#Investors should be fucking happy the thing they invested in gets up and running and that's it
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Capitalists hate me because I simply believe that you do NOT have the duty to increase profits for shareholders at the cost of health of you, your employees, or even your company hope that helps â¤ď¸
#Investors should be fucking happy the thing they invested in gets up and running and that's it#You invest because you want that service don't you??#Making people invest in things to make money not working?? Sounds like something a rich person made up#They should be happy that the business is stable and running and DOES WHAT IS ADVERTISED#Anything past that is extortion#Shark tank makes me feel like people are selling their souls to the devil#What do you mean this product that is so helpful and needed isn't worth time because you will ONLY make your money back???
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Chapter 36 of Good Investment is now up on my Patreon!
Good Investment is available at the $5/month tier. People who pledge $5 a month have access to not only Good Investment but The Sponsors series (ongoing), Pretty Things (complete), May the Blood Run Pure (complete), and Kept Man (complete), along with the $1/month tier books, the Reflections trilogy (ongoing) and The Halfwife (ongoing).
Adri Schvaneveldt has always felt split between two worlds. In one world, they are the adopted child of a large and conservative Mormon family. In another, she is the CEO of a burgeoning fashion empire that pushes boundaries. But in order to be the latter, Adri first has to find the funding. After gaining a hefty following as a social media influencer/model, Adri has the potential customersâ if they can get a reliable production model pounded out. And that means a bit of groveling at the feet of investors, most of who have never even heard the term ânon-binaryâ.
But Adri lucks out with Gideon Snow, whose youth and open mind bring much needed funds to make Adriâs dream of diverse, accessible fashion a reality. Of course, lifting a newborn company to its feet is no small task, and late nights drive Adri to occasional stays at Gideonâs nearby house, where their relationship begins stretching beyond business. Adri knows they canât put an entire business venture at risk for the turbulent whims of their heart. But reason doesnât always win out.
Excerpt:
âOkay,â Tiffany finally said, voice quiet. âI get it. I am happy for you, you know. For once you get to date another ex-Mormon with the same fucked up coping skills as you.â
Gideon chuckled. âYeah, we understand each other on a level I canât explain to people who arenât from Utah.â He inhaled shakily. âSheâs so sweet, but not in the way my parents pretend to be. Sheâs genuine. And talented, of course. Sheâs⌠sheâs a lot of things.â Again, Gideon glanced at the patio door.
âAww, Giddy. Youâre so cute when youâre in love.â Gideon wasnât sure if she was making fun of him, but he decided to be generous and assume she wasnât.
âAnyway, I probably should go. Iâm sure itâs late there.â
âOnly eleven-thirty. You go and enjoy your sexy vacation with your sexy mistress. Think about what we discussed, but also try not to get food poisoning.â
âYeah, yeah, Iâll do my best.â
âGood luuuuuuuck,â Tiffany sang, then hung up.
Gideon sank back into the patio chair for a few minutes, just staring out across the ocean. Then he hauled himself to his feet and pushed the sliding patio door back, finally granted a decent look inside the room. Adriâs form was still nestled under the puffy white comforter, one slim arm stretched out across the pillow heâd abandoned. His chest swelled with emotions he struggled to contain, and he stepped lightly across the space between the door and the bed to rest a knee on the mattress and lean over Adri. They were mostly buried in sheets, but their bare shoulders and neck were exposed. Gideon pressed a hand to their skin, reveling in the texture of it before dropping his head and kissing the dip between neck and shoulder. Adri moaned softly and shifted, rolling onto their back before their eyes fluttered open, two warm pools of blackish-brown that Gideon wanted to dive into and curl up with like he did his cat.
âMorning,â Adri said with a sweet, sleepy smile.
âHey,â Gideon replied, smiling in kind.
Adri reached up with thin fingers and pastel pink claws to push some hair off his forehead, then dropped a thumb to the center of his forehead, teasing out what must be a wrinkle. âEverything okay?â
Gideon braced an arm on Adriâs opposite side, which freed up his other hand to rub their forearm until they dropped it, allowing him to wind their fingers together. The distress that his conversation with Tiffany had rustled up now felt a thousand miles away. Love really had his brain simmering in its own juices like a slow-cooked turkey.
âEverythingâs fine,â he told them, squeezing their hand.
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Do you think one can ethically enjoy the svb bank collapse. I KNOW it effects regular people and not just rich assholes but any time I read anything about it my dominant emotional reaction is "lmao get rekt." I know that's not mature, but it's so hard to feel anything else! ESPECIALLY when all the news seems to focus on is how this effects other rich people shit like stocks and investment security. I'm not happy that normal people aren't getting paid, but I am delighted that a major bank was brought down by a bunch of panicking tech bros causing a fucking bank run. Can I keep enjoying the schadenfreude, or should I put on a mourning veil and nod somberly every time it's brought up?
Hey anon, thank you for asking this question. This is an interesting one, and I had a good time chewing on it a bit before I sat down to answer.
In a way, it feels like the inverse of the "thoughts and prayers" issue. There, like here, we -- you and I, and 99.9999% of the rest of the tumblr ecosystem and the world at large -- can't do anything about the current situation. There is nothing particularly useful that we would do if we packed our bags and showed up onsite to "help," and we have our own lives that we need to keep on track.
Do I think donning a mourning veil and nodding somberly every time SVB comes up in conversation would actually improve the situation in even the tinest of ways? Not really, no, any more than posting "thoughts and prayers" on Facebook does. It's not gonna get any startup employees or contractors paid, it's not gonna convince the rest of the larger finance world to stop running around in circles and screaming incoherently, it's not gonna convince the government to maybe let the risk-hungry investors actually feel some of the pain of their risk-taking.
And, let's be real, a little schadenfreude can be cathartic. It's nice to see the guys on top of the world panic-crying sometimes. To be clear, the things that they regard as catastrophic and the things that are catastrophic for us normies down here on the ground are very, very different, and even on their worst day they're much better off than I think I will ever be, but... well, it's kinda nice to see rich assholes have bad days anyway.
But there is a risk there as well; it's entirely possible to take so much joy in the bad day of a rich man that you lose sight of the downstream impacts. One of the things that makes trying to fix our broken world so difficult is that any major event has very wide-ranging impacts, and those impacts almost always fall hardest on the people least able to cope with them. And while Facebook thoughts and prayers do nothing to help or harm others, it is also true that your habitual thoughts become your unquestioned and automatic thoughts. Unbridled schadenfreude can over time lead to a chronic lack of compassion for others, and that, I think, is something to carefully avoid.
My approach, and the approach I recommend in general, is to let multiple things be true at once, and to hold that dualism actively in your mind. Enjoy the schadenfreude -- believe me, I am! -- but don't let yourself forget the ordinary people impacted. Let an awareness of them hang at the back of your mind even while you're laughing. Not with guilt, but with caring, because much like schadenfreude, compassion is a habit you can cultivate.
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Always Been You
Pairing: Maxwell Lord x F!Reader
Rating: M
Words: 2182
Warnings: Sexual tension, language, some angst, fluff.
Summary: Maxwell Lord and you were dating for two years when you walked in on him in the office with an investor and you called it quits- now heâs reaching out to you, a year later, to give you some closure before you leave forever, but what he doesnât expect is that you feel the same way about him as he still feels about you.
A/N: This is the first time Iâve ever really written anything other than poetry and I hope this is received well. Iâve also never uploaded anything like this to tumblr before, so hopefully this works out correctly for me. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it!! Â
Maxwell groans, gripping the bed sheet in his hand, he's been dreaming of you again- while laying next to another one night stand. He grips the sheet harder before letting out a breathy moan of your name, before he sits straight up in bed and glances at the time. 3:02 am, he's drenched in sweat and the cool air on his skin sends chills down his spine, he sighs and whips the blanket off of him before climbing out of bed. He grabs his phone, tapping the screen to scroll his contact list, selects your name and chooses to send you a text. "Y/N, can we talk? It's been a while- I know. I fucked up- and I wanted to clear the air, before you leave New York forever. I know the timing is bad, I'm sorry. Please give me a call later", he presses send and places his hand to his forehead, squeezing gently and pulling his hand down his face. He looks back at the woman, who is peacefully sleeping, and he thinks that sending you that message might have been a mistake. His eyes widen as he feels his phone buzz in his hand and he thinks "there's no way that she's calling me now, she shouldn't even be awake". He quickly looks down at the phone to see your name across his screen and he scrambles to get out of his bedroom quickly, shutting the door behind him, he swipes his finger across the phone and slowly raises it to his ear "Hello? Maxwell???" you softly speak and his voice trembles "H-hey Y/N" , "Why did you text me? Why do you want to talk? The last time we spoke you couldn't even give me an explanation for what I saw in your office. You literally broke my heart, Max." you say, with pain in your voice and he can sense it, the hurt, still as fresh as it was, a year ago. He sighs "Y/N, I fucked up. I was only worried about how I could keep the business running. I wasn't worried about the one thing that mattered most to me", you cut him off "Oh, and now, suddenly, a year later you want to talk to me about it? Now that I am going to leave to get away from seeing you in everything I look at? Maxwell, please spare me the bullshit" anger now penetrating your voice "Y/N, listen please. What you saw wasn't me- I mean it was me, but it wasn't me. Alice was our biggest investor and I didn't think she was a threat to our relationship, not until that day... Not until she pulled me into her.. I know what it looked like and I know I should have heeded your warnings and your feelings before, but I promise you- I never wanted anything to do with her" he sputtered with anguish in his voice. You softly spoke "Max, a-are you t-telling me that she propositioned you and..." you trail off, your breath hitching as you gasp for air, your throat swelling and your eyes filling with tears. Maxwell can tell you're beginning to cry and he inhales sharply "Y/N, please don't cry. It would be easier to talk to you in person, I know its now.." he looks over at the clock "3:30 am, but if you want to meet for breakfast at the Radio?", your lip trembles and tears stream down your cheeks.. a year has gone by and you're just finding out the truth, learning that what happened wasn't his idea and he wasn't comfortable with the situation and your breath trembles as you speak "M-max, I don't think I can wait- is there any chance we can meet now? You can come to my place" you ask. Max looks over his shoulder at the woman sleeping in his bed and he thinks for a second "Yes, I would like that more than waiting. Let me get dressed and I'll drive over" he says and you can feel a smile crack at the sides of your mouth "Okay Max, I'll unlock the door for you. I'll see you soon."Â you sigh and you hang up the phone.
Maxwell walks over to the bed, sighing and looking at the clock, it blinks 3:45 am and he gently nudges the woman until she wakes and softly says "I will have an uber here for you in 15, you need to go, please. I'm sorry I brought you here, it was a mistake" and she looks up at him in the glow of the light from the city "It's alright, Maxwell, I was going to sneak out while you were on the phone, but you were pacing around the room and I didn't want to startle you or make a ruckus, it seemed like you are trying to fix a relationship that meant everything to you, and I truly hope that she is everything youâve ever wanted" she said, without any regrets or anger in her voice. He walks to his bathroom, flicks on the shower and removes his boxers, slipping into the shower, as his guest shows herself out. Meanwhile, you're scrambling around your apartment, tidying up, you didn't want him to see your vulnerability and the sadness still lingering in your apartment. You set the Keurig up to brew some coffee and place a cup on the machine and press the button, nervously pacing your kitchen as you wait for the brew to finish so that you could make a second cup for Maxwell.
You look over at the clock and it says 4:25 am and you startle a bit as you hear the handle on your front door grind as Maxwell opens it and enters your apartment. You hear his footsteps louder than you've ever noticed before as he walks in and closes your door, turning around and walking towards you in the kitchen. He looks so perfect, so composed and you have your hair up in a messy ponytail, a loose shirt, tired bags under your eyes and you keep staring at him as he crosses the floor to you. "H-hey M-maxwell, you look amazing" you stutter out, holding up his cup of coffee towards him as he approaches, and you sip yours as he gently takes the cup out of your hand and leans against the counter across from you, smiling before saying "You look as beautiful as ever, Y/N, I've missed you so much, it hurts every single day", you blush and shift on your feet, while looking at him "So, what are we doing, Maxwell?" you avert your eyes so he can't see your tears welling up. Maxwell sets his cup down on the counter, gently, with a clink and steps towards you, slowly lifting your chin to look him in the eyes. Your eyes meet his soft brown eyes as they gaze into yours and you tremble, he takes your cup and places it on the counter next to you.
"Y/N, I know you've taken the job in DC and that you'll be leaving in a few days, but I couldn't let you go without telling you what happened- giving you that closure and asking for you to not hate me anymore" he swallows sharply and his lips pull back in when he does "I'm not here to ask you to stay, or to stop you from going, I just want to give you the closure that I've heard you have been wanting." he says as he's looking down into your gaze. Your eyes well up with tears and you place your hand on his wrist to pull his hand from your chin, sighing, "Max, I took that job because I was being haunted by seeing you everywhere, in everything I did. It's been a year and I am still so deeply in love with you, that hearing about your escapades just keep destroying me and I need to get away. I didn't even want this job with the agency, I don't want to work for them. I want to go back to my normal office job, with you. But every time I did something and started feeling happy again- someone came around and rubbed you in my face" you say breath hitching and tears rolling down your face "asking why I ever let you go and shit I just don't want to go back into". He lifts his other hand and gently wipes the tears from your cheeks with a sigh, looking away, you can see the pain in his eyes.
"I told you I made a mistake and I threw away everything we had, to try to advance our companies investments. When you left me that day, my heart broke into a thousand pieces and I went looking for anything to fill that void... the loss of you, I turned to meaningless sex, I've slept with 6 women since then... I've not called any of them again, and I felt sick after each one, always dreaming of you- waking up in a sweat, gripping my bed sheets. Standing here in front of you, is the happiest I've been since you left. Y/N, I am still in love with you. You're all I've ever wanted." he chuckles lightly and cups your cheeks with his hands "remember that song by Blink-182? "All of This".. the one I sent you 6 months back?" he smirks a bit and you nod your head and speak softly âyes, the one that I responded to telling you to not contact me...but contact is all I wanted from youâ, still anxiously shaking in his hands "Again, I wait for this to pull apart, to break my time in two, another night with her, but I'm always wanting you" he says- "It's always been you, I want to ask you to give me a second chance but I also don't want to take away from you, this opportunity to work with the agency, even if you say you don't want this, itâs all youâve dreamed of for years, Y/N." and you bite your lower lip gently, looking away from his eyes and fidgeting your fingers into each other, you inhale sharply "Max, kiss me. Kiss me like you're never going to see me again- please"Â Maxwell smiles "I thought you'd never ask" and he leans down and places his lips against yours, his warm but familiar lips send a shiver down your spine as you wrap your arms over his shoulders and place one of your hands in his hair, his hand still on your cheek, his other hand drops to the small of your back and pulls you in close against him and he kisses you with the passion he had the very last time you kissed him. Your hand plays with his hair and he gently pulls away from the kiss, looking at you, holding you against him. Your breath hitching and your heart rate is higher than usual, you lick your lips, longing to still feel his lips against yours.Â
"Max, I.. I don't want to go to DC and be away from you, I want to be with you, be by your side" you blink several times and your shaky voice begins to calm "You won't be taking this opportunity away from me. I had the option of staying here and working or going to DC. If you will have me again, I'll request that I stay here for this job, I'll just need to turn a room into an office here". Maxwell's eyes light up at you asking if he'd have you "Y/N, I'll always have you, I love you more than words can express." He glances around your apartment before looking back into your eyes "You don't need to make an office here, you can have a private office, next to mine, in our building". You look at him, smiling and your thoughts racing with how much you've missed him and how right this feels to you. "Max, I love you. I would love to have an office next to you" your breath hitches a little "I will call the agency when the main office opens at 8:00 am, and change my assignment to here, instead of DC." as you run your fingers through the hair at the back of his head still, "I won't leave you again, Max. I don't think either of our hearts could handle it". He chuckles gently and then moves both of his hands down to your butt, lifting you up to sit you on the counter in front of him. " 'll never make another mistake where I could lose you, ever. I promise you, Y/N, I love you- more than any words can express", looking into your eyes, that are now level with his. You pull his lips into yours and kiss him deeply as the sun rises and fills your apartment with orange and yellow hues against both of your flesh, and the sunlight glinting off of the glass buildings surrounding your Skytop apartment.
Tag list:
@starlightmornings
#maxwell lord x reader#maxwell lord fanfic#maxwell lord fluff#maxwell lord angst#maxwell lord x y/n#max lord x reader#max lord fluff#max lord angst#max lord fanfic
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The Game ~ KNJ (18+)
âł summary - âBehave yourself tonight, _____,â he warned. âI mean it. Too far, and Iâll be forced to act.âÂ
âOf course, dear. Iâll play fair, I promise,â you smiled, fluttering your perfectly permed eyelashes at him.
And with that, the game was on⌠Â
âł rating - explicit/18+
âł word count - 8.3k
âł pairing - namjoon x reader
âł genre - established relationship, alternative universe, CEO Namjoon, angst, smut
âł warnings - teasing (oh, so muchâŚ), flirting with others, angry Joon, rough Joon, manhandling, oral sex (m receiving), throat fucking, dirty talk (incl. name calling), unprotected sex, rough sex
Ⳡa.n - okay so yeah hi it's been nearly 5 months since i posted an au please don't hate me life has been ROUGH but here have this little gem that was commissioned by a lovely twitter follower of mine.If you'd like your own commission or to leave me a tip, head over to https://ko-fi.com/ratedbangtann (i just lost my job thanks to corona so anything helps, honestly) **************************************************
Your husbandâs words echoed around inside your head, a strangely sadistic little grin on your face that only you knew the reasoning behind.
âBehave yourself tonight, _____.â
You had promised you would, but were you being entirely truthful? Absolutely not. On a night like tonight, how could you possibly not use your charms to get ahead? That was the foundation of your company, after all; the charms you had used on your husband and his clients to merge your small business with his much larger enterprise.
Of course, you hadnât done this with malice, and you certainly hadnât expected to fall in love with the CEO of the company you flirted your way into⌠Not until he called you out on your charm, made light of it, and explained that actually, he saw you as a very smart and beautiful woman with a drive that precluded any other potential businesses he was contemplating to taking on.
Four years of happy marriage later, you had become co-CEO of Kim Enterprises â a main hub for all things fashion and retail, with 32 different brand names coming under the Kim umbrella; including your very own line of gorgeous evening wear.
Tonight, yourself and your husband were holding a company event at a hotel, hiring out the ballroom to bring together the heads of each of these little companies you had dominion over in order to impress a handful of investors to buy shares in Kim products. This was your specialty, and you were certainly going to whip out your charm tonight.
However, in the back of the Bentley that had driven you and your partner to the ball, your husband was already way ahead of youâŚ
*************************************************
He looked handsome, as always. His silver hair perfectly quaffed and styled with a side part, round-rim glasses poised on the end of his nose, sharp grey suit fitted perfectly to his wide shoulders and thick arms. His hand had been affectionately poised on your bare knee for the duration of the ride, the flesh of your right leg beautifully displayed through the slit in your evening dress â from your own company, of course.
Just five minutes away from your destination, you felt his grip tighten a little, and slide a little further up your thigh, enjoying the softness of your skin on the inside of your leg. He was staring down at his own hand, watching his thumb draw circles on your skin with a look of deep thought on his face.
âYou look a little apprehensive, Joonie. Are you alright?â you had asked, concern laced in your tone with perhaps a little mischief. He hummed in response, not looking up at you and instead still very much intent on his thumb grazing your skin.
âYou look so beautiful in that dress tonight, my loveâŚâ he smiled to himself, pride swelling in his chest that it was you he got to call his wife. âNo doubt, youâll turn some heads.â
You smirked; this was the start of laying down his rules⌠You knew it was coming. It sent thrills through you every time.
âThank you, itâs from the Fall line. Taking it out on a test run, shall we sayâŚâ you smiled sweetly.
It really was a stunning dress; sleek and fitted pearlescent silk with a little fabric tapering in the waistline. The straps themselves were strings of pearls, thin over the shoulders and draping in loops down your chest, cleavage beautifully displayed with the low hanging stones and fabric. The pearl straps continued to drape over your back also, hanging lower than in the front in another loop. The fabric exposed your back to just where your back dipped in, the pearls hanging down over the top of your butt.
It was an extremely sleek and sexy gown, expertly tailored to hide potential flaws and accentuate perfections. And thatâs why you picked it tonight.
âItâll definitely be an advantage in your tactics tonight, Iâm sure,â he smirked, his eyes finally darting up to meet yours. âI have mine too though, just so weâre clear.â
âI donât doubt it,â you laughed quietly, shaking your head with a smile. âBut the dress is not the only tactic I have up my sleeve, my love. Youâll seeâŚâ
His thumb stopped its rotations then, his grip tightening just a little more in response.
âBehave yourself tonight, _____,â he warned. âI mean it. Too far, and Iâll be forced to act.â
âOf course, dear. Iâll play fair, I promise,â you smiled, fluttering your perfectly permed eyelashes at him.
And with that, the game was onâŚ
************************************************
You stood and laughed with the small group of investors that you had attracted into a corner of the ballroom. The dress and your charming reputation proceeded you and worked like a beautiful spiderâs web, drawing in the most naĂŻve of flies until they stuck â it was then that you could make your moves.
Three men were stood in front of you, all of them middle-aged, wealthy bachelors of sorts. Mr Song, CEO of a cosmetics company you were hoping you could persuade to come on board and partner with Kim Enterprises; Mr Kang, an investor who made his money buying and selling shares of companies throughout Korea, and Mr Garcia, a Korean-American entrepreneur looking to invest in more Korean companies to impress his elderly Korean mother, unhappy with his choices to continue his late fatherâs American legacy.
Frankly, it seemed like an easy sell. You knew you could get Mr Garcia to come around very easily; he was in a rush to invest, hoping to improve his foreign relations and his relationship with his dear mother.
Mr Song had shown an interest in selling part of his company to Kim Enterprises for years, but it had never felt like the right time to introduce a cosmetics line into your empire; Namjoon agreed. Focus on fashion, on the clothing and accessories retailers to begin with. When you had enough, cosmetics could be introduced. Youâd kept Mr Song at armâs length, dangling the carrot in front of the donkey for him to follow you; and he had, willingly.
But Mr Kang? He knew the market very well, he knew his investments, he was careful and very picky with what he chose to buy into. But when he did, he really invested; billions of won at a time, in fact. If you could just crack his outer shell, you were sure he would drop his guard a little, and you could sweet talk him around.
You had a few tactics of course that included, but were not limited to; laughing at their jokes with a coy giggle, fluttering your eyelashes a little, giving them side eye smiles, pushing your hip out and elongating your leg to show it off through the slit in your dress, touching their arms when you were talking directly to one of them, making little provocative jokes followed by a delicate wink and a sip of your champagne fluteâŚ
All these things combined? They worked incredibly well, as did the compliments you would slide in, directed at the men themselves or at their business endeavours. They seemed incredibly receptive to you, taken in by your beauty and your confidence as many men often were; including your husband, who had been eyeing you from the bar across the ballroom for a while.
He himself was focussed on his own investors; female, of course. But he wanted to watch you deal with yours first, he wanted to watch his competition â you â claim your prizes before he made any moves on the female investors he was hoping to win over. And of course, keeping to himself was always a viable option in these games you played at corporate events. It kept him mysterious and aloof, striking at opportune moments and asking these women for a dance, or if they would like to join him for a drink; if he kept to himself all night, then these women would feel particularly special. âWho, me? He wants me?â they would think. All part of his plan.
But for some reason, tonight he was distracted. He couldnât tell why, but his eyes were fixated on you even more so than usual. Perhaps it was the way Mr Garcia seemed to have taken an interest in you, standing a little closer than the others⌠he kept pushing his hair back too, trying to flip is off his forehead in that typical âmovie heartthrobâ way, but honestly it was just laughable from where Namjoon was standing. Every time you touched his arm and laughed at his joke, he shuffled a little closer, and it was starting to bother Namjoon.
He wasnât the one you should have to focus on⌠He was an easy catch, desperate to invest. So why were you paying so much attention to him? Namjoon didnât understand⌠Unless you genuinely were enjoying flirting with the youngest of the three potential business partners. Oh, his blood boiled at the thought.
But what he didnât know, was that you already had Mr Song hooked on your line. He was in, whether heâd verbalised it yet or not. Mr Kang, however, was a little more reserved, although he did enjoy your attention. You had quickly calculated though that he was someone who got what he wanted, and it infuriated him when he didnât get it. He would do anything to get what he wanted⌠So, you paid extra attention to Mr Garcia, starving Mr Kang of your attention that he so clearly wanted.
Doing so made him work harder, would make him eventually think that it was his idea to invest in order to get your attention back on him. So far, it was working. He was trying to land more jokes, make you laugh at his one liners the way you laughed at Mr GarciaâsâŚ
But Namjoon didnât get your game, didnât understand what you were doing. He saw you getting closer to Mr Garcia and it enraged him, immediately jumping to a wrong conclusion as men so often do.
Now, he wanted to strike. He was ready to start his game.
Leaning against the bar, he necked back the rest of the expensive scotch in his glass, slamming the glass to the bar and pushing off in search of a particular young lady he knew was a potential investor; So Soomin.
Soomin was an easy target; new money. She was a fashionista, a blogger mostly with a large Instagram following. Her profile skyrocketed when she began dating a famous idol, as did her net worth. And although that relationship came to a sticky end, it was the idolâs career that suffered, and not hers. Hers has only blossomed into modelling and investing. She was new on the scene, fresh and a perfect advertising opportunity, and investment opportunity also.
Namjoon had spotted her sat at a table on the edge of the dancefloor, in a stunning navy blue sequin gown. She was most certainly beautiful in reality also, just as her photos portrayed her. She was sat talking to an older woman, a woman Namjoon recognised from Kim Enterprises as a very loyal board member for the public relations department. She must be working her magic on Soomin too, seeing her as the perfect walking advertisement.
But Namjoon could work his magic too. He strode over to her, confidently stepping through those dancing on the dancefloor to make his entrance. As he stepped up to her table, her head turned to look at him immediately, and her face changed from relatively serious to a very sweet and flirtatious smile.
âGood evening, Ms So,â he bowed nice and low, respectfully greeting her. She dipped her head as he straightened back up. âKim Namjoon, Kim Enterprises.â
âAh, of course. Pleasure, Mr Kim,â she chirped, her eyes glittering under the dim lights of the room.
âI wondered if you would be interested in a dance?â Namjoon offered his hand, ignoring the look of âhere we go againâ from his employee â of course everybody at Kim Enterprises was aware of the marriage between you two, and yet unaware of the games you played at events such as these that kept the fire of need burning hot within you both. They saw you as a pair who used their attractions to get what they wanted, but of course, they dare not speak up.
âThat sounds lovely, if youâll excuse me Mrs Cheong,â she bowed her head to the woman and took Namjoonâs hand, stepping ahead of him to pull him onto the dancefloor in a display of confidence.
It caught your eye; specifically, the sparkle of her dress caught your eye. Clearly, a woman who liked to make a statement. And behind her was⌠your husband? Smirking and quite clearly checking her out.
Now, itâs fair to note that in your entire relationship with Kim Namjoon, neither of you had ever been unfaithful, and neither of you had ever planned to. There were of course limits, and plenty of trust. This game that you played with each other was to keep that fire lit; and boy, was it raging right now.
Namjoon carefully took Soominâs hand with one of his, placing his other on her waist, and began to sway to the smooth jazz being played by the hired band. He smiled down at the beautiful woman, and from what you could see, he was enjoying a flirty conversation with her.
She would giggle and hide her face behind her hair a few times, Namjoon tucking it back behind her ear. He would smirk and arch his eyebrows suggestively. But the moment that made you snap? He leaned down and whispered something into the womanâs ear, to which her eyes widened momentarily, and she was grinning and laughing again.
Your boiling point had been reached. The game had now stepped up.
âHm, you know what?â You started, interrupting Mr Garciaâs little conversation with Mr Kang, bringing the attention of all three men back to you. You quickly necked the rest of your champagne and smiled up at Mr Garcia. âI want to dance.â
âIf you donât mind, Mr Garcia, I would like to take this one?â Mr Kang piped up, seemingly out of nowhere. You looked at him, a little shocked, but smiled and took his open hand that he had offered you.
âDonât worry, youâll get your turn,â you turned back to look at Mr Garcia, winking in his direction before allowing Mr Kang to direct you to the dancefloor. As the oldest of the three men you were working so easily this evening, he was most definitely the most chivalrous. He guided you like a gentleman, stepped aside to let you step onto the dancefloor first, gracefully placed his hand high enough on your waist to be respectful, the other in your hand and much like the other duos scattered around, you began to sway to the music. You remained in pleasant silence, dancing with the older man for a few minutes.
âYou know, Iâm aware of what youâre up to, Mrs Kim,â he smirked, averting his gaze to be interested in something in a far corner.
âUp to?â you asked, remaining calm and collected as if you had absolutely no idea what he was accusing you of.
