#The other translations might be better but that's the first one I clicked and it's so fuckin funny

[gxlden-angels]

Me trying to comprehend anything from 1 Timothy 5:

[random-fandom1984]

hi, can you do, Yandere tfa Longarm/shockwave x cybertronian reader

Oh, yes! I have a story in the making on Wattpad, and in a way, I guess it would be a Yandere story? But that doesn't matter at the moment. This is exciting! :D

Warning: Potions, Yandere Behavior, etc.

~All It Takes Is A Potion to Show How Much I'm Obsessed with You~

Translations: Stellar Cycle = 1 year Deca-Cycle = 10 days Solar Cycle = 1 day Orbital Cycle = 1 month Nano-Click = 1 second

Sparkmerge = Wedding/marriage Energon Sweets = candy High Grade = Wine/alcohol/beer/vodka/etc. Conjunx Endura = Spouse Optics = Eyes Datapad = Book/tablet/etc. Subspace = Storage unit Dente = Teeth Throat Pipes = Throat

Today is our second Sparkmerge anniversary of the Stellar Cycle. I've had a good history with making Energon sweets, so I plan on making one that's his favorite, that sadly went out of business a few Deca-Cycles ago, and some high grade. I remember that we first met in Autobot Boot Camp and got along swimmingly. It was sad that my old friend turned out to be a Decepticon Spy, but I digress and moved on. Sure, it was hard to do, but at least I made a new friend who became my Conjunx Endura, Longarm.

We both graduated with flying colors and became Primes. He became head of Cybertron Intelligence – the one before him, Highbrow, was discovered dead, and no bot knew how – and I became his S.I.C. – the previous one ending up missing for some reason–, so they put us at the top since we were great at our jobs. We became an item way before we got promoted.

Of course, there had been an issue that popped up. Five Orbital Cycles ago, Longarm had gotten a call from a couple of bots that we went to boot camp with: Bumblebee; the one who Longarm helped to call out Wasp as the spy, and my cousin Bulkhead. The both of them are a part of Optimus' team on Earth, fighting Megatron. Apparently, the both of them intercepted a call with Megatron and a spy. Something about a construction project.

I can feel excitement pulsing through the other side of the bond, to which I sent back to with suppressed giggle; He's been like this all Solar Cycle, even yesterday ever since he came back from Iacon's Hall of Records, and I find it cute. He's so sweet, smart, and adorkable! I wonder how things are holding up on his end.

Yesterday

It's true, you two have been bonded for the past 2 Stellar Cycles and started dating in the middle of your time at boot camp. But there was one thing you didn't know; let me start from the beginning.

When entering the Autobot Boot Camp with a fake frame, he wasn't expecting anything to distract him from his mission for Lord Megatron as a spy. But... that all changed the moment his optics landed on you. To him it was love at first sight. And he saw how close you were with Wasp and Bulkhead, he felt something inside of him. What was this? Jealousy? No! There's no way! He's a Decepticon and you're an Autobot.

When he was approached by Bumblebee, who told him that he found out there was a Decepticon spy and suspects it might be Wasp, he took that as a way to drive attention away from him and onto him and C/n will be hi- Stop it! After Wasp was taken away to prison, he found you slacking off and then later came across you crying in your room. For some reason, he comforted you even though he shouldn't; you would've been kicked out for slacking, which would have gotten rid of another Autobot in his way, but he didn't. You also had another bot help comfort you, which was Bulkhead, who he later found out was your cousin; nothing to worry about with him getting in his way.

Later on, he grew to accept these feelings. You needed him; you don't need those unknown admirers that went missing a few days after interacting with you. Just him. This turned for the better in his favor when caught you leaving secret admirer love letters in his dorm; he didn't bring it up until he confessed his feelings. The image of your flustered face plate when you realized you'd been caught from the start will forever remain in his processor.

After graduating, he had to wait a while to kill Highbrow and instantly killed his assistant for abusing his role by being a creep; he deserved it. And it turned out good because not only did he become the new Head of Intel, but you became his assistant.

For the past Deca-Cycles, he's been conflicted. The Prime Council found out that there's a Decepticon spy in their ranks, which only led to another problem. If they found out he's the spy, you would most likely react negatively; you knew him better than anyone else in their ranks and will use it against him. So, he has two options:

Do nothing, and if he does get found out, have you sparkbroken and hate him, assuming he faked his affections towards you.

Find a way to turn you into a Decepticon.

He wanted to do the second option, but so far, all resources he's found in the history section in the Hall of Records ends up with the victim in pain in the process. The only thing calming his nerves and keeping him from lashing out in frustration that he was getting nowhere was a gift you made him when you both were in the dating phase of your relationship; A charm that hangs from a string, which is connected to a small magnet that is currently magnetized to his wrist.

He was fiddling with the charm until he felt it slip from his grasp. He looked down to see something slip into the shadows and move away in a blob of shadows. Obviously, he chased after it, nothing takes something of his that was made by his darling and gets away. As he chased it, he didn't notice the scenery change until he was deep enough in another section of the Hall or Records, which seems to be abandoned.

He continued to chase until he came across a bot. The shadow he was chasing phased out of the shadow in the form of a snake, with only a single eye, dropping the charm in the figure's servo. The figure turned their head, and to his surprise, was literally made of shadows, the only thing that stood out from the dark mass with glowing purple outlines was that had one normal optic and the other looked like the snake's, the Snake-Eyed Bot he'll call them.

Before he could demand for the charm back, the Snake-Eyed Bot tosses it back to him without a single word and beckoned him over. Suspicious, he approached with caution. Upon arrival, the figure gives him a datapad.

"H̵̯̞̥̙͕͔̗̺̠̼͖̩̟͚̄̅͂͗̐͂̈́͜e̶͇̣͉̫̻̹̝̻̩̰̲͇̘̱͒͐̊͌̽͠ṙ̸̢̉̓͐̃͠e̵̞̺̟̗̤̎̈́̀̑͊͝'̴̢̘̣͉̬̙̘̞́̇̃̌͑̈́̈͘̚ş̸̢̧̹̬̟͎̘̓͛̓̎͗̀̓̆̏͋́̆̃́̀ ̶̧̥́̅̈́̏̈́͆̆͒͗͒̉͂͗͒t̶̡̨̨̧̤̬̱̘͎̹̞̪̻̀̕ͅh̸̢̏̑͆͆̊̅̋͊̇ę̸̜̭̬͍̜͎̣̬͔̘̮͙͋̐̿́̈́͠͠ͅ ̷̩̫̿̃̿̐͛͝à̷̢̢̢͍͎͚̓͂̆͗̔̆̈̕̕̕n̴̢̲̹̬̩̼̙̯̬̜̼̩͈̎͂̾̃̈͜s̷̬͍̻̰̩͓̏̏̽̃̅͒́́͝��̧̱̥̗̝̩͜w̸̧̡̨̟̺̣̖͉̣͎̦͈̗̳̏͂͊̑̋̈́̿̿́͗̃̑̕e̴̬̺̙̞̗͎̞͍̞̠̒͜͜͝r̷̡͙͇͕̫͉̞̮̞̦̦͚͒͗́͐̽̉̕͝͝ ̸̢͇̲̬͕̺̙͉̈́́͐̇͂͌͂̊̑̽͝ț̴̡̺̾͋̅͐͑͊̌̈̓̌͗̕̚̕o̶̭̞͙̳͇̰̘͛ͅ ̶̨̧͎͇̫̹̰̮̘̬̯̗̟́y̴̢͖̩̳̱̞̎́͜͜o̶̡̫͔̹̯͍̹̱͖͔͎͚͚̼̎̾́̓̀̐̈́̈̄͂̀̈́̓̃̚u̷̺͕̭̫̬͛̎r̸̲͓̺̖͔̠̤̪̺̮̦̗͇̾̐̐̈́̌̈́ͅ ̴͉̺̯̯̻̓̀̃̈́̿̓š̸̱̫͈̥̺͔͚̣̺͍̒̑̍̇̊̉͆̀̔͘̚͠ͅe̸̡̧̨̖̣̰͍̺̻̱̅̌̈́͊̅̑͠a̶̤͈̭͈͆̓͝r̶̨̜̜̱̫̣̭̼͎̤̊́̓̃̾̈́č̶̡̻͎̠͉͎̩͉͓̜̰̭̱̓͐͜h̶̛͙̻̭̮̮̖̼̦̞̩͚͚̹̀̆͝ͅ."

Confused, he looked at it's contents; the Title caught his attention. Forever Potions? Before he could ask anything else, the figure tossed him a sack. Looking inside and at an ingredients page, there was three of everything on the list. He looked back up, only to find that he was standing behind the table he was sitting at, almost like he experienced a hallucination in a mere second, but the data pad and bag proved otherwise.

He placed the bag in his subspace before sitting back down and looking through the datapad. The results is what he needed: Something painless. Knowing better, he knew to read the part about the inner workings before heading off and doing something without knowing if this was truly safe or not. Luckily, it was.

He returned home, happy with his search.

It was the next day, and it was their second anniversary, and he came up with the perfect plan. For his surprise, he prepared a romantic dinner for just the two of you. He luckily had the day off, and as he was preparing the dinner, he was filled with joy and excitement, which only grew when every single time you returned the feeling over the bond.

He made Energon cubes for the both of you, crafted the potion carefully as possible, and poured it into yours. Luckily, it didn't affect the color of it so then you wouldn't be suspicious of it. He had extra time before it would be the exact time you would arrive home, so he decorated the room for the occasion.

When you arrived, he was both surprised and happy that you had his favorite Energon sweets; he'd thought they sold out. To his surprise, it wasn't that, you made it yourself?! He couldn't have asked for a better sparkmate.

He sat you down at the table, and you were flabbergasted at how gorgeous the room was, and he made Energon cubes? Frag yes! When you ate your cube, for some reason it tasted sweet/salty/sour/whatever-flavor-you-like than the last time you had one, but you weren't complaining because it tasted better than ever before.

A few cups of high grade later, you started to feel lightheaded. He saw this and led you to the berthroom where you both cuddled as you both went into recharge.

Everything is going according to plan.

(The Next Day)

No one seemed to notice any changes at work. Everything is going on like everything is normal.

"C/n Prime, here's some reports about the information of Decepticon spy my team could possibly find." Firerunner said, giving you a datapad containing all the information. "Thank you, Firerunner. You are dismissed." You said, taking the datapad, not taking your eyes from your screen and your fast typing.

Just as he was about to turn around, he noticed something. "Um, C/n Prime?" He called out. "Yes?" You quired. "Are you okay? Your optics are looking a little..." He trailed off. You turned your helm, your green optics staring back into his, almost boring into his soul. "Oh, I'm fine! Thanks for asking. An old friend of mine, who's a medic, looked into it and some bot decided to do something funny to by Energon rations for this to happen to me. I don't know how long it'll last, but I can assure you, I'll be fine." You informed with a smile, which just made your green optics seem a bit creepier. "Okay then, have a good day, ma'am." He said with a bow before walking off.

When he was out of sight, you picked up the datapad and looked through it, and sure enough, it had information regarding any information they could find about the Decepticon spy and where they might be hiding. With your smile never faltering, you deleted everything off of it before breaking in half, your smile now showing your dente. A giggle escaped your throat pipes as you dumped it in the garbage chute behind your desk. Out of sight, out of mind.

That's when you suddenly received a call from your comm-link. "Hello?" You asked in a sweet tone. "Dear, can you please come to my office? There's someone I'd like you to meet." He requested. "Of course, be there in a nano-click." You said before ending the call.

You stood up from your seat and started to traverse through the halls of building to your sparkmates office. You were in front of his door, looked around to see if anyone was around. You saw no one. Not a bot in sight. You opened the door, closing it behind you so no camera can have a peek on what's inside.

At his desk was your love, his true self of course. He was now taller than you by a landslide, had two antlers on the sides of his helm that extend upwards, three digits that are claw-shaped, a single, red optic being the only thing in the center of his face plate, and, of course, a Decepticon sigil proudly shown on his chassis.

"Lord Megatron, this is our new recruit, and my love: C/n." He said as you walked over and were in frame of the camera. On the other end of the screen was Lord Megatron himself. "And how are you sure she isn't tricking you?" Megatron asked. "Nothing that you should worry about, my liege. I made sure. But let's just say, it was an enchanting discovery."

Part 2?

[elyvorg]

The Most Significant Change in AAI2’s Official Localisation (according to me)

Ace Attorney Investigations 2 finally has an official localisation! This is kind of mind-boggling to those of us who played the fan translation and have loved it in that form for years, never expected an official localisation to happen, and now suddenly have to get used to everything about it being Just Slightly Different.

Having played the official localisation in full, I can say that for the most part, it’s even better than the already-excellent fan translation! Most of the lines have just a little bit more colour in them now, and there’s a bunch of small nuances that went over my head before that are emphasised better in the new version. There are some lines I prefer in the fan translation, but they’re vastly outnumbered by all the lines I prefer in the official version. All in all, strongly recommend fans of the fan translation to check out the official version in some form.

However, among these minor lines here and there that I prefer in the fan translation, there is also this one small but much more significant thing from the fan translation which is not present in the official version. I happen to care about this small-but-significant detail a lot, so here is a post explaining exactly why this is a Thing that Matters (to me, at least).

(This will mention major spoilers for the game! Do not click the readmore unless you have experienced the entire story of AAI2 in some form.)

The Thing is this: In the fan translation, Simon refers to his friend as “Knightley”, all the time. Meanwhile, in the official localisation, Simeon always calls him “Bronco”.

Now, I get why the localisers did this. It’s a Japanese cultural thing – in Japanese, it’s common for even close friends to address each other by their surnames, and indeed, Sim(e)on referred to Knight(ley) by his surname in the original Japanese game. This is usually changed into friends using each other’s first names in English localisations, because it feels strange in English to see two close friends addressing each other in what feels like a distant and formal kind of way.

(For example, in The Great Ace Attorney, Ryunosuke and Kazuma addressed each other by their surnames in Japanese, and this was – very correctly – localised to them using each other’s first names in English. It would feel wrong to an English speaker for these best friends not to do that, even though they are still characters from Japan.)

So it just makes sense as the obvious localisation choice to have Simeon refer to his friend with his given name, rather than his surname.

However! In this particular instance, I firmly 100% believe that this was the wrong decision.

See, Simon calling Knightley by his surname in the fan translation isn’t just an awkward holdover of a somewhat more direct Japanese translation – it actually means something. It’s a subtle hint that Simon doesn’t actually see Knightley as the friend he supposedly is; he’s distancing himself from his friend by talking about him in this more detached way.

