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anghraine · 2 months ago

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what happens to charlotte lucas if mr. collins dies early (before he inherits longbourne)?

That is the worst possible scenario for her, basically.

Mr Collins's living with regard to Hunsford only lasts for the duration of his life, so she gets nothing from it. Unless her child (she's implied to be pregnant at the end of P&P) is a son and, iirc, falls within a set number of generations as laid out by the original entailment, she also gets nothing with regard to Longbourn (and if the child is a girl, she now has another dependent to worry about and provide for; I think Mr Bennet's daughters would receive preference over Charlotte's if Mr Collins never inherits and there's no son).

There would have been legal documents accompanying their betrothal that laid out exactly how much property or money Charlotte and her potential children would receive during and after the marriage (this is what is meant by references to pin money and jointure; pin money is what the woman will regularly receive for her private expenses during the marriage, and jointure is what she gets if she survives her husband). There's a straightforward example of this with Mr and Mrs Bennet, for instance.

Mrs Bennet brought a dowry of four thousand pounds to the marriage. Mr Bennet or his family settled an additional one thousand pounds on her at the time (23 years earlier). So there's five thousand pounds attached to Mrs Bennet and her children specifically that is essentially secure—the income from it can only go to her or her children. Since her children are all daughters, however, this pretty much automatically includes her daughters' husbands as well, since women were legally and financially subsumed into their husbands' identities upon marriage and it took some legal shenanigans to protect their resources. Lydia's share of Mrs Bennet's fortune, one thousand pounds, effectively goes to Wickham as part of the marriage arrangements, and it's not clear if Lydia's money is legally secured to her in the same way since it was part of bribing Wickham to marry her at all.

(Tangent: a lot of analysis tends to assume that income from a lump sum of this kind would generate an income of 5% of the principal via low-risk, low-reward government investments. Mr Collins himself explicitly estimates that Elizabeth's portion of Mrs Bennet's settlement would generate an income at a 4% rate, leaving her with a mere 40 pounds a-year. This might seem Mr Collins-style negging, but in reality these kinds of safe government investments could and did drop to rates closer to 3% due to various economic upheavals at the time.)

Returning to Charlotte's situation, eighteenth-century advice urged men (even much less affluent men) to set aside a significant portion of their incomes every year to add to what was settled on their wives/children, so that if they died, their children and widows would have more to live on. The original settlement, as in Mrs Bennet's case, could be pretty small, especially for multiple people to live on. Mr Collins is enough of a rules guy that he might set aside the suggested percentages of his income, especially if Lady Catherine considers it proper. But even if we assume he's setting aside, say, 20% of his income, I doubt that would amount to very much if he dies soon; the Hunsford living is good, but not that good, and he's only 25, so there just hasn't been much time. Charlotte would essentially be a poor cousin by marriage of the Bennets and dependent on her own family (already in straitened circumstances) for anything more than her settlement, which given the circumstances wouldn't amount to much.

People often kill Mr Collins young to given Charlotte a chance at a better life, but in reality, this would likely be a disaster for her.

#anon replies #respuestas #austen blogging #charlotte lucas #william collins #long post #anghraine's meta #mr bennet #mrs bennet

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sreegs · 5 months ago

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gonna start this post upfront by saying tumblr's fuckin up bad with moderation right now, regarding the wave of trans people being targeted. but i'm not here to discuss that issue, i'm going to talk about the nature of large and small social spaces on the internet

as this post rightly points out, examining our existing social network structure reveals the crux of the problem: we are tenants on someone else's service. extrapolating from that, we're the source of revenue for someone's business. under that model, there is no incentive whatsoever for a social network to apply a "fair" or "just" moderation scheme. their goal is to maximize the number of people using the service and minimize blowback from advertisers regarding "what goes on" on the site

there will not be an alternative social network that gets this right at scale, unless it meets the following criteria:

1. Has ample moderators to thoughtfully deal with user moderation cases

2. Has terms of service that you agree with

3. Has a moderation team that understands how to apply moderation according to the terms of service, and amends it when necessary

4. Does not rely on external income source to pay for the site

Number 1: An ideal social network is one that has numerous, well-treated moderators who are adept at resolving conflict. Under capitalism, this is a non-starter, as moderation is seen as a money sink that just needs to be barely enough to make the site usable.

