#Historical Merchants' Hall

[postcard-from-the-past]

Merchants of the Central Market Hall of Paris

French vintage postcard

[dolcejwnie]

THE GAME OF DESIRE. Y.JUNGWON

synopsis: where you, a courtesan in the old china, meets a foreign man who could change your whole life forever.

warning: open ending .ᐟ.ᐟ

genre: historical au; courtesan! reader x a very rich man of power yang jungwon, platonic love, 4149 words.ᐟ

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you were born into a world where survival was a delicate dance, and beauty was a currency that could either condemn or elevate. the daughter of a minor merchant family in the bustling streets of suzhou, your early life was one of modest means, tinged with a sharp awareness of the class divide. your parents, struggling to make ends meet, were forced to make difficult choices to ensure you and your younger siblings ate. you remember the day your mother, her face pale and drawn, came to you with a proposition. a tháng—a renowned brothel in the heart of suzhou—was looking for young girls with talent, beauty, and grace, to be trained as courtesans. your mother, knowing your aptitude for music, your quick wit, and your striking looks, saw it as an opportunity for you to escape a life of poverty. though she had always hoped you would marry a respectable man and lead a life of honor, she also knew that life, as it had been for many women in your position, was often a closed door.

at the tender age of 14, you were sent to the tháng, where the sound of guqin and pipa could be heard in the halls and the air was thick with the scent of jasmine and incense. the brothel, like all others, was a place of both beauty and brutality. it was here that you learned the art of seduction, music, poetry, and tea—skills that would elevate you in the eyes of wealthy patrons and clients. but as the years passed, the harsh reality of your position became clearer. the courtesans who could capture the attention of powerful men would rise to the coveted title of huakui—a position of wealth, influence, and respect. and with that respect came a power that no amount of wealth could buy. huakui was the highest rank, but it wasn’t given; it had to be earned.

you, like many before you, were trained to entertain the rich merchants, the government officials, and the scholars who came and went like shadows. you were taught to be charming, to make men feel as though they were the center of your universe, while beneath it all, you maintained a careful detachment. at first, you believed in the idea of courtship, the slow, deliberate dance of seduction. but the years wore on, and you saw how many women, far more beautiful and talented than you, were cast aside by the men they gave their hearts to.

it was clear: huakui was not earned through beauty alone. it was a game of power, of influence, of timing—and above all, wealth. wealth, and the men who controlled it.

over the years, you made subtle shifts in your approach. you no longer relied purely on your beauty or music to capture the attention of a potential patron. you began to study their desires, their weaknesses. you became a master of conversation, learning to read a man’s true intentions long before he even spoke. you became adept at playing the game of jiu—of knowing when to give and when to withhold. you grew bolder, more confident, as you learned that to rise, you would have to sacrifice not just your time, but pieces of yourself.

by the time you reached 20, your beauty was still radiant, but it was your presence—your intelligence, your wit—that began to attract attention. still, despite your efforts, none of the men who visited the tháng seemed capable of taking you to the next level. they were all too ordinary, too distracted by their own desires. you could play the game, but you needed more than just a string of fleeting admirers. you needed someone who could offer you more than a few nights of extravagant dinners and trinkets.

one evening, as you rehearsed a new choreography in your room, your mind wandered again to huakui—the title that, it seemed, could only be earned by the wealthiest, most powerful of men. it was said that a woman who became huakui would be given a sum of wealth so vast, she would never need to work again. but more than that—she would gain respect, control, and an elevated place in society. she could even influence the city’s politics, if the right man found her. that’s when you first heard rumors of a foreigner, a mysterious man who had been frequenting the most prestigious brothels in the city. a man who had connections to the highest echelons of power in suzhou, someone capable of making a woman’s dreams come true. but there was a catch—he was notoriously difficult to please, and none of the courtesans seemed able to capture his attention for long.

your desperation deepened. if huakui was your only path to the life you dreamed of, you had to be ruthless. you would not wait for a man to fall in love with you, to be courted into submission. no, you would approach this differently. you needed someone who could take you to the next level—and you would have to impress him, no matter what.

you had heard whispers of his name: jungwon, a foreigner with a keen interest in strategy and intellect. it was said that he preferred a different kind of woman—one who was not simply beautiful, but sharp, calculating, a challenge in her own right. you knew your beauty alone would not be enough. you would have to prove yourself in ways that others could not, in ways no one had expected.

but even as you rehearsed your pieces and prepared your mind, there was one thing you could not deny: the desperation inside you, the hunger for power, for respect, for the life you had always dreamed of. you were willing to pay whatever price was demanded, to give up whatever was necessary, because you knew that without huakui, you would never be free.

the night of your performance arrived, heavy with anticipation. the tháng was alive with murmurs of your bold plan, courtesans and attendants alike buzzing with speculation. the air was thick with incense, clinging to your skin and filling your lungs with an almost intoxicating sense of destiny. You had spent weeks crafting the perfect strategy, knowing that Jungwon was not a man easily impressed.

The performance hall was lit with an array of glowing lanterns, their light casting soft shadows on the lacquered floors. The guests that evening were of the highest caliber, adorned in silk robes embroidered with gold and silver. And among them, seated near the center, was him—Jungwon.

jungwon entered the tháng with the quiet confidence of a man who didn’t need to announce his presence. the room shifted around him, the air becoming charged with something indefinable. conversations slowed, laughter faded into whispers, and eyes turned in his direction, drawn as if by an unseen force. even the courtesans, practiced in their poise, faltered for a moment, their fans stilled mid-motion.

he was younger than you expected, barely in his late twenties, but his presence made him seem older, like someone who had seen and shaped more of the world than most men twice his age. his features were a study in contrasts—sharp cheekbones softened by the fullness of his lips, a strong jawline balanced by the slight curve of his nose. his skin carried a faint golden undertone, kissed by distant suns, and his hair, dark as a moonless night, was neatly combed back, exposing a broad forehead and the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw.

his clothing marked him as both foreign and elite: robes of deep indigo silk, trimmed with intricate embroidery that seemed to shimmer in the lantern light. the subtle elegance of his attire spoke of immense wealth, but it was his demeanor that truly set him apart. his movements were deliberate, each step measured and soundless, as though he had long mastered the art of walking unnoticed yet unavoidable.

when his eyes swept the room, they moved with the precision of a hawk scanning the horizon. dark and piercing, they seemed to see not just what was in front of him, but beyond it, to some hidden layer of reality no one else could access. his gaze lingered nowhere for long—until it found you.

the moment his eyes met yours, it was like the room collapsed into silence. his stare wasn’t appreciative, nor was it dismissive; it was calculating, as if he were weighing something unseen. there was no warmth in his expression, no smile to soften the intensity of his focus, only a calm, quiet challenge that seemed to say: are you worth my time?

whispers began to ripple through the room, hushed and urgent. jungwon. the name moved like a secret passed between trembling hands. a foreigner, they said, but one with connections to the highest circles of power in suzhou. it was said he was a man of ruthless intelligence, one who favored strategy over brute force, intellect over emotion. those who underestimated him often found themselves ruined before they even realized they were playing his game.

yet it was not just his reputation that made people pause. it was the way he seemed to hold the room in the palm of his hand without a single spoken word. men envied him, some even feared him, but no one dared to challenge him. women watched him with a mixture of curiosity and longing, their gazes lingering on the way his robes clung to his broad shoulders or the faint, knowing curve of his mouth.

as he took his seat near the center of the room, his posture relaxed but commanding, it became clear that jungwon was a man who did not chase after things. he expected the world to come to him. and it did.

you stepped into the center of the room, the faint hum of whispers melting into silence as every gaze followed you. the air was thick with expectation, the light of the lanterns softening the edges of the polished floor. your silk robes clung to your form as you moved, a deliberate choice—you had spent weeks preparing not just a performance, but a strategy. tonight, your dance was your weapon.

the music began, a soft, hypnotic rhythm of guzheng and flute. at first, your movements were traditional, precise, flowing like water through the air. your arms extended in arcs of perfect symmetry, your steps delicate and measured, as though you were painting poetry with your body. you knew how to play this part—the elegant courtesan, demure and untouchable. it was what the audience expected of you.

but jungwon was not like the others.

you had studied him, listened to the whispers, the rumors of his sharp mind and colder heart. men like him did not fall for convention, for what they could predict. they craved something else, something unexpected. so, as the music swelled, you let your movements shift, the rhythm of your dance breaking free of its careful elegance.

your steps became bolder, your hips swayed with a daring curve that edged on the line of propriety. your arms, once delicate as willow branches, now moved with the slow, deliberate confidence of someone unafraid to be seen. you tilted your head, letting the dark curtain of your hair fall over one shoulder, a subtle invitation, a tease.

a ripple of murmurs spread through the room, a mixture of surprise and tension. no one had expected this—the playful tilt of your smile, the flirtation woven into the precise art of the dance. it was a risk, one that could easily be seen as too brazen, too improper.

but jungwon’s eyes never left you.

you could feel his gaze like a weight, sharp and assessing, but not disapproving. his expression was unreadable, a mask of calm, but there was a glint in his dark eyes, a flicker of something primal, something intrigued.

your pulse quickened. you had him now.

as the music swirled toward its climax, you moved closer to where he sat, your steps slow, deliberate, each one a challenge. your gaze locked with his, and you let a faint smile curve your lips, as if daring him to look away. he didn’t.

the room seemed to vanish. there were no murmurs now, no whispers. it was just you and him, the unspoken tension crackling in the air between you.

when the final note of the music faded, you ended your dance with a low, graceful bow, your arms extended, your head lowered. the silence that followed was deafening, every eye in the room waiting for his reaction.

jungwon sat back slightly in his chair, his expression unchanged except for the faintest curve of his lips. it wasn’t a smile, not fully—it was something deeper, sharper. he brought his hands together in a slow, deliberate clap, the sound breaking through the stillness like a drop of water into a calm pool.

“unexpected,” he said, his voice low and smooth, carrying just enough weight to send a ripple through the audience. “and bold.”

he leaned forward slightly, resting his elbow on the arm of his chair, his fingers brushing his jaw as he studied you. “you dance like someone who doesn’t fear the consequences of being seen.”

there was a pause, the kind that stretched just long enough to draw a breath of uncertainty before he added, “and that is what makes you remarkable.”

his words were simple, but they carried a quiet power, a subtle acknowledgment that sent a thrill through you. the risk you had taken had paid off. for the first time that evening, jungwon was no longer merely observing. he was engaged, his focus entirely on you.

you straightened, your heart racing but your face composed. you met his gaze with calm defiance, as if to say, i know what i am doing, and so do you.

the tension between you hung heavy, charged with possibilities. but this was only the beginning of the game.

"i wonder—are you as skilled off the stage as you are on it?”

the challenge in his words sent a shiver down your spine, but you met his gaze with unwavering calm. “that depends, sir,” you replied, your voice steady. “on the nature of the challenge.”

his smile deepened, sharp and knowing. “xiangqi,” he said simply. “join me, and let’s see if your mind is as sharp as your moves.”

the attendants quickly set up a xiangqi board, the red and black pieces gleaming like gemstones in the lantern light. as you took your place opposite him, the tension in the room grew thick, the weight of countless eyes pressing down on you.

the xiangqi board gleamed between you and jungwon, the lacquered wood reflecting the flicker of lantern light. the red and black pieces were meticulously arranged, the symbols etched on them seeming to hum with the promise of conflict.

jungwon sat across from you, his posture relaxed but his gaze sharp, cutting through the ambient noise of the room as if no one else existed. his fingers brushed the edge of a black piece—a general—his touch slow, deliberate. “the stakes are clear,” he said, his voice smooth but carrying an edge of challenge. “if you win, you become an huakui, your reputation elevated beyond question. financed by me.”

he paused, his dark eyes catching yours. “but if i win… you should be mine. no one else’s.” his words hung in the air like a knife’s edge, daring you to falter.

the room was utterly silent now. the courtesans and guests who had gathered lingered at a respectful distance, but you could feel the weight of their gazes. you met jungwon’s eyes, your lips curving into the faintest smile. “a generous offer,” you replied, your tone steady, teasing. “but are you sure you’re ready for the consequences of losing?”

his mouth quirked, a subtle hint of amusement. “i never lose.”

“then let’s see,” you said, your fingers lightly touching a red soldier piece as you made the opening move.

the game began.

at first, the moves were measured, careful. jungwon played like a tactician, each movement precise, calculated, as though he were testing you. but you didn’t falter. you knew his type—men who expected to dominate the board, who underestimated the nuance of your strategy.

he tilted his head slightly as he studied the board, the movement revealing the curve of his neck beneath the edge of his high-collared robe. the rich black fabric clung to his shoulders and chest, emphasizing his lean, athletic build, while the faintest trace of a smirk played at his lips, just enough to send a thrill down your spine.

“an aggressive start,” he noted, his voice low and smooth as he countered one of your moves, capturing a soldier with a cannon.

you leaned slightly forward, letting the motion bring you closer to him, your hand lingering on the board. “sometimes aggression is necessary,” you murmured. “but only when it serves a greater purpose.”

his lips curved faintly, his gaze flicking to yours. “you speak like someone who’s used to winning battles of her own.”

“perhaps,” you said, moving your horse to an unexpected position, a move that forced him to pause. “but sometimes, it’s more satisfying to win the war.”

when he spoke, his voice was low and smooth, like the first notes of a pipa—calm, controlled, and undeniably alluring. “are you hesitating?” he asked, his gaze lifting from the board to meet yours. the question wasn’t innocent; it carried a weight that made your pulse quicken, as though he could see the exact moment doubt flickered across your mind.

his eyes then sharpened, and for the first time, you saw it: surprise. he hadn’t expected that move, and the realization sent a ripple of satisfaction through you.

the game continued, the tension between you thickening with each passing moment. jungwon played with an almost predatory grace, his hands moving with purpose, each piece he captured a statement of dominance. there was something about the way he moved, deliberate and unhurried, that made the air feel heavier, warmer. the curl of his fingers around a game piece, the way his lips parted slightly as he calculated his next move—everything about him exuded confidence, a quiet, smoldering power that made it impossible to look away. but you weren’t merely playing defensively—you matched his intensity, meeting each calculated strike with one of your own.

your moves became bolder, riskier. you leaned into the game, your hand brushing his once as you reached for a piece. the touch was fleeting, accidental, but it sent a jolt through the air, an unspoken challenge that lingered in his gaze.

