionally perfect figure they owned in high school.
"Hmmm. That's not inaccurate." Observing. Did they like observing? Was it a scientific experiment for them? In truth, it's only that people are mortifying and change their opinions at the drop of a hat, and thus the goal of 'what is qualified as a human being' seems to be an ever-changing goalpost. And in live conversation, lies and memory factor in, as well as emotion and mood. How's someone supposed to figure out what a human being is when all the variables are moving all at once?
... yeah, it might be a scientific experiment.
Not a solitary person. It's weird, to have that spelled out for them. It's true -- they are Rumourmonger Merry. They are Hope. Hope means nothing if it isn't infectious. They've positioned themselves as a community guidepost, both mundane and supernatural. They're posturing themselves to take down a beast of capital -- the biggest one they've hunted yet. They're inextricably connected to the world.
So why do they still understand nothing?
"Yua would say, at this time... would you like to have some tea?" A pause. "It would have to be outside. I don't think I have tea. Unless she stocked some...?"
Don't look in their pantry, So-young. You'll truly understand what it means to be 'disqualified as a human being'.
<Pose Tracker> So-young Park has posed.
So-young watches those thoughts cross Myunghon's face. Except really, she doesn't - she concentrates on her playing instead, and mostly just wonders what might be running through the other person's head as she fills the silence with her violin. You could certainly call her comfortable in her own skin, but you could also call her puddle-deep if you felt like it - and it probably wouldn't be all that wrong. The advantages and disadvantages of having her heart on her sleeve are both fairly plain to see.
Her eyebrows raise at the offer - she doesn't reply immediately, but her music shifts slightly, obviously deliberately winding down to a conclusion from the holding pattern she's been idly playing through. Ever so slowly, she's learning how best to handle talking with Myunghon, so rather than ask who Yua is, or complain about the pantry that she has already learnt about from Gumiho, she simply tilts her head.
"If you'd like-- that is, if you're comfortable with the idea," she amends. "I know I can be a hothead, but I would like to think I'm not forcing you into anything that would make you uncomfortable. And I _can_ be patient, from time to time." ... this is, astonishingly, not quite a lie - though it's probably thanks to the tempo of their discussion having primed her by being relatively slow from its onset. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
"Oh, I saw the loveliest place on the way over. The sundaes looked _very_ photogenic," she adds. Never mind, make that 'the next twenty minutes' instead.