Number 2: An ideal social network has terms of service you agree with. Unfortunately there's no set of rules everyone will find fair. While this is not a problem for the people who want to use the site, it will inevitably create an outgroup who are pushed away from the site. The obvious bad actors (nazis, terfs, etc) are pretty straightforward, but there are groups that do things you might find "unpleasant" even if you support their right to do it. Inevitably this turns into lines drawn in the sand about how visible should that content be.

Number 3: An ideal social network has moderators who have internalized the terms of service and consistently make decisions based on the TOS. If a situation comes up where there's no clear ruling in the TOS, but users need a moderation decision regarding it, the moderation team must choose how to act and then, potentially, amend the TOS if the case warrants it. Humans, though, are not robots, and no, AI is not the solution here jesus christ. There will always be variance in moderation decisions. And when it comes to amending the TOS, who's the decision maker? The sites' owners? The moderation team? Users as a whole?

Number 4: An ideal social network does not rely on an external income source to pay for the site. The site pays for itself, and its income flow covers the costs necessary with reserves for unexpected situations. Again, under capitalism this is a no-go, because a corporate social network's only goal is to maximize money. Infinite growth, not stasis. A private social network paid by members requires enough paying members to be sustainable, and costs will generally go up over time, not down. A social network that has some lump sum of cash just generating wealth is also unreliable because, first you need a large lump sum to begin with, and that mechanism is tied to the whims of the investment market. And, again, costs of the site will go up, not down.

As you've read through these you're probably reaching the conclusion: making a large-scale social network that is fair and sustainable is very, very difficult, if not impossible with our current culture and economic systems. There might be a scale where you can reach "almost fair" and "barely sustainable", but then you have to cap its growth.

So the "town square" social network is rife with problems and we need to abandon it's model as the ideal network. Should we go small instead? We have a model already for that with message boards and forums. Though they weren't without their problems, they didn't have the scale that exacerbated those problems to crisis levels. Most of the time.

If you're thinking maybe you need a small network like this, free from a corporate owner (like Discord), the tools are out there for you to accomplish it. However, before you try, keep the above points in mind. Even if you're not out to create a large-scale social network, an open network will run away from you. And all of those points above are guidelines for a good online community.

You and your network of 50 friends and friends of friends might all get along together, but every single person you add increases the risk of creating moderation problems. People also change, or simply have episodes of irrational behavior. You need a dedicated team of moderators who are acting coherently for and agreeably to the community.

And you absolutely must keep this in mind: inevitably, as you add more people, someone will do vile shit. CSAM and violence type shit. You have to be prepared to encounter it. You have to have a plan to see and handle that, and the moderators who are part of your moderation team must be prepared to see and handle it too.

There's been a steady trickle of new alternative social networks (or social media networks) popping up, but you cannot expect those to be perfect havens. Tumblr was once the haven for weirdos on the internet. Now it's hostile to its core members. This is not trying to rationalize staying here because "hey, it could be worse". This is just trying to warn you to temper your expectations, especially because new networks that suddenly get a huge influx of new members hit a critical point where many falter, change, or fail.

Examine who's running those networks closely. Think critically about what they're touting as the benefits of those networks. And if you decide to join them, do not, under any case, expect those new homes to be permanent.

#social networks #social media #internet #tumblr

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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The health industry’s invisible hand is a fist

On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

The US has the rich world's most expensive health care system, and that system delivers the worst health outcomes of any country in the rich world. Also, the US is unique in relying on market forces as the primary regulator of its health care system. All of these facts are related!