This is subtle enough that it isn’t a spoiler, either! On my first playthrough of the fan translation, I never batted an eye at Simon using his friend’s surname. Some people in English-speaking countries do just prefer to go by their surname, even to their friends – particularly when their first name is kind of awkward. It felt perfectly natural that Knightley might prefer to be called just that even by his best friend, instead of “Horace”, which sounds somewhat old-fashioned and dorky.

(And this would go double, surely, for someone whose first name is freaking Bronco of all things. It’d make plenty of sense that he’d rather be called Knight!)

Knightley himself probably didn’t even question it. I imagine Simon would have called him Horace while they were kids at the orphanage, but then when Simon reappeared in his life years later after his disappearance and was calling him Knightley instead, Knightley probably shrugged and figured, yeah, Horace is kind of a dorky name, he’s not a kid any more, “Knightley” is way cooler. (Especially with his obsession with chess, not to mention his whole white-knight complex towards Simon.)

The biggest reason why this means something is that Simon calls him Knightley almost the entire time, with one single exception. In the flashback to their impromptu nighttime meeting in the prison, in which Simon knows he’s about to get his “friend” killed and this is the last time he’ll ever see him, the final thing he says to him is, “Goodbye, Horace.”

He uses Knightley’s first name, for the only time in the game’s present. And so, precisely because he’s used his surname every other time, this simple line becomes an achingly telling sign that Simon still cares about his best friend despite everything, despite the fact that he is literally getting him killed. It’s like he’s remembering the happier times they had being friends at the orphanage before everything turned sour, like a part of him wishes they could still have that, and it breaks my heart.

(This is the same in the Japanese, too – he uses his friend’s given name, which is a sign of extremely close friendship in Japanese and would have even more of an impact to Japanese-speaking players.)

This implication isn’t there in the official localisation, because it can’t be. Not when Simeon calls him Bronco all the time anyway, even when he’s revealed his true colours and is no longer pretending for the sake of Edgeworth and company. Which means that he simply did call him Bronco the whole time, even after they reunited, even while secretly wanting him dead. In that context, using the name Bronco when saying goodbye to him in the prison means nothing in particular. It’s just the name he always uses.

…Okay, granted, it’s not like that flashback scene has no emotional weight in the official version. It still is Simeon coming to talk to his friend one last time when he doesn’t really need to, which still means a lot on its own. But the final line itself isn’t a particularly notable part of it. In the localisation, it’s “Goodbye, Bronco. …And farewell.” The added “farewell” mostly just serves to make it obvious that he knows this is the very last time they’ll meet, but I suppose there is at least something to the fact that you wouldn’t usually say that to someone you didn’t care about. I don’t think it hits nearly as hard as calling him Horace for the first and only time in twelve years, though.

It seems like either the official localisers didn’t notice the significance of the given name in that line there, or they did notice it but they decided that localising Simeon to use his friend’s given name the rest of the time, like localisers normally would, was worth losing the impact of that line. And I firmly disagree that this was worth it. There’s nothing inherently wrong about Knight going by Knight even to his best friend, even if it might feel a little awkward in principle, and the emotional impact of the final thing his best friend says to him would have absolutely made up for that.

[hanzajesthanza]

How to read the new Witcher book, Crossroads of Ravens, in English (e-book) [GUIDE]

Thanks to @nohtora for the method, I decided to write up a short post detailing how to use Calibre e-reader to read a side-by-side English translation from the Polish text.

This post is dated 12/02/2024 - as of yet, no English translation has been scheduled, nor even announced. I am writing this because I have seen many fans say they want to read the book and are sad because they can't read Polish and don't want to wait forever for a translation and get to posting memes already. Well, me too.

So, I read it.

Because, if you are an international fan like I, and do not live in Poland, you can still purchase a copy of the new book of Rozdroże kruków ("Crossroads of Ravens") and read it... also in English.

How, you might ask? Well, by buying it and translating it yourself... or rather, not yourself, but with the assistance of... *Percival Schuttenbach voice* modern technology!

Now, when I read it, I did the foolish thing of copying and pasting literally page-by-page into Google Translate. Noels (nohtora) had a much better solution, which I will detail here.

This method is easy, free (well you gotta buy the book, but not the software) and accessible (available on Mac, PC, Linux). If you have access to a computer and are OK with reading from screens, I recommend this.

In total, it took me about 10 to 20 minutes to set up from scratch.

Step 1. Download Calibre, a free and open-source e-reader program. Step 2. Install the translation plugin - also free and open-source. Step 3. Purchase the e-book. Step 4. Open the e-book with the plugin, translate. Step 5. Read!

Step 1: Install your e-book reader.

Download Calibre here. It is a free and open-source e-reader program for laptops/computers (although it does not run on mobile devices). You install it like any other program on your computer (Windows, MacOS, or Linux).

Step 2: Download the translation plugin.

Use this free Calibre plugin to translate e-books.

Watch until 1:00 to install the plugin. The rest of the video you should return to later, during Step 4.

Notes of steps to install plugin: (1) Open Preferences. (2) Get plugins. (3) Get "Ebook Translator" from Author "bookfere.com"

Step 3: Buy the book.

You can purchase Rozdroże kruków online for about $8.

I purchased my copy from Legimi, which I will show you now. I didn't really poke around for other websites, it seems like Legimi had it the quickest. But other sites will have this ebook eventually, so don't feel pressured to get it from Legimi, specifically. I just wanted to include a "how to purchase" step in this guide because (1) it's a direct link to get it (2) in case people felt anxious about navigating a UI they can't read.

This is what the page for Rozdroże kruków looks like. As you can see, it is currently 34.99 zł, or: $8.57 US, $13.21 Aus, £6.77, or €8.15.

For me, it was $8.49 after foreign transaction fees. (I paid through PayPal).

But before you buy anything, you first need to create an account.

From the homepage, click the yellow button, "Zarejestruj się", "Sign up".

Put your username, email address, password, and confirm password. Check the first box to accept the terms of service. Don't check the second box unless you want their newsletter.

I kind of... already bought the book, so I can't buy it again on this account. I have selected a couple of other books for demonstration purposes. Same process.

Select the "ebook" tab, the right one on the ribbon (underlined in green), to buy the singular book and not a subscription. Then select the yellow button, "Dodaj do koszyka", or "Add to cart".

After adding to your cart, click the yellow button to go to your cart and checkout.

Check to accept the digital distribution agreement.

You can then pay with your credit card or PayPal. (From top to bottom, left to right: "First and last name on card" "Credit card number" "Expiration date" "Security code").

Don't worry that it says you will pay in złoty, it will be converted. There may be a foreign transaction fee depending on your bank, but it is typically small (around 3%). If you are only buying an $8 book, that will not be much.

From here, you are going to want to click the WHITE button: "Przejdź do półki", "Go to shelf". (The green button is to download their application, which we're not gonna do for this).

If you skip this on accident, just go to your profile in the top right corner and click "Półka", "Shelf", to see the books on your account.

You will see it in your shelf. Click on it.

Click the yellow button "EPUB" to download it as a .epub format. Save to your Downloads or where-ever is convenient.

Step 4: Open the book in Calibre.

Refer back to the video from Step 2 for this section and watch the part on how to use the plugin. I will add my example here, too.

Open Calibre. Click "Add Book" at the top of the ribbon. Locate rozdroze-krukow.epub from where you saved it. It will be copied to your Calibre library.

Before starting the translation, make sure to adjust settings in the Translate Book option (sometimes hidden in the ribbon as you can see in my screenshot - just click the kebab menu on the right to bring it up) to export the file the way you would like it to be formatted. I also recommend checking the box in "General" to allow it to merge paragraphs, Google Translate tends to work better when it has more context.

Select Translate Book as shown in the video. Translate into English (or - hey - language of your choice! Sky's the limit). You can also use different translation programs if you'd like, the default is Google.

You should select "Output" at the top right after this is complete.

It will create a separate epub in your library, tagged as "Translation."

Step 5: Read it and have fun! It's a fun read!

I set up my formatting this way because I want to read a Polish paragraph, then an English paragraph, but you can also set it up to be side-by-side (left page in Polish, right page in English), or even hide the original text if you're not interested and just want the translation.

The days of manually copying-pasting into Google translate are over! Thanks again to Noels for sharing this method in the Discord.

Now, this translation will NOT be 100% perfect - this is a Sapkowski novel after all; humans have difficult translating him, and this is only a machine. I wrote a Reddit post about some caveats to this desperate method of translation, and some silliness I specifically encountered with this book (light spoilers, I mention a couple of characters and settings, but no plot points).

My rule of thumb for when the translation is weird: Pay attention to the context. It is usually not too hard to figure out what the translation meant. If you have real trouble understanding it, or are just curious, Google the Polish phrase that it seems to be hitching on. Make use of Reverso Context, Reddit (r/learnpolish), and Polish learning forums.

Oh, and make sure to watch out for "grasshoppers" ;)

Finally, I recommend you also support the official English translation when it does come out; if not to compare translations, to show Orbit-Gollancz that English readers do want more translations (and ideally we'd like them sooner rather than later).

Good luck on the path ~ Powodzenia na szlaku ~

[reminiscingtonight]

Reunions

Alessia Russo & Reader (Leah Williamson x Bronze!Reader)

Word Count: 713

A/N: Started this after the transfer news. Finished after Alessia's semi-final goal. Seems fitting to add it the Setbacks Universe

[Setbacks Masterlist] // [WOSO Masterlist]

The last couple months have been a rollercoaster. 

After working through your injury, you’ve bounced back with a vengeance, all the weeks you’ve spent cooped up translating to endless bounds of energy on the field. 

There’s no other way to describe the second half of the season than constant ups and downs. 

Arsenal beat out Chelsea for the Conti-Cup title. 

Your girlfriend tore her ACL.

You sold out the Emirates for the Champions League semi-final.

You lost the Champions League semi-final. 

And then you got called up for the freaking World Cup.

It’s definitely a bittersweet feeling, being called up to live your dreams while your girlfriend is stuck watching on the sidelines. But Leah’s quick to reassure you of how much you deserve it. Of how proud she is of you.

You thought making the world cup squad would be the highlight of your year. The peak of this year of ups and downs.

You never accounted for one Alessia Russo.

July 4th might be America day to those living across the pond, but July 4th will always be “Alessia Russo joins Arsenal” day to you.

“So.”

Blue eyes look up at you, narrowing with good reason. There’s a devious look in your eyes as you plop down next to one of your best friends. 

“Missed us that much, huh?” 

Alessia’s dressed in Arsenal gear, having just finished her photoshoot and making her rounds around the training ground. You lit up the second the blonde opened the door to the physio room, you having had accompanied Leah to her appointment, and you haven’t left Alessia’s side since.

Alessia rolls her eyes. “Lotte maybe. You? Not so much.”

“Ouch, you wound me,” you gasp, hands clutching at your heart.

Of course you’ve been aware of all of the rumors floating around. Alessia Russo to Arsenal everyone said, the media, the fans. Everyone but the one person who actually mattered. 

Despite all of your probing, Alessia refused to tell you where she was actually headed to after her contract with Manchester United ended. 

You were just starting to entertain the idea of her following her ex-Manchester teammate to Barcelona when Alessia finally spilled the beans. Not even Leah’s injured form could stop you from lifting and twirling your girlfriend around when you got the news. Leah had simply laughed at you, telling you to put her down.

And now you’re here. Sitting in the oh-so familiar locker room, with someone who’s also oh-so familiar, just not familiar with this side of the field.

“I can’t believe it. The Tar Heel gals, back together again.”

Alessia snorts at the phrase, remembering when she shouted that upon your late addition to the Lionesses senior squad.

“Only this time we get to do it at Arsenal.”

“The better reds,” you nod in return, laughing when Alessia shoves you back in retaliation. Alessia might be a gunner now, but you know she’ll always have a soft spot for her childhood team.

“Babe, leave her alone.”

The sight of Leah making her way into the locker room has your face breaking out into a smile, but something akin to a whine is quick to break out of your mouth at her warning. “But Leah! Lessi is--”

The sight of a perfectly crafted eyebrow raising at you has you shutting your mouth with a click.

“Lessi is what?” Alessia eggs you on, laughing at the face you pull at her. 

Leah ignores the disgruntled look you shoot her way, sighing at your dramatics. “The two of you are children.”

“Well this child gets to go home with you,” you point to yourself. “That child is banned from… ” you trail off, trying to think hard of something to stay. 

It’s Alessia’s muffled laughter that has you blurting out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Alessia’s banned from ever meeting Winnie!”

The silence that follows is very telling.

Leah avoids eye contact while Alessia looks all too gleeful.

You gasp, pointing an accusing finger at Alessia. “You’ve already met Win?! They wouldn’t let me meet her until I my second month here!”

.

The three of you run into Win on your way out.

Leah has to try not to laugh when Win nearly knocks you over to get to Alessia.

[dipperscavern]

hiiii! the anon who requested the Mike x fem!reader fic here. please don't apologise, I can totally understand😭😭 the show's too addictive, I binged watched the first few seasons really quick too, you can take your time🫶🏾

HII IM SO SORRY FHIS TOOK SO LONG GRR. honestly, i really struggled w this 😭 i didn’t make it very long or defined (i wanted this to set the tone of their relationship), and i left it pretty open ended (on purpose) so it could be built off of in other continuations as maybe a clientsdaughter!reader 🙂‍↕️thank u sm for the ask & i hope u enjoy!! (this is ass)

mike ross x fem!clientsdaughter!reader

mike had learned a countless amount of knowledge since joining the firm. how to talk to people, how to negotiate, how to work, how to win. along with this, he also learned the workings of the office itself — more so the people that were in it.

kyle talks to his girlfriends throughout the day. it’s often mike can catch him leaned back in his chair, not-so-discreetly checking his phone, eyebrows raising as he clicks on the selfie he was sent.

louis keeps his favorite breakfast bars in the top cabinet. rachel chews her lip when she’s thinking. the fax machine only listens to donna — don’t mention if harvey’s having a bad hair day, he knows.

oh. and don’t sleep with clients.

not getting involved with clients was a general rule of thumb. according to harvey, the less emotion involved, the better. even so, harvey himself was guilty of sleeping with a few clients — after business was done, of course. but that was different. harvey was harvey, and mike was a first year associate, already tap dancing on thin ice. he could absolutely not afford to break any rules — no matter how unspoken they might be.

truly, it was all going fine. until he met you.

you & your father are in the racehorse industry. famous for the record breaking times your horses submit (& the world-class conditions they’re always in), thousands come to the races to bet on them. your family has been breeding, training, and racing horses for decades, and your father loves his job. there’s only one issue.

he’s currently being sued for “wrongful termination” by an ex employee. the employee mistreated multiple horses during his time working for you & your father. once you both found out, he was gone.

now, 4 months later, when your most famous horse “knights honor” has died, the employee is claiming the horse was milkshaked before his races (he was not).

