Chapter Text
Not a lot happens in the small town of Utopia, Elysium. It’s a pretty quiet, easygoing sort of place, so people tend to treat it as a hub point between other, more interesting destinations - either while heading north to the Coliseum Casino, south to see the Badlands Nature Preserve, or east to the ever-bustling city of Xenokuni.
That being said, the locals will be the first to tell you that, if you do find yourself passing through this small town, do yourself a favor and tune your radio to 108.2, “The Roam.”
During the day, resident metal-head Banzoin Hakka mans the airwaves, pumping up folks with hardcore bangers. But at night, you get Josuiji Shinri, playing smooth jams for those working the graveyard shift. And every once in a blue moon, he’ll treat his listeners to a ghostly story of the supernatural, for avid listeners know this is no ordinary radio station.
This is the local station of the Radio Ronin Paranormal Investigation Agency.
“If there’s a ghost of a chance, we’ll give it a glance.”
It’s a corny, but catchy tagline, and one that marks the end of his most recent email: a response back to a cheeky entrepreneur, declining their generous offer to pay him and Hakka in “exposure” in exchange for ad space on their radio program. Money might be tight, but they aren’t that desperate.
Shinri hits send while taking the last sip from his coffee. It’d gone cold in the time it took him to read over today’s messages, with most of them being junk mail, billing notifications, and of course, the aforementioned business inquiries. He knows better by now than to get excited over the “new message” notification, but still he checks it. Just on the off chance that maybe, just maybe, something… big will be there.
Hey, it happened before, right? Could always happen again, he tells himself.
As the clock ticks over into 3 PM proper, Shinri hears the door to the studio room behind him open. A few minutes later, Hakka exits with a stretch and a wave, barely managing to mumble, “Hi, Shinri,” through a jaw-popping yawn.
“Hey, Hakka,” Shinri greets back, then gestures over to the pot of coffee in the kitchenette. “Think there’s enough for one more cup, if you need it.”
“Heck yeah.” Hakka shuffles past him eagerly, and just like that, they begin to settle into their afternoon routine. Shinri switches on the TV for some background noise while Hakka makes himself some lunch, pouring himself the last of the coffee, and the two of them share the silence as they catch the tail end of the latest news story.
“—And finally, popular Southern Elysian show choir, the Octoposse, announces they will be canceling their upcoming concert in Xenokuni for undisclosed reasons. Their choir director went public on social media with an apology for the short notice, stating that while he unfortunately cannot share the reasons for the cancellation, he and his Poppets are planning on performing a make-up concert later this year in Xenokuni, and that tickets will be refunded in full.”
“Are you fucking — Dude, I spent half this morning hyping that shit up…” Hakka groans, slumping against the couch, his plate of food balanced precariously on his knee.
“Guess something big must’ve come up for them to cancel so suddenly.” Shinri shrugs.
“Yeah, but that was literally the only thing we had for news today. Was hyping that shit up so much, you have no idea.” The musician takes an aggressive bite of his sandwich. “What about you? Get anything exciting in the mail today?”
“Just the same old junk mail and bills.” He shakes his head. Leans away from his desk to add: “Water’s due at the end of the month, by the way.”
Hakka clicks his tongue. “Seriously? That's it? What about that possible ghost writing the Takeda family found?”
Another defeated shake ‘no’. “Gonna be honest, I don’t think that lead’s going anywhere. Been over a month now and the granddaughter hasn’t responded back to the last message I sent.”
“Man, what the fuck. Like legit, feels like we haven’t gotten any good leads in ages.”
“Ghosts aren’t exactly a common, everyday occurrence, Hakka.” Shinri sighs. “I’m sure some people might not even realize they’re being haunted to begin with.” He’d long since accepted that folks in Utopia were pretty quick to write off signs of the paranormal. A drop in temperature? Probably just the AC going on the fritz again. Random objects moving without being touched? Eh, must’ve been nudged when no one was looking. Eerie whispers in a quiet room? Gotta just be someone’s earphones bleeding sound or something.
Still, there’s a pang of sympathy towards Hakka as the man visibly deflates further into the couch. “I know, I know. Just frustrating, I guess.” He punctuates his pouting with a sad little noisy sip of his mug. “Really hoped we could get some kinda lead before I go outta town.”
“Me too…” Shinri offers up a small smile. “But hey, don’t worry. The town’s still gonna be here when you get back.”
“Nah, I’m gonna go on break and there’s gonna be fucking chaos in the streets. You’re going to get a bunch of listeners calling in like ‘Ueeh, where’s Hakka? I miss him!” He even pitches up his voice for comedic effect. “He hates us, that stinky bird…”
Shinri chuckles. “Sounding a lot like Flayon there.”
Laughing around the last few bites of his sandwich, Hakka then makes to stand from the couch with his plate. “...Oh, that reminds me: Flay texted me. He said the cameras and mics are fixed. We can stop by the shop anytime to pick them up.”
“Hey, good to know. How much do we owe him?”
“Don’t worry, I already paid.” A bit sheepishly, he adds, “Uh, he… wasn’t able to get the kinetic projector working though. The part he needs to replace for that model isn’t being sold anymore.”
“…Means we’re gonna have to get a new one, huh?”
Hakka sucks in a breath, and lets out a grumbling, “Yeaaaaaah.”
“Ah…” Shinri tried not to let the disappointment seep into his voice. After all, it wasn’t as if they were on some kind of timeline. Hakka said it best: the agency hasn’t gotten any good solid leads in… god, probably three months? Maybe four? Who’s to say. All he knew is that it was getting harder and harder to justify the cost of equipment and repairs when there weren’t any ghosts or specters to hunt down.