Capitalism's most dogmatic zealots have a mystical belief in the power of markets to "efficiently allocate" goods and services. For them, the process by which goods and services are offered and purchased performs a kind of vast, distributed computation that "discovers the price" of everything. Our decisions to accept or refuse prices are the data that feeds this distributed computer, and the signals these decisions send about our desires triggers investment decisions by sellers, which guides the whole system to "equilibrium" in which we are all better off.

There's some truth to this: when demand for something exceeds the supply, prices tend to go up. These higher prices tempt new sellers into the market, until demand is met and prices fall and production is stabilized at the level that meets demand.

But this elegant, self-regulating system rarely survives contact with reality. It's the kind of simplified model that works when we're hypothesizing about perfectly spherical cows of uniform density on a frictionless surface, but ceases to be useful when it encounters a messy world of imperfect rationality, imperfect information, monopolization, regulatory capture, and other unavoidable properties of reality.

For members of the "efficient market" cult, reality's stubborn refusal to behave the way it does in their thought experiments is a personal affront. Panged by cognitive dissonance, the cult members insist that any market failures in the real world are illusions caused by not doing capitalism hard enough. When deregulation and markets fail, the answer is always more deregulation and more markets.

That's the story of the American health industry in a nutshell. Rather than accepting that people won't shop for the best emergency room while unconscious in an ambulance, or that the "clearing price" of "not dying of cancer" is "infinity," the cult insists that America's worst-in-class, most expensive health system just needs more capitalism to turn it into a world leader.

In the 1980s, Reagan's court sorcerers decreed that they could fix health care with something called "Prospective Payment Systems," which would pay hospitals a lump sum for treating conditions, rather than reimbursing them for each procedure, using competition and profit motives to drive "efficiency." The hospital system responded by "upcoding' patients: if you showed up with a broken leg and a history of coronary disease, they would code you as a heart patient and someone who needed a cast. They'd collect both lump sums, slap a cast on you, and wheel you out the door:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195137/

As Robert Kuttner writes for The American Prospect, this kind of abuse was predictable from the outset, especially since Health and Human Services is starved of budget for auditors and can only hand out "slaps on the wrist" when they catch a hospital ripping off the system:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-13-fantasyland-general/

Upcoding isn't limited to Medicare fraud, either. Hospitals and insurers are locked in a death-battle over payments, and hospitals' favorite scam is sending everyone to the ER, even when they don't have emergencies (some hospitals literally lock all the doors except for the ER entrance). That way, a normal, uncomplicated childbirth can be transformed into a "Level 5" emergency treatment (the highest severity of emergency) and generate a surprise bill of over $2,700:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/27/crossing-a-line/#zero-fucks-given

The US health industry is bad enough to generate a constant degree of political will for change, but the industry (and its captured politicians and regulators) is also canny enough to dream up an endless procession of useless gimmicks designed to temporarily bleed off the pressure for change. In 2018, HHS passed a rule requiring hospitals to publish their prices.

Hospitals responded to this with a shrewd gambit: they simply ignored the rule. So in 2021, HHS made another rule, creating penalties for ignoring the first rule:

https://www.cms.gov/priorities/key-initiatives/hospital-price-transparency/hospitals

The theory here was that publishing prices would create "market discipline." Again, this isn't wholly nonsensical. To the extent that patients have nonurgent conditions and the free time to shop around, being able to access prices will help them. Indeed, if the prices are in a standards-defined, machine-readable form, patients and their advocates could automatically import them, create price-comparison sites, leaderboards, etc. None of this addresses the core problem that health-care is a) a human right and b) not a discretionary expense, but it could help at the margins.

But there's another wrinkle here. The same people who claim that prices can solve all of our problems also insist that monopolies are impossible. They've presided over a decades-long assault on antitrust law that has seen hospitals, pharma companies, insurers, and a menagerie of obscure middlemen merge into gigantic companies that are too big to fail and too big to jail. When a single hospital system is responsible for the majority of care in a city or even a county, how much punishment can regulators realistically subject it to?