“you’re playing dangerously,” he said softly, his voice laced with both admiration and warning.

when he leaned forward to place a piece on the board, the subtle shift brought him closer, the faint scent of sandalwood and something darker—something unmistakably him—lingering in the space between you. the proximity was disarming, the brush of his sleeve against your hand almost enough to send heat rushing to your cheeks.

“isn’t that what makes it fun?” you countered, your tone light, teasing. you moved your chariot forward, cutting off one of his major pathways.

jungwon’s gaze darkened, the flicker of a smile tugging at his lips. “perhaps you’re more dangerous than i thought.”

the tension between you was almost unbearable now, the air electric with the weight of every move, every glance. the onlookers held their breath, their eyes darting between the board and your faces.

and then came the final play.

jungwon’s general was cornered, his defenses crumbling. his jaw tightened slightly as he assessed the board, his mind racing to find an escape. you could see the flicker of frustration in his eyes, the realization that he was moments away from losing.

you hesitated, your hand hovering over the board as you prepared to make the winning move. for a heartbeat, you met his gaze, and the intensity there was enough to steal your breath.

“if you do this,” he said quietly, his voice low and intimate, “you’ll win everything you’ve ever wanted.”

you tilted your head, your smile soft but confident. “but at what cost?”

he leaned forward, his voice a whisper meant only for you, his yes locking you in like you could never escape, even if you ever wanted.

“because if you win, you’ll never see me again.”

the words hit you harder than you expected. the game wasn’t just about strategy anymore—it was about something deeper, something unspoken between you.

you had entered this game with clear intentions: to win, to claim the title of huakui, to secure a future of wealth, freedom, and power. it was what you had worked for, dreamed of, bled for. and yet, in that moment, as jungwon’s voice—low and unyielding—wrapped around you, the certainty of that victory began to waver.

was this the cost?

your fingers trembled slightly as they hovered above the board, your mind racing. you could feel every beat of your heart, loud and insistent, like it was trying to drown out the logical reasoning you clung to.

jungwon sat before you, his face calm, but his eyes—those dark, penetrating eyes—held a challenge that made your chest tighten. he wasn’t bluffing. you could see it in the set of his jaw, the faint curve of his lips that wasn’t quite a smile. if you placed that final piece, if you claimed victory, he would be gone.

there was a bitter irony to it. the very thing you had fought for—a place at the pinnacle, recognition, power—felt hollow now that it came with the loss of him. and yet, what was he to you? a stranger, a patron, a man who had challenged you, intrigued you, drawn you into a game that was about more than pieces on a board. he wasn’t part of the life you had imagined for yourself.

and yet… he had become central to it.

your gaze flickered to his hands, steady on the edge of the table, and you remembered how they moved—precise, deliberate, with an elegance that matched his words. you thought of the faint scent of sandalwood that clung to him, the way his voice had wrapped around you like silk, the quiet intensity in his eyes when he looked at you.

the thought of never seeing him again sent an ache through your chest, sharp and unexpected. it wasn’t love—it couldn’t be, not so soon, not with someone you barely knew. but it was something. an allure, a magnetism, a possibility. and now, that possibility hung in the balance, waiting for you to decide.

you swallowed hard, trying to steady yourself. every rational part of your mind screamed at you to finish the game, to take what was yours, to secure the life you had dreamed of since you first set foot in the tháng. you owed it to yourself, to your family, to every sacrifice you had made.

but as your fingers brushed the edge of the winning piece, the thought of jungwon walking away tightened around your heart like a vice.

was this truly winning?

your throat tightened as the weight of the choice bore down on you. the audience around you faded further, their whispers and expectations dissolving into the haze of your uncertainty. the only thing that remained was him, watching you, waiting.

the question wasn’t about the game anymore. it was about you.

what did you truly want?

your fingers moved with precision, placing the final piece. “checkmate,” you said softly, the word carrying the weight of victory.

the room erupted into whispers and applause, but you barely heard it. jungwon sat back, his expression unreadable, though the faintest hint of a smile touched his lips.

“well played,” he said, his voice calm but laced with something deeper—respect, admiration, and perhaps even regret.

you straightened, your heart pounding as you absorbed what had just happened. you had won. you were an huakui, your future secured. but as you looked at jungwon, at the quiet intensity in his gaze, you couldn’t shake the feeling that something more significant had been at stake.

“congratulations,” he said, rising to his feet. he inclined his head slightly, a gesture of acknowledgment. “you’ve earned your victory.”

but as he turned to leave, you found yourself speaking before you could think. “wait.”

he paused, his back to you, his shoulders tense, as if saying that he didn’t expect that you could have something else to say to him.

“you said if i won, i’d never see you again,” you said, your voice steady but soft, almost a whisper. “what if i don’t want that?”

he turned slowly, his eyes locking onto yours, a flicker of surprise crossing his face before it settled into something softer, something warmer.

“then perhaps,” he said quietly, a faint smile tugging at his lips,

“you’ve just made your boldest move yet.”

[pixelplayground]

Harbour House, Home of the Potomac Maritime Society

Commissioned in 1892 by James Wellington Thorndike, a prominent shipping merchant who made his fortune establishing trade routes between Baltimore and Asia. Having immigrated from Bristol, England in his youth, Thorndike sought to create a sanctuary that merged American innovation with European maritime tradition.

The original structure was designed by renowned architect Stanford White, who drew inspiration from both Newport's Gilded Age mansions and traditional English maritime clubs. The distinctive three-story building, with its commanding views of the Chesapeake, featured a signature octagonal watchtower that still serves as a landmark for vessels today.

During the Prohibition era (1920-1933), Harbour House gained notoriety as a gathering place for Washington's elite, who would arrive by boat for "afternoon tea" - though rumors persisted about hidden wine cellars and secret passages used for rum-running. The club's guest books from this period, still preserved in the library, bear signatures of several senators and at least two Supreme Court justices.

The property survived a devastating fire in 1943, which destroyed the east wing but spared the historic main hall with its hand-carved mahogany bar and original brass telescopes. The reconstruction effort, led by Thorndike's grandson William, added the now-famous verandas and modernized the facilities while maintaining the building's historic character. In 1962, Harbour House made history by becoming one of the first yacht clubs in the region to admit women as full members. This progressive decision was influenced by Katherine "Kay" Thorndike, William's daughter, who had become an accomplished sailor in her own right.

Notable moments in Harbour House's history include:

Hosting several planning meetings for the D-Day invasion during WWII, when the club served as an unofficial gathering point for Allied naval officers.

The visit of Sir Thomas Lipton in 1925 during his America's Cup campaign.

Serving as the emergency coordination center during the historic Chesapeake flooding of 1933.

The establishment of one of the first youth sailing programs in the region in 1958.

Today, Harbour House stands as a testament to the region's maritime heritage, with many original elements preserved, including:

The original lighthouse-inspired watchtower.

The Thorndike family's private collection of maritime maps and navigational instruments.

The "Captain's Room" with its 19th-century ship models and original furnishings.

[iguanodont]

Introducing a new birg culture, and the reason the Twowi go to such lengths to cross the icy equator with their cargoes of rare metal and pungent gall-spice. The Ss’wassoum are a wealthy empire based on the far southern coast, where the sea-ice melts more quickly in the spring and its people first built their wealth on the sea-harvest. Their language is heavy on harmonized syllables, which lends their speech a distinctive musical quality. Family units are smaller than the fiercely clannish Twowi, and the gender divide is less rigid, though still distinctly matriarchal. Some of their most lucrative raw exports are refined tree-plastics and sea-silk, which is valued for fine textiles.

While the Twowi run on highly specialized industrial clan-towns, the Ss’wassoum exist in more diverse cities, though the class divide is impossible to ignore. The nobility are loud of dress and voice, with their ornate refined plastic head-dresses, vividly patterned veils, and resonators worn over the rear spiracles to enhance their voices. But despite all the attention they draw to themselves, their faces are always covered; to be perceived as gray-furred mortals akin to any commoner is inconceivable. They walk the streets as living demigods. Just below the nobility are the merchant class, which may approach their influence in wealth and education but are legally barred from the elaborate headwear and home exteriors of their superiors. Instead they adorn the insides of their homes with the latest in art and technology, particularly elaborate electric light fixtures crafted from imported Twowi metal. Commoners wear little at all in the sunny months, save for the occasional beaded sash and brass mandible-cuffs. Sailors and other hard laborers frequently adorn their bodies with scarified and dyed patterns to mark themselves for the goodwill of protective gods.

The Ss’wassoum government does implement a standardized education system of sorts, though only those of the upper class can test or pay their way into the finest schools, where they can master the high dialect and the art of Opinion. Historically, etiquette laws forbade the discussion of controversial topics in public spaces; these were reserved for halls of judgement. The rule is more of a social taboo these days, but an ancient loophole ruled that written forms of debate could be presented anywhere, and with the subsequent invention of movable type, a colorful written debate culture flourished. Wherever there is a public bulletin, a cafe wall, a blank space where people gather, you fill find posted essays on anything from the hypocrisy of the noble class to a long winded treatise on the merits of toe-biter clams. It is not uncommon for a debate topic to outlive the original essayists, as hills are chosen to literally die on are then proudly upheld by the writer’s descendants. So ingrained into Ss’wassoum society is this debate culture, that committed debate rivals may be legally recognized as a marriage-like partnership. Though the Ss’wassoum carry no expectations of monogamy to a reproductive partner, the correlation between rivalry and mating season partners does not go unnoticed. As a general rule, a worldly and strongly opinionated individual is more attractive.

Big thanks to @primalmuckygoop for pitching so many great ideas for these guys, including most of the lore on their debate culture, and the very name of this civilization!

—————

If you’d like to see more stuff in the works for birgworld, check out my Patreon!

Or you can support me through Kofi and Inprnt

[saoney]

Skyfall .𖥔 ݁ ˖

⭑ Satoru Gojo + [Fem! Reader] .ᐟ

𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 Eldoria was built on lies and blood. [Y/N], the sheltered princess, lived her life unaware of the sins her parents committed to secure their kingdom’s golden age. But the ghosts of the past do not rest. Satoru Gojo, the last survivor of a kingdom destroyed by Eldoria’s greed, returns with a vengeance. When the night of his conquest leaves [Y/N] orphaned and her kingdom in ruins, Satoru spares her life—but only to make her his captive bride. In a world of betrayal, power, and obsession, can love bloom in the shadow of vengeance? Or will the weight of their broken kingdoms destroy them both?

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐬 Dark Romance, Drama, Historical Fantasy, Revenge, Tragedy, Slow Burn

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 Graphic Violence, Death of Loved Ones, Emotional and Physical Abuse Themes, Forced Marriage, Power Imbalance, Themes of Revenge and Obsession, Psychological Manipulation, Trauma and PTSD Representation, Mature Themes

🔖 masterlist

Chapter 1: An Eye for an Eye

The kingdom of Eldoria shimmered beneath the midday sun, its white stone walls gleaming like polished pearls. Golden banners bearing the royal crest fluttered in the gentle breeze, announcing to all that this was no ordinary day. It was a day of celebration—the [Y/N Age] birthday of Princess [Y/N], the beloved jewel of Eldoria.

The marketplace buzzed with excitement. Merchants called out their wares, offering trinkets and sweets crafted in honor of the princess’s special day. Children ran through the cobblestone streets, their laughter mingling with the music played by wandering minstrels. Flowers of every hue adorned the archways, filling the air with a heady perfume that seemed to embody the joy of the kingdom.

In the grand palace atop the hill, the King and Queen were a picture of regal pride. King Takeshi, with his imposing stature and kind, weathered face, stood at the head of the banquet hall, overseeing the preparations for the evening’s feast. Beside him, Queen Sakura, her emerald-green gown flowing like liquid silk, directed the servants with the grace of someone who had long mastered the art of ruling a kingdom with both strength and compassion.

“More lilies on the table,” Sakura said to a nearby servant, her tone gentle but firm. “They’re her favorite.”

Takeshi chuckled, placing a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “If we keep going like this, the entire palace will be a garden by the time she arrives.”

Sakura turned to him with a smile that spoke of decades of partnership. “Our daughter deserves the very best, Takeshi. Let her have her garden for today.”

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

In her chamber, [Y/N] stood before a tall mirror, her reflection framed by the soft glow of sunlight streaming through the window. She wore a gown of pale gold, the fabric catching the light with every movement. Her long, dark hair was braided intricately, studded with tiny pearls that shimmered like stars.

Her handmaiden, Mira, fussed over the final touches, adjusting the delicate necklace that rested on [Y/N]’s collarbone. “You look like a dream, Your Highness,” Mira said, her eyes sparkling with admiration.

[Y/N]’s cheeks flushed, and she let out a soft laugh. “It’s just another birthday, Mira.”

“Not just any birthday,” Mira corrected. “The whole kingdom is celebrating you today. They love you, Princess. We all do.”

[Y/N] turned to the window, gazing out at the bustling city below. Her heart swelled at the sight of her people’s joy, the very same joy her parents had worked tirelessly to protect and nurture.

“I only hope I can live up to their expectations,” she murmured.

“You will,” Mira said with certainty, not once her admiration towards the princess waver. “You already have.”

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

As the sun dipped below the horizon, the palace courtyard transformed into a wonderland of light and sound. Lanterns hung from every tree, their golden glow casting a magical ambiance over the gathering. Long tables were laden with an array of dishes—roasted meats, honey-glazed pastries, and fruits so vibrant they seemed plucked from a dream. Goblets of sparkling cider clinked together as laughter filled the air.

[Y/N] sat at the head of the grand table beside her parents, her face radiant with happiness. Her father raised a toast, his voice booming with pride.

“To Princess [Y/N],” Takeshi declared, “the light of our lives and the future of Eldoria!”

The crowd erupted into cheers, their voices echoing through the courtyard. [Y/N] felt a blush rise to her cheeks as she raised her own goblet, smiling at the faces that had gathered to celebrate her.

Midway through the feast, a group of children approached the royal table, their tiny hands clutching garlands of flowers they had woven themselves. The youngest, a girl no older than seven, stepped forward hesitantly, her wide eyes fixed on [Y/N].

“Princess [Y/N],” the girl said, her voice trembling with both fear and excitement, “happy birthday. We made these for you.”

[Y/N] knelt to their level, her smile warm and genuine. “Thank you,” she said, accepting the garlands with care. “They’re beautiful. Just like all of you.”

The children beamed, their nervousness fading. Another girl, slightly older, spoke up. “When we grow up, we want to be just like you, Princess. Kind and beautiful.”