âYes, itâs quite clear to me. Itâs quite amusing, honestly. I appreciate that you use your strengths to your advantage in business. You most definitely had me for a while, I was definitely very willing to invest for your attention. But you gave yourself away,â he looked back down at you, clear amusement on his slightly aged features.
âHow so?â you asked, dropping the innocence and yet remaining charming.
âI saw your face falter when you spotted your husband over there, dancing with the pretty young woman in the blue dress. And now suddenly, you wish to dance? I ask myself, why on earth would you not simply walk up to him and tap him on the shoulder to take her place? Why would you ask Mr Garcia to dance?â Ah, busted⌠âThis is some kind of game to you, isnât it? Between you and your husband, I mean.â
You were lost for words; no one had caught on before, but the slip in your persona had been noticed. Damn.
âTell you what,â he began to proposition, âif you can win this little battle with him tonight, make him jealous enough that he is the one to step to you, then Iâll invest heavily into Kim Enterprises. Thatâs a promise,â he grinned. And suddenly, the gleam in your eye was back.
âYou want in on this, huh?â you laughed, stepping just a little closer to him.
âAs long as I donât get a fist in the face, Iâm happy to help you win your game Mrs Kim,â he smirked, his hand slowly starting to sink a little lower, resting on your hip.
âWe have a deal, Mr Kang. But just so you are completely aware, I am completely loyal to my husband. I wouldnât want you to misunderstand at all; this is just good sport. Just flirting,â you outlined with a playfully warning tone.
âAbsolutely. Iâm not interested in separating a marriage. I wonât try to kiss you or woo you in any way. Just good sport,â he mirrored. And now, you had stepped up to Namjoonâs level, with another key player involved.
Across the dancefloor, Namjoon was happily chatting, happily flirting with Soomin. They were discussing business amongst general chit chat, flirting happily and dancing away, when Namjoon caught a familiar figure in the corner of his eye; you.
He turned strategically in his dancing with Soomin to get a better look and low and behold, there you were just a few metres away from him, on the dancefloor with Mr Kang and looking⌠rather cosy, shall we say.
He didnât like how low his hand was on your waist, on those curves of yours that he adored so much. He didnât like that your hand wasnât on his shoulder or his arm, but snugly half tucked into the inside of his tuxedo jacket, lying flat on his chest. He didnât like the mesmerised looked you seemed to have in your eyes as you gazed up at him. And he most certainly didnât like the smirk of arrogance on his face eitherâŚ
Namjoon was only partly listening to Soomin talking about the timeline of her modelling career, eyes intently focussed on watching you dance with Mr Kang seemingly unbothered by the fact that he was metres away with another woman in his arms. It was like you were lost in the arms of the silver fox of the business world, and it infuriated him.
He noticed the grip on your hip tightening a little as you giggled at whatever poorly constructed joke he must have been telling you. He watched as you lifted your hand from his chest and tapped the end of his nose playfully with a perfectly manicured finger.
It was the tiny little details that were starting to make his eyebrow twitch and his tongue press against the inside of his cheek.
He watched for what felt like hours but could only have been a maximum of twenty minutes, the music changing pace and flowing from one theme to the next three themes, but it was all background noise to him. Until Soominâs narcissistic bubble finally popped, and she noticed the attention was no longer on her.
âIs everything alright, Mr Kim?â she asked, tapping his shoulder and watching his pupils adjust as he focussed back in on her.
âHmm? Yes, fine. Apologies, you were saying?â he brushed it off as nothing, managing to convince her enough to start babbling on yet again about herself. But when Namjoon looked up to keep tabs on you, you were nowhere to be found on the dancefloor.
His head whipped around, panicked with anger bubbling in his chest. Where the hell had you gone? Where had he taken you?
A quick scan of the ballroom found you, sat at a lone table in the corner, Mr Kang closely sat beside you. He leaned forward and whispered something in your ear, and Namjoon watched as you swatted his shoulder with a playful giggle, your hand dropping to rest on his knee which had found its way between yours, the slit in your dress exposing your beautiful thigh.
No, this was too far. He had warned you before, and you had promised to play fair, but this wasnât fair at all⌠If he had to watch that man touch your knee, your thigh⌠He couldnât bear it. His jealousy, his ownership of the woman he loved had ignited his primal self, and he needed to come and claim you again, to show you and everyone else that you were his.
Without so much as a glance down at Soomin, Namjoon dropped his hands from her and began marching towards you sat at the table with Mr Kang.
âN-Namjoon?â she called after him, confused and annoyed that she had been cut off mid-sentence. But again, he paid no mind, intent and focussed on getting between you and the man with his hand on your bare fucking thigh.
At the table, Mr Kang was the first to spot Namjoon, quickly approaching with a face like thunder. His eyes widened momentarily, before settling back on you, a smirk on his features.
âCongratulations,â he mumbled to you smugly just as you heard the stomp of Namjoonâs loafers getting closer to your chair. Your head snapped up to look at him, and there he was â and oh, did he look pissed. You were half expecting steam to be shooting out of his nose and ears.
âAh, Namjoon! I wondered where you had been all evening. This is Mr Kang. Iâm sure youâre aware of his stellar reputation in investmen-â
âMay I speak with you privately?â Namjoon interrupted, popping his tongue into the inside of cheek, eyes darkening.
âIs something the matter?â you asked innocently, cocking your head to one side. Namjoonâs eyes darted down to the hand still comfortably laid on you, although now it had shrunk back to just rest on your knee. Your eyes followed his, looking up at Mr Kang briefly â who was smiling sweetly as if nothing were the matter â and then back to Namjoon.
âThereâs an opportunity that has come up, I need to discuss with you immediately. Itâs quite time sensitive. Mr Kang, if youâll excuse me, my wife and I need to have a private discussion,â he barked, like a guard dog defending its prey from another equally hungry canine. Then without hesitation, Namjoon took your hand in his with assertive dominance and guided you out of the large double doors to the ballroom.
As you were navigated through the tables you turned back to see Mr Kang smiling and waving at you, giving you a thumbs up. He knew you had won the game. He was going to invest. Perfect.
But now to deal with Namjoon.
Your husband was dragging you now, out of the view of the investors and business partners and alone together in the hotel corridor. You let him take you, thrills already building and anticipation heightening. At the end of the corridor you noticed a lattice shutter and an open silver chamber behind it; a service elevator. Was that where Namjoon was headed?
Apparently so. Without letting go of your arm he pulled the metal lattice gate open and practically threw you in, stepping in himself and slamming it shut behind him, pressing the button to the left hand side marked â8â and there he stood, silent and motionless as the elevator kicked to life.
With his back to you and his hands clasped behind him, you were suddenly very aware of the anger in his demeanour, the dominance in his posture. He stood unmoving, not bothering to look back at you once, not saying a single word as you steadied yourself and hung onto the railing along the back wall. The silence seemed deafening, louder than the chatter and the music that you had experienced throughout the night.
The ride up to the eighth floor seemed agonisingly slow, every silent second dragging. You knew Namjoon had booked a room in the hotel for that evening so you wouldnât need to go home after the event, so assumed that must be where he was taking you.
The elevator ground to a halt and Namjoon ripped open the lattice gate, letting it slam against the edge before turning and gripping your wrist again, pulling you and pushing you until you were both on the opposite side of the threshold and he could slam the gate shut once again. And then he began walking, leaving you stood in shock that he wasnât dragging you this time, just expecting you to follow suit.
You folded your arms across your chest for a second and waited, wondering if he would turn and tell you to follow him, or come back to grab your arm but he did neither, simply stomping his way down the long hall with white walls and gold trimmings, luxurious red rug rolled out with gold detailing. Beside each roomâs door was a small mahogany table with a white and gold marble vase, fake red arrangements inside. Fancy, but youâd expect nothing less from a hotel of this calibre.
You realised quickly Namjoon wouldnât turn around, wouldnât wait for you, and with a huff of annoyance you unfolded your arms and followed behind him, the pearls on your dress rattling as they hit each other in the quiet of the corridor. Three doors from the end of the corridor, he stopped and turned to room 804, slipping a key card out of the inside of his jacket and into the slot as you approached him. He disappeared from view, entering the room and almost letting it shut behind him, if you hadnât been quick enough to stop it with your healed foot.
âYou know, Mr Kang is really a very nice manâŚâ you began to speak as if nothing was wrong, entering the room and closing the door behind you, flipping the lock. But before you could continue, your shoulders were being pulled to spin you around, and pushed back against the door.
Namjoon loomed over you, his eyes dark and angry, arms either side of your head now, trapping you.
âIs he, now? Is that why you looked so cosy with him on the dancefloor, hm?â Sarcasm dripped from his voice, his head tilting in mock query.
âJust as much as you and that man-eating model? Donât try and take the high road, Namjoon,â you defended with a smirk. âWe both know the game we play, for good sportâŚâ You leaned in, lifting your lips to his ear in order to whisper to himâŚ
âAnd I think I wonâŚâ
Namjoon closed his eyes for a moment, his jaw locking and teeth grinding, a deep breath quickly exhaling through flared nostrils. He hated losing. He hated it so much. But admitting he had lost was even worse.
He said nothing, but instead you felt two strong hands on the tops of your arms, gripping them and pulling you from the door, dragging you further into the room before he could push you down onto the couch of the open hotel suite. You didnât have time to admire the royal blue upholstery and French renaissance style before he was slotting his knee between yours and towering over you. You let your back sink into the back of the couch, sat upright with your thighs parted by his.
He ran his fingers through your hair, letting the fingertips gently glide down your jawline and eventually grip your chin with a hold that you couldnât wriggle from.
âYou went too far, ______. I warned youâŚâ His voice was significantly darker than usual; deeper and more threatening than most would have heard from him.
âI was simply trying to get us an investment, Mr Kim. But I think your pathetic little display of dominance may just have ruined that,â you argued, although of course it wasnât true. You only wanted to rile him up further, to aggravate him into giving you frankly what you can only describe as a good, hard fucking. It was working, too. You saw his eye twitch.
âYou just donât know when to stay quiet, do you?â he scoffed. You simply looked down at his lips and back up to him, as if you say âoh, yeah? Try me.â He didnât like that.
So instead, he swooped his head down to plant a ferocious and bruising kiss to your lips, his hand coming to push the back of your head into him further. He wasted no time in parting your lips, messily exploring and taking ownership in the way he had wanted to all damn evening. His fingers curled into your hair, short nails lightly dragging at your scalp and adding to all the sensations you felt all over your body.
Namjoon was always so skilled with his kisses, having you succumb to him very quickly like a warlock casting a spell. You felt yourself move to his every whim, sinking further and further. It was when you moaned into his kiss that he knew he had you under his thumb.
He let go of you and moved to stand, seemingly in a rush to get some kind of payback or comeuppance for the way you had teased him tonight. He shook his tuxedo jacket from his shoulders and unfastened the zipper â and just the zipper â of his slacks, reaching in to pull his half-hard length through the opening in his underwear and the hole in his trousers, slowly tugging at it a few times to full arousal.
In this position, with him stood with one leg between your thighs and you sat directly in front of him, you were at the perfect height for what he wanted from you⌠He squeezed himself each time he came close to his tip, allowing for a small bead of pre-cum to gather. He pushed his hips out until all you could focus on was the sight of his delicious pre-cum.
âFor you, Madam,â he smirked when your eyes met, his hand reaching out to run his finger under the length of the straps of your dress and gripping the strings of pearls that gathered in front of your breasts like reins, âseeing as you like pearls so much.â
And then he pressed the little pearl of precum to your lips, coating them like a gloss before pushing the tip of his cock past them and sitting it on the flat of your tongue.
âLetâs see you talk shit with a mouthful,â he smirked, fingers weaving into your hair once again and gripping tight, pulling at the roots to move your head and have you begin to bob on his length, encasing the impressive size in the warmth of your mouth and throat. You gladly took it; you could never deny your man since the first head you had ever given him. Heâd practically declared his love to you for the entire twenty minutes whilst you showed him what a blow job was supposed to feel like.
You just had a thing for making your husband feel exceptionally good.
âFuck, see? You can be a good girl,â he praised, grunting and beginning to piston his hips back and forth whilst still moving your head. âJust needed putting back in your place again.â
The chords of pearls on your dress rattled as they rocked with your body, hitting each other noisily with each forward and back motion. You relaxed your throat easily to take him, although with his girth and length combined it was always a snug fit. You could feel each ridge of the vein on the side of his shaft, the drag of his uncut foreskin on your tongue. It wasnât common for a Korean man to remain uncircumcised, but it was never something that bothered you. In fact, it seemed to only encourage some more imaginative ways to please him.
But there was no time for intricate details, no space for you to move your tongue and focus on the spots that made him weak when he was moving at such a pace and filling your mouth and throat over and over again. You could do nothing but bob your head the way he was moving it and flutter your eyelashes innocently up at him with a sparkle behind them. It drove him crazy, to see you so pliant and taking him so well. He loved the way your lips wrapped around him, how you took the opportunity to try and hollow your cheeks to vary the pressure you put on him. All of it was so perfectâŚ
âFucking shit, ______,â Namjoon groaned, his head falling back and his eyes closing in bliss. You hummed against him, sending vibrations through his length and you were sure you could feel the vein pulse harder as his thighs tensed in his slacks. Knowing what you were doing to him, the pleasure you were giving him right now⌠well, it was turning you on considerably. If he were to peel back the rather beautiful ivory lingerie you had decided on, then he would be all too aware of the arousal this was causing.
âYou wanted this, huh?â he asked, gritting his teeth and tightening his grip in your hair. âThatâs why youâve been acting up. My little cock slut was just desperate to get fucked huh, is that it?â His hips increased in speed and power. You were no longer moving, simply kept still by his hold as you tried to keep from gagging. You were good at this, at letting him use your throat like a fleshlight. Youâd had plenty of practise after all.
All you could do was hum in affirmation, sending another wave of vibrations along his shaft. A rumbling groan erupted from his throat and he bit his lip, pulling his cock out of your throat completely. You gasped for breath, now able to take in more through your mouth for longer.
âYou want my cock that badly, hm? In here?â he reached between your legs with his free hand, using the slit in your dress to his advantage and placing his palm flat over your damp panties. You whimpered a little at the contact, flinching but never daring to look away. Without having to think your head nodded on autopilot, desperate for him to give you what you wanted.
He smirked and stood back, lifting you by gently tugging at your hair to stand. He spun you around, easily finding the zipper on the low back of the dress and unzipping it, letting the straps of pearls fall down your arms and the dress come clattering to the floor with a loud rattle. A beat of silence passed in which you werenât sure what he was doing, but you werenât quite brave enough to turn your head to see, let alone ask him.
But had you seen him, you would have noticed the way his eyes were scanning every single beautiful curve of your body, every inch of smooth skin right down to his favourite part of you; that incredible round ass of yours. And in the lingerie you wore for him? Oh, it was beautiful. The ivory tones complimented your skin tone in the most marvellous way, and Namjoon couldnât help himself from salivating at the sight.
He snapped himself out of his trance quickly though, manoeuvring you to kneel on the couch and bend over the fancy upholstery arm. Before you were really even comfortable, your panties were being tugged down and falling to your knees and a swift and harsh spank landing on your ass. Joon always loved watching that little jiggleâŚ
Behind you, you heard fumbling, the rustling of Namjoonâs shirt being untucked from his pants, his tie being undone, and his buttons being popped open. But the fabric never hit the floor, and his pants remained unaltered.
Waiting was driving you crazy, so to taunt him even more you leaned down fully on the arm of the couch and wiggled your bare behind up in the air.
âImpatient little girl, hm? Donât worry, youâll be full in no time,â he growled, positioning himself with one knee up on the couch and pulling on your hips to line himself up with your dripping core.
He dragged the tip through your folds a few times before he pushed in, agonisingly slowly but at least you were finally getting some attention. When buried completely to the hilt, his hips pressed firmly against your ass and his grip on the flesh of your hips tightened, fingertips digging in as he adjusted to your warmth and the pleasure it brought him.
Even after four years of marriage â six since you had begun your office romance â he still revelled in the way you felt around him, still marvelled at how stunning you looked from every angle. Heâd never tire of you, completely intoxicated and hooked; and this explained exactly why he was so possessive of you. No other man could have you; you were his.
Now that you finally felt full, your eyes fluttered closed and enjoyed the feeling. By now, you were used to his size and the way it filled you, but it didnât mean it brought you any less pleasure than that first night you spent together. Your jaw dropped as he dragged himself back out of you, a high pitched moan spilling from your throat. His hands tightened on your hips, digging into the flesh as he used it as leverage to slam back into you harshly, jolting you forward and pushing a cry from your lips.
âIs that better, baby? This what you wanted?â he grunted, his hips now snapping against yours rhythmically. âYou wanted my attention, hm? You got it, BabygirlâŚâ
The force he used against you was intense, the slapping sounds deafening despite him never even removing his trousers â he knew you liked it when he was still at least partially dressed in his suits. It somehow upheld his aura of dominance, of power and leadership.
You couldnât help but moan with each thrust, his length hitting every wall inside you, every sensitive nerve sending pulses of extreme pleasure through your pelvis and spanning out like lightning bolts through the rest of your body. Youâd wanted this all night, been doing everything in your power to rile him up and get him to this point. This was the whole point of the game, and whilst he wouldnât admit it just yet, you knew you had won.
âF-fuck⌠NamjoonâŚâ you groaned, the upholstery on the couch brushing against your breasts. Hearing you groan his name ignited a fresh fire fuelled by lust in his gut, his hips changing their angle to hit you more directly against that spot inside you that sent you crazy. He pounded into you with an unforgiving speed, over and over and over again until he decided he was bored of that angle, that position. He wanted your full attention just as much as you wanted his.
So without warning, he pulled out of you and sat back against the opposite arm of the couch. You whined in disappointment, turning your head to see him watching you with his arm draped over the back of the couch, his other hand stroking himself slowly, and his lips pulled into an infuriating smirk.
âCome and get it, Babygirl,â he taunted, and rather than fight him on it you did as told, too worked up to deny yourself. You kicked your heels to the floor and pulled the panties draped around your knees off whilst Namjoon shuffled and laid down flat on the couch. The shirt he was wearing spilled open, exposing his well-toned chest and abs to you. You wasted no time, straddling his hips and positioning yourself to take him again, to let him stretch you out so perfectly like before.
Only this time, you were in control, and he didnât seem to mind that â wanted it, even. Some of his favourite positions included ones in which you were the one moving, using his cock to make yourself feel good. Heâd get lost in watching you, the way every part of your body moved, the way your eyes shut, and mouth fell open. And already, he was hypnotised by the way you rolled your hips against him, trying to move as fast as possible and as fluidly as possible to make sure he hit every nerve ending.
Your hands fell flat onto his pecks â those glorious, solid pecks â to keep yourself from collapsing forward, overwhelmed by pleasure. He reached up to your breasts, feeling the weight of them in his hands bouncing with every movement. He growled like an animal, sitting up and latching himself to one of your nipples, tongue flicking and teeth nipping at the sensitive nub. He continued to growl deep in his throat like a man possessed, his own length throbbing and pulsating inside you.
âJ-Joonie⌠Mm, feels so goodâŚâ you practically sang, threading your hands through his hair and messing it up in an instant, holding him against you. You bucked your hips against him as fast as you could, clenching your walls on purpose to make him lose his mind. He did just that, letting go of your breast and falling back against the couch, his hands over his face and a long, wanton moan rumbling from his chest.
You kept clenching around him every time his cock would slide out of you, creating a drag that was absolutely mind blowing and has him sucking air through his teeth every time.
Suddenly his hands slapped down onto your thighs, fingertips digging in and his feet planting themselves flat on the couch behind you for leverage as he bucked his hips up into you. He furiously pounded into you from below, losing his composure. Your head dipped forward and all your weight went into your wrists, still holding you up by your hands flat on his pecks. He gripped your arms then, grunting with rapid breaths from exertion.
âHey⌠Hey, ______,â he snapped his fingers in front of your face a few times to get your attention, âEyes on me, Babygirl. Understand?â
âUh⌠uh-huh,â was all you could muster with the force of every thrust and the roll of your hips in time with them. You could only hold eye contact for a moment or two until one particularly perfect thrust and then your head fell forward again. Namjoon didnât like that, his hand coming to reach for your chin to hold your head up, forcing eye contact between you.
âNaughty girl⌠canât follow basic commands,â he grunted, his fingers tightening on your chin and pushing on your cheeks. âI said, eyes⌠on⌠me,â he punctuated each word with a thrust, having you biting down on your lip and digging your nails into his pecks. You could only stare into his eyes as the both of you moved in sync. His were dark, so clouded with lust and hooded with passion that the heat in your abdomen started to swell impossibly.
Somehow, he kept up his pace. His thighs â however thick and muscled â must surely have been burning with his movements as yours were. His abs must have been screaming at him to slow down, but he didnât, not even for a second. And now, he had slipped a hand down between your legs to circle your clit, adding yet another rush of heat.
You could feel yourself growing wetter, a sure sign of an impending orgasm. Namjoon clearly felt it too, judging by the way he looked down at the two of you connected and muttered out a âoh fuckâŚâ followed by a sharp intake of breath. He was starting to show tell-tale signs of his own climax approaching; heâd sucked his cheeks in in that way that made him look pissed off, but in fact was him simply tensing his jaw. His biceps were tensing under the sleeves of his open shirt and you could feel the pecks underneath your hands tensing also.
And my god, were you close tooâŚ
âG-gonna cum, please⌠please let me cum,â you begged between pouted lips forced together by his hand clutching your jaw. With or without his permission it was all about to unfold so quickly you couldnât hold it off.
âCum Babygirl, cum with me. Want you to feel the way I fill you upâŚâ With his permission, letting go was easy. You squealed and whimpered as your nerves set alight, the heat spreading and igniting, filling your veins like hot lava. Your pussy clenched over and over, pulsing around his length and sending him further into his own ending, not quite there but so, so very close.
He let go of your chin, letting you break eye contact and fall forward onto his chest. He quickly wrapped his arms around you, still lifting his hips up to ride you through it and get himself off. He held you tight against him, whispering how good you felt in your ear, how perfect you were, how much heâd wanted you all night, that you were his and his alone.
Slowly, the heat dissipated, the fire cooling and leaving you light-headed and breathless, and Joon just kept on going, desperate for his own orgasm. You did your best to help him along, mustering all your energy to purposefully clench around him. Tilting your chin up, you were able to bury your face in the crook of his neck and nuzzle into the skin just under his shirt collar, kissing him just where his mole was. You nibbled and sucked and mouthed at the skin, feeling the tendons in his neck tensing.
And then he was groaning out loud, letting go completely. His hips stuttered and jerked unevenly, and you could feel pulse after pulse along his shaft. A new heat filled your pelvis; his seed spilling inside you, painting your walls white and creating a lude noise as he came to a halt.
His legs fell back down onto the couch whilst his arms loosened their grip on you, but still cradled you close to him; no way would he want to let you go right now.
âFuck, babe⌠Fuck,â he sighed. It took a few moments for you to lift your head to see the blissed-out look on his face, eyes shut and sweat dripping from the ends of his messed up hair. You laid together like that for a while, catching your breath and enjoying the high you both felt.
âHey JoonieâŚâ you whispered, giggling when he opened one eye to look down at you. âGotcha.â
He sat up a little then, resting back on his elbows as you sat upright, still straddling him. You had to clench a little extra hard to stop from leaking his own cum back onto his lap⌠You wouldnât want to ruin such an expensive suit.
âWhat do you mean, gotcha?â he asked, brows furrowed.
âThe game. I won,â you grinned, reaching out to fix his hair sticking up in strange directions.
âB-but⌠I got you to come with me, I must have made you jeal-â You pressed your finger to his lips.
âWho felt so threatened by Mr Kang that he just had to intervene, thus, already losing at his own game?â you smirked. He couldnât argue with that.
âWell be fair, he was getting very cosy, and you werenât stopping himâŚâ he complained.
âSure, but um⌠Mr Kang was in on it.â You got off him then, standing up to head to the en-suite bathroom to freshen up, but he caught your wrist.
âHe was what?â he asked, confused and irritated. You turned to face him again and leaned over him.
âIn. On. It,â you sounded out slowly. âIf I could get you to break, if I could win, he promised to invest heavily.â The smarminess was laced in your voice. You knew you had won. You got everything you wanted tonight; investment, and a decent, hard, jealousy fuelled fuck with your husband.
Namjoonâs jaw dropped, his grip falling from your wrist as he sat back against the couch with a heavy thump. He shook his head in disbelief, a smile forming as he watched you walk away and into the bathroom. But you popped your head out of the doorway, catching his attention again.
âOh, and uh⌠as you were dragging me out, he gave me the thumbs up. Mr Kang will definitely be investing in Kim Enterprises,â you winked.
âOh you, littleâŚâ he couldnât hide his happiness at the investment, a grin spreading across his face. He didnât mind that heâd been beat, not when such a huge business transaction was about to unfold. He didnât even mind that heâd been played; not by you at least. Not by his incredibly gorgeous, sexy and genius wife.
âYouâŚâ he stood up, jogging towards you and shedding his shirt to the floor, âare impossible,â he laughed, chasing you into the bathroom and slamming the door shut behind him. Your night was only just beginning.
You had definitely won this game.
#BTS#bangtan sonyeondan#bangtan au#ratedbangtann#namjoon#kim namjoon#rm smut#RM#rap monster#rapmonster#SMUT AU#Smut#fan fiction#fanfic#fan fic
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I Travel Troubled Oceans: Chapter 20 - In Which Jack is the Life of the Party and Charles is a Wallflower
Councilor Featherstone comes through with planning permission, his personal interest allowing Max's petition to jump to the front of a very, very long and very, very slowly moving list. Glacial is a good description of that list. Full of icy aristocracy impeding any sort of forward progress. Because they all make money when the price of real estate goes up and up and up via the dearth of available properties.
Should someone sell off a property â or, God forbid, build a new one, particularly one meant for the lower class rabble to actually live in â well, they'd lose out on potential astronomic profits. And losing out on potential profit is as good as being robbed.
Not to mention the cut they make if someone has enough name and capital to approach them about buying a potential property, hoping to bolster their own enormous bank accounts with a ârisk freeâ investment. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, particularly to the sharks that swim in the ocean of Britain's current property market. Everyone gets a cut of the pie.
Finders fees, they're called. As if anyone is finding anything in the morass of red tape and stark type on expensive paper. Not if someone doesn't want it to be found.
Jack has actually been granted a sizable finders fee by Max. All part of the massive, technically-legal tax dodge that allows the wealthy elite to remain the wealthy elite. Max makes an obscene amount of money selling her property off to a developer â while retaining a seat on the board of trustees, of course, and majority interest in the company they've formed to oversee the spa. And then she pays Jack a handsome consulting fee for all of his assistance with the planning permission. Which is a business expense â and therefore, a tax write off. And then Jack uses the money to wine and dine the councilor. Which is also a business expense and so another tax write off. On and on and on. Each just a small step in the endless dance of Legitimate Business.
Incidentally, Max is also paying Jack rather handsomely to consult on the design and interior decorating for the spa.
There are, of course, actual interior designers and professional decorators and florists and lighting and sound specialists in Max's company's employ. But it just wouldn't be nepotism if she hadn't found a job for Jack to make a lot of money at whilst doing absolutely nothing of value. And it just wouldn't be a London planning project without nepotism.
Plus, it gives Jack's not quite fake career as a fashion designer a little boost. Soon every rich socialite in London â and elsewhere, hopefully â will be relaxing in a Jack Rackham original spa robe, lounging on Jack Rackham original cushions on a Jack Rackham original divan reminiscent of a swan's elegantly unfolding wing, but in palest peach to complement the spring pink scrubs worn by spa staff â another Jack Rackham original â and soothing seafoam walls.
And if all that weren't enough to keep him and Christine (mostly Christine, if he's being honest) busy, Jack's also got fashion week to contend with. Oh, his projects are all finished, and he hasn't even worked himself into that much of a tizzy over the whole ordeal. Not with as well prepared as he feels â and as buoyed as he is by the positive attention his press releases and Instagram posts have received. No, he's as prepared as he can be and there's little point in wearing himself ragged worrying over the what ifs and wheretofors.
No, what's wearing on Jack in the small hours of the night is something else entirely.
More than Jack's actual fashion show â where half the designers are showing essentially nude models with various decorous scraps of latex and/or lace as opposed to actual outfits, not that Jack's petty or anything â more than the actual fashion show, Jack is required to make an impression on all the âbenefactorsâ of the event. The rich, vapid men and women who decide whose fashions are to die for â and who's dead in the water.
Jack's not a real fashion designer. Just someone posing as one for the cover it gives a (hopefully) international crime empire. But that only makes this gladhanding and wheeling and dealing all the more imperative.
It's not much of a cover if everyone questions how, exactly, Jack's made it into the international fashion world. Hell, even here at home he's required to make the sort of connections that get him into the posh parties and stately homes of the rich and famous so he can case the joint and report his findings back to Max.
