#also if anyone is reading this and in uni: getting a degree can also be VERY right for you! go you!

[weraceasone]

Hi :)

If this is too personal please feel free to ignore.

Can i ask how did you know it was the right decision to drop out?

I've been thinking about it, i'm absolutely miserable at school and i know that's not the career i want but what if there's nothing better? but on the other hand i don't think things can get much worse tbh

Thank you and hope you are well <3

hi anon🫶🏼, don’t worry it’s not too personal!!

personally for me, it was a decision that took a long, long time. the first time I thought about dropping out was back in october 2021 (during my second year) when I realized the subjects we were studying actually didn't interest me at all. I pushed it away at the time, out of fear of the opinions of others and because I didn't really know what else to do.

so, I went on and on and on, and like you mentioned, it just made me absolutely miserable. the subjects didn't interest me, I had no motivation whatsoever to do my assignments and I knew in my heart that this wasn't what I was supposed to be doing. but I persevered because I've always put the opinions of others above mine. I thought this was what I was supposed to do: go to uni, get a degree and all that kind of stuff. I also felt bad about the fact that I had already made it this far, so I told myself to just finish it.

then in my third year, I had to do an internship. so I applied for internships, got accepted at one and told myself I had to do this. the internship started in february, but I already started having physical symptoms back in december. I started having a lot of panic attacks, was constantly walking around with headaches and stomach aches, was always nauseous and just could.not.stop.crying. seriously, I cried every single day. it honestly made me depressed. but I still moved on, cause I was scared of the consequences of dropping out. so I started the internship and it was the absolute worst time of my life. the people were incredibly nice, but I just hated it. I hated the 9-5 lifestyle and the work and I hated feeling isolated working in an office all day, it just made me absolutely miserable. so after feeling incredibly depressed and crying my eyes out for two months straight, last week I quit and dropped out.

I know I joke around a lot on tumblr about being a uni dropout, but it has honestly been the hardest decision of my life and the hardest time of my life. but I know in my heart that I made the right decision, because I automatically felt a million times better when I made it. I want to start living my life for myself and not care so much about the opinions of others. and I know in my heart that getting a degree and working in an office is not the right choice for me, even though that may be most desirable to a lot of people.

I was just like you, anon. I always worried so, so much about: what if there's nothing better? what if there's nothing I enjoy doing? but I think the answer to that is this: maybe it is okay to just see where life takes me. I am allowed to try whatever I feel like trying and if it doesn't work out, then I'm just going to try something else. I don't need to know the whole roadmap of my life right now, it is enough for me to just know the next step. I have passions and hobbies and I'm a hard working person and everything will work out for me, just because I said so.

I hope everything works out for you, anon. whether you choose to continue with your degree or drop out, I wish you all the best🧡.

[satoruhour]

HIHII hope you are doing well!!!

I have a request but if you're not comfortable writing it's completely fine too!!

Anyways~ can you write something with University professor geto x top student reader??? They have a lot of sexual tension and geto continuously targets the reader in his lectures only for her to storm into his office after a test in which he didn't give her the marks she deserved just so he could piss her off and eventually leading them to blow off some steam together hehe-

HEJSJSH ANYWAYS I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT REST OF THE DAY💗💗

-🍒

I GOT THAT DUMB D*CK !

a/n: hi cherry 2! saying 2 because i already have another cherry anon, thank u for waiting for this btw sorry this took so long omggg!!! i wanna make it similar to the short blurb i did here, but ill leave out reader being a camgirl! a lot of lore talk, just a warning

wc: 8k (sigh ....)

warnings: so much lore lol sorry, no beta we die like men, age gap (32 / 24), professor!geto, fem!reader, geto is also a cam worker, masturbation (both f and m), toy use during f! masturbation (vibrator), fantasising, pet names, praise, degradation, use of ‘slut’ and ‘whore’, oral (m receiving, f receives briefly at the end), dumbification (ig?) face-fucking, deep-throating, spitting in mouth, unprotected sex, creampie / breeding kink, cum eating, implied multiple rounds, n*sfw under the cut

no one could really pinpoint the reason why professor geto had picked on you, called you out so much, and why you entertained the incessant questions. it was unbecoming of a prof., he knew, it was never smart to favour one person (negatively, in this case) in a room of bright students who could read between the lines. but he just feels himself so drawn to your furrowed eyebrows and words laced with venom, because at the end of the day, he can see that you aren’t all talk.

you challenge his views and you do it in a way that catches him off-guard. you propose insane arguments that you willingly would die at the grave just to find evidence for; or it could just be because he was staring too much at the way your mouth moved and your eyes expressed everything to pay attention to your words, finding that you were just too beautiful to be chasing a linguistics degree.

this was another thing: geto suguru could possibly have anyone he wanted. he was fine. shoulders pulled back in proper posture, hair either tied up fully or just halfway, and always, always wearing shirts with sleeves that reach his wrist. to that, everyone could see just how bulked the man was, top looking too tight all the time.

geto knew he was fine, too, because on top of (and before) being a professor, he found that he could get a good amount of money by just streaming — camera propped below his neck and obviously tight button-up shirt discarded to reveal his tattooed body, while he has his legs spread and the thirsty, horny comments flooding in on the platform. it’s been a norm by now, started from his uni days where he needed some extra money to support his fees and living necessities.

one year turned into two, two years turned into stagnancy during his third and fourth years (save for a few occasional streams), and up came a little funny graduation stream suggested by his best friend. geto had spent a good half ’n hour talking about his time in university and thanking his viewers, changing up the setting almost immediately by showing hard he was.

[uzum4kisl0ver]: YEAAAH we’re getting to the good stuff, thank u for feeding us so well these few years uzumaki-san!!

[minstash96]: Congrats on graduating Uzumaki-san!! I rmb joining during your third year and found out from everyone u were getting busier </3 but Im glad youre back again!!!

[g_bigdick_s]: fellas is it gay to support your best friend’s graduation jerking off stream

the flood of “yes”’s replying to gojo made the streamer laugh, thankful that his best friend had listened a little and at least changed gojobigdicksatoru to just his “G.S.” initials to avoid people finding his LinkedIn. from there, geto had gotten into the true nature of his stream easily, fishing out his cock to stroke and loving the sounds of tips coming in, the name of his alias Uzumaki continually commented. since then, it’s become a side hustle — finishing his masters, training to become a professor, it’s all natural to him, taking even further steps to make sure he isn’t found out.

exactly, he could have anyone he wanted — a fan from his streaming account, or one of satoru’s regular fwb’s but instead he finds himself drawn to someone else, you, the second year student in his bilingualism and multilingualism module that he has no trouble teaching despite his freshly employed status.

at the start of the week, the gods decided thought it would be funny to delay the campus bus that would take you to the english department for a consultation session with your professor. you couldn’t focus in lectures due to bad cramps, you were behind on your non-major related courses, the bad luck just seemed to seep into one day after another. you had woken up late, putting on a terrible outfit that no one really cared about, except your professor who just had a smirk on his face.

“if you notice, runes were created as they were spoken — spelt as they are said which almost look like ‘pictographs’,” prof. geto switches to the next slide with the runes and their meanings alongside a jumble of symbols that send the whole class into hysterics, “can anyone sound out the phonetics of these runes to me? hint: even though i said they look like pictographs, the first rune is definitely not an E.”

he was known for asking questions during lectures, pleased with anyone that would even try because he knew how quiet lecture theatres could get. he was exactly like that in university, too, letting satoru take all the attention due to the many unknown people in the same room. now, he found that asking the questions was a little entertaining, seeing the way students look back down at their laptops and avoid eye contact. but he doesn’t need to do anything and his body is already turnt towards you. he’s not even pointing physically, which he thinks he’s done a good job of restraining himself.

ᛊᛃᚨᚾᛖᛚ

“the words and names should be as they sound — so ‘s’ or ᛊ should translate into a ‘c’ since they didn’t have a C back then and it’s the closest sound to C. ᛃ can’t be ‘h’ because of the usage of H in hagl . . its pronunciation is different and plus, we’ll spell it how we say it, so maybe it’s ‘j’?” you mutter to yourself, an urge to answer the quickest, always. you aren’t sure where this streak came from, but you’ve been smart always, “sja . . it either can be chanel or channel since there’s a rule you can’t use the same rune twice in succession . .”

professor geto already knows you’d be the first to answer, raising your hand even without looking since you were still calculating the other four letters which you put together fairly quickly.

you take the safest route, “chanel, with one N.”

geto clicks his tongue and sucks in a breathe, “so close, miss (y/n), but it’s because i cheated a little on my part.” you can feel your blood boil and the grimaces of other students when he switches to the next slide and there’s a little grin on his face. it says — ‘there is no distinction between capital and small runes, nor can you use the same rune twice continually.’

“you are right, partially, but i did want to drive home the point,” which he’s sure you already know. “that words with two N’s or L’s or whatever, would only show up in the runic language as only one character.” your face morphs into something of annoyance and the grin on professor geto’s face only widens — that defiant, headstrong nature is something he loved, but the grin drops a little when he imagines something . . out of the classroom. his pants tighten.

you mirror him, clicking your tongue and reluctantly taking down the note in your documents before sinking into your chair — not even chō, you friend, could find the proper words to comfort you. you spend the rest of the lecture, sulking, unwillingly answering his incessant questions with a scowl on your face and a headache forming.

this never stops—

“miss (y/n)?” one-on-one meetings were the bane of your existence, but it was the only way to connect with your professors properly — here, geto calls you to talk about your latest essay where you were the last on the roster. by then, everyone has filed out with nobara waiting for you just outside the classroom.

“don’t have to call my name, i’m the only one here.” you mutter under your breath, and geto feels a little annoying today.

“what was that?”

“nothing—”

he hums, scooting his chair closer once you sit, and while you find the gesture a little weird, you’re overcome with just how good he smells and it only fuels your hatred more. it’s no fair that he’s so . .

“miss (y/n).” you sigh with an apology, frankly not ready to hear how he’d be attacking your essay. it was written on a rushed timeline, you didn’t cite your sources properly, you knew some criticism was warranted as much as you didn’t like to hear it from your professor’s mouth.

“. . you do know you can’t just rely on your brain, right?” geto speaks softly and you feel your heart flutter at his tone. he points to the places where you forget your in-text citations.

“but professor, information about syntax and phonetics just comes like second nature . .” you mumble, ignoring how he closes his eyes and hisses, “and all the sources on the internet say different things.”

“then just find a reliable one.”

you tsk, taking the paper from him and flipping to the next page, “well, i did one here.” the paper makes a sound when you press your finger into it, aware of how close you are. from here you can feel the heat radiating off his body, unconsciously rubbing your thighs together.

“too long ago, needs to be within five years.” geto’s lying through his teeth.

“no, it does not!” you pull back and look at him incredulously. ah, the feeling’s gone, “not in language related papers, at least!”

“but that claim was from the 2000’s, miss (y/n), for all we know it could’ve been resolved by then.”

“then why didn’t you say anything about chō’s scholar article from the 1990’s?” you’re standing up, now, furrowed eyebrows depicting the very thing you feel: confusion, agitation at being treated like this. given you weren’t in the best condition when you wrote this essay, but you still gave it your all.

“her argument was about the interconnectedness between the romance languages — yours,” he punctuates while leaning back in his chair. you don’t like how your eyes flit down to his lap, but you’re forced to look up when he stands up too, “is about the use of ciphers in comparison to an immature language developed on the internet that created in the 2019s. any scholar claim before that would be void.”

your blood boils just like that day. alas, he had a good point, but like always, the gentle slit of his eyes and the all-knowing smile didn’t match the bullying he was laying on you and you despise it.

even! even, as you notice how there’s probably less than a inch between your faces as you puff out your chest to look more intimidating and yet geto suguru towers over you. and even when your heart beats loudly in your ears, feeling his hot breath fan over your own face while you don’t miss how he licks his lips and glances down to yours not-so-secretly.

you swallow at the silence, until there’s the annoying notification of his Outlook cutting the tension and soon you’re snatching the essay from him, walking to where your bag is. although you want to let your anger overflow, all you say is a tame, “noted. thanks, prof” with a glare, eye twitching.

you made sure to slam the classroom door with shaky hands . .

. . but you’re not very good at capping your rage. “i swear to god! he better fucking check his mirror and admire himself because soon i’m going to beat him up so bad that everyone can’t recognise him.” geto’s lips turn up in a small smirk at your flared expression he just witnessed — he just loves your dirty mouth and he finds himself thinking of it more and more often.

chō only can tut, “so you find him attractive?”

“what? how the hell did you infer that from my rant?” you scoff, shoving her to the side, not aware that your whispered outburst is heard as he’s packing up. he simply enjoys looking at you walk away through the glass slit of the door, hips swaying unknowingly.

“bad news, guys,” geto, or rather Uzumaki, sighs on screen, adjusting so the lens of the camera rested just below his collarbones. easily, his chat fills up with a mixture of horny comments and genuine questions, chuckling to himself as he unbuttons his shirt. he feels more like a sinner at this point, suddenly flustered with the confession he’s about to make.

“i think i’ve taken quite a liking to someone,” geto hums, hands going to his trousers to palm his bulge. he had to get home immediately after that, cancelling his meetings for the day. with a single text to gojo, the white-haired man was excited to hear everything about this new person, thankful that his best friend will finally not be alone.

[g_bigdick_s]: TELL US! TELL US!!!! TELL US!

but professor geto is lost instantly, imagining you as he massages his erection. thinking about your anger transforming into pleasure, into obedience for him as he forces your mouth down on his cock. oh . . how’d your mouth and hands feel, how’d your pussy feel.

geto groans, already removing his dick from the constraints, and pumping it to full length. he doesn’t even talk much, only the endless comments and tips reminding him he was still on live. spitting on his hand, he wraps his hand around himself again, thumbing the tip and hoping it’d be your tongue swirling around it.

what would you look like on your knees, taking each inch of his cock down your throat? would he be able to wipe the defiance off your face? would he be able to fuck his smart student, dumb?

“you need a good destress, woman,” chō suggests over the phone, voice a bit uneven due to it being stuck in between her shoulder and ear, “go on camstar or something, i’m sure you’ll find something hot there.”

“chō, i am not going on a porn streaming website! i’ll very much settle for my smut fics, thank you.”

“boo, don’t you get bored? i get that normal adult industry videos are super inaccurate but . . when was the last time you’ve watched an unfiltered, unedited jerk off vid? that’s the hottest.”

you scoff, “yeah, like you would know, miss complain-whenever-you-get-dick-pics.”

“that’s because it’s unsolicited! plus all the men who send me pics have ugly dicks. if anything i’m more open to get unsolicited pussy pics rather than consensual dick pics at this point.” your friend nonchalantly says, spreading her fingers to look at her manicured nails, “but anyway, prof geto is on your ass too much lately. maybe he wants to get in your pants?”

you don’t recoil at the suggestion as much as you expect to and you’re puzzled at that — “please never say that again.” just as you’re saying this, you’re typing in camstar.org even though you told yourself not to but deep down, you know that you’ve been craving more than just twitter links and porn with plot stories. on the front page, you’re seeing a video thumbnail of a guy with a fairly big . . feature, countless tattoos lining his body while you can catch a faint glimpse of his long hair in the dark room — it’s the only one that draws you in, other streams merging into a blur.

chō’s voice fades off when you notice just how popular the stream is, cursor hovering over the title (“just a ramblefap, need to release some tension”) almost tempting you to click.

“okay, will get back to you,” succumbing to your needs, you shamelessly grab your vibrator just as she cheers into the phone. you can hear that’s my girl! on the other side as you stifle a smile, bidding a goodbye before you settle into bed. from there, you do what you always do: relax for a few, slow your breathing, get yourself wet a little—

click.

The stream you have attempted to view has ended a minute ago. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. View more livestreams below:

you shove the vibrator under your pillow and bury your head into it, screaming.