[Y/N]’s heart swelled with emotion. “You are already beautiful,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “And if you keep kindness in your hearts, you’ll be even more than you dream of.”

The children giggled, their faces alight with joy, before running back into the crowd. [Y/N] watched them go, her chest tight with a mix of love and responsibility.

As the night wore on, the celebration showed no signs of slowing. Music played, couples danced, and laughter rang out into the cool night air. [Y/N] felt as though the world was wrapped in a cocoon of light and warmth, untouched by anything dark or cruel.

But beyond the glow of the lanterns, the shadows of the night stretched long and deep. And far away, an army marched under the cover of darkness, their purpose as unyielding as the steel of their blades.

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

The peace of Eldoria shattered like fragile glass under the weight of a nightmare. While the kingdom celebrated, unaware of the looming threat, shadows crept closer—an army of vengeance cloaked in the night.

The attack began with terrifying precision. Arrows lit with fire streaked across the sky, igniting the city’s gates and towers. Explosions rocked the walls of the once-impenetrable fortress, and screams of panic replaced the joyful music of the festivities.

Satoru Gojo’s forces swept through Eldoria like a relentless storm, sparing no one in their path. The guards, caught off guard and drunk from the celebrations, scrambled to organize a defense, but it was futile. Satoru had planned every detail, exploiting the kingdom’s arrogance and overconfidence.

In the throne room, King Takeshi and Queen Sakura received the news with dread. The royal guards burst into the hall, their faces pale and weapons drawn.

“My King, the city is under attack!” one guard shouted.

Takeshi rose from his seat, his commanding presence faltering for the first time in years. “How is this possible? Eldoria’s walls have never been breached!”

“It’s… it’s an army, Your Majesty,” the guard stammered. “Led by… by Satoru Gojo.”

Sakura gasped, her hand flying to her chest. The name was a ghost from their past, a shadow of the sins they thought buried.

Takeshi turned to his wife, his face grim. “Take [Y/N] to safety. Now.”

“No,” Sakura said firmly, tears pooling in her eyes. “Not without you.”

“We don’t have time to argue,” Takeshi snapped. “She’s our daughter, Sakura. If we fall, she must survive.”

The queen nodded, swallowing her grief. She summoned two trusted servants and gripped her daughter’s shoulders, her emerald eyes searching [Y/N]’s face.

“You must go,” Sakura said, her voice trembling but resolute. “Do not look back, no matter what happens.”

“Mother, Father—what’s happening?” [Y/N]’s voice quivered with fear, her gaze darting between them. “I don’t understand!”

“There’s no time to explain,” Takeshi said, pulling her into a brief but fierce embrace. “Just know that we love you more than anything.”

The throne room doors burst open with a thunderous crash, shards of wood scattering across the marble floor. Satoru Gojo entered, flanked by his soldiers, his presence a storm that sucked all warmth from the room. The gilded splendor of Eldoria’s throne room now felt suffocating, as if even the air recoiled from his fury.

Takeshi rose to his full height, his sword in hand, his face a mask of grim determination. “Satoru Gojo,” he said, his voice steady despite the tremor in his hand. “You dare invade my kingdom?”

“Your kingdom,” Satoru echoed, his tone a venomous mockery. His piercing blue eyes locked onto Takeshi with an intensity that made even the guards falter. “You speak as though you’ve forgotten the blood spilled to build it. My people’s blood.”

Sakura stepped forward, her voice trembling but firm. “We gave you mercy, Satoru. We could have done worse.”

“Mercy?” Satoru barked, his laughter sharp and bitter. “You razed my home, butchered my family, and called it mercy? No, Queen Sakura. Tonight, I show you what true mercy looks like.”

With that, he unsheathed his blade, the sound like a serpent’s hiss.

The clash was immediate and brutal. Takeshi charged first, his sword aimed straight for Satoru’s heart. Satoru sidestepped effortlessly, his movements fluid, almost graceful. Their blades met in a violent symphony of steel, sparks flying with every strike.

“You’ve grown old, Takeshi,” Satoru sneered, his voice laced with disdain. “And weak.”

Takeshi’s strikes grew desperate, his swings fueled by fury and fear. Sakura joined the fray, her dagger slicing through the air as she aimed for Satoru’s side. He caught her wrist mid-thrust, his grip ironclad.

“You fight well for a queen,” he said mockingly, his voice low. “But not well enough.”

With a savage twist, he disarmed her, sending the dagger clattering across the floor. Takeshi lunged again, but Satoru parried with a brutal counterstrike that sent the king stumbling.

“You stole everything from me!” Satoru roared, his voice cracking with raw emotion. “My family. My home. My future!”

With one final, devastating blow, he drove his blade through Takeshi’s chest. The king’s gasp was a guttural sound, his body collapsing to the floor. Sakura let out a piercing scream, her grief palpable as she knelt beside her fallen husband.

Tears streaked her face as she turned to Satoru, her voice breaking. “You monster… You’ll pay for this.”

Satoru’s gaze softened for a fleeting moment—a flicker of hesitation, almost imperceptible. Then it hardened again. “Not before you do.”

With a cold, calculated strike, he ended her life. The queen fell beside her king, their blood pooling together on the marble floor.

“Find the princess,” Satoru commanded, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade. “Bring her to me.”

Suguru Geto nodded, his loyalty unwavering. But deep down, he feels and immense satisfaction as Eldoria falls into shamble. “It will be done.”

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

The echoes of battle still roared outside the palace walls as [Y/N] stumbled through the labyrinthine passages beneath the throne room. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her legs trembling with every step. The distant sound of screams and clashing steel filled her ears, a horrifying symphony of chaos.

“Why?” she whispered to herself, her voice choked with tears. “What is happening?”

The once-familiar corridors now felt like a maze, every shadow a potential threat. Her mind raced, her thoughts a whirlwind of terror and confusion. She clutched the edges of her gown, lifting it as she ran, the hem already stained with soot and blood.

She thought of her parents, of her mother’s trembling hands as she pushed her toward the secret passage. “Go, [Y/N]. Don’t look back.” But she had looked back. She had seen the terror in her father’s eyes, the way he gripped his sword as if it were the only thing keeping him upright.

The guards found her before she could escape. Their heavy footsteps echoed like drumbeats, and their shadows loomed over her before their hands did. She screamed, her voice raw and hoarse, thrashing against their grip.

“Let me go!” she cried, her nails clawing at their arms. “Please, let me go!”

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. They dragged her back to the throne room, her heels scraping against the marble, leaving faint streaks behind.

The throne room was drenched in the stench of death and fire. The once-grand marble floor, now smeared with blood and ash, bore the marks of a kingdom’s final battle. Flames danced along the shredded remains of Eldoria’s banners, casting eerie shadows on the ruined walls.

Satoru Gojo stood at the center of the devastation, his piercing blue eyes cold and unyielding. In his hand, he gripped the bloodied hilt of his sword, its tip resting against the cracked crest of Eldoria carved into the marble. The bodies of King Takeshi and Queen Sakura lay crumpled before the throne, their faces frozen in expressions of defiance even in death.

“Bring her here,” Satoru commanded, his voice a sharp, merciless blade.

[Y/N] was dragged into the room, her delicate frame barely able to hold itself upright as the soldiers flung her onto the bloodstained floor. Her golden hair spilled across her face as she gasped, her body trembling from the cold reality sinking into her bones.

Her wide emerald eyes darted around, desperate to make sense of the chaos. Then they found them—her parents.

“No,” she choked out, her voice barely above a whisper. She scrambled forward on her hands and knees, her fingers trembling as they reached for the lifeless forms of her mother and father.

“No! Mama! Papa!” she screamed, the sound raw and piercing as it echoed through the ruined hall.

Satoru stepped closer, his boots crushing glass and debris beneath their weight. He grabbed her by the arm, yanking her to her feet with little regard for her struggle.

“Look at them,” he ordered, his voice a venomous snarl. He twisted her toward the lifeless bodies. “Look at the price they’ve paid for their sins.”

“No!” [Y/N] shrieked, trying to turn away, to shut out the sight. But Satoru’s iron grip held her firm, forcing her to confront the horror before her.

“They loved you, didn’t they?” he hissed, his voice dripping with scorn. “So much that they thought their lies and their tyranny wouldn’t catch up to them. But love doesn’t erase blood spilled in greed.”

Her knees buckled, but he held her upright, dragging her closer to the throne where their blood pooled. “You think they were heroes,” he spat, his fury unrelenting. “They weren’t. They were thieves, murderers who cloaked themselves in righteousness. They stole everything from me—my family, my home, my people.”

Tears streamed down her face as she shook her head vehemently. “They weren’t like that! You’re lying! They were good—”

“Good?” Satoru cut her off, his laugh harsh and bitter. He leaned closer, his face mere inches from hers. “Do you know what it feels like to watch your parents die while your home burns around you? To hear the screams of your people as they’re slaughtered?”

Her sobs grew louder, her breaths coming in shallow gasps as she trembled in his grip. “I didn’t know,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I didn’t know any of it…”

“And that makes you innocent?” he growled, shaking her slightly as his rage flared. “You were their legacy. Their pride. Their perfect little princess. And now you’ll carry their sins.”

He shoved her down with brutal force, and she collapsed onto the marble floor, her cries echoing through the room.

[Y/N] raised her tear-streaked face, her eyes blazing despite her fear. “Then kill me,” she said, her voice breaking but filled with defiance. “Kill me and let this end.”

Satoru stared at her, his jaw tightening. “You think death is the end?” he said coldly, his lips curling into a sneer. “No. Death is a release you don’t deserve.”

He straightened, towering over her trembling form. His voice boomed through the hall, leaving no room for doubt.

“You will live,” he declared, his tone filled with ruthless finality. “You will suffer. You will know what it means to lose everything. You will be my wife—not as a queen, but as a prisoner. A tool for my revenge.”

[Y/N]’s breath caught, her eyes widening in horror. “No… you can’t…”

“I can. And I will,” Satoru said, his gaze icy and unrelenting. “Take her to the dungeons. Prepare for the wedding.”

As she was dragged away, her desperate cries filled the air, but Satoru didn’t flinch. His resolve was ironclad, his vengeance complete. Yet, as he turned to the throne, the ache in his chest deepened. The throne was his, the kingdom had fallen, but the weight of his fury burned hotter than ever.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Satoru muttered the ancient proverb under his breath as he starred at the downfall of Eldoria yet his mind was elsewhere.  Replaying the events of that fateful night over and over. The crack of gunfire. His parents’ cry, cut short. The spray of blood, shockingly bright against the moonlit snow.

He had made a vow then, kneeling in that crimson slush. A promise sealed in blood and grief. And now, after years of meticulous planning, the time had finally come to fulfill it.

⊹ ࣪ ﹏𓊝﹏𓂁﹏⊹ ࣪ ˖

[Y/N]’s cries echoed down the dim, narrow corridor as she was dragged away, her steps faltering as the weight of her despair crushed her spirit. The iron grip of Satoru’s men was unyielding, and the golden hem of her once-pristine gown trailed behind her, smeared with soot and blood.

Back in the shattered throne room, silence lingered like a curse over the court of Eldoria. The remaining nobles—those who had survived the massacre—stood frozen, their faces pale with fear. Among them were aging advisors, loyal knights stripped of their swords, and trembling maids clutching the remnants of their courage.

Satoru, towering over them, his icy gaze sharp as a blade, raised his hand to command their attention. His voice was calm, yet the power it carried was absolute. “Eldoria is mine,” he began, each word falling like a hammer blow. “Its throne, its lands, and its people—all belong to me now. Your king and queen have paid the price for their sins.”

He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in. Then, with a cruel smirk tugging at his lips, he turned to Suguru, who stood nearby with a confident and unwavering demeanor. “But there remains one final stain on this land that must be cleansed. Atonement requires sacrifice.”

The nobles exchanged wary glances, the growing tension almost unbearable. Whispers of rebellion flared among the younger knights, but an icy glare from Suguru silenced them all.

Satoru continued, his tone laced with venom. “Princess [Y/N], the last of Eldoria’s wretched lineage, will atone for the sins of her bloodline in the only way fitting.” His voice grew louder, carrying authority and cruelty in equal measure. “She will marry me.”

Gasps rippled through the room like a storm, horror etched onto every face. The princess—their beloved [Y/N]—forced to marry the man who had torn their world apart?

One noble, braver—or perhaps more foolish—than the rest, stepped forward, his trembling voice barely audible. “My lord, surely… surely you do not mean this. The princess is innocent—”

“Innocent?” Satoru’s laughter rang out, sharp and biting, as he descended the steps of the dais. His piercing gaze locked onto the man, who visibly withered under the weight of it. “Innocence does not absolve her of the blood in her veins. She bears the mark of her parents’ greed. Their sins will be her burden to carry.”

Satoru’s hand clenched into a fist as his tone grew colder. “And through her suffering, the stain they left on this world will be erased.”

Suguru stepped forward then, his voice calm but lethal. “She is no longer your princess,” he declared, his hand resting purposefully on the hilt of his sword. “She is the bride of your king. Speak against this, and you speak against your ruler.”

The murmurs of protest died instantly. Fear gripped the room like a vice, choking out any hope of rebellion.

Satoru turned back to the trembling crowd, his next words cutting through the air like ice. “The wedding will be held under the crimson moon—an omen befitting the union of blood and vengeance. Eldoria will bear witness to its new queen's sacrifice.”

All rights reserved © 2022 saoney. Do not copy, repost, translate, or modify my works in any platform.

[himbocoups]

˗ˋˏ Epistolary Yearning ˎˊ˗ | 18+ Only

synopsis: a series of letters, speckled with notes of budding romance and longing, exchanged between a newly married couple separated by seas and the ongoing war the emperor sent his commander to end.

pairing: duke!lsm x reader (gn afab)

genre: epistolary form, historical fantasy, romance | smut

tags: arranged marriage, mentions of a war, dk and yn accidentally invent the concept of planes, two people very much falling in love | degrading, fingering, guided play, honey play, marking, mirror play, pet names, praise, pussy slapping, riding, spitting, squirting…

wc: 5.13k

message from nu: fueled by my love for historical, fantasy, and isekai manhuas. big thank you to my beta readers (@heartkyeom, @aceofvernons, and @multi-kpop-fanfics) for reading when I was playing with the format of this fic + @junkissed with helping out with the syntax for this one very confusing line I wrote. also summoning @onlyseokmins bc I told her I'd tag her once duke!dk was finished <3

himbocoups's masterlist

Letter One - YN

My Lord, 

How are you? I hope your trip is going as smoothly as planned. 