All of which necessitates Jack throwing his own party. A night of debauchery so blatant, so tasteless it wraps right around to tastefulness again. A night where he can show the fashion world, business moguls, and investors that he has the money and connections that make him worth their money and connections. And he's been granted the dubious honor of hosting the night of the newcomers fashion show. His debut on the international stage. Followed swiftly by his debut as an international man of quasi-leisure.
Max is, of course, the one actually throwing the party. The one determining the guest list from the half-dozen file cabinets worth of dirt and gossip and just creepily intimate details about London's upper crust.
Max is the one to hire the DJ â the same poor sap she'd blackmailed into playing Jack's first fashion show slash after party. And she's got Eme lording over the caterers with an iron fist.
And Max is the one to insist that Jack put up her ridiculous painting in pride of place, over the main sitting room fireplace where it can be reflected a hundredfold in the mirrors she'd brought in to line the room â and in the disco ball the DJ brought for the occasion. A thousand tiny paintings cover the floor, the walls, the goddamn ceiling. And sure, it's a nice enough painting â although it makes something spark hot and hungry in Jack's breast when he looks at it too long.
Or maybe that's just because a shirtless, glistening, complaining Charles â who just spent the majority of the morning hauling furniture and sound equipment around and hanging mirrors - is the one who's been roped into hanging it. Standing there, arms straining as Max directs him to position it just so.
Jack lets his gaze trail down Charles's biceps, chest, abs and away. He's got too much to do to be caught lollygagging like this. And Anne's amused and too-knowing look from over her clipboard is rather ruining the mood.
--
Anne watches Jack flounce away through the crowd, the heaving throng of party guests parting around him like water.
Jack's fashion show had gone over well. All the rich fucks without an original fucking thought between the all of them had been impressed with the flash fucking jewels and dripping gold. Entranced by the swirl of velvet skirts and silken shirts baring just slightly too much cleavage Which Anne knows cuz she's the one telling all the makeup artists to put fucking glitter on all their tits, like Max told her to.
And all them rich fucker's'd been entranced by Jack, too. Drawn like moths to the dancing flame of his showmanship. Lured by the siren song of wealth and elegance he'd spun on the catwalk.
And here at the party too.
Though it ain't elegance they're after here. Decadence, just like the fucking fashion show. But this ain't some rich old fuck's sitting room. This is a bacchanal. They're the cult of Dionysus tonight and they've got loyal followers high on poppers and coke and half a dozen other designer party drugs, courtesy of some of Jack's now-infamous street contacts, dolled up nearly as much as the party guests. And the drugs are all set out in little gold-rimmed dishes on antique walnut sideboards. K itchy as all fuck. Like candy someone's Nan might set out. All free for the taking.
Well, the first taste is, anyway. You gotta pay for the next dozen.
And they're willing to pay, the rich fuckers. Money's no object to them. And they've sold their souls long ago. What's a little more blood squeezed outta stone? Why give a fuck about tomorrow when you can constantly live in the happy glimmering now? Consequences can't touch them â these golden fucking chosen people.
And Jack walks among them like a prince. Like a god, and all this worship is simply his due.
Even from her secluded, shadowed corner Anne can see how he draws them in. Snares them with pretty words and pretty clothes and the promise that if they just flock to him, follow him, they too can be as effortlessly beautiful and catty and elegant and perfect.
And then, when they're thoroughly caught in his silken web, he directs them towards Max.
She's standing on the second floor balcony overlooking the party, queen of all she surveys. And even though Jack's throwing this party, she's the real mastermind behind everything. Every sweating, glittering, drug soaked body heaving against each other on the dance floor is there because that's exactly where she wants them. And when she turns her gaze to one or another in particular, it's far, far too late for them to run. Cuz even if they wanted to. Even if they weren't snared so tight they couldn't get out of the trap not even if they chewed their own fucking leg off. Even if they escaped, Anne'd chase them down for her. Hunt them down for her, across oceans and continents until they'd been found and bound and delivered back to her feet. Where they fucking belong, the fucking scum.
--
Charles tucks himself further into the corner he's found on the second floor. It's not quiet â nowhere in the house is quiet, not even the fucking bathroom. And his spot overlooks the dancefloor, bass thrumming up though the floor to rumble against the bottoms of his boots. But at least it's private.
Jack's holding court in the middle of the crowd, shining and happy and basking in being noticed, being revered.
He's always been like that. Flash and brash and attention grabbing. So you don't see the knife Anne's slipping between your ribs from the shadow Jack casts.
But even then. Even when it had been half misdirect and half distraction. Jack'd wanted this. Burned for it so bright and hungry you almost couldn't stand looking at him. But at the same time, you can't stand looking away.
Charles isn't like that.
Not that he lurks in the shadows, like Anne â or Max, even. He's a blunt instrument, and not ashamed of that fact. His strength lies in direct confrontation.
Oh, he can be crafty. Strategic. He can turn everyone's expectations of him against them. Jack's not the only one with a head on his shoulders, oh no. And Charles ran a crew just fine without his wiles.
But Charles doesn't want to live in the spotlight either. Hasn't chased renown, it had just kind of happened to him, whether he wanted it or not. More trouble than it was worth, half the time.
And now, something else â a new kind of notoriety â is happening to him. And it's all Jack's fault.
See, people aren't only fawning over Jack. No, there's those who saw the promotional material with Charles's face on it and decided he was some sort minor celebrity. Some kinda object for them to project all their filthiest desires onto.
He'd been poked and prodded and fondled. Offered modeling contracts. Offered sex. Offered money for sex. Like he'd welcome it â feel honored by it. Like he's some kinda doll, dressed up pretty just for them.
Not real.
Not a person.
Just a fucking pretty picture in a glossy program, there for them to get off to and then throw away.
He's been down that road before, though not with Johns as posh as these. The swells so used to getting what they want the moment they want it there's no real way to say no. Especially not when they â Anne and Max and Mary and Jack and him â have got so much riding on this.
Charles isn't going to be the one to ruin this. This bright shining con. This dream world Jack and Max have spun out of gossamer. So fragile â so easily ruined.
Charles isn't going to be the one to let the crew down.
So he'd flirted. Glib and meaningless and pretty. Dumb and flighty and careless. Caressed everyone who'd fondled him. Stood close and whispered low in their ears. Made them feel special, feel noticed. And then when they'd tired of him, cuz they always fucking do, so bored of life nothing can hold their interest for long, especially when he's not trying to keep it, Charles'd escaped to the second floor balcony overlooking the party and he'd put his back to the wall and watched Jack's glittering, fragile, beautiful dream unfold below him.
--
âHiding up here all by yourself, Charles?â
Charles grunts in response, but not in a way that makes Jack feel like he's unwelcome. So Jack leans against the banister next to Charles and waits to see if he'll say anything more illuminating.
After a few minutes of silence â or silence from Charles, at least, the music's loud enough to be heard from a block away, never mind just upstairs â it becomes apparent that he won't be any more forthcoming. And if he's to speak, someone will need to coax it out of him.
Fortunately, Jack is nothing if not persistent.
âGot sick of the party, I'd imagine. It's a bit over the top, even for me.â
Charles snorts at that, so they're making progress.
âI know you'd be happier with something a little less glam pop.â Because that's never really been Chaz's scene. He's more of the rocker type, really. Not that Jack's complaining about his penchant for black leather on top of black silk. âBut you have to admit, it's a good turnout. Especially for our first real industry bash. And Featherstone certainly seems to be having fun.â
Jack looks down at where the councilor and Idelle are grinding together on the dance floor (eughh) with the mirrored reflection of Max's painting shimmering on Featherstone's sweaty skin and reflecting in Idelle's eyes. Drawing him in almost as much as Idelle having exchanged her ornate velvet gown for a sexy little cocktail number - although she's wearing hardly any less jewelry than she had at the fashion show â and that too reflects a hundred thousand tiny sparkling versions of the painting. Of the taste and class and wealth the painting promises.
She's bathed in it.
She's a goddess. She's regal. Elegant. Glamorous. The kind of woman the kind of man the councilor is could have for more than a fun night in the sack. The kind of woman he could have for forever, if he'd wanted.
If he was lucky enough to catch and keep her attention.
Men and women in the crowd, only some of them planted by Max, ooh and ah over Idelle's elegance and poise. Remark, just loudly enough to be heard by the councilor about how much they wish she would deign to look at them like she looks at him. Ask to cut in, only to be cut down by Idelle, who has danced only with the councilor, attended only to the councilor, all evening.
Made him feel special. Feel desired. Feel like perhaps he could have this every night of his life, if he'd only put a ring on it. Something suitably flash, of course. Idelle deserves only the best.
But he's not thinking about any of that right now, not with the way he's got his gaze fixed firmly on her bosom, which is being shown off to great effect by an enormous diamond pendant that only she and Max know is actually cubic zirconium. Marriage is probably the furthest thought from his mind right now. But in the morning â in the morning, he'll remember this night. This wild bacchanal. The way the painting had whispered promises of finally belonging to the elegant, tasteful, obscenely rich world that Idelle navigates so effortlessly. How maybe she could guide him through troubled waters when he finds himself out of his depth. Idelle and only Idelle.
âWish there weren't so many fucking people,â Charles grits out, shaking Jack out of his dreams of what ifs and might could bes. Back to the man standing beside him, one of the reason's they've had so much success in this venture. âAll pawing at you. Like you owe them something.â
âOh, darling. I've never minded a little manhandling, you know that.â Jack keeps deliberately glib, because Charles looks like he's liable to rip someone's throat out if Jack even hints at discomfort.
And it's true that he'd been somewhat leery of the attention at one point, after so long hiding in shadows out of necessity, even as he'd yearned to step into the spotlight.
It turns out that actually being in the spotlight isn't quite what Jack had imagined. That sometimes people shine it on you for reasons other than simple recognition.
That night at the strip club comes to mind.
That had felt like being used. Like being back in his childhood, father a subject of ridicule too drunk to understand that the whole village was laughing at him.
But Jack had understood. He'd understood the power of perception. The power other's had over you when they were the ones controlling the narrative. The ones making you an outsider.
But today, Jack's the one controlling how people see him. The one directing â and misdirecting â perceptions.
Because there's power there. Because people only see what they want to see. And you can get a hell of a lot done when people are too stupid to believe you capable of anything.
This being in the spotlight, being loved and adored by a fickle crowd, keeping the eyes of the world on him so that they stay off Max and Anne and Mary as they pick their marks. This is just another kind of power. Just another shield to hide behind while the dirty work gets done.
Jack elbows Charles in a way he hopes is reassuring. âAnd anyway, Anne's been keeping an eye out for trouble. You know she's been itching to stab someone for weeks now. I'm safe as houses.â
Charles grunts and turns away, back to the shadows he'd been hiding in when Jack came up here to talk to Max briefly, introducing a new mark â one who's in international real estate and interested in investing in Max's little property endeavors. And the glint of Charles's eyes in the gloom, the occasional sparkle of the silver charms in his hair and the earrings in his ears, the rings on his hands and necklaces draped against his bared chest, it had felt like a predator looking at him. Some big jungle cat watching him from the tall grass.
But Jack hadn't felt frightened. Because he's stupid and hopelessly in love. And he knows Charles, better than he knows himself, sometimes.
So he'd gone over to where Charles was standing. And he had stepped out of the shadow and into the glaring light of the party to stand at the balcony railing with Jack. To listen to Jack prattle on about inconsequential things with only fond mock annoyance, the way he'd always done. Even when Jack had been considerably more annoying â and Charles considerably more inclined to gut people who annoyed him.
But if he's hiding again, returning to the shadows, clearly that wasn't the right tack.
Jack comes at it from another angle. âWould it make you feel better if you came and danced with me? Just to remind everyone my big tough boyfriend is looking out for me?â
Because Charles trusts Anne. They all do â and with their very lives. But sometimes Charles is a protective, possessive sonofabitch. And if he's in a mood, Jack wants to make sure they deal with it in a way that doesn't end in homicide.
Charles turns back, eyes gleaming. âStake a claim, you mean. In front of everyone.â
Prove Jack's his. And fuck. Maybe that is a step too far for their pretend relationship.
He's about to apologize. Walk everything back, make a joke, disassemble.
But then Charles says, âYeah, all right. You're too much trouble for only one person to keep an eye on.â
--
Charles has Jack in his arms. And Jack'd said it was about Charles staking a claim. Making sure all the rich fucks kept their greedy hands off Jack. Make sure he was being looked after.
But it goes the other way, too.
Charles is out here in the middle of the dancefloor, covered in shiny that Jack'd bought â or stolen â just for him. Jack's arms around him, just like he's got his arms around Jack. Like they're one person, bound together, with no beginning or end.
There for everyone to see. To see that he and Jack are one.
That Jack has a claim on Charles. That all their pawing and fawning and come-ons don't mean shit. Just like all the heaving, sweaty bodies surrounding them don't mean shit. Not when him and Jack are like this. Together.
Everything â everyone â inconsequential compared to the feeling of Jack pressing against Charles's front, grinding against his dick, Charles's hands on his ass. Jack's his, if just for this moment. And he ain't gonna waste it.
Charles cups the back of Jack's head, fingers tangling in that stupid mullet he still insists on wearing. âMine,â he growls into the breath of space between the two of them.
And Jack must be a great lip-reader. Or he's on the same wavelength as Charles, feels the same way as Charles does about all this. Because he grips Charles at the nape of his neck. Pulls his hair until his head tilts back and Jack's teeth are at his jugular.
And Charles feels the threat and the promise pressed so tenderly against his skin when Jack says âYours.â
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A Fair(y) Crime
â Words: 22k
â Genres: 50% Fluff, 45% Crack, 5% Angst
â Summary: While you might hate fairytales, it doesnât change the fact that you are the descendent of the fairy godmother. With a wand in your hand and magic running through your veins, you have to search for your Cinderella and grant them their happily ever after....but things might be a bit more complicated than that when you find out your little Cinderella comes in the form of troublemaker Kim Taehyung.
You hate Cinderella.  Actually, you hate all fairy tales. The storylines are terribly vapid, love made to seem one dimensional, characters awfully helpless that it makes you frustrated. But at the young age of six, none of these thoughts came across your mind nor did you care much for good storytelling. Rather, you didnât like these stories so much anymore simply for the fact that⌠ You are the fairy godmotherâs descendant.  âWhat?â You blink in confusion, head lolling to your side. âWhatâs that mean?â  âIt means you have to find your Cinderella and grant them their happily ever after,â your father explains with a bright smile, his cheeks puffing out, eyes crinkled as if heâs trying to convince you to eat broccoli. You are unimpressed, leaning on the table and looking over.  âYou know Aunt Yeri?â your mother pipes up.  âYeah!â You nod enthusiastically, recalling the pretty lady that gave you lots of toys. She visits sometimes with her doggy and you went to her wedding a long time ago. It was at a garden and very pretty.  âWell, she isnât just my best friend. She was my Cinderella and I helped her to her happy ending.â  Youâre silent for a moment, letting it sink in. Your parents wait patiently and you quirk your head to one side. âWhen will I find my Cinderella?â  â...later.â Thereâs uncertainty in her voice, unsure. She has the same tone as when she debates if she should give you a snack before dinner. âMaybe in a few years, honey.â  âWill they be my best friend too?â  âThatâs entirely up to you.â  âHow will I know itâs them?â you ask, firing question after question.  âYouâll just know.â It sounds weird like she doesnât know herself, and she must read your expression because then she saysâ âDidnât you always want to be a fairy godmother?â  âNo!â You stand straight on the chair, nearly climbing onto the table even though youâre not supposed to. But no one scolds you, too concerned as you shriek, âI wanna be a princess! Not a fairy!â  âWellâŚ.â Your father is at a loss and he smacks his lips together, looking for the right words. âYou can still be a princess, sweetheart.â  You pout, suddenly feeling very sad. âI donât wanna be a fairy godmotherâŚâ  âTake a look at this, Y/N.â Your mother draws your attention away before you can burst into a tantrum and immediately, you stop sniffling. You lean fully over, sprawled over the table and the tips of your toes on the chair cushion.  Thereâs a narrow golden box that she brings up. Youâve seen something before â Valentineâs Day when your father brought you to the store and you helped pick out a gift for your mom.  The necklace you chose ended up in a similar box.  âWhat is it?â But youâre unsure of what the contents are and you peer over, as close as you can get with your short height.  Exactly as your suspicions, it isnât gold jewelry. Itâs a silver stick. Itâs thicker on one end and narrower on the other, coming to a point. The stick seems to shimmer and shine against the fluorescent ceiling light above the table, glimmering as if there are sparkles embedded into the surface.  âItâs a wand.â  âItâs magic?!â Your eyes glimmer, grown wide and your jaw drops.  Both your parents laugh, exchanging relieved expressions. âKind of.â  âCan I grant wishes then?â  âOnly the wishes of your Cinderella. You canât use it on yourself,â she tells you but youâre too excited to fully understand and be disappointed. âYou like it?â  âYeah! Itâs cool!â You take it, waving it straight up in the air like youâre a magician about to conjure a dragon up. Itâs heavy, but sits perfectly in your hand.  You were an idiot.  You didnât know then. At first, it was fun to know you were some sort of secret fairy. That your great-great-great-great-great grandmotherâs grandmother was actually the fairy godmother of the fairytale you had read so frequently. You had magic. You had superpowers.  But as you got older, the true gravity of your situation crumbled down onto your shoulders. You were someoneâs fairy godmother, forced to serve a random stranger out there. You canât even grant your own wishes, bring away the suffering that you faced, or fulfill your deepest desires.  Youâre someoneâs servant.  And with the anger that came with puberty and your teenage years, you threw away that wand. You abandoned it, left it in places, tried donating, throwing it in the dumpster or even a bonfire one summer at camp. But no matter what happened, it always appeared in your surroundings again.  You wish this was an awful prank your parents had set up and continued over the years. But itâs not. And you know that fact deep down â this is very, fucking real. This nightmare is your life.  âGoddammit!â  Youâre on the floor of your college dormitory, roommate thankfully out lest she sees the way youâre sobbing and concludes youâre psychotic. The boxes around you circle you, towering like buildings in the city. Yet, on top of all of it, the stupid stick you left back home has somehow appeared in your belongings once more. And youâre aware neither your mom nor dad had anything to do with it.  So here you are, on the ground, gripping it with both hands and trying your best to snap it.  âBreak already!â  Youâre screaming, teeth gritting down, jaw clenched, face growing red as your muscles strain.  But it wonât. Itâs like concrete or made of the strongest material despite being so thin. Itâs unyielding, fighting for its survival, not budging or even bending the slightest bit. It mocks you.  You end up flinging the wand to the wall and it makes a dent in the paint. âWho the fucking hell is my Cinderella?!â  The question asked for decades on end isnât answered and that special someone doesnât appear until youâre at your absolute lowest.
You needed this.  A vacation, that is.  The stresses of your life were about to eat you alive. It started a little more than half a decade ago â years of breaking your back to get good grades and obtain your degree. Then it was months of unemployment and crippling debt that forced you to trash your beloved History masterâs for a job in the candle industry.  It was temporary, you said. But the bills and debt payments werenât temporary.  So here you were, dealing with a psychotic boss, doing a job that felt like you were selling your soul to the devil.  Needless to say, you needed a vacation desperately.  So this was perfect. Sort of.  âIs there a purpose for this trip?â the reception of the dingy hotel asks with a bright smile that almost cracks her face. âIf itâs for pleasure, there are a lot of fun and adventure packages I can offer you. Macau has plenty to do during your stay here!â  âNo, itâs okay.â You hold back a sigh. âItâs for business.â  This place was essentially the Vegas of Asia, but for you, it wasnât so much of a vacation as it was more a business trip. A trip where you had a budget of less than a hundred dollars for â meant for you to solely buy convenience store food and maybe a tacky shirt as a souvenir. A trip that required you meeting some investor and convincing him to invest in thousands of candles.  âI see.â She nods her head in sympathy, reading your exhausted expression and dead eyes. âI hope you enjoy yourself nonetheless. Hereâs your key-card for room two-hundred nine.â  âThank you.â You take the card off the counter, not sparing another glance. Pulling your baggage behind you and letting the wheels roll, you walk towards the elevator. But something stops you, making your feet halt.  Or rather, a feeling.  Itâs intense, pulsating through your veins. Itâs as if youâve been shot or had an orgasm, or both things occurred at once. The tips of your fingers tingle, your muscles tense, core clenching and head aching. The overwhelming emotion ricochets through you, giving you whiplash and it rips the air out of your heaving lungs. Euphoria fills every crevice of your body, intuition screaming out, and itâs like youâve scratched an inch you didnât know was there.  Your neck cranes over.  Thereâs a young girl half across the lobby. Sheâs in a straw hat decorated with a pink bow, wearing a soft sundress that hugs her curves and cools her skin from the heat of summer. The female is tapping on her phone, looking out the window like sheâs waiting for a taxi and immediately, you beeline towards her. Sheâs the person youâre supposed to meet. Sheâs your Cinderellâ  But she walks away.  The girl walks out the glass doors before you can get to her and you halt again, watching her get in the taxi and how the vehicle pulls away from the curb, taking off. And as you stand there, jaw slack, dazedâŚ.the feeling you have still lingers, not fading away. The person youâre really here for cuts through the lobby and exits the same doors youâre staring at.  Heâs homeless. Or at least, he looks like it. The man is in rags, wearing oversized bohemian clothing with loose bags slung over his body. A five oâclock shadow is plastered around his mouth and it matches his blonde bed hair thatâs in a disarray.  The deadbeat dude is your Cinderella.  And heâs leaving.  âWait!â you scream across the lobby to no avail. Several tourists and workers turn to stare, but you pay no mind, moving based on animalistic instinct, frightened as the feeling begins to fade the farther he gets. Your luggage is pulled until you get to the bellboy and you pass it towards him. âCan you please bring this up to my room? Iâm in four-hundred eightâ no, I mean, four-hundred nine!â  âO...o-kayâŚâ Heâs bewildered, but before anymore can be said, youâre already out the door.  âWait! Wait!â Youâre screaming at the top of your lungs above the roar of traffic and the engines of motorcycles. The sun beats down on you, causing you to break into a sweat. Your shoes are flimsy and your clothes are wrinkled, the same ones you wore on the entire plane ride.  Still, none of this particularly deters you as you run against the grain of people.  He keeps getting farther and farther away despite your shouting. He doesnât hear you, or at least he doesnât know youâre the one calling out to him. Frustration eats at you alive and you stop in your spot, inhaling a large breath to screamâ  âTaehyung!â  Miraculous, he hears you calling his name. He halts in his sandals and turns around. In the midst of the people, his brown irises lock right onto yours. You stare at him, lashes fluttering before you run again. By the time you get to him, youâre panting and hyperventilating heavily, crouching over as you feel your lower gut ache from the unprompted exercise.  âDo I know you?â His voice is deeper than expected, taller too, and heâs surprised, wondering how you know his name.  âNo.â You shake your head. âNo, you donât know me. I donât know you. But...Iâm about to.â  âAlrightâŚ?â  âI know this is going to sound completely insane and crazy and youâre not going to believe it, but Iâm your fairy godmother.â  â.....â Thereâs a long silence. It is awkward. In the middle of the bustling morning, thereâs quietness between you and him until he says, âPardon?â  âI...am a descendant of the fairy godmother.â You cringe but without knowing any other way to say it. And with his expression, you know Taehyung doesnât believe you. If anything, he thinks youâre legitimately crazy, that you escaped out of the mental ward at the hospital. âAnd Iâm here to grant your wishes.â  âIâm sorry.â He backs away. âIâm not interested.â  âIâm not trying to sell you anything!â you yell in exasperation, knowing you sound less like a saleswoman depending on her commission to make a living and more like a scam. You donât blame him. You even sound insane to your own ears.  âI-Iâm fine. I donât need any wishes granted. Sorry.â  âNo. Wait!â You grab onto his arm before he can run off. âYou donât understand. My entire family are descendants of the fairy godmother. You know Cinderella, right? Itâs like that. Everyone in my family has their own Cinderella and itâs one of our life missions to grant their wishes and give them a happy ending. Youâre mine.â  â....Umm...are you staying at a hospital right now?â His thick brow quirks. âNeed me to call someone for you?â  âNo! God!â You give up, arms dropping to your side, at a loss for words. But then thereâs a last thought that strikes you, a last hope. âLet me show you. Let me grant a wish of yours.â  Taehyung looks at you, staring directly into your eyes. Heâs obviously weirded out, skeptical of the nonsense youâre sprouting. And youâre even more embarrassed and horrified. You were here for a business trip, goddammit. Not to run into your Cinderella. But now thatâs here in front of you, youâre not letting go.  Youâve been waiting for him for years now.  He is your obligation. As bullshit as this is, you must honour your family and respect what theyâve given to you.  So, you beg him to trust you one time, âPlease. Give me a chance.â  //  As you enter the lobby, the receptionist and bellboy eye you warily, especially considering a young man is trailing after you. It looks like youâve picked him off the street which is technically true. But unlike their suspicions, you are most definitely not inviting him back to your room and paying him for a night of pleasure.  You give him your name, mumbling a bit about your background to relax him and he says nothing as you take the elevator up to your tiny room. The queen sized bed is clean with sheets tucked in, not as sketchy as that time you went to Iceland. Itâs fairly nice for it being such a small space, but the bed takes up most of the area, forcing the single-stalled bathroom in the corner and thereâs only a tiny window in the other corner.  There isnât a chair or desk in sight or even a television like usual rooms.  âSorry, Iâm just here on a business trip. Meeting an investor.â  âUh-huh.â  Quickly, you drop down to your suitcase, tugging the zipper to dig into your belongings. Youâre like a wild animal scavenging for food. âW-what are you looking for?â he asks and you know this doesnât look good. Itâs like youâre about to drug him and someone else will enter the room, help drag his body and the pair of you will harvest his organs.  But you would never resort to such a method to make moneyâŚ.no matter how desperate you are.  âMy wand.â  âWand?â  âThere it is!â The silver stick is found in your underwear pocket of your luggage and you pull it out. Taehyungâs brows raise once more and you admit to him, âI..Iâve never used this before. It only works if youâre the one who wishes for something.â  âSo...I just make a wish?â  You nod. âYou should start off with something small.â  âThenâŚâ He steps back, still on alert. âI wish for a flower.â  The blonde male expects nothing while youâre waiting patiently. It takes a jerk of your hand that the wand begins to quiver in your grasps. Dust and sparkles come from the tip like itâs a bubble gun and you both watch in amazement, breaths hitched. The fairy dust falls on the ground and begins to stick together. It glows white, too bright that youâre forced to look away.  It morphs into a perfect red rose, three leaves on the thornless stem. The hue is strong, reminding you of blood and the petals are abundant, flourishing in front of your very eyes.  âOh my god!â You fling the wand across the room, hands grabbing fistfuls of your hair. You canât believe it â some part of your brain always had doubts, but they werenât lying after all. âIt fucking worked!â  âHoly shit!â Taehyungâs jaw is dropped, eyes doubled. âWhat the fuâ! Youâre my fairy godmother!â  âIâm your fairy godmotherâŚâ you repeat him and allow it to sink in, speaking with bitter acceptance. Youâll get this done and over with. The faster you can give him his happy ending the faster youâll be free from this obligation.  The two of you try again, making sure this isnât just an illusion or a one time occurrence. âI wish for a hundred dollars.â And just like that, the crisp bill is conjured up. âOh my godâŚ.oh my god...this is real...this is real, isnât it? Itâs not a dream?â  âItâs not a dream.â The ability for you to grant his wishes is both terribly tragic and ironic. Here he is with a hundred dollar bill that you havenât been able to see in ages. But you shake off your self-pity, something youâll reserve for later. âIâm here to give you your happy ending.â  âMy happy endingâŚ.â The realization hits him and a rectangular grin spreads across his face.  âYeah.â You shift from sitting on your knees to the floor, seated across from him. âSo...you have any ideas what is it you want?â  He hums and shrugs. âCan you make me handsomer?â  The question is odd. As...dirty and disoriented as Taehyung appears, somehow up close he doesnât appear that bad. But you shrug and try nonethelessâŚ.though nothing happens.  You try again, flicking the wand as Taehyung wishes for it aloud. Nothing.  âI thinkâŚ.I can only conjure up physical thingsâŚ.so I canât alter you or your personalityâŚâ  âOr give world peace?â He pouts and sighs. âOh well, guess weâll have to make do.â  âUh-huh.â You wear a blank expression, though internally you glare. Make do? God, he doesnât know how fortunate he is and how envious you are. âIs there a dream or aspiration I can help you with? You...want me to give you a house or...better clothes?â  âMy clothes are fine,â he argues in offense. You mutter an apology and he smiles, carefully considering it. âThereâs nothing I particularly wantâŚ.well...I guess there is one thingâŚâ  Itâs the best thing youâve heard all day. âWhat is it?â  âYou should be asking me âwho is it?ââ A soft smile comes across his features, tinged with a bit of sadness and regret. You recognize it well after considering you see it in the mirror. âYou told me youâre here because you...work in the candle industry?â  âY...yeah?â Youâre unsure of where heâs going with this.  Youâre not particularly proud of your occupation. The company that you work for isnât Yankee Candle or Bath and Body Works. Itâs for some crazy lady thatâs passionate about candles and somehow engineers the worst smelling ones that youâve ever had the unfortunate opportunity of sniffing.  