“Milkshaked? What the hell is that?”

harvey’s voice carried through his office as jessica presented the case to him & mike. your father was a friend to her, and it was important that harvey got this done. mike remembers the article he read years ago on racehorses when knights honor won his first championship.

“In the context of horse racing and illegal substances, a milkshake is any compound or combination of compounds administered to a horse, pre-race, for the purpose of causing.. metabolic alkalosis of the blood and extracellular fluid of that horse. Although, a previous widely used method to ensure placing times, milkshakes are a prohibited practice on race day in all U.S. jurisdictions.”

harvey and jessica exchange looks between themselves & mike. they're about to raise questions when donna's voice crackles through harvey's phone.

"Translation: Its when the horses are given a “milkshake” of different drugs before a race. It can kill fatigue and improve their endurance."

all heads look down to the phone, then at donna's desk. donna's already looking their way, of course, and she swallows under their field of vision. she shrugs.

"What? I can't.. watch tv?"

she abruptly puts the phone down, turning her chair around to type on her computer. jessica clears her throat.

"Tom is an old friend. He's genuine."

harvey interrupts. "You need me to make it go away.”

“No. This could tarnish his entire reputation… his life’s work. I need you to kill this thing in its tracks. Get it done.”

with that, jessica turns & exists the office. harvey sighs, skimming over the case file jessica dropped on his desk. he looks at mike.

“Find the daughter. Find out everything — previous arrests, divorces, a stolen tangerine from publix- I wanna know about it.”

mike nods, offering a-

“Yes, captain,”

(which makes harvey give him an exasperated look) before he retreats back to his cubicle, moving to start his manhunt. donna winks as he passes her desk.

꧁——————————————————꧂

“No, he doesn’t.”

you can sense the presence of the associate approaching behind you. you quickly thank the man working the stand as he hands you your pretzel, and you turn to face harvey’s right-hand. mike ross.

“I- You don’t even know what I was about to say.”

“Yes, I do.”

he’s cute. pretty blue eyes, a photographic memory, and a boyish charm that you can’t say you’re immune to.

“You were about to ask if he’s had any previous arrests. No, never.”

mike shakes his head. “Sorcery. Speeding tickets?”

you turn to look at him with an exasperated look. “No, officer.” he smiles.

“How did you know? That I’d ask.”

you shrug. “Ancient blood magic.”

a few moments of silence pass, and he’s silently moving his head in tune with his thoughts — like he actually believes you. you decide on mercy.

“It’s the first question lawyers always ask.”

“Ah. Been through this before?”

you shrug.

“Do you always stalk your clients?”

he doesn’t miss a beat. “Only the pretty ones- a hobby of mine.”

you hum, breaking off a piece of your pretzel and handing it to him. he sighs, leaning back.

“Oh you sweet, sweet angel.”

you both continue your walk to pearson/hardman, wanting to get there early to prep for the deposition today. mike breaks the silence once he’s done chewing.

“Do you always feed your lawyers?”

“Only the cute ones,” you break off another piece, handing it to him. “Its a hobby of mine.”

꧁——————————————————꧂

the elevator rings, signifying the end to your journey. mike is in disbelief as you step out of the elevator — mind trying to wrap around your last statement.

“What- are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

mike moves to catch up with you. “Okay, multimillion-dollar horse racing company, and you just.. have no security cameras? Zero?”

you turn to face him, giving him a defiant look that makes his heart flutter.

“I don’t see any cameras around here.”

as you approach the glass-doored conference room, mike opens the door for you.

“Touché.”

you shoot him a look across your shoulder before you move to greet your father, already waiting. mike pauses outside, staring, as you hug your father, no doubt offering some sort of reassurance.

“No.”

mikes head snaps toward the voice, harvey’s un-foreseen presence making him jump a little. mike looks around a bit.

“I.. didn’t even-“

harvey points a finger at mike, then at you, then slowly wags it back and forth for dramatics. mike sighs, looking around and putting his hands in his pockets, waiting for his scolding to be done.

“Harvey-“

“Uh uh.”

“Harvey.”

harvey continues his finger wag. “Micheal.”

“Harvey.”

harvey walks backwards towards the door, opening it with his free hand. “Don’t.. do it.”

mike rolls his eyes, following harvey into the room.

okay. don’t get with the funniest, most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. got it. easy.

easy. right?

the look you give him as he sits down proves him otherwise.

[zikkytheblicky]

hii! how are u?? Hope I'm not bothering<3

could u do (separate) headcanons with Alastor and Vox x a chubby Male Reader who is kinda insecure and very sweet and kind?

if u only do for one character for request, i prefer alastor

have a Nice day/night!

HIII IM GOOD YOURE NOT BOTHERING ME LMAO I JS SAW THIS 💓!!

(A LITTLE WARNING I DIDNT HAVE ANY TIME TO DO VOX N DIDNT WANT THIS TO COME OUT TOO LATE/DIDNT RLLY HAVE ANY IDEAS FOR HIM SO IM SO SO SORRY 😭!! )

anyway this idea is so AGGGGH its so adorable ☹️☹️☹️ also some characters might be a little ooc ! im not too sure that’s kinda ur pov!! :3

SORRY FOR THE bit of lore i js inserted for the angst

c/w:

you and charlie have a little brother older sister relationship. very loving <3.

for the french/creole i used google translate so im sorry if its wrong :(

ALSO YES ALASTOR IS HALF HATIAN LETS GOOO 🙏🏾 CARIBBEAN HUSBAND 🙏🏾🙏🏾

everything about the little niffty part i had to google cuz i genuinely thought niffty was 5..

husk is so black coded idc idc idc

sir pentious holds such a special place in my heart i love him. ☹️☹️💓

alastor’s is kinda crack like until you get to the NSFW and the angst part!!

mentions of cannibalism.

ALASTOR

MEETING A GENTLEMAN.

the first time alastor met you was the day after the meeting with the overlords. charlie mentioned you were one of her best friends and somethings about you and how you and her clicked like two puzzle pieces because of your similar personalities.

alastor, like the gentlemen he was, introduced himself first, complimenting your looks and calling you sweet names off the bat..

you obviously caught his interest. may it be because of your calm aura, your gentle eyes, or the sweet tone of your voice… or maybe the plushness of your body?

as the sinners finished trampling you with questions and introductions, alastor spawned right in front of you- you didn’t know he was watching or even there for that matter. “hello there my dear! it seems charlie has friends besides her girlfriend after all!-“ “hey!” you heard charlie interrupt, a pout on her lips. their antics caused you to giggle into your palm which immediately caught alastor’s and the rest of the sinners’ attentions. “you are quite the adorable thing aren’t you?” alastor whispered, his tone holding what seemed to be a seductive tone behind the static that filled the room. “huh ?!” you asked as your face became flustered, refraining the urge to hide your face into your palms and slowly sink into the floor of the hotel. alastor just smirked, standing up to his full height (wait.. he was leaning down this whole time? what the fuck is it with overlords and there overbearing heights ! you thought bitterly, craning your neck to look up at the (sadly) much taller demon.) later on when everyone went to there respectable bedrooms you went down stairs for a nice, tall glass of water. unknowing of the pairs of red eyes that stared hungrily at your abdomen.

that day you went into your specially made bedroom with a teeth mark on your tummy.

after a few months he got to know you better.. and better.. and ended up dating you. which wasn’t a shocker to charlie since she’s noticed the overbearing and possessive stares alastor has sent you and the bashful glances and flustered faces sent alastor’s way.

but the others..

“toots theres no way you’re dating that jackass.. though he’s good lookin’ though.. got taste.” angel dust had said with a disgusted yet amused look on his face, faking a gag as he stared at the claws massaging your scalp and the toothy grin on alastor’s face. “tsk. gays.” was all angel said before turning away from you both and going back to bothering husk.

“i know already. you guys don’t think i haven’t noticed the bite marks on m/n/n (male names’ nickname) thighs and stomach ?” husk had huffed out, rolling his eyes at the look that was sent his way from charlie and forcing himself not to laugh at the way blush that was already on your face sprouted from your face to your neck. “i had to keep it a buck. sorry.” (husk was definitely not sorry he likes seeing you flustered it’s funny to him.)

“oh! sssso i guess the eggssss were right!” sir pentious slurred out, a grin in his face. “you too make such an interesting couple! one a nice, kind and sweet sinner and the other a… a..” sir pentious stuttered as static started to fill his ears. “a..a very well put together gentlemen overlord!” sir pentious rushed out before going back upstairs to his pet eggs.

“wait men can impregnate other men ?” niffty had asked curiously. all you did was sigh, clasping your hands together as you shook your head while alastor let out a staticky cackle, clutching his chest as he leaned over in laughter. “thats- thats not what we said niffty .” you murmured, rubbing your temple gentle before playfully hitting alastor. “it’s not funny she’s like 5.. or something!” you pouted, crossing your arms over your chest. “she-“ alastor coughed- “she was in her 20s when she died, mon amour (my love). and that was in the 1950s.” alastor corrected you gently with a toothy grin and a pat to your head. “oh..” you mumbled leaning into the touch with a pleased sigh. “gay people!” niffty blurted out, raising a rainbow flag she clearly stole from charlie in the air in front of you both. “oh my god. so out of pocket.” you gasped out, a slight giggle coming out while alastor cackled even harder than before

ALASTOR ver 2

(IN)SECURITY.

when alastor found out about your insecurity he was very confused. very. who cares about how you look? you’re so beautiful to him and that’s all that mattered. who cared if someone wouldn’t date you because of your weight? most people like that are still lonely masturbating themselves on valentines day while listening to those break up songs.

though that’s what he wanted to say, he was actually very gentle with you and was so sweet and practically worshiping your body when he found out (not like he didn’t worship your body on the daily.) though he was a little silly.

“what’s all this nonsense you’re saying, Mon pécheur ? (my sinner)” alastor cooed with a frown, pulling you into his lap and gently squeezing your stomach. “you see this? this is what keeps me sane.” “and these?” alaator grabs your thighs pressing small kisses to them. “these keep me from killing everyone in hell.” alastor mumbled into your thighs, resting his head on them as you combed through his hair. sitting in comfortable silence despite the happy tears that flowed down your chubby cheeks beautifully.

the time you fat shamed yourself in front of charlie and he got so mad at you. (he comforted you by being scary as fuck and then complimenting snd practically worshipping your body.)

“‘m so.. fat i need to start starving myself again.” you murmured quietly. so quietly. so quietly the sinners you say near didn’t hear you. but who did? charlie. she was standing across the room talking to vaggie and she STILL heard you. the only reason alastor didn’t hear you along with charlie was because he was out taking “care” of the eggs (you made sure he listened to vaggie by threatening to revoke his permission to bite your thighs and stomach.) charlie turned your direction and furrowed her eyebrows. “hold on, vaggie. i’ll be right back..” charlie mumbled as she strutted her way towards you where you, angel, husk, and sir pentious were in a group chatting.. well except you. you only sat with them because you were lonely and didn’t want to disturb charlie and vaggie- that’d be rude. charlie pulled you away with her to the second floor of the hotel in a dark corner. “m/n/n..” charlie started, a knowing frown and glance in her eyes. no. not this again. “charlie- charlie please..“ “listen, m/n/n. i don’t wanna have to tell him but i kinda have to. alastor will never trust me again if i dont tell him this… but seriously, amour (platonically.) going back to starving yourself? you remember what happened last time?” charlie whispered, cupping your cheeks with her soft palms. “‘m sorry.” you mumbled into her palm. “it’s ok. now are you ready for me to tell al?” charlie asked as she slowly took out a bracelet that had “INCASE OF EMERGENCY” written on it. “yes..” you mumbled, slowly moving towards al’s room as you got ready for a feral alastor to appear. “now.” charlie clicked the button on the bracelet, flashing a smile at m/n before disappearing back downstairs on the main floor. almost immediately alastor appeared behind you, grabbing you by your waist rather roughly and taking you inside of his room. “al, please i didn’t-“ “silans (hatian creole; silence).” was what you could make out- he was glitching slightly and his voice was very staticky. and also- oh god he’s speaking creole. he usually only spoke creole when he was pissed or was cursing someone out. you felt a shiver down your spine as alastor’s shadow locked the door- hell even it looked mad. and it’s a shadow for hell’s sake. “Wi mesye (yes sir)” you mumbled back in his native language, pulling your legs closer to your chest and resting your head against your thighs, sniffling slightly. you felt like such a disappointment (your nails digged into your thighs), why couldn’t you just listen for once? so useless. useless, useless, useless.“are you crying, love? what are you thinking?” alastor pulled you hands away from your thighs, watching the skin heal in a split second. “‘m such a disappointment. why can’t i just listen to you and charlie? im so fat too- why can’t i be as skinny as-“ you were immediately shut up by the cruel, almost scary laugh alastor let out. when you rubbed your blurry eyes full of tears you could see al’s eyes glowing, his regular toothy grin was now a scary, painfully fake (even more fake than his usual one), and prey-like. “silly boy. so stupid yet sweet and bashful yet so careless. do you not know how much your body is worth? in the city i practically was born in (cannibal city) your body is worth over a million. and i get to have it all to myself- every curve, every freckle, every birthmark, every bump and every hair. just to myself. do you know how nice it feels to know that, little deer?” alastor hummed out, pulling his coat off and pulling you up onto him to sit on his chest, his hands roamed around your chest and thighs, treating each and every curve with so much love it hurt.

ALASTOR ver 3

NSFW HEADCANNONS (SHORT)

he uses your ass or thighs as a pillow sometimes and likes to bully you by telling people he’s friends with on how much he recommends your ass or thighs to his friends (as a joke of course).

“i truly recommend this pillow to you, dear !” alastor lifted his head up slightly, grabbing your ass in his sharp claws and squeezing it gently. “very soft and squishy too!” al gave his signature toothy grin as rosie chuckled into her palm. eating another piece of human legs that she had boiled up nicely and was seasoned to perfection; just the way she liked it.

purposefully does doggystyle just to see your ass jiggle (very much an ass man imo.)

loves your kind personality. one time you told him not to go to hard because charlie wanted you to help her do documents the next day and it required you to move a lot. alastor purposefully fucked you into the stars (his excuse was, “i don’t like getting told what to do.”). you didn’t realized though. you just thought he was really pent up and didn’t mean it.

alastor added special noise cancellation to his room once he started dating you. you never asked him why when you started dating but now..? you understand.

alastor loves watching your ass idk why.

alr that’s it bye bye!! :J this is a lil late (๑´·.̫ · `๑)

[otomehonyaku]

Diabolik Lovers Daylight Vol. 7 Ruki ☽ Animate Tokuten Drama CD ☽ Sleeping Together ★ With Vampire

Original title: 添い寝でおやすみ ★ ヴアンパイア Voiced by Sakurai Takahiro English translation by @otomehonyaku Click here for the audio, provided by @karleksmumskladdkaka!