Not much, as it turns out. Kuttner describes how Mass Gen Brigham cornered the market on health-care in Boston, allowing it to flout the rules on pricing. In addition to standard tricks – like charging self-pay patients vastly more than insured payments (because individuals don't have the bargaining power of insurers), Mass Gen Brigham's price data is a sick joke.

See for yourself! The portal will send you giant, unstructured, ZIPped text files filled with cryptic garbage like:

https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/patient-care/patient-visitor-information/billing/cms-required-hospital-charge-data

These files have tens of thousands of rows. As a patient, you are meant to parse through these in order to decide whether you're getting ripped off on that HIP STEM 16X203MM SIZE 4 FEMORAL PRESS FIT NEUTRAL REVISION TITANIUM you're in the market for (as it happens, I have two of these in my body).

Kuttner describes the surreal lengths he had to go through to prevent his mother from getting ripped off by Mass Gen through an upcoding hustle. By coding her as "admitted for observation," Mass Gen was able to turn her into an outpatient, with a 20% co-pay (this is down to a GW Bush policy that punishes hospitals that charge Medicare for inpatient care when they could be treated as outpatients – hospitals reflexively game the system to make every patient an outpatient, even if they have overnight hospital stays).

Kuttner's an expert on this: he was national policy correspondent for the New England Journal of Medicine and covers the health beat for the Prospect. Even so, it took him ten hours of phone calls to two doctors' offices and Blue Cross to resolve the discrepancy. The average person is not qualified to do this – indeed, the average person won't even know they've been upcoded.

Needless to say that people in other countries – countries where health care is cheaper and the outcomes are better – are baffled by this. Canadians, Britons, Australians, Germans, Finns, etc do not have to price-shop for their care. They don't have to hawkishly monitor their admission paperwork for sneaky upcodes. They don't have to spend ten hours on the phone arguing about esoteric billing practices.

In a rational world, we'd compare the American system to the rest of the world and say, "Well, they've figured it out, we should do what they're doing." But in good old U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!, the answer to this is more prices, more commercialization, more market forces. Just rub some capitalism on it!

That's where companies like Multiplan come in: this is a middleman that serves other middlemen. Multiplan negotiates prices on behalf of insurers, and splits the difference between the list price and the negotiated price with them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/us/health-insurance-medical-bills.html

But – as the Arm and a Leg podcast points out – this provides the perverse incentive for Multiplan to drive list prices up. If the list price quintuples, and then Multiplan drives it back down to, say, double the old price, they collect more money. Meanwhile, your insurer sticks you with the bill, over and above your deductible and co-pay:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/multiplan/

The Multiplan layer doesn't just allow insurers to rip you off (though boy does it allow insurers to rip you off), it also makes it literally impossible to know what the price is going to be before you get your procedure. As with any proposition bet, the added complexity is there to make it impossible for you to calculate the odds and figure out if you're getting robbed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/04/house-always-wins/#are-you-on-drugs

Multiplan is the purest expression of market dynamics brainworms I've yet encountered: solving the inefficiencies created by the complexity of a system with too many middlemen by adding another middle-man who is even more complex.

No matter what the problem is with America's health industry, the answer is always the same: more markets! Are older voters getting pissed off at politicians for slashing Medicare? No problem: just create Medicare Advantage, where old people can surrender their right to government care and place themselves in the loving hands of a giant corporation that makes more money by denying them care.

The US health industry is a perfect parable about the dangers of trusting shareholder accountable markets to do the work of democratically accountable governments. Shareholders love monopolies, so they drove monopolization throughout the health supply chain. As David Dayen writes in his 2020 book Monopolized the pharma industry monopolized first, and put the screws to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

Hospitals formed regional monopolies to counter the seller power of consolidated Big Pharma. That's Mass Gen's story: tapping the capital markets to buy other hospitals in the region until it became too big to fail and too big to jail (and too big to care). Consolidated hospitals, in turn, put the screws to insurers, so they also consolidated, fighting Big Hospital's pricing power.