It has been a while since I last heard from you. As Summer comes to a fading end, Autumn threatens to wash the foliage to hues of brown and auburn. And I sit at the library nook beside the window, taking quill to parchment against the cover of a heavily bound book and scratching against blank pages before I can muster the courage to write to you. I do sincerely apologize if this attempt seems strange. 

Though I pity our brief time together, the only things I familiarized myself with are your scintillant eyes. Maybe instead of feeling as dull as the color of nature, I’ll think about how the color is reminiscent of your eyes. Eyes, these beautiful jewels seem to reflect the light through your smile. I can’t help but imagine myself as the last person to see them every night as I lay beside you as we drift off into slumber. Would it be too forward of me to say that the thought of growing fond of you, not just your eyes, is slowly appealing more and more to me? 

However, I do have hesitations as I am left alone to roam these lonely halls in a place so unfamiliar to me. It would be a pity shall I reach familiarity with my surroundings before I become familiar with you. Or even worse, to have you forget your familiarity with me. 

Please be safe for me. Hurry home soon.

Letter Two - DK

My Jewel,

For someone who longs for familiarity, you need not create even more distance between us through formalities. And my love, you need not refer to me as your Lord. Love is all I ask for, as love is what you will always be to me. Albeit, I do find it disheartening to read that you think of me so lowly. I could never forget someone as precious as you, even if you do not believe in your preciousness. 

Nevertheless, I, too, pity the brevity of our time together. Marriage agreed upon through an exchanging of letters by our guardians, now our marriage follows suit in the epistolary form. Yet no descriptive access through penmanship could ever grant the feeling that blossomed inside me and continues to bloom since I first laid my eyes upon you. And on the eve of the third week of our matrimony, I was whisked away to end the war. I do sincerely apologize for my absence. 

On this rocking ship, all I can do is stare into the swirling sea in search of a passing merchant ship with letters to deliver. The birds that soar above me seem to provoke me with their independence, cawing in hearty guffaw at the fact that this poor man can never take flight at any moment back into his lover’s arms - where he feels most at home.

Maybe we should take giant birds instead of ships, soaring in the skies and reaching our destination in an instant. How wondrous that would be. 

But I am an equally lonesome Commander among his squadron, a man who keeps the first letter from his lover in the pocket against his breast and his wedding band around his neck. Just thinking about how you were thinking about me while writing that letter, still thinking about me, conciliates any disarray in my mind. And I promise you that I will make you feel loved for the rest of your life, even if our love is only budding. 

I will lead my men well. Then I will lead myself home. To you. 

Letter Three - YN

My Dokyeom (If it is fine to refer to you in this way),

I do have to admit to my shyness, how my face flushed with heat when you referred to me as your beloved. Your “love”…my goodness, our servants nearly called the doctor over when they saw my state of awe. Although, I do apologize if the language in my initial letter seemed blunt or made you feel even a hint of sadness that I accidentally made you for a man with a cold demeanor. 

You wrote: “Maybe we should take giant birds instead of ships, soaring in the skies and reaching our destination in an instant” in our last exchange. What a preposterous idea! But what a new discovery to find that you are as funny as you are charming. Shall we commission a local alchemist to create potions that magnify tiny sparrows to large ships? Or shall I ditch my archery lessons in exchange for nights in your magnificent library, scouring the archives with the hope to find a recipe to an enlarging potion hidden in a romance novel? 

Oh, how I wish everything could be as easy as depicted in romance novels or that one Opera we went to watch. Days consume me on end. Not in the way in which I consume much of my leisure time by staying in the places we frequented in our time together, but in the way in which time passes by so slowly it feels like the concept of time is consuming me instead. I wish it were you who were consuming me even though I do feel it through your love. Because I, too, keep your letter near me. And I trace over the areas your quill indented the parchment, so much that I sometimes end up smudging the dried ink with my hand. 

I do miss you...even more when everything around me reminds me of you. Because you, who makes silly promises about a budding romance, will also be the receiver of my elementary promise about my slowly collecting love for you. 

P.S. They are close to finishing our portraits. I have yet to decide where they are to be hung. 

Letter Four - DK

My Love,

My Seokmin. Seok. Min. Mine. Beloved. Love. Dearest. Husband. Equal. Anything but Duke, Lord, Commander, or Dokyeom is welcome. How I wish for the day I get to hear my name leave your lips through a soft murmur, laughter, greeting, whisper, and mayhaps even a whine. 

Honeymoon was cut short by my trip across the sea. We are finally on land. In front of me is a crackling campfire whose glow conceals the redness of my cheeks, dappled with jubilance from reading your last letter. 

My dearest shy and humble lover whose metaphoric propositions of love are anything but reticent, I have annotated my favorite portions and circled words that I replay in my mind as a source of comfort. However, like what you did with your quotation of my imaginary bird ship, I must reference a few nuances in your letter that I find interesting. Particularly, I find that you must be careful in formatting your syntax, my beloved — for your way of language is enough to drive a sane man mad. Just think of me: a sane man before I had you and now a man slowly falling madly in love with you. 

Referring back to how time achingly consumes you, your “I wish it were you who were consuming me. Although I do feel it through your love” causes me to quiver in a way that is only shared between two lovers. I am a man whose honeymoon was interrupted by the king’s call, a man who is weeks without his lover, a man who has needs - desires. And your need for me to consume you? I can only pluck it out of context. 

If everything around you reminds you of me, then I must tell you that I hope your reminder does not make you suffer as how I suffer. My love, do you know how painful it was to lay in my bed while the ship continually rocked back and forth? It was reminiscent of our second week together when you decided to mount me in bed, your beautiful opalescent undergarment covering an action so lewd that it could never be named in public. Yet I was a man on a ship with his aching cock in his hand, imagining his newly beloved on top of him who squeezes him tightly as they ride his lap. 

No hand could ever replace the fervor of having you rock me, leaning forward to kiss me down my naked chest while sucking and licking the thin area of skin right above my collarbone. How warmly your walls enveloped my own, squeezing and contrasting with every glide you make. I couldn’t help but twitch in you, trying to hold in my selfishness by grabbing onto your thighs - kneading and feeling the skin fill the areas between my fingers. But you bounced on my lap like a bunny in heat, causing my hands to trail further upwards until they lay on your ass…I wanted to worship you by turning myself into a throne, a marble stand so others could be in awe of you for centuries to come. 

Mouth unable to talk, your kitten drooled onto my lap and coated the surface with liquid lust while you whimpered as I praised you for treating me so well. I scooped the syrup from the maple tap and brought it to my mouth to suck; even now I can still feel your sweet syrup rest on my tongue and swirl in my mouth. Yet there I was on that boat, losing my mind with my hand on my tap. Bed sheets soaked with my sweat, I could only imagine that it was your sweat-glistened skin that stuck against mine. It was but a shame, and still is but a shame, that the image of you collapsed against my chest with exhaustion when your thighs trembled with such a quake only exists as a memory. How long would it take for me to turn the memory of me looping my arms around your back and pushing your upper body against mine, feeling you build and crash through a scream, into our reality? 

The land is no better than the sea. Truly, it must be treason to think such impure thoughts while riding on my finest stallion to head to our base. I am a Commander, a Duke for God’s sake. But the bouncing, the clopping - oh, beloved, my skin pricked with heat so much that I thought bandits were ambushing us. The pain I felt while I waited for my swelling to go down - I am utterly embarrassed to admit I almost released while riding in front of my men. 

How I wish I could come running back home to you. Shall I single-handedly overturn the monarchy so we can be equal partners to the throne? So that we can be rulers who need not leave our estate? Just give me the word, and the empire will be yours. Then I would never need to leave your side. That I guarantee. 

P.S. Hang the portrait wherever you please. Perhaps the ballroom so I would always be with you during the night of the balls. 

Letter Five - YN

My King,

How mad of you to write such vulgarities, to suggest usurping the throne only if it means being able to stay with me. You are a Commander. You are a Duke. You are one of the King’s men. Do you not fear the inevitable consequences that you would face should your letter be opened by anybody other than myself? Do you not fear what would happen to you if your lust-driven joke was wrongly taken for treason? I must say that despite everything, I found myself dipping a finger into your words and listening to my juices sing your letter like lyrics. 

Your words comforted my ache at my core, skillfully fighting fire with fire to extinguish my burning forest. However, if you were to turn into a mere object – a chair, a throne, a stand – I would never be satisfied in your worship. ‘Tis true that I would like to be worshiped by you like the first time your palm cupped my face in private confinement under the shade of the gazebo in the garden. With nobody around us, your face softened to reveal the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. Earnest eyes flittered to and fro as you studied me in awe and whispered words of praise. Up until then, I never even knew you could worship a person such as me. Yet, you, a mere stranger I met a few hours ago, placed a kiss upon my lips as soft as the petals on the flowers that surrounded us. 

If worshipping me means an inanimate you, I don’t think there would be anybody who could worship me with such sincerity and reason as you do…and I quite like the animate you even if the animate you screamed at the bug upon your sleeve. I couldn’t stop laughing then. And when you looked back at me with those bashful eyes, I knew this would be a marriage filled with laughter.  

Laughter, as I have recently learned, doesn’t only exist jovially. No. Reading your comment about my syntax, I almost erupted in a peal of sinister laughter. My poor lover with his cock in his hand and his quill in his other and his attempt to warn someone with such an extensive educational background about their syntax…you are too pure for this world. Should it make you feel better in any way, I have also thought about you in ways such a person in my stature should never. 

The other day when I was particularly distracted by the particular “unease” that had been building inside me, I accidentally launched a practice arrow into the wind. Chasing it, I happened upon our agriculture stables where the young workers sit and milk our cows. I swear, I must have been in such a delusional state to feel such a rush just from watching the motion of our cows getting milked that I ran off to the kitchens without picking up my stray arrow. 

Can you believe it, my dear? Have you been thinking of me differently since I admitted to almost leaking when I saw the cows getting milked? Would you think of me even differently if I told you I thought of you while talking to our ice sculptors? If you can quench my thirst on my loneliest days, I can only imagine what taking you in paired with ice would feel like for both you and me. 

Mayhaps, we should convene in the kitchen at night after the bell strikes twelve when all of our kitchen staff have retired. I want to kiss you with cherry-stained lips, watching tint transfer onto yours as I play with the seed of the fruit in my mouth while I wait for our cups of tea to steep. Kissing, I hope, would act as an analgesic for your painfully sleepless nights. Still, I find it abstruse that a kind, gentle, and good man like you would live such a cathartic life as a commander. Enerverated in every way as I am, I can only offer a somnolent kiss in hopes of luring you to sleep before your tea can fully steep. 

“What is a man without his honey,” you would say. Then I would ask you to specify what type of honey you are referring to. 

You would reply with this cheekiness in your voice while your lips pull into a wide smile, “the syrup.” If I’m not wrong, you would peck the top of my head while you reach over me to grab the jar that the cook keeps at the counter for you to easily access. Because the man with a honeyed siren voice that often procures lullabies for me to fall asleep also has a taste for the pollinators’ syrup. 

As you can tell…we are not simple people. We are not a regular couple. We have exchanged letters for longer than we have physically been together. So when I tell you to close your eyes to try to find your honey, would you? If I blindfolded you with a kitchen towel and told you to search for the dab of honey I swatched on my body, could you do it? Would you go to the lengths just to search for the honey to your tea?

Would you use your nose and sniff along my skin, searching for the floral and fruity aroma? Gently picking up my arm and bringing it to your nose, would you gently guide your nose along the surface of my skin in a position so intimate that you feel my arm hairs tickle the tip of your nose? Would you guide your nose upwards along my arm until you arrive at my collarbone, sniffing and docilely licking areas you think to be as sweet as honey? 

Imploring you in your reconnoiter, I must keep quiet as I watch you blindly explore every groove of the topography of my body. I imagine myself tilting my head towards the side to allow you access to the side of my neck, sharply breathing in as you nose the area in which I am the most sensitive. I see you hesitate for a second before planting your supple lips against the skin as if to sample before making a decision. To your surprise, what coats your lips in a sticky and sweet amber gloss is the honey I placed on my neck slowly trailing towards my collarbone. And I watch you intently as you lick it off your lips, leaving a translucent liquid sheen. 

Affected by a magnetic lure, you would somehow find yourself in front of me, your head positioned right above the slowly trailing bead of honey. It starts with a lick, hot tongue against cold skin. I can’t help but feel how the bumpy texture of your tongue cleans and pulls its way up my neck. After the hot saliva hits cold air, you take off the kitchen towel and look at me like a puppy waiting for its owner. 

“Such a good boy,” I murmur as I take the towel from your hand and wrap it around the nape of your neck to pull you in closer. “How does it taste?” 

What is more, is that I hope that in that moment my heart is not the only one that is beating as fast as how a hummingbird flaps its wings. My greedy husband, you back me against the kitchen island until you are pressed firmly against me as I watch and feel you bite and suck a garden of flowers across my neck and chest. Your large hands find themselves around my thighs, kneading and squeezing them so much that the fabric of my night clothes bunch in the palm of your hands. So I maneuver your hands around my waist, and you spin me around and bend me against that counter so I can feel you push yourself against me. 

“Be good for me,” you would command while undressing me. 

Then I would feel it, hands spreading my legs and fingers prying my ass apart, and then your warm and flat tongue against my kitten. One single lick would make my knees buckle. But you eating me out from behind, the way you knead my ass while you take your time swirling your tongue against my lips and lapping up my juices would make me come in an instant. Your tongue presses against my nub while your nose digs itself into my opening almost to the point where you’re fucking me with the tip of your nose, yet it is me who begs for air. And you keep my liquid on your tongue as you rise from your knees to pull my head back until I’m looking at you and your swollen and burgundy lips with my head tilted backward. 

And you pry my mouth open with your hand and watch me catch that sweet honey on the tip of my tongue. 

My dear, I am much too hot to even think about what comes after you let go of my jaw. My tenses in this letter are all mixed up because I’m so caught up in my delusions that I mistake dreams for reality. I feel ashamed to revert to such elementary composition when I am clouded by lust. But in this sensory game of wits, who do you think would win — the explorer or the explored? 

P.S. I’ve had our painting temporarily hung in our dining room as I cannot even bring myself to think about the possibility of hosting a ball without you. The great ballroom has been collecting dust since the first month you left for the war. Besides, invitations to the first ball of the season have long been sent out. I attended and made some acquaintances. Are you proud of me? Are you missing me as much as I am missing you?