When youâre in the office, youâre constantly getting migraines and headaches, enough that you have headache relieving medicine in your top drawer at your desk. All year round, they light the campfire roasted blueberries five wick candles â which smell more like the sweetest perfume mixed with axe body spray that boys used to spray around their lockers in high school.  The worst part is that you canât even openly gag, second to the fact that the awful odor always becomes stuck to your clothing. You can leave your work at work, but you always bring home the scents back into your home, making it linger on your curtains and in your bedroom.  The mere thought of the candles brings shivers to your spine.  âIâm here because Iâve been looking for someone.â  âYouâve been looking for someone?â you echo him with a frown, unsure if you heard correctly, but Taehyung nods.  âI...I wasnât a good guy back in the day. Iâm someone who you mightâve called aâŚ.fuckboyâŚ.but I swear Iâve straightened out.â His hands lower, slowing down his wild gestures and you patiently wait as he explains himself. âI might or might not have dumped, well, no, thatâs not the right word...I...cheated on a girl I really liked.â  Youâre unimpressed, but the dots are easily connected. âAnd youâre here to win her back?â  The bohemian-hobo styled man nods. âWhen she left, I realized how much I love her. It really broke me and made me think a lot about things.â  He came all the way here to find her and win her back.  You have mixed emotions â not sure if heâs an asshole for cheating in the first place, moved that heâs learnt his lesson the hard way and came all this way, or if heâs just a plain idiot to think anyone would come crawling back after being cheated on. He doesnât look like heâs been doing well either.  But you donât know their relationship, so you make no comments.  Instead, you eye him up and down. âHow long have you been here for?â  You thought he was a permanent resident. He certainly acts very accustomed to the lifestyle here, enough that he travels around with a few bags from this place to the next.  âA year.â  âYouâve been here for an entire year searching for her?!â  Heâs definitely an idiot.  âI donât know where she lives, only that sheâs here in Macau. She doesnât release a lot of info on social media and all my texts and messages to her are ignored. I think sheâs changed her number too. Her friends donât know much about her whereabouts either and they wouldnât tell me if they knew.â  You frown, at a loss with his situation. âHow long has it been since youâŚ.parted ways then?â  âFew years?â He shrugs. âThree or four.â  âHuh. Well, okay then.â Itâs not too bad â his issue is simple enough. He just wants to win back this girl. Though youâll admit, it feels more like Taehyungâs the prince than Cinderella. But you donât mind whatâs been presented in front of you. Through love and romance, he can achieve his happy ending and you'll be set free. You were scared he was interested in a political career which would mean youâd have to stick by his side for the rest of your life or until he retires. âD-do you know where she is now?â  âIf I did, sheâd be here with me.â He smiles.  âSo...you have no clue?â  âNo clue!â he chirps back and youâre yet again unimpressed.  âOh god,â you groan, running a hand over your face in defeat. Youâll do whatever it takes to make it a success, but that means his problems are yours.  âI have a few leads though.â Taehyung smiles again, eyes twinkling like youâre his sun and maybe you are. At this rate, anyone who can help his hopeless ass is his savior. âBut Iâm starting to think based on your reaction that I should take you on that offer of getting better clothes.â A tinkling laugh spills out of his mouth. âI canât go to her looking like this, right?â  He puts his arms out, staring down at his own body. Itâs comfortable attire, but dirty with many stains and holes as if itâs been his only clothes for the past several months. You sigh, nodding. âItâs good to have some self-awareness.â  Taehyung scoffs playfully. âIâll let that insult slide because weâre going shopping, my fairy. But I wonât let it happen next time.â  His fairy? You guess heâs not wrong there.  //  You quickly learn that Kim Taehyung likes shopping. He enjoys it enough that he doesnât want you conjuring up clothes for him and wants to make it a full on activity. He enjoys it enough to hop in a cab with you beside him, looking at the driver and saying âGalaxy Macau, please.â  The two of you are driven to the ritziest part of the city where the most affluent tourists are shopping with one another. Itâs grand and beautiful, making you stop to take it all in. The place you were staying at was more dingy, part of a suburban area where there were alleyways and stray dogs, streets emptier and only full during rush hour when citizens go to work or return home.  Here, resorts and five-star hotels are all around you. Thereâs fine dining restaurants and one of the biggest shopping centers towering above your frame. Here, you learn Kim Taehyung doesnât just like shopping. He fucking loves it.  âLook at this. Itâs cashmere.â  âCool.â You feel out of place. But Taehyung owns it with his confidence. He has an unlimited amount of money anyways, youâve conjured up two thousand in the proper currency. Thereâs no reason for him to feel self-conscious, even if he looks like a caveman â his pocket is literally bursting with bills. It looks like heâs robbed a bank. As he walks past clerks and attendants, their eyeballs nearly fall out of their sockets from the sight of the side bulge of his pants.  âHello, do you need any help?â  âYes, hello.â Taehyung flashes an eager smile. âI was actually looking to get your most expensive suit. Could you tailor it right now too?â  âIt might be additional costs to get it done right now, but we can certainly do it for you.â  âAwesome. Iâll do it for whatever cost.â  âR-right this way.â  It feels like youâre a mother-in-law, watching the bride try on wedding gowns. Youâre sitting on the plush lounge chair, waiting patiently. Three attendants crowd Taehyung, measuring tapes slung by their necks, convincing him to buy these shoes or that belt. When he has a hard time deciding, he decides to take all of it.  âWhat do you think of this?â  He pulls on the edge of his sleeve, fiddling with it nonchalantly and youâre amazed. âWow.â Itâs the only thing you can utter. The saying that a fitted suit makes any man look good is all too true. The makeover is drastic and despite his hair being disoriented and he still has a five oâclock shadow, he looks like an aged scientist going to a fancy gala. Heâs slimmer and taller than you thought too, and you try not to focus on the bulge in his tight trousers. âYeah, itâs good.â  âEnough to make her speechless.â He laughs heartily, joking around with one of the attendants like sheâs his new best friend. All three ladies laugh loudly and itâs obvious that theyâre faking it. âIâll take it.â  âGreat choice!â  As she scatters off, another attendant waltzes up to you and hands you some fancy bottled water for free. âWould you like to look for anything, Miss?â  âOh, Iâm fine. Thank you.â  âAre you sure?â Taehyung turns, halting before he goes back into the dressing room.  âYeah.â You wave him off. At the end of the day, youâre not here for yourself, even if you want to be the one trying on all of this and go shopping to your heartâs content. Youâre here for him.  Taehyung ends up picking two suits, two pairs of socks, one belt, and three sets of ties. Heâs already wearing his Italian loafers that are personally hand-stitched by some sixty year old man with fifty years of experience. Heâs reeking in wealth and one might believe he won the lottery.  The next place the pair of you enter is a salon. Youâre ecstatic when he tells you he wants to get a haircut with a blowout style and wants his face shaven. But as heâs getting himself cleaned up, you sit at the waiting area, tapping on your phone. Youâre answering texts back from your boss whoâs asking if youâve arrived yet. You can practically hear her squawking voice in your ear.  âY/N?â  âHmm?â You look up and you almost drop your phone. âT-TaehyungâŚ?â  âYou looked so focused. Whatâs going on?â  âN...no...nothing.â  You canât believe your eyes. His hair is cut and styled, slightly swept to the side with part of his bangs down. His face is shaven, skin clean and smooth underneath, showing his sharp jawline. The cherry on top is that heâs changed into his suit too. Holy fuck. You may or may not be salivating. He looks ten years younger than before â princely too.  âWhat do you think?â He shows himself off, spinning in slow circles without registering that everyoneâs eyes in the salon are plastered on him. Those waiting are gawking over their magazines, folks in their chairs have turned around and even the hairstylists are frozen with scissors in mid-air. One accidentally cuts off a chunk of the ladyâs curls without realizing.  âY-yeah. Itâs nice.â  âLetâs go. I wanna look for some cologne.â  Thereâs no time to waste, no more ogling.  If Taehyung wasnât going to kill you through envy, then you guess he wants to kill you from shopping till you drop. Anything that he likes, he buys. You end up holding all the bags and it doesnât help when attendants give you looks of pity. To them, you appear as his poor maid that heâs stringing along. In a way, you are his maid⌠ Well, youâre more like a servant.  You just have a prettier, fancier title of âfairy godmotherâ.  The name bestowed to you makes you bitter, and that bitterness expands tenfolds with the realization of how fucking unfair it is that Taehyungâs beautiful too. Ever since he got his makeover, transforming from head to toe, hoping that girl heâs looking for will accept him back in a blink of an eye, heâs been even more captivating than before. His clothes are well-fitting, aura strong and confident. Taehyung commands attention simply by walking into a room.  âAre you sure you donât want anything too?â  He glances at you once he hears the sigh you release. Taehyungâs leaving the spa after getting a facial and naturally, you pick up all the bags to follow him out onto the hot street.  âIâm fine.â  He hums a low note and steals another peek at your profile. âSoâŚâŚ.what is the candle business like?â  âYouâre curious?â You eye him suspiciously, wondering why heâs trying to make small talk with you. Candles are the most boring subject in the world, but when he nods and insists, you tell him, âWellâŚ.you sell candles. Every season there are new candles released. You usually have to go to the lab and try out different scents, test which you want, see what the trends are, try mixing things with each other. Thereâs the whole marketing and sales aspect to it tooâŚ.â  âWhatâs your job?â  âIâm an assistant to my boss. I do whatever she doesnât want to do...so here I am, about to meet an investor.â You give a lifeless laugh that morphs into awkward silence. Itâs now that it hits you â youâre a servant through and through. âItâsâŚ.as fun as it sounds.â  âIt sounds kind of exciting. You donât like it?â  âGod, no.â You scoff, shaking your head.  âThen why are you working there?â  âI need money.â  âEveryone needs money.â His lips are pouty and his eyes twinkle. âIs there something else you like to do?â  â....history,â you murmur, âI have a masterâs in it.â  âReally?!â His brown eyes widen, impressed. âThatâs so cool!â  âActually?â Itâs your turn to be surprised. âI thought that would soundâŚ.lameâŚâ  âWhy would it be? Think of it like this, if you end up in a time machine or you fall into some hole and youâre forced to travel to the past, then you know whatâs going on. Thatâs super cool!â  You laugh, caught off guard with how wholesome he is. âI guess. I never thought of that.â  âWhy arenât you doing anything with that degree since you obviously like it so much? Like...be a historian or something.â  âYeah, thatâs easier than it sounds.â You shrug. âPeople arenât looking for people with history degrees.â  âIâm sure you can find someone out there. Opportunities always come and go,â he says and looks off into the distance, slightly wistful. âI donât have any fancy degrees like you, but I went to an art program for a while and I have a few certificates in photography and painting in photorealism.â  âThatâs amazingâŚâ And you really mean it too. You took an art class once and it went so atrociously that you have high respect for anyone who pursues that kind of academics. âThink you can paint me?â  âIâd have to charge you.â Taehyung playfully bumps your shoulder with his own. âBut because youâre my fairy godmother, maybe Iâll let you have a discount.â  You scoff and your eyes travel down to the numerous bags youâre holding. âAre you done shopping now?â  âUmmmâŚ..one more store.â He leans down and takes the bags off your left hand. Taehyung ends up sauntering off, holding the bags and throwing it over his shoulder casually.  You smile, a tiny scoff coming from your chest before you pick up your pace, catching up with him.  The both of you enter the last store and this time, itâs not for him. Taehyung insists that you wear something half-decent as well. Itâs amusing how he rifles through the racks of clothing and hands you things to try â it feels like youâre a poor girl in a drama and heâs the son of a rich mogul. You both end up choosing an expensive black dress and you canât remember the last time you had something so nice.  Itâs been long since youâve been pampered and youâre surprised at how thoughtful he is.  âAre we going to go look for her yet, Taehyung?â  He has his clothes, heâs cleaned himself up. Thereâs nothing else missing.  âWe can search for her tomorrow.â His arm drapes over your shoulder. âOnce I get my happy ending, my little fairy godmotherâs going, so I should make the best out of this, right?â  You open your mouth to say something before closing it. You can understand where heâs coming from. Plus, if he finds her tomorrow then your job is done. Tomorrow it will be over.  âThen where are we going next?â  âTo the best place here!â Taehyung hollers and cheers, other arm shooting right up. âVenetian Macau!â  //  You end up conjuring some red, obnoxious sports car upon his request, so you have him to blame with why your hair is whipping you in the face and you have yourself to blame on why you chose to envision a vehicle without a roof.  But your parents would be so proud of you right now â you gave your Cinderella the perfect ball gown to wear and provided the pumpkin carriage...metaphorically, of course.  The drive is less than ten minutes and soon, heâs parking in front of the grand hotel that has fountains springing up in front and the bustling sound of ringing and clanging from inside spilling out. The valet happily takes the key and you two cut through the casino to the lobby, taking the largest room they offer â the Presidente, a 12-bay suite with four bedrooms.  Itâs at the very top floor and itâs massive, the size of an entire house. You set all the bags down, staring in awe at the rotating bed, the jacuzzi and bathtub out in the open. Itâs all white and glass, the mere kitchen the same size as your apartment back at home. But what takes your breath away is the view of the entire city.  The windows take the entire side of the wall, pristine to the point where you feel like with an outstretched arm, you could touch the city with your fingertips. The towers and buildings surround you, the smoke curling up to the blue sky. The entire world is at your feet.  âItâs amazing, isnât it?â Taehyung approaches, standing at your side as you both look out.  âYeahâŚâ Youâre speechless, mouth full of cotton. âItâs gorgeous.â  âI love this city,â he whispers and then turns towards you. âIâm glad youâre here.â  âBecause Iâm your fairy godmother?â  âNo. Just because.â He walks away, leaving you confused, but before you can ask anything, Taehyung throws a glance over his shoulder. âYou should change into your dress. It looks weird if Iâm the only one in a suit. Makes me look overdressed.â  âWhere are we going now?â  âDown to the casino, silly.â He laughs and his gaze intensifies. âWe gotta win some, Y/N.â  Taehyung knows fully he doesnât need to win anything. He has an unlimited supply of money right now, of wishes for that matter. But you give into his will out of defeat. You change into your own dress which is tighter than you remember, though he tells you itâs just fine. And with your wand, you grant him his wish of a hundred thousand dollars.  No sooner are you walking alongside him in the boisterous casino. Taehyungâs hands are dug into his pants pocket like he owns the place and he throws his money carelessly. He acts recklessly and boldly, but in doing so, he wins.  âThis gentleman has put fifty thousand on red! Double or nothing on red!  âLetâs go!â he hollers. âLetâs go!â  It feels like youâre babysitting. Taehyung doesnât need this â heâs simply playing with his money at this pointâŚ..no, money is practically useless to him now that he has an infinite amount. Yet, everyone around you is watching with bated breath, egging him on, cheering and clapping. Thereâs a crowd circling the table and the hype is infectious, making you nervous too.  Youâre frozen as the ball is thrown.  It rolls around as the roulette table spins, ticking like a metronome. It lands on red and black and red and blank until it stopsâŚ..  Right on red.  âOh my god!â Thereâs sharp inhales before it breaks out into applause and cheers. Immediately, Taehyung turns beside him and hugs you as if it was on instinct. He laughs and squeezes you before lifting you off your feet, arms wrapped around your waist. He spins you around in circles, making you giggle. âWe did it! We fucking did it!â  Youâre still being spun. âTaehyung!â  âCongratulations! Youâve just won a hundred thousand dollars!â  People are congratulating him, watching with envy and clapping. One man smiles and sips on his bourbon. âIs she your lucky charm?â  He finally sets you down on your feet, wearing a ginormous grin. âOh, sheâs my lucky charm, alright. Sheâs my precious fairy.â  Youâre embarrassed by his declaration and others laugh, seeing how close you both are.  âA fairy indeed. I should get a lucky charm myself.â  The lights in the casino whirl around you, neon lights making you dizzy. Your senses are in overdrive, taking in your chaotic surroundings. Without windows, itâs easy to get drunk off the atmosphere, caught up in it without knowing if itâs day or night. Thereâs a constant barrage of noises, the pink of slot machines accompanying the jittery fall of chips. Levers are pulled, coins flowing through slots, dealers standing back or shuffling their deck of cards.  Youâre mesmerized over the bright colours and itâs Taehyung who grounds you. The way he turns around, always checking up and reading your expression, sometimes calling your name â it helps you from being overwhelmed. And you can only stare at the way the vivid lights glow on his skin, thankful that heâs here to tread in this new world with you, a world you are too unfamiliar with.  He lives it up in the casino, gambling and going crazy, popping bottles of champagne. The minute you leave for a bathroom break and return, heâs somehow gotten to know a crowd of young folks. Taehyungâs charming when he wants to be and maybe thatâs how you two end up in a limousine on the way to a club with these people.  While youâve enjoyed yourself thus far, this was most definitely not a fun part for you.  Your feet ache, youâre sweaty and tiredâŚ.and some girl is perched right on his lap, directly on top of his crotch.  âYou should let me come back with you later,â the doll-like girl whispers seductively while twisting a strand of her curly hair with her finger. She knows what sheâs doing, youâll give her that.  Thereâs hollering all around you, strangers acting idiotically and pouring vodka down their throats. You feel out of place. Too old for this. Youâre a woman with a job who pays her own bills and these kids are acting like dogs in heat or itâs the first time their parents arenât watching them.  But you sit still, narrowing your eyes onto Taehyung and picking up on the private conversation because youâre his fucking servant.  âSorry, babe. I donât do that kind of thing anymore.â He flashes a sly smile. âI have someone special to me.â  âBut I thought you said she was only your fairy.â The girl gives an exaggerated pout and spins her head around to stare at you. You look back at her impassively and she returns to Taehyung, playing with the collar of his ironed dress shirt. âHow about this...if sheâs your fairy, I can be your angel. I promise Iâm a good girl. I wonât misbehave.â  Taehyung chuckles as he leans back, legs widening a bit more. âNo, I have an angel already and itâs not Y/N. This other girl...I love her.â  Despite what he says, youâre beginning to doubt his feelings â otherwise, why would he let some other chick sit on his lap. But you donât make any comments. Instead, your death glare intensifies and you angrily chew on your chocolate bar that the limousine provided. You havenât had a proper meal all day and you needed something to bring your blood sugar up.  âThen where is she? Sheâs obviously not here with you.â  âIâm looking for her.â He grins proudly. âIâm a monogamous man now. I donât like playing around so much anymore. Sorry to disappoint.â  âAww...you wonât make an exception for me?â She bats her lashes back and forth.  âI canât,â he answers and before the girl can huff out and try to coax him otherwise, her friends call her out for being desperate and thirsty. She pouts, sliding off his lap and in the next two minutes, the limo is pulling up at the obnoxious nightclub.  As if the neon lights from the casino werenât enough, now it was strobe lights flashing to the back of your eye balls and making you see stars. Taehyung doesnât seem to mind as he dances with his new best friends. On the other hand, you slide up to the bar, making an order of the cheapest drink to sip in. Unfortunately, thereâs no food and when you asked to suck on some lemon slices instead, the bartender shot you a weird look and told you they werenât for sale.  âYouâre not gonna dance?â Taehyung joins you briefly, strands of his blonde hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. It was no wonder he was drawing in women and men alike as if he were a magnet â the man looked like a sculpted Greek God that descended from the heavens.  âNo!â you shout back, straining your voice against the booming music. The vibrations were shooting all the way up to your bones.  âWhy not?! Donât be a downer! Letâs have some fun!â  You barely finish your drink before heâs pulling you out on the dance floor. Itâs terribly awkward and feels like you have two left feet as you stumble out, trying to dance with him. You donât appreciate others rubbing against you either, so you move close to Taehyung. And he doesnât have any grievances as he pulls you against him too.  You wish you could shut your eyes and wave your wand around right now. If only your wishes could be granted, youâd hope to be in bed, curled up in the sheets at a cozy house, perhaps a cottage in some secluded place with mountains and a waterfall.  But when midnight strikes the clock, instead of Cinderella rushing back homeâŚ..  The both of you end up here.  âWhy do you look so sad? Want me to hire a male dancer for you?â  âNo.â Youâre sitting in the corner with your hands in your lap. It reminds you of when you were put in time-out at home. âAnd why do you think I look like this? Weâre in a strip club, Taehyung.â  âAnd whatâs the issue with that? If girls stripping isnât your thing, thereâs plenty of guys too.â The idiotic boy points off and you donât even bother looking. âLook, dudeâs wearing a thong.â  It was an exclusive booth, the best seat in the house and full view of the stage. Several girls were off to the side, giggling and giving a private show to the âfriendsâ Taehyung had made hours earlier. He paid a lot to get a spot like this in the top strip club of Macau â but of course, money meant nothing to him now that he had an overabundant amount of it.  The more and more you get to know Taehyung, the more disgusted you are. The rich lifestyle doesnât suit him at all. He was at least cute and somewhat wholesome pre-fairy-godmother-magic. Now that he had endless wishes via you and heâs gotten rich, heâs adopted the âfuck bitches, get moneyâ that rappers promote in mainstream media.  You swear Cinderellaâs story had more decency than this.  Should you really be surprised though? Fuck boys never change. And youâre especially witnessing that feat as he cheers on his friends that are trying to slap some assesâŚ..  Before you can get a hernia, you end up falling asleep. The last thing you see is a magician on stage using his thick wand to undo his pants. When you come to consciousness, Taehyungâs shaking you awake, all his âfriendsâ gone and itâs three in the goddamn morning.  Finally, the pair of you are going back to the hotel. Taehyungâs arm is draped around your shoulder as usual and heâs teasing you for being grouchy while petting your bed hair.  But damn straight youâre grumpy. You went gambling, then to a club, then to a strip show. Youâre tired and sticky and disgusted with Taehyung. Still, you canât come to hate him for dragging you around like this or for being an absolute douchebag. Heâs too happy with you and the grin on his face is too infectious.  You collapse on the bed as soon as you get in, not having enough energy to wash your grimy skin or peel off your tight dress. Like you, Taehyung simply undoes the top button of his dress shirt and he collapses onto the soft mattress.  There is silence.  You nearly drift off to sleep, but then he interrupts.  âThanks, Y/N.â  One of your eye opens and you find him staring at you. You stare back at him. â...youâre welcome. Did you have fun?â  âSort of.â  âOnly sort of?â  âIt was alright.â The answer takes you by surprise since he seemed to have the time of his life. Taehyung continues to explain, âI wanted to see what it was like â itâs been a long time since I did anything like that. But once you get homeâŚ.itâs kind of quiet, huh?â  âThe quietâs nice.â You shuffle, getting comfortable and relishing in what heâs most afraid of.  âMakes everything else from earlier seem empty though,â he murmurs softly, but you hear it. He wears a contemplative expression, gazing straight into your eyes. Before your lips can part and you can say anything, he plasters a grin on his face like earlier and changes the subject. âYou wanna go eat?â  âEat?â  âI know you were hungry. Iâm sort of hungry too.â  Thereâs a pause. As tired and sleepy as you were a few minutes ago, you were wide awake again. It was obvious to see that Taehyungâs adrenaline was still coursing through his body too. And he was right â you were starving. You imagine that some food in your system would make sleep even nicer.  So with any determination that you can muster, you haul yourself up, scratching the back of your neck. âSure. Where to?â  âI know a place.â He tugs on your wrist before you can walk off. âWait, can I make a wish first?â  âWhat is it?â You automatically look around for your wand. Of course, it appears on the coffee table, always there no matter where you go off to.  âI was thinking about things and I really want to...travel. I want to make the wish now in case something happens. Yâknow, itâs good to be prepared. And Iâve been thinking about it a lot.â  âAlright.â You grab your wand without a second to waste, not thinking twice. âWhere to?â  âUmmâŚ..I havenât decided. Can you just give me tickets to every destination in the world? The most popular places to visit. Two of each in case I want to visit again. And if itâs possible, they donât have a set time or date, so I can fill it in later and decide whenever I want to go.â  âSure.â You shrug, finding his specific request achievable. âBut can I also make a request?â  âWhat?â He grins as you look down at yourself, pinching at the skin-tight fabric of the dress.  âIâd really like jeans and a sweater.â  //  Itâs not a fancy restaurant. Not in the least bit. There arenât any lobsters, fresh crabs or truffle for sale. Rather, itâs a run-down burger joint that runs for twenty four hours. He shrugged and told you nothing could beat a good burger and that he was quite the fan of fast food.  You laughed and slid into the booth across from him after picking up the order from the poor teenager working the night shift.  âAre you going to finish all that?â Youâre looking right at his two burgers and his mountain of fries.  Taehyung puts a hand on his chest in mock offense. âAre you shaming me right now?â  âNo. Itâs just a waste to throw away food.â  âTrust me, Iâll eat this all.â  âIf you need any help. Iâm sittinâ right here for you.â You give him the hint, pretending to nudge him across the table and he grins, sliding the fries in the middle.  âI thought we were sharing anyways.â  âOh. We were?â  âCourse we can share.â He bites into his burger and hums at the taste, having missed it. You eat as well, food tasting glorious on the palette of your tongue. Thereâs been too many days and nights of nibbling on instant noodles that even greasy, cheap fast food tasted delicious.  âI was staring,â you mumble past a mouthful.  Taehyung stops. His cheeks are puffed up and he stares at you through his thick lashes without you realizing. Slowly, a soft smile spreads into his face, all too fond of you.  âSorry.â He looks away the same time you glance up at him. âFor dragging you around all night. I know you werenât having that much fun.â  âNo. It was alright.â You set down your burger, dusting your fingers off and picking a fry to dip it into ketchup. âI just got tired and I was a bitâŚ.bothered.â  âAbout?â  âThis girl youâre searching forâŚ.â You donât mean to question his intentions, but itâs been pressing on your mind ever since you met him. â.....do you actually love her, Taehyung?â  Thereâs silence in the restaurant.  The fluorescent lights whirr above you, flies circling the light. Taehyung swallows his mouthful, caught off guard. A knot is made between his brows. âWhat do you mean? Course I love her. Why?â  âI donât knowâŚâ You shrug, trying to brush it off, but he insists you explain.  âY/N.â  A sigh leaves your mouth and you look directly at him, deciding not to spare the blonde man from your thoughts. âIf it were me, Taehyung, if someone I loved was out there and I truly cared about them and I was looking for them â I wouldnât waste a single second.â  âWell, Iâve been searching for an entire year now.â  âMacau isnât that big,â you retort. âHave you been looking for her all this time?â  âYes! Iââ  âThen why not search today? Because you wanted a break? Because you wanted to enjoy what Iâm giving you before Iâm gone?â Youâre breathless and the truth of your anger divulges, âIf you were in love, you wouldnât let other girls sit on your lapââ  âShe was the one who sat there!â he argues and from an outsiderâs view, it looks like youâre both a couple fighting. The teenager standing at the counter stares and eavesdrops like heâs watching a television drama. âIt wasnât my fault!â  âDoesnât matter. You let her sit there.â Staggering breaths are ripped from your lungs. Youâre fighting in place of the girl that Taehyungâs searching for, a girl you donât even know. âWhat about the strip club?â  âWhat about the strip club?!â His arms are thrown in the air, burger nearly flying out of his hand. âThat has nothing to do with anything!â  âWhat about calling me yourââ precious fairy.  But the words catch in your throat, caught in your mouth. You lean back and look away. âYou know what? Never mind.â  He exhales in frustration, running a hand through his hair and realizes the ruckus the two of you are making. Taehyung leans over the table and speaks in a low voice, âYouâre right, okay? I know how it looksâŚ..I was the one who cheated on her at the end of the day and now Iâm going around and it looks like I havenât changed.â  The food becomes more tasteless as he continues, âThe moment she left, I knew I fucked up badly. All his bullshit of partying and drinking and girls, itâs fun. But it was fucking worthless. It still is. I donât expect her to take me back, Y/N. I just...want to apologize and get some closure. I know Iâm an ass, but Iâd like to think Iâm at least trying to improve myself. I donât want to be the person I was back then. I never want to go back to being that person.â  You eat again, forcing yourself to swallow it down and let the sugary liquid of the soda tingle your tongue. âThen what do you find fulfilling? Painting and photography?â  Youâll always be skeptical at the whole âIâve changedâ narrative, but you can at least understand where heâs coming from. You know most people canât keep up with the partying lifestyle. At some point, everyone wants more for themselves. More and more. To make the most out of life.  Youâre the same â always wanting better.  The problem is if you can ever fulfill those desires.  A twinkle in Taehyungâs eyes ignites, glad you asked and a cute smile comes across his face. âYou remembered?â  âYou only told me a few hours ago. My mindâs not that of a goldfish. Who do you even take me for, Kim Taehyung? Iâm your fairy godmother.â  âYou donât act like you want to be,â he points out and youâre surprised. You look up at him and he smiles as if his intuition senses more about you than youâll even realize.  âI...just want you to get your happy ending.â  âYou seem stressed.â He shrugs nonchalantly. âThatâs all. And I guess, you make me feel a bit rushed too.â  âI donât,â you murmur, finally admitting it aloud. You called him out on his feelings, brought question to his convictions. Itâs only fair if youâre honest as well and you have an inkling he might be sympathetic to your situation. âI donât want to be. Youâre not wrong. I never wanted to be anyoneâs fairy godmother.â  Taehyung quirks his head to one side. âYou donât like magic? I think itâs pretty cool.â  âYeah, but Iâm your servant,â you mumble with a pout.  He immediately interjects, âYouâre not.â  âI canât make my wishes come true. Do you know what itâs like when itâs your magic, your wand, but you canât use it for yourself or your family?â  Thereâs a pause. âWell, when you put it like that, I guess it really sucks.â  A small laugh pulls out of you. âPsh, yeah. I know that sounds incredibly selfish butââ  âIt doesn't. Itâs completely understandable.â Taehyungâs expression is blank and he blinks innocently at you. âItâs like your lottery ticket is given to someone else.