“i mentioned in yesterday’s lecture that Latin evolved from the dialects of the Italic peoples of ancient Italy, or Latium, a region in central western Italy. over time, Latin absorbed elements from other languages, such as Etruscan and Greek, and it became the main language of the western Mediterranean.” professor geto rambled on in classic geto fashion — it was his passion that made him so easy to listen to, as with the many enamoured girls with googly eyes and the guys who wish they could carry themselves the way geto did.

you’d say the same thing: his love for his subject of study made him attractive — charming even — as much as you didn’t want to admit to your friend, but you’d be more open with your attraction like everyone is if he wasn’t—

[9:52am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] so fucking annoying and cocky and picking on me all the time!!!!!! im soooo sick of him im so serious omfg ....

but today, he’s looking less at you and more at other students, or even marvelling at the terrible paint job of the classroom as he goes from slide to slide. he talks about the derivation in which French separates from Latin, borrowing similar spellings and meanings from the old language while separating the way they are spoken.

“French is the most divergent of the romance languages because of strong Gallic and Frankish influences. The Celtic Gauls spoke a language similar to Old Dutch but adopted Latin as the Romans invaded Gaul.” you don’t even have to look at him to get him thinking of lewd things, spiralling into his fantasies ever since last night. geto is a little fatigued, too, having lost sleep over his fucking student which he just can’t help bothering. excitement at having you in class before is now turning into dread with every week that passes, and this week is just one instance.

“uh— i-i know you guys aren’t well-versed in either, but with your knowledge of both languages,” geto pulls at his tie. he feels hot, “discuss with your tutorial groups, the differences between the two and list down examples. just come up with one difference, but preferably name a few instances.”

[10:01am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] wish u were here im so bored 😭😭 profs acting so weird today tho

[10:01am, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] is he looking hot and bothered, nervous ??? like he wants to cry? im tellin you he wants you fr

of course she’d come out of her sickness-induced sleep just to bother you about him having the hots for you.

[10:02am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] you’re so ... i swear pls shut up he may want me but i do NOT want him

[10:03am, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] not even while you were just ranting about how his side profile looked a little too good in lecture yesterday?? anyway i hope you’ll be able to get that nut tn 🙏🏼 that guy on camstar sounded hot asf

[10:04am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] ikr i cant believe i got cockblocked by a fuckin livestream ending 💀 thank you fr i need it atp

“any progress here?” he comes out behind you and you slam the phone so hard you give the both of you a scare while your other friends exchange giggles with each other. what you don’t know, is how his arm is positioned upon the back of your chair and his whole body hovers just beside yours. you’re threatened to look, but you know if you do, you’d be falling deeper into the pit that you promised yourself not to fall into.

“yup, we’re just discussing things about how in terms of grammar, French has conjugation but almost no declension. but— uh, it rather uses word order to express some of the intricacies that Latin expresses through word endings.”

you can see geto nod from your peripheral, “good. good answer, any examples to show me?”

your friends nod towards you since you’re usually the one with all the information about different languages. they aren’t foreign to the way geto keeps calling on you to answer him, too, so you shouldn’t have any problem with this, right?

wrong. you’re stuttering through your answer, turning your head finally and being met with the sight of prof geto looking down on you like a deer caught in headlights. you think that being in lecture theatres, sitting near to the back and your hatred in general has desensitised you to the beauty of your professor, because being under him like this makes your core pulse uncomfortably and your voice shaky.

“. . hm? what was that?”

“i was uhm— saying how— uh,” the way geto nods at you makes you more nervous, painting you as someone who someone who had all bark and no bite, but the other knows very well that you had a nasty bite. you’re smart and witty, pretty, hot as fuck, and if anything, it’s taking everything in geto not to bend you over and show you your place in this very classroom in front of everyone, too.

“little lady got nothin’ for me today?” geto purses his lips and lets his teasing side take over, an easy-going smile taking over his features that you just want to kiss and slap off at the same time. wait.

“i didn’t get enough sleep because i was too busy trying to rewrite the damn essay you said i had outdated and missing sources for,” you speak through gritted teeth, feeling a mixture of arousal and pure rage for the man hovering over you.

geto juts his lip out in a pout, face getting dangerously close to yours and challenging you. he just hopes your two friends won’t say anything, “well, darling, if you picked an easier topic to argue about, you wouldn’t be doing that, would you?”

“well, sorry i’m always trying to outdo myself. are you, professor geto? what with your boring suits and black and white slide designs?”

you click your tongue and turn back to your phone to pull up your chat with chō while geto takes a deep breath, desperately hoping the hard-on wouldn’t show through his slacks. your other two friends only giggle even more at the exchange, because for the rest of the class, professor geto is on edge, unable to teach coherently.

[11:17pm, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] YOU DID WHAAAAATTTTT...???? GIRL YOU SAID THAT???!!!!!!

[11:18pm, (y/n) -> chō 💟] bro what if i get expelled.. i shouldnt have but he was pissing me off so much... i did put an apology in the end tho

by then, you’ve already submitted your rewritten essay, putting in a short note at the end for your behaviour in class. although you don’t take it back, you’re still trying to play it safe especially with how much you paid to get into university. you scroll along camstar, bored out of your mind and hoping to find something as compelling as the inked guy from last week, but nothing really draws you in. until you’re refreshing the page, and just like the previous time, the popularity of that same bulking guy seems to push his video to the top.

and finally, before you’re clicking into the video, you check out his profile: in his early thirties, started this account when he was 24 and in university. you smack your lips at that — he’s been doing this for almost ten years? that’s dedication. in curiosity, you scroll down his account, seeing the progression of which this guy built up his figure and tattoos that litter his body. he’s kept the same format, camera showing his body chest down until you’re lazy to scroll more, a little disappointed in not being able to find any indication of his face.

you think that maybe you saw a glimpse of that wrist tattoo that matched the tattoo on your professor’s wrist, but you could just be imagining things.

“alright guys . .” the man on the screen huffs, clothes already discarded to get straight to the point, and you’re recording a small snippet of the same guy you told chō about. “had a rough day today.”

the onslaught of comments going i can make u feel better!!! Take ur anger out on me Uzumaki-san makes you sputter and laugh, sending that video first before you’re taking another. your attention is stolen for a moment, seeing chō react with emojis to your video message (“let’s see what emails i got today, huh?”), but the structure of sentences that the man speaks soon brings you out of jollity and into shock.

“how cute, an essay sent straight to my email.” geto wants to do anything but look at emails right now, but ever since he’s gotten your rewritten assignment, it’s all he’s wanted to check out if it wasn’t for the many meetings and errands he had to run today. “yadda yadda . . oh?”

“i’m sorry for today’s lesson,” purposely pausing to leave out his name, geto continues on, “i shouldn’t have reacted in that way no matter the situation.” a smirk forms on his face while your body fills with dread. in your panic, you pull up your own document whilst catching all of this on camera, tracking each word as the man on camstar.org continues to say out your apology word by word.

and then bit by bit, you’re making out how the man behind the camera might, just might be your linguistics professor. the broad shoulders, the jawline, the long hair, the manspread . .

but even with your heightened combination of excitement and revelation, you don’t click away, blindly sending the video to your friend and then shamefully digging under your pillow to grab your vibrator.

“teaching people is so difficult sometimes, guys,” he grunts, pulling down his underwear and revealing his already hard cock. he lets out a shaky sigh as he wraps a hand around his shaft, “you usually get the people who won’t do any work, the ones who are absent half the time — usually they go hand in hand.”

professor geto laughs and you twitch at the lovely sound. “but . . there’s this one girl . . in my classes— f-fuck.”

you’re entranced, watching your professor masturbate in front of thousands of people who possibly didn’t know a thing about this man while you try to get your jaw off the floor, “who is entirely different from these categories.”

“she’s smart,” geto groans out and you watch transfixed as he starts to pump himself, hips grinding up into his palm, “she’s so smart that i’d want to get to know her one day and just talk about anything.”

“s-she’s so fucking attractive, too, you guys won’t even— oh goddd . .” you feel like you’re being watched, so you’re careful with how you’re putting your vibrator to your core and once you start it, the moan that leaves you lines up with geto’s deeper groans. it turns you on so damn much.

with his head tilted back, he’s long gone as he moves his hands faster and faster, the slick noises of his pre-cum and spit mixing in together — geto only wishes he could act on his desires once the course was over, but knows you’ll probably be mortified at the prospect. at least here, he can imagine that it’s your mouth or cunt doing all the work.

“s-shitttt . .” the professor sounds out, hissing when he thumbs his tip and even more pre comes spilling out and while you watch, you’re hypnotised by the beautiful moans in its perfect cadence and the thickness of his cock. by now his chest is heaving and he’s holding onto his bedsheets so tight you wish it was your thighs.

“i want to fuck her silly, fuck all of those stupid facts out of her head and get her dumb on my cock,” geto whines, hips fully bucking up now while you press your vibrator deeper into your clit. you’re left wondering how his mouth would feel, to shut him up by pressing him into your cunt until he can’t breathe, soak his stupid fucking suits, “want to hear her moan my name.”

you whimper at all the things professor geto swears he wants to do to you, grinding into your hand while he speeds up as well. he doesn’t speak, simply stroking himself as he thighs tense up and he squeezes his shaft with head full of visions of you in terribly lewd positions, making disgusting sounds, and all for him. it isn’t long before geto cums with a loud drawn out moan, shooting his cum onto his torso with a sigh before taking a sticky hand to his lips, licking it off — “i’d want to see my cum dripping out of her one day.”

that sends a chill down to your core, biting your pillow before you release softly all over your hand and vibrator; you spend the rest of the night watching professor geto’s other videos.

[12:32am, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] oh. OH..........

“i should’ve just taken an off-day today, i do not want to get back our results.” chō rubs at her eyes and temples, wanting anything to do with the return of test marks, but unfortunately it was the week after midterms and it was inevitable, “don’t need to ask you though, you’re probably not worried at all.”

“trust me, i am,” you bite the inside of your cheek. it’s been at least . . two weeks after that whole debacle, and despite your intense vents with your friend and the continuous picking on by prof. geto, nothing out of the blue was happening. except, maybe, your growing physical need for your professor and your simultaneous, increasing hatred for him.

“it’s only midterms — you don’t need to worry too much since it doesn’t contain a high percentage. what you should be focusing on are your finals. we’ll work on your shortcomings and mistakes here so you guys will do the best when the time comes.”

and when professor geto comes around to hand you your test, all you do is glare up through your lids, taking it from him before feeling your whole world crumble.

“a B+?!” your mouth gapes open at the blatant 65/100 mark that glares back at you. you know that you would’ve gotten anything but a 65, willing yourself to study harder and harder just to rub it in his pretty little face that you weren’t falling behind in his class. at this point it’s got to be personal, so soon, you’re packing up your things angrily with the intent to storm his office after your other classes.

it’s late in the afternoon when you finally finish your other tutorials on a short fuse, him clearly getting ready to head home by the darkness of his office when you shove your way through the door.

professor geto is sat in a laid-back position, tie hung on the hooks installed in the office and a few buttons are unbuttoned, revealing the very familiar tattoos you’ve become acquainted with.

“to who do i owe the pleasure?”

“cut the crap, prof.,” you scowl, using your foot to slam the office door close. despite the late nights being buried in your sheets, you won’t let yourself be treated like this, “i deserved anything but a 65 on midterms.”

geto tilts his head, sitting up and gesturing out to you; you realise he wants to see your test paper.

“ah!” with a finger, he makes a show of finding for your obvious mistakes which was minimal — but the way he marks obnoxiously tells you everything you need to know, “here. your comprehension of the similarities between Latin and Ancient Greek was too surface level, you didn’t explain why—”

“i. did!” you press down into the paper like the first time, leaning over his table and reading out the exact answer you wrote just a few days ago, “here, since your blind ass wants to act like i wasn’t answering the question.” you push yourself into his desk more, eyes levelled with his. you dare him to say something smart.

“well, your explanation of the six cases in Latin left out the locative, the last one, and there were some problems in the conjugation that the test asked of you.”

“bullshit. show me, if you’re so confident.”

professor geto knows he’s hit a dead-end. he was telling lies, full of it, but he’s enjoying every second of the anger that translates into your features, of the growl in your voice. he leans back further the more you close in on him.

“nothing, right? so tell me, do you hate me that much?”

geto simply laughs, crossing his arms and reminiscing on the many nights he’s spent doing anything but.

“quite the opposite, sweetheart.” the name catches you off-guard for a moment, but your sour face returns soon enough.

“then what the fuck do you think you’re doing, picking endlessly on a student?”

your professor sits forward, prompting you to cower back. you think it’d be good to bring up whatever he’s got going on on camstar.org but you’ll wait to a good moment before you say anything about your trump card, until geto snaps you out of your stupor by towering over you. the sheer difference makes you swallow.

“because i like seeing you flared up and angry and mad.” professor geto surprises you with each second, the nonchalance in which he said it, the stupid, attractive smirk on his face. now’s the time.

you compose yourself, thinking of the best way to phrase this, “you know you’re not entirely safe, either, you know. i could report you with the frequency in which you’re picking on me.”

you point a finger to his chest, thinking you could get him to lay off immediately with this as much as you were hoping he wouldn’t. the attention was unwarranted but not entirely . . terrible, “that wouldn’t look so good on your record, right, Uzumaki-san?”

you relish in the surprise that seeps into geto’s pretty features but it’s a short-lived victory when he goes back into a relaxed state, expression neutral — “so you know.”

“know . . what?” your professor pulls away and walks around his desk, finally in close proximity to you like he’s always wished.

“how badly i want you.” he whispers, but doesn’t go past that, rather letting you figure everything out for yourself.

“‘. . fuck her silly, fuck all of those stupid facts out of her head’, right?” you mumble softly, not admitting to even chō that you had watched that livestream over and over enough to memorise the few sentences. geto wraps an arm around your waist to tug you closer, faces so close that you could just shut him up.

“go on.”

“you want me to go dumb on your cock,” professor geto mutters a correct which undeniably sends a thrill to your core.

“you want to hear me to moan your name.” “—want to hear her moan my name.”

a small smile spreads across his face (even if you left out the most important thing) as he finishes his own sentence with you, eyes clouded over with lust and your scent and he’s positive he can smell your soaked panties from here if he tries hard enough.

“that’s right.”

“sooo . .” by god, you fucking hated the man, but seeing someone stroke their cock to just the thought of you — how could you pass off such a good opportunity? “do you prefer professor geto, or suguru?”

geto groans at his first name usage, setting you on his desk and presses himself into you at the sound of papers flying to the floor, stationary falling to the ground. he can only hope no one walks in. he’s fully hard, loving how your legs naturally spread for him.

“whatever you want, baby.” and after, it’s all history with the way geto crashes his lips into yours, letting you pull at his jacket and shirt, practically ripping open the buttons to see his tattoos that you’re begging to see. slowly, he lets you trace them while he kisses down your neck, roughly pulling your sweater off of you. you have the cutest tits, packaged nicely in your bra which he has no trouble taking off. there’s a small sound that escapes his mouth when he unclasps your bra and your breasts come falling out.

“didn’t tell me you had such a nice pair . .” you giggle.

“yeah, like i would straight up tell my professor that.” with a hand, your hand follows the ink of his dragon that wraps around his body and torso, right down to his happy trail, “but i mean, you get the honour of seeing it now.”

with a squeeze to his bulge, you whisper, “maybe i’ll let you fuck them next time.”

geto lets out a little moan, “fucking minx,” before he latches his mouth onto your nipple, kneading the other greedily. a soft moan leaves your mouth as you knead his erection, a culmination of your combined groans in the quiet office. soon he’s giving attention to the other, a hand trailing down into your panties where he rubs your clit to test the waters, and he smiles into your skin at the way your hand falters and your head hangs forward.

“p-professor . .” it’s clear geto can’t wait, because he pushes a finger into you easily with how dripping wet you are, panties showing a dark patch of your juices. “s— so thick—”

“i know, baby, gotta stretch you out,” a soft pop! is heard as he comes off your nipple before he meets your lips in a sloppy kiss. he shoves his tongue into your mouth the moment he pushes a second finger in and he swallows your moans, letting you feel around his body to dig your nails in — it was just too damn much.