Letter Six - DK

My Sweet,

Loneliness is when you are trapped by your stillness while everything around you splits into two and crumbles. And you are stuck in the open space of where everything once was, you in your bubble of muteness as the world crashes and breaks in a cacophonous roar. The feeling that engulfed me during these past few months was beyond my description of loneliness. So with a happy heart, I am telling you that the war is over. I’m coming home soon to hold you in my arms, to show you what this world that surrounds you is truly like — delicate and with the warmth of a glowing morning Sun that promises juvenescent Springs until the end of time. 

Regarding your question about the potential winner of the sensory game you described in your last letter, whether I am the person exploring or explored, I know I would always be the victor as only a true victor can call you “his.” My sweet love, I hope to stick by your side as long as I prefer honey in my tea and you by my side when I sleep. 

However, with a slightly interruptive transition, I have a few requests regarding the contents of your postscript. That is:

One, I am wholly and with every fiber of my mind, soul, and body proud of you. You, my shyest lover who sought friendship in your moments of loneliness, I love you so. Yet I find myself utterly in distress that I cannot co-host our tea parties until later should you hold one in a few days. Our estate is boring, and it must be tiring seeing the same things and people every day for the past few months. I urge you to go out more and explore so I can come home to plentiful stories told in your voice. I want to fall asleep to your descriptions so I can dream of how you see the world around you. 

Two, of course, I am missing you. Even if I were a few yards away from you, I would still miss you. I am currently bothering our treasurer in regards to spending the rest of our budget on a winter wonderland in which we would freeze the entire world so I could easily and quickly sled back home like a seal off an iceberg. However, our treasurer is insistent on saving the budget for lodging, travel, and sustenance. I, for one, think I am right.

Three, I think this might be my last letter in a while as when this stack of parchments finally reaches you, I would almost be home. So I am struggling between keeping this short and straight to the point or long and thoroughly eloquent with everything that I want to write and say to you. Instead of coming to a conclusion by myself, I bid you farewell until we meet again with this set of instructions within my set of requests for you. I’m sorry if the format of my letter makes it very hard for you to read. Like how you described your delusions, I often find myself alone at night imagining you by my side so much that I feel your physical presence next to me. 

Four, as for our portrait in our dining room, I must ask you to perform a favor for me as I have not seen the finished painting myself. It is a test regarding the “likeness” of our portraits that can only be performed by yourself. When you wish to perform the test before I arrive, please excuse all our staff who stay by your side during dinner and ask to eat alone. Should they give you looks, please say that it was requested by me. 

When you are alone, I need you to get into a position in which you can look at yourself through the large mirror that is mounted above the low mantle towards the end of the dining room table. I assume our portrait is hung on the wall at the other side of the dining room table, am I right? If you move the plates and sit on the table, you should be able to look at both your entire body and our portrait through the mirror. Do not worry about making a mess my dear. 

Perhaps this test may be a little lewd for a dinner setting. But after your proposed rendezvous in the kitchen in your last letter, I suppose this test would be nothing to you. 

Look at yourself in the mirror. Can you imagine me behind you, slowly kissing down your neck as I undress you while the candlelights flicker beside us? Our shadows cast against the walls that surround us tell the story of two lovers slowly conjoining into one. And I sit you against the front of my naked body, bending your legs and positioning them so you can see all of you through the mirror.

My love, can you see your lips unfold into a beautiful bloom, leaking with its sweet nectar for your man to taste? The sweet nectar, the glistening substitute to the honey our staff brought alongside our dinner rolls, rolls off the flower and soaks the tablecloth beneath you. Tonight I am not doing anything except revel in your beauty like a man awestruck by something so exquisite that he cannot do anything but stare. 

I want you to imagine that the same me in the portrait is the me you imagine to be behind you, the very me who writes this letter and instructs you on how to pleasure yourself for the night. Suck on your own fingers, my darling. Bring your fingers to your lips, and let me see the way you ready yourself before the pleasure comes. Because what I want is for you to fuck yourself well for me so that after you’ve squirted all over the dining table your pussy continues to throb so much that you confuse it for your beating heart. 

Don’t be shy. Bring your soaked fingers to your folds, and trace along the lines of the petals. Look at how they seemingly open and close as your stomach jerks in reaction. Slowly rub yourself up and down, coaxing that beautiful sigh that I know too well out of your mouth. Feel the pads of your finger mix with your juices, slipping easily and making your hand glide smoother. 

Are you looking at me through the mirror? Are you begging me to instruct you in other ways to satisfy your lust? Do you want to rub your pearl and flick it with your finger in a way that makes you clench and collapse? 

What is it, honey? Are you whining for me to make you feel good? But this is your guided session. Don’t you see yourself through the mirror, so pathetic looking that you would do anything that I tell you to do? Then take that same hand you used to tease yourself and slap your pussy for me. Bring the hand back and bring it down on your pussy quickly and with so much might that the sound of palm against tender skin echoes throughout the empty dining room. 

Don’t you feel pathetic? Getting off from you slapping your own pussy? Doesn’t it please you and make feel so dirty at the same time? When you’re striking your palm against your pussy over and over as your other hand unconsciously reaches upwards to knead your sore nipple, are you looking at yourself through the mirror? Are you still imagining me sitting behind you on our dining table, whispering and taunting you as you attempt to come undone? If your head is not completely clouded with lust, when that pussy is throbbing with such pain and pleasure, you will take your finger to your entrance and insert it slowly so you feel your warm and wet insides slowly swallow your finger the further in it goes. 

Let your mouth hang open as you plug yourself with another finger. Fill the lonely dining room with your sweet moans for me. Listen to your kitten squelch and leak the more you pump yourself so that a warm and hot feeling grows in your stomach, making you clench your body tighter and tighter. Scissor your fingers, and fill up that empty space where my cock usually rests. When you release, pull out your fingers as you come on the tablecloth and look at the cream I miss the most. 

You’re so perfect, you know that? You’d look even more perfect when you’re on your knees with your fingers underneath you and inside of you. Bounce for me my sweet, ride your own fingers as if you’re riding me. Massage yourself with your other hand, grabbing and kneading your breasts and your nipples as I do for you. Can you see yourself through the mirror more clearly when you’re in this position? Do you see how messy and needy you look while you’re pathetically riding your own fingers? Do you wish they were mine? Do you wish they were my thighs? 

Open your eyes for me as you reach another wave of ecstasy. Look at me in the eyes, the man painted next to your glowing figure as you reach your last high. I know you can do it. Scream my name if you love me, and squirt as if your pussy was crying for the man you love. 

Turn your head around when you’ve caught your breath. Look at our portrait. Do you see how I’m smiling at you? 

I’m proud of you, my love. Thank you for holding on for so long. I’ll be home soon. 

P.S. I love you.

Copyright © 2023 Himbocoups. All rights reserved.

[evorlaah]

T R O U B L E

PARING : Niki x Female!reader

SYNPOSIS: y/n, a rebellious Montague, clashes with Niki Nishimura, a charming merchant’s son. Their rivalry fuels every ballroom—until one dance changes everything.

Warnings&genres!: romance, drama, historical fiction, angst, slowburn, mild language, rivalry (a little Niki just loves to tease) .

Note 💌: I struggled so hard with Niki I didn’t know where I was going with this 😭, lmk if you have suggestions!

@evorlaah

T R O U B L E

“Hold still, Miss,” your maid chided gently, her fingers working expertly with the laces.

“I would hold still if I didn’t have to go,” you muttered under your breath, earning a sympathetic glance from her in the mirror.

The distant sound of carriages rumbling to a halt outside grew louder, signaling the arrival of guests. From your vantage point, you could see the Montague estate coming alive. The glow of lanterns illuminated the sprawling grounds, and elegantly dressed figures stepped out of carriages, their laughter and chatter spilling into the night air.

Your maid finished her work, stepping back to admire her efforts. “You look stunning, Miss Y/n. Like a true vision.”

You forced a smile, smoothing your gown. “I suppose visions don’t get to rest, do they?”

She laughed softly, a sound that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Not tonight, Miss.”

You took a look at yourself before turning around to face your maid, forcing a smile.

“Can I have a minute? Tell my mother and father that I’ll be right down.”

Your maid nodded, curtsying briefly. “Of course, Miss Y/n. I’ll let them know.”

As she exited the room, you let out a slow breath, the forced smile falling away. The soft glow of the candelabras reflected off your sapphire gown, the fabric shimmering like a restless sea. For a moment, you stood there, taking in your own reflection. You looked the part of a perfect Montague—a poised young woman ready to dazzle the night away. But inside, the weight of expectation felt like an anchor.

You moved to the window, brushing aside the heavy drapes to gaze out at the carriages pulling up. Each one carried someone important, someone who would soon fill the ballroom with chatter and intrigue. Among them would be suitors eager to court you, men with perfect manners and predictable smiles.

And then, there would be him.

You didn’t need to see Niki Nishimura’s name on the guest list to know he’d be there. The son of a prominent merchant family, his sharp wit and sharper tongue had a way of finding you at every gathering. Your encounters with him were always charged, a careful dance of disdain and unwilling fascination. It wasn’t just that he was insufferable—it was the way he seemed to enjoy getting under your skin, as though irritating you was his personal entertainment.

Still, you couldn’t deny the strange electricity that lingered in the air when he was near.

“Miss Y/n?” Your maid’s voice interrupted your thoughts from the other side of the door. “Your parents are asking for you.”

You sighed, glancing one last time at your reflection. Straightening your shoulders, you slipped on your mask of practiced elegance.

“I’m coming,” you called, the words heavier than you’d intended.

With one last glance at the quiet sanctuary of your room, you stepped out into the hall, ready to face the night—and, inevitably, him.

You descended the grand staircase carefully, one hand trailing lightly along the polished banister and the other holding your gown to avoid tripping on the cascading fabric. The sound of laughter, music, and clinking glasses grew louder with each step, filling the air like a tapestry of splendor.

The ballroom came into view at the bottom of the stairs, a dazzling scene of opulence. Chandeliers cast a golden glow over the marble floors, their crystal facets reflecting light like stars. Guests milled about, dressed in their finest silks and satins, their voices rising and falling in a harmonious murmur.

At the foot of the staircase, your parents stood together, greeting guests with the ease of seasoned hosts. Your father noticed you first, his expression softening with approval. “Ah, here she is, our jewel of the evening.”

You forced a smile, hoping it looked as effortless as it was meant to seem. “Good evening, Father. Mother.”

Your mother’s eyes swept over you with a quick, appraising glance before she nodded. “Perfect. Go on, mingle. The young men are already asking about you.”

You resisted the urge to sigh, offering a polite nod instead. As you stepped into the crowd, you felt the weight of countless eyes on you. It was always like this—like you were some prized artifact on display.

“Careful, Montague, or you’ll blind the entire ballroom with that gown.”

The voice was smooth, teasing, and unmistakably familiar. You turned, already bracing yourself, and there he was. Niki Nishimura.

He stood with his usual air of nonchalance, a glass of champagne in hand, his dark eyes glittering with mischief. His tailored suit fit him too well, and his hair was slightly tousled, as though he’d only just bothered to look presentable.

“You’ve mistaken the gown for the chandelier, Nishimura,” you replied coolly, raising an eyebrow. “But I suppose anyone would, given your perspective.”

His lips quirked into a grin, clearly enjoying the exchange. “Touché. But I must say, you clean up rather nicely. Almost unrecognizable, even.”

“And you’re as insufferable as ever,” you said, though the corner of your mouth betrayed the faintest hint of a smile.

“Charmed,” he said, mockingly bowing. You rolled your eyes walking down another small stair case with the crowd while Niki followed.

“Do you ever take a hint, Nishimura?” you asked, glancing back over your shoulder as you descended the smaller staircase. The crowd below bustled, oblivious to the banter unfolding between the two of you.

“Why would I, when your reactions are so entertaining?” he replied, effortlessly keeping pace with you. His smirk lingered, a constant reminder of how much he enjoyed getting under your skin.

You reached the bottom of the staircase, stepping into the throng of finely dressed guests. A waltz had begun, the orchestra’s melody weaving through the ballroom like a spell. Ladies and gentlemen spun gracefully across the floor, their movements precise and elegant.

“Perhaps you should find someone else to bother,” you said, grabbing a glass of champagne from a passing tray.

“And miss this opportunity?” Niki quipped, plucking a glass for himself. He leaned casually against a nearby pillar, watching you with that infuriatingly smug expression. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, no one else is nearly as fun.”

You scoffed, sipping your champagne as you scanned the room. Your parents were deep in conversation with a noble family near the dais. Suitors hovered at the edges of the ballroom, their eyes drifting in your direction but lacking the courage to approach just yet.

“Fun?” you repeated, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve got an odd definition of fun, Nishimura.”

“You wound me, Montague,” he said with mock offense, pressing a hand to his chest. “Here I thought we had an unspoken understanding—enemies, yes, but entertaining ones at least.”

“Entertaining? Hardly,” you replied, turning your attention back to the dancers. “More like tiresome.”

“Is that why you’re smiling?” he asked, his voice lowering slightly.

You froze for half a beat, realizing too late that the corner of your lips had, indeed, betrayed you. You schooled your expression into something colder, tilting your chin up.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” you said sharply, though the heat rising to your cheeks said otherwise.

Niki chuckled softly, clearly enjoying your discomfort. “Ah, Montague, if only you could see yourself right now.”

The music swelled, filling the room with the elegant strains of a waltz. Couples began gathering in the center of the ballroom, their movements fluid and precise as they prepared to take their places. The air buzzed with anticipation, every gaze trained on the polished floor where the first dance would begin.

You felt the weight of expectation pressing down on you. As the youngest Montague, you knew eyes would soon turn to you. Yet, here you were, standing with Niki Nishimura of all people, his outstretched hand lingering in the space between you.

“You’ll be noticed if you don’t dance soon,” he said, his tone light but edged with a challenge. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll outshine you?”

You narrowed your eyes at him, the fire of his words igniting a flicker of rebellion in you. “Outshine me? Hardly. I just don’t want to waste my time.”

“Then prove it,” he said, stepping closer. His dark eyes gleamed, daring you to take his hand. “Show me what all the Montague charm is about.”

The murmurs around you grew louder. Guests whispered, their curiosity piqued by your exchange. You knew refusing him now would draw even more attention.