Despite his best efforts though, the worry must’ve been written all over his face, because now it’s Hakka’s turn to look at him with a sympathetic smile. “Hey, I can swing by to pick it up while you’re doing the night show, if you want. Save you the hassle?”
Shaking himself out of his own mind, he scoots back from his desk decidedly and makes his way to the studio room. “Nah, don’t worry about me. I’ll probably stop by tomorrow while I’m running errands. Besides, you gotta get on the road soon.”
Before he shuts the door, he flashes a small grin back towards his co-host. “And I've got a show to start.”
-----
“— And that was ‘Afterwards’ by Rikka. One of his latest hit singles, and a great song for a quiet night like this…”
Quiet, the kinder word for downright dead. Everyone thinks Fridays are the busiest days for radio, but no. The closer you get to the weekend, the less people tuning in. Thursdays like these? They’re the last bastion before the weekend fall-off. Er, well, they're supposed to be. Normally by now, he’d have gotten a call-in request for a song or two. Or maybe someone phoning in with a chilling tale of the undead. But tonight, it’s just him, the music, and the hum of the apartment’s ancient AC trying to combat the lingering summer heat.
He knows how to fill the air, at least — knows how to make this night worth it for those who might be listening in. Cracks a joke about finally having the place to himself with Hakka heading out of town for the weekend. Tells a story about getting approached about joining an MLM. Yet tonight he feels the silence more than ever when he cuts to an ad-break, and Shinri realizes for the first time in a long while, he’s alone. And more crushingly, he’s bored.
The radio gig is… it’s fun. It is, really. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be putting so much effort into it. And Hakka’s been great to work with, even if his volume levels threaten his tinnitus. It’s steady work, and after a year and some change, they have a dedicated fan base. On top of that, word’s been spreading about their station as more folks travel in and out of Utopia.
Leaning back in his studio chair, his eyes wander around the room until they land on a framed newspaper page on the opposite wall. On the front cover, as vibrant as the day it was printed, the main photo is a picture of a man’s mugshot. Middle-aged, tired eyes, prominent mole on his upper brow. In the corner of the mugshot in a separate image is a picture of him and Hakka standing with a detective, all of them smiling as they turn toward the camera. The headline’s stark font sticks out boldly against the rest of the page —
RADIO HOSTS FIND FRAUD! A FOUL PLAY COVER-UP?
Part of him still wishes he’d worn something nicer for that photo. Part of him still doesn’t care. What he does care about though, is that knocking he hears on the front door downstairs now that he’s taken off his headphones. And from a quick listen, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to stop any time soon. The ad-break ends, and Shinri hops back on-air to tell folks he’ll just be a minute, something’s come up behind the scenes, and that he’ll be right back. In the meantime, he hits play on an old recording of a viewer-submitted story he’s read before, and ducks out of the studio room to go investigate the knocking.
The agency’s base of operations is located in an old duplex, now split into four separate apartments - two upper, two lower. Their landlord had called it ‘recently renovated’ in the listing, but every precarious creak and groan of the stairs as Shinri trudges downwards makes him wonder just how recent is recent and just how much was renovated. But he counts it as a win when his foot doesn’t go through the last step, despite how much it protests. Holding up his phone to the door’s peephole, he peers through it with his camera to get a better look at the visitor.
A young man, or at least young in the face. He dresses in a fine way with slacks and a matching vest over-top his white button-up shirt. Across his shoulders is a dark blue coat that looks far too big for his slight frame, but his posture keeps it from dwarfing him entirely. His off-white hair is full of styled swoops and waves with three distinct braids, two on either side of his face and one trailing down behind his left ear.
Shinri checks the time on his phone: 9:22 PM. Too late for a door-to-door salesman. Hasn’t left yet, either, so probably not some prankster (do kids still ding-dong-ditch these days, Shinri wonders). He’s debating on if he should just keep quiet and wait for the stranger to leave when —
“Hellooo? Anyone there?” The man calls out. “I… I heard you coming down, you know. You have very loud stairs!”
Well. There goes that idea.
With a resigned sigh, Shinri pockets his phone, and unlocks the door only as far as the topmost security chain would allow.
“Uh, hey there. Can I help you?”
“Hey, hey! Hello, sir!” His visitor greets back brightly. He tilts his head to the side as if to peer past Shinri through the door, but he stays in place with a polite smile. “This is the agency, right? The Roaming Ronin thingie?”
“The, uh, Radio Ronin, yeah.” Shinri corrects quietly. But agency, huh? Not ‘The Roam’? “Something I can help you with, Mister…?”
“Oh, whoops! Forgot to introduce myself: the name’s Octavio — starts with an O, ends with an O. Easy to remember.” The man holds out his hand, as if talking to him plainly and not through a quarter-open door. “A pleasure to meet you!”
“Josuiji Shinri. Just ‘Shinri’ is fine, though.” He leans weight against the door frame just enough to glance beyond the stranger. There's no one else on the streets, no one other than this Octavio fellow on this humid summer night.
“Um, hey, so… I don’t mean to cut this short, but I’m kind of in the middle of—”
“Ah, right, right! Your radio show!” Octavio pulls back his hand quickly. If he’s offended by the lack of handshake, he doesn’t show it before rambling onward. “I’m sure you’re really busy and all that with the radio, and I don’t want to keep you, but I think there’s some strange things going on where I’m staying, and it’s making us all kinda nervous…? And I guess I just don’t know what I should be doing, or who to talk to about this sorta thing.”
Strange things? Us?
Shinri squints. Stares at the stranger a moment longer, before sighing deeply and undoing the security chain to the door. “Sorry. I’m not sure I follow. What’s going on exactly?”
“Something unnatural is what’s going on, Shinri.” Octavio reaffirms and meets his eyes head-on. “And I need your help.”