“so— suguru, your f-fingers, they’re so—” even with your protests, your hips grind up against his thick fingers that are pumping in and out of you, taking every last piece of fire in you as you succumb completely.

“what, miss (y/n)?” geto memorises the exact way all your previous blazing words are reduced to mere mewls and whimpers, alongside your pleas for more, more, more.

“i need something—” you whine when he pushes all the way inside, stretching your cunt so well as you clench around him like a vice and sucking him in, “i wanna make you feel good—”

you get at least a little resolve in the time it took you to say that, drunkenly unbuckling his belt before pulling his cock out. his tip is positively leaking, fingers curling instinctively in your pussy and your moans mingle together again.

“c’mon, prof, please?” geto tuts, reluctantly removing his fingers from your cunt which he wish he could spend more of his time in, but gives in to you as you switch positions, pushing him against his own desk. from there you’re going to your knees, marvelling at the cock you’ve watched on your very own screen.

“better than you imagined?”

you roll your eyes, “shut up or i’m blue-balling you.”

geto exhales forcefully, cut off when you put your mouth gently over his tip. you suckle on it like a pacifier, swirling your tongue around the mushroom head and looking up at him through your lashes; the sight is heavenly. the hair from his bun had fallen out, framing his pleasure-filled face, and the veins on his arms pop out so much from how harshly he’s grabbing the wood.

“f-fuck, baby . .” his words are lost once you start bobbing your head, encasing his shaft deep in your mouth as you suck and lick and slobber over his thick cock, using your hands to stroke the places you can’t reach. a choked moan weasels itself out of geto when one of your hands deviate to play with his balls, squeezing lightly at the sack while you continue to lick the underside of his length.

“take me like a slut, don’t you?” geto says breathlessly, fingers going through your hair to gather the strands into a makeshift ponytail, cradling your head to guide your mouth, but he soon starts to thrust into your waiting mouth.

“want me to fuck your dirty whore mouth?” your professor asks and you hate how much it turns you on as he brings you off to let you breathe for a moment. you stick out your tongue, big doe eyes just pleading to be used as your hands anchor themselves down to his belt loops.

“y—yes, prof., give me everything you got,” geto hums, seemingly satisfied with your answer as he taps your tongue with his tip, cock so heavy and thick it makes you whine a little before he shoves it in without warning. the moan that rumbles deep in your throat sends vibrations up his body and he starts a pace immediately.

“that’s it, that’s it—” you breathe through your nose as geto face fucks you, two hands covering the back of your head as he thrusts into your throat. your mouth’s just so damn warm and tight it has geto groaning non-stop while your eyes start to well up with tears. he uses you like a cocksleeve, abusing your throat each time his tip meets with it.

“fuuuckk— yes, yes, your throat’s so—” geto tilts his head back when he buries his cock in you, the deepest he’s ever been and your nose meets with his pubes, the smell of his musk and sweat making your eyes roll back in pleasure. suguru is all grunts before moving again, the gagging, gawking noises filling the small space.

“mmhm— mmf!” you moan around his length, trying your best to move your tongue along the underside of his cock. a hand goes down to quell the growing need of your cunt, slipping a finger or two in.

“dirty girl just can’t think straight when she has a— s-shit— cock in her, huh?”

you hum in agreement, eyes fluttering when you feel his tip twitch in your mouth and geto spills right into your throat with a long moan. your lids flutter close, taking as much cum as you can before coming off with a deep breath. strings of his cum and your saliva connect you to his cock, the lewdness of it all showing clearly in how sloppily you sucked your professor off.

“open.” and you show your tongue still full of his cum, taking the opportunity to lean down to let a ball of spit fall from his mouth. it drops painfully slow to your tongue, closing it only when you hear the rasp of swallow, “good girl.”

“think i’ve kept you waiting for too long, need to be in you,” geto brings you up by your upper arms, propping you up nicely onto his desk where you already start to leak into the wood, “do you want me to be in you?”

“only if you promise to stop picking on me, prof.,” you pout. really, a changed girl once you get some cock, huh?

“but you’re too cute not to bother, baby.” your pout deepens and geto feels a tug on his heart. oh, you were too adorable, knowing you’d kill him the next time he mentions this. he hopes they’ll be a next time.

“i mean it, suguru,” you murmur as he uses his tip to play with your juices, smearing it around your cunt. “treat me like a proper person.”

“can i at least treat you like a slut behind closed doors?”

you bit your lip, he’s asking for a next time, and who are you to reject him?

“whatever you want, professor,” you wiggle your hips along his cock, hoping for some friction which he grants to you with no problem, “use me. treat me like your cum dump.”

geto hisses at your tightness and your words as he bottoms out in you. he’s had your pussy once and already cannot get enough of you, moaning each time he moves in and out of your cunt. your walls hug him so snugly, sucking his cock in endlessly.

“baby, baby, baaaby . . your pussy’s so fuckin’— good—” he grunts into your ears, hips starting to thrust slowly into you. he swears he can see you in your tummy, asking you to look down, “look at how deep i am in you, sweetheart.”

you moan at just how big he was as you glance down, but you’re more focused on the way your pussy spreads for him, the cute veins on his length as he moves in you. you’re leaking so much that it’s effortlessly, the way he rams into you.

“sugu— suguru . . mmfuck—” geto groans upon feeling you rub your clit, your own hips bucking needily into his own as your juices start to drip down his balls. this was everything that he hoped would happen; your features morphed into pleasure, you descending into stupidity just from some dick, feeling your pussy, finally.

“hear yourself?” your professor proposes the question and you’re confused for a moment until he slows down and you whine at the sudden change, brought to attention just how soaking you were. the soft shlick, shlick, shlick sounds take your breath away, as with the translucent sheen of your juices coating his cock.

there, your professor resumes his pace, “hear how fuckin’ sloppy this pussy is for me. listen to her,” your senses are all overwhelmed: by how he hits all your sweet spots, the sweat on your back, your fast-beating heart and you let out a mangled whimper, “yesss . . that’s what i like to hear.”

geto smirks at how you can’t even answer, picking up his pace into a regular one. with his cock buried deep in you, you have no choice but to let your body move with his thrusts, jerking each time his balls meet your ass noisily.

“is this what the little lady needed? just some professor cock to get her to not be so damn uptight!”

“y—yessss . .” you’re delirious, “yesyesyes, suguru!” you squeal when he holds your legs up and pushes your legs into your chest, tongue lolling out at the deepness that he was in you.

“fucking slut,” geto mumbled, hips turning sloppy with fatigue taking over, but your cunt was just too good to stop, “where d’you want me to cum, baby?” he knows you’ll answer how he wants you to, especially after watching his livestream—

“i-inside— inside, pleaseplease,” the circles on your clit are messy, now, chasing your high more than ever, but your pussy is grasping onto him like a vice, prompting groans deep from his throat. “want your cum dripping out of me, prof—”

those words alone has geto shooting his load with a strangled grunt, switching to shallow, quick thrusts to pump you full of his cum. it comes out in hot, thick spurts, filling your insides more and more until it spills out the sides and you follow soon after, whole body convulsing from the intense orgasm you can’t stop shaking violently.

“take it— that’s it, attagirl,” he whines out, stroking his length to make sure you’re getting every last drop out of him, “take all my cum . .”

geto is sure he’s getting old by the way he feels lightheaded, having had to hold onto the edge of the table for a minute — but in that 60 seconds you’ve stumbled off the table and laid your chest over it, perking your ass up where your pussy continues to leak hot, white cum.

your professor takes one good look at your ass, hands going up to knead at them and spreads your cheeks. with his tongue, he eats his cum out of you, making your jerk at the sensitivity.

“oops, i’ve cleaned you up of my cum — guess i gotta give you a couple more loads,” geto props a leg up, eating you out, “it’s only right since my brightest student has suffered so much at my hands . .”

tagging @arminsumi @shidouryusm @suguruplsr @crysugu @slttygeto @suget @sonarspace @marimogf @hannzai &lt;3 ok gn

[strayed-quokka]

babydoll || ji changmin || act ii

↳ Changmin isn’t popular nor is he rich, whereas you run on the other end of the spectrum, spoilt and living on your dads credit card. when you’re tasked with kicking him out of the biggest party of your year, you come to realise he’s not all that bad. unfortunately, falling in love with the ji changmin is your one way ticket to social suicide.

↳ pairing: ji changmin x female reader + ex lee juyeon x female reader

!!! this is not a love triangle !!!

~ rating: NC-17 minors please do not interact with this work

↳ genre: enemies to acquaintances to reluctant friends to lovers, slowburn, drama, angst, happy end but it takes a long ass time, rich girl broke ass uni boy

~ warnings: everyone still kinda sucks, juyeon is toxic and a red flag, manipulation, emotional abuse, toxic relationships, family abuse (implied, vaguely shown), bullying, reader is still a pain to deal with, alcohol, drug use, the classism is strong in this one still, implications of an eating disorder, body issues, body modifications (tongue and nipple piercings), changmin is basically a chainsmoker but we love him, minnie teaching ya'll and reader how to roll a cigarette, cocaine is common, so is imported wine, swearing, pet names (little doll, doll, darling, princess), whore and bitch, suicidal ideation, mild violence, first degree burns, taller reader with long hair, is anyone redeemable?

everyone is an adult in their 20s

!!! if I missed anything or I remember something else I will add it !!!

↳ words: 28,173

a/n: this is late. I apologise this shit is long as hell to edit and it broke tumblr and my computer.

I have said this previously but I will be stating this every chapter. There are some specific physical attributes to this reader which I usually avoid doing but for the story itself it was necessary.

Also, please note that the warnings are applicable to the chapter in question, not necessarily the whole story. You can find all the general warnings on the masterlist to babydoll. I also take no responsibility if you take issue with the topics and characters at hand once proceeding as I would hope you have read the warnings beforehand. If there is something I did genuinely miss in the warnings you are more than welcome to tell me though, since there is a lot and some might get overlooked.

let me know if you wanna be on the taglist and please I beg love up on this changmin he's taking all the strength I have and possess.

babydoll playlist || act i

You could go without hearing Changmin’s voice for the rest of your life. It’s not that it was an unattractive tone or that it was harsh, but it was the person behind it that immediately brought you to a halt. There was a very big part of you that almost knew what this was going to be about, and you were set on avoiding it. 

It was the very first time you didn’t stay to catch his attention. You walked away, heading down the stairs to the first floor in an attempt to shake him off. But Changmin was stubborn in his pursuit of you, especially today, and he persisted in running after you until he caught up and stood right in front of you to block your path. 

“Why am I wrapped up in a rumour that you want to fuck me?” 

It’s painfully embarrassing to hear those words from him. You’d expected it, given that in the past few days, the looks you’d received were ones that made you feel cornered, like prey being chased. Chanhee had even asked you, in a tone that sounded so judgemental that for a moment you thought he’d slipped into the opposing side. Juyeon’s side. 

Hyunjae had been worse. You’d deemed him a maybe friend, especially considering how he’d been standing up for you recently, but his tone, like he was amused and laughing at your massive fuck up and that it was somehow funny to him, had made you cold towards him. 

Younghoon was a nightmare. He’d grabbed your long hair by the roots and dragged you into an empty hallway to shame you. You’d embarrassed Juyeon and everyone knew about it. You fucked your ex boyfriend, used him for his money like a whore and then had the audacity to think about someone else.

It’s not like you had wanted to. 

It had been an honest mistake, a thought that fell away from you. 

Your social status had fallen to a new low. To a degree that had even Chanhee wary of speaking to you around others. You didn’t blame him, as you knew if it had been him, you’d likely cast him out much the same. See, that was the thing in both your circles, when it was all wealth and appearance and nothing of substance. Looks mattered, behaviour mattered, how awful you were to keep it perfect didn’t matter at all. 

You missed Chanhee but you didn’t beg for him. He spoke to you when he desired, asked if you were okay, even apologised once when you were alone, but the damage was done. 

Chanhee couldn’t fully understand it either. He knew you so well, he knew you’d never jeopardise yourself to this extent, so how were you possibly so stupid?

You straighten your posture but you’re more nervous than usual, hiding your palms underneath your hoodie as you fiddle with the sleeves. 

Yes, the same hoodie the man before you had returned perfectly new, wearing it like an oversized dress with heels that once again made you just a little taller, and right now, it reassured you. You were above him, both physically and in status, and that still remained true. He would never be better than you. 

“Says who?” 

You’re stoic and nonchalant in your behaviour, even ice cold as you try to keep all your expressions away from his prying eyes, but Changmin only raises his brows and leans against the wall in disbelief because he doesn’t believe it. You’re not sure why he doesn’t, anyone usually would, but he looks at you like you’re see through, like everything is laid out in front of him, like he knows you down to the bone and it makes you extremely uncomfortable to know that he’s analysing you for more than just your body. 

“Half the school is asking me why you moan my fucking name when some asshole fucks you and your concern is who?”

To be perfectly fair, both were of your concern. The fact that so many people approached a social outcast to ask him what the fuck you were doing, what you had done, all because Juyeon ran his mouth, just as much as who specifically had been the one to bring this to Changmin’s attention. 

“Juyeon?”

“No, though I hear he’s been riding out the emotionally torn up victim perfectly,” you almost laugh because you can imagine it so well. Juyeon’s ego had been bruised and he had to run around so that everyone would know about it, but you caught yourself by hiding the slight smile behind your hand. 

It wasn’t funny. 

“I really don’t care, you know? You can fantasise about me all you want. Is that why you kept my hoodie?”

He’d been so close. So close to making you take a step back, if even just for a minute to tell him it was okay. Because the reality, as much as you hated it, was that none of this was really Changmin’s fault, even if you wanted it to be. 

And then he went and ruined it, and it made you snap.

“You think I fucking like Juyeon going around telling people that I said someone else’s name when I fucked him?! Like you so graciously told me to?! 

“I didn’t-”

“Don’t you think I’m humiliated enough?! It’s so fucking embarassing that it had to be you,” and that’s when you break. The cruelty of your words aren’t lost on you, but the emotional torment and humiliation you feel is even worse. You don’t let yourself, but it happens almost on its own when you start to cry, and you never cry. 

Not like this, but the tears fall so freely that you couldn’t catch the droplets between your fingers even if you tried, and Changmin just stands there like an idiot. He stands there and you’re not sure if it’s because he’s amused in watching your vulnerability or because he genuinely feels bad, but either feel equally as bad at this point. 

You run away as a result, and this time it proves successful as Changmin doesn’t seem to be following you, so you keep going. You run all the way to your car and when the door closes you allow yourself to really break, because you feel like your life is ruined. You feel like everything you worked for, and everything that was so unbearably painful to work towards, was for nothing. People looked at you now and saw one thing. You were the one who hurt Juyeon, someone well loved, in a manner that is so utterly humiliating that anyone would say he deserved better. 

Juyeon was never the bad guy, and you just had no idea how to possibly spin it so that he could look to be the one who’d caused you more pain than you’d caused him. For the truth to your relationship had ran deep behind closed doors and you’d never let anyone in on it, and yet you slip up once and he lets the mask fall on who you are. 

At least, who you are in his eyes. 

You were sure now more than ever before that you and Juyeon were over, and it was like experiencing a break up all over again. It hurt, a lot, because there was once a time in which you would’ve said you maybe loved him. And the reality of him at the very least never caring to preserve your dignity and appearances when he knew how hard you worked for it and what you did to attain it, was a brutal reality that you simply did not want to face. 

Weeks go by and you’re sure your life has hit a wall that you’ll never get over. You felt dramatic, sure, but you were certain you could simply cease to exist and it wouldn’t really matter anymore. It wasn’t that you’d made any plans at your life. It was more so a feeling of if you faded away, would it even make a difference? 

You didn’t think it would. You’d let yourself sink to the status that Juyeon had asked for. You crashed, horrifically, falling so depressed that getting to class was a challenge, much less looking presentable. Your endless pairs of heels were replaced with trainers, ones you liked from dior but not nearly as graceful and elegant as what you usually had on, and you practically lived in hoodies that posed as dresses because they were just about long enough. 

You still wore make up, but it was far less intricate than before, and your hair was usually up in a high ponytail because you just wanted it out of your face, and you wanted to hide the fact that you barely had the energy to brush through it. 