With a resigned sigh, you placed your hand in his. “Fine,” you said, your voice low. “But don’t think for a moment that this means anything.”

“Of course not,” he replied, though the triumphant smirk on his face said otherwise.

He led you onto the dance floor with a surprising grace that almost caught you off guard. The other couples parted to make room, their eyes flitting between you both, wondering what spectacle was about to unfold.

As the first notes of the waltz began, Niki placed a hand on your waist, his touch light yet firm, while your free hand rested on his shoulder. He moved with ease, guiding you into the rhythm of the dance.

“You’re not terrible at this,” you admitted grudgingly, matching his steps.

“Why, thank you,” he said, twirling you smoothly. “Coming from you, that’s practically a love letter.”

You scoffed, though a reluctant smile tugged at your lips. “Don’t get used to it.”

“Too late,” he quipped.

The music swirled around you, the room fading into a blur of color and light. For a moment, it felt like the world consisted only of the two of you, locked in a dance neither of you could quite control. And though you’d never admit it, you didn’t entirely mind.

Before you could realize it, the other couples had stepped aside, leaving you and Niki alone at the center of the ballroom. The music swelled around you, the haunting melody echoing through the vast space as countless pairs of eyes fixed on the two of you.

Your heart raced, though you weren’t sure if it was from the intensity of the dance or the weight of everyone’s gaze. “This is your fault,” you hissed under your breath, glaring up at Niki.

“My fault?” he asked, feigning innocence as he spun you gracefully. His smirk betrayed him. “I didn’t tell them to stop. They must be captivated.”

“By what? Your arrogance?”

“By us,” he said simply, his voice lower now, almost conspiratorial. His hand tightened ever so slightly on your waist as he leaned in just enough for only you to hear. “You can deny it all you want, Montague, but they see it. And so do you.”

“See what?” you snapped, though your pulse quickened.

“That we belong in the spotlight together,” he said, twirling you again.

You felt a warmth creep up your neck, but you forced yourself to meet his gaze, refusing to back down. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you’re glowing,” he retorted. “It’s a good look on you.”

The music reached a crescendo, and Niki pulled you closer, his movements impossibly smooth. You hated how well he danced, how effortlessly he seemed to command the floor—and your attention.

As the final notes of the waltz echoed through the hall, a smattering of applause erupted around you. Your chest heaved as you stepped back, your hand slipping from his.

“Well, Montague,” he said, his tone softer now, though his smirk remained. “I’d say we made quite the impression.”

You glanced around at the crowd, cheeks flushed, before turning back to him. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

But as you walked away, you couldn’t ignore the way his words—and his touch—lingered.

[delicatuscii-wasbella102]

Historisches Kaufhaus (Historical merchants‘ hall) Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

[duckprintspress]

My June Reads

Storygraph introduced auto-generated graphics for sharing our reads by the month, which makes it much easier to do a review, and here I am! Sorry it's kinda pixelly, the settings on Storygraph aren't perfect yet but they're planning to add functionality.

I've been posting on the Duck Prints Press Book Lover's Server for a while, so everyone knows there that the answer to "how do you read so much?" is the library, but just to be clear, if it's a graphic novel, I got it from one of three libraries - either my local system, @queerliblib, or the Japan Foundation Library. The last two are both free-throughout-the-US Libby libraries and they've both been awesome.

Prose books, I usually own.

Anyway. Onward! My June reads:

How to Love: A Guide to Feelings and Relationships for Everyone by Alex Norris (graphic novel, short self-help stories about how to be in relationships, how to be alone, etc., all very inclusive.

Blue Flag Vol. 1 - 2 by Kaito (manga series about modern high school and a young man and his best friend - who has a crush on him - and a young woman and her best friend - who has a crush on her. poly vibes.)

The Tea Dragon Festival and The Tea Dragon Tapestry by K. O'Neill (graphic novels, very fluffy fantasy slice-of-life with various queer rep)

Squad by Maggie Toluda-Hall and Lisa Sterle (graphic novel, modern with magic, wlw high school student discovers that fitting in with the cool kids means becoming a murderous werewolf)

Clementine vol. 1 and 2 by Tille Walden (graphic novel, post-apocalyptic set in the same 'verse as The Walking Dead about a wlw amputee surviving against the zombies.

A Thousand Hopes, A Thousand Risks by Kelas Lloyd (short story, fantasy, pre-mlm between a young merchant and a god)

Ride On, Shooting Star by J. D. Harlock (short story, science fiction, a space courier wants to retire)

Deadendia vol. 1 by Hamish Steele (graphic novel, modern with magic/horror elements, about a trans male teenager who runs away from home and moves into a haunted house at an amusement park)

Giant Days vol. 2 by John Allison and Whitney Cogar (graphic novel, modern college setting, about the somewhat silly lives of the main characters)

Yona of the Dawn vol. 1 by Mizuho Kusanagi (manga, fantasy, about a young princess whose kingdom gets taken over by someone she thought a friend)

In the Dark vol. 3 by Jin Shisi Chai (danmei novel, mlm, last of three volumes - I read the other two in May - about an undercover drug cop who returns home after six years undercover)

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua vol. 6 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (manhua version of the MDZS novel, mlm, historical cultivation about a fraught political situation)

The Fox Maidens by Robin Ha (graphic novel playing on story of the fox maiden Gumiho in Korean mythology, with a side of wlw)

My Hero Academia vol. 9 - 12 by Kohei Horikoshi (manga series about teenagers at a high school for superheroes)

Frontera by Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo (graphic novel about a young man crossing the border between the US and Mexico illegally, and about the mlm ghost who helps him)

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi (autobiographical manga about a young lesbian in Japan trying to figure out her identity and find companionship)

Solo Leveling vol. 1 - 2 by Chugong (a manwha series set in modern fantasy Korea, about a young man is terrible at "hunting"...until he isn't)

Haikyu!! vol. 5 - 6 by Haruichi Furudate (manga series about young men who play high school volleyball)

Little Birds by Anaïs Nin (a collection of short erotic stories with lots of trigger warnings applicable and a few dashes of wlw, originally written in the 1930s and 1940s)

To Strip the Flesh by Oto Toda (manga collection of short stories, with the longest/most involved being about a young man's journey coming out as a trans man)

Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed (graphic novel exploring three stories of Egyptians getting first-grade wishes in a modern-with-magic world, includes NB rep)

Limerence by Jiang Zi Bei (danmei novel, mlm, about a young college student who breaks up with his boyfriend and ends up falling for his ex's roommate.)

Our Colors by Gengoroh Tagame (manga about a young Japanese gay man coming our of the closet and making friends/finding a mentor in an older gay man)

Silent Hearts vol. 1 by Jing Shui Bian (danmei novel, mlm, modern high school setting, lots of disability rep though not for either member of the main couple)

Rainbow! vol. 1 by Sunny (modern, maybe with magic, about a young woman with a tough life and the people around her; wlw implied in the future?)

Out of Left Field by Jonah Newman (real-life-inspired graphic novel about a young gay man navigating high school)

Escape From St. Hell: My Trans Life Levels Up by Lewis Hancox (autobiographical graphic novel about a young trans man with severe anxiety)

This was the most pages I've read in a month all year, and the second most individual books. There's actually one more book not pictured, as it wasn't on Storygraph and I opted not to add it.

Happy reading, y'all.

[thgfanfictionlibrary]

do you guys know of any everlark fics that are based on robin hood? specifically looking for one where katniss is the robin hood-figure in the story- i can’t find it!!

Hello Anon!

Thank you for this ask! Below is a list of Robin Hood x THG fics, it looks like several are Katniss as Robin Hood but some are not. Figured I'd list all I could find here though! Happy reading!

Between Poverty and Prosperity-Gamemakers (ff) Summary: In Panem's woodlands, the villagers of Twelve struggle to stay alive while those in the Capitol enrich themselves. Katniss Everdeen attempts to right this injustice, stealing from the rich to support the poor. She'll stop at nothing to help the people she loves, but she cannot fathom how far these actions will take her from the world she knows. Robin Hood AU, Everlark. Bullseye (An Everlark Robin Hood Adventure)-hutchabelle (ao3) Summary: Peeta Mellark is the Kingdom of Panem's Robin Hood. All he's missing is Katniss, his Maid Marian. Daughter of Robin Hood-we'reonfire (ff) Summary: Most people say Robin Hood was the best archer in the land. Legend has it, he had a secret daughter. The Merchants turn their noses up at the "tale for the feeble soul." Little did the poor Merchants know, that another Robin Hood was about to give them a run for their money. Hunter Hood-CrystallineX (ff) Summary: Take a Robin Hood, except he's a she and doesn't tow around a band of merry men. Add a sister studying to be a healer, and a baker's boy dreaming of something more. Let the games begin. AU Legend HGRomance (ao3) or (ff) Summary: People in the kingdom whispered about a legend: a boy with a bow. They said he took up residence in the woods, hiding out while committing random acts of kindness, namely stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Historical AU. Robin Hood. Of Arrows and Burnt Bread-sadbrowngirlpoetry (ao3) Summary: Halle Mellark is in love with Robin Everdeen who is best friends with Gayle Hawthorne, and that complicates matters. Then the Games happen, and that changes them entirely. AU series of interconnected one-shots. Genderswap rewrite of The Hunger Games. Robin hood and the juggling lumberjack-Thatoneloserkid (ff) Summary: Katniss tries to teach Johanna how to shoot a bow while Johanna tries to teach Katniss how to throw an axe. Robin Hoods Identity-I-piTy-Da-FoOl (ff) Summary: He saved me, the one that fascinates me the most. That boy has something about him. Something alluring. And even I, Katniss Everdeen, the unknown warrior that most fear, is attracted to him. She has no time for this. She has to take care of her soldiers. They're her life. Will Katniss's mother make or break her? Will Katniss keep her reason to fight? Or will Snow take it away too? Sparrow-jennajuicebox (ao3) Summary: Mad, I might be. But I will never be convenient. Tales-writing4mylife13 (ff) Summary: My name is Katniss Everdeen, but you may know me as Robin Hood. I steal from the rich and give to the poor. The Sun Thief-bubblegum1425 (ao3) Summary: In the land of Panem, over a decade ago, the royal house Mellark was overthrown by the usurper Coriolanus Snow. Though the terror-filled reign of Snow and his sons has now nearly extinguished the last spark of hope in Panem's people, one boy with a bow and his Merry Band seek to restore the faith and overthrow the King. An Everlark take on Robin Hood. Fantasy AU What's a Mob to a Queen?-orphan_account (ao3) Summary: At 17 years old, Katniss vanishes off the face of the earth. Five years later, on the day of Prim's birthday, Katniss shows up at the doorstep of her old home with an ultimatum for both her sister and lifelong best friend: "Come with me now and leave everything you know behind, or stay here and never tell anyone that you ever saw me." Peeta and Prim are shocked and overjoyed to discover that Katniss is alive, but that's not all: she is the Mockingjay – the queen of a powerful, definitely illegal but morally good organization. But reuniting with Katniss has costs; they will both need to say goodbye to their old lives and their old identities if they want to survive here, and Katniss will need to decide whether or not she can truly trust her two oldest companions. Will they find a way to get their old lives back, or will they join her in her life of danger, wealth and power?

If anyone knows of a fic like this, please reblog, reply, or send an ask with fics fitting this idea and I’ll add it here!

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to shoot me an ask!

[mwthesims3]

I've been fooling around Praaven (original by @potato-ballad-sims, reworked by @nornities and @simsmidgen) around the same time I read threads on historically accurate medieval building reconstructions.

Because of that I ended up reworking the façade of the buildings around the Market Square (specifically the City Hall and the Merchants' Guild) (I felt they needed some more colors, given the time period, as it's supposed to be set in late 14th Century Bohemia iirc).

Next step: remove the sunflowers from all lots that have them (as they're native to Mexico, which hasn't been invaded up to the 1490s)

Edit: Post #500. WOOO!!!1!

[cozycottagelife]

Ropes Mansion, located in Salem, Massachusetts, is a historic Georgian Colonial mansion that was built in the 1720s Originally built for merchant Samuel Barnard, the home was later acquired by Judge Nathaniel Ropes in 1768.

Nathaniel Ropes was a well-known person in Salem, serving as a judge and a member of the Governor’s Council. In 1774 during the American Revolution there was an attack on Ropes Mansion, Nathaniel succumbed to smallpox shortly after this incident.

The mansion is as famous for its haunted tales as it is for its historical significance. Stories of ghost sightings have surrounded the mansion for many years. One of the most well-known ghosts said to haunt the Ropes Mansion is Abigail Ropes. Abigail was the daughter of Judge Nathaniel Ropes II, in 1839 she died in a fire that started in the mansion. According to legend, Abigail’s spirit is tied to the mansion, unable to move on from the place of her death.

Visitors and staff have reported seeing a ghostly figure, believed to be Abigail Ropes, walking through the halls and appearing in the windows. Some have felt sudden drops in temperature, unexplained noises, and the feeling of being watched. The haunting stories have been passed down through many years adding to the mansion’s attraction.

Today, the house is owned by the Essex Institute’s successor, the Peabody Essex Museum. It is one of a number of historic homes owned by the museum, and it stands as an important architectural landmark. However, it is a major tourist destination in modern Salem for different reasons. The 1993 film Hocus Pocus used the house as a filming location, and it was prominently featured as the home of one of the main characters, Allison Watts.

[aspenous]

Kuroshou medieval AU haHA

Daishou is a noblemans son, one not that important in the grand scheme of things, yet still powerful enough to be allowed into the royal courts. His family has a tendancy to avoid picking sides, more often a neutral party during political conflicts, and because of this Daishou is able to participate in various parties. Its there he meets Tetsurou; another noble who quickly gets under his skin and irritates Daishou to no end. The teen doesn't even tell Daishou which house he's from, instead daring him to guess. Daishou knows everyone. He's poured through historical records and memorized Lords and Ladies alike and yet, he can never pin point which family Tetsurou's from. For each guess wrong, he looses a bit of his own secrecy. Tetsurou asks him about his own family, his studies, his hobbies and whatever else; half the topics feel inproper for noblesons to discuss, but Tetsurou always insists and Daishou is pride bound to uphold his end of the bet.

Tetsurou starts to appear more often. At every party Daishou attends, he'll find Tetsurou as well, who seems to have made it his mission to bother Daishou constantly. It's easier at least, than trying to kiss ass to older noblemen who look at him as if he's a starry eyed toddler. Talking to Tetsurou–despite being annoying–was much easier, and with each conversation they share Daishou learns a little more about the other boy.