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

I figured it would be fun to try out a drama CD translation for once, and this was a nice short (but sweet) one! I have another tokuten audio + translation hopefully coming soon... Stay tuned ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡

Please do not reuse or post my translations elsewhere or translate my work into other languages without my permission.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

00:00 Hey, Livestock. What are you doing? That’s an awfully big box you’re holding.

[You’re glad to see him.]

You were looking for me? Why?

[You explain the situation.]

So Kou told you to give this box to me. I don’t remember sending him on an errand, though.

[You pass on Kou’s message to Ruki.]

“Just open it and have fun”? That sounds a lot like him, but he must be up to no good…  We should ask him what’s in the box first…

[You say you couldn’t find Kou anywhere.]

Ah, right, he said he had a film shoot today…  Oh, well. If the sender’s not here, we have no choice but to open it. Give me the box, Livestock. I was going to open it in my room, but if you’re curious what’s inside too, then come with me.

[You nod.]

Let’s go, then.

[The two of you go to his room.]

01:20 Sit over there.

[Ruki puts the box in front of you.]

Well, then. Let’s open it right away. For such a big box, it’s not very heavy. What could be inside? Wooden pieces of various sizes… and a lot of them, at that.  They look like they’re parts of something.

[You spot a letter inside the box.]

A letter? Kou must have put it in there. Let’s see.  “Here’s one of your beloved puzzles as a present. Have fun! Try assembling it together with her.” I see. So it’s a puzzle.

[You’re confused.]

Yeah, it looks different than a normal, flat puzzle.  Judging from the parts, the finished product must be three-dimensional. There’s no manual, either, but I wonder if it’s because Kou removed it, or there was no manual to begin with… Anyway, this may be just another of Kou’s whims, but we have the time.  Maybe I should assemble it.

[You say that you want to help.]

It does not look like I would need your help with it, but Kou said to do it together, so… If you’d like, you are welcome to try.

[The two of you start assembling the puzzle.]

03:03 Hm. My side looks like it’s coming together. How about yours?

[You tell him.]

Let me see it.

[You show him what you’ve got.]

That looks better than I expected.  If you’re worried about this part, I think it might fit here…

[Ruki helps you.]

You should try doing the rest yourself.

[You ask him whether he’s done this before.]

Not exactly. I have done a variety of 3D puzzles before, but this is the first time I’ve tried this type of puzzle. Not that I’m very particular about my puzzles, though…

[You ask him if he has a particular strategy.]

I have my strategies for each kind, but in the end, the process of putting parts together and aiming for the final product is the same for every puzzle.

[You say you have no idea what the puzzle is meant to look like.]

Right. I cannot picture what the final product is going to look like just yet, but if we just look at the parts even though we have no idea what to expect…

[You tell him that you should both try your best.]

04:20 Yeah.

[To himself] It would be a shame to spoil her fun by telling her the answer to the puzzle, but…

[You ask him if he said something.]

No, nothing. Besides, we won’t finish the puzzle at this pace. Less talking, more working.

[You agree enthusiastically.]

Heh. You’re curious about the final product, right? 

The harder you work, the sooner you’ll find out what it is.

[You tell him you’ll work harder.]

Yes, you should. I will try to increase my pace, too.

05:06 Ah, it’s finished. When I opened the box and saw the parts, I already had a hunch, but… It looks like a small castle you might find overseas. I think we happened to see it on TV around the time when Kou was featured on a programme.  He must have remembered that you and I talked about wanting to go and see it in person. That must also be why he told us in the letter that we should assemble it together. Whatever his reason was… heh. He probably wanted to make us happy.

[Ruki incorporates your part into the puzzle.]

Look, your work is now part of the castle, too. You did really well considering you had no idea what it was.

[You don’t respond.]

You were so excited to see the final product, but your response is a bit underwhelming, don’t you think?

[Ruki looks down at you, leaning against his shoulder and sleeping soundly.]

06:05 Heh, I see.  You have some nerve using someone’s shoulder as a pillow while you sleep, Livestock. Oh, well. It’s past your usual bedtime, so it’s fine. I must have been engrossed in the puzzle as well for me not to notice you nodding off.

[Ruki picks you up, bridal style.]

However, if you sleep here, you’ll regret it later. You should just sleep on the bed.

[He carries you to his bed.]

You should have just told me you were tired… You worked hard and stayed up just to finish the puzzle with me. You didn’t make it to the end, though…

07:05

[Ruki looks at his watch.]

It’s about time. I should tidy up and head to bed, too.

[Ruki walks back to the table.]

I should hide the puzzle under the table for now.  I want her to see it tomorrow. I wonder how she’ll react.

[Ruki walks back to the bed.]

Hey, Livestock. Move over a bit. I want to get under the covers too. She’s so far gone she doesn’t even hear me… 

[Ruki gets in bed anyway and squeezes himself beside you.]

What a foolish face. You must be tired from using your head so much.

[Ruki touches you.]

I wonder what kind of face you’ll make when you wake up tomorrow. Will you feel guilty for falling asleep before seeing the finished puzzle?  Or will you become shy when you wake up next to me? Anything is fine.  Your reactions are always something to look forward to. Ah, but when you see the finished puzzle, you’ll probably be ecstatic. You were looking forward to seeing it so much, after all. I want to see your happy face. I was having such a good time, uncharacteristically so. I might not be able to fall asleep like this. I’ll have to thank Kou later.

08:45 For tomorrow’s dinner, I’ll make him something he likes.

[You shift in your sleep.]

What, the mention of dinner does evoke a reaction from you? What a greedy little thing. Don’t worry. I’ll cook one of your favourites, too. You worked hard on the puzzle, after all. 

[Ruki settles in for sleep.]

I’m looking forward to seeing your reaction tomorrow.

[the-himawari-otome]

[Shuuen no Virche] Birthday Short Story - Yves

The birthday celebration of a certain handyman

<Original post here>

･ﾟ･:,｡★ translation under the cut ★,｡･:･ﾟ

Mathis: H-Happy birthday, Yves!

Yves: Thanks, Mathis. And the rest of you guys— I can't believe you went through all the trouble to hold a dinner party just for me...

Adolphe: I mean, you're always helping us out after all. Although... you probably didn't need us to celebrate for you, huh?

Yves: Hey, that's not true. I'm super happy about it!

Adolphe: You say that, but...

*Baaam...*

Ankou: You can't help that thought when you see all the gifts from the townspeople piled up in the garden...

Lucas: Indeed. The moment I saw that huge amount of boxes, I thought you might be moving homes...

Hugo: Haha. He's a real natural charmer, isn't he?

Scien: Well, you won't be running low on supplies for a while.

Yves: Gosh, while I'm grateful for the gifts from the neighbourhood... it feels especially nice being celebrated by my precious friends.

Ankou: ...I see. Our princess and the others should be arriving shortly as well. Please enjoy today's party to your heart's content.

Lucas: I must say, it was surprising that Scien came to participate in the festivities.

Scien: Dahut was nagging me to bring over a birthday gift. I decided to have a drink and a bite to eat while I was at it.

Hugo: Isn't that what the person being hosted should say, not the host themselves...?

Yves: Now, now. Don't sweat the details. 'Tis the occasion, so let's all enjoy it together.

Mathis: That's right! I helped with the cooking too!

Mathis: Ah, but before that... Wouldn't it be better to give him his gifts first?

Lucas: Yes, good point. More guests will be coming later. Let's give him ours first, shall we?

Yves: Huh, you even brought presents? That's too much...

Hugo: Alright, I'll go first. —Happy birthday, partner. Eat this and stay your ridiculously energetic self from tomorrow on.

Yves: Thanks, Hugo. I'll be relying on you too! Is this... a fishbowl? ...And inside is— Woah, there's a fish I've never seen before!

Hugo: It's a big one, right? It's a special catch reeled in by the genius fisher, yours truly.

Yves: It looks like it'll be worth slicing up! I'll cook it up nice and tasty for us.

Hugo: About that. Eat it yourself. Alone. Seriously, by yourself. Down to the last crumb. There's no need to share it with me, got it?

Adolphe: (He's just making sure he doesn't suffer any harm himself...)

Ankou: Now then, as for the gifts from the others—

Lucas: Um. If I am not mistaken, it seems there are ominous sounds and fumes emanating from the gifts all of you are holding...

Adolphe: ...Yours is the same, isn't it?

Scien: It appears all of us had the same idea.

Mathis: I see, everybody brought fresh ingredients that Yves can cook!

Ankou: I-Indeed... However, we also prepared tangible items in addition to the ingredients...

Lucas: Oh my, to think our gifts would overlap to that extent.

Yves: Woah, woahhh...! Is this much okay!? I'm going to happily accept all of it, you know...!?

Adolphe: ...Well, it's fine as long as he's happy. Mine's a whetstone, so you can use it to maintain your sword.

Yves: Great, thanks! ...It really is wonderful to have people who are special to you celebrate your birthday.

Yves: I wonder if it's alright to be this happy. ...Won't God punish me later?

Scien: I won't, so don't worry.

Hugo: Haha. God guaranteed it. Don't fret, Yves.

Yves: ...I see. That's true. I hope I'll be able to continue to spend my birthdays together with everyone I care about.

Yves: And forever with her—who bound me to this fate.

*CLICK*

Yves: ! Hey, come on in. I was just thinking about you. Thanks for coming for my birthday.

Yves: Huh... a present? I see, you also—I appreciate it. ...Can I look inside?

Yves: ...! It's a gorgeous gem— You found it at Marché? And you thought it would suit me?

Yves: ...Thank you, truly... I'm over the moon...!

Yves: I really am blessed with encounters. After all, I was able to meet a girl who's giving me such a wonderful present—

Yves: From the bottom of my heart, I love the happiness I feel for having met you, my hope—

And I pray that in the future that awaits, I will be able to dedicate my first "love" to you...

---

[DO NOT USE OR REPOST MY WORK W/O PERMISSION, THANK YOU]

[the-lonelyshepherd]

Had my ninety millionth rewatch of Yellowjackets because I wanted to work on drawing the girls. Been thinking about Jackie's butterfly shirt and how Shauna later on wears it. Not to mention to Shauna wears other butterfly shirts. any thoughts on if the butterfly symbolism was intentional? -💀

HI YES. i had like. so many thoughts on this all at once. i reasearched a lot of butterfly shit for a personal project before and it all just clicked in yj context. a warning that this is going to be rambley its going to be messy and some of it might be a stretch. yippee!

SOO first off its def like. butterflies are a very common just design for shirts in the 90s so its def just like part of the period wardrobe. HOWEVER. jackie and shauna, as far as i know, are the only characters seen wearing butterfly shirts (and i could be wrong but even so theyre the only characters with repeated obvious butterfly shirts including in the adult timeline). which is very interesting.

so heres shaunas butterfly shirt (note the words)

jackie's butterfly shirt and.. shauna wearing it (note the scene)

adult shauna also wears a butterfly shirt im 99% sure it was like black with a white butterfly design. i need to find a pic rgh

SO LETS START

first off - what is butterfly symbolism?

butterfly symbolism is literally anything you want it to be. its such a common symbol if you look it up theres millions of websites on weird slightly not so slightly appropriating spirit bs and a shitton of vague statements. so lets narrow the question.

what is butterfly symbolism in the context of yellowjackets?

much better. my personal view on it is this - butterflies, in a multitude of cultures, are a symbol of hope. theyre pretty theyre flappy theyre whatever. but butterflies are also a symbol of change, of transformation. but what i think is so interesting about butterflies as change is when we look at how butterflies change.

butterfly transformation is inherently something of horror. its a gorey, bloody transformation where the caterpillar literally dissolves in a chamber of its own making and reforms into something completely different. but the thing i find so fascinating is that its not a whole new thing - its literally a restructuring of the caterpillar. its something that was always there.

and this exact thing is imo one of the central themes of yellowjackets - they were always these people. What the wilderness did is amplified it, twisted it, made it louder and more obvious and definitely more bloody. but the violence and the competitiveness and the drama? was always there. look at allie, look at shauna and jeff. what the wilderness did was give them a stage (a chrysalis, if you will) to transform.

What about the specific shirt designs?

Lets start with shauna. Its a basic design with 6 butterflies of various kinds, but the most notable thing for me is the text. "Lueur d'espoir

yeah i used google translate whatever its not like ive been taking french classes for years. or something. let me live.

so. as you can see its "glimmer of hope" which goes hand in hand with the common butterfly symbolism. but actions overpower words because with a lot of shauna's actions, (ie 2.07 massive girl on girl violence) shes pretty much the opposite of hope. shes giving into the brutal violence that the wilderness is bringing out in all of them and hell she even relishes it. its an almost comedic grasp at imitating jackie when really shes the opposite side of the butterfly symbolism coin - transformation. but specifically metamorphasis. this side of her was always there.

now its number time!!

shaunas shirt has 6 butterflies and jackies has 3. jackie is literally half of what makes up shauna - without jackie she loses a significant piece of herself. i might throw up.

after jackies death shauna does everything she can to get her back. not only does she talk to jackies corpse for months, she literally EATS her. but theres also more subtle attempts to get that part of herself back - like wearing her "missing half" - the butterfly shirt. its all in vain really because its with that grasping at anything she has left of jackie and order and everything she used to know, with that shirt, that she commits one of the most brutal acts of violence in the entire show. also shauna wears it while beating up lottie after wilderness baby dies and wb was basically the last living (rip) thing she has of jackie. ough.

back to shaunas original shirt, the one with six butterflies. 6 is a number commonly associated with nurturing energy, and sometimes maternal. sound familiar?

similarly, jackie(shauna)'s 3 butterfly shirt - 3 in general is a very powerful number symbolically. the birth-life-death cycle, the mind-body-soul connection, things coming in threes. jackieshauna and whatever they connect to be that wilderness baby, jeff, callie, the wilderness in general maybe lottie. who knows!! the toxic homoerotic bestfriendship spares no one.

