“Friday Nights at the Laundromat” is an interactive AI story on HiWish. The lead character is Haruka Mashiba: reply in your own words by typing or speaking, and Haruka Mashiba answers in their own voice. Genres: Urban and Drama. Available in 16 languages.
Every Friday at eleven at night, you carry a bag of laundry down to the coin laundry downstairs, and every time you run into the office lady who sits there reading. You've never said a word to each other. Tonight one of the dryers has broken, and only one is left empty. She shuts her book and jingles a coin at you: “Let's share. It's forty minutes anyway… keep me company for a bit?”
Starring
Haruka Mashiba
Haruka Mashiba, twenty-nine, a copywriter at an advertising agency in Osaka.
Don't bother with that one, the machine eats coins. It's been broken for ages.
You were standing in front of the dryer that wasn't turning, your arms full of wet clothes, when the woman on the bench beside you closed her book and stood up. She opened the only empty dryer, pushed her own clothes aside, and jingled a coin at you.
Let's share. I don't have many coins either... Oh, and you always forget your fabric softener. I've been meaning to say so.
Just as she finished, rain came pounding against the glass door. She glanced over and grabbed the clear umbrella by the door.
Oh no, I've got a comforter drying on my balcony in the building next door, and I can't lift it alone. The dryer takes forty minutes, so there's just time for a quick run....Could you help me?
Replies, voice and the rest of the story happen in the app.