Monopoly at any point in a supply chain leads to monopoly throughout the supply chain. But patients can't consolidate (that's what governments are for – representing the diffuse interests of people). Neither can health workers (that's what unions are for). So the system screwed everyone: patients paid more for worse care. Health workers put in longer hours under worse conditions and got paid less.

Kuttner describes how his eye doctor races from patient to patient "as if he was on roller skates." When Kuttner wrote him a letter questioning the quality of care, the eye doctor answered that he understood that he was giving his patients short shrift, but explained that he had to, because his pay was half what he needed, relegating him to a small apartment and an old car. The hospital – which skims the payments he gets for care – sets his caseload, and he can't turn down patients.

The answers to this are obvious: get markets out of health care. Unionize health workers. Give regulators the budgets and power to hold health corporations to account.

But for market cultists, all of that can't work. Instead, we have to create more esoteric middlemen like "pharmacy benefit managers" and Multiplan. We need more prices to shovel into the market computer's data-hopper. If we just capitalism hard enough, surely the system will finally work…someday.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/#hayek-pilled

#billing codes #health #corruption #ripoffs #arm and a leg podcast #robert kuttner #prices #austrian economics #Prospective Payment Systems #the invisible hand #shop around #a market for lemons #monopoly #monopolization #upcoding

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starlightseraph · 24 days ago

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yes, save dead boy detectives. yes, save good omens. yes, continue sandman. but fucking fire neil gaiman first. have him renounce his royalties. the lump sum for the rights, the producer/writer salary, any residuals. if that doesn’t happen (and it seems unlikely), then don’t go ahead with the shows. don’t give him more money.

his backing out voluntarily or being forced out of financial benefit is a prerequisite for my willingness to support any of these projects in the future. i hope it is for you, too.

these shows and their accompanying works are dear to me. dbd is one of my favourite shows of all time. i want it to go on for so many reasons. but not at the price of funding an alleged predator. go was formative for one of my own writing projects, and it’s influence is seen in a lot of my writing. but i can’t in good conscience support go itself as long as he’s involved. sandman is brilliant and i’m fully emotionally invested. but i won’t invest financially unless he’s gone.

the other wonderful and talented people involved in these projects deserve to continue them. ng doesn’t. the casts, crews, other writers, and specifically terry pratchett, they deserve these things. the fans deserve them. we can make these our own, but only if neil is gone first.

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nerdlingmerchling · 9 months ago

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Jesper: I called Wylan 'baby' and now he's upset. I don't understand.

Kaz: Of course he's upset! You've basically called him an infant!

Jesper: It's an endearment!

Kaz: It's not! It's an insult! You should have called him a 'gem', a 'diamond', a 'gold stash', or, better yet, if you truly wanted to be complimentary : a 'desirable asset', an 'investment', or even a 'lump sum', although you might want to keep that last one for when you're in private; it's pretty racy. Anyway, I'll write you a list. *walks out of the room*

Jesper: Kerch men are so fucking weird....

Inej: *nods sagely*

#jesper trying to navigate the cultural differences #wesper #incorrect quotes #six of crows #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #inej ghafa #kaz brekker #wylan x jesper #kaz x inej #incorrect crows

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batboyblog · 9 months ago

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week. #5

Feb 9-16 2024

The Department of Education released the first draft for a wide ranging student loan forgiveness plan. After Biden's first attempt at student debt forgiveness was struck down at the Supreme Court in 2023, this new plan is an attempt to replace it with something that will hold up in court. The plan hopes to forgive debt for anyone facing "financial hardship" which has been as broadly defined as possible. Another part of the plan hopes to eliminate $10-20,000 in interest from all student loans, as well as a wide ranging public Information push to inform people of other forgiveness programs they qualify for but don't know about.