Everything was tiring. Having everyone stare at you, treat you so far beneath yourself for something that had been no one's business was an awful, terrifyingly isolating feeling. You’d never been more aware of your appearance ever before as you were now, and yet you’d also never been as unenthused to fix it in your life. What was the point when the looks were the same. You were judged, beneath them. 

You’d sunk to Changmin’s status, and for the first time you wondered how he could do it. How was he able to brush almost anything off, to seem so unbothered, when he was being torn apart from all directions. You’d done it to him, but you’d seen others do it far worse, and yet he acted just the same. It was something you wished you knew how to mirror, for maybe then it would at least earn you some respect back where he couldn’t, because he lacked the privilege you had. 

Chanhee had brought you a coffee in the morning, your absolute favourite order and therefore you knew how expensive it was. A mix of extra shots of coffee and syrup, but it was refreshing and made you smile as he kissed the top of your head. You appreciated it more than he probably knew, because Chanhee hadn’t been around you much in recent weeks. Ever since it happened, you wouldn’t call it distance, but more missed chances to cross each other and neither of you made an effort to fix it. 

Normally, Chanhee loved to pry. He wanted all the dirt and tea he could get out of you, but it’s like he knew to not cross this line, and the end result was distance. It was ironic, really, because you could’ve really used someone to talk to. For someone to ask with a non judgemental tone what the actual fuck had happened. 

Even if in truth you didn’t fully know either where the hell you had gone wrong. 

Changmin had tried to talk to you one more time but you’d turned him away. It’s like he’d chosen the worst moment, exactly when Hyunjae and Juyeon turned the hallway towards you both, and if you had even considered staying for a bit to hear what he had to say, it all went out the window as they showed up. You turned so fast to run that the three of them would likely fail to catch you. 

Juyeon had somehow managed to spread more rumours, because the kicked little kitten had seen you with the very man you’d thought of. It felt ridiculous, even pathetic, the way he was dragging it, and yet the way you knew to stand up for yourself was entirely lost on you. You forgot to speak, forgot how to be firmly yourself with your thoughts to tell them all to go to hell. You forgot how to exist in yourself.

You went home that day and saw Changmin’s dark hoodie laying on the edge of your bed where you’d left it in the morning, and you decided you’d had enough. You weren’t a weak person, and you were letting yourself be walked over and dragged with the name of someone you didn’t even like. Why the hell would you stand for it, like he was worth more than you? 

It was five in the morning when you got ready for your lecture three hours away. You dragged yourself into your shower, your little cat watching you with peculiar eyes because you were never up this early. She knew that, so she found it rather odd and just sat there perched curiously on the counter where all your makeup was messily strewn about for someone else to clean. 

Changmin might’ve forgotten about the hoodie entirely, accepting defeat and transferring ownership, but you wanted to cut any and all strings with him. You wanted to have no part of you be intertwined with him, no association or ties that meant you even knew each other. 

And you would do it looking absolutely stunning. 

Your dress sits so tight it threatens to hurt you, but it forms around your body well and the length is just enough to be acceptable if you tape it to your thigh before it rises above your ass. Not class appropriate, but its never bothered you before. 

You decide to wear one of your three red bottom heels, the highest ones you own, the colour black to go with the same coloured dress, paired with your silver jewellery. The ridiculous hoodie in your hand ruins the entire aesthetic, but at least you’d be rid of it soon. 

When your driver drops you off at school, you make the not so unusual albeit stupid decision to cut a line of cocaine on a small piece of decorated glass that you keep in the car to break and distribute the powder into lines, because you’re tired as hell and have to withstand a lot of stares today. That, and you would willingly go looking for Changmin, his piece of clothing hidden away, folded neatly and delicately in a discarded designer shopping bag from one of your many expensive trips on your exes dime. 

Maybe you needed a cigarette. A bottle of wine wouldn’t hurt either.

“You look very nice today,” it was a careful voice, Hyunjae, but you frowned when you turned to look at him. He was alone, well dressed with a cologne you couldn’t recognise, rare in your case, but nice. It wasn’t overbearing, and it mirrored the man in front of you quite well. 

“Since when do you take the time to give me a compliment?”

“I just think you look nice,” he sounds honest and sincere, which in truth you do believe he means. You don’t think he’s carelessly choosing to say words to make you feel better, but it still doesn’t sit well with you, so you smile at him gently and touch his shoulder to squeeze it and ask for his attention.

“Well don’t, Jae,” he lets you leave, and you’re determined more than anything to find the man you wish to blame everything on. There’s a bounce to your step, wide awake now as the drug infiltrates your bloodstream, and you’re almost a little excited to get it all over with. 

You’re even more excited at the prospect of dragging Juyeon down beneath you, but that was for later.

You’d just about given up on finding Changmin when after your final class, the library proved successful in your search. However, it also proved to be a mistake. You’re not sure what the reason is, but seeing Changmin makes you stop. You hit that familiar wall, except now it's a dam and it’s threatening to break. And if it breaks, so do you. 

You’re emotionally charged in a way you don’t want to be, simply because you see him standing there, reaching for a book dressed in a simple t-shirt with his glasses perched over his nose that looks almost crafted from the side at which you're standing. It hits you suddenly, that you find Changmin to be physically beautiful. Even when he isn’t well dressed, there is a simplicity to him that is welcoming, and it makes you want to turn away. 

He notices you, probably because a shadow loomed to his side and he was notified of your presence because you simply stood there. He’s carrying three books, and you wonder what they are, but then he moves towards you with a confused stare that has you thinking you couldn’t do this. 

“Is there something on my face?”

His voice breaks you free from your mind in which you are a prisoner, or at least feel like one with your overwhelming thoughts that you simply never wish to have. Everything seems so easy for him, talking to you seems simple, and you’re wondering why you can’t formulate words to return it when it shouldn’t require any effort at all. 

“I have your hoodie,” you keep your voice low just in case, but he hears it and seems to curiously perk up at the prospect of getting his clothes back. 

“Oh? I figured you were keeping that,” honestly, so did you. You’d really wanted to, because it was still insanely comfortable to you. You loved it, in truth, for the way it wrapped around you felt soft, like you were nestled up in something that wouldn’t hurt your skin and never sat too tight just to form your body a certain way. 

“I don’t want anything that ties me to you,” you wonder if it stings, when you insult him like this, but he makes no face that tells you it does. He’s perfect at hiding how he feels, and you nearly wish to ask him how he does it. How does he remain so okay, when things so cruel and hurtful are thrown his way? 

You wish to emulate it, even in this moment, but you can’t. 

It’s the one part of him you wished you could learn to take for yourself.

“Are you okay?” 

Those three words hit you like a knife straight through your chest, reverberating deep in your bones as your entire resolve breaks. Your walls fall apart yet again and he’s the one to do it, because in truth you aren’t and he’s the only one to even ask the questions in weeks apart from Chanhee. People you consider your friends, or would consider anything at this point that Changmin isn’t, haven’t even asked, and yet he stands before you and doesn’t even seem to stumble over the words to pose the question. 

And it makes you cry. 

It’s absolutely humiliating to cry like this and the mascara burns your eyes in an instant, and yet every effort to stop forsakes you because it all makes it worse. Changmin stands there so awkwardly, like he might have ways to comfort someone but no ways of knowing how to comfort you, and you’re fairly certain he wishes to turn away because he finds it uncomfortable to simply stand here with you, in a corner, far from others yet not far enough that no one could see if they didn’t go to look

“I… listen… I really didn’t mean to make you cry,” you can tell he doesn’t like it. Maybe because it’s you or he’s uneasy by it in general, but it fills you up with even more embarrassment as you try to will your body to walk away. Yet you’ve turned to stone, accepting your humiliation because how much lower could you go before his eyes? You’ve broken entirely and he’s witnessed almost every second of your demise as you became nothing of value to absolutely everyone around you. You really were like a whore.

“Can you just t-take it?” 

Forcing the bag into his fingers doesn’t work, and you note for the first time the silver rings he wears. You’re surprised you missed it before, or maybe he wasn’t always wearing them, but they’re intricate in their simplicity and you wish to have a closer look, though you wouldn’t be the one to ask. 

“Listen… I know you have some pathetically unjustified hatred towards me-” you scoff, only to prove his point that has him rolling his dark brown eyes because he’s exasperated that you simply can’t let him finish, “I also find you incredibly fucking annoying and a raging bitch-”

“Hey!” 

You want to hit him, yet you’re not going to disagree with him. You know how to hurt people well, how to manipulate a situation and how to come out on top above everyone else and so it earned you occasionally negative titles that were sometimes deserved. 

Nevertheless you weren’t quite sure what he was getting at. 

“Do you want to get some ice cream?”

Whatever it was, it hadn’t been that. You hadn’t expected to be asked to go anywhere with him, and yet here you both were, in a position of vulnerability for him and one even more for you. You were conflicted and uncertain in what you’re answer should be, because even if your first thought was to say no and reject him, it wasn’t what you truly wanted. 

“What?”

“Ice cream makes anything better. Don’t you think?” 

Well, no, you didn’t think so, for it added weight where you didn’t need it, and yet you didn’t want to turn him away. You were upset, evidently, and he was trying to do something to bring a smile to your lips and you hated that it felt like it was working. It shouldn’t be working, and yet you were heavily considering it. 

“Fine, but I don’t need us to leave together.”

“I have another class, anyway,” but the way he spoke made you wonder if he’d been willing to skip it, if you’d immediately said yes to something you’d never thought you’d hear him ask. He almost seemed bitter but you weren’t quite able to feel bad. 

But you wouldn’t mind ice cream, if you were honest.

“I can meet you there,” Changmin seems surprised, perking up in a way that is strangely endearing yet you refuse a smile, waiting for him to tell you where to go. 

“It's just a ten minute walk from here. Amorino, I think.”

You’d heard of it, but in truth you’d never been, but it was meant to be good for the little it cost, so maybe it was worth a try. 

“Fine. I’ll be there,” you’d get some of your assignments done, maybe, but first you’d need to spend the next hour in front of a mirror so that you didn’t look like an absolute mess, even when you felt like one. Changmin looked like he wanted to say something else, but he bit his tongue and walked away from you with your hands still firmly latched around the strap of your shopping bag. You wondered if he’d intentionally left it in your grasp, if there was a reason he was no longer so hellbent on getting it back, but you weren’t going to dwell on it. 

And you were not keeping it any longer either. If anything, you’d blame your willingness and brief vulnerability to say yes on the fact that you simply just wanted to be rid of him, and that included the item you were holding. 

You almost wished the rain had put him off from walking through the glass doors that led inside a sickly sweet smelling cafe, slightly cool because of the various ice cream needing the lower temperature. Sadly, it hadn’t, and Changmin walked in just a little over an hour after you had taken a seat in a corner far inside the shop, hoping that if anyone you knew would walk past, they wouldn’t recognise you. When he spots you, he seems almost as apprehensive as you to approach, brushing through his matted down wet strands of dark hair to move them away from his forehead. 

“I’m surprised you’re here,” it seems true. Like he hadn’t expected you to really show up and in truth it seemed like the most reasonable assumption to make, because you really had no idea either. 

“Me too,” he smiles at you and it makes you uncomfortable, for the shift in the way he treated you seemed disingenuous, yet nothing about it told you that his kindness in looking at you wasn’t real. It’s like you’d genuinely managed to amuse him with little to no effort, after the countless times in which you were a pain in his ass. 

“Do you know which flavour you’d like?”

“I… honestly can’t decide,” it all sounded heavenly. You couldn’t remember when you’d last indulged in a sweet treat like this, even if it hadn’t been intentional to go so long without. It just never came to be for a very long time and suddenly you were overwhelmed with flavours that you wanted to try. You could’ve eaten half the menu, and yet you barely desired one in terms of calories.

“I think you can choose up to three for one cone,” three seemed absurd. It seemed excessive and yet the temptation to try three was so overbearing that you wanted to give in.

“Are you having three?”

“Probably,” you nod, falling silent because you really don’t know how to talk to him normally. Changmin was a stranger to you, and you fully realise it when you sit across from him and realise that you don’t know him at all. You don’t know who he is, how he thinks, aside from what he tells you, and the only other thing you know is what he looks like, and that he often adjusts his glasses as if they sit just a little too big. 

“I can order for us both,” he offers, breaking you out of your trance to once again be reminded of how strange this is. You don’t like Changmin, yet sitting with him like this is simple. It’s weird, but it’s easier than expected. It’s very awkward, but it’s simple. 

“You don’t have to order for me.”

“It was an offer, not a demand,” you roll your eyes, though his kindness isn’t lost on you and you’re once again sat here wondering what you’re really doing, and wondering why Changmin’s shift in personality was so sudden but genuine. 

“Stracciatella, dulce de leche and coffee.”

“I can tell you’re rich,” you wonder if it’s an insult, but if it is he’s smiling and that almost makes it worse. You know how to do it best, smile through something you didn’t mean, or something that was an insult but you wanted the other person to maybe have hope that it wasn’t meant that way. Or maybe he was joking, and the slight tease just went way over your head. 

“What’re you think?” 

“Vanilla, lemon and amarena,” you nod, as if to just tell him you were listening but have nothing to say. 

“But I’m the rich one,” it’s your way of figuring out if he was teasing too, by doing so back and seeing what his reaction will be. Changmin seems amused and you relax in knowing that he wasn’t mocking you. 

“What’s wrong with those flavours?”

“Nothing,” you draw out, staring back at the menu to decide on a coffee, “I’ll get a drink.”

Changmin seems to hesitate just briefly and realisation dawns on you. You’ve always looked down on him for having less money, for not affording things, but it didn’t cross your mind that he might not even be able to afford this. The issue then became that you had no idea how to delicately approach it. 

“I’ll pay for it,” you tell him, but there’s surprise on his face and a hint of frustration, and you wonder if you read it all wrong. 

“I’m not in poverty, you do know that, right?”

Honestly, you didn’t. It might’ve been embarrassing to admit but you weren’t quite sure at what point someone was considered within poverty because very often, your parents had shown you that even the most common ordinary people lacked money and therefore weren’t content in life. You had no real way of measuring what was really considered little. Hell, you barely knew what your family had in regards to wealth, because you rarely looked at the money you spent. You knew you always had it, so you spent it, without having to think about it. 

In your mind, anyone that had to consider their spending was poor. 

Sat here now with Changmin was probably the first moment in which you briefly think that might’ve been wrong. That maybe he was cautious with money but not without it. If he was without it, he would likely not be as inviting to sit with and dressed the way he was, even if you’d never buy clothes like the ones he wore. 

“I’d still like to pay,” you offer, and you’re not really sure why. You’re here to give him this stupid bag that’s been weighing down on your mind all day as you chased after him, and maybe you’re also hoping to buy his silence on the fact that you cried before him and have done so twice now. 

“I invited you here,” he was right. Usually, at least how you were raised, the one inviting the other is the one to pay unless otherwise agreed, which had never been the case for you before, yet it was now. 

“And I’m telling you to let me pay.”

“You’re really demanding you know?”

You knew. It’s how you got what you wanted, to make demands rather than ask questions. Changmin seems displeased but he doesn’t argue with you, shrugging his jacket off to drape it over the chair before he gets up and waits. 

“What?” 

“You’re not coming with?”

“Just take my card. Three, five, seven, two,” you hold it out to him between your long manicured nails and he looks at you like you’re insane. It’s another reminder of how different you two are, of how giving him access to sums he’s never even seen or hoped to dream of meant absolutely nothing to you, because it really didn’t.

“Thanks?”

Changmin walks away, but it’s only brief before he’s turned back around to approach you, “which coffee did you want?”

“A latte macchiato,” he nods, leaving you alone with your thoughts again as you watch his back. The weather has since gotten worse, but it’s quite cosy from here, to simply watch the rain fall, the droplets chasing after one another from top to bottom, only to repeat over and over again in different patterns. The heating was on too, and it was quite comfortable to simply sit here. 