ALSO the butterflies on jackies 3 shirt are monarchs which are commonly associated with the dead and more specifically remembrance of the dead. throws up.

so overall!

the butterfly shirts could very much be just be time period wardrobing but i do think there is at least some significance given jackie and shauna are the only characters (as far as i know) who repeatedly wear butterfly shirts.

butterflies in jackie's context are almost a satire of the hope theyre supposed to represent - jackie has lost all hope by clinging to a past she can never get back to. in most cases she would be a hopeful character - take akilahs clinging to wiskayok, doing SAT prep and talking about her family. but the difference with jackie is that she clings to it as if it were already dead. she has this passive suicidality because she knows that shes never going back to what was and she REFUSES to transform. a catterpillar who doesnt pupate and dies never changing.

butterflies in shauna's context i think point to the gorey, transformative yet revealing nature of the wilderness. similar to metamorphosis, through a complete restrucuring of what was already there in the optimal conditions for change, we see this violent, bloody, version of Shauna emerge in the wilderness. Similarly to the twisting of butterfly metaphors, shauna also represents a twisted kind of hope through her pregancy. Inherently a birth is supposed to be a symbol of new life, of hope and joy. And for a while the baby is a symbol of hope! you have the babyshower raising spirits etc. but everyone knows it was doomed from the start. in the wilderness a birth is not a thing of hope but a thing of horror - its seeing your teammates mouths covered with blood and its burying your son when you too are still a child.

soo yeah. butterflies. dont know how much of this is gonna make sense but it definately made me think about things

[entertext]

HGSN 25-3

Chapter (Japanese)

(Please hit the green thumbs up at the end of the chapter on the Japanese site to show the mangaka support)

Rough translation by me

P1

Rie: I...don't know if that will happen

Rie: But, it might improve things a bit...using a wrong sized lid is better than not having a cover at all.

(sfx: tick tock tick tock)

Rie: However, it's not a solution to the fundamental issue...

Rie: And, it's not like there couldn't be other...

P2

Hikaru: I'm totally fine

Hikaru: I'm a monster after all, so something like this is... ...

Hikaru: ....*sniff*... ...

Hikaru: ...I hate this...*sniff*...why...

Hikaru: Uu...I don't wanna be alone

Hikaru: ...*sniff* ...why...

Hikaru: Uu...Uuu...Yoshiki...

Hikaru: Uu...

P3

(sfx: rain)

(sfx: page flip...)

Yoshiki: Anything's fine, I just need something that could be a hint...This one doesn't seem like it'll be useful

(book: Regional Folktales)

Yoshiki: So if I summarize where we've ended up...

(sfx: pencil click)

P4

(txt:

"Unuki-san" worship begins

↓

Becomes "Nounuki-sama"='Hikaru' worship

* Local religion originating from difficulty living

* God that grants wishes if heads are offered

* The offered head disappears, a replacement is made and memorialized in the "Hall"

* In order to separate and bury the sacrifice's body parts as far apart as possible, the village was split

↓

"Mass Death" Incident (1749)

* Brought about by the Indou family's ancestor

* Excessive wish→Wife's resurrection

* Afterwards the village became peaceful

* From then on, there is a custom where the Indou men use "Hichi-san" in a ritual on the mountain

)

Yoshiki: The sin of the Indou family was...that he sacrificed the villagers outside of the family to resurrect his wife

Yoshiki: As a result, the mass deaths occured.

Yoshiki: The truth of the mass deaths wasn't death by famine but bizarre deaths...

Yoshiki: With that, the villagers must have thought that Nounuki-sama had become a tatarigami

(Hikaru: Is being dead and being alive that different?)

P5

Yoshiki: ...

Yoshiki: The reason the village stablized afterwards is probably because the amount of impurities decreased, right?...

Yoshiki: But, it's strange

Yoshiki: While Nounuki-sama = 'Hikaru' is on the mountain, the impurities should gather on the mountain and the village should be fine. What was happening before the mass deaths?

Yoshiki: And another question is the part where

Yoshiki: up until the mass deaths, "even if you offered a head, nothing actually happened"

Yoshiki: Why was it only at the time of the mass deaths that a wish got granted?

P6

(sfx: office chair squeaks)

Yoshiki: *sighs*

Yoshiki: In the first place, we don't know why there's so many impurities in this area...

Yoshiki: If we don't know that, then in the end...

Hikaru: Yoshiki

Hikaru: I'll go back to the mountain haha

Yoshiki: Anything but that. No way.

(sfx: fwh-fwhump)

P7

(book: Rafanelli Art Collection)

Yoshiki: An artbook ...

(sfx: flip...)

Emanuele Rafanelli

Renaissance painter

Died 1520

Yoshiki: Beautiful art...

(title: Girl With Veil)

Yoshiki: And here's the pages with rough sketches?

(sfx: flip...)

Yoshiki: ...hm?

P8

Yoshiki: This is...

P9

Hikaru: ...*sniff*...

Hikaru: ........

Rie: 'Hikaru'-kun...

Rie: (I'm sure it hasn't even been a year since he came into this world)

Rie: (For a child like that, this is just too cruel...Just for a little while, maybe we could let things be...)

"That softness will invite greater misfortune..."

Rie: (I can't make him disappear, but...)

P10

Rie: (With 'Hikaru' as he is right now)

Rie: (I might be able to tear him from that body)

Rie: (If the alternative is making him suffer, then for Yoshiki's sake as well)

Rie: (It's better that I take full responsibility)

Rie: (and deal with 'Hikaru'-kun...)

==

Next chapter: in 3 weeks

Twitter Extra (link):

If he'd been a glutton

Hikaru: I don't wanna be alone...

==

The other legible book titles on Dad's bookshelf:

* History of War

* How to Interact with Children~Recommendations for the Rebellious Age~

* Ecosystems of the Countryside

* How to Write Mystery

* How to Write Suspense

[lalune9x]

SCTIR Translation - Chapter 474: The Owner of the Letter (1)

I swallowed back the words, 'I'm sorry for being late. Did you wait long?' The hall was just as dark as it had been before I entered the drawer. But something about the atmosphere was strangely different.

Chapter translation under the cut.

—-

Chapter 474: The Owner of the Letter (1)

I was in exactly the same spot where I had used the drawer. That is, a spot slightly suspended in the air. It wasn't too high, and since I had prepared, I landed lightly. At the same time, I remembered to turn off my Curse Resistance.

My socks, still soaking wet, were now covered in flower petals. White, pink, yellow, light purple, and various other colors—they were scattered all over.

Not whole flowers, just petals.

I swallowed back the words, 'I'm sorry for being late. Did you wait long?' The hall was just as dark as it had been before I entered the drawer. But something about the atmosphere was strangely different. I blinked slowly.

Sung Hyunje was sitting in a chair, leaning back against it. Flower petals were scattered all over his body, and beneath his long, stretched-out legs lay piles of stark green stems stripped bare of all their petals.

It looked like a graveyard of bones. That thought suddenly crossed my mind. The soft, vibrant petals were dispersed in all directions, with only the long stems in piles overlapping here and there. He must have gathered all the flowers that had been decorating the room, as there were more than enough to bury the chair's legs.

"You… must have been very bored."

If he had burned the flowers or smashed the table, that would have been less surprising to me. Even if the entire hotel had been blown away, revealing the blue sky, I might have just rubbed my forehead. Someone suddenly disappearing without a word was more than enough reason to get angry. Maybe even to break some of the surroundings in frustration. But this… this felt like a calm, quiet madness.

I swallowed dryly.

After a brief silence, Sung Hyunje spoke.

"1 hour, 29 minutes, and 51 seconds have passed since Han Yoojin-gun disappeared. And now, precisely an hour and a half."[1]

Click. The cover of the pocket watch in Sung Hyunje's hand snapped shut. He was sitting slightly outside the hall's illuminated area, so I couldn't see his expression clearly. His face was cast in deep shadows.

"Out of sheer boredom, I decided to try flower divination. Fortunately, there were plenty of flowers."

He must have sat there, picking the petals one by one. The chains must have quietly wrapped around the piles of flowers and stacked them at his feet. It would have been better if he'd just destroyed everything. Without fear resistance, I’d probably have goosebumps by now.

"I didn't mean to be late, but an hour and a half isn't that long, is it? And we were playing tag, so you must have guessed that I was hiding on purpose."

I didn't think he would have been worried. When I first disappeared, he must have been surprised, but also found it amusing. But as time dragged on, he must have gotten a bit annoyed.

"Of course."

Sung Hyunje crossed one leg over the other and continued.

"I figured you had gained something new that I wasn't aware of. But the human mind… this brain." He lightly touched his temple with his fingertips. "It likes to imagine things. What if, perhaps, maybe, surely not… and so on. I was once human, after all, so it wasn't an entirely pleasant time."

"I… apologize for that."

"I believe I've told you before—I'm neither accustomed to nor fond of having anything taken from me."[2]

"But it's not even yours."

"Not just objects, but people and relationships can be taken as well. Didn't you once mistakenly think you'd lost your position as your little brother's guardian?"

"…I did lose it. That wasn't a misunderstanding."

"Well. From my perspective, you never lost it once." His pale-colored eyes remained the same, but the corners of his mouth lifted faintly. "And waiting, as it turns out, really doesn't suit my temperament."

Waiting, knowing nothing, unable to do anything—that was what he really didn't like. Although Sung Hyunje's voice was relatively light, I had the sense that he was more displeased than he'd ever been before.

"I've spent years like that. But no matter how much time passes, I've never gotten used to it. It's always infuriating."

Thinking about it that way made me feel even more guilty. I had just assumed that he hated waiting a long time. In any case, since we were supposed to be partners now, it wouldn't do to just suddenly go missing… Though, he had also hidden things from me.

Anyway, I had won, right? But the atmosphere didn't seem right to demand the letter right away.

"Um, I drank a bit, and finished off all of Hyuna-ssi's wine but… would you like a cigarette, at least?"

This was a non-smoking hotel, but still. Sung Hyunje tilted his head slightly and beckoned me with a finger. The gesture was disgustingly arrogant, but just this once, I should bow my head. I took out the cigarette case from my inventory and approached him.

"You're wet," he noted.

"I fell into some water."

"Oh my, and in this chilly weather."

"It was pretty warm there."

I opened the case and pulled out one cigarette, then took out another.

"It's not good for—"

"Secondhand smoke is worse, you know," I cut him off and put the cigarette in his mouth to stop him from nagging.

I couldn't touch these things in front of the kids anyway, and I rarely went anywhere alone these days. Especially recently, with Gyeol trying to stick to me all the time.

Of course, I had no lighter. I was looking around wondering how to light it, when Sung Hyunje picked up a flower that hadn't been torn apart yet. 

Around the full, pale pink bloom—

Crackle.

Electricity sparked. The skillfully ignited flame enveloped the flower. Usually, something so moist wouldn't catch fire so easily.

With the flower in the middle, both cigarettes were lit. This would be the last time; truly the last.

"I received it from the King of the Mist Sea. There's a limit on the number of uses."

I spoke as I watched the smoke curl and dissipate into the air.

Sung Hyunje seemed as if he was only half-listening. The way he held the cigarette between his fingers looked like something the kids should never see. If they tried to imitate him, I'd have to cut them off. Even adults might be tempted to smoke more just watching him. He looked like a high-budget commercial ad.

In the meantime, ash fell from Sung Hyunje's other hand as the fire that had burned down to the end of the flower stem quietly fizzled out. He still didn't seem to be in a good mood.

"…Do you want to go to the aquarium? I'll buy you ice cream, too," I offered.

I wondered why I was trying to comfort him, but it was true that I had been quite late.

"What should I do with Han Yoojin-gun?" Sung Hyunje murmured as if talking to himself.

What do you mean, what should you do?

"Just leave me be. I'll take care of myself. Not everyone will turn out the way you want, you know. Take Director Song, for example."

"I recall a certain someone desperately trying to give him a baby lamb as a gift."

"…No, that was… that was just because I wanted to be of some help. Besides, well, you know about Director Song. What happened before the regression."

I wasn't trying to change someone completely. I just wanted him to take better care of himself. But even if that wasn't possible, I wanted him at least to survive.

"It's not easy to mold someone as you want while respecting them," Sung Hyunje commented.

"Look, the 'respect' part completely disappears if you're doing it 'as you want.' First of all, abandon the idea that you'll lead."

Even among natural born S-ranks, considering he’d lived for so long as a Transcendent-level being—though he’d lost those memories—it was only natural, I supposed. There was no way most people would feel like equals to him. Honestly, him calling me his 'partner' was probably not acknowledgement, but more something he was 'allowing'.

'It would be difficult for someone who's lived like that for hundreds of years to suddenly change.'

It hadn't even been six months, after all.

"Turning a blind eye to danger just to show respect is putting the cart before the horse," he said.

"Well, that's true, but…"

"What if a non-Awakened Park Yerim said she wanted to enter a dungeon?"

"Obviously, I'd stop her," I replied.

And I had also tried to stop an S-rank Yoohyun from entering dungeons. It wasn't that I didn't respect them, but… molding them 'as I want'… Then again, stopping them was an attempt to impose my will on them… It was complicated.

If they were complete strangers, it would be different, but with people around me, especially people I liked, wasn't it nearly impossible to just leave them alone? Even if it was for their sake… hmm. It was still my desire at the end of the day.

After taking a single drag and letting the smoke drift out, Sung Hyunje simply held the cigarette in his hand.

Meanwhile, my cigarette had already burned down quite a bit. As I glanced around, wondering what to do with it, Sung Hyunje held out his palm.

"…Come on."

Surely he wasn't asking me to put out my cigarette there. He was S-rank, so a lit cigarette would be nothing to him, but still I grimaced at the thought and stared at him.

Sung Hyunje reached out and pinched the end of my cigarette to snuff it out. Ash stuck to his pale fingertips. Then, he crushed his own cigarette with his hand. When he opened his fist, there was nothing left but a faint trace of ash.

Right. I could've just put it in my inventory. I followed suit and stored the cigarette butt.

"Let's say it wasn't pleasant, but it was a productive time," Sung Hyunje said lightly.

Productive? What had he been thinking about? He stood up, and the skeletal flower stems lightly brushed against his feet.

"Oh, the flower divination. What was it for?"

I was curious and concerned about what conclusions he had come to during that hour and a half.

Looking down at me, Sung Hyunje's eyes crinkled. "The young lady called."

"What? Yerim called?"

"She said she couldn't reach you and asked if I had broken your phone again. Then she asked me to tell you there's a famous dessert sold at this hotel and that she wanted to have some before leaving. And then…"

And then?

Sung Hyunje's eyes crinkled further as his smile deepened. "I told her Han Yoojin-gun wasn't here."

"T-that's—! You can't do that! So then, what did Yerim say?"

"She asked what I meant, so I told her again, you weren't here. Then she shouted for Han Yoohyun."