The House passed 1.2 Billion Dollars to combat human trafficking, including $175 million in housing assistance to human trafficking victims

The Department of Transportation announced $970 Million for improvements at 114 airports across 44 states and 3 territories. They include $40 million to O'Hare International in Chicago to improve passenger experience by reconfiguring TSA and baggage claims, and installing ADA compliant bathrooms(!). The loans will also go to connecting airports to mass transit, boosted sustainability, installing solar and wind power, and expanding service to under served committees around the country.

Medicare & Medicaid released new guidelines to allow people to pay out of pocket prescription drug coats in monthly installments rather than as a lump sum. This together with capping the price of certain drugs and penalties for drug companies that rise prices over inflation is expected to save the public millions on drug coasts and assure people don't pass on a prescription because they can't pay upfront

The EPA announced its adding 150 more communities to its Closing America's Wastewater Access Gap Community Initiative. 2.2 Million Americans do not have basic running water and indoor plumbing. Broken and unreliable wastewater infrastructure exposed many of those to dangerous raw sewage. These Americans live primarily in poor and rural communities, many predominantly Black communities in the south as well as those on tribal lands. The program is aiming to close the wastewater gap and insure all Americans have access to reliable clear water.

The White House announced deferred action for Palestinians in the US. This means any Palestinian living in the United States, no mater their legal status, can not be deported for any reason for the next 18 months.

The Department of Energy announced $60 million in investment into clean geothermal energy. The plan will hopefully lead to a 90% decrease in the coasts of geothermal. DOE estimates hold that geothermal might be able to power the hopes of 65 million Americans by 2050 making it a key step in the Biden administration plan for a carbon-free grid by 2035 and net-zero emissions by 2050.

The EPA launched $83 million to help improve air quality monitoring across America. With updated equipment local agencies will be better able to report on air quality, give more localized reports of bad air quality and the country will be better equipped to start mitigating the problem

The Department of Energy announced $63 million in investments in domestic heat-pump manufacturing. Studies have shown that heat-pumps reduce green house gases by 50% over the most efficient condensing gas boilers, as technology improves this could rise to 75% by 2030. Heat pump water heaters meanwhile are 2 to 3 times as energy efficient as conventional electric water heaters.

HHS awarded $5.1 million to organizations working with LGBTQI+ Youth and their Families. The programs focus on preventing homelessness, fighting depression and suicide, drug use and HIV prevention and treatment, as well as family counseling and support interventions tailored for LGBTQI+ families.

The House passed two bills in support of the oppressed Uyghur minority in China. The "No Dollars To Uyghur Forced Labor" Act would prohibit the US government from spending any money on projects that source materials from Xinjiang. The Uyghur Policy Act would create a permanent post at the State Department to coordinate policy on Uyghur Issues, much like the special ambassador on antisemitism.

#Joe Biden #Thanks Biden #politics #US politics #Democrats #climate change #student loans #student loan forgiveness #green energy #Palestinians #Uyghur

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nico-esoterica · 22 days ago

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I've been manifesting that I receive money constantly and that it's in love with me. Different affirmations like that. That's been my mindset for months but I really locked in with that over the past two. When I see manifestation success stories, half the time people don't mention all the mental discipline they invested into changing their mindset over weeks, months, etc. That's where the 'overnight' materializations come from imo.

Little twitter threads giving tips on how to receive passive income have been showing up on my feed lately. My aff is that I get paid for doing nothing. First of all, if you've ever had a delayed flight, you need to visit the airlines site and get it refunded. A woman posted her receipt and got back 1k. My Chicago flight from August got delayed and I just got back $299. You have up to a year to fill it out.

If you're in the US, stay up to date on if you can get $$ owed to you from class action lawsuits. Another woman on twt posted that she got around 3k because of one from a vaping product and she advised to check if you qualify for any. It's such an 8H/12H (astro) coded way of receiving extra money from doing nothing. That's a manifestation. I'm in the process of filling out something for my car. A series of crazy events unfolded which point to me getting a huge lump sum. I'm excited. You never know WHAT is happening behind the scenes once you open yourself to miracles.