The girl at the counter smiles at Changmin in a way that makes you want to turn away, not because someone flirting with him bothers you, but because you can’t believe how ridiculous she’s being in doing so. He’s here with you, and she’s practically begging for it. 

Whatever she says, he seems polite but distant enough for her to straighten her posture and adjust her smile to a more professional one, and so you take that as a rejection on his part. You’re not sure why you find that so satisfying, that she didn’t get her way, but you’re happy about it regardless as he’s handed two ice cream cones that seem far more intricate than you’d expected. 

It’s only when he comes closer that you realise that the ice cream has been layered together to form the shape of multiple rose petals and ultimately a flower, three separately assorted colours that make up the flavours you asked for, “they’re still making the coffees.”

“Thanks,” you take the ice cream from him carefully, admiring its shape and look. It’s beautiful, really, and it does put a gentle smile on your face as you manage a little laugh in amusement, “it’s pretty.”

You wonder if Changmin knew how they put the ice cream together. If maybe he suggested this place because he figured something as simple as an ice cream shaped like beautiful petals belonging to a rose would cheer you up or make you feel better for the absolute mess that had become your life. For the emotional turmoil you felt as you fell in importance and high regard in others’ eyes. 

You mattered less to almost everyone you knew and it bothered you greatly.

Both of you fall silent, likely because neither of you have anything to say. There’s nothing to talk about, not between the two of you, and there’s no attempt at changing it either. Neither of you want to become friends, and yet here you both sit being friendly. 

How strange the world worked sometimes.

“I’m sorry Juyeon’s such a dick to you,” it takes you by complete surprise to hear him speak, and whilst normally you’d find yourself frustrated to hear him even bring it up again, it’s oddly comforting to hear an opinion you agree with, albeit planned to have kept from Changmin. You want him to believe that things are perfect, that you and Juyeon are perfect, because you hold on to the false belief that maybe it would be. 

“Juyeon’s just… a guy, I guess.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” you wonder why he says it. If he’s trying to tell you he’s better than Juyeon and if so, why it would matter. You have no interest in him and never would, so there was no need for Changmin to make himself better than the man you somehow spent still loving, despite all his horrifying flaws.

And there were many of them, and yet you still saw it with rose tinted glasses. Whilst aware of it, it mattered less to you. 

“I don’t plan to ever have sex with you if-“

“That wasn’t an invitation,” again, your eyes roll almost instantly. He’s too good at being frustrating, and he sits there with his body leaned forward like he’s engaged in you while he takes a bite of his ice cream. 

A bite.

“You’re insane. Why do you bite it?”

“It’s food?”

“It’s cold.”

“Why would I want to just lick it? I barely get any ice cream and then it melts.”

You watch as he bites into another petal and you push your body up a little to see what flavour it might’ve been. 

“Vanilla,” he answers and you nod, sitting back with your one leg crossed over the other.

“Isn’t vanilla a little plain?”

“Is that a double entendre?”

It’s so easy to give up when the conversation is so static, so forced because you truly have nothing to talk about. What the hell do you both even have in common?

“I have a cat,” Changmin laughs and it’s a little unexpected, his smile so light and his dimples set deep in his cheeks. It’s an inviting smile, warm, and his tone of laughter is unique and suits him. There’s a childlike amusement to his features as he looks down at the table. 

“I also have a cat,” you were curious to see her, or him, but you didn’t really want to ask. Both of you sharing photos of your pets over ice cream and coffee was a little bit too friendly, but you supposed there was now something you had in common, “but I don’t really like cats.”

Nevermind.

“Then why do you have one?”

He thinks, just for a minute as he drinks some of his coffee that had been brought over just a few short minutes before, and you must say now you really want to know why he has a pet he doesn’t even like. 

“I found him on the streets. He was put in a box and it was raining. Wasn’t going to take him first because I didn’t want one. But when I went to call someone in the shop nearby, he’d somehow jumped out of the box and started to follow me. He just wouldn’t leave.”

It was unexpectedly sweet and very much something you would’ve never considered. Of course your cat was store bought, expensive and from a litter from a breeder that had done this for the past decade or two. Getting a cat of the streets, even if unintentionally was so out of your character, but you knew when to admit you found it to be kind of Changmin to have done so. 

“You kept him?”

“I did. He’s very sweet.”

“Chanhee says my cat is a diva.”

“So she takes after you. Figures,” you could hit him, but you bite your tongue and try a new flavour of the ice cream petals. Coffee. Definitely. 

The conversation dies again when it would be so easy to keep it going, but it’s like neither of you have any desire to do so. And yet, you find yourself far more at ease sitting here than you would’ve thought when you first agreed to it. You didn’t feel like you had to make up the silence that you both shared.

He seemed to share the same thoughts, though he didn’t often share eye contact with you. You weren’t sure if he was hesitant to or maybe he just didn’t want to look at you, but previous times you’d met him, he’d always been good at looking you in the eye. It was a little strange that he seemed to look everywhere else but at you now, unless you spoke. 

“You smoke, right?” Painful. These occasional conversations littered into being sat here were just simply weird, but you watch as he grabs a bag of loose tobacco out of his jacket as well as some rolling paper and a filter. 

“Didn’t you smoke straights last time?”

“You remember?”

Fuck. 

“I didn’t forget you offering me one,” he shrugs and you watch as he distributes the tobacco onto the paper carefully between his jewellery adorned fingers. It was distracting and you could curse again for it, because he was doing it all effortlessly with one hand. 

“You want one now?” 

“I can do it…” he seems to hesitate though ultimately pushes the bag of tobacco over to your end of the table, and you fiddle with the cone of your ice cream between your one hand whilst figuring out how to do this with the other. Actually, how the fuck had Changmin done this? 

“How did you-”

“Put it on the table first. You can roll with one hand,” he was definitely more confident in your abilities than you were, and maybe that was sweet but it was also giving you far more credit than you deserved. 

You didn’t even want to admit that you couldn’t roll a cigarette at all. You always bought straights, the times you bought any at all. Doing it yourself seemed like extra effort for not much pay off. 

You try to mirror Changmin, seeing how much tobacco he used and loosening up the dried leaves between your fingers the way he had done as they all clung together in the bag, then adding a generous amount to the paper you’d taken out of its flat packaging. 

“Do you always smoke American spirit?”

“I tend to. Or marlboro. Why?”

You shrug, going back to what you’re doing but you very quickly realise you’ll need both hands. Watching him do it, pushing and pinching the thin paper together to tighten the tobacco with two fingers, maybe three at best, was ridiculous. 

“Do you want me to hold your ice cream?”

At this point, you’re determined to prove both him and you that you can do this, when you know the reality is you can’t. Changmin doesn’t know that though, and how hard could it be to roll a cigarette, really?

“You can have it.”

“You have more than half left,” he frowns, putting his nearly rolled cigarette down on the table as he holds your ice cream, watching you and the way your fingers take both ends of the paper to pinch it together, “is it not good?”

“It’s nice. It’s not the flavour,” hopefully, he knows to drop the conversation. Though you look up and can tell by his expression that he likely wants to keep asking but you don’t see why you should need to justify it. 

“You need to… no… you have too much,” he sighs, wanting to reach over but both his hands are occupied with both of your ice cream cones and so he can only sit trapped wishing to intervene as you try to make adjustments when he complains with no real instructions as to how you can do it better, “you’ve never done this before.”

“So I’ve been caught,” as if one of the cafe staff had noticed him struggling, they bring over a holder for two ice cream cones that are scattered on a few tables, yours not having been one of them. 

“Thank you,” he redirects his attention to you, hands free, “look, I’ll teach you,” you scoff, crossing your arms as you’ve let go of the damaged bundle of tobacco in a scrunched up paper, looking between its state and back up at Changmin. You didn’t want him to teach you anything, because you didn’t think he had anything worth showing you. Yet at the same time, you didn’t enjoy not knowing how to do something, and if he was willingly prepared to show you how to actually do it, maybe you shouldn’t deny him. 

“I don’t really smoke…” 

“I won’t encourage you to,” he grabs another rolling paper, holding it out to you and you hesitate but ultimately take it between your fingers as he does the same, ignoring his near finished cigarette to start over, “but I smoke a lot, so I’ll take it off your hands if you don’t want it.”

“You’ll get cancer,” you’re disgusted but you don’t have much of a right to be. You smoke too and do far worse things. Every party could bring you to the brink of death if you aren’t careful enough with what you’re using, and yet you’re telling him he’s risking his life. 

“Thanks, the packaging hadn’t told me,” you recognise Changmin’s sarcastic tone well by now, given that it’s the tone he mostly spoke to you in, but you also don’t retaliate this time. You had nothing to say, nothing to add that wouldn’t be another circular back and forth of neither of you ever getting to the point or settling a fight. 

“The tobacco is quite tight, so you’ll have to loosen it with your fingers a little before you put it on the paper.”

“What about the filter?”

“It’s harder to roll with a filter. Try without first,” but you’re stubborn, and you grab a filter and bring it to one edge of the rolling paper before he can take it away from you. Sighing, he relents and grabs one too to demonstrate more accurately. 

“You’re ridiculous,”

“And I won’t be caught dead smoking a non filtered cigarette.”

“You should try it. The nicotine high is amazing,” okay, so maybe you’d reconsider. You’d never thought of it, even if it was obvious, “you’re curious now.”

“I might be,” Changmin smiles and your cheeks feel a little warmer, but surely it’s the warm coffee and the indoor heating and not the fact that he looked at you with eyes that were gentle, like his happiness in showing you something wasn’t structured into an act of false behaviour.

Then you wonder why it makes any difference. If he wasn’t being genuine, did it matter?

He leans back over and slips the filter away from your paper, then adjusts and sits up a little straighter before his body moves back into your space to be a little closer to demonstrate. 

“So, you loosen some of the tobacco between your fingers. This one is quite dry- and then you bring it onto the paper like so,” you follow his lead, though you could’ve managed this part on your own. This was the one part you’d done correctly without his help, “you want it to be pretty even but don’t worry about it not being perfect.”

“It has to be perfect,” he sighs, his head rolling down in defeat before he slowly looks back up at you. 

“Perfection is an unattainable fantasy. Now take your fingers and move them to either edge and pinch while rolling it like so.”

You follow his lead though if you’re entirely honest, you have no idea how he makes it look so easy and effortless. His tobacco bunches together into a beautiful neat line perfectly, whilst yours is a disaster in which it falls or thins out too much on one end. It feels awkward and incorrect, the way you do it, and yet you’re following his exact instructions. 

“You’re terrible at this.”

“Or you suck at teaching,” giving up was tempting, but showing Changmin defeat wasn’t an option. You wanted to get this, no matter how awful the end outcome would be. 

“You have the ends. Move your fingers more into the middle to roll.”

“It doesn’t work like that!”

He looks exasperated, his glasses moving slightly as he raises his brows and huffs out in annoyance at your inability to do something he deemed simple, “you’re just bad at this. That’s okay.”

“Absolutely not. I’m not bad at things.”

“Just roll the paper over once you have the right shape. Wet the end and seal it and then you can tap the end against the table,” he shows you how, but he does it so quickly you barely manage to follow his movements. He’s amazing at it, you do have to admit, but you hate him for it because you want to be better. It’s irrational, because how realistic is it for you to be better at rolling a cigarette when you’d never done it before, when Changmin had probably done it for years?

“It’s not tight like yours though.”

“Just try. You have the movement right,” but it doesn’t feel right. It feels awkward and you might just blame it on your acrylics for not managing, but the end result is so pathetic that you’re surprise the cigarette even holds. 

“It’s… a cigarette.”

“I’m not smoking that,” Changmin doesn’t seem surprised, but he does surprise you when he places his perfectly rolled cigarette right before you and takes yours instead, placing it behind his ear before retrieving his jacket and taking his melting ice cream, “you coming?”

Well, you suppose you were now. 

You grab the bag with his hoodie in one hand, Changmin’s cigarette in the other as you follow him outside, leaving your ice cream to melt before it’s thrown away. It’s not unnoticed by him either, and he turns around to grab it between his fingers, “if you won’t have it, I will. You’re wasting money and good ice cream.”

“I’m watching my figure.”

“Why?”

He holds both cones in one hand with their remnants of sweet gelato, placing his cigarette between his lips and lighting it with one hand turned away from the storm and rain. The shop has an overhang to shield you both from direct downpour, but lighters are stubborn with wind and he seems to know it well. 

His one worded question seems strange. It’s not worried, nor is it judgemental. At least you don’t perceive it to be. It’s simply confused, like he’s genuinely surprised that you would even bother at all. 

“Because I want to be thin.”

Changmin wants to say something. You can tell he does, that there’s something right on his lips yet he doesn’t speak it. He resists words he probably knows you really don’t want to hear. He would be right, because any comments about your body aren’t welcomed unless they’re compliments that remind you of what you’ve worked for. All the times you don’t eat are rewarded with the acknowledgement of it. 

“Here,” he holds out his lighter, the flame igniting right by your lips in which the cigarette is perched carefully, and you lean in enough and inhale so that it burns. 

“Thanks.”

“You really are peculiar,” you don’t see how you are. From your point of view, he’s the abnormal one. He dresses cheap despite the school he attends, he doesn’t socialise, and he seems so ignorant to his surroundings and the importance of appearance, “I have to go.”

It takes you by surprise. Your thoughts had been so tangled and convoluted that you hadn’t seen him take his phone out, much less fumble with the ice cream, his cigarette and the device to answer whoever it was. 

You wondered who it was. 

“Who is it?”

You can’t help it. Call it morbid curiosity, even in regards to Changmin of all people, “I completely forgot I have a date.”

The thought of anyone going out with Changmin was a concept you weren’t ready to wrap your head around, but maybe if it was a girl he’d met online, she’d based it merely on appearance and even you wouldn’t fully be able to say that he was ugly. You knew he wasn’t, as much as it pained you to admit he was actually rather beautiful when he didn’t open his mouth. 

“Is she cute?”

“She’s cute, yeah,” but he doesn’t seem excited. It almost feels like an insult to hear how he speaks about the prospect of his date. Were all men like this?

Had Juyeon been so disinterested when he first dated you?

“You’re going dressed like this?”

“What’s wrong with it?” 

Boy, he really wasn’t trying. It felt near cruel, because you were almost certain that the girl would be beautiful, and even if her physical appearance wasn’t as gorgeous, she would make up for it in every way with the way she chose to dress. 

And Changmin was in casual attire, his hair had fallen to his face and he seemed tired. 

“Poor girl.”

“It’s really not your business,” and then he discards his cigarette and grabs the bag you’d been holding without warning, practically ripping it out of your hand and the movement feels more aggressive than you’re used to from him. His tone could be harsh but his actions never were, and so it surprised you when he didn’t even ask to take it. 

“Thank you for the hoodie.”

He doesn’t sound thankful at all. Changmin sounds annoyed, as he throws the little remnants of ice cream cone with next to no ice cream left, in the trash he passes as he walks away from you. You stand there, empty handed aside from the cigarette that was burning but barely smoked, and you honestly feel lost. You’re strangely confused and unsure, and you really don’t quite know why.

You felt like maybe you’d managed to really get under his skin, and if that were the case, you were sure it was the first time you’d ever managed it. Yet you’d expected it to feel different, to frustrate him enough to show true emotion in his anger and discontent towards you. 

Instead it just felt like nothing.

You’re not sure what to make of Changmin. But you had bought a packet of loose tobacco and pink rolling paper to fiddle with in the comfort of your large bedroom. You were near naked, just out of your shower and only in underwear whilst you fiddled around with the cigarette in your hand. It was fucking difficult, and you’d probably gone through ten different videos on youtube teaching you how to do it. At least trying to, and each time you just failed to fully do it right. 

Juyeon had called you and while you’d originally wanted to pick up and even thought to, by the time you made any attempt to move your hands, he’d already hung up.

Chanhee had also called though and you had picked up, asking how he was though he pushed for you to answer first, and you hadn’t known what to say. You felt fine yet simultaneously you felt strangely numb. It wasn’t that you didn’t care, it’s that Juyeon had worn you down. He’d broken something in you and collecting the pieces wasn’t possible because not all parts still existed. 