â  âYeahâŚâ Itâs moments like these that he catches you off guard. When he isnât so unbearable, but sweet, compassionate and empathetic. Itâs no wonder so many people are drawn to Taehyung without needing to know him for long. âSince I was young, my parents shoved down my throat that this is the reason I was born...to serve whoever was my Cinderella. This is supposed to be my life purpose.â  âI donât think so.â His lips are pouty, gaze intense. âMaybe itâs part of what you have to do, but it shouldn't be your sole purpose.â  âWell it isnât, but sometimes it sure feels like it.â  He hums a low note and chews on a few fries thoughtfully. âWhat would you wish for? If the tables were turned and I was your fairy godmother.â  âI donât know.â You havenât really thought about it. Coming up with desires that couldnât be fulfilled would leave you even sadder than before. âI guess, Iâd want a house and some money. Iâd buy a place for my parents and I wouldnât have to work anymore. Iâd take care of their retirement completely. Iâd pay off all my loans too and give money to charity.â  Taehyung acknowledges your choices, finding it pretty close to what heâs going to wish for as well.  A thought comes to mind and your eyes light up. âGod! Iâd quit my job! Yes, I would actually do that first above everything else!â  He laughs, finding your enthusiasm endearing. âYou really must hate candles. But what would you do after that?â  âIâd travel. Iâd go see the entire world and then eventually, settle down and work as a historian.â The more you think about it, the more eager and energized you become. This fantasy youâre constructing around you sounds so uplifting that the moment reality sets you, youâre guaranteed to be disappointed. But for now, Taehyung gazes at you, admiring how passionate you are. âIâd lead a research team at a university or at a museum. Or maybe Iâd work as an archivist and preserve historical pieces. That would be really cool.â  âThat sounds really cool. Would you let me work there too?â  âWhat would you want to do there?â  âI could paint or take photos and you could put it on display at the museum. Iâm not half-bad, yâknow.â  Itâs pleasant to the ears, the mere idea of it sitting well with you. In this fantasy world, you are the princess and itâs a dream you want to relish in. âSounds like a plan then.â  Taehyung finishes his burger, stuffing his cheeks to the brim. He drinks his soda, sliding the food down his gullet. He hums, thinking of something and wipes his mouth with a napkin. âWhat about your romantic life?â  âWhat about my romantic life?â You eye him with feigned suspicion while a smile tickles at the corner of your mouth. âYou think I got time for love, Kim? Iâm about to make history here.â  He laughs again, heartily and rowdy. His eyes are crinkled, lips spread into a rectangular shape and he nods firmly. âYouâre right. I donât need to find your prince charming when heâs already sitting across from you.â  You grin, finding the situation unbelievable. âAre you flirting with me, Kim Taehyung?â  âIâm stating the truth.â  You scoff. âArenât you supposed to be in love with someone else?â The playful question suddenly draws out a silence. He doesnât say anything, chewing on fries and your brow lifts. âNow that I think about it, you havenât seen her for years, right?â  âListen, time makes the heart grow fonder.â His irises twinkle with mischief. âHavenât you heard of that?â  Another laugh spills out of your body. âTime makes all wounds heal, Taehyung. Time makes you forget.â  âI disagree,â he counters, âI wonât ever forget us.â  Taehyung says it so casually without knowing that the weight of his genuine words makes your cheeks warmer than they should be, You donât say anything, simply scoffing. But itâs because youâve been made speechless by him, mouth filling with cotton, caught off guard.  The chatter and banter eventually continues. Conversations come easily between you and him, spilling out without any awkward pauses. Heâs charming, a conversationalist that makes you laugh and feel at eased. Soon, the two of you are walking on the street, side by side with synchronized steps. The bustling city is quieter than ever before when itâs four in the morning.  âYou wonât leave me as soon as I get my happy ending, right?â  âBut what else would you need me to do?â  Taehyung gasps in mock offense. âI thought we were friends!â  âNah, this is just a business relationship,â you quip.  âHere I thought you were becoming my friend. I canât believe itâs been one-sided all this time.â  âThought youâd be used to it by now,â you bite back, this time making him the speechless one.  Taehyung begins to chase you down the street and laughs. âIâm gonna choke you!â  âI bet you like that, huh?!â  Two blocks are made before youâre both tired out from running needlessly. The both of you are less drunk from drinking hours earlier and more off of each other, feeling oddly giddy and happy.  Taehyung walks with his arm draped around your shoulder like thatâs the way it should be. At this point, it feels natural even. âYou gave me a few ideas.â  âAbout choking?â  âNo! Jeez!â He laughs, the tinkering sound making you giggle. âAbout wishes. I should prepare more and think about things in the future, not just short-term enjoyment.â  âWow, Sherlock. Youâre a real genius.â  From your sarcastic tone, he pokes your side, tickling you slightly. âIâm being serious here!â He laughs. âI should put some money into my bank. Pay off my loans and buy some stocks or something to make sure my familyâs retirement is secure. I want to buy my parents a house and give to charity too.â  âI approve of these wishes.â You bob your head, nodding enough for your neck to break while stumbling in your steps and leaning closer to him without realizing.  âI want to make your wishes come true too,â Taehyung murmurs softly.  Automatically, your head turns and you find him staring down at you. Heâs pulled you close and you watch the way his Adamâs apple bobs in his throat. You could count his lashes if you wanted, see how his cupidâs bow dips, imagine lines through his freckles and moles like itâs stars in the sky and youâre trying to map out constellations.  You look away from him before you do something worthy of regret. âYou donât have toâŚâ  âBut I want to.â Taehyung smiles. âIt would be an honour to grant your wishes.â  âHow would you go about doing that?â  âWell, your wand listens to me and only me. So I can just make your wishes for you. I can say the word.â  You scoff, elbow jutting out to his ribs. Yet, it does nothing to deter him and only puts a wide smile on his face. âYouâre going to travel with me?â  Taehyung shrugs. âSure.â  âWouldnât that girl youâre looking for mind?â  âI donât know and I donât care if she does or doesnât. Youâre important to me.â He is warm, not just his skin against yours like this, but also in his personality. âYouâre my fairy.â  You donât detest the nickname so much anymore. Itâs kind of sweet when he says it like that.  âThatâs a big promise to make.â  âThen Iâll have to step up when the time comes.â  âAlright, Kim. Donât be all talk and no action.â  âI wonât,â he promises. âWe should secure a source of money right now though. I donât feel safe carrying around so much.â  Thereâs an ATM approaching to the left and the pair of you slow down. Taehyung lets go of you and your hand digs into your pocket, finding the wand magically materializing there. âHow much do you want?â  The man hums and picks a number off the top of his head. âA hundred million?â  âYouâre going to put a hundred million in your account all at once? That sounds like a bad idea.â  âNo oneâs going to notice.â He waves his hand off. âDonât be such a worrier. Youâre going to get wrinkles by the time youâre forty.â  âThereâs nothing wrong with wrinkles,â you mutter with a sigh. The want trembles in your pocket and a second later, you hand a cheque to him. Taehyung smiles and turns to the ATM. You watch his back, making sure he doesnât get mugged.  He puts it into his bank, ready to pay off his loans in one go and eventually transfer it to his family and those who are important to him â to charity and to you too.  It was wrong of you to dehumanize Taehyung and boil him down to some ex-fuckboy. Heâs more than that, just a little lost, but heâs a ray of sunshine, passionate and eager, thoughtful and sweet. You can feel your heart softening for him and maybe thatâs why youâre turning more into an idiot as well.  //  Ken scrolls through his computer.  Heâs bored looking through the records and the numerous spreadsheets that have enough numbers to make his brain implode. He blinks wearily, feeling his eye bags deepen in its purple hue. The man has turned off the fluorescent lights, sitting in the darkness. The bright light of the monitor screen casts on his face.  He exhales in exhaustion and drinks his coffee in the thermostat, leaning back in his chair.  But suddenly, thereâs a notification on the corner of his screen.  His eyes grow wide on what he sees on the monitor. And Ken spits out his mouthful of coffee. The brown liquid spews off his tongue and drenches his keyboard and all over his dress pants.  He screams, bloodcurdling at the burning temperature and he dabs the mess pathetically with a crumpled tissue while his other hand grabs the phone, going on speed dial. âBoss? Yeah, Iâm sorry. But youâre gonna want to see this.â  It goes through a long chain of command. Phone call after phone call until every department is awoken at four thirty. There are grumbles from each person, but the floor becomes alive again. Though thereâs more bewilderment and confusion than outright panic.  The phone rings, blaring. It nearly falls off the bedside table.  Seokjin is shocked awake.  He crawls out of his bed, emerging like a bear after a season of hibernation. âWhat the hell are you calling me for, Namjoon? Do you know that the goddamn time is?â The dark-haired manâs voice is thick and groggy. He scratches his scalp and looks at the time â the red digits reading four thirty seven a.m.  âItâs an emergency.â  âIt always is.â Jin stands up nonetheless and switches his lamp on. He grabs his clothes from the closet and sighs, glancing at how puffy his face is in the mirror. âIs it another murder?â  âNo. Itâs worse.â  It sounds dire and the detective drives quickly to the station. As he arrives, the floor is bustling with people and he doesnât waste a second to look at the files provided to him. Exceptâ  âThis isnât worse than murder!â he shouts in exasperation, âItâs just some guy under the suspicion of printing money!â  âYeah, but weâre still part of the investigation team.â Namjoon leans on the desk and takes a sip of his coffee cup like itâs noon and thereâs no reason to be grumpy. âItâs still a job.â  âI didnât even brush my teeth.â Jin glares narrowly at his partner.  âAnd you still came late,â Namjoon argues back. âI already took a look at his profile and found where heâs staying at. Letâs go.â The older male follows and Namjoon talks as they both walk out. âHis name is Kim Taehyung. Male. Late 20âs. Single. Unemployed. But he put a hundred million in his bank account about an hour ago.â  âA hundred million dollars?! Jesus christ, where did he get that?!â  âYeah, itâs not something you can get from just spending a few nights at the casino. Itâs most likely through some kind of money laundering. Theyâre suspicions that itâs tied with the Jeon family. Thatâs why our department took the case,â he tells and it all clicks in Jinâs head.  After all, theyâve been investigating gangs and corruption in the city for the better part of two years now.  Though one thing doesnât make any sense â âBut why would they choose this guy?â  âNo idea.â Namjoon is honest and as befuddled as the rest of the team. âHeâs completely clean as far as weâve seen. No connection to the family whatsoever, no criminal background, no relations. He came here a year ago and hasnât been doing much.â  âIs it possible he could be just a new recruit of Jeonâs?â  âTo entrust a new recruit with a hundred million dollars?â Namjoon shakes his head. âIâm not sure. Doesnât sit right with me. Weâre going to get him now since thereâs reason to believe he might be a flight risk. This Kim Taehyung may be what we need to bust Jeon once and for all.â  Seokjin nods and they both get into the car.  //  At the same time, half across the city in a high-rise building, a shorter man with black hair and frighteningly cold eyes knocks against the door once. It is eerily quiet and after a second, thereâs a smooth voice from the other side.  âCome in.â  Jungkook is sitting at his desk, swirling a cup of bourbon in his left hand. The ice clinks against the fragile glass, liquid inside sparkling against the dim chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The person entering automatically lowers his head towards the younger male.  âWhatâs the matter, Yoongi?â he asks curiously at why heâs being disturbed at this time of night. The walls are dark, expressionless portraits grand, curtains drawn like itâs permanently a state of night in this office.  The man named Yoongi lifts his head. âI received a message from our informant.â  âAnd?â  âTheyâre going after an individual named Kim Taehyung. They believe he has connections to us.â  Itâs absurd and the leader is made confused. He searches his mind, but is unable to recall such a name. Jungkook has never heard of him in his entire life. âWhy would they?â  âThis individual deposited a hundred million into his bank account.â  He almost chokes on air. Instead, Jungkook masks a composted exterior he was taught since he was born and sets his drink down. He sits straight and clasps his hand on top of his mahogany desk. âThatâsâŚ.bold.â  It isnât idiotic. Itâs a tactic. By doing something so brazen, this Kim Taehyung was trying to send a message to everyone else. âWho is this man?â  âWe have no idea,â Yoongi answers honestly. âThe police force is as confused as we are. He appeared out of nowhere.â  âThen he must be a rival. He may be from TaiwanâŚ.â Jungkook considers it and sharply inhales. Kim Tae from Taiwan. This was the Great Gatsby in real life. This mysterious stranger could perhaps have an empire overseas. In less than a day heâs become infamous in Macau. But whatever the case may beâŚ.  âBring him to me.â  âUnderstood.â Yoongi lowers his head, preparing to leave.  âAnd whatever information you receive, tell me.â Jungkook stands. âWe need to take each threat seriously.â  //  Itâs five in the morning when you and Taehyung finally arrive back at the hotel. All the sleep that you had ached for earlier has left your body. Youâre past the state of exhaustion and into the stage of deliriousness. But the diminishing logical side of you tells you that you should go to bed anyhow and rest up before going on the search for Taehyungâs girl.  Unfortunately, Taehyung is still hyper energetic, more so than before now that he has two burgers, a mountain of fries and a liter of sugary soda in his gut. He becomes curious of the twenty-four hour gift shop in the lobby, looking at all the knickknacks and snow globes.  You whine to him enough that he laughs and tells you to go up to the room first.  ââfloor is he on?â  âTop floor,â the taller one answers and then thereâs a pause.  The two males turn their heads to stare at you and it takes a delayed moment for you to enter the elevator. Maybe itâs deliriousness getting to you but both are incredibly handsome men. The slightly shorter one has princely features, full lips and dark hair, clad in a long taupe jacket. The other is a brunette, dressed in a casual topcoat and wearing thick rectangular glasses that reminds you of what a modern spy would wear.  You realize youâve been drooling when they smile politely at you. âUh...what floor are you going to miss?â  âUmmâŚâ You swallow your mouthful of saliva, turning to the elevator buttons and finding the top floor already pressed. It strikes you oddly considering you didnât see anyone else staying there. And for some reason, your mind tickles and you blurt outâ âThirtieth floor, please.â  âAlright.â The brunette presses the button and you watch the metal doors close.  âYou know, now that weâre here, we should check out the Paiza Club and Dining lounge. I heard they have something called Chocolate Brioche Bread Pudding that is to die for.â  âWeâre here on an investigation, Jin,â the taller one scolds, whispering under his breath.  âYou need to lighten up, Namjoon.â He gives an exaggerated and playful sigh, hand plopping on his partnerâs shoulder. âWhen you can have some fun, you should take it! At this rate, youâll die a workaholic.â  âIâm not going to go eat Bread Pudding.â  âYouâre no fun.â He clicks his tongue and stares straight ahead, speaking lowly, âWe went all the way here, but we might not even run into Kim Taehyung. Should make the most out of this trip.â  In the midst of their conversation, youâve turned to stare at them. This time not because youâre marveling at their handsomeness. The name rings in your ears and you donât realize just how intensive your gaze is, hardcore even. It doesnât take three seconds before the hair on the back of their necks raise and they crane their necks over.  âCan we help you?â the man named Namjoon asks.  âN-no, Iâm okay.â  You whip your head to look forward again. But it only arouses suspicion and the two experienced detectives exchange an array of expressions with one another.  Seokjin smiles and glances at you. âDid you have a fun night tonight?â  Youâre shocked that heâs speaking to you, but you manage to scrape up something coherent. âMe? Yes. I was down at the casino.â The corner of your mouth lifts stiffly. âIt was fun.â  Jin steps forward, closer, and you feel cornered. His hand slips into his coat pocket and he pulls out a picture of someone you recognize all too well. Itâs a fuzzy photo, one that looks like his driverâs license. âDid you happen to see this man?â  You wear a blank look, mind delayed and then you peek up at them both, quirking your head to the side. âOh. I met him in the lobby earlier this afternoon.â  âSo, heâs staying here, correct?â  âYes, I think so.â You nod once, not sure where all these lies were coming from. It was instinctual to protect Taehyung and your intuition told you not to trust these two men. âWe talked briefly when he sat next to me at a slot machine. He seemed fairly nice. Are you looking for him?â  âWeâre just searching to inquire about a case he may have witnessed,â Namjoon says simply without revealing much. He turns his body towards you, narrowing his eyes and watching your every movement. âDid he happen to say anything to you? Anything important at all?â  âNot at all. I believe we talked about theâŚ.gift shop and the snow globe sales in there. He left afterwards, but he seemed pretty nice.â Itâs a good thing your body is too tired to make any suspicious movements. You feel like youâre having an out-of-body experience. Luckily, your concern for Taehyung comes across as concern for society. âCan I ask what happened?â  âItâs a private investigation, we canât reveal anything.â â âHeâs under the suspicion of money laundering.â  Namjoon and Jin answer at the same time. And as it tumbles out of their months, realization sinking in, thereâs a suffocating silence drawn out. The two detectives exchange expressions, Namjoon glaring and Jin knowing he fucked up badly.  You give your best gasp thatâs not completely fabricated. âT-thatâs horrible!â  âWell, hopefully we can catch him soon and make the streets safer.â Jin offers a tense smile to comfort your worries.  The elevators open to the thirtieth floor. âGood luck and good night then.â  âYes, goodnight.â The handsome investigator nods and you smile, walking away as the doors close and you hear the two men bickering with each other.  The moment itâs quiet again, you whip yourself into the fire escape, running. Your feet shuffle as if youâre doing drills, step after step, leaping down the staircases. You nearly trip and eat shit on the hard ground, but you catch yourself, gripping onto the banister.  Itâs thirty levels you have to dive down and you just hope Taehyung hasnât gone up yet. Every five floors, you peek out to the elevator, finding the numbers increasing to show Namjoon and Jin are continuing upwards. Luckily, the other elevator remains stagnant and you can only wish for the best.  A deep breath is stolen through the seams of your lips and you pass a few drunk people giggling. Sweat drips down your head. Curses spill out of your mouth. You almost start crying, but you make it to the lobby, launching your body out, startling several strangers as you burst out the door.  The person youâre looking for is standing right there.  Taehyung is innocently waiting in front of the elevators, rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes. You donât waste a second, throwing yourself at him. The second Taehyung sees you, on instinct, a grin spreads across his face. He opens his arms and catches you, hugging you back.  âY/N? Whatâs wrong? Did you take the stairs?â  Youâre hyperventilating. âT-T-TaeâŚâ  The blonde man has an endeared expression as he looks down at you. His smile softens and he holds your arms before lifting up his left wrist, showing off the plastic bag. âIn the end, I couldnât choose any snow globe or postcard, but I got cat mugs for us. Theyâre matching and in the shape of a cat! Fifty percent off for the second one too! Cute, huh?â  âT-TaehyungâŚ..th...eâŚ.theâŚ.p...p-o...liceâŚâ  âWhat?â  âTh...e...p...o..liâŚ.câŚ.eâ  âWhat?â  âThe police are here!â you whisper harshly and out of desperation. All at once, his expression falls and he pales.  âWhat?â  //  The two investigators linger outside the door. They shift the weight of their foot from one to the next, waiting patiently as if theyâre trick-or-treaters on Halloween or simply very insistent missionaries who want to enlighten people and lead them away from Hell.  But after a full minute, thereâs still silence and no movement made on the other side.  Seokjin leans over and rings the doorbell again. The sound can be heard echoing throughout the suite. Jin rings the bell yet again and this time he knocks five times.  âPolice! Open up!â  Silence.  Jin cranes his neck to his frustrated partner. âI donât think heâs in there.â  Thereâs no choice and Namjoonâs patience is running too thin. He digs in his pocket, taking the keycard out and he swipes it at the handle. It flashes green and he pushes the door open.  âOoh, breaking the rules, arenât we, Joon?â Jin teases, âLook at how bold youâre getting. Barging in without a search warrant? Iâm proud. Never thought Iâd see the day youâd actually bend the rules a little.â  âHeyâŚâ Namjoon enters the room without looking back.  âYeah?â  âCan you shut up?â  âWill do.â  The two of them enter, yelling out that theyâre police. But like before, there arenât any responses. They check each room thoroughly, peeking in the closet, looking underneath the bed. Itâs empty. There arenât any suspicious belongings either and when Jin and Namjoon regroup, they suspect this Kim Taehyung mustâve known they were coming and purposely slipped under the radar.  âDamn.â  This person wasnât to be messed with.  //  âOh my god, oh my god.â Youâre shaking your head, whispering in disbelief. Panic has set over your body and caused you to hyperventilate, blood rushing in your veins, air never staying in your lungs. âWe are so fucked, we are so fucked, Taehyung. Holy fucking shit. Weâre going to jail.â  âWeâre not going to jail,â he counters.  âThey think youâre involved in money laundering!â you spit at him. âHow are we going to explain the one hundred million dollars?! God, I knew that was a bad idea. I shouldâve stopped you. No...itâs not your fault. You wouldnât blame a four year old for eating candyââ  âIâm not a four year old!â  ââyouâd blame the parent that gave it to them. I fucked up.â Youâre pacing back and forth, fully aware that itâs not helping, but you donât know what else to do anymore. In the span of a day, youâve screwed up your entire life. âI fucked up!â  âY/N, stop.â His hands drop down to your shoulders, halting you mid-step. âCanât we just tell them what actually happened? Itâs not like you and I did something actually illegal.â  You shove his hands off of you, narrowing your eyes. âYou think we can just waltz up to law enforcement and tell them we got a hundred million from magic?!â  âIf we show them, theyâd believe us.â  âAnd then theyâd take me away!â Your arms in the air, already envisioning you strapped down to a medical table. âTheyâd take my wand, take my blood and my family, take me in for experimentation! Itâs a family secret for a reason, Taehyung! Thereâs a reason we donât go around parading weâre the fairy godmotherâs descendants!â  The pair of you were hidden in his old apartment. It was a sad and small room, falling apart in the corners. Taehyung was evicted a few months ago, but he knew it was empty and helped you climb the fire escape as he busted a weak spot on the door outside. Despite it being relatively reclusive, there was no possible way that you could stay long.  The police would know this place and come investigating sooner or later. Theyâd probably pull the floorboards apart to make sure heâs not hiding any money or drugs. And eventually, they were going to find you tied up with him in all this.  There is no escape.  âHow do we undo this?â you ask him, completely lost and hysterical.  His eyes spark with an idea. âCan I wish for an invisibility cloak?â  âI canât grant you something that doesnât exist,â you sigh out and begin to consider the possibilities. You had magic on your side after all. It was definitely a choice to give him a gun to protect himself, but then that would be an unregistered firearm and could land the two of you in a bigger world of trouble. The car was unregistered as well. Getting a plane or spaceship out of Macau would be impossible as well. If you snuck out of Macau, you donât know where youâd go.  Itâs funny how you can grant any wish, yet you feel so limited.  Cinderella never went like this â she was never chased down by the fucking police.  âY/N, weâre going to be okay.â  âHow can you say that?! Weâre not going to be okay. Weâre not! Thatâs a fact! Weâre screwed!â  âCan you please just trust me?!â he shouts above you, probably allowing the neighbors to hear. But his deafening volume shocks you to silence and your mouth seals. Taehyungâs gaze is intense and he licks the seam of his lips, swallowing hard. âI trusted you once. So trust me. Can you do that?â  âI...I donât knowâŚ.â  The man in front of you reaches down, holding your hand and squeezing it. As he soothes you, he makes a promise, âI wonât let you get hurt.â  âAnd what about you?â  âI wonât go to prison.â He wears a soft smile. âWhy would I? I didnât do anything wrong but indulge a little with my fairy.â  Itâs stupid of you â but you chose to believe him. Taehyung trusted you once. Itâs only right if you give him a chance as well, let him prove to you whatever he wants as you once proved to him your abilities.  For now, the two of you have to look for another place to go to and after a bit of rest, he takes your hand and leaves, never once showing any fear for the circumstances ahead.  //  The security room is cozy with monitors all around, staticy screens showing every corner of the casino. The athletic male is leaning over, watching with intensity as the technician delves into the hours of CCTV footage and searches thoroughly.  Namjoon mutters under his breath, obsessed with figuring out this puzzle, âWhere did he go?â  Jin hangs up the phone and joins his partner. âHoseok and Sowonâs patrol car broke down.â  âAgain?â  âYeah. Theyâre jump starting it now, but the battery might be done for.â  He shakes his head. âEverything always falls on us, huh?â  âSometimes it can be easier like that.â Jinâs hand plops on his partnerâs shoulder, giving a cheesy grin and squeeze. âRemember all those old days when we were new to the department and we dug up cases even when boss said they were done? But we broke the rules and solved them anyhow? Those were the days! Doesnât it make you feel nostalgic?â  âNo.â  âOh, come on,â Seokjin whines much to the working technicianâs amusement. âWe solved so many cases with just the two of us! It was fun!â  âWe almost got fired.â  âBut we didnât,â he chimes.  âStop. Right there.â Namjoonâs finger juts at the monitor and the two detectives lean in with their eyes squinting. As far away as the camera is, the features of the male are indistinguishable. He was dressed cleanly, but looked like he had a whole night out, wrinkled dress shirt with the top buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He definitely looked like a man of money, power, and sophistication. âHuh. Heâs right there.â  âAnd that was at five twentyâŚ...what time did we arrive, Namjoon?â  âFive fifteen.â  âWhat in theââ The footage continues and the two men watch as you come running from the fire escape door and launch into Taehyungâs arms, observing the way he hugs you. âOh my god. Thatâs her! The girl we talked to in the elevator!â  They exchange looks with one another.  A radio call is received that helps piece things together. Earlier yesterday, half across Macau in a lower class hotel, Taehyung was spotted. The people in the lobby said they witnessed Taehyung and thought he was a gigolo. And yet again, you were there with him the entire time.  âJin. Get those arrest warrants.â His partner nods in response and he turns to the security technician. âCan we see what direction they went?â  âSure thing.â The man smiles. âOur CCTV goes for blocks.â  //  Taehyung has spent an entire year in Macau. Itâs needless to say that he knows all the kind spots â even if those are places are underneath bridges or in secluded alleys. You trust him enough to lead you as you figure out what to do or at least evade the police for long enough and buy some time so you two can somehow figure out what to do with all the money in his account.  If there was a way to get rid of it, you could act like it was never there in the first place or it was soft of mistake that neither you nor Taehyung have anything to do with.  So, you go with Taehyung, never once realizing who was following you two.  Itâs not until youâre standing at an alleyway, taking cover after hearing sirens and being relieved that itâs just an ambulance, do you truly come to realize the detrimental state of the situation.  âWeâre safe,â he breathes out as the ambulance passes and you nod.  âAre you Kim Taehyung?â A deep, rumbling voice comes from the end of the alley and you both jolt with a scream. A short man emerges from the darkness. His black hair matches his dark eyes and the colour of his clothing. He is in a leather jacket, boots and gloves too.  Youâre alarmed, his piercing gaze sending chills down your spine. You catch the tattoos on his neck, the only skin on his body revealed, and it appears to be symbols spiraling upwards like the tail of a dragon. Heâs not holding any weapons as far as you can see, but his presence still sends goosebumps all over your arms.  Heâs dangerous â and itâs not only your instincts that scream it.  You and Taehyung are holding onto each other, backing up slightly. âWho are you?â  âAre you or are you not Kim Taehyung?â Yoongi steps forward, coming more into the light and the man holding you pushes you behind him.  âThatâs me. What do you want?â  Yoongi scans him up and down as if heâs looking to purchase a fish at the market and is sorely unimpressed with what he sees. There seems to be a glimmer of uncertainty and confusion before he masks it with impassiveness. âThereâs someone who wants to speak with you. Come with me.â  âIâm not going anywhere.â  âYou donât have a choice,â the stranger says pressingly. âYou can come with me willingly or not. Itâs your choice.â  âWho is it?â you pipe up over Taehyungâs shoulder. âWho wants to see us? Weâre not going unless you tell us.â  âJeon Jungkook,â the man becomes tired of the negotiation and hisses the name in a husky timbre like it is a name worthy of a kingâs honour.  But there is silence.  You and Taehyung look at each other. âWho?â  The gangster is gawking in disbelief, appalled at this show of ignorance that might be an indication of Taehyungâs sheer power â to not know Jungkook in this world was to either be deaf and blind or high up enough that he never spared a glance at any rival. Just how powerful was this Taehyung? But why is he curled up in an alley with some girl? None of it made sense.  Yoongi is puzzled.  âJeon Jungkook from the Jeon family.â  Taehyung nudges you. âHe sounds familiar. I think I read his page on wikipedia.â  âWhat did it say?â you whisper despite Yoongi being able to hear everything.  âHeâs the leader of aâŚ.aâŚ.cart.â  âA cart? Like a food cart?â  âNo, wait. I think I remember now. Not a cartâŚ.a cartel.â  âHeâs part of the mob?!â Youâre shouting, eyes almost falling out of their sockets. Oh my god. This just got a thousand times worse and youâre starting to wonder if this is a terrible nightmare youâre having on the plane and you havenât actually landed in Macau yet or maybe this was a hidden camera and you were going to be famous on a variety show. You hoped it was either one...  There was just no way Taehyung could be wanted by the police and now the mafia in Macau.  âYou donât know who Jeon Jungkook is?â Yoongi inquires with raised brows. âAre you sure youâre Kim Taehyung?â  âYes, but I donât know who you think I am,â he tries to reason, but it unknowingly sounds like heâs boasting. âI have nothing to do with your cartel.â  âIf you show up on our turf, in our space, you are now.â  âWhat? No! Iâm not part of any cartel. I didnât know this was your turf, but Iâm not dealing with any drugs or anything. I am literally not involved in any criminal activity!â  Yoongiâs blank expression is washed over with bewilderment. âAre...you not from Taiwan?â  âNo!â  âYouâŚ.donât have an empire?â  âWhat empire?â Taehyung is at a loss as he tries to clarify. âIâm not related to the mafia whatsoever. Not here. Not in Taiwan. Not in Korea. Not anywhere!â  âThen where did you get the money?â The dark-haired individual steps closer, gaze narrowing in. âWhere did you get the hundred million dollars from?â  âI...won it at the casino.â Taehyung backs up, holding you close behind him and you shuffle together.  âA hundred million?â The man scoffs before coldly chuckling. âDoubt it. The biggest winning is twenty one million dollars. Yours is almost five times as much.â  âW-what do you want with us? Do you want the money?!â  âNo.â He rolls his shoulders and smirks, tugging his gloves to secure them. âAt any rate, you should come meet my boss.