Sunny G's Series of Rash Decisions by Navdeep Singh Dhillon

Author:Navdeep Singh Dhillon [Dhillon, Navdeep Singh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

THANKS A MOCHI

Someone cosplaying as a giant robot with red eyes opens the door. Inside, everyone is milling around the house, some kids sitting on the stairs, but mostly loitering in the living room and kitchen, probably in the backyard too. I don’t see any other Snollygoster-heads, but there are plenty of people in anime-related cosplay.

“You know,” the robot says solemnly. “I didn’t ask to be this big.”

Neither of us knows who he’s cosplaying, but I’m impressed with the work.

“Geez, man. I’m friggin’ Alphonse. Alphonse Elric!” The robot stamps his feet. “The brother who loses his whole body! You know, from the failed attempt at alchemy to bring their mother back?”

He takes his head off. It’s Shaiyar, an anime- and Minecraft-obsessed Twitch streamer I know from school and online. He and his sister, Kavya, used to run a YouTube channel together a few years ago until their brands kinda diverged and they went their separate online ways.

“Arrr, Fullmetal Alchemist,” I say, vaguely recalling the show about the two Elric brothers.

He smiles and puts his head back on.

“Foam?” Mindii says.

“EVA foam,” he says. “And contact cement.”

“Can’t knock me down,” Mindii says, striking a low pose and staring intently at him.

“Katara! Noice!” Shaiyar says enthusiastically. His sister, Kavya, walks toward us, a golden lightning bolt sewn on her deep blue salwar kameez, glitter all over her face. Kamala Khan, the new incarnation of Ms. Marvel. She hands him a plastic cup filled with some kind of blue punch. “Next time, can you just hot glue a straw to your helmet so you don’t have to keep breaking character to take a drink,” she says to him.

“A big fat plastic straw running from the top of my helmet to my face IS breaking character!” Shaiyar says with irritation as she starts walking back to the party. She pauses to look at me. “What is that, some kinda crepe wool?”

I nod.

“Cool.” She continues walking away, as Shaiyar awkwardly maneuvers holding his helmet and drinking punch simultaneously, #cosplayproblems.

We mosey on through. It takes me a minute, but I recognize the music playing in the living room. The original Cowboy Bebop theme song in all its glory: purely instrumental, 1970s pulp sounds. Fitting for an anime about nihilistic bounty hunters in space.

I can almost see the visuals. Big poofy Afros, sunglasses, sleek spaceships, that constant sense of being broke and hungry. Just as the music crescendos into a fast-paced trumpet-like balloon squeal, the two girls from the donut shop—the fox and the dragon, Yia and Hazel—jump into the only clear space in the house, a makeshift stage between the sofa and TV. They start spitting rhymes, thick hip-hop lyrics in mostly English punctuated with Hmong and Khmer. Not that I’m an expert in either language, I just know what they sound like.

The girls are really revving up the dramatic arcs of Cowboy Bebop like lyrical gangsters.

They finish and find me and Mindii.

“That was straight fire,” I say.

“Thanks!” Yia in her fox cosplay replies.

“I gotta ask,” I say.

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