Convincing yourself that it was over was difficult when Juyeon was right there to call back. 

You wanted to. 

It takes about ten failed attempts at rolling a cigarette before you manage one that’s just decent enough to smoke, and in your mind you wish to share your success with Changmin, since he was the one that had witnessed your inability to do it in the first place. You wanted to prove a point, as petty and unimportant as it was. You could roll a damn cigarette. 

But you’d rather roll over in your grave than ask anyone for his phone number. If anyone even had it. He’d said he was supervising a friend the night you first really spoke to him but you’d yet to see him talking with anyone at all. Who was Changmin friends with, if anyone at all?

The question dwelled on you curiously. You didn’t think he’d lied to you that night, you had to at least give him the benefit of his annoying ability to always speak what you assumed to be his truth. He didn’t care of the consequence or if it hurt, and you supposed maybe that was where your one similarity lay. 

If you hurt someone, it didn’t really matter as long as it made you look good.

“Dear? Could I come in?” 

Your mother being home was unexpected. Her knocking on your bedroom door to ask if she could come in was even stranger. It made you worry, and you quickly discarded all your rolled cigarettes in a drawer as well as any other damning evidence aside from the one now considered a masterpiece to show off. You placed it behind your ear and straightened your posture, “yeah?”

“You need to draw the curtains,” she criticised, walking over to the massive window to give you far more than you bargained for with the natural sunlight despite the depressing clouds, “and we do not smoke indoors.”

“I’m not smoking it!”

“Attitude,” you want to sigh but you’re sure that runs in the same category as what she’d just warned you about in your tone, so you bite your tongue and just wait to hear what she wants. 

“I’ve been told you’ve missed a lot of your classes.” 

“By who?” 

“We had dinner with the Lee’s. Juyeon expressed his concern over you. Why you ever broke up with that handsome young man is beyond me, Y/N,” yeah, it was beyond you too, at this point. Clearly you were the fucking idiot, as everyone so rightfully had begun to assume. Juyeon was the perfect man, one most girls would probably dream of and you had him. You had him, and you wasted the opportunity to be happy with him. 

And what for? 

“I know, mother.”

“You should come with this time. Maybe you can both make up before we go on that lovely vacation together.”

“What…?”

She stands by the edge of your bed with condescending eyes that look down on you and make you feel small, which was ironic because your mother was about a head shorter than you and incredibly petite, but her personality was so in your face, her stare so cold that it made you feel like nothing. She made you feel insignificant and she did so perfectly. 

“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten? You’ve always been forgetful,” you cast your eyes down to your lap, listening to her berate you and having no real way of defending yourself without it earning you a slap or worse. 

“I’m sorry. Just have a lot on my mind.”

“Go on a walk. You could go to the docks on one of the boats. I don’t care. But stop missing classes because I will not have a failure of a child when she gets everything handed to her,” it stings. It really stings to be insulted so genuinely. Your grades were by no means terrible and your mother rarely cared before about any of your stupid behaviour, but you supposed as soon as your mask slipped and you fell towards lower status, she could sense it like a blood hound and she was intent on destroying you to a point in which you’d need to remodel yourself to be perfect again. 

You were grateful for her, because she knew how to shape you into someone you wanted to be. 

“And invite Juyeon if you’re taking the boat out!”

She leaves without another glance your way and you feel like nothing, but you also call Juyeon, so you suppose her harsh words and loveless demeanour worked. They worked at beating you down and you listened to her, but you couldn’t say you weren’t at least a little relieved when Juyeon didn’t pick up at first.

“What?”

Damn it. 

“You called me first.”

“And now you’re calling me back,” it felt like a game. It was constant at this point and it never felt healthy and yet you knew no better. You weren’t dumb but Juyeon had an incredible way of making you appear to be the greatest idiot. 

“My mother wants us to take the boat out,” you wait for a response, not hearing one first until there’s shuffling on the other line. 

“Just us?”

“Well, she likes you,” you add, which you knew would work well for his bruised ego. Juyeon loved being told he was liked and you knew how to feed into it well. You’d spent years learning the intricacies that made up Lee Juyeon, and you doubted that would ever fully go away. You weren’t sure if you wanted it to go at all. 

“Have you told her why I haven’t been around?”

“You could always tell her yourself. She hates me enough, you can’t make it worse,” you hear him on the other end and you hope he feels bad for you. You want him to, even if it’s just for a little moment. 

“That’s just not as fun,” he breaks your illusioned disbelief that he could be sympathetic towards you and you wish yet again for your remaining feelings to go away. 

Instead, you decide to be stupid and slip up. 

“I really loved you.”

The silence is so painfully long you could honestly throw yourself out the two story window of the view your mother had just revealed to you moments before. 

“You don’t love me anymore?”

The way you fell into his traps was so effortless. Juyeon wasn’t having to really try and yet you fell right into his hand every time without fail. You were so drawn to him and you couldn't tell for what reason. Because in truth you didn’t really see yourself as wanting a relationship with him, he was an asshole and yet you ran in circles because you somehow still liked him despite it all. 

“Juyeon…”

“Do you love me?”

He asks it again and the question is a demand for you to answer and yet it doesn’t come naturally to you the way you want it to. It feels false, maybe because you know you’re walking yourself into a trap. Yet the trap being laid out for you to see doesn’t hinder you any less from falling into it because of the reward you see in the midst of it. 

“I love you.”

“Then why don’t we celebrate?”

A yacht party was not at all what you had in mind when celebrating your pathetic attempt at clearing your image by being back on Juyeon’s side. But Juyeon had insisted and your mother had somehow overheard at some point and was practically beaming just at the prospect of Juyeon being back on one of your family boats. Her timing was masterful and you hated everything about it. 

You also hated the looks you were getting, judgement, whilst Juyeon was on the opposite end of the yacht gleaming and taking in every ounce of sympathy like it fed him. He’d so graciously forgiven you, told everyone that it was an honest mistake and that he understood you both were over, and now everyone stood at his feet as if ready to do any and all of his bidding.

It was insufferable.

“I think he likes attention more than you,” Chanhee mumbles, standing next to you now with a champagne flute between his delicate fingers and you turn to him with a frown on your face. 

“I think it’s pathetic.”

“I’d agree,” your best friend leans back a little, staring into the dark water as night time beams above you in the shape of a crescent moon, “but you go for it every time.”

“I’m not here for a lecture,” you have a sip of your drink, grimacing at the strength of it. You’d been a little too generous on the rum, even for your standards, but you need the alcohol if you’re going to get through this night out on open water. 

“Have you seen the new kids?”

Chanhee nudges you towards another direction, one that has two younger men downing a glass of something each, and being urged on to do so by Younghoon and Hyunjae. Juyeon was now talking to a girl you didn’t care to know the name of, but he occasionally glanced over too. 

“Freshmen?” 

“Mhmm, one of them is kinda cute, no?”

You give your best friend an odd look before glancing back over. They both look young, not older than twenty, playful and energetic and so full of life that you wonder when that’ll go away. You wonder when both of them will realise the world is dark and being so carefree was simply being naive. 

“Which one?”

Chanhee gestures to the one on the left, with dark hair and full lips that you’re sure has made girls jealous in the past, and if not jealous, at least more than willing to kiss him. He seemed to know it too, because something about him felt cocky and maybe even arrogant, despite his sweet playful smile and loud laugh that you could hear from this far away. 

The other, a striking blonde colour of hair that he’d definitely bleached with a sharp pointed nose that seemed surgical, making you wonder if he’d invested in a nose job as soon as he’d turned eighteen. It wouldn’t surprise you if he had, for if it was real it was almost absurdly perfect. 

“Juyeon invited them?” Chanhee shrugs, though given that neither you nor your best friend seemed to have any clue on who they were and had no influence on them showing up, you were almost certain it was Juyeon. It was near confirmed when your recent lover approached the blonde and wrapped an arm over his shoulder, ruffling through his hair playfully though you could see the roughness in his grip. 

It’d surely be blamed on boys being boys.

“I’m gonna grab another drink,” you say, and you can see Juyeon’s eyes meet yours as you do. He detaches from the blonde and approaches you, and god do you wish it wasn’t noticeable to everyone that he was doing so. 

“Little princess,” he leans against the railing, watching as you pour yourself more rum but in truth you are ready to down the whole bottle when he talks to you, “why’re you frowning?”

“Did you invite freshmen?”

“Who? Oh- you mean Sunwoo and Eric? I did, yeah. They’re cute, right?” 

There had to be a motive. You didn’t trust Juyeon to have pure intentions and simply so graciously bring a pair of freshmen onto a party such as this. There was no way in hell Juyeon would introduce someone into his social circle without gaining something out of it. Especially someone younger than him. 

“What’re you doing with them?”

“I’m thinking a sex party?” you laugh because it’s absurd, but Juyeon laughs too because he’s managed to humour you and it’s nice. It’s nice to laugh with someone you consider close, someone that is similar to you and that understands the importance of status and appearance. 

“Now what is it actually?”

Juyeon looks over, seeing his friends and the two in question playing around with a lighter and the not lit outdoor fireplace. At least not lit yet, given that they were clearly trying. Hyunjae was sat on the circular couch, Younghoon lying next to him, Sunwoo standing and berating Eric who was hunched over trying to light the coal, “he needs ignition.”

“I’ll go grab it for him.”

Juyeon leaves you standing there with a bad feeling. Drunk people around a fire, intoxicated people in general around live flames was a recipe for disaster. Yet you weren’t stopping it. Maybe because you knew it wouldn’t be you to fall into it. 

Chanhee had joined them, sat next to Hyunjae with his legs curled under his thighs as he held a new glass in hand, looking so delicate and regal he felt most like royalty out of all of you. He was so beautiful, it made you jealous again. It was worse, too, to know that he had naturally just formed to be this way, whilst your parents had discretely paid for your nose to be fixed, your breasts to be augmented and to have some leftover fat dissolved to appear even smaller. 

Not that you’d outright admitted it to anyone, though you were sure those who’d known you long enough, knew that a part of you simply wasn’t real anymore, because reality wasn’t pretty and you wanted to be.

Juyeon joined them a few seconds after with lighter fluid, thankfully not being too generous with how much he coated the charcoal in. At least he seemed sober, more than anyone else that was sat there, and you watched Eric attempting to light the flames again, this time successful in sparking a fire that jumped high enough to nearly hit his face, making him jump back in surprise and panic at the thought of getting burned. 

Unbelievable. 

You walked over to them and sat down at the very edge, Eric turning his attention to you with a bright smile that surprised even you. He seemed energetic and sweet, but why he was so open to you simply coming over was a strange feeling. Juyeon noticed it too, and before you realised, he’d moved to sit between you both.

“Are you jealous?” Juyeon looks at you with a forced smile, shaking his head before having more of his drink and turning his attention to you. 

“I have no reason to be,” he answers, and you suppose he’s right though just the same you wish for him to be, “I’m not the jealous type.”

It felt like a lie. Juyeon’s characteristics that made up who he was were all fairly negative and jealousy was one of them. But then he’d have ways in which he showed kindness with gentle touches and you fell into it because those touches were warm and those words were sweet. 

“Not like me, right?” 

You attempt a joke you both know to be true. You could easily get jealous, because the prospect of having romantic competition made you feel worthless, like you weren’t good enough, and so anger came naturally whenever your worth was threatened. 

“Not like you,” he has more of his drink and you drown out the conversation, watching the way your best friend cuts up two lines of cocaine with Sunwoo now, as if he’d made a quick natural friend and you’re just at the very edge being forgotten. It’s the feeling of unimportance and being replaced that bothers you, and instead you focus on the fire right in front of you. It’s enchanting and beautiful, tempting enough to fall into because it’s warm and inviting. 

It’s dangerous too and that isn’t lost on you, but you still lean a little closer, being careful to push your hair back whilst you watch the flames. You’re in a little world, one none of them are in and you honestly don’t think they ever really noticed how close you’d gotten to the fire, which ends up being the big mistake. 

You’re not sure what happens, but the flames make a crackling sound and the fire rises so incredibly close to your face, you feel the heat sting at your skin. It sends you into high alert and panic, causing you to scream and turn around just quick enough to avoid it burning your face. Unfortunately, the wind and your hair among the flames causes the strands to start burning.

“What the fuck, Eric!”

“We need to put it out!” Chanhee. That’s his voice and the only one you can make out. The others barely seem to move and you’re not sure if it’s shock or because they don’t care, but Chanhee is genuinely the only one moving at first.

You can feel the way it hurts your skin, but it all happens so fast that the pain barely registers with the way the back fabric of your dress singes. 

“Are you fucking stupid?” Chanhee, again, but then you feel another force that sends you falling forward and the sound of a fire extinguisher. 

“YOU’RE NOT MEANT TO USE THAT ON A PERSON!”

So many voices, complete panic and you barely register any of it. You feel dazed, nearly unresponsive and it’s likely the shock settling in that just leaves you numb to it. At least the fire seems to be out, given the darkness that had cast over all of you. Your skin feels cold at first, until you feel a heavy blanket over your shoulder and Juyeon crouches in front of you. 

He’s speaking to you, but you really have no idea what he’s saying. Even when he cups your cheeks, it’s completely lost on you. Nothing he says is audible and for just a brief second you wonder if maybe you’d entirely lost your hearing, though you don’t see why you would and you’d heard voices just seconds before. 

You feel him touch your hair and you’re relieved more than anything to know it’s still there at first. The very relief of knowing that makes you want to cry, but you refuse to show any of them that you were scared. 

“She needs a hospital. Turn the boat around,” you hate attention like this. When you’re vulnerable, it’s not what you want. 

“How bad is it…?” 

You sound hoarse, but Juyeon doesn’t get time to answer because Eric intervenes with panicked eyes. He looks so genuinely guilty, like a kicked puppy and you know almost immediately that deep down it was likely a genuine mistake. Though it didn’t really matter as the damage was done either way, “I’m so, so sorry. I’m really sorry.”

You don’t think you forgive him. Even if he looks sorry, you’re more than a little upset, rightfully so, “I can’t believe you’re so fucking stupid. Who’re you trying to impress, anyway?”

It cuts him, you can tell. That childlike energy that had been there before dies the second you speak to him like he means nothing. Eric looks like he could cry and you’re certain you don’t really care but something about his eyes make you feel guilty. And you don’t do well with guilt. 

You force yourself up and away from everyone, pushing past Younghoon harshly because you can see him trying to bite down laughter. You’re near close to slapping him, but you don’t want even more unwanted attention. 

You hide away in the bathroom and no one seems to follow you first, locking the door after yourself  before stripping down to your underwear, discarding your heels and letting your feet rest bare against the tiled interior. Every bit of sound is slowly coming back, and you seem to be returning to your senses as you cast your eyes outside through the small circular window, seeing the distant city and the water break into aggressive ripples of small waves. 

You run your hands through your hair, trying to adjust the mess that it probably was before you realise that certain strands come to an abrupt harsh stop. It feels uneven, shortened and burned and that’s when you first notice the smell that becomes so sharp so suddenly that it overwhelms you. 

You open your palm up to be met with charcoals of black burnt hair that you’d broken trying to brush through it with your fingers and now you’re completely certain that you fucking hate Eric. He’d ruined your appearance, and it’s only confirmed when you look in the mirror and are met with something so ugly, you could break the glass in front of you. 

So you do. You break down and shatter the mirror because what you see disgusts you. A part of what had made you so feminine and pretty was scorched unevenly, in parts up to your shoulder, and it was so ugly and heart wrenching you could’ve thrown up just remembering what it looked like. 

It was so ugly and unattractive and the worst was knowing that everyone else had seen it before you. They had seen it, and said nothing. Juyeon had touched your strands of hair near the root and yet said nothing to indicate that a part of it was missing by the ends of where your hair usually fell.

You can’t take seeing it, and in your slightly intoxicated mind it makes you sink enough that you throw up into the toilet, hating yourself more than you ever had. It would take years to grow back the hair you’d lost, and worst was that you’d have to let go of the length that some strands still held. The ones that went unscathed and were still perfect would be lost just the same. 

It was so embarrassing. 