â  The true lottery that Taehyung won is Kim Seokjin and Kim Namjoon arriving in the nick of time.  Heâs down the avenue and flips on his police car siren. Everyone moves out the way and he zips through traffic like heâs part of Fast and Furious. Namjoon leans over and turns it off. Jin turns it back on a second later and flashes a glare.  âLeave it!â  âWeâre not chasing anyone! We shouldnât turn on the siren!â  âBut we can avoid all this traffic!â He grips the steering wheel tighter. âMy car, my rules.â  âItâs the stationâs car.â  âI drive, my rules.â Jin turns his nose up into the air, purposely acting snotty. âIf you want to drive, then be my guest. But let me remind you that the last time you did, you hit five trash cans consecutively and skimmed against three other cars.â  âThey werenât parked right at the curb!â he argues and in his rage, turns off the siren.  Seokjin turns it back on, face getting red and hot. He screams, âHands off my fucking siren, motherfucker!â The warbling pitch of the siren is deafening. It wails in the air, drowning out Namjoon and Jinâs arguing inside the vehicle, while red and blue lights fly into the sky, flashing onto pavement. It comes closer and closer and Yoongi curses underneath his breath. He steps forward, but Taehyung holds you back, making it obvious that heâs not giving you or himself up without a fight.  Your hand wraps around Taehyungâs and you take the opportunity to run. Itâs risky to go sprinting across the road while the police car is approaching, but you barely make it and Yoongi has no other choice â forced to retreat and withdraw back into the shadows.  It was amazing, really. In just a few hours, Taehyung became infamous and now everyone wants a piece of him. Too bad you come with him like a buy one, get one free package.  //  The four glass walls trapped you, but not necessarily suffocating your spirit with its transparent surfaces. Instead, it makes you feel vulnerable, like the police or mafia could catch you here.  It was a bit better when Taehyungâs body covered one side of the phone booth, his back towards you as heâs on the lookout. You had conjured a face mask and a dark hoodie for him to cover himself up with, sunglasses as well and you wonder if it just makes him more suspicious.  Thoughts pushed aside, you gain the courage to pick up the handle, slide the coins in and dial the memorized number. It was morning now with people beginning to stir and you know the person on the other line was awake too at this time. But considering the number would appear as unknown on her phone, itâs a streak of luck when the dial tone stops and itâs actually picked up.  âYeah hello?â  âHello?â  âWho is this?â  âItâs Y/NâŚ.â  It takes one split of a second. Your bossâ chirping morphs into rage, dropping into a deep pitch and growly like a monster. âWhat are you doing calling me on this number?! I texted you last night several times! Do you think youâre going on vacation, Y/N?! I expected better from you! What time is it over there?! Arenât you supposed to go to the meeting?!â  Shrill screams ring into your eardrums and you have to pull the handset away from your ear for a moment. This had to be considered as some kind of verbal abuse. âDo you know how important this investor could be to my business?!â  âA-a-about thatâŚâ  âWhat?! Speak up!â  âI...I might have to reschedule,â you murmur, âI...Iâm sorry. I donât think I can meet him today.â  âAre you kidding me?! Y/N!â Sheâs yelling at the top of her lungs. âWhat the hell are you doing over there?! Why are you rescheduling?!â  You donât realize youâre crying until your cheeks feel wet and you wipe your eyes quickly with the sleeve of your sweater. âIâm sorry.â You bow from your waist despite her not being able to see you. Itâs instinctual as if youâre part of Pavlovâs Dogs, and sheâs trained you to be this way. âIâm sorry. Iâm sorry.â  âI donât need your apology! I need you to meet him! How will my candles sell now?! Will you buy them?!â  Suddenly, thereâs knocking on the glass. You lift your head to find Taehyung worries, his brows knitted together tightly. He mouths âare you okay?â and you nod, wiping your eyes.  âIâm sorry.â Truth be told, you werenât okay. Not in the least bit. You were on the verge of being fired.  The phone call eventually ends when you run out of coins and youâre no longer able to hear her even when sheâs still screaming at you and making you face her wrath and fury. You donât care about your job or about candles. But you donât enjoy being humiliated by anyone and at the end of the day, itâs your means of survival. Without your shitty job, you donât have anything and thatâs the sad part.  Thereâs silence as you sit on the bench, facing the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea. From the distance, you can see the docks of Macau and the shadows of the nearby islands. Itâs serene and you feel yourself relaxing, giving up. They could come take you now â arrest Taehyung for money laundering and take you to investigation. Heâd be imprisoned and they might take you in for experimentation. Or better yet, the Macau mafia could take you first, kill you and Taehyung, and then steal the moneyâŚ.  This is not what Cinderella was like.  You much prefer the fairytale version that you detested for so long.  âWhat are you thinking about?â you ask him, breaking the quiet and turning your head to his handsome profile. Taehyung is looking out at the horizon, oddly calm too. No one was freaking out anymore.  âHow I donât want you to get caught up in all of this.â  Even when heâs in this predicament, heâs not thinking about himself â Taehyungâs thinking about you. You admire his selflessness and your hand reaches out, pinky first before your palm slides on top of his. Taehyung gets used to your touch before flipping his hand over and lacing your fingers together. It was comforting to hold his hand like this.  Your gaze softens on his profile and he turns, locking his eyes with yours. âI want to find who Iâm looking for.â  âRight now?â  He nods. âIf I can get my happy ending, you can escape from all this. You can be free from me.â  âYou canât get your happy ending if youâre being chased by the mafia or by the police, Taehyung.â  He squeezes your palm. âI want to try. I donât want you to be stuck to me.â  âI can leave, Taehyung,â you tell him in a gentle murmur, âI could leave right now. Iâm not stuck to you. Iâm choosing to be here.â  âYeah, but you have an obligation to be with me at the end of the day or at least fulfill my wishes.â The corner of his mouth lifts with a sad smile. âI donât want you to have to feel that way.â  âI donâtââ  âLet me go find her.â  âIs that what you want?â you question him, searching his expression. âForget about me for a moment. Think about yourselfâŚâ  âI am,â he assures and helps you stand up.  Youâre uncertain â you donât even know what a happy ending means.  //  Itâs a slip of paper with an address messily scribbled on it, the blue ink slightly bleeding on the crumpled paper. Taehyung tells you when he came here, he had an old picture of her and asked around the streets of Macau like she was a missing person. He followed faint trails here and there, going on a wild goose chase until someone told him they had seen her before and wrote down where.  And here you were with him â on some dingy street, standing in front of a butcherâs shop.  âSheâs supposed to be here?â You stare at the shop, reading the name of it written in bold red.  âMaybe. An old lady at a fish market saw her working here before.â Taehyung glances at you for an extended time and you turn your head, blinking at him.  âAre we going in?â  âY-yeahâŚ.rightâŚâ He pulls the door open, letting you in first. The butcher owner is grinning, asking if you two want to buy some meat and what kind, but Taehyung greets him and then slides the picture over to him, explains why heâs here. âHave you seen her?â  âBae Jenny? Yes. She lives across the street!â The older man points out the window. âRight there.â  Youâre surprised. Taehyung seems even more shocked. Her location is finally pinpointed into a definite place, so close. It occurs to you all this trouble so far couldâve been avoided. Heck, Taehyung probably wouldâve found her two days ago if you never ran into himâŚ.  The man frowns. âBut who are you?â  âI...Iâm an old friend of herâs.â  He nods in understanding. âShe should be home at the moment. I believe itâs her day off of work.â  The bell chimes as you two exit the shop. Itâs quiet. Taehyung is contemplative and youâre on autopilot while you cross the street safely, taking the stairs outside the run-down building. You shuffle to the open apartment complex, stopping right in front of the door.  âWeâre lucky, huh?â  âI guess.â  You brace yourself with a deep breath, but when Taehyung doesnât move, you frown. âWell, arenât you going to knock?â  âY/N. I need to tell you something.â He turns to face you, swallowing hard like he has something important to say and itâs simply caught in his throat and heâs not used to this kind of thing. âThis happy ending that youâre trying to achieve for me. I...I donât need this. What I want isââ  The door swings open. Thereâs a girl holding her trash bag. She freezes.  âTaehyung?!â  His eyes are wide, rounded with horror. âJenny?â  The female is short and petite with long, black hair. She is a doll with delicate features and you wonder if she always looks this amazing at home â dressed like sheâs going out, eyeliner and pink lipstick. She is gorgeous and breathtaking. This is what you envisioned your Cinderella to look like.  âWhat in the ever living fuck.â She glances at you and glances back at him. âWhat the hell are you doing here?â  He waves meekly. âH-Hi.â  Eventually, the two of you are invited into her cozy home. Itâs small, but comfortable. Though you canât get settled down, feeling too awkward as the third wheel. With a harsh nudge from you, the suffocating silence is interrupted by Taehyung who starts off with, âItâs good to see you.â  âYeah? Canât relate. How did you find me in the first place? Last I checked, I ghosted you on everything and I havenât posted about my whereabouts in a long time.â  âI...Iâve been looking for you. I asked around for a long time.â  âWhy?â Her brows raise, genuinely confused and unable to rationalize it.  âI...Iâm in love with youâŚ?â The last syllable of Taehyungâs weak declaration has its pitch increasing like heâs unsure of himself and questioning it too. It sounds weird and you donât know what his issue is. Wasnât this what he wanted?  Jenny is unimpressed and also unfazed. âAre you serious?â  âI...guess.â  âYou know we were together for less than five months?â  âYeah.â  âYou didnât even consider it official.â  âI..knowâŚâ  âAnd that was four years ago.â  âUh-huh.â  âYou cheated on me, remember?â Jenny looks like sheâs five seconds away from slapping him or splashing him with her glass of water and when she puts it like that, your initial disbelief with Taehyung returns. He nods and you realize how ridiculous this all is. Itâs obvious â he doesnât love her. Or whatever he thinks, whatever he feels, it isnât love.  Jenny sighs tiredly, aged an additional fifty years with him in front of her. âYouâre an idiot. An absolute idiot, Taehyung. For coming here. For saying that. I donât love you. Never had. Never will. We didnât even have anything special. It was a basic relationship.â  He nods again, unable to say anything.  The girl regards him with narrowed eyes. âIf you think it was anything great, then frankly, youâre just idealizing our relationship and romanticizing it after itâs over because you live a fucking sad life. Youâre projecting your ideals onto us, onto me, because youâre lonely.â  âThatâsâŚ.harsh.â  But Taehyung is not surprised. Heâs rather unaffected, letting the insults roll off his shoulders, fully aware and even embracing that he is indeed an air-headed dumbass.  âWell, itâs true.â Jenny sets her cup down and leans back in her seat, crossing her arms. âYouâre lonely. Always have been. You just never wanted to admit it, so you found all these girls to try to temporarily fix your problems. And once I realized your issues, I dropped you. Iâd understand if you came for me to look for closure, but to announce you love me.â She scoffs and rolls her eyes to the back of her skull. âAre you kidding me?â  âSorry.â Heâs fiddling with his fingers and scratching the back of his neck. Taehyung came all this way. This was most definitely not the outcome you were expecting. You thought sheâd leap into his arms, that theyâd go prancing into the fields together and get married. But you suppose romance never worked like that in real life.  Itâs not your place to say anything either.  âIâm sorry for you too.â She sighs again. âHonestly, I couldnât love you even if I wanted to, Taehyung. I like girls.â  He quirks his head to the side, mildly interested at the new development. âYou like girls?â  âYeah. I mean guys are fine too, but I prefer girls. I can...tolerate them better.â Jenny steals a glance at you, the corner of her mouth curling. âThis oneâs a cute one.â  âThanks..?â Youâre sheepish, having stayed quiet and out of the conversation. But all the while, sheâs noticed you and read your expression like itâs an open book.  âIs that all?â Jenny looks back at Taehyung. âI gotta get ready and leave soon. I got a hot date scheduled and frankly, I think this conversation is over..â  âYeah, weâll get going.â He stands up, waltzing outside without begging to stay or pleading with her to be heard. He acts nothing like a person who wants to redeem himself in front of the woman he supposedly loves.  Jenny leans against her door frame. âHey, Taehyung. Wait.â He hums, spinning on his heel and she smiles. Between the two of them, there aren't any harsh feelings or emotions of resentment left. You can see it on her face that sheâs mostly apathetic about his existence and only slightly annoyed by his antics. âIf you ever wanna stop being dumb and go clubbing with an old friend some time, call me up. I know a few places.â  He smiles, a puff of air coming from his nose, having expected nothing less. âOkay.â  âAnd bring this one too.â Jenny smiles at you. âI havenât seen someone tolerate your bullshit in a long time and sheâs a pretty one.â  âY-yeah.â  The two of you walk without saying anything for an entire block. Youâre reeling, not sure what just happened. But Taehyung isnât heartbroken at all or as devastated as you thought heâd be. He seems to only be embarrassed for the rejection and having his issues said aloud, all the things that haunted his mind coming to confront him.  âSo...that was that...are you hungry? Iâm sort of. Maybe we should go get some waffles.â The blonde male turns his head and then freezes up. Youâre crying silently, tears shedding down your cheeks as if you just splashed your face with water. âY/N?â  âFuck, what are we supposed to do now?!â You wipe your eyes with the back of your hand. Youâve lost it. Everything was crumbling down onto your shoulders, the weight of what youâve done heavy. âShe was supposed to take you back! But she insulted you and you didnât even say anything back!â  âWell, what she said was trueââ  âNo! Youâre not that big of a dumbass.â  A smile pulls on his lips, endeared and he wraps his arm around your shoulder. âThanks. I appreciate it.â  âI failed.â  âYou didnât.â  âI did. Iâm supposed to give you a happy ending, but I canât even do such a simple thing that the rest of my family accomplished! I donât even know what a happy ending means! What does it mean, Taehyung? What does it mean?! Things donât end until we die! Life always continues and there will always be issues. How can you have a happy ending? How can you be happy forever?! Do you even want that?!â  âNo. I donât want a happy ending. Youâre right.â Taehyung composes you, calming your turmoil and he grins. âI want adventure and Iâm having that with you right now. My precious fairy that makes all my wishes come true.â  Youâre catching your breath. âThis is what you want?â  âWell, maybe not being chased by the police or by the mob, but being with you. Itâs fun, right?â  âFun?!â  âItâs fun,â he assures and his arm slinks off of you. Instead, Taehyung reaches down to hold your hand, lacing his fingers with yours. âAnd itâll be better when things are okay again. Right now, I can think of one or two ways to make things better...and to solve our little issue. Do you trust me?â  Thereâs a pause. You sigh and nod once. âI do.â  As distressed as you may be, lying isnât easy â youâre relieved that Taehyungâs with you.  //  Yoongi follows closely and swiftly, yet discreetly as he remains in the shadows. Heâs been tailing the two of you since he parted ways hours ago and it was curious. So many things he was befuddled about despite being so well-informed about this world. You spoke to someone at a telephone booth, to who Yoongi has no idea. But Taehyung watched your back â that means you had an important part to play in all this, important enough that the man has to protect you.  Then the pair of you also sat on a bench for an extended period of time. Perhaps waiting for someone else or maybe signaling to another person nearby that things were progressing. Itâs the most mundane activities that often signify the most.  Yoongi followed you to a butcherâs shop, an innocent little place that has potential of being more, perhaps where the money was supposed to be laundered. And then you went to see someone, a woman who quickly shut the door after you entered.  The gangster is intrigued, that much is clear. He doesnât know whatâs going on and the longer he follows after the both of you, the more heâs learning your techniques of getting around Macau. Though it still struck Yoongi as odd as to why this Kim Tae denied coming from Taiwan, refuting that he had any part of the illegal world, of having any affiliation with a family or empire. Perhaps he wanted to remain discreet, to conduct his business without arousing any attention.  Whatever the case may be, he was a man with a talent in lying.  Yoongi almost believed you and him were innocent for a moment.  But what truly provokes his curiosity is when you disappear into an alley and you both come back with a white envelope and purposely let it fall to the ground, walking away without looking back.  Yoongi picks it up after a minute and he isnât disappointed by what he finds.  âWhat is this?â  Jungkookâs own question is answered as he opens the envelope and finds a cheque of exactly one hundred million dollars. He glances up at his right-hand man and finds another slip of paper with an address and time written on it.  âIâve been following them.â  âAnd?â  âHe denied having any affiliations with anyone and from being from Taiwan. I believe heâs lying since he doesnât want to draw attention from anyone. He seemed to want nothing to do with us. I donât believe heâs a threat.â  Jungkook nods, taking it all in and Yoongi continues divulging the information heâs collected, âI think heâs targeting police and trying to taunt them more than anything. Though Iâm not sure why. I donât know the specifics of the business theyâre conducting, but they went to various locations around Macau while evading the police.â  âHe must have some kind of vengeance against the department if heâs willing to go out personally. I wonder if he works for someoneâŚ.â The leaderâs voice draws on and he ends it in a thoughtful hum. âAnd you were telling me about a girl?â  âYes. He protects her. I have reason to believe she may even be the mastermind behind these plans.â  Jungkook rolls his tongue inside his cheek, looking at the cheque and the amount of zeros behind the number one. âThis money is a sign of an alliance.â Itâs a truce, perhaps a request to join hands and destroy the police department once and for all. While the intentions are still unclear to Jungkook, he knows what to do. âLaunder this money properly. Iâm going to meet this Kim Tae myself.â  He lowers his head and takes the cheque. âUnderstood.â  Jungkook fixes his suit jacket, tugging on the sleeves as he considers how respectable a character Taehyung is. He has to see this man for himself.  And in the meanwhileâŚ.  The department floor comes alive. The ceiling fan whirrs in rhythm with the coffee machine. Phone calls are ringing and officers greet each other as they pass. In the midst of the usual chaos, Namjoon leans back in his swivel chair, feet propped up on his desk and he sips on his caffeine drink. His feet ache, eyes weary, counting the hours since heâs been awake. But as exhausted as he is, he continues to flip through the file and re-reads the profile of the suspects.  Heâs brought back to his senses when his partner plops something down. âHoseok wanted you to see this.â  Namjoon takes it and sits up, looking through the crisp printed pages. Itâs information on the nightclub they've been keeping an eye on and that has suspicions of being linked to the Jeon family. The profits arenât out of the ordinary but for todayâs circumstances, it is.  Seokjin adds, âAll the money in Kim Taehyungâs account is gone.â  âA hundred million?! Are they tracing it?â  âThey donât know where it went, but we might be getting a sniff of it soon.â  Namjoon scoffs. âI knew it had something to do with Jeon Jungkook.â  âIâm starting to think Kim Taehyung is a red herring.â He meets his partnerâs eyes. âA pawn in the grand scheme of things.â  He nods. âSomething Jeon threw out to distract us, huh? He must know weâre closing in on them.â  âIt doesnât make sense otherwise. I keep looking into Taehyung and heâs a nobody.â  âThey mustâve had internal issues and transferred the money to him and used him to throw us off his scent. Make it so damn obvious by going to the Venetian and having shopping sprees so we canât ignore him.â Namjoon slams his fist against the desk. âThat damn Jeon. We wonât be tricked!â  Itâs not worth going after Taehyung â one shouldnât capture the pawn when they could capture the king.  Yet, it still makes the detectives frustrated. They detect Jungkookâs play, but an entire night and day has been wasted going on a wild goose chase after someone whoâs essentially a smoke screen. While theyâre thankful they realized this before wasting any more time or investing weeks into Taehyung, they donât know what to do anymore.  That is until Jung Hoseok comes running towards them. âWe just got an anonymous tip.â  //  Jeon Jungkook stands at the docks. His hands are dug within his dress pants pockets and he faces the sea, allowing the cool mist to carve through his hair and recall simpler days when he was just a child innocent of the world he belonged to. His childhood memories only ever consist of his late mother and the nannies, never of his frightening father, a father who seemed absent from all things until he was fourteen and he groomed Jungkook to become what he is today.  As he waits patiently for the infamous man heâs only heard about, he relishes in all these thoughts of a time that was simpler. His men have circled the area, securing it from anything suspicious and Yoongi is standing by, perhaps more alert than Jungkook is.  Suddenly, a black sleek car pulls up. Its wheels dig into the sand and asphalt from the road, stopping harshly without a lurch forward. The windows are tinted and Jungkook raises his left hand up, stopping Yoongi from walking over. Jungkook allows this Kim Tae to approach him first and he listens to the noise of both sides of the door opening.  Then immediately, without time to breathe the oceanâs scent, the two spin around to Jungkook.  Their pistols are pointed right at him.  âGet down on the ground!â Namjoon is shouting, deep within his stomach. âHands in the air where we can see them!â  âHands in the air!â Seokjin screams over top of his partner. âDo not reach for anything!â  Yet with one flick of Yoongiâs wrist, his handgun from his back pocket comes to point at the two officers. He cocks the gun back, preparing to fire if need be, but no one shoots.  âYouâre surrounded, Jeon Jungkook! Give up! You have nowhere to go!â  The mafia leaderâs hands lift in the air lazily, right next to his head. He spins slowly around on his heel to face the undercover officers and the corner of his lip curls. âReally now?â  âThe roads are barricaded off. Your men have been identified and are surrounded. We have our officers all over the docks.â Namjoon remains calm and composed. There wasnât a single fisherman on the docks, all undercover police officers. âItâs over.â  This was the moment they had been working so hard for. The evidence they had compiled are simply missing a few puzzle pieces. If they get Jeon Jungkook and strike a deal with him, they could shut down a chain of underground businesses and corrupt politicians. Everything could come crumbling down.  The manâs brow cocks. âWhat are you arresting me for?â  âOn suspicion of being involved in solicitation, extortion, and embezzlement.â  âAnd whereâs the evidence?â he mocks them, singsonging the question. âNone of it has my name on it. None of it connects to me.â  Seokjin smiles. âYeah? Well, youâre under arrest for money laundering. The evidence is in the hundred million dollars!â  The police department received a tip, a deep voice that mumbled Jungkookâs name, a time and a location. They were hung up on, but tracing the call, it came from a phone booth. The CCTV footage showed a person in a dark sweater, face indistinguishable, more of a shadow than a human. Perhaps it was Taehyung betraying his mafia family, but that wasnât important â the information was enough to devise a plan. It was the quickest and most hasty thing theyâve come up with in this investigation, but it worked.  They have Jeon Jungkook cornered.  As the muzzle of the gun is pointed at Jungkook, the tunnel of the barrel that seems endless, a chilling chuckle emits from the manâs throat. He knocks his head back and laughs, scaring the two officers. At the same time, more police cars pull up, siren deafening. They truly have him surrounded⌠ It hits Jungkook like a freight train â it was a trap.  This is the cost of wondering about Kim Tae from Taiwan. This was the repercussions of digging into his business in Macau, meddling in his work. Jungkook doesnât know if he respects this Kim Tae or finds him truly fearsome.  âCuriosity kills the cat, doesnât it?â His cold chuckles end and he shakes his head in regret, murmuring, âI shouldâve never poked the bear with a stick.â  Theyâre confused, but thereâs no time to react, much less to make sense of his words or respond. In a blink, Jungkookâs smirking again and with the muscle-memory that his father hammered into his skull, he reaches into his inner blazer pocket and has his own handgun.  His smirk morphs into an eerie grin and like a brat, he says, âYouâll have to take me dead.â  Someone shoots first. No one knows who or from what side, but then bullets begin spraying into the air. They take cover, glass of cars shattering, screams of âget down!â. Itâs chaos and Jungkookâs men run over, protecting their boss with their own bodies, a full shootout erupting.  âThis is your anchor Park Jimin, here to deliver some breaking news. Several miles south of Macau Port, several male suspects have opened fire against policemen. As you can see, shots are being fired as we speakââ  Youâre watching the news with Taehyung through the window of a store, standing shoulder to shoulder on the street. Your jaw has dropped, mouth full of cotton and Taehyungâs eyes glimmering in equal amazement. Itâs something out of a movie and youâre not sure you can believe this is actually happening â but considering youâre a fairy godmother, you guess anythingâs possible.  âDo you think this was our doing?â you mumble out the corner of your mouth.  Taehyung grins. âLetâs just say it is. That would make one hell of a story.â  âYeah, a story I don't think weâll ever be able to tell anyone.â You look away from the screen towards him, blinking at how blazing he is and how the sun has kissed his skin, making him glow. âI think you might be a goddamn genius, Taehyung.â  âI know.â His grin widens and the sheer size of it might break his face. He looks so happy with your praise and you donât care that youâre feeding his ego. âYouâre only starting to realize?â  You scoff. âI knew you werenât a complete idiot.â  âPsh. Your expectations for me are too low. Iâm going to have to keep trying to impress you, arenât I?â  âIf you want to impress me, youâre going to have to step your game up, Kim.â  âWill do.â His arm slings around your shoulder as you both resume walking down the street.  The money was gone. None of you had it anymore so that problem was solved. The police should be off your tail and as for the mob...you hope theyâre too scared of Taehyung to do anything. But you donât know for sure. Regardless, the two of you will have to leave Macau as soon as possible for the sake of safety.  âWhat are your plans now?â  You hum, havenât had time to think about it. âProbably go back home. Catch up on some sleep on the plane considering Iâve been awake for forty-eight hours now...and then, Iâll go crawling back to my job and apologize to my boss again. Assuming I havenât gotten fired yet.â  âWhy would you go back there? You hate it.â  âWhere am I supposed to get money to live?â  âI still have the money that I legitimately won from the casinoâŚâ  âThatâs yours.â You tease, âAnd you should keep it â itâs not like you have a job.â  He gasps in mock offense, hand over his heart. âIâll have you know, I make a decent living selling my picture and drawing people on the street.â Taehyung pulls you closer to him, looking down at you. Itâs too intimate and to outsiders, the pair of you appear more like a couple than friends. But thereâs no time to linger in the way your heart is thundering in your chest when his smile falls and he becomes genuine.  âIâm serious. You shouldnât go back to that place if it makes you so unhappy. You shouldâŚ.come with me instead.â  âCome with you? Where?â  âI still have my plane tickets. The ones you gave me,â he reminds you and points to the old bag slung across his abdomen. The two of you had ran to get your belongings in the hotel room and got out as quickly as possible. Everything you need is with you and when he puts it like that, heâs technically right. You could go anywhere in the world.  âI asked you for two not because I wanted to go back for a second time, but because I want you to come with me,â he admits as his cheeks begin to deepen in hue, embarrassed that he had thought about this before and many times at that. âI was even happier when you said you wanted to travel too and...I made a promise, right? I...I just want to keep it.â  Youâre speechless. âTaehyungâŚâ  âI have to leave anyways. I want to leave with you.â He stops walking and you halt with him. Taehyung is a scrambling, stuttering, nervous mess and you eat it all up. âI know itâs a lot to ask. You technically met me yesterday and now Iâm asking you to travel the world with me and we donât know each other that wellââ  âI think weâve gotten to know each other a lot in these past two days,â you refute. You canât think of anyone else thatâs been chased down by the mob and police with you. The experience definitely drove you closer together and youâre full-aware of his issues as he is aware of yours. Everything is out in the open. Thereâs nothing to hide and nothing you want to keep hidden from him.  Taehyung laughs and you add, âToo much actually.â  âWill you still come see the world with me?â  You never thought there would be a day where someone would ask you such a thing. Itâs mind boggling to consider that you couldâve been with anyone. Anyone in this world that couldâve had unlimited wishes, that wouldâve used you until the last moment, that would throw you away afterwards. But it was Taehyung of all people. Youâre the one whoâs lucky.  And youâre so glad that heâs your Cinderella.  âIt would be my honour as your fairy godmother,â you mean it. Nothing excites you more. As long as youâre not chased by the police or the mob, youâre happy to go anywhere with him.  Taehyungâs smile almost makes his cheeks burst and he nods. âBut before we go, thereâs something I want to do.â  âYou know we canât stay here for long, right?â  âYeah, but this will only take a second.â Taehyungâs body is facing you and his arm extends, palm opening and pointing towards the sky. You glance up at his face, trying to decipher his blank features, not knowing what he wants or if he wants you to hold his hand again. But what he says is not what you expect. âGive me your wand.â  You trust him enough at this point to hand it over. âYou know you canât do anything with it, right? Iâm the only one that can use it.â  âYeah, I know.â He holds the silver stick. It shimmers and shines against the light, glimmering as if sparkles are embedded into the surface. Taehyung grips your wand with both hands.  âWhat are youâ Taehyung! No! You canât break it! I triedââ  But the stick bends. And then suddenly it⌠ Snap.  Much to your horror, he announces it blankly, âI just broke it.â  âWhat the fuck?!â Your eyes are wide and your hands are curled around his wrist, trying to see the damage done. Itâs snapped in half. And you canât wrap your brain around it. It never even so much budged in your hands. It was concrete, unbending, unyielding. Yet, he snapped it as if it was an uncooked noodle. âHow?!â  âI donât know.â He shrugs. âWasnât hard. Maybe I got the power to do it cause Iâm Cinderella.â His brows playfully wiggle, joking around, but you arenât amused. Youâre shocked.  âWhy?â  âI donât want you to feel like youâre my servant. I donât want you to feel obligated towards me.â A shy smile spreads into his face and he lowers his arms, your grip on him loosened. âHappy ending? Iâm already happy with youâŚâ  Youâre emotional, stunned to silence. But the words that croak out of your lips first isâ âWh-why are you so cheesy?â  His shy smile becomes another enormous grin. âYouâre my fairy either way. I donât need wishes.â  You let out a breathless scoff, walking away from him and trying to ignore the way a lump has formed in your throat, how your chest feels light and fluffy. He quickly catches up to your pace, synchronizing his steps with yours and he steals glances of your profile like he canât get enough of you. âYouâre paying for our taxi ride to the airport, right? Where are we going first?â  âMumbai or Italy?â He laughs. âYour choice.â  He throws the wand into the nearby trash can, chucking it away and neither of you look back as you continue on your way down the street of Macau.  Youâre still not sure what a happy ending entails, but you wonder if this is it â this contentment and bliss of being Taehyungâs fairy and princess.