Not about his family, history or lineage. But instead his habits, quirks and personality. For one, he prefers salted foods over anything sweet. He constantly hovers close to crowds, and slots himself easily into them, as if he'd been part of the conversation from the start. He talked to people. Alot. He has the worst case of bed hair known to man, and apparently each attempt to fix is has failed. His best friend was a boy named Kenma, a merchants son who always looked like he'd rather be in some ditch than any party. He's preceptive–oddly so–picking up on habits, moods and mannerisms even Daishou hadn't noticed until it's pointed out.

He's a caring person, past all the witty jokes, layered provocations, he has a habit of looking out for others and Daishou finds himself thankful to just know. To be allowed to see this side of the boy. Somewhere along the way, after months of nightly comradery, he's grown fond of Tetsurou,

"More like a crush–" Mika had cooed, taking off down the hall before Daishou could defend himself.

Fond. It's the appropriate word to describe the ease he feels whenever he spots the rooster nest of hair in a crowd. The perfect word for the bright warmth that spreads through his chest when the bastard smiles, more teeth and cheek than socially acceptable. Its the right word, and if Daishou repeats that to himself enough times, maybe he'll believe it himself.

They end up at another party. Grander than any other since it's the royal family themselves hosting it. Despite having arrived an hour ago, Daishou has yet to spot Tetsurou, and almost considers that maybe the other boy had just decided not to show up; that is until the doorman announces the hosts, and Daishou zeros in–embarrassingly quickly–on a familiar boy standing beside their King, covered in fine only the finest cloth and silk.

What the fuck.

(I died lmao Democratic vote should I continue this?? Edit: came back and added a little more.)

[shadowsteed15]

Romania 🥰

This year my summer is a bit Dracula themed and last month I went on a little trip to Romania by myself. Romania is a beautiful country, it's tourism still growing and not everything is perfect, but there are plenty of wonderful places to see that are more than worth the visit, so here you have some tips for some Dracula tourism in his home country. 😊

Brasov - Whether you're going to Romania to follow Dracula or not, Brasov is an excellent place to start. Situated in the centre of Transylvania, it is a lovely, historical city and a tourist centre from which you can travel to different places of interest in the surrounding area. In the 15th century, Brasov was one of the most important cities belonging to the Transylvanian Saxon merchants, who didn't have a very good relationship with Vlad Tepes and according to legend, Vlad once came to the city and impaled 40 of the merchants on the nearby Tampa mountain. You can visit the mountain yourself either by climbing one of the tracks or using a cable car that travels from the foot of the mountain. Once you come back down, you can visit the beautiful Council Square with the famous Black Church and then you can go have lunch to the Dracula restaurant that features some lovely Dracula-themed decorations. 🙂

Bran Castle - From Brasov, you can then travel by bus or book a day tour to the Bran Castle, nestled in the mountains not far from the city. Bran is famously called Dracula's Castle, even though it has little to do with either the vampire or the prince, beside the fact the the castle is said to have been the inspiration for the actual castle in the book. But here at Bran they love their connection to the vampire that brings crowds of tourists to the area and the castle features a small exhibition dedicated not only to Vlad Tepes and Dracula, but also to other stories from Romanian folklore. In addition to that, the castle is a museum featuring exhibits from the life of the royal family, who used to live in this castle during the last century. 😊

Sighisoara - If you want to truly immerse yourself in the story of Vlad Tepes, you can travel to the beautiful town of Sighisoara, where he was originally born in 1431 and you can find signs of his presence everywhere. Sighisoara is a lovely city with a small, medieval fortress situated on a hill in its centre. This UNESCO heritage site will make you feel like you've been transported back in time with its colourful, old buildings and unigue, medieval atmosphere. The most famous building is a large clock tower that you can see from everywhere in the city, but a few steps from the tower you can find the house where young Vlad Tepes lived with his family for the first few years of his life. Today the building houses a restaurant and a souvenir shop.

Continuing with our exploration of the city, not far from the house, between a church and the city's town hall, you will find a stone bust of Vlad Tepes, commemorating the city's connection to the ruler. Walking back to the square and turning to another street, you can then visit the Mystical Transylvania museum that offers two small, but very well made exhibits, one talking about some famous stories from the city's history and the other one focusing on the story of Vlad Tepes himself, narrating his life with the use of projections, light and shadow and other special effect and an entertaining voice acting.

Though the journey had some challenges, I had a lot of fun and definitely will visit Romania again to see some other cool places, not only those connected to Dracula, and there's still a lot of these, but also from the large collection of other places that I haven't seen yet. 🥰

[maboroshi-no]

Hamefura Movie Novel Extra Story 1 Summary

I am currently reading the light of the novel of the upcoming Hamefura movie and will write summaries as I read.

(The translation is a bit rushed because I am in a hurry).

Previous Chapters:

Chapter 1: The Foreign Merchant Caravan

Chapter 2: The Emissaries From Mutlaq

Chapter 3: Food Supplies

Chapter 4: Encounter

Chapter 5: Sacred Beast

Extra Story 1

Katarina is currently riding a carriage. She asks a question to Geordo, sitting opposite her.

Katarina: The play we're going to watch is having its debut performance today, right?

Geordo (grinning): That's right. Today is the debut performance of the play we're going to watch.

A few days ago, Geordo invited Katarina to go to the theater. Katarina is not fond of theater since the plays she watched long ago always were hard-to-understand historical plays, but Geordo told her that the play this time was intended for a general audience, so she thought she would give it a try. And here they are.

Katarina looks out of the window.

Katarina: I think we'll arrive soon.

Keith: Right, we'll arrive soon.

Keith is actually riding the carriage with Geordo and Katarina. 

When Katarina told Keith that Geordo had invited her to the theater, Keith told her he also wanted to see the play and asked if he could join them. Katarina accepted. When Geordo came to fetch her, Geordo told Keith he had no seat for him, but Keith told him he had already booked a seat for himself. Katarina felt relieved that Keith already had his own ticket. 

The carriage has arrived at the theater. Katarina gets off the carriage, goes through the theater's entrance, and arrives in the hall.

Mary: Lady Katarina!

Katarina turns her head.

Katarina: Mary, Sophia, Maria, Prince Alan, Lord Nicol!

Katarina can see that all her friends are here.

Katarina: What are you all doing here?

Mary (smiling): We were interested in the play so we came to watch it. I am so glad to meet you, Lady Katarina. Let's watch it together.

Katarina is happy to meet her friends in such an unexpected place.

Katarina: Yes, let's.

Geordo: Unfortunately, the box seat I took can't hold so many people, so Katarina and I will watch the play together and once it is over, let's all spend time together.

Katarina remembers that nobles take seats in elevated boxes in theaters. In that case, everyone will indeed not fit in.

Katarina: Oh, right. Everyone will indeed not fit in. Then let's all spend time together after the play...

Mary: It is alright, Lady Katarina. I have also booked a box seat. Up to 4 people can sit in it, so let's split gentlemen and ladies and watch the play.

Sophia and Maria quickly take Katarina's hands.

Mary: Well then, gentlemen, please enjoy the play in the box seat booked by Prince Geordo. 

Mary starts walking elegantly, without letting anyone object. Katarina, Sophia, and Maria follow her.

The girls arrive at the box seat booked by Mary. Katarina feels like it is spacious enough to easily fit more than 4 people. But then she remembers that nobles usually have attendants with them, so it might have been taken into account.

Katarina sits on the soft sofa and sees sweets and tea already on the table.

She remembers how she was amazed by the service the first time she went to the theater. Maria seems to be as amazed as she was long ago.

Mary: Lady Katarina, do you know about the story adapted in this play?

Katarina (shaking head): No, I only heard that it was an adaptation of a story.

Sophia: It seems to be a love story between a princess and a knight. I don't know the precise content since it was written on reading material for commoners and hasn't been made into a book. I am looking forward to it. 

Katarina: So it is a love story between a princess and a knight, huh? I have read many of them in romance novels but I have never seen them in plays. I can't wait.

The plays Katarina watched before were all historical plays, like the history of one of the past kings, or the research of a famous magician. Compared to these, she is way more interested in love stories.

Maria: Is that so? Though, I heard they do this kind of play in commoner theaters.

Mary: Since it was popular in small theaters, it seems like they decided to hold a performance in a big theater like this for the first time.

Katarina: I see.

Katarina is amazed by how well-informed Mary is.

The curtain rises.

The girls watch the play.

The play has ended.

Katarina loved the play. She found the production very high quality: the stage setup, the actors' performance, the costumes… The story was staged as a romance novel, so it was easy to get into it. But Katarina was displeased with one thing.

Katarina: Why was there a bad ending?

Maria is puzzled.

Maria: What is a "bad ending"?

Katarina: Ah, umm~ Like, there wasn't a happy ending.

Sophia (outraged): I wholeheartedly agree! Why did they do such an ending?

Katarina notices that Sophia's expression just now is just like Acchan's angry expression.

Mary (hand on her cheek): I would have never guessed that it would turn into a blighted love.

The princess and knight's love story in the play ended up in a blighted love.

It was the story of a princess and her protecting knight, a commoner, who were both attracted to each other. A common trope in romance novels. In most of them, the two would overcome their difference in status and get married. But in this play, the knight stepped aside because he thought the princess couldn't be happy with him.

Katarina personally prefers happy endings, but she also reads blighted love stories.  

Katarina: But it totally felt like they would end up with each other! It completely built up towards them throwing away their status and getting married. So why at the very end, did it end up with him stepping aside?!

Sophia: It is completely as you say! It should have undoubtedly developed towards their marriage! I just can't believe that at the very end, the knight stepped aside.

Katarina and Sophia agree. Maria gives it some thought.

Maria: But the knight stepped aside because he noticed the prince's feelings for the princess and thought he would make her happier than him, who had low status. Since I am a commoner like the knight, I can understand his feelings.

As high-ranking nobles, Katarina, Sophia, and Mary can't really understand that feeling, but they guess it might be the case if Maria says so.

Maria (decisively): I can understand his feelings, but... If it were me, I wouldn't give up.

Katarina is blank, surprised by Maria's sudden determined words.

Maria (dignified): Supposing there was a difference of status between me and the one I love, if they chose me, I would want to stay by their side for as long as they desired. I would do anything to that end. 

Maria makes a dignified face befitting of the heroine of the game. Katarina is sure the capture targets are also attracted to Maria and want to live with her for as long as they desire.

Mary (fully determined): Me too! I also want to stay by my beloved's side forever! If there were a big obstacle in my way, I would break it!

Sophia (excitedly): Everyone is so passionate. But I share the same opinion. Even if another more suitable person has appeared, what about the princess's feelings? For him to give up one-sidedly, the knight is so self-righteous. If he had refused to give up and run away with the princess, they could have lived together. 

Katarina feels like Sophia breathing out of her nose out of excitement would be NG for a game, but aside from that, she vehemently agrees with her.

Katarina: That's right. He shouldn't have given up. The princess loved the knight after all. It would have been great if she had chosen to be with him. 

The girls all agree that the play was great and that the knight shouldn't have given up at the end. They all have fun exchanging their impressions.

Katarina wonders how it went with the boy's group.

Geordo's POV

Geordo wonders how things turned out like this. He deeply sighs.

A few days ago, Geordo heard a play would adapt a story intended for the general public. Katarina wasn't really interested in plays because a lot of them were historical ones, but he thought she might like this one since she enjoyed reading romance novels.

Geordo secured tickets right away and invited Katarina. Katarina promptly accepted, but Geordo was fairly sure he wouldn't be able to go to the theater alone with her

Based on the usual pattern, since Geordo can't prevent Katarina from talking, she would tell Keith, then it would reach Mary, and then Mary would suggest doing it "with everyone". He can clearly see that happening.

Geordo doesn't particularly hate spending time with everyone. Before meeting Katarina, he found it bothersome to spend time with people at times, but that is not the case anymore. His friends, who have been with him since childhood, are important to him and he enjoys spending time with them. 

Still, Geordo considers his time with Katarina as a different matter. The heart-pounding time with the one he loves is special.

Since he has graduated from the academy, Geordo will start working as a full-fledged royal. As for Katarina, she will join the Ministry of Magic. They will have significantly less time to see each other. That's why he wanted to spend just a little time with her now.

Geordo intentionally chose a narrow box seat to that end. He expected that Mary and the others would forcibly enter the box seat he booked, but if they couldn't all fit in, they would have no choice but to wait outside. He also intentionally chose the date of the debut performance so there wouldn't be any other available box seats. That way, they wouldn't be able to get a large box seat on that day.

...So why did it turn out like this?

Geordo looks at the 3 grown men closely huddled together on the narrow sofa. They are in such close proximity that it would have been improper if they had been unmarried men and women. But since they are all men, there is no problem since same-sex marriage is currently not recognized in Sorcier. This distance does not raise any problem, but it looks so sultry. The sofa is too narrow for 4 grown men to sit together but if he chases them out, the 3 won't have any seat

Geordo wonders if Mary secured a box seat from the start while anticipating that he would take a narrow box seat. If so, the frightening Mary Hunt is becoming more of a formidable enemy with the passing years. He will need to refine his countermeasures against her after that. While thinking of this, Geordo shudders about having to watch a play on a narrow sofa filled with men.

Geordo: Umm, won't it be hard for you? Wouldn't you rather not force yourself to watch the play and just wait outside? 

Alan: No, since I'm already here. Besides, I'm curious about the play, so I'll watch it.

Nicol (expressionless): Me too.

Keith: I'll also watch it since I'm already here. If I don't, I won't be able to discuss the play with Big Sister after.

Keith has added his motive. Geordo has the same motive, so he reluctantly decides to endure the narrowness and the sultriness and watch the play.

The play is over.

Geordo feels like, because they're bringing forth a story intended for the general public for the first time, the staff put out all the stops for the play. Geordo could tell they put a lot of work into the stage setup and the costumes.

The story was about the love between a princess and a knight like in many romance novels that Katarina enjoys, but the feelings of the two protagonists who were attracted to each other despite their difference of status were carefully depicted. Geordo thought that at this rate, they would probably marry each other at the end, but it unexpectedly ended with the knight stepping aside.

Geordo wonders why the knight would step aside here, then concludes that each person is different. But his younger brother and friends have other opinions.

Alan: For him to step aside for the princess here...