Ack, she told Yoohyun? Wait a minute—so the kids now…! 

Sung Hyunje shamelessly continued. "When he asked where his hyung was, I honestly told him I didn't know either, and that Han Yoojin-gun had left this place about twenty minutes prior."

Twenty minutes prior? That was over an hour ago. Of course they'd be in a panic. Sung Hyunje!

"You were unnecessarily honest!"

"I only told the truth."

I quickly took out my phone. It had gotten wet but fortunately was still functioning. Thank god for waterproofing.

"Do you really want to be grabbed by the collar that badly?" I demanded.

"It seems they immediately left to look for you, so they didn't come here."

"Of course, because Chloe—Yoohyun!"

[Hyung!]

Yoohyun picked up almost immediately. There was a slight tremble in his voice.

[Where are you? Are you okay?]

"I'm fine. I'm at the hotel."

[…What?]

"It's true that I disappeared for a bit, but no one kidnapped me or anything. I was in a place kind of like Myungwoo's smithy—the drawer from the King of the Mist Sea."

I could hear him gritting his teeth on the other end, so I quickly added that Sung Hyunje hadn't known either. We didn't need the hotel to go up in flames.

[I thought you were taken while returning to the room alone…]

"You must've been really worried. But there are so many hunters around that it's hard to imagine I'd get kidnapped. Besides, if Sung Hyunje hadn't escorted me back, I would've called you."

There was no way I would've wandered around by myself without Gyeol.

"What's the situation now? You didn't announce to everyone I was kidnapped, right?"

[Of course not. We contacted the Awakened Management Office and the Association to check the airports and track Chloe Alger's movements. Only Director Song Taewon and a handful of people at the Association know.]

"Good job. Come back for now, but just ask Director Song to meet us at the hotel. Leave the Association out of it."

Even if they tried to handle it quietly, the fact that the airports had been checked meant it was unlikely the information hadn't leaked. Since things had already escalated to this point, we might as well make the best of it.

[You're not alone, are you?]

"Nope. The Sesung Guildmaster is right here in front of me."

"Don't worry, young master. I'll take good care of your hyung. You can come at your leisure."

[…I'll leave him to you for now. Hyung, stay put.]

The call ended. I quickly called Yerim next.

[Ajussiii!]

[Daaad!]

Gyeol was on the verge of tears, and Yerim was half-scolding, half-grumbling that they'd been worried sick. Poor kids. It really wasn't a big deal. But wait… Oh no, this meant…

[…Yoojin, you.]

Sure enough, Myungwoo sounded angry. His voice was heavy and intimidating.

[How on earth could you—!]

"No, really, this time nothing happened!"

[We were so worried, Yoojin-ssi. Myungwoo-hyung, please calm down.]

So the two of them were together. Well, even though this time wasn't my fault, I felt guilty since I'd worried them so many times before. I humbly apologized.

Finally, I called Director Song, who sighed heavily as soon as he answered.

"It was really a misunderstanding. I swear."

[At least you're safe. Is Hunter Sung Hyunje beside you?]

"I feel a little sorry for Director Song Taewon," Sung Hyunje said, his tone and expression showing not the slightest bit of remorse.

[Please refrain from making false reports.]

"False? I only spoke the truth. There was merely a slight misunderstanding in the process of the message being relayed."

It was annoying because technically, he wasn't wrong. But thanks to his mischief, Sung Hyunje's mood seemed to have improved a bit.

After finishing my last call, I looked up at him.

"Anyway, I won."

"I concede."

Nodding slightly, Sung Hyunje took out the letter and placed it in my hand. I hoped it wasn't just some trivial content after all this.

---

Footnotes:

[1] It says 1 hr 27 min 51 sec in the e-book but I think it is an error.

[2] The lack of a word in English that captures both "things" and "people" again makes it awkward to translate this without specifying one or the other. In Korean, Sung Hyunje doesn't specify what he doesn't like losing, which is why he then clarifies that it's not just objects but people that can be taken away.

[bittersweetorpheus]

I’ve been getting into otome game lately, and finally had some free time, so… why not integrate the mechanics with Bungou Stray Dogs? I think there’s some huge potential for fanfics! Might turn into a series depending on the response I get ^^

An isekai: a Japanese term translating to ‘other word’. Always following the same plot— the protagonist who is transported to a fantasy world, game world, or parallel universe after dying in this boring normal one (usually via truck).

Yours had been your own fault, but death wasn’t as distressing as realizing bitterly that anime worlds were, in fact, real, and you were stuck in some random anime/manga you’d hyperfixated (curse your autistic tendencies) on for years but never actually watched or read. Bungou Stray Dogs, was its name. A world where ability users, those granted a single power based on classical literature and named after real life authors, prowled the streets.

You ate, slept, worked, rinse and repeat.

Or you did. Until you accidentally changed the whole damn genre of the manga! And the title, as well. Ahem, let us present… I Got Isekaied and Accidentally Caught the Eye of Fucked Up Criminals Because of Plot Convenience?!

Ah, the classic trope of the title spoiling the entire premise. But, we’ll need a little more context then that, won’t we?

—————

[REWIND TIME TO INTERLUDE?]

*YES* | NO

—————

You, fresh out from another shift of ‘standing around the warehouse and doing nothing at all’, had been mindlessly making your way home when— distracted by some shitty gacha game on your phone— stumbled right into an active crime scene. Active as in: the murder was currently being committed.

Dead police officers, a jester in a fully white outfit, portals opening up behind you…

Shit. You’d totally interrupted Nikolai’s introduction scene, hadn’t you? Your first thought was to curse yourself for your own stupidity at being so distracted by shitty, addicting mobile games that you failed to notice a crime scene going on in broad daylight.

Nikolai, still in that creepy clown getup, slowly turned his head towards you. His eyes narrowed, as though assessing you, before a smile slid onto his face.* “Looks like we have a little mouse who’s wandered into a tiger’s den! Hehe, you’re so cute, I might play around with you for a bit!”

You cringed. Who was in charge of writing dialogue for out-of-script scenes? Nikolai’s words were along the lines of what one would expect from an awkward bedroom partner who’d only ever stuck to the more vanilla side of things. Then again, it fit his happy-go-lucky-serial-killer persona, you supposed. Characters couldn’t be fleshed out in their very first scene, that was just rushed writing.

Pretending you had dialogue options to help ease her stress, you went with the safest one. “Wow. What a horrible crime scene. Please don’t stab me.” Ok, new issue: you absolutely sucked at acting when under pressure! It didn’t sound genuine at all!

Nikolai let out a small, low ‘pfft’ at your words, his shoulders shaking with the effort of containing his laughter. “Hey, hey, hey! It’s no fun when you’re so scared and shaky like that! You’re too cute!” Did Nikolai just… break character? This wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? That smile of his widened into a full blown grin. Shit. Were they self aware?

“Say, mousey, I’m curious about something,” he practically purred out, leaning down to get in your face, “How is it that you haven’t panicked and run away yet? I just slaughtered four whole policemen, after all.” His eyes narrowed, and he scrutinized you closely, searching for something that you couldn’t see.

> Punch him! Kick him!

> Run off now that he mentioned it—

> Confuse him by going from blunt to philosophical…

Those were the three options your frazzled mind presented you with. Mentally, you clicked on the third. Perhaps impulse-decision making was better left up to other people.

“Glue trap.” You said, fucking yourself over further. “You know, ‘cause you compared me to a mouse. But, like, aren’t we all mice? Stuck in glue traps, that is. Ugh, whatever. Look, it’s a perfectly natural reaction: fight, flee, or freeze.“

—————

*➳ NIKOLAI AFFECTION +5 -> TOTAL NIKOLAI AFFECTION: 5/120 ♡*

—————

“Glue trap?” Nikolai repeated, his expression briefly baffled. Clearly he hadn’t expected *that* from you.

He seemed to ponder something, then he abruptly stepped even closer, still towering over you. Nikolai put his gloved hand on your forehead, almost a bit like he was checking for a fever. With the difference being that he was way too close now. You could practically feel his breath brush against your skin, and it sent shivers down your spine.

This guy was way too damn close. The hell was he doing?

Nikolai finally pulled away, a thoughtful expression on his face. He began to circle you slowly, and his fingers drummed against his chin, as though deep in thought. “…Mousey,” he finally said, his voice quieter than before, more contemplative. Uh, what? “Have we… met before? Your voice… sounds familiar.”

You, the rizz god (maybe now wasn’t the time to use stupid internet terms), couldn’t help but ignore all the red flags that had popped up from that very same statement you’d heard far too many times before in otome games, so you could… make it into an inappropriate-for-the-situation pick up line. Well, ya missed 100% of the shots you didn’t take, though you weren’t quite sure you wanted this one in the first place. “No. But we *could* meet again, as a cute couple. Not a serial killer and unwilling witness. Only if you don’t murder me. Dating a corpse would be boring. I think.”

—————

*➳ NIKOLAI AFFECTION +10 -> TOTAL NIKOLAI AFFECTION: 15/120 ♡*

—————

Nikolai froze, wide-eyed and a strange expression on his face. Then he began to laugh. For once, his laugh wasn’t crazed or unhinged. It was a normal laugh, one full of genuine amusement.

He continued to chortle for a few more seconds, before he finally stopped and tried to compose himself again. Nikolai shook his head, but there was still a wide smile on his face. “Damn, do you have a death wish? Or do you make a habit of flirting with serial killers?” He paused, stepping even closer as if he just realized something. “Hold on, can you say something for me?”

“If it’s something along the lines of ‘I love you’, then it’s too early for the plot. And out of character, I have commitment issues. Just to be clear.” You made sure to word that a very particular way, praying Nikolai wouldn’t inadvertently confirm your suspicions that you’d ended up in one of those ‘self aware/third wall breaking’ alternate universes.

—————

*➳ NIKOLAI AFFECTION -5 -> TOTAL NIKOLAI AFFECTION: 10/120 ♡*

—————

*Nikolai chuckled, the amusement never leaving his face. He crossed his arms over his chest, still towering over you. Nikolai’s smile was just a tad bit unsettling.* “No no, mousey, not that. I was thinking something a bit less cliche.”

He paused, and that thoughtful look returned to his face. Nikolai tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at you, almost like he was trying to figure out a complex puzzle. “Say something. Anything. And don’t try to act. Just speak,” he insisted.

How the hell were you supposed to gauge whether he was self aware or not from that answer? Today just wasn’t your day. You not only messed with the plot line, but the character dynamics as well, by introducing herself into it. Damn! Why couldn’t this position have been given to some die-hard fangirl, instead of some office worker who’d only fixated on the franchise for a year or so.

“…I wish this was a shoujo instead of a seinen?” You blurted out. Even a shounen would’ve been better, with a power scaling system and hardworking main character. But, nope! Bungou Stray Dogs just had to fall into the seinen category because of heavy themes you in no way wanted to deal with.

A game over screen flashed before your eyes, at the very same time Nikolai’s portals did. Let’s hope you quick-saved, as this would be a rather humiliating end for you.

[82mitsu]

{18Trip} <PROLOGUE SIDE-A: Still blank> 000-A04 First Trip

A translation of 18TRIP's PROLOGUE SIDE-A by 82mitsu. ENG proofreading by sasaranurude.

TL note:

I believe the little jingle Sakujiro does is a reference to Doraemon, when he pulls out a gadget out of his pocket to help out Nobita-kun.

Kaede: You’ll catch a cold if you stay here.

Boy in hospital gown: ……

Kaede: Say, Kafka… how about we go back inside?

Kafka: …No.

Kaede: But… it won’t be good if you get sick!

Kafka: …Only this far. I… can only… go to the rooftop or courtyard of the hospital here.

Kafka: This is as far as I can get from my room… To me, it’s a trip I have to put all my energy into.

Kaede: Kafka…

Kaede: But, but! Once you get that amazing surgery, you’ll be able to go wherever, right!? 

Kaede: You’ll get better, and can go anywhere… We'll be able to make fun trips and play lots together, right?

Kafka: The success of my surgery isn’t 100%.

Kaede: Does that mean it might end up failing?

Kafka: …Whatever it is, it’s still a long way off until the surgery.

Kaede: Kafka—

Kafka: You know, I’m jealous of you, Kaede-chan. Because you can go anywhere, as far as your feet can get you—

Kaede: …Then, Kafka. Once the rain stops, let’s go on a trip. Both of us.

Kafka: Kaede-chan… and me?

Kaede: Yes. Together.

Kafka: …Kaede-chan.

Kaede: Hm?

Kafka: My hand. Don’t let go of it. Keep holding onto it tightly, forever…

Kaede: Yes. I won’t let go.

Kafka: Forever, okay? Even… even when that surgery will happen one day…?

Kaede: I won’t let go. Ever.

Kafka: Promise?

Kaede: Yes, I promise!

Kaede: —-I did make that kind of promise, didn’t I.

Text message from Kafka 

<[Surgery’s over.]

Text message from Kaede

[Eh!?]>

[Surgery!? Over!? What do you mean!?]>

Text message from Kafka 

<[Sorry. The decision came out of nowhere so I couldn’t let you know.]

Text message from Kaede

[How was it?]>

[Kafka?]>

[Did something happen?]>

[Heeeey!!]>

Kaede: –And no reply…

Kaede: But if Kafka himself texted me about it being done, then the surgery must’ve been a success, right.

Kaede: (I said that, but I can’t calm down until I see his face, after all!)

Kaede: Kaf—-

Slender glasses man: DON’T MOOOVEEEEEE!! Please stop where you stand!!

Kaede: Uwoh!?

Slender glasses man: You may not set one foot in this room! There are many such times where unsolved cases have instances of things left unnoticed during the initial investigation. Or not.

Kaede: (Huh, getting a good look at him, it’s Kafka’s butler—)

Kaede: Sakujiro-san? Not letting me in means… this has to be Kafka’s room, right?

Kaede: Did something happen to Kafka….!?

Sakujiro: That—that is what I am investigating at the moment. It’s with utmost regret that I say this, however, but I kindly request for Kaede-san to wait right over there for the moment.

Kaede: Uh… sure?

(Sound of something being unzipped can be heard)

Sakujiro: I am left with no other choice. Fly too close to the sun and your wings will burn, sacrifice your autonomy to artificial intelligence and humanity shall fall…. If possible I wouldn’t have chosen to go this far, but alas… 

Sakujiro: Tututurun!♪

Kaede: Is this another installment of Sakujiro-san’s mystery gadgets?

Sakujiro: Exactamundo, these are the seven hundred seventy seven tools for butlers inherited from generation to generation within the Oguro Family.