Your hand was bleeding, shards of broken glass between the knuckles but you made no attempt to get rid of them. You could’ve been dying and it would’ve meant nothing to you. 

A knock on the door snaps you out of your dazed mind but you don’t respond. You hope maybe they’ll go away, but then there’s another knock followed by a third in quick succession, “want a line?”

Chanhee. You laugh at the way he speaks and then you soften because he’s there, standing on the other side and looking for you. So with the little strength you can bother to conjure up, you unlock the door for him. 

“Holy shit,” it’s not you being naked that really surprises him, but rather the utter damaged state this room was in, “your parents are gonna kill you.”

“Fuck, I didn’t even think about that,” you groan, watching your best friend lock the door once more before grabbing a towel and turning on the faucet, the water presumably cold. 

“I hear Juyeon’s pissed,” Chanhee starts, and it manages a smile out of you just briefly as he comes over, “Eric feels horrible, though.”

“He should,” you snarl, watching the way Chanhee grabs a pair of tweezers from his purse, disinfecting it with a wipe before grabbing your hand. 

“Should I book you a hairdresser?”

You know he’s trying to lighten the mood, but you don’t find it funny. You don’t say anything as he starts to remove some of the glass from your skin, carefully and precise as to not cause you more injury. He seems to get the hint, that you’re not in the mood for anything lighthearted, so he stops and falls silent that only you break after a few minutes. 

“I’m ugly, Chanhee.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll get a cute haircut and you’ll be perfect again.”

Even if that were to be true, you’d never be Chanhee. You felt so jealous, the more you thought of it. So much so, that you wanted to hate him. You wanted to tell him how unfair it was, that he didn’t deserve it when you did, but you would never dare to break what made you two so close. You loved him.

“I don’t want a haircut. I want my hair.”

“I know,” but he says it like you should know that it’s not an option. You do know, and it makes you want to die inside. 

Another knock and a voice you make out to be Juyeon’s, so you let Chanhee reach over and unlock the door as a familiar figure leans in with a smirk on his face. Maybe it’s seeing you sat here naked, but you turn your head away to avoid looking at him, “ambulance is here. We’ve docked.”

Chanhee finishes getting one more piece of glass out and helps you up, Juyeon handing you your dress and helping you with your shoes, touching your bare legs so carefully that it makes you feel a little shaky. He smiles, looking up at you with sweet gentle eyes that are so unlike him and once again bring in the idea of a motive to your mind, “your mothers gonna kill you for that glass, by the way.”

Everything else after the boat docked had become a blur. You had some mild burns but your now ruined dress had protected most of the flames before they were put out, so most of the marks were faint angry red shades on your back that would likely fade over time if you kept it well treated and applied an ointment to avoid scarring. You’d been grateful that it hadn’t been worse but the state you were in didn’t quite feel better.

Your hand wasn’t broken, but one of the gashes had been pretty bad unbeknownst to you and it had needed five stitches, everything being wrapped up in a bandage as you were told to rest a couple of days. 

You’d wanted to rest, but the following morning, your mother had other ideas.

“Juyeon tells me you had an accide- my god, what happened to your hair?”

“I burned it off,” came your response, feeling your blanket being ripped away from you, your bare legs being met with the cold air as you tried to adjust your shirt. 

“Why in heaven's name would you ever do that?” God, you could laugh. She clearly didn’t know you, if she ever thought you’d do such a stupid thing intentionally. 

“I’ll get it sorted,” though you’d made no attempt at making an appointment. As long as the outside world didn’t see you, you could be as ugly as you wanted. 

“You, young lady, are headed to class,” she slaps the bottom of your leg before running over to your beloved curtains, tearing them open and letting the offensive light blind you, “you’ve missed far too much already.”

“I’d rather die than go looking like this,” you mutter, earning you another slap to your skin that makes you sit up sharply and glare at her with such discontent, she must know that you hate her. 

“Should’ve made an appointment in the morning then. You can fix it later, but you’re going, now.”

There was no point in arguing. Even with a valid doctor's note, it was pointless. She’d make you go to uni and whatever you said would be entirely without point because it wasn’t valid. It didn’t matter. The best you could do was attempt to look presentable despite your singed hair and then run to your family's go to salon for help right after.

You made sure to wear something revealing. Something hopefully distracting enough so that the hair you’d tied up in a bun, wouldn’t be very noticeable. You actually thought you managed to hide it with fair success, but you had to pull out nearly every trick you knew about a tight ballerina bun to hide most of the damage. The biggest issue was the damaged strands being so short in length sometimes, that they kept falling back out and refusing to lay the way you wanted them to. 

Your mother had already left the house by the time you were ready, in a tight mini skirt and a shirt kept together by string in the middle, showing plenty of skin all the way down to your pierced navel. It was just enough to grab attention away from everything else that needed fixing. 

Getting to class made you realise just how much people talk. As if the vitriol from Juyeon humiliating you with Changmin’s name hadn’t been bad enough, now everyone seemed to know about your burns and the bandage on your hand didn’t help either. You’d overheard someone say that they thought you’d gone off the rails, making you shove your shoulder against theirs so that they fell off balance. 

But that girl hadn’t been the only one to say it. It felt like everyone was looking at you again, like this was high school and your dirty little secrets were all exposed to be mocked and tormented until you well and truly became the off the rails mess that they already claimed for you to be. The looks were horrific, but the fake sympathy in trying to speak to you was worse. 

Though you’d truly wanted to lose it when you overheard the sympathy Eric was getting. How sorry he’d been and how it had been such a horrible accident. How bad he felt, that you’d rejected his apology and been so cruel to him. That you were truly a horrible person. Even if it might’ve been true that Eric felt bad, he had hurt you, and yet no one spared any real empathy for you. No one cared. 

You had one more class for the day but a long gap in between where you’d need to find something to do, and so you settled on the park nearby with a small lunch and a coffee, having a sip before you reached for the tobacco in your bag. 

You still wouldn’t call yourself a smoker, but you could use one now and it was still practice and improvement from the absolute travesty you had rolled before. Besides, you found it peaceful, to sit there and roll a cigarette to then smoke or save for later. 

“It’s getting better,” you look up and see Changmin already with a cigarette between his lips, placing it between his fingers to move it down and away from his mouth as he exhales. He’s dressed warm, in a dark sweater and jeans with a coat over both, his eyes staring at your own as he takes you in, “you want help?”

“I don’t need your help.”

“I didn’t ask if you needed it. I asked if you wanted it,” you were struggling and he could tell. Your hand still hurt from injuring it and it made rolling even more awkward, so eventually you relented and just shoved the bag of tobacco out for him to take. He sighs and sits next to you, turning his body a bit towards you as he discards his own cigarette entirely in favour of starting over. 

“Why’d you waste it?”

“Well, I figured if I offered it to you, you’d refuse it,” he was right, “I’ll roll two.”

Normally you’d be tempted to argue and fight with him using your stuff, but you have no energy and he was kind enough to share with you last time. You watch him, the way his fingers work together to roll the first cigarette, and you can’t say you’re not entranced because you are. The way he does it makes it all seem so easy. 

He seals the first cigarette with his tongue before placing it behind his ear, and you swear for the first time you saw a hint of jewellery, “do you have a piercing?”

“I have more than one,” he gets to work on the next one, looking over at you briefly as you try not to stare too obviously. You’d seen the ones on his ear but the one on his tongue had been new to you. 

“I never noticed.”

“We don’t really talk,” he hands you your cigarette and you nod in thanks, twisting it between your fingers once to inspect it before placing it between your lips. You end up fiddling with your lighter, huffing in frustration each time it refuses to light. The wind worked against you and it seemed low on lighter fluid already, but still you persisted. 

“Here,” his cigarette is lit, and he places the burning side against yours, “just inhale.”

You listen to him and the flames transfer to your cigarette when you do, thanking him again, though you’re not sure why he didn’t just offer you his lighter instead, “I had it.”

“Sure,” you both fall silent again and you must admit it’s getting a little bit annoying to have nothing to really talk about. It seems so pointless, like it holds no real purpose and yet there’s a comfort in just being sat here and clearing your head. 

“What did you do with your hand?”

“You’re telling me you haven’t heard?” you don’t believe it. Changmin might not socialise but he does hear about things. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have been so wrapped up in the last one. Or maybe that one only reached him because it directly involved him. 

“Isn’t it better to hear the truth from you?” he surprises you again. You hadn’t really thought of it that way. In your eyes, people were always quick to believe what they were told from others whether or not it was the truth. Especially from those whose words held more weight simply because of who they were. And if someone like Younghoon, who you suspected, was running around telling people you were insane, they were bound to believe it without fact checking his claims at all.

“I broke a mirror,” he laughs, as if it’s amusing to hear about your screw up and you wonder if it would be worth hitting him again. 

“You really are something else, even for a rich person,” you want to know if that surprises him. If he’s as confused by you as you are by him and his strange behaviour. He seems to bite back less in sarcasm today, but he still speaks like he’s unimpressed, unphased by your violent outburst and rather finding it amusing. 

You stare at him for a long time, taking in his side profile up close. The way his glasses frame his face, how his dimples aren’t as deep but still there because he’s trying to bite back his amusement in a smile that you find pretty, even if you won’t say it. He takes another drag of his cigarette, then turns his attention back to you, though it quickly falls from your face to your hair as he gestures to it, “and this? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair up.”

“You pay attention to things like that?”

 “Unintentionally, yes.”

“But you don’t notice it’s burnt?”

“Oh, no, I noticed it,” of course he did. He was probably waiting for the opportunity to tug your hairpins out so he could see the disaster that is your hair. It probably didn’t matter, really, if he saw it, but you liked the belief that you could remain beautiful, at least in someone's eyes, regardless of who they were. 

Then again, Changmin might not find you pretty at all. 

“I wasn’t meant to come today but my mother told me to. I haven’t been able to fix it,” you’re not sure why you’re honest, especially to him, but he doesn’t really say anything at first while he continues smoking, “I don’t know why I’m even telling you this.”

“Neither do I,” god, what an asshole. He simply couldn’t keep his mouth shut and accept it, “is it true a freshmen burned it off?”

“So you did hear about it?”

“I saw him getting coddled in the hallway. I think a girl brought him flowers,” of course she did. He gets flowers and you get to drop a couple of hundred at the hairdresser to salvage what’s left. You’re not even sure you want to go at all and be faced with the vitriol. 

“I really don’t need our family hairdresser to tell the whole community about my hair being charcoal black because of a drunk night out.” 

“You have a family hairdresser?” it’s like it’s the most absurd thing you’ve said, stranger than your hair being burnt by an open flame, or the fact that you smashed a mirror and your mother dragged you out anyway, or the countless other things, actually, that you’d said and he hadn’t really cared to comment on. 

“You focus on the wrong things.”

“And all you focus on is superficial at best,” you wonder what he considers the worst, “so you’re not going to get it fixed?”

No, you are going to get it fixed. That’s what you want to tell him, that of course you’re going to drag your ass there right after your final lesson is over. That it’ll be perfect again tomorrow and you will be perfect and you can forget all about it. Maybe you can even forgive Eric if you’re feeling extra generous, although you don’t think you will be. 

“I will. I just… have to find another hairdresser. I don’t really know how to do that.”

“Google it?” you grimace, eyeing him strangely yet he looks at you like you have three heads. Like something is seriously wrong with you and you wonder if he’s right or if he just has no concept of the real world.

“I don’t want them to say something.”

“I doubt they care,” Changmin offends you, but he says it nonchalantly and casually as he puts out his cigarette and discards the filtered end, “let me do it.”

“I’d rather die than let you touch me,” it’s a quick answer, snapping back at him with determination because you really would rather sign an early death than let him any closer than he already is just sitting here next to you. 

“But I don’t care about how ridiculous you might look,” so he admits you probably look insane. You know better than to believe that he wouldn’t laugh at you, yet you also wonder if maybe that was better than it being spoken around your closed community and bringing embarrassment to your parents for your drunk failings. They didn’t care what you did if it didn’t affect them, yet this might and therefore it became a bigger problem. 

“Do you even know how to cut hair?”

“How hard can it be?”

“Absolutely not,” you think that’s the end of it, but you hadn’t known Changmin to be so determined with something such as this, for he seems persistent in making a case for himself as he turns to you fully. 

“I think you should think about it.”

“You could make it worse. You have no idea what you’re doing and you hate me too,” he doesn’t disagree with it, though he does seem to think. Perhaps another way of making his case though you really don’t know what could convince you when you had money at your fingertips to even fly halfway across the globe for someone to fix it for you. 

Which, actually, might’ve not been a bad idea. No one would know you abroad.

“I wouldn’t cut it any more than where the strands are burnt.”

“No.”

“Fine, at least let me see it.”

“Absolutely not,” he huffs like a child, watching the clouds pass while the sky dims to a depressing grey, indicating rainfall. You don’t need to be laughed at, especially by someone lesser than you.

“I have to go,” you want to ask him how his date went. You remember it now that he goes to leave. Yet you also know not to ask him. The last thing you wanted was his assumption that you might be interested in him, “you can think about it.”

“I don’t think I will.”

“Suit yourself, little doll,” he leaves you alone and you simply stay sat with a frown on your face until the raindrops start falling and you’re forced to go inside. 

They had all been right. You’d lost your mind, completely, because the hairdresser you had found completely destroyed your ends even more and you refused to let yourself be seen by anyone until it was fixed. Like a dog with his tail between his legs, you drove to university without the intent of actually going to class, but rather waited like a stalker for Changmin to appear at some point, because he had to, right?

It took far longer than you’d hoped, because the first time he had appeared, there were far too many people around for you to give in to his suggestion of doing it himself, but turns out paying for it to have it done professionally hadn’t done much of a difference and had been far from worth it. 

The second time he came out, he had his nose in a book and was barely watching where he was going, and you figured it would be the perfect time to step out and talk to him. You’d still dressed up, albeit not as much as you usually might to avoid detection, when you approach him and stand right before him. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, his head not moving up to look at you as he keeps walking. You felt ridiculous chasing him, but you grabbed his shoulder and stopped him in his steps, finally looking up to face you, “oh, it’s you.”

“What do you mean, oh?” 

“Exactly what it sounds like. What the fuck happened to your hair?” Changmin asks, seeing that you kept it out but hidden under the hood of your jacket, and he could still see the damaged parts as you’d eventually gotten up mid hair appointment to leave before she could finish and do any worse.

“Someone fucked it up, obviously. Are you stupid?”

“No, but your insults when you want something from me are a poor choice,” you cross your arms, standing straighter to look down on him, heels just tall enough to do so while he adjusts and closes his book, “so, what is it?”

“I… need your help,” fuck, that pains you. It really kicks your ego and confidence to have to ask something of him. Well, not that you had to, but you were refusing the family hairdresser even more now and if Changmin fucked up too, at least his services were free. 

“You want my help?”

“You offered it,” you bite back, but he doesn’t seem pleased. If he was taking his offer back, you felt like he should just say so, but instead he was smiling as he lit a cigarette. 

“That I did,” he was so cocky, it reminded you of Juyeon, “I guess I could give it a try.”

“You said you would.”

“I said I can do it if you’d like me to try.”

“And I’m telling you to.”

“But you should be asking me.”

“Changmin, you think I haven’t been through enough embarrassing shit because of you? You owe me this fucking favour before I break your neck with my heel.”

He stops entirely, eyeing you up and down briefly before he finally settles on your eyes again. It’s a little intimidating to have him stare at you so intently, but you refuse to show discomfort and stand your ground. He fucking owed you this and you knew that he did. He did owe it to you, at the very least for the rumour involving you and Juyeon.

“Okay, sure. But I’m driving.”

He discards his cigarette and holds out his hand for the key, and you really think he’s joking before he gives you another look telling you to hurry up. 

“Are you serious?”

“Think of it as payment,” it’s crazy to you but you ultimately agree. Curse you for not using your driver for one day, but why should you when you weren’t even planning to attend classes. It just left another witness to tell your parents that you had been faltering in the one thing they expected you to do well on. 

“I hate you,” his hands hold the key to your Mercedes and he seems content, and you watch as he steps up inside your car so carelessly that it makes you nearly cry out to tell him off.