Alan is grimacing with a pained face because he is empathizing with the knight. Geordo thinks to himself that Alan has grown up into such an honest person. He sometimes wonders if Alan really is his brother.

Nicol: Yes, for him to go through his decision to step aside so resolutely...

Nicol is expressionless but the tone of his voice resounds as pained.

Geordo is surprised that Nicol would empathize with the knight, but then he remembers that Nicol is Sophia's older brother.

Keith: For him to step aside and entrust the princess to the prince...

Keith makes an incredibly sad face. Geordo thinks to himself that Keith seems to empathize with the knight but he is not disregarding the other people. Though, his look is similar to the other two.

Geordo analyzes the situation. 4 grown men are sitting tightly with shoulders touching on a narrow sofa intended for lovers and married couples and 3 of them are hanging their heads with pained faces. If someone were to enter right at this moment, they would think he had done something to the other three. On the other hand, if he leaves ahead and the remaining 3 are seen hanging their heads like this, people may think that he not only did something to them but also promptly ran away. 

In the end, Geordo didn't leave the sofa and just waited for the other three to sort out their feelings. 

When the 4 of them left the box seat and joined back with the girls, the girls were excitedly talking among themselves. Geordo felt incredibly jealous looking at them.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Part II: Deep Genealogy of Wage Labor

Now I also want to talk about the deep genealogy of wage labor — that’s part two. In this essay, I want to pursue the relation of debt and commoditization of labor by looking at the history of the wage relation itself. Considering the dominance of the wage system today, it’s actually remarkably under-researched. There’s a lot of studies of slavery. Just compare how many studies of slavery there are to how many studies of wage labor in antiquity or the Middle Ages. You realize that it’s true slavery was actually a more important institution, but it’s like fifty to one; there’s enormous amounts of one and surprisingly little on the other. I can’t think of a single book-length study (somebody tell me if I’m wrong) about forms of wage contract in the ancient or medieval worlds. And insofar as information about wage contracts is to be found, it’s largely inside the literature that’s about slavery. And that’s of course significant in itself, since for most of history, the two institutions were in fact closely related.

This is well-documented in ancient Greece, although I think often people draw the wrong conclusions. Essentially, Jonathan Friedman came to the famous conclusion that ancient Greek slavery was really a form of capitalism, whereas I would rather make the argument that capitalism is really a transformation of slavery (Ekholm and Friedman 106). But it is certain that slaves and wage laborers were essentially overlapping categories in most of ancient Greek history. Freeborn Athenians, Corinthians, for that matter, of the fourth or fifth centuries BC didn’t consider being paid to work for a government as in any way shameful. That’s because if it’s one’s own government, one is essentially working for oneself, if one’s doing jury duty or building a monument. Athens wasn’t considered an abstraction. Athens was the Athenians. ‘If I am an Athenian, and I’m working for the Athenians, I’m working for myself.’ Even hiring oneself out as a mercenary to a foreign potentate was an honorable thing to do.

However, hiring oneself out to a private citizen in the same community was totally different, and people really avoided that, because it essentially marked you as a slave. As a result, almost all early wage labor contracts that we are aware of appear to have in fact been contracts for slave rental. These arrangements could, as Friedman pointed out, be quite sophisticated, involving the allocation of money wages split between slave and owner, to workers maintained in workshops producing for the market. In many ways, they did approximate what we’re used to thinking of as capitalist arrangements, but they were an extension of the institution of slavery itself.

Now some of the world systems theorists have generalized from this. Chase-Dunne and Hall, in their book Rise and Demise, argue that capitalism, and like most world systems analysts they’re defining capitalism in Braudelian terms, as basically the use of money to make more money. Capitalism, they say, tends to develop within what they call autonomous capitalist city-states on the semi-peripheries of world systems. The examples they give are “Dilmun, Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Malacca, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Antwerp, and the cities of the Hanseatic League” (Chase-Dunn and Hall 92). Even that point is actually an extension of a point Braudel had made, that if capitalism can only emerge if merchants and financiers are able to ally themselves with governments, then small mercantile states is where that’s most likely to happen.

What’s interesting for my own purposes is that these are also the kind of places where one is historically most likely to encounter the densest concentrations of chattel slaves, even in periods where chattel slavery had largely been eliminated elsewhere, such as the Middle Ages, and also particularly as a factor of production. So it’s those areas where you find nascent capitalists allying with or taking over governments. It is the place where you see the most chattel slaves, but it’s also where you see something that resembles wage labor emerging from within the institution of slavery, in much the way as you saw happen in ancient Greece. I think historians have largely missed this, because if you look at the exceptions to this, they’re mostly in northern Europe. European mercantile city-states were somewhat anomalous in this regard.

Southern Europe actually still fits the pattern fairly well. Italian city-states like Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa were not only centers of commerce and finance, as we know. They were precisely the part of medieval Europe where slavery, classic chattel slavery, held on the longest. It’s true it was contested in the twelfth century. For example, the slaves that had been employed making cloth by monasteries in Venice were largely replaced by guild labor. Actually, this is across Italy. After that, Italian slaves were rarely employed for producing for the market, but that’s largely because that was around the time that the use of servile labor for producing for the market shifted away from Italy itself to what were essentially colonial possessions, particularly sugar plantations in Crete and Cyprus, in what many believe provided the model that was later exported, first to the Canary Islands and then to the Caribbean. I think all of this happened because in Europe, much unlike the rest of the mercantile city-states elsewhere in the world at that time, almost all of which were part of the larger Islamic ecumene (if you want to call it that), where Islam and Islamic law was a sort of medium of trade or arbiter of trade and enforced a strict division between war and commerce.

In Europe, war and commerce was mixed together in a way that really didn’t happen elsewhere. I talk about this a bit in the Debt book; this is why there’s exploitation of servile labor for market purposes funded directly by mercantile city-states, which tended to happen as part of military and colonial ventures, whereas such things in other places happen within the city-states themselves. If you go back to the trading role of the Indian Ocean during the same period, one finds with remarkable consistency labor arrangements similar to those of the ancient world, where it’s actually almost entirely slaves who are doing wage labor. Insofar as we observe wage labor contracts, they are actually slave rentals, either because the owners would rent their slaves out directly, or because slaves who had achieved a certain amount of autonomy would be allowed to find work on their own and then be expected to turn over a share of the proceeds to their owners. And again, going back to my own fieldwork in Madagascar, which is a marginal part of that larger Indian Ocean trading world, the port cities were part of it, and I was in the highlands, which was just plugged into that.

That was actually the principal way of organizing labor in the nineteenth century. It began in port cities like Tamatave [modern-day Toamasina] and expanded to the highlands. By the nineteenth century, even Quaker missionaries active in the abolition movement had to protest to abolitionists at home who had complained that they were all basically having all their work done by slaves or being carried around by slaves on palanquins and whatnot. They say,’Look, you know we would employ free labor, but it’s impossible, because, you know, nobody who isn’t a slave is willing to work for wages. You know, we pay these guys.’ In the nineteenth century, the transport industry throughout Madagascar was entirely dominated by slave porters who formed effective unions. And those porters in theory had to turn over a percentage of their wages to the owners, but in practice they often didn’t. This is one contemporary missionary source I found:

Slaves enjoy considerable freedom of action. While theoretically without rights, practically they enjoy a good many. As there are no made roads and no wheeled vehicles in Madagascar, travelers are carried in palanquins, and baggage is conveyed by men. Slaves are permitted by their masters to hire themselves out as servants and laborers to carry baggage and messages to and from the coast, to go on long journeys with travelers, in fact to do anything for which they can obtain wages. Sometimes the master receives a portion of the wages thus earned. Sometimes he receives nothing at all, but in that case the slave has frequently to hire someone else to take his place and fulfill his share of the personal service when required. (British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society 1)

So here you have slaves not only hiring themselves out, but hiring other slaves, so only slaves work for wages to work for their own masters. This provides a fascinating glimpse of one way that slave labor could become commoditized.

Another thing which actually always fascinated me about the Malagasy system, which I’ve never had a chance to write about, but I will someday, is that they had partible inheritance system in Madagascar, which meant that slaves quickly came to be divided up, so if you have eight children, each one gets one-eighth share of the slaves, so it’s not at all uncommon to see contracts for the sale of one sixteenth of a slave, or a slave who owns three-quarters of himself slowly buying himself back from his various owners. What this actually meant in terms of labor arrangements is really unclear from the sources. There is occasional references to division of days, that slaves would have to wander around from one place to another if their various owners lived in different places, but it’s easy to see how under such conditions — and slaves were itinerant anyway- systems of substitutions like that could become commonplace. Slave labor was already broken into units and commoditized in various ways, which may have lent itself to further doing so through the payment of wages.

Anyway, Malagasy slaves in the late nineteenth century achieved an unusual level of autonomy, but similar arrangements, usually more strictly enforced, could be observed in a lot of other places: Swahili city-states are a good example. Most of our sources are pretty late, nineteenth century — early twentieth, but they’re very consistent. Here the main employers appear to have been Hadhramis, small-scale entrepreneurs originally from Yemen, notorious for purchasing slaves so as to hire them out as either craftsmen or dock workers, then collecting a share of the wages. So it’s the same deal, and precisely the same pattern appears in most of the major cosmopolitan port cities of Southeast Asia, where early European sources almost always describe the bulk of the population as slaves.

This, as we’ll see, might be exaggerated, because most of the population of these port cities seem to have been made up of people in the slightly more ambiguous condition of debt bondsmen, or personal dependents of large magnates, rather than, say, war captives. It isn’t often they made a distinction; they were all sort of collapsed as slaves. But the real slaves are the ones who were captured in war, who had fewer rights and lower status. Nonetheless legal documents make clear that wage labor contracts basically consisted of agreement to rent one’s servile dependents or for servile dependents to rent themselves. This is Anthony Reid:

In none of these trading cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can we identify a class of independent urban artisans or laborers, free to work for wages or not to work. If we compare wage rates given in European sources of the cost of the day’s rice, we find a very high labour cost. (Reid 1983 168)

So people were paid a lot, but this is not a free market wage paid to the worker but the cost of hiring bondsmen from a master. This is a quote that Reid quotes: “It was their custom to rent slaves. They pay the slave a sum of money which he gives to his master, and then they use that slave that day for whatever work they wish” (Reid 1983 168 and Reid 1988 131, quoting Ibrahim). The laws of Melaka “similarly [give] many examples of the legal implications of ‘hiring’ or ‘borrowing’ slaves, but none of any other type of labor contract” (Reid 1983 168). We see the same thing in colonial Java. There were actually free wage laborers in colonial Java. It appears around Batavia in the early colonial period, but it’s almost exclusively confined to the semi-criminal masterless men from the countryside, who were available for seasonal agricultural labor during the colonial period, people who were otherwise abused by the authorities as derelicts and thugs. The bulk of wage labor, however, continued to be performed by slaves there as well.

So, finally, it hardly seems coincidental that plantation slavery, which in historical terms is one of the rarest forms of the institution, tends to appear precisely in the same context where one has mercantile city-states and the emergence of wage labor from within slavery. Outside of the ancient world, one might point here to the slave plantations encouraged by the Omanis in nineteenth-century East Africa, the pepper plantations in Sumatra managed by merchants from Aceh Melaka. Still, it was only really unlucky unfree laborers who ended up working on plantations.

And here’s where debt comes in. This is very interesting. In Southeast Asia at least, and I suspect this is true in a lot of places, most wage laborers actually got themselves into that situation, sometimes intentionally, by manipulating debt, since debt peons both maintain many of the rights of free people, but were formally dependents on some local notable and were typically seen as far higher status than the criminals and vagabonds who were available for casual hire, if indeed anyone was. The logic seems to have been this: since working under another’s orders, particularly on an ongoing basis, is by definition a relation of dependency and nonfreedom, only those in a formally dependent state could really do it.

As a result, it was not at all uncommon for someone attracted to work in a bustling port city like Melaka or Aceh or Makassar to take out a loan so as to render themselves dependent on some local grandee, who would then hire him out and collect a share of the proceeds. So if you wanted to come to town and get a piece of the action, you’d intentionally take out a loan to make yourself into a debt peon, and then the guy who lent you the loan becomes your agent. In fact, he might even take the money that he got on the loan and hire debt peons of his own, or servants, or buy people who are already slaves.

According to the Cambridge World History of Slavery, “Debt bondage was by far the most common form of slavery” (Ellis 163):

Slaves are both hired and traded on open markets, and slaves themselves could participate in such markets by purchasing slaves for themselves, thereby lessening their own labor obligations. (Ibid.)

Much like the Malagasy people are hiring slaves to fill in for themselves.

Of course debt bondspeople could also be sold off by their masters, but there was a social obligation not to sell debt bondspeople outside their own natal society. (Ibid. 172)

So, as you might imagine, these things could become really complicated very quickly, with the same individuals acting as both creditors and debtors, masters and slaves, employers and employees, often in the same transactions, and at the same time, much like the Malagasy slaves, but debt was absolutely critical in effecting the transformation from one status to another.

I think that at the root of all these complicated machinations, however, there’s a really simple paradox. I think the fundamental contradiction is the very idea of a free contract in which two parties agree not to be in a relation of equality anymore, because any contractual arrangement assumes two parties, and at least some kind of formal or legal equality exists for them to enter into a contractual agreement to begin with. But how do you frame it if what they’re agreeing to is not to be in a relation of formal equality anymore, at least so all the terms of the contract apply? In that way, in purely formal terms, debt contracts and wage labor contracts are actually very similar, because they’re both agreements between two ostensibly equal parties to enter into a relation of extreme inequality for a specific period of time under certain specific conditions.

I think it’s this similarity which allowed debt to be the conceptual wedge through which wage labor became socially, morally, and politically possible. After all, in most societies, the idea of temporary voluntary reduction to a status that was only otherwise familiar in relations of either patriarchal authority within the household or outright chattel slavery, an institution which was always at least in principle conceived to be founded on right of conquest, would have been either morally outrageous or simply inconceivable. One does not normally think to rent oneself out as either a daughter or a slave.

It was the absolute quality of the moral power of debt — this is the thing that always fascinated me when I was writing the book — is how the morality of debt seems to have this astounding capacity to trump any other type of morality, so that people will accept things that they would have never accepted under any other circumstances if it’s what’s necessary to pay one’s debts. That’s what made it so well suited to transform labor itself into a tradeable economy [sic: commodity?], either through the manipulation of marriage payments, in the case of women’s labor, or the case of wage contracts, although not exclusively undertaken by men.