Sakujiro: …I believe this one is suitable for our current predicament. A scent detector for the Young Master, the sniffer-licker-woofer!

Sakujiro: This dog-like robot that records Young Master’s scent every single day has the capability to detect what Young Master is doing, what he’s eating, what he’s hiding, and what mutations are happening within the Young Master’s veins.

Kaede: Can it… lick you, too?

Sakujiro: It cannot deliver any licks. Sakujiro will fill in the blanks within his mind palace.

Sakujiro: Now search, it shall. Click click.

Sakujiro: Muh, a response! 36 minutes and 31 seconds ago the Young Master got up from his bed slowly and changed out of his pajamas.

Kaede: He must have— there’s pajamas thrown off to the side here!

Sakujiro: Then he turned around in this spot, and put one single piece of dental gum in his mouth. I can say for certain that the bottle feels one gum lighter than when I checked it earlier this morning.

Kaede: To notice a decrease in weight like that, I’m speechless…! 

Kaede: (Sakujiro-san, as always, has full knowledge of just about everything when it comes to Kafka…)

Sakujiro: Followed by Young Master putting his hand on the door, peering into the hallway, left, right, left and confirming the coast was clear.

Sakujiro: Good heavens, he performed a proper safety check exactly as I, Sakujiro, had taught the Young Master during his boyhood. 

Kaede: In other words, Kafka was being cautious to not be seen when he lefthis room…?

Sakujiro: According to the sniffer-licker-woofer, during that time Young Masters' emotions were excitement and nervousness divided perfectly half and half!

Sakujiro: Thus, at last, starting with his right foot he departed from this room…!

Kaede: …(Gulp)...

Sakujiro: …..

Kaede: So then, where did he….?

Sakujiro: I do not know. Unfortunately, the sniffer-licker-woofer isn’t equipped with functions that are able to deduct that far.

Kaede: You’re kidding me…! Even though it has way too many crazy features!

Sakujiro: Nevertheless, there is one thing I can confirm, which is that we must go search and bring him back posthaste.  

Kaede: Kafka, where did you go… All of this—and right when your surgery was just finished, too…

Sakujiro: .Hm?

Kaede: I heard from him that his surgery was over.

Sakujiro: …I see. 

Sakujiro: Kaede-san, may I request your cooperation? For some reason…

Sakujiro: This is a letter addressed to you... Or rather, something akin to a tape would be more befitting.

Kaede: A cassette tape? And it’s Kafka’s?

Sakujiro: It was lying on the floor under the bed. 

Kaede: Ah, the date on this…

Kaede: (It’s 10 years ago, but it has to be…)

Kaede: Once the rain stops, let’s go on a trip. Both of us.

Kafka: Kaede-chan, and me?

Kaede: Yes. Together.

Kaede: It’s from back then—

Kaede: It’s from back then—

<<previous chapter / next chapter>>

prologue directory: A01 / A02 / A03 / A04 (x) / A05 / A06 / A07 / A08

[isaiahpadams]

Hi, this is an excerpt from a novel I'm working on. It is a very rough draft of a scene based on my own experience as someone who had to learn English as a second language. Please share your thoughts and opinions, just click "keep reading" to see it.

“I learned English when I moved here, I was five years old I believe, by reading from a dictionary and listening to period dramas a family friend would watch.” He chuckled at himself "People used to laugh because, naturally, the words I knew were outdated. My teachers adored me because I had an extensive vocabulary but the others thought I was showing off.” There was an expression of something like shame on his face as he continued “That is why I find it hard to speak to you, I tried breaking the habit and adjusting, altering-" he trailed off in thought for a moment, taking in a deep shaken breath “but I cannot speak to you without weaving poetry into all I say. You make a poet of me.” Priyam laughed and it was the sweetest sound Amadeo had ever heard. “I know you are not a judgemental person, but I worry you might tire of it or think I’m speaking for the sake of speaking, when in reality I just cannot shape this love I have for you into anything other than sickening, dramatic, awkward poems. No simpler words quite fit the archaic devotion.” He paused “I am not trying to force beauty or to make myself look better, smarter, I know my words are out of place, my accent-” Amadeo kissed him, held him and tried to will his own love to translate into this one kiss. “You are not just a poet, but every poem ever written. Your voice is the only music my mind repeats over and over so that I can commit it to memory. I love you.” The hand on his own was so incredibly grounding. “I really hope you know that your voice is genuinely the most beautiful sound I have ever heard and the way you speak makes every pitiful word in existence become something glorious, this isn’t your first language, nor is it mine. We both have to translate each thought into something else, not all words or feelings carry over as well as others but you do it so beautifully, I envy it sometimes.”

They had not yet noticed that they had a similar way of speaking by then, that they shared so much of their time together that they spoke almost as one, borrowing each other’s words and voices.

[love-and-monsters]

The Ship and the Alien Pt. 3

M alien X GN reader, 5,478 words

Next chapter, whoo! The chapter after this might take a bit, since my birthday is next week and I might be taking a little time off then. I hope you're all enjoying! Now, let's make planetfall and see what the centaurs have planned next. Read part one here and part two here.

Content warnings: Mentions of medical examinations and procedures.

The shuttle trembled under your feet as soon as you entered the atmosphere and you clutched the straps of your seat tighter. You didn’t feel particularly secure there, which was because you weren’t particularly secure. The seats had all been designed for centaur body plans, with a flat seat, almost like a bed, with straps for the legs to be secured with. They’d needed to change it around for you, which meant you were strapped on your back on a table that was slightly too small for you with too-loose straps. It was probably secure enough that you weren’t going to get tossed to the ground, but it didn’t make you feel particularly safe.

“Three talcs to landing,” your centaur said, the little translation device buzzing by your ear. You gritted your teeth. ‘Talcs’ were slightly longer than minutes, so it was going to be a little bit before you hit the planet. Your stomach was already swarming with nerves and the violent shaking, which was getting worse by the second, was not helping.

The ship groaned ominously and the shaking started to taper off. The engines groaned, the air pressure went wonky enough to make your ears pop and ache. You could feel the acceleration slowing in the swoop of your stomach and you swallowed back nausea.

Everything went dizzyingly still. Your head swam, your ears still throbbing from the air pressure. How was it these people had invented sustained space flight and were still struggling with air pressure?

The other centaurs around you didn’t seem particularly comfortable either, but they gradually started to walk around, clearing things up as the door in the back of the ship opened. Your centaur walked over and clicked the straps open. “Doing all right?”

“Define ‘all right,’” you muttered. Your centaur made a sympathetic noise.

“I don’t like the landing, either,” he said. “Can you stand?”

Mostly just to prove you could, you shoved yourself upright. It was a little dizzying, but you’d been doing better with things like ‘standing’ and ‘being functional,’ so it wasn’t awful. Your centaur made a pleased little trilling noise.

As soon as you felt stable enough to do so, you headed toward the door with your centaurs. It scrolled open and you squinted in the blinding light of the sun. It was the first time you’d seen actual sunlight in… in how long? You weren’t even sure how long you’d been on The Ship, now that you thought about it. It could be hundreds of years. It could be thousands.

You were shocked out of your melancholy thoughts by the sound of intense chattering, thumping, popping, and other noises you recognized as hallmarks of the centaur language. It was hard to see beyond the brilliance of the sun, but the noise alone indicated there was a crowd.

Your centaur guided you out into the light and your adjusting eyes revealed what you already thought was the case: there were a lot of centaurs. It wasn’t the biggest crowd you’d ever seen before, but there was a fair amount, and as soon as they caught sight of you, they surged forward. A group of centaurs wearing what looked like dark green uniforms waved the crowd back, some of them making almost aggressive gestures when members of the crowd tried to surge forward. You pulled back against your centaur automatically and his tail came forward to swing around you in a defensive gesture.

Right in the front of the crowd was an enormous centaur, the biggest you’d ever seen- not by a big margin, but still. But their horns were the biggest by a decent margin, stretching back from their head so far you wondered how they actually managed to get their head through their clothes. They had to be several inches long. They were holding two long, lacquered and brightly colored, sticks in their arms, though when you saw them step forward, you realized what the sticks were- they were crutches.

They made their way forward slowly, other people parting with respect. Even the crowd seemed to calm down, like they were embarrassed to be acting up in front of this well-respected centaur.

“Ma’am,” your centaur said. He drew himself up as soon as she started approaching. He recognized her, but you couldn’t be sure if he knew her because he knew her or if he just knew of her.

“Hello,” she said, barely looking at him before her gaze swapped to you. Her eyes, dark as the night, bored into you. You felt the urge to straighten your spine. “You’re the new species.”

“Uhhh.” You glanced at your centaur. “Y- yes, ma’am.”

She lowered herself further to stare directly into your face. You blinked back into her dark, fathomless eyes. “Good to meet you,” she said after a moment. “I’m Celebration.”

More of those weird centaur names. You give her yours. She nods slowly, then turns away, her tail curling behind her. “Come, then. We have much to discuss.”

You and your centaur followed her as she stepped through the crowd. They seem mostly mollified by her presence, although a smaller centaur, one you assumed was relatively young, abruptly lunged forward and made to grab at your hair.

The reaction was immediate. They snagged only the cloth of your sleeve, but it was startling enough that you yelped and instantly tried to pull away. Your centaur lunged, baring his teeth- they were bigger than you had realized, with the canines on the bottom wickedly sharp. The centaur that had grabbed you jumped back, making a noise that was either frightened or amused, and as soon as they lost their grip on you, some of the uniformed centaurs closed in, hauling them off. You clutched at your arm where the centaur had grabbed- you hadn’t been hurt, but the entire experience had been unsettling.

“Come on,” your centaur said, ducking his head close to you so he could speak in a quiet, soothing voice. “We have to go, okay?” You stumbled along as he ushered you along. He’d been quite close before, but after the attack, his body language is highly protective.

It wasn’t much longer before you managed to escape the crowd and stepped into what resembled a cross between a bus and a car. It was smaller than a bus, but it had the same sort of tall, rectangular structure. The steering wheel was also designed more the like yoke used to steer a ship, and was positioned more centrally than the steering wheel on the busses you knew.

There were no seats. Apparently centaurs could lock their legs, like horses, and they would then be latched onto the floor by shoe-like structures, so their feet didn’t slide when the bus moved. Naturally, there were no straps that fit you, so you just held onto your centaur as the bus rolled out.

The scenery that rolled by was fascinating. Admittedly, you weren’t a botanist, so you couldn’t really tell most of the plants apart, but there were flashes of animals that definitely looked different from creatures on Earth. There were tiny, scaled creatures that zipped and darted around in the sky almost like birds or miniature Pteranodons. Sometimes you caught sight of a strange, moose-like creature reaching up to pull the branches of a tree down toward its muzzle with a hooved hand. There was even a lean, foxlike creature that slipped out from the undergrowth in pursuit of a smaller creature that was difficult to see. It snapped out a clawed forelimb, puncturing the creature in a single motion, then skittered away once more. Apparently this wasn’t a common sight, because your centaur murmured with excitement when he spotted it.

“Volk,” he said when you asked what it was called. “They’re shy creatures, and they don’t come near civilization often. But they’re signs of good fortune when they do- they hunt almost exclusively pest animals.”

Good fortune. You could use a little of that. Hopefully the rumors about such a creature were right.

The ride wasn’t long, thankfully, and it ended at a massive building. The entire thing seemed to be constructed of wood and some clear substance that resembled glass, but wasn’t- it looked too matte and didn’t catch the light correctly. It was quite low to the ground, as were the few other buildings surrounding it, and used primarily rounded edges in its design as opposed to the hard, rectangular angles you were used to. Or, had been used to, before The Ship. Everything had been rounded there. All the better to fly through space with.

You winced. The Ship. The rest of The Ship, more accurately. There were other people out there. Not people you knew, but other people regardless. You needed to find them. If these people were supposed to be saving endangered species, then certainly they’d want to find more of your kind, right? It wasn’t like you could reproduce on your own. Without any other humans, you’d be… You’d be…

You didn’t want to dwell too much on that thought.

“Are you all right?” Your centaur nudged your side with one of his arms and you startled. You’d been walking through the building on autopilot, and completely missed when everyone else turned.

“Yes,” you said, hurrying back to his side. “I was just thinking.”

Celebration (it was weird to think of that as her name- sort of My Little Pony-esque) stopped in front of a room and gestured for you to go inside. You hesitated. The entire thing was about the same size as a walk-in closet, much deeper than it was wide. There looked to be about standing room for one centaur in there. “You want me to get in there?” you asked, apprehension making your voice pitch upward. “Why? What is it?”

“It’s a shower,” Celebration said, matter-of-factly. You gaped for a moment, then practically bolted inside. A shower! A real, actual, water-based shower and not the ‘cleaning gel’ that just kind of sloughed the dirt off your skin and made you feel sticky for ages afterward no matter how well you toweled off.

“Take off your clothes and press the button here to start it. It will run on a natural cycle, so there’s no need to touch anything else.” Celebration leaned back and started to talk with your centaur, but the translation bot had already drifted out of the chamber and before you could even tell it to come back, the door was sliding shut.

The enticement of a good shower didn’t let you dwell on that discomfort for long. You stripped, pressed the button on the wall and waited.

There was a humid mist, then nozzles inserted in the walls sprayed jet streams of water at you. It was a little more powerful than you’d expected it- the water made you stumble for a second before you could properly brace yourself against it. It also wasn’t just water- your nose picked up on a slight chemical scent to the air, and when you rubbed the water into your body, it foamed a little. After a couple of minutes, the soapy water petered out. A moment later, it was replaced with another jet of clear water, which rinsed you off. You felt great you’d been shaved before going into the pod. The only hair on your body was short, so it didn’t take much effort to wash.

Eventually, the water clicked off again. You had a couple of seconds to spit excess water out of your mouth before there was a low whirr. Fans kicked on and you threw your hands over your face as the air blasted you dry. It wasn’t comfortable, like being trapped in a hair dryer, but it did get you dry quite efficiently.

The shower went silent, except for one of the nozzles gently dripping water. It was quite humid in there, with condensation still clinging to the walls. You walked over to the door and pressed your hand to it. There was no knob. How were you supposed to open it?

You glanced around the room. There was only the little button that had started the shower, not any other ones that might open a door. Hell, the shower wasn’t even particularly well-lit. You could barely see the outline where the door was.

What the fuck. Had they trapped you in there?

Your first instinct was to pound on the door, but the instant your hand met the hard metal surface, you yelped in pain. It hurt. You hadn’t even hit it that hard- had the hibernation made your body weaker overall. You considered kicking the door instead, but you couldn’t imagine it would go any better, and it would be hard to walk on a broken foot.