#bts fanfic#bts scenario#taehyung fanfic#taehyung fluff#v fanfic#OC as the fairy godmother about to get a hernia#Kim Taehyung as an ex fuckboy who's trying to get his shit together#lol
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In the fall of 2008, Americaâs wealthiest companies were in a pickle. Short-selling hedge funds, smelling blood as the global economy cratered, loaded up with bets against finance stocks, pouring downward pressure on teetering, hyper-leveraged firms like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. The free-market purists at the banks begged the government to stop the music, and when the S.E.C. complied with a ban on financial short sales, conventional wisdom let out a cheer.
"This will absolutely make a difference," economist Peter Cardillo told CNN. "Now, if there is any good news, shorts will have to cover.â
At the time, poor beleaguered banks were victims, while hedge funds betting them down as the economy circled the drain were seen as antisocial monsters. âThey are like looters after a hurricane,â seethed Andrew Cuomo, then-Attorney General of New York State, who âpromised to intensify investigations into short selling abuses.â Senator John McCain, in the home stretch of his eventual landslide loss to Barack Obama, added that S.E.C. chairman Christopher Cox had âbetrayed the publicâs trustâ by allowing âspeculators and hedge fundsâ to âturn our markets into a casino.â
Fast forward thirteen years. The day-trading followers of a two-million-subscriber Reddit forum called âwallstreetbetsâ somewhat randomly decide to keep short-sellers from laying waste to a brick-and-mortar retail video game company called GameStop, betting it up in defiance of the Street. Worth just $6 four months ago, the stock went from $18.36 on the afternoon of the Capitol riot, to $43.03 on the 21st two weeks later, to $147.98 this past Tuesday the 26th, to an incredible $347.51 at the close of the next day, January 27th.
The rally sent crushing losses at short-selling hedge funds like Melvin Capital, which was forced to close out its position at a cost of nearly $3 billion. Just like 2008, down-bettors got smashed, only this time, there were no quotes from economists celebrating the âgood newsâ that shorts had to cover. Instead, polite society was united in its horror at the spectacle of amateur gamblers doing to hotshot finance professionals what those market pros routinely do to everyone else.
âŚ
The episode prompted calls to regulate Reddit and, finally, halt action on the disputed stocks. As I write this, word has come out that platforms like Robinhood and TD Ameritrade are curbing trading in GameStop and several other companies, including Nokia and AMC Entertainment holdings.
Meaning: just like 2008, trading was shut down to save the hides of erstwhile high priests of âcreative destruction.â Also just like 2008, there are calls for the government to investigate the people deemed responsible for unapproved market losses.
âŚ
The only thing âdangerousâ about a gang of Reddit investors blowing up hedge funds is that some of us reading about it might die of laughter. That bit about investigating this as a âpump and dump schemeâ to push prices away from their âfundamental valueâ is particularly hilarious. What does the Washington Post think the entire stock market is, in the bailout age?
Americaâs banks just had maybe their best year ever, raking in $125 billion in underwriting fees at a time when the rest of the country is dealing with record unemployment, thanks entirely to massive Federal Reserve intervention that turned a crash into a boom. Who thinks the âfundamental valueâ of most stocks would be this high, absent the Fedâs Atlas-like support in the last year?
âŚ
In other words, it was all well and good for investment banks and executives of phoney-baloney companies to gorge themselves on funhouse profits on a funhouse economy, but when amateurs decided to funnel just a bit of this clown show into their own pockets, finance pros wailed like the grave of Adam Smith had been danced upon. The worst was Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman, who issued a somber warning that those behind the recent market frenzy are âin for a very rude awakening,â adding, âI donât know if it is going to happen tomorrow, next week or in a month, but it will happen.â
This is the same James Gorman whose company just saw its 2020 fourth-quarter profits go up 51% versus the year before, with total revenues up 16% to $48.2 billion, matching almost exactly the 16% rise in the stock market last year. If youâre going to rake in $33 million as Gorman did last year captaining a firm that just siphoned off billions in essentially risk-free profits underwriting a never-ending bailout, should you really be worrying about someone else getting a ârude awakeningâ? There are 19 million people collecting unemployment who might be reading those profit numbers. Does this man know how to spell âpitchforkâ?
GameStop has prompted more pearl-clutching than any news story in recent memory. Expert after grave-faced expert has marched on TV to tell Reddit traders that markets are complicated, this isnât a game, and they wouldnât be doing this, if they really understood how things work.
âŚ
Furthermore, everybody âunderstandsâ what happened with GameStop. Unlike some other Wall Street stories, this one isnât complicated. The entire tale, in a nutshell, goes like this. One group of gamblers announced, âFuck you!â Another group announced back: âNo, fuck YOU!â
Thatâs it. Or, as one market analyst put it to me this morning, âA bunch of guys made a bet, got killed, then doubled and tripled down and got killed even more.â
Regarding improprieties, leaving aside that the Redditors were doing exactly what billion-dollar hedge funds do every day â colluding to move a stock for fun and profit â the notion that this should be the subject of a federal investigation is preposterous.
âŚ
While it isnât a complicated story, some of the awesome humor of GameStop is in the mechanics.
Unlike betting on a stock to go up (i.e. betting âlongâ), where you can only lose as much as you invest, the losses in shorting can be infinite. This adds a potential extra layer of Schadenfreude to the plight of the happy hedge fund pirate who might have borrowed gazillions of GameStop shares at five or ten hoping to tank the firm, only to go in pucker mode as Internet hordes drive the cost of the trade to ten, twenty, fifty times their original investment.
Short-sellers bet by borrowing shares from so-called prime brokers (Goldman, Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are among the biggest), selling them, and waiting for the price to drop, at which point they buy them back on the open market at the lower price and return them. The commonly understood rub is that prime brokers donât always really procure those original borrowed shares, and often give out more âlocatesâ than they should, putting more shares in circulation than actually exist (as in this case). GameStop is exposing this systematic plundering of firms using phantom shares and locates, by groups of actors who now have the gall to complain that theyâre the victims of a âget rich quickâ scheme.
âŚ
The home of James ârude awakeningâ Gorman, Morgan Stanley, got its bank holding company license (and the lifesaving Fed credit lines that came with it) late on a Sunday night in September, 2008, because the firm couldnât have opened its doors without it the next Monday morning. Theyâd have been blown to bits, by âfundamentals.â Instead, they got rescued, given a forever pass to keep feeding at the neck of society while claiming, falsely, to be not-failures and not-welfare recipients, better somehow than the âdumb moneyâ they think should be theirs alone to manage.
The rank selectivity of this makes any moral argument against the GameStop revolt moot. Thereâs no legitimate cause here, just an assertion of exclusive rights to plunder, which will doubtless be exercised now in the form of bans, investigations, and increased barriers to market entry. Probably also, in the political spirit of our times, there will some form of speech crackdown on platforms like Reddit, to protect us from the mob.
About that: there are many making hay of a description found on a Subreddit, to the effect that wallstreetbets is âlike 4Chan found a Bloomberg terminal.â A columnist at the Guardian, settling into the rhetorical line sure to find acceptance among the wine-and-MSNBC crowd, admitted to finding the rampaging-id dynamic on 4chan funny as a young person, but strange now to âwitness a brief and regretful adolescent occupation re-emerge as a prominent cultural force.â The author wanted to admit to laughing at this âintentionally senselessâ behavior, but ultimately decried the âtransgressive attitudesâ of the Redditors.
This is where society will ultimately come down, of course, uniting to denounce $GME as financial Trumpism, even though it actually comes closer to being an updated and superior version of Occupy Wall Street. Itâs likely not any evil manipulation scheme, but ordinary people acting â out of self-interest, but also out of sheer enthusiasm for one of the best reasons to do just about anything, because you can â on a few simple, powerful observations.
Theyâve seen first that our markets are basically fake, set up to artificially accelerate the wealth divide, and not in their favor. Secondly they see that the stock market, like the ballot box, remains one of the only places where sheer numbers still matter more than capital or connections. And theyâre piling on, and itâs delicious, not so much because theyâre right, but because the people running for cover are so wrong, and still canât admit it.
Buy the ticket, take the ride, nitwits. If you earned anything, itâs this.
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ok-yikes replied to your post: diefordarkseid replied to your post: ...
ok but like thank u sm for the link iâve been vaguely following your winston/billions content and ive been trying to find the context without having to watch the whole thing lmao so now i can fully understand ur analysis and art that i already enjoy!!
oh first of aw!!!! thatâs such a compliment lol ty and yes s/o to @winstonthequant for posting that compilation for 5.5k+ people to partake in, itâs super useful
yeah we Jest that all anyone needs to know to understand the Spirit Of Wynnstanning is to have seen those scenes with winston and taylor from kompenso, ep 3x11 lol.....i mean itâs partially a joke but itâs also partially true, thatâs pretty much the Cause of the group of us going âoh my godâ and becoming Invested in all of this. winnie n tay baby.......their Dynamique...they are way too good Ugh
and yeah the Broadest Of Strokes of this series overall is that the Central Theme is "insufferable bastard hedge fund ceo damian lewis [aka axe] man Versus insufferable bastard attorney general paul giamatti man [aka chuck],â just these corrupt assholes having a back and forth slapfight power struggle every season. nobody cares what happens in season 1 but taylor is introduced at the start of season 2 as a just-out-of-undergrad intern at axeâs hedge fund. turns out theyâre amazing at hedge funding (they have some goddamn sense and strategy and awareness, whereas axe is 100% beholden to the whims of his own Delicate Temper and Ego and is a continually self-sabotaging idiot, nbd) and by season 3, while axe is doing a bit of jail time over insider trading (see: previous parenthetical) taylor is left effectively in charge of axeâs hedge fund, which btw is called axe capital
Our Beloved Quant Winston enters the picture 3 eps into this situation, where taylor is attempting to start a quant team at axe cap, hence interviewing him, then only known as âquant kid 2âł in the credits. [not-that-informed explanation of What Is A Quant: where the Traditional Financial Analysts in a hedge fund try to make profitable stonk trades just via like, reacting to The News and other publically available info / whipping up Strategies / intuiting shit and making judgment calls or whatever the hell they do, a Quantitative Analyst (a more recent development in the high finance world) is taking a more mathematical approach to the whole legal gambling operation which is The Stock Market and might, as winston does, use An Algorithm to analyze finance info and make trades in response. is the vague idea here] Quant Kid 2 was not Originally meant to ever reappear, hence him just messing up the interview and getting sent off after like 30 seconds, but they wrote him in further when William Roland showed up and actually filmed the scene.Â
when âiâm a shitty bastard driven by my shitty ego and will self-sabotage if my Pride asks for it on a whimâ axe shows back up, tl;dr, he spends the rest of s3 being terrible and unappreciative to taylor, who you might imagine is Threatening That Delicate Ego of his by capably taking care of his hedge fund while he was indisposed. for example, he needlessly wrecks taylorâs relationship with a guy they were having a nice time dating (and will, weâre pretty sure, talk to again in s5ep2!! hoorayy) and does basically the opposite of apologizing, sweeps taylorâs Quant Project into the trash, gets mad at them for failing to land a certain investor which he said they did on purpose which idk they May Have lol i think this was later in the season, and wonât give them the raise they want, and thatâs just A Few of the bullet points in this topic. but oops, turns out that taylor has been secretly taking steps to put together their own entirely separate hedge fund! which is where winston comes back in, aka their meeting him in that empty classroom only to summon him to a random basement. that algorithm he ends up creating for them (which heâd Assumed was for axe cap purposes) was used by taylor to entice a Big Investor at axe cap to invest in their own hedge fund, taylor mason capital, which exists by the end of season 3, which obviously axe is not happy about and of course itâs a whole ~betrayal~ even though he did it to himself but no, he decides taylor is his Nemesis, b/c in so many ways he is a dumbass. god
season 4 has winston as taylorâs Main Quant (the one time we hear his name spoken aloud is taylor saying âwinston and the quant team). taylor spends the season dealing with all the problems of having a Brand New Hedge Fund and having a Well Established Hedge Fund With An Asshole At The Helm constantly trying to sabotage their fund, which we also call tmc / mase cap for short, just for reference lmao, the latter being how they shorten it in the showâs actual dialogue. the Front Running mentioned in that one clip was an instance of such sabotage. and by the time winston shows up 5 eps later, that Fracking Subplot (lmao...this fucking show) was about taylor being reeeeal sick of axe capâs sabotage b/c they kinda made it personal, and thus spending the whole episode Completely playing axe for a fool, which was kinda fun, b/c itâs not that hard and he has it coming. it gets a little involved with whatâs going on in ep 4x11 with the bonuses lmfao but it's nbd, just know that winston was right, we went frantic about him being Bullied and are still indignant about it, and taylor talking to Everyone in that 4x12 clip does seem to address what winston had said, compare and contrast 4 yourselves, even if this apparently went totally over the heads of any Regular Billions Viewers lmao. and then in 4x12 A Lot Happens b/c itâs the finale but axe manages to self-sabotage himself in a way that does a lot of damage for mase cap though, and axe thinks that heâs successfully blackmailed taylor into returning to axe cap with mase cap as a Supposedly Temporary subsidiary of axe cap, which sucks, but taylor is not as blackmailed as he thinks, which is a secret, Drama and Twists and Shifting / Dubious Loyalties and Stonks are just constant themes here and who cares. we are here for the quant, who is there with taylor
We Have Many Ideas / wise concepts and headcanons, seeing as canon is a nightmare and thereâs not That much material re: winston and precious few details about him / he spends sooo much time offscreen and unmentioned and it leaves us plenty of blanks to fill in. for example, maybe u noticed we think he should kiss taylor and also get railed by them, there are extensive ideas about that relationship wherein we happily ignore Finance. also, there is an unusually kind and reasonable analyst over at axe cap named ben kim who we also think should kiss winston, so yeah That idea is sure around as well lol, they have enough Parallels and complementary Similarities and Contrasts and also just like, a normal nice person is a rarity on this show, so ben does Not have a world of competition in our [list of people whoâd be Okay to kiss winston, b/c someone should, b/c he deserves that cuz we love him]
yeah thatâs my Quick Basic Context summary lmao we hate it here but also we have fun, and really at any time (extending this to anyone lol) feel free to Send An Ask about anything at all b/c i am Not annoyed by random / unprompted asks from anybody, i love interaction! who knows if iâll answer promptly (for example: sorry @ the person whoâs asked for deh/bmc hcs who i havent answered yet lol) but yeah. itâs totally nice that you were already interested even without any Context lmao like. i mean yeah basically the joke still stands that the only context u truly need is that one scene from Kompenso but. yeah #Stonks
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Letâs Make a Deal Pt. 2
Summary: (Y/N) has been told about the deal that her father has made but will she accept it after finding out the conditions....or even better who she will be making a deal with?Â
Warnings: Violence, Gang referenceS, Adult Language, eventual (m) rated chapters and Iâll add as I go if necessary
Genres: Angst, eventual smut & fluff
Word count: 1341
Namjoon x latina
Namjoon x reader
All you could do was sit there and try to think and process what had just been said.You had heard the word but no matter what you just couldnât believe it.
Marriage.
How could they do this.
Minutes passed....maybe even hours...though at this second you didnât care.
How could they?
Every time this phrase crossed your mind your anger grew with it.
Who makes this kind of deal. Your parents thatâs who.
Though you were mad at your parents  more than anything all you could do was think ....why me.
You had been trying your best to keep yourself together but this was not fair. Ok you knew that sounded bratty but why..why...why..why. You took on the second job you tried helping but this was too much.
âWeâre meeting with him tomorrow to go over everything,â was the only thing you remember your mom saying before both of your parents left the room.
As the door closed behind them you felt all your self control release.
Tomorrow was going to change everything you ever knew.
(Next day)
âWell I guess this place is big enough right.â
You had honestly been zoned out all the way to the home where you were to meet your fake Mr. Forever....Kim Namjoon or as many knew him RM.
Both of your parents didnât try to talk to you during the car ride. Granted they wouldnât have gotten a response out of you anyways.
Since last night you refused to speak to them or even be in the same room as them if you were being honest.
You understood that they saw this as the only way out and they believed that this was the only solution but you were still beyond pissed off but more than anything you were hurt.
Hurt by the decisions that had been negatively effecting your life. To be honest though more than anything it hurt knowing that these decisions werenât yours to begin with.
How is it that your dad was the one who caused all of these issues but yet here you were being used to fix everything.
âMr. Kim is ready for you. Iâll take you to his officeâ one of the maids had said to you and your parents as you had entered the home.
âWell fuck me right.â
As your parents were about to step forward to follow the maid to the office with you they were stopped.
âActually Mr. Kim would like to speak with (Y/N) alone.â
âGreeeeeeaaaaatttt this only gets better and better.â
You simply nod and follow her until youâre facing the door to the office.
âWell here goes nothing I guess. Itâs not like Iâm allowed to say no.â You said to yourself.
And then you do it. YOU KNOCK ON THE DOOR.
âCome inâ
You step through the door only to feel your heart drop out your ass.
NO. FUCKING. WAY.
Itâs the obnoxious dude from the bus. Your fake fiancĂŠ is the guy you almost tackled yesterday. Is this a joke? It has to be. Why would he want to marry you?
âI see youâre a little shocked. I mean I can understand considering this isnât our first meeting and itâs not like you made an amazing first impression yesterday. â He said as he walked towards you.
âWell apparently I made some type of impression on you considering the circumstances weâre currently in wouldnât you say....amigoâ You snap at him.
âIm not your amigo....Iâm your fiancĂŠ.â
âYes without even asking would you look at that your manners seem to have stayed the same.â
He narrowed his eyes at you obviously becoming annoyed as he now stood in front of you.
Once again though you didnât care. Why should you? He was forcing you into an arranged marriage to get your family out of a very very bad situation. Â His feelings really didnât mean much to you.
âI see your attitude is also the same.â
âWhat do you expect? You canât think Iâm happy about this.â
âIm just giving your family a way out that works for everyone. So you can take it or leave it no ones making you do anything itâs simply a deal. Whether you take it or not Iâll leave up to you....not your parents.â
So he was going to let you decide? Definitely didnât see this one coming. Something told you that it couldnât be that easy.
âBefore you decide though let me tell you whatâs going to happen if you donât take it. 1st your father is going to be immediately targeted by Samuel and his gang for stealing from their operation. You think the beating he got was yesterday was bad....that was nothing heâd be lucky if they let him live which I doubt. 2nd his debt is gonna fall on your mom and when she canât pay it they will come after her or even worse your sisters.â
You wanted to be calm and say it wasnât true and that you would figure it out. That you guys would be fine without his help but you knew that he wasnât lying. The more you tried to belittle the situation the worse it was going to get.
â......and what happens if decide to take your deal?â
âIn regards to your family I would pay off your fathers debt and relocate your parents to a new home. They would be safe and I promise that they will lead a comfortable lifestyle. Your sisters I think itâs best to keep them in the dark as much as possible so they will stay put but will be given security to make sure they are safe. And obviously you will stay with me so you will not need to worry about your own safety.â
âWhy are you doing this?â
âIm trying to grow in my own investments.......If Iâm married I wonât have to worry about someone trying to sneak into my bed trying to sabotage my work. I need someone who I know doesnât have connections to this world. It also looks good to investors to be married. To make it simple you need me as much as I need you.â
âGranted there are obviously other conditions in regards to the marriage aspect of our deal.â He continued
âSuch as? You might as well tell me everything at once.â
âAlright. Well it would be best to get married as soon as possible so Iâm going to say letâs go ahead and plan for next week.â
âNEXT WEEK!â
Namjoon didnât pay any mind to your sudden outburst and continued on.
âAnyways afterwards weâll plan to head back to Seoul as that is where I mainly reside. You will be my wife so you also will be living with me. As my wife you will attend parties, luncheons, you know normal wife things I suppose.â
Sooo many thoughts were running through your head that you thought at any moment it was going to become too much and you were going to black out. Â
He wants you to go to Seoul! First of all youâve never stepped foot out of the US other than to go to Mexico and now youâre being asked to live in Korea. A country where you didnât even know the language.
Also could you really be someoneâs wife? Even better question was could you be HIS wife knowing the kind of work he was in? You didnât know.
âSo what do you say do we have a deal?â He asked as he extended his hand to you.
Feeling as though you were drowning with all this information you didnât know what to do.
All you could think about was your family. Yes you were in this mess without your consent but regardless you loved all of them and you knew that you would do anything for them. So with that you turned to Namjoon.
âJust promise me they stay safe and Iâll keep my part.â
With that you extended your hand into his.
Authorâs Note: Hereâs part 2 sorry it took me a minute to post this. Lol i posted it earlier but felt as though it was missing something so reposted it. Also I just read where if you have a link in your writing it doesnât come up in the search. I went ahead and removed the pt 1 link but it is attached to my masterlist. Please let me know what you think any feedback is greatly appreciated :)Â
#bts#bts fanfction#bts fanfic#bts au#bts gang#bts reactions#bts scenarios#bts one shot#bts imagines#bts drabble#bangtan#rm#rapmon#rap monster#namjoon#namjoon imagine#namjoon au#bts masterlist#bts fake text#namjoon series#jimin#v#suga#jin#jungkook#jhope#min yoongi#bts preferences#BTS request#namjoon x reader
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Chapter 19 of Good Investment is now up on my Patreon!
Good Investment is available at the $5/month tier. People who pledge $5 a month have access to not only Good Investment but The Sponsors series (ongoing), Pretty Things (complete), May the Blood Run Pure (complete), and Kept Man (complete), along with the $1/month tier books, the Reflections trilogy (ongoing) and The Halfwife (ongoing).
Adri Schvaneveldt has always felt split between two worlds. In one world, they are the adopted child of a large and conservative Mormon family. In another, she is the CEO of a burgeoning fashion empire that pushes boundaries. But in order to be the latter, Adri first has to find the funding. After gaining a hefty following as a social media influencer/model, Adri has the potential customersâ if they can get a reliable production model pounded out. And that means a bit of groveling at the feet of investors, most of who have never even heard the term ânon-binaryâ.
But Adri lucks out with Gideon Snow, whose youth and open mind bring much needed funds to make Adriâs dream of diverse, accessible fashion a reality. Of course, lifting a newborn company to its feet is no small task, and late nights drive Adri to occasional stays at Gideonâs nearby house, where their relationship begins stretching beyond business. Adri knows they canât put an entire business venture at risk for the turbulent whims of their heart. But reason doesnât always win out.
Excerpt:
Gideon decided to check his phone for the first time since last night, and he was shocked to find a text from Adri sent just an hour ago.
Happy Halloween! Hope youâre doing well!
This text was followed by a picture of Adri standing in a hallway and looking over her shoulder at the camera, wearing a pleather leotard, fishnets, stilettos, and a furry cat tail and ears. Sheâd drawn whiskers on her face, as well as a cat nose.
âWhat is it?â Maxim asked as he attempted to light a cigarette.
Gideonâs throat felt very dry as he set the phone down. âI forgot it was Halloween.â
âYou want to dress up? We can go buy some candy.â
âNo, itâs justâŚâ Gideon resisted the urge to look at the photo again. Was she trying to fuck with him? Maybe she was drunk. Clearly she was at some kind of party.
Maxim waved a hand. âLet me see the phone.â
Gideon decided against resistance and gave it to him. Maxim choked a little on his cigarette, then gave Gideon a decidedly approving look.
âWho is this girl?â
âSomeone who firmly told me we need to stay friends.â Should Gideon correct him? Sheâs not a girl, sheâs nonbinary. He probably might have bothered to clarify if he considered Maxim a good friend, but it was likely theyâd never see each other again after this, and he had no clue what Maxim thought about anything outside of drugs and where to get them. Dutch people were generally open minded about queer people and sex, especially people who lived in Amsterdam, but Gideon was exhausted from last night and didnât want to turn it into a thing.
It definitely wasnât because he preferred people assume he was straight.
âAh, so she likes to play games.â
âI donât think so. I think sheâs just drunk.â Hopefully. Adri wasnât much of a drinker, but he preferred to think she was drunk than she was purposely trying to toy with him. That leotard was going to show up in a variety of fantasies in the coming weeks.
âSheâs very cute.â
âSheâs a model.â
âAnd you like her?â
âYeah.â Best to just leave it at that.
âHmm. Well. Many women like to be chased.â
âIâm not into that sort of thing. I like easy catches.â
Maxim chuckled. âAnd maybe that is why you are thirty-seven and still single, yeah?â
Gideon tilted his head and raised his coffee cup in acknowledgement. âMaybe.â
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What type of plot lines would you have put in season 7 of Gilmore Girls to improve it?
Oooh, great question! I mean, on a macro scale I was okay with season 7. I getLorelai going to Chris after the Luke breakup. I get Rory starting to worryabout her career future. I get Luke getting more involved in Aprilâs life. Itâsthe execution that really bothered me.