Life's been good and is about to be great forever for me. I'll keep you updated :) Just wanted to post some progress because this is an example of how money can squeeze out for you in unexpected ways once you're open to it~

#loa #manifestation #loa success story #personal #updates

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as-the-moon-blooms · 2 years ago

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First Kisses

*Kamisato Ayato

-There was an age-old contract between your family and the Kamisato Clan, betrothing you and the clan head.

-Actually, the contract wasn't even for you; it had been for your father and Ayato's mother before the then Kamisato Clan head had fallen in love with her. The arrangement had been called off (happily on all sides, truth be told), and the contract had faded into obscurity as time passed.

-The only reason you had the contract unearthed was because you were desperate to save your family. You had done all you could to protect your small clan, but wise investments took time. And with three younger sisters and a younger brother to care for, you knew that time was running out. If you could obtain just a small lump sum of money to last until those investments came to fruition, your hard work would pay off.

-You had assumed they would pay the penalty to void the old marriage contract. The life-changing sum of money you required was small change to the Kamisato Clan, after all. And why would the Kamisato Head be interested in your small clan?

-And he wasn't. Ayato had called you to the Kamisato Compound, fully intent on telling whatever marriage-minded miss that arrived that he was not interested. Only to find out that the miss in question did not at all seem to be the social climbing person he expected to find. You were pleasant enough, but he was sure you were hiding something.

-The more he learned about you, the more he realized that you were not who he had expected at all. You did not seem very concerned with social positions, walking the streets of Inuzuma to meet some of your friends (an ex-shrine maiden and a sharp-witted detective).

-One night, he catches you off guard in the moonlight courtyard of his home. After some back and forth, he corners you against the wall—one hand on your waist to hold you in place, the other grips your chin.

-You finally admit that he was right. You didn't want to marry him at all. And Ayato was surprised to find that he did not care for that answer from you.

The memory of you laughing in the streets of Inuzuma with that detective flashes through his mind as he stares down at your defiant expression. His hand on your hip tightened slightly.

“Then, is it because of your lover?” Ayato asked quietly, gently sweeping his thumb over the delicate skin below your plush lower lip. He supposed it wasn’t a fair question for him to ask you, especially considering that you had made it abundantly clear you wanted to call off the arrangement. Nor was it fair as he had a small handful of lovers himself before the two of you had ever met. However, fair or otherwise, he couldn’t help but watch you carefully as your breath caught at the question, blinking a few times in surprise before masking your surprised expression.

“Y-yes.” You declared, large eyes flashing defiantly in the moonlight despite the slight catch in your voice.

Ayato arched an eyebrow as he stared down at you, watching the color rise in your cheeks.

“For such a skilled player, you are a poor liar.” He murmured, unable to quell the desire to tease more of that blush out of you as he moved closer into your personal space. “So, you do not have a lover.”

“What, no, I…” you hiss, your words losing their harshness as your tone turns pleading. “I have a lover!”

He chuckled, his thumb continuing to stroke your smooth skin as he watched your cheeks flushing as your frustration grew.

“I have a dozen lovers!”

Such a poor pretty little liar.

“Poor thing,” Ayato murmured, slightly surprised by how sadistic he was feeling. There was something about how you looked up at him, your large eyes blinking back frustrated tears as you pleaded with him in the moonlight. He lightly rubbed the tip of his nose against yours as he continued playing with you. “Poor, poor thing. I bet that you have never even been kissed, have you?”

He had meant merely to tease you, but the truth hit Ayato as you sucked in a sharp breath.