Despite the little rectangle being quite warm, you started to shiver. You were alone. Trapped in this little space. What were you going to do? Why had you even gotten into this damn square in the first place? For all you knew, the shower had been a trick and within a moment the nozzles were going to spray you with an anesthetic and you were going to be dragged off to be dissected and analyzed and, if you were lucky, put into a zoo, and if not-

The door scrolled open and your little translator drone zipped in just ahead of your centaur. He blinked at you. “Are you all right? I head a bang-”

You slammed into his chest before you consciously realized you were running toward him. He didn’t stumble, but he swayed a little with the movement. One of his arms came up a little awkwardly to mimic the hold you had on him. Did centaurs even hug, usually? He was at least trying. That was nice.

“Are you all right?” The little clicking and thumping noises he made were almost louder than the translated voice the robot offered. “Did you get hurt?” He gently pried me off of him, or at least tried to. His arms seemed to be weaker than human arms, and his wrists lacked the same mobility, so he couldn’t get a good grip.

“I’m okay,” you said, letting go of him. He glanced you over, clearly trying to check if you weren’t really injured, and you abruptly became aware that you still weren’t wearing anything. And you had hugged him. Whoops. “I, uh. Couldn’t open it from the inside. I panicked a little.”

“They automatically release,” he said. “These ones are older, so the release is a bit slower.”

“Oh.” You felt ridiculous. You had panicked over an automatic door. In a desperate effort to save face, you changed the topic. “Where’s the other lady? Uhh. Celebration, that was her name, right?”

“Celebration?” There was a bit of a pause and your centaur’s face scrunched a little. Crap, was that not her name? Was forgetting a name extremely poor etiquette here? If it was, you were so fucked, you couldn’t remember anything ever.

“Oh,” your centaur said abruptly, like he’d finished whatever internal conversation he’d been having. “I see. Yes, Celebration, then. She’s gone ahead to speak to some of the other leadership. I’m supposed to bring you to them.”

You shuffled a little. “Do I get clothes before that?”

He laughed a little. “They only transported some of your clothes here, but I’m sure we can find something that’ll fit.”

He took you to a small room packed with transport boxes. You recognized them- they were made of the same space-safe material as everything else on The Ship. Your centaur popped one open and offered the box to you. It was packed tight with an assortment of clothes- mostly the same standard hospital-gown like stuff, but there was warm weather gear when you dug a little deeper, and even a few normal t-shirts and shorts. You chose that outfit, since the planet had been warm when you’d been outside. It was nice to have an upgrade from the hospital gown you’d been wearing around.

Once you were dressed, your centaur let you explore the rest of the boxes. There were boxes of spare parts, farming tools, medical supplies- most of the stuff you’d expected on the ship. There was only one noticeable absence.

“Where’s the seed crate?” There was a crate in each section of the ship that was more or less the pod version of a crate. It kept all the seeds in a carefully climate-controlled box to keep them preserved, so even if we landed on a mostly-deserted planet, we could still terraform it with plants we had. There had been a desire to do that for the animals of earth, as well, but there had been no good way for reviving them from DNA once we landed, and we couldn’t spare the space for all the live animals we would need to keep the species alive.

“It was kept up there.” Your centaur pointed toward the ceiling. Still in space, probably. “It was kept there for quarantine- We don’t want potentially invasive seeds hitting out planet. It’s more likely they’ll be harmless than harmful, but there have been records of only a few accidental seed releases destroying ecosystems on other planets.”

That was sensible enough. The seeds could last in stasis for a long time, and maybe they would eventually come across a planet that could support them.

Your centaur’s clothes beeped and he pulled a small, thick device from his pocket and glanced at it. “Oh.” He tapped his foreleg nervously against the ground. “Hm. It seems they’re ready for us.”

“Ready for us?” Your centaur turned toward the door, gesturing for you to follow him with his tail.

“The council. They want to talk to us. Well, to you.” He glanced back to me. “We don’t want to keep them waiting.”

“Right.” You followed him, almost tripping over your own legs in your anxiety. You were about to speak to some ‘council’ that was going to decide your fate. Maybe even the fate of humans in general, if they decided to abandon the ship. Your heart felt like it was pounding out of your chest and swelling to constrict your throat at the same time.

Your centaur led you through the building to a large doorway. He paused, giving one final glance back at you, before stepping forward and, without so much of a knock, opening the door.

Maybe it had been melodramatic, but you’d been expecting a large, shadowy room, maybe with large, court like furniture to complete the aesthetic. It was not that. In fact, the room was a little more like a sunroom combined with a nice meeting room. There was a lot of sunlight from the massive windows set in the roof, there were a few pillows, cushions, and other soft objects scattered around the room, and the centaurs milling around all seemed relaxed and cheerful. It wasn’t quite the intimidating scene you’d expected.

As you and your centaur entered the room, several people looked over at you. They expressions were nakedly curious. Celebration, the only centaur you recognized out of all of them, drew herself up and made loud thumping noises, pulsing them from deep in her chest. The other centaurs dropped what they were doing and gathered close. Your centaur guided you to the middle of the room, then backed away. You glanced at him, worried, and he gave you a reassuring look.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Celebration said. “I’m certain you have much that you’d like to ask us, but I think I will start with our most pressing concern first: How do we ensure your continued safety and health?”

You stayed silent for a moment before you realized the question was not rhetorical. “You’re asking me?”

“You would be the person who would have the best knowledge of such a thing,” Celebration said. “We would like for you to be able to express your needs here.”

“Then…” What did you need most? The answer came to your head with surprising ease. “Then we need to find the rest of the humans. The ones in the part of The Ship that wasn’t destroyed. That’s what will help me.”

There was a pause. It hadn’t been the answer they were expecting, you were sure of that. Celebration turned to murmur something to the centaur next to her, who pricked their ears in interest. The translator didn’t pick any of that conversation up. You turned to see your centaur’s gaze. He gazed back encouragingly.

Celebration turned back to you. “The search for the remainder of your ship is already underway. It is highly recommended that you do not participate in it, however. Your status as the only member of your species currently living means you are in a delicate position. We cannot allow the risking of your life for this- and scrolling for lost ships in unknown space is always dangerous. That is not a risk we are willing to take.”

“Not a risk you’re willing to take?” The words practically exploded out of you. “It’s my life! It’s a risk I’m willing to take! What’s even the point of protecting me as the last of my species if I can’t get to the other members? I’ll just die out in, I don’t know, forty to fifty years. Without other humans, there’s no point.”

“You life is more valuable than you give yourself credit for. Even as an endling, you still retain great knowledge of your own species, of your customs, of things that are unique to you. Even if we never find the rest of your species, you are still valuable and we do not want you to die.” You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to block the tears that were welling up. “Of course, we understand you want to seek out members of your own species. I am sorry that you cannot do that. But it is dangerous and you are too valuable to do so. We will do our best to bring them to you as soon as possible. We promise.”

You gritted your teeth, stiffened your shoulders, and stared down at the ground. You didn’t speak. You were going to cry if you spoke. And you did not want to cry in front of all these strange aliens.

Celebration shifted her weight between all her legs. Clearly this was making her uncomfortable. Good. You felt some bitter satisfaction. “We would like your input on what would make you feel more comfortable while you’re staying here.” Her voice was gentle. You clenched your fists.

“I told you already what would make me more comfortable.” Your voice was tight with your efforts not to cry. “I don’t know of anything else.”

There was long pause. Celebration rumbled quietly, though her expression was unreadable and there was no translation to help you out. She turned and spoke quietly to the centaur next to her. Finally, she turned back to you. Her voice was softer than you expected it to be. “Very well. We will continue our efforts to bring your people back to you. In the meantime, you’ll be staying here. We will provide you with room and food until we can set up your own home for you to stay in. Materials will be translated and provided to you for you to learn about our culture and way of life in this community. You may ask us for anything you wish, as long as it makes your stay more comfortable. We will be working to make your area as comfortable for a human as we can.”

You nodded once. Your eyes still had that heavy, overly full feeling, like you were going to cry at any moment and you didn’t want to. You didn’t want to cry in front of them.

There was a long pause, like maybe she was waiting for you to add something else. She rumbled softly when you didn’t say anything else. “Grove-peace.” You blinking in confusion before your centaur stepped forward, head lowered. “You will continue seeing to the human’s needs, yes?” He lowered his head and bent his forelimbs in a show of submission. “Please, do so.”

Your centaur trotted over to you, placing his body between yours and the other centaurs of the counsel. But he didn’t push you along like you thought he was going to. Instead, he stood by your side, like he was waiting for your signal. A few of the other centaurs murmured and rumbled to each other, maybe in irritation, but despite his ears folding back against his head, he didn’t move. Finally, you gathered yourself enough to move forward and waved at him to do the same.

He trotted ahead of you as you left the room, taking the lead to guide you along the half to what was presumably your room. He was patient even when you came to a stop a few times to calm your wobbly breathing.

“I’m sorry,” he said to you as you headed deeper into the facility. You bit your lower lip as the stinging tears welled up again. You didn’t want to cry. “I… I wish there was something I could do. You’re right, it’s not fair that you can’t go with them to look for your people. I know why you can’t but…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”

You didn’t say anything, and he didn’t try to start a conversation after that. He just kept his gaze locked forward as he walked.

Eventually, you came across a room. It was prettier than the rooms you’d been allowed on the spaceships you’d been on. The walls were made of a dark brown wood, with tiny splashes of green and deep blue. The bed was clearly designed for a centaur, and presumably an injured one at that, since it was larger than you needed. But you didn’t mind. You crawled into it, barely sparing a glance at the other parts of the room. You wanted to sleep.

Your centaur, Grove-peace, you needed to remember that, padded across the room, silently inspecting things. You could hear him shift a few things around, examining things from all angles. Half of you wanted to tell him to just get out, to leave you alone. The other half wanted him to stay, almost desperately so. Please, I don’t want to be alone, I don’t want to, why am I alone, how can I not be alone ever again-

You curled further into your bed, burying your face in the blankets and squeezing them to your chest like a stuffed animal. Tears dripped down your face, smearing against the cloth you’d buried yourself in. It was smothering but you couldn’t bring yourself to leave.

It took some time, but eventually, you fell asleep. It wasn’t a restful sleep- in fact, you felt far more exhausted when you woke up than when you fell asleep. Your mouth was dry and sticky and a heavy lump of nausea swirled in your stomach. You unburied yourself, the cool air pleasant against your overheated skin. The room, small enough that you could see all corners of it from the bed, was empty. You couldn’t tell if you were okay with that or not.

There was a slightly-ajar door across the room leading to what you assumed was a bathroom. It was probably a good idea to go there. Relieve yourself, get a drink of water, even if you had to slurp it up straight from the tap. But you couldn’t get your body to move. Even relieving physical needs wasn’t enough motivation to get out of bed. Maybe you could stay in there forever.

Time was like a thick sludge- it slipped by slowly, in clumps, indeterminate in length. There was no clock in the room. Or maybe there was, but it just wasn’t recognizable as one. You shivered under the covers of the bed. Was the room cold, or was it just you? Your fingertips felt oddly tingly and numb.

There was a hiss-click noise and the door opened. Grove-peace trotted inside. His expression was weary, though when he saw you staring at him, he perked up a little. He was carrying a bag looped over one of his arms. “There you are. Did you just wake up?” He trotted closer and locked his legs next to the bed. “I brought you food- sorry, the meeting went on and I had to go back for a little while. They’re looking for a place to get you set up with a home- a real home, not just staying here. They’ll probably be asking after you for your preferences in a few days, seeing if you want to live close to a town or a city or more on your own, but I said they should let your rest for now.” He took in another breath, to continue, then let it out in a sigh. “Ah, sorry. I’m rambling, and it’s late. You must be starving.” He offered you a few of the dried food rations. “I got you some options.”

You picked up one of the fruit and nut bars. It wasn’t like a granola bar- it was more like a slurry of fruit and nuts mixed together and dried into a jerky-like stick. Very chewy, but sweeter than anything of the other dried options you had. Barely even bothering to sit up, you unwrapped half the bar and crammed it into your mouth.

It was weird- it didn’t taste any different than normal. It wasn’t stale (if such things could go stale, since they’d never been fresh in the first place) and it wasn’t rotten (again, if such things could become rotten). But it tasted like ash on your tongue and swallowing it was like swallowing pebbles. Your throat convulsed around it like your body wasn’t sure whether to accept or reject it.

Grove-peace watched you, ears drawn back. “Are you all right?” His voice pitched anxiously and he fumbled through the bag. “Here, have some water.”

You swallowed a few sips. The water didn’t taste bad, either, maybe a bit too hard. But it was still an effort just to get it through your mouth and throat. Grove-peace’s ears ticked anxiously. He plied you with a few more bites of food, but you didn’t eat. You couldn’t bring yourself to.

He ran a hand along your head. There was a tremble to his fingers. “I’m going to go get a doctor, okay? I’ll be right back.”

His footsteps headed toward the door. They were significantly faster than when he’d come in.

As it turns out, ‘get a doctor’ had been sort of an understatement. Because he ended up getting several doctors. And there were a couple others milling around outside the room, like they were just waiting for a chance to come in and inspect you as well. The poking and prodding wasn’t significantly invasive, and you couldn’t bring yourself to resist. You let them roll you over, scan you with machines, compare all of them against whatever data they’d gathered from The Ship. Eventually, they came to some kind of conclusion and most of them filtered out of the room, probably to go fight over who got to be the primary care doctor for the fun new species. Grove-peace and another doctor stayed in the room and spoke quietly to one another for a moment. Grove-peace seemed upset, but you couldn’t make out what they were saying. The translator hovered next to you, apparently uninterested in helping you out. Not that it really mattered what they were saying. Know it or not, you clearly didn’t have much of a say in what happened to you.

The last doctor left after a while of a quasi-arguing with Grove-peace. Once the door closed, he swayed on his paws, scrubbing at his face with a wrist. He looked tired, now that I was getting a proper glance at him. His legs wobbled and he had to quickly correct his posture before he fell over a couple of times. It was a bit late, wasn’t it? How long had the doctors been here for? You hadn’t been really paying attention.

“You should go home,” you said from under the pile of blankets you were housed in. He started, glancing over his shoulder at you. Maybe he hadn’t been expecting you to be awake.

He trotted over to the bedside and folded his legs in a kneel. “I think I’ll stay for a bit longer,” he said. “If you don’t mind.” He looked at you, waiting for your answer. Huh. He was really asking. If you didn’t want him to stay, he wouldn’t.

“No,” you said, letting your eyes drift shut. “You can stay.”

The room was a little more peaceful with him around, after all.

Part 4 here