In Partings, Lorelai said that sheâs never really lovedChris or wanted to marry him. So her going all in with Chris doesnât make muchsense to me. I would have preferred to see her full-on rebounding with Chris.Weâd see the dynamic between them weâve always seen: Chris loves Lorelai andwill take her any way he can and Lorerai using him when sheâs lonely or runningaway from something. Them trying a relationship make sense, but Iâd have likedseeing why it is that they canât ultimately work out: they both revert to theirteenage selves. So maybe Chris, in doing something spontaneous for Lorelai, inadvertentlymesses up with her work somehow and she ends up missing an important meeting orduty. Or the two of them have lots of fun, but Chris doesnât show up when heneeds to and Lorelai doesnât want to commit to him. Them ultimately realizingthat Chris will never get âall of Lorelaiâ and Lorelai realizing that she usesChris (unfairly) as an emotional crutch, and them agreeing thatâdespite theirconnectionânow that Rory is grown, they need to maybe not have each other intheir lives (so that the temptation isnât there)⌠that I would have enjoyedbetter than that marriage/divorce bs.
Iâd have liked to see more conflict between Rory and Lorelaiover her sleeping and rebounding with Chris. In the later seasons it wasestablished that Rory did not want Chris with Lorelai. She wanted him to stayaway. So her only once mentioning to Lorelai to âbe carefulâ with Chris andthen just being perfectly happy with the CL relationship bothered me. Given howmuch Lorelai disapproves of Roryâs boyfriends and Rory having wanted herparents together in the early seasons, a switch in dynamic where Rory is openlycriticizing Lorelaiâs romantic choice in Chris would have been cool.
Instead of that stupid custody story line, Iâd have liked tosee Luke get overly invested in Aprilâs life. In the same way that Lorelaioften used Rory as an emotional crutch and couldnât form good relationshipswith partners because of Rory, Iâd have liked to see Luke make April his wholeworld and then realize that this isnât healthy. Luke, more or less, chose Aprilover Lorelai in S6, and then he kept the âtwo worldsâ separate. Now that oneworld (Lorelai) was gone, heâd overcompensate with April and then see thefallout of that. Aprilâs a teen and she doesnât really need Luke that much. Hershowing or telling him that she doesnât need him to the extent that heâd beusing her to compensate for not having Lorelai in his life would have beeninteresting. Iâd have liked Luke to realize that heâd been a dick to Lorelai inS6 and realize that him âneeding timeâ and essentially quarantining Lorelai ina corner of his life was fucking stupid. Iâd have liked to see Luke apologizeto Lorelai and woo her in some way to get her back. Actually, I really, reallywould have liked to see Luke actively try to get Lorelai back instead of mopingand then waiting for Lorelai to forget him being a dick and take him back afterher marriage to Chris didnât work out.
Iâd have liked for Rory to face more rejection. The girlbarely worked a job her whole life, and when she did it had been handed to her.I didnât even buy her getting the Obama trail gig (mainly because sheâd nevereven been interested in political journalism). While the NYT rejection wasnice, Iâd have liked for her to face more career-related challenges and realizethat the only way sheâll be able to get a job she wants is through herconnections to Logan and her grandparentsâ world. It would have beeninteresting for me to see Rory maybe get the job of her dreams, but not in theâhonestâ and âindependentâ way that she wanted. Roryâs whole life has been theresult of privilege and connections, and her successes have often been murkilymixed with her being handed things by others, so her acknowledging that wouldhave been cool. How interesting would it be if Rory got her dream reporter job,but, say at The Guardian (an NYT competitor a la Harvard vs Yale) in London,thanks to Logan? It would be a bittersweet ending for her to get the job andthe guy, but always wonder if she really earned it through her talents or herprivilege. That, to me, has always been Roryâs struggle in a nutshell. Plus,her moving far away would have been the final emancipation from Lorelai.
The whole Logan S7 storyline bothered me on every level. Inever saw Logan as leaving the family business and becoming some kind ofZuckerberg-esque Palo Alto new media creator or investor or whatever the fuckhe became. I think it would have been much more interesting if Logan began tothrive at the paper in London, proving Mitchum right (that Logan needed to goto London to mature and that he was made to someday run the family business).Iâd have liked to see Logan realize that 1) he really is born to do thisbecause heâs a great writer and knows the business well 2) Mitchum wasâatleast partiallyâright in that Logan needed to mature by going to London 3)Logan can follow in Mitchumâs career footsteps without âbecomingâ Mitchum orliving his life exactly like Mitchum. Because to me, Loganâs big issue wasnever about the family business, but that it was the only career choice that herealistically had, as well as his fear that heâd become Mitchum and have tolive the Huntzberger-approved life. Maybe if Logan stayed in London, heâdbecome mature enough to accept and âchooseâ to stay in the family business, butdo it his own way and on his own terms. In that way I think heâd have followedthe new-generation-Sulzberger-at-the-NYT comparison that ASP had been making inS5 and 6.
Instead of making Sookie pregnant with that psychoticJackson-didnât-actually-get-a-vasectomy story line, couldnât they just haveSookie injure herself and stay on bedrest? Lorelai then having to do more work andher relationship with Chris making Lorelai less on top of things would haveworked, I think.
And umâŚLane should have never gotten pregnant and gotten adivorce from Zach ASAP. I would have been happy with literally any S7 story arcfor Lane so long as those two things happened.
#asked/answered#gilmore girls#lorelai gilmore#rory gilmore#luke danes#logan huntzberger#christopher hayden#sookie st. james#lane kim
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Socially Responsible Investing: Is It Also More Profitable?
Since the Dawn of Mustachianism in 2011, the same question has come up over and over again:
âMMM, I see your point that index fund investing is the best option. But when you buy the index, youâre getting oil companies, factory farm slaughterhouses and a million other dirty stories.
How can I get the benefits of investing for early retirement without contributing to the decline of humanity?â
And in these nine years since then, the movement towards socially responsible investing has only grown. Public pension funds have started to âdivestâ from oil company stocks, and various social issues like human rights, child labor, climate change or corporate corruption have bubbled to the surface at different times.
And all of this has led to the exploding new field of Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), and a growing array of new ways to do it.
So it seems that this is not just a passing trend â people just might be starting to care a bit more. And since capitalism is just an expression of human behavior, the nature of capitalism itself may be starting to change.
This leads us naturally to the question:
What can I do with my money to help fix the world? And even better, is there a way I can make money in the process of fixing it?
The answer is a good, solid âProbably.â
As long as you donât get too hung up on getting every last detail perfect, because just like real life, investing is a haphazard and approximate and unpredictable thing. But by understanding the big picture, you can make slightly better decisions on average, which lead to slightly better results. And slightly better results, stacked up consistently over time, can lead to a much better life, or even a much better world.
This is true in all of the main areas we care about â personal wealth, fitness and health, even relationships and happiness. And while your money and investments are certainly not the most important thing in life, they are still worthy of a bit of easy and effective optimization.
So anyway, the first thing to understand with SRI is, âwhat problem am I trying to solve?â
The answer is, âYou are trying to make your investing (especially index fund investing) have a better impact on the world.â
On its own, index fund investing is ridiculously simple. You just get an account at any brokerage like Vanguard, Etrade, Schwab or whatever, and dump all your money into one exchange-traded fund: VTI.
When you do this, you are buying a stake in 3500 companies at once(!), which is both impressive and overwhelming. How do you even know what you are holding?
Well, this is all public information, and easily available with a quick Google search. For example, hereâs a list of the top 90 holdings in VTI (click for larger):
Top 90 holdings in Vanguardâs VTI Exchange Traded Fund
As you can see, the biggest chunk of money is allocated to todayâs tech darlings, because this index fund is weighted according to market value, and these are the most valuable companies in the US today.
Through a convenient coincidence, the total value of the VTI fund happens to be just under $1 trillion dollars, which means you can just throw a decimal point after the ten billions digit of market value to get a percentage. In other words, about 4.7% of your money will go towards Apple stock, 4.4 towards Microsoft, and so on. Together, these top 90 companies are worth more than the remaining 3,540 companies combined, so these are what really drive your retirement account.
And within this list, you will see some of the usual suspects: Exxon and Chevron (oil), Philip Morris (tobacco), Raytheon and Lockheed (bombs), and so on.
But what about the less-usual suspects? For example, I happen to think that sugar, and especially sugar-packed beverages like Coke, is the biggest killer in the developed world â a major contributor to 2 million of the 2.8 million deaths each year in the US alone. Should I exclude that from my portfolio too?
And what about drug and insurance companies â arenât they behind the political stalemate and high costs of the US healthcare system? Comcast funded some election disinformation campaigns here in my home town in the early 2010s, should I exclude them too? And if youâre part of a religion that is against charging interest on loans, or in favor of pasta and Pirate costumes, or against a spherical Earth, or any number of additional ornate rules, you may have still more preferences.
The higher your desire for perfection, the more difficult this exercise will become. However, if you are like me and you just want to get most of the desired result with minimal effort, you might simply have a look at the Vanguard fund called ESGV.
ESG stands for âEnvironmental, Social and Governanceâ, and in practice it just means âWe have tried to avoid some of the shittier companies according to some fairly simple rules.â
And the result is this:
Vanguardâs ESGV Exchange traded fund (ETF) â top 90 holdings
The first thing youâll notice is that itâs almost the same. In fact, the top five holdings â Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet (Google) and Netflix not far behind, collectively referred to as the FAANG stocks â are completely unchanged â and this means that there will be plenty of correlation between these funds.
Itâs also the reason that the stock market as a whole has recovered so quickly from this COVID-era recession: small businesses like restaurants and hair salons have been destroyed by the shutdowns, but big companies that benefit from people staying at home and using computers and phones are making more money than ever. The stock market isnât the whole economy, itâs just the publicly traded companies, which are the big ones.
But letâs look at the biggest differences between the normal index fund versus the social version.
The following large companies listed on the left are missing in the ESGV fund, in order of size. And to make up the difference, the stake in the companies on the right have been boosted up to take their place in your portfolio.
Main differences between VTI and ESGV (source: etfrc)
The omission of Berkshire Hathaway was a bit of a shocker, as it is run with solid ethical principles by Warren Buffet, one of the worlds most generous philanthropists. And in fact the modern day nerd-saint Bill Gates is on the Berkshire board of directors, another person whose work I follow and respect greatly.
(side note: Apparently the company fails on the âindependent governanceâ category. And Buffet disputes this category, but in his characteristic way has decided to say, âFuck it, Iâma just keep doing my own thing with my half-trillion dollar empire over here and you can have fun with your little committeeâ â Iâm paraphrasing a bit but he totally did say that.)
Furthermore, both funds hold the factory meat king Tyson foods, while neither holds Roundup-happy Monsanto, because it was bought by the German conglomerate Bayer AG a while back. Nextera is a giant electric utility in the Southeastern US that claims to be the worldâs largest generator of renewable energy. Some do-gooders are against nuclear power, while others (including me) think itâs the Beeâs Knees and we should keep advancing it. And all this just goes to show how nobody will agree 100% on what makes a good socially responsible fund.
But What About The Performance?
In the past, some investors were nervous about giving up oil companies in their portfolio, because while it was a dirty substance, it was also what made the world go round â which meant it was a cash cow.
Now, however, oil is on its way out as renewable energy and battery storage have crossed the cost parity threshold â meaning itâs cheaper to make power (and vehicles) that donât use oil. In its place, technology is the new cash cow, and tech is heavily represented in the ESG funds. The result:
Traditional index fund (VTI) vs Socially Responsible equivalent (ESGV)
As you can see, the performance has been similar but the ESG fund has done significantly better in the (admittedly short) time since it was introduced at Vanguard.
Of course, we have no idea if this will continue, but the point is that at least our thesis is not a ridiculous one â environmentally sustainable companies do have an advantage, if the world gradually starts to care more about these things. And if you look at the share price of Tesla and other companies that surround it in electric transportation and energy storage, you will see that there are many trillions of dollars already lining up to benefit from this transition. And the very presence of so much investment money creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Tesla is now building or expanding five of the worldâs largest factories on three continents simultaneously.
So What Should You Do? (and what I do myself)
My latest home-brewed ebike project â this one can reach 42MPH / 67km/hr!
First of all, it helps to remember a fundamental piece of economics: your spending dollars will probably have a much bigger impact than your investment dollars. This is because you are sending a direct message to the world rather than an indirect one:
When you buy a new gasoline-powered Subaru (or a tank of gas for your existing guzzler) or a steak at the grocery store, or a plane ticket, you are telling those company directly that consumers want more of these products, so they will produce more of them immediately.
When you buy shares in Exxon, you are only subtly raising the demand for those shares, which raises the average price, making it ever-so-slightly easier for Exxon to maybe issue more shares in the future. In other words, you are making it easier for them to access capital. But capital is only useful if there is demand for their products. And with oil there is a nearly constant surplus, which is why OPEC and other cartels need to work together to artificially restrict supply, just to keep prices up.
Plus, as a shareholder you are theoretically eligible to place votes and influence the future direction of companies â even companies that you donât like. If you look up the field of âshareholder activismâ, youâll see this is a tradition that goes way back.
So I have tried to take a few simple steps on the consumer side myself, and I find it quite satisfying: Insulating the shit out of all of my properties, building a DIY solar electric array on one of them, and buying one electric car so far to eliminate local gas burning. And a few electric bikes including a super fast one I made myself.
Each one of these steps has provided a very high economic return, percentage-wise, but that still leaves a lot of money to account for, which brings us back to stock investing.
As someone who loves simplicity, I have done this:
Bought almost entirely VTI (or similar Vanguard funds) from 2000-2015
Started experimenting with Betterment in 2015, liked it, and have been adding a percentage of my ongoing savings to that account to that since then. (Note that Betterment now also offers a socially responsible portfolio option.)
Switched the dividend re-investing of my old Vanguard VTI over to Vanguard ESGV, to avoid âwash salesâ in making the most of Bettermentâs tax loss harvesting feature.
Bought some shares of Berkshire Hathaway separately, and also make a few sentimental investments in local businesses, including the MMM HQ Coworking space.
But you could choose to be more hardcore in your ESG/SRI investing:
Buy your own basket of stocks based on the index, but with different weighting based on your own values
Spend more money on other things that generate or save money (a bigger solar array on your house, better insulation, electric car, an ebike to reduce car trips, etc.)
Invest in local businesses of your choice, rental real estate, community solar projects, or other things which generate passive income â publicly traded stocks are just one of many ways to fund an early retirement!
Like most areas of life, investing is not something you have to do perfectly in order to succeed â even socially responsible investing. If you apply the 80/20 rule to get the big picture right, you have probably found the Sweet Spot and you can move on to the next area of life to optimize.
In the Comments: What is your own investment strategy? Have you thought at all about this ESG / SRI stuff? Did this article bring anything new to the table?
from Finance https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/08/22/socially-responsible-investing/ via http://www.rssmix.com/
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Ok, so I donât know how much you remember from the first movie, so some of the non wonderland stuff wonât make sense. Also I may have some of the details wrong.
The movie starts with Alice having built railroads all over Asia, and now being a kind of successful, adventurous merchant. She escape pirates by sailing through a bunch of rocks that no one who doesnât believe in the impossible would ever try.
However, she just lost a lot of money because supposedly, one of her ships died. (I think thatâs the reason, although I also have a feeling someone stole her stuff? Not sure.) and now her biggest investor is dead, and his son, who she was supposed to marry but had rebuffed (he also looks like an uglier Hans from frozen) is like nah, Iâm not going to invest in you. Especially since you have fancy Chinese pants on you. (Her outfit is pretty great). Her mother is worried because a woman should not be doing any of this. Also her Mom has barely any money left, and the only thing that is left is a small house by the sea. Alice tried to convince her mom to sell the house and come with her, but the mom is afraid. Then they go to a party with the man who used to like Alice and thatâs where she finds out that all her possessions are being repossessed by the bank.
I donât quite remember how she got into wonderland, but it def involved mirrors. She gets in, expecting to see everyone happy to have her back, but she finds out that days are lasting minutes, everyone is distressed, and the mad hatter is dying.
He was walking with his buddies when he came across the burned remains of his village* where he had a mental breakdown about the annhilation of his family, who he never got to reconcile with (they werenât on good terms), and the fact that there is a slight chance they may not be dead. As his emotions are affecting almost everyone, wonderland is going bottoms up.
*there was a flashback in the prev movie where the jabberwocky burned all of Whiteâs court.
In order to find out what the hell happened in the past, and as Alice is one of the few characters that has agency anymore apparently, she has to break into Father Timeâs palace (i donât remember if they called him father or not) and steal one of his time travel machines. All the while trying to dodge him and his erasers. Any change she makes in the past will get fixed by the erasers, but if she makes too much trouble, I think her life will get erased? Also, if the erasers canât keep up with all the paradoxes happening, then all life will die.
Meanwhile, the red queen had killed the Jack dude she was ducking and became queen of the vegetables. And now she is seducing Father Time (who is played by the police dude from Hugo, btw) so she can go back and erase Alice, or maybe her sister. Donât remember.
Alice breaks in, and time travels. First she gets it wrong by accident and sees the coronation day of the red queen. Except, it wasnât actually her coronation day, as none of the crowns got and it turns out her parents were cowards and had been waiting to pull a switcheroo, naming the white queen as their heir due to redâs anger issues. She runs off crying. Btw teen March Hare, Hatter and Cat are jerks, although I think the Hatter might hit on Alice? Donât remember.
More time shenanigans, donât quite remember, and Alice ends up seeing why Red queen has such a fucking big head. Also we find out that Hatter was verbally abused by his dad, who didnât like the more artsy hats that young!mad hatter made (Heâs like 8).
Turns out, White was a shitty sister, and liked to get Red in trouble. White stole their momâs jam tarts (I guess this was to tye in with the whole jam tart trial in the original book?) and planted the crumbs in redâs bed. As this was âRedsâ last chance to âdo the right thingâ she got in huge trouble and was unfairly punished. She ran away, crying, slipped on some ice, was almost saved by Alice, and then slammed her head into a fountain, causing it to swell and have trauma. This is wear we see baby Cheshire. I think he didnât like Red either.
Alice finally makes it to the time where Hatterâs family was brutally murdered. I think she also sees a scene where she is escaping pirates? Donât remember. Itâs the typical âflash through time-line tunnel effectâ. And THEN she sees something about the murder.
Present-ish time, Red gets mad with Time and tries to murder him, and he finally realizes. Heâs dating a lady who murdered her last two lovers. So now he kind of stops her???
Unfortunately, there have been so many paradoxes the whole world starts to crystallize. Alice almost gets to the key which would reset the issues, and then crystallizes too. I donât remember how she gets unstuck and fixes things, but she does.
Then she figured out that Red had been carrying Hatterâs family in a bottle (like with a ship in a bottle) at all times and gives it to the Hatter. He reconciles with his fam and Alice goes home.
Alice gets back and manages to prove that the bank was fucking with her family. She then convinced her Mom to invest in Alice and now theyâre a mom and daughter merchant adventurer duo. The mom is no longer afraid of change, and maybe puts on pants too. The end.
Also the caterpillar dude, who was played by snape, comes back for a bit to remind her that she should believe in herself. It was that actorâs last role before death.
I know at least some of this is misremembered, but thatâs Alice through the looking glass.
Day two of my Win A Commission Contest! If you guess what story this is from before I post the title, you get a commission! Check out the tag #wac for more details! :) This one ends on May 14th, 2020. Hereâs a hint for what story it is: they sing a whole song about pepper.
@boopboopboopbadoop
@a-bisexual-teenager
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A few thoughts about KiraPuri Ep. 8...
Another long post. Iâm sorry. -.-;
It was good episode. Very good episode.
But I hope I wasnât the only one who was a little disappointed that last weekâs preview tricked us into thinking this would be about Ichika bossing the others around and through that, mess up the camaraderie theyâre supposed to be forming. Which would then be followed by everyone deliberating what to do to solve this problem and what Ichika has to do to correct her wrongs. Or something along those lines.
Again, how things played out was in fact, a lot better than putting Ichika in the main spotlight like how it was for the past seven weeks. Now everyone has a part in putting this team together, finding ways to work with each other and so on. Honestly, I couldnât have asked for a better end to the âintroductory arcâ, where we often see the lead Cure taking charge more than the others.Â
Because Iâm aware that itâs kinda necessary to have the them establish themselves into their leader roles that way (by being energetic and encompassing) so Iâm willing to let that slide as far as the first 10 episodes go.
However, I still think it wouldâve been interesting to see a flaw (any flaw) of a Pink Cure be portrayed in a negative light.
Mostly because I feel that a lot of times any aspect of the protagonist, even the very less than ideal ones, would rarely be displayed so badly that it would alienate the other characters or viewers from her.
For example, even if she was incredibly selfish and jumped into something without consulting her team members first, the plot would conveniently bend over to accommodate what she wants and then find some cheesy way to justify how ârightâ she is or beautify her to such an extent that it leaves no room for argument against her. Then nobody would have a chance to call her out on her faults so that she can learn to fix it herself. Whether by virtue of her âpurityâ or whatever glorified trait she possesses, itâs almost always guaranteed to turn out her way.
Thatâs one of the major reasons why I had so much difficulty tolerating Cure Flora in Go!Pri. As well as many other hero/heroines in other series and genres but those in Precure, especially, because this franchise seldom operates outside its usual formulas.
Maybe Iâm not talking much sense but⌠itâs just this bothersome feeling I canât help having on how the writers do their characterizations. Like, donât just gloss stuff over all the time. Give me their ugly sides, give me unsettling confrontations between friends, give me something that wonât allow me to let her live it down but can also allow me to totally accept it as part of the composition of her character. Because thatâs what going to flesh her out. Sheâll be more of a person and less of an stereotypical image on paper. Flaws make a person a person.
Yea, yea, I do realize I might be thinking too deep into a childrenâs show but hey, since I invested myself in watching it, then itâd be dumb not to wonder about these things.
*sigh* Well, anyways, itâs a good thought exercise to have, nonetheless. And itâs still very early in the game for Kira Puri so maybe we will see some clashing development like that later on. Only the next 40 something episodes will tell.
Moving along!
Iâm glad Yukari brought up the question on whether itâs true that âeveryoneâ wants to open up this patisserie shop.
It implies that the lot of them might just be pulled in by Ichikaâs enthusiasm and the fact that they are all Precure rather than being genuinely interested in participating because they want to.
Akira, in particular, is indirectly called a bit of a pushover which isnât hard to see why since she often pampers her sick sister so that habit might have extended to their group where the majority of them are still in middle school. In other words, Akira has no will or opinion of her own. She just goes along with the flow to appease everyone and sheâs being called out for it.
Yukari isnât trying to be mean but itâs a question that really needs to be asked because lemme tell ya, starting and managing a business is no fucking stroll in the park. It takes a lot of time and effort and in this case, manpower, to get it off the ground and running.
If nobody but Ichika is 100% sure of really devoting themselves and a good portion of their schedules to this project out of their own volition or desire, then the patisserie is not going to succeed.
Thankfully, they all realize they do in the end but again, I have to say this because Toei is giving too many unrealistic expectations on what itâs like to run a shop. As a working person, I canât just sit by and not say anything about it.
Another thing that got me concerned was how time management or store hours never entered their conversation and likely never will after this point even though itâs a super important discussion that you must have with your employees.
Because Precure universes have a weird sense of time in general but Kira Puri takes the cake in that I see these girls lounging around town and baking at the patisserie more than doing anything else that they should be doing. Like going to school, doing extracurricular actives, etc. I get that this season doesnât prioritize those things but thenâŚHOW do they make it work? Itâs not like they have a fully-fledged, nontransparent and non-creepy adult to oversee the place when theyâre not there.
Also, considering that 3 out of the 5 of them already had other commitments to attend to before the patisserie idea came up, itâs a surprise that nobody mentioned them until the very end of the ep. And even more of surprise when Ichika seems so shocked by it so you kind of wonder how self-absorbed she really is to forget stuff like that about her friends so quickly.
Iâm sorry for dragging out these gripes of mine but honestly, things canât possibly go so smoothly like what Iâm seeing here. Not to mention, I hate the fact that they brought this up for comic effect when in hindsight, itâs really not something you should be laughing about.
So I hope at some point later in the season, there will be scheduling and commitment conflicts. Everybody might be on board now since they just finished setting the place up and all but when business is booming (Iâm guessing it will anyway) and Ichika needs all the help she can get, how will they deal with it when the others canât spare the time for the shop?
Anyways, while I do make too much of a big deal out of kidâs show, I also know that thatâs not the objective of this episode.
The point of this episode was to see if the girls could learn to cooperate with each other. Cuz that absolutely had to happen first otherwise KiraPati would never have been set up.
And since it was set up, obviously they did find ways to work together.
Which introduces new pair dynamics as well.
We already got a good feel of Ichika + Himari + Aoi and Yukari + Akira based on grouping them by age. Plus Ichika + each Cure in their respective scenarios.
But itâd be boring if it was always limited to those so itâs high time that interactions not involving Ichika was finally delved into.
For Himari + Akira, you can see the relationship as that of an older sibling and younger sibling (cuz duh, this is Akira weâre talking about).
Tol and smol. Cute. <3
But you can also see them as marketing partners, too.
Akira, whoâs already been assigned as KiraPatiâs main garçon, attracts customers and investors with that welcoming, charming demeanor of hers, making it easier to lower their guard so she can pitch their ideas to them.
Meanwhile the more knowledgeable Himari backs up their proposals with the extensive details, showing how serious they are about their business and assuring people that they will be putting the resources they receive to good use.
Itâs very encouraging to watch as they naturally come to bounce off each other in that respect.
Then we have the creative pair. The cool feline pair.
Stylish Mama Cat and Rockstar Lion Cub pair.
Their job is interior design cuz you want your customers to enjoy themselves in a nice setting under a pleasant atmosphere after all, right?
Yukari certainly got the aesthetics for the store down and Aoi, being an artist in her own right, most likely agrees with the concept she came up with. So itâs just a matter of organizing everything up to scale.
And of course, they do.
Yukari makes efficient use of Aoiâs muscle to help her set up the decorations and furniture. Not a space wasted but not too cramped (yes, I wouldnât put it pass Yukari to be an expert on feng shui, lol).
And Aoi, well, itâs just scary how she manages to throw everything into the right spots with such precision (moral of the story: donât mess with Aoi cuz she will kick your ass).
To think they were in such a messy state the day before but they can all come together like this and make that much progress in such a short amount of time.
Itâs great. Their strengths complement each other well and theyâre being productive about it.
Itâs just great. ^^
Last but not least, the moment of crowning.
While itâs still debatable if the current Ichika is qualified enough to be a steady manager who puts a 14-year old in charge of a store? AND the cook (oh boyâŚ), thereâs no doubt that she definitely did earn her title as the leader of the group.
Ichika was the one who brought them together. She was the one who made the decision to use this space provided to them for a cause. She was the one who wanted to bring something good to others and get them to smile from the sweets theyâll serve.
She may not have Himariâs brains or Aoiâs strong arm or Yukariâs calmness or Akiraâs maturity. And itâs true that sheâs reckless and clumsy all over the place.
But itâs indisputable that sheâs got the heart needed to make all this possible.
And that, I think, is the most critical element in sustaining their patisserie. You gotta have the intention to make people happy. Thereâs no other way you can open a business without that.
So itâs only fitting that Yukari would be the one to christen Ichika with the important position of manager. Because throughout this whole fiasco of building a shop together, Yukari was the only one who didnât lose herself to stress over the situation (duh, this is Yukari weâre talking about).
Why? Cuz she predicted this would happen.
She knew that with the variety of people here, it definitely is possible to open a magnificent patisserie. Them getting off to a rocky start is just a minor bump in the road because no oneâs going to do everything perfectly on their first try like how she was with the macarons *gets shot*.
And she knew that Ichika had the potential to live up to the expectations of being manager because Ichika has the determination to see it through.
If she didnât know those things, she wouldnât have stuck around to help because then it would be a failure and Yukari doesnât accept failure. She doesnât function on something flimsy like a whimsical belief. She has to really know there is a winning result at the end to see this as worthwhile.
(True moral of the story: Kira Puri wouldnât survive with Yukari. Yukari knows all. Theyâd be lost without her. This season would be nothing without her. Yep.)
So think about what it means for her to entrust this huge responsibility to Ichika.Â
âI trust that you wonât bore me so do your best, little manager.â
Yukari, whoâs the most capable of them all. Yukari, so capable that she can probably/easily be a better manager than Ichika but chose not to because that would be no fun for her. Yukari wants Ichika to rise up the challenge in overseeing this patisserie.
It doesnât just imply how much faith Yukari has in Ichika. It also suggests that being manager will mold Ichika into an even better character. All the stuff sheâll have to face as the leader of her team, that is what going to serve as her character development.
And I so hope that is the case here. I really, really do. Youâve got 40 more episodes ahead of you to take this seasonâs Cures as far as you can, Toei. Donât disappoint me.
And thatâs that, I suppose.Â
lol, what the hell is bunnycake looking so tired out for? She didnât do anything while the rest of them were slaving away to construct her restaurant. :P
Now bring on the fillers~
I canât do this kind of review every week, itâll kill me. =A=;
#now off to do a post for LWA#I'm so busy ugh#kira kira precure a la mode#usami ichika#arisugawa himari#tategami aoi#kotozume yukari#kenjou akira#pekorin
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2018-03-15 14 FINANCE now
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