He was too close. Your hands had been pressed against his chest to try to push him away, but he was too close now, trapping them uselessly between you. He was barely touching you, but he was so close that he was scrambling your racing thoughts. You had always thought he was as cold as the stories about the proud Yashiro Commissioner had proclaimed him to be. But he certainly didn’t seem cold right then, standing so close that every nerve in your body was aware of his body heat from his proximity. His fingers were curled against your jaw, trailing sparks with each deliberate movement. His elegant nose nuzzled against yours, feather-light but lighting a fire in his wake. You couldn’t help the uneven gasp that escaped you as he stroked his thumb and pressed down, parting your lips slightly with the firm pressure.

Ayato was anything but cold, with his hot touch keeping you locked in place. He was pretty. So damned pretty and so damned sure of himself, his lips quirking in a lazy smirk as he watched you fidget; all retorts were long lost to you as he watched you through the pretty sweep of his long lashes.

Vaguely, you recalled your father’s warning when you first told him about your plan.

‘The Kamisato clan head is brilliant and cunning, y/n. He has hundreds of women throwing themselves at him, begging for his attention. He is going to see through you right away.’

It would seem that your father had been right to warn you.

“I’m not going to beg you.” You suddenly say, half to him and half to remind yourself. You had tried to snap the words but failed as they caught in your throat and came out in a whisper instead of the sharp hiss you had meant them to be.

His lazy smirk grew suddenly at your declaration, and your face flamed as you realized how he must have taken your words.

“Of course not.” Ayato cajoled, his words ghosting across your lips like a physical touch as he loosened his grip on your chin, still not closing that final gap. “What sort of gentleman would make a lady beg for her first kiss?”

Slow and deliberate, Ayato tilted his head and pressed his lips firmly against yours.

You inhale sharply through your nose in shock before you melt into him. Your hands on his chest trembled before you gripped the fabric of his shirt, unsure of what else to do with them. A small voice in your mind argued that you should push him away from you, that you should be outraged that he was so easily playing with you, but all reason is swiftly forgotten as his thumb strokes your cheek and his lips move slowly, persuasively, against yours. You nearly forgot everything. You could scarcely remember how to breathe, especially when Ayato’s tongue licked insistently at the seam of your lips.

Your lips parted beneath his with a surprised gasp. Ayato deftly pressed his advantage, tongue plunging in to steal what little remained of your logic and reasoning. His body was hot against yours and as unyielding as the wall against your back, trapping you in place. His tongue flicked against yours, tempting you into an unfamiliar game that set your senses ablaze.

In shy, uncertain movements, you try to keep up with him. Your tongue twists with his earning you a low moan of approval from him. The sound settles in your chest as you tremble slightly, leaning into him further. Ayato’s fingers trailed from your jaw to rest around your neck; his long fingers wrapped around your neck with light pressure as he stole your breath away with his kiss.

Slowly, he pulled back from you. You blink a few times, hazily looking up at him. He watched you closely with lidded eyes as he leaned down and nipped at your still-parted lips before pulling back.

You swallow, unable to say anything for a moment as you look down at your fingers still gripping the fabric of his shirt. The night air seemed too cold now that Ayato had moved back to allow you to regain some of your personal space.

“I…” You start before trailing off as you realize that you are unsure what you want to say to him. You swallow, your neck moving beneath his fingers that still encircled your sensitive skin. You could feel his gaze watching you like a caress. “I think….”

He cut you off, leaning back down. Ayato moved his hand on your hip to the small of your back to pull your soft body flush against his. His cheek slid against yours as he placed his lips next to your ear, his breath on the sensitive shell of it forcing the hair at the nape of your neck to rise. If he had thought your eyes were expressive, it was nothing to your body. Every small gasp, your grip on his shirt tightening, the tilt of your head rolling to the side to give him better access even if you weren’t aware of what you were doing.

“Perhaps now you can see why,” Ayato said, his voice slightly hoarse as he whispered low in your ear. “Perhaps now you can see why I cannot allow you to call the deal off.”

This was originally just a small part of a much larger story but I’m not sure if anyone would want to read the whole thing. Since then, my imagination has sort of run wild and i have a half dozen of these little first kiss stories planned with different characters.

Who would you like to see next?

🌙🌸

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