When you get in, he leans over and places his bag down by your feet and you note that same cologne that had sat on his hoodie that you took so long ago. A creature of habit, whereas you went through various perfumes depending on the type of outfit you were wearing. 

“Can you be more careful? The interior is custom.”

“Of course it is,” he adjusts the seat and you realise what a bad idea this really was because everything he changes now, you’ll have to change back, but it was too late. He settled and reversed the car far faster than you would’ve liked, barely looking in his rearview mirror to see if he’d hit someone. 

“Do you even know how to drive?”

“It’s an automatic. Even an idiot can drive one. Exhibit A,” he looks at you and you ignore it by looking ahead before he abruptly hits the breaks because someone crosses the parking lot completely unexpectedly, “god, some people just want to die.”

“Do you even have a licence?”

The silence confirms your expected fear and you cannot believe you just put your life in his hands. You wish you could hit the brakes, but he’s turned into the main road and now you’re wondering if you’ve well and truly lost your mind. You can practically hear Chanhee’s voice berating you for the insanity that you’re currently in. 

“Where am I going, by the way?”

“I guess my house,” he sighs, and your hand instinctively falls to the wheel to pull him more to the right to avoid the left lane.

“Yeah, and where is that?”

“Oh, right. I’ll write it in the nav,” he scoffs like it’s absurd, but you’re not really in the mood to give instructions and honestly you didn’t think you’d be very good at it. You knew the way well and your mind would naturally think where to turn without saying it outloud. 

“You’re driving too fast,” at this point you’d fully accepted your potential demise, because making him pull over seemed like an almost worse idea at this point. 

“I thought it was sixty.”

“It’s fifty,” you answer him, and at least he listens and slows down, maybe because being caught meant you’d both be in horrific trouble. 

There’s no music and the silence in such close proximity isn’t exactly your idea of fun, but it’s becoming a little more familiar than you’d like to be like this with Changmin. It wasn’t that you liked him or enjoyed his company, but the way you both sat together without speaking had become a little common, at least enough that you found it to be okay. 

“This cannot be real,” he mumbles, the gates to your community closed before you hand him the keycard. He looks at it like it’s alien, but he opens the window and reaches for the keypad to open the gate, “I actually hate rich people.”

He doesn’t sound genuine, more baffled if anything as he drives in and over to your house. His eyes just widen more as he parks outside the front steps leading to the massive entrance door, but you’re more relieved that you survived driving as a passenger with someone that had no right to even take you anywhere with a car, “I was gonna say park in the garage but I suppose you can leave it.”

“I think I’m good, yeah.” 

You step out with him, taking the key back as soon as he lets it dangle between his fingers for you to take, and you walk in with him and greet one of your cleaners that seems more than a little surprised to see you with someone. Normally you might make an attempt to hide who you were with, but she was nice and didn’t speak often, especially to your parents unless it was work related, so you knew her to not be the type to say something. 

You really hoped, anyway, or you were definitely fucked. 

“Do you have scissors for cutting hair?”

“I think we do somewhere. I’ll ask someone,” though Changmin doesn’t seem to be listening, because his eyes are cast elsewhere and you notice your little ragdoll perched on the railing and looking at him with curious eyes. 

“Oh, look at this little cutie,” he approaches her carefully, holding his hand out gently but she seems more than a little excited, which you find unusual, though maybe she sensed his compliment to stroke her little ego. 

“Thought you didn’t like cats?”

“How can I not when I see this little dear, hmm?” 

She purrs in response, pushing her head up into his palm as he scratches her ear, and you nearly roll your eyes at seeing her unusual affection. She liked Chanhee, sure, but even that had taken some time, but with Changmin she’s practically on his lap within the first minute. 

“Do you have any treats for her?”

“Sure, they’re in my room. Or the kitchen.”

He follows after you, the little lady prancing after him like she’s straight out of the aristocats, elegant in how she moves and so confident in her step. Lady really is a diva.

“They’re on the desk,” you gesture over to the corner and Changmin moves over to find them, but he’s slow and looking around like he’s taking it all in. It leaves you a little vulnerable, only because the way you’ve decorated is a look inside who you are, feminine and expensive, with simple colours and beautiful plants and endless books that are overflowing on your shelf. 

“I didn’t know you read.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you’re a pain in my ass. Here you go, darling,” he crouches down, holding out a treat for your cat while you open a window. She seems pleased, tapping his hand for more with her little paw and even you admit it’s a cute display of affection from her. 

“I’ll look for the scissors.”

Changmin doesn’t answer, busy being loved by a cat and so you leave them both while on the hunt for some scissors. In the end, you ask one of the cleaners if he’d seen any around while finishing up your parents’ bathroom and to your surprise the search is successful when you go through one of the drawers. 

You pass the kitchen and grab a bottle of water from the fridge, one for Changmin too because you hadn’t asked and you were not prepared to walk back downstairs again in case he wanted some. That, and you brought a packet of gummy bears, not for you but him, and then came back upstairs to see Changmin still on the floor waving a string with a little tiger on the end that Lady was chasing relentlessly. 

“I found them,” he looks up at you and she takes the opportunity to pounce on the toy, dragging it between her claws as he tries to push against her, “I also have water.”

“Voss?”

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t that overpriced tap water?”

“Tap water tastes like blood. This is citrusy,” you hold it out to him, and he takes it despite his apprehension.

“Put a lemon in it,” he says, before adding, “and why do you know what blood tastes like?”

“Why do you not?”

He gets up while you rummage around your room, moving your chair right in front of your mirror to give you a view of what he’s doing, “I might need wine, on second thought.”

“I’m not going to ruin your hair any more than it already is,” at least he acknowledges the horrific state it was in, but you knew that, “did the hairdresser cut it that weirdly?” 

“I didn’t let her finish. Look at this,” you show him one of the butchered strands and even Changmin looks more than a little shocked that a professional had done such a horrific job.

“I’ll have to cut quite a lot. You realise that, right?”

You did. Of course you knew your once beautiful long hair would be no longer than right by your shoulder and that fucking shattered your heart and confidence, but you could not keep it like this either and magically having longer hair again wasn’t happening without a wig or extensions. 

“I won’t cut before you tell me it’s fine but a lot of it is still burnt up to about… here,” he gestures to your collarbone, though he’s careful not to touch you. Maybe he knows you won’t like it and he’s right, you wouldn’t like it, but you were surprised by his way of keeping boundaries. 

“If you manage to do this well I’ll buy your groceries for a week,” Changmin perks up, like he hadn’t expected it but they were words he was happy to hear. Almost like he needed it. 

“I wouldn’t mind that,” and now your mind wandered again, because he’d insisted he had at least some money and yet he made it sound like he was struggling just to buy some food. Though you try not to dwell on it as you grab your hairbrush to gently get the knots out of your hair.

“I really don’t want you to cut more than you need to.”

“I already told you I won't,” he’s getting frustrated, you can tell, but you want to make sure he gets it. If he didn’t listen to you, it would be so much worse and you’d be absolutely destroyed, and Changmin likely wouldn’t care because it didn’t affect him. 

“Okay, so I have a plan,” he says, and even those words cause you worry but you’re willing to hear him out before you both commit, “I’ll just cut all the long hair that’s left up until slightly above your chest and then I’ll actually be neater and more precise with what’s left to work with that’ll get rid of all the burnt hair.”

Not a terrible plan, actually. It’s not like he’d have to be neat cutting up to a certain point if it wasn’t going to stay. It would be a waste of both your time if he did it that way, “okay, we’ll try that.”

“Do you want any music?” Changmin asks you, your cat jumping up onto the bed to perch herself on the edge and watch the way you both move and speak. You wonder if she can tell you both dislike each other, or if she thinks maybe that’s a friend. It makes you curious to know how cats think, but that was a whole other thought process that you were honestly too sober to consider really having. 

“I can turn some on,” you connect your phone to your speakers, pressing the shuffle button and leaving it on one of the coffee tables you had next to the mirror full of perfumes and some accessories. 

You take a seat and place a towel that you’d gotten around your back and a little towards the front of your body, adjusting your back so it’s straight as Changmin stands behind you. You watch him in the mirror, the way he studies your hair and seems to be contemplating on how to best approach it. It makes you nervous, and once again you’re wondering when you became this insane. 

“Okay, I’ll just start cutting.”

“Okay.”

You both fall silent, though you’re left still staring at him in the way you both reflect before you amongst a few polaroids stuck on your mirror. Your heart picks up when you feel his fingers brush the back of your neck as he takes some of your hair between his fingers, but you push it away and try to focus on something else. Anything else. 

The first strands of hair fall and you feel like crying. You see the way they end up on the floor, how they lay there and you feel terrible. It feels like you’re ripping away a big piece of yourself and you didn’t wish for it to ever happen. 

“I can’t believe Eric did this to me.”

“Wasn’t it an accident?”

“I don’t care,” you snarl, crossing your arms and watching him cut away more and more pieces. For a second you wonder if he’s cut too much but he seems to know how to read your mind because he brings what’s left of it to the front of your body so that you can see its length, most of it the promised length he’d agreed on with you aside from the bit of hair that was already ruined or made shorter before he ever got to it. 

“If it helps, I think short hair might suit you,” might. Not that it would, that it might, and that really doesn’t sit well with you, because what if it doesn’t?

“Short hair isn’t pretty on women,” you tell him, but he looks entirely perplexed at your statement, as if he finds it to be absurd.

“According to who? You?”

“Everyone,” a lot of men, mostly, and some women. Juyeon didn’t like it either, you knew that. He’d told you once when one of your female acquaintances had cut her hair and he looked at her like she’d grown two heads. 

“I think some women look better with short hair,” he tells you but you don’t really buy it. Then again, you don’t really know Changmin’s type, and once again you’re reminded of his date. Maybe you could ask now, right? 

“Did your date have short hair?”

Subtle. You could laugh at yourself, laugh at how pathetic you’d become and how Changmin was often the reason for your downfall. Of course he was, and you cursed yourself for ever agreeing to kick him out of that forsaken party months ago. 

“She did not, no. Unless you consider a little over the shoulder short.”

“I do,” he sighs again and maybe you want to smile because honestly, it is a little funny at this point, how quick he is to be annoyed and how quick you are to be the same, “did it go well?”

“Do you really want to know about my dating life?”

“I’m just trying to make conversation,” you lie, because honestly you were really curious to know. You wanted to know what she looked like, if she was beautiful, more so than you. 

“It was fine. Didn’t really have much chemistry,” he tells you, adjusting his glasses briefly as he dusts off some of your cut hair from your back. 

“You mean like sexually?”

“What? No. I mean in general. Chemistry isn’t just sex,” to you, it was most of it. At least you believed it to be. Good chemistry came from desire and lust, which is why you and Juyeon had worked so great when you were in love. You wanted to answer, maybe even defend yourself where he didn’t know you had to, but instead you kept your mouth shut, “I’m going to cut more now.”

“A lot?”

“I think if I play my cards right, it’ll just about be touching your shoulder,” he answers you and you agree, sighing as you adjust the way you sit again and watch him in the mirror. 

You watched the way he concentrated, how he bit his lower lip and occasionally adjusted his glasses if he leaned forward too much. He seemed so intent on doing well that it calmed you just a little. At least he would try, you assumed, and all you’d have to do in return was get his groceries. 

You were both silent for a long time, simply watching his hands move between strands of hair, trying not to tug too much or break off more hair with what was burnt. The music wasn’t overbearingly loud, and your cat was soft asleep now, sprawled out comfortably in your duvet. It was all very peaceful, strangely so. 

You came to realise even more in such silence that Changmin really was just so pretty. 

“You’re staring at me,” he tells you, not once making eye contact with you and yet he’d caught you. 

“What am I meant to look at?”

“I was only telling you.”

“Does it bother you?”

He stops, meeting your eyes in the mirror and suddenly you look away, “no, I don’t really care.”

You both fall silent again and you watch as he fixes the broken ends and frowns when it doesn’t seem to be going how he wants it to. Seeing him concentrate is a little amusing, because his nose occasionally scrunches and he lets out a little breath of air in annoyance when it just doesn’t work. 

“Did you ruin it?”

“Do you really want the truth?”

“Changmin, what the fuck did you do?” 

He laughs, and it sounds so happy and amused you turn around and hit his arm, making him jump back and hunch over even more to clutch his stomach while he chuckles. You want to know what the hell is so funny when he’s potentially done worse to you, but he doesn’t say a single word. 

“Changmin!”

“It’s nothing. I just find your lack of faith in me hilarious,” your arms cross and some of your hair falls to your face, but to your surprise it seems shockingly neat. 

“I was just going to say that I was right. Short hair suits you,” you heart lurches forward again and you’re stunned on what to say. It’s clear to you that it’s a compliment and maybe an attempt at making you feel far better, but all it manages to do at first is make you feel more vulnerable. He’s the first to see you like this and he’s not turning away from it or insulting you the way you would’ve insulted yourself. He’s kinder to yourself at this moment than you would ever be, and it doesn’t even feel forced. 

You don’t know what to say. 

“You don’t need to say that. We’re not friends,” he looks exasperated, like he’s near given up on ever being kind to you and you hope he truly stops trying. You don’t want to be friends, and while you’ll admit he’s not been as bad as you might’ve initially presumed, you would never want to speak of this after. 

“I think it’s nearly done.”

“Are you sure?” Changmin looks at you through the mirror, his eyes finding yours so quickly it makes you stop and stare back at him with strange interest. 

“Mhmm, where’s your hairbrush?” you hand it to him and he thanks you, brushing through the strands with a gentle touch you’ve never even given yourself. He’s so careful, like he truly doesn’t want to hurt you, and you’re not really sure when that became important to you but it makes you smile, “I think I should change majors.”

You know he’s teasing though his confidence leaves you curious. From what you can see, it isn’t terrible, but you have yet to see the full result and it’s scary to realise that your hair no longer reaches very far. You’re not even sure how the hell you’re going to style it when you have to have it up, or want to. In the end, maybe you would need extensions. 

“Do you have any hair oil?”

“I can’t believe you know what that is,” you get up, intentionally ignoring the mirror to stare back as you move to your bathroom, rummaging through one of the drawers before you find the serum you’re looking for, bringing it over to him, “here.”

He nods, standing in front of you and you don’t make an attempt to move. You let him reach for your hair behind your ear, bringing it forward between his delicate fingers with the oil you’d brought him, bringing it to your short ends and you simply let him. He’s never been this close to you, you don’t think, but it surprises you how it doesn’t make you grimace and want to turn away. Changmin’s in your space, but he isn’t invasive with it either, so very careful with his movements like he’s wondering when you’ll actually shrink away. 

“Done,” okay, fuck, now you’d have to look. It would either make you want to curl in on yourself or you’d be content to deal with it, even if you hated the short hair either way. You were already prepared to not like it, but you turn around and it hits you again. 

“I hate it,” Changmin’s face briefly falls, maybe with worry or just genuine upset because it sounds like an insult towards him. It’s the very first time where your heart sinks because you feel bad for making him believe he’d done something horrific when he’d helped you. He looks so genuinely pained, almost like he’s afraid that you’ll turn violent for what he’d done, and how truly sorry he looks makes you feel awful. 

“I’m sorry,” you shake your head, turning back to him so you can avoid the mirror, and you make an effort to look into his dark brown eyes framed by his glasses, the softness in them not going unnoticed by you. The way he looks like he’s ready to walk out with a knife in his back. 

“No, I just… I hate having my hair short,” you attempt, awkwardly reaching for his arm in an attempt to make it better, but it’s awkward for you both and so you remove your touch and look back at him instead, “I think you did great, Changmin.”

“You can be honest.”

“I am. I think it’s really neat,” which was true. He’d cut it precise and straight just along your shoulder and nothing seemed out of place. It was hard to believe he’d never done this before.

“I should get going,” there’s a voice in the back of your mind offering him to stay a little longer, but your mother could be home at any point and you knew very well that she wouldn’t like Changmin at all, even if he’d done you a favour. 

“Wait…” he stops, his jacket just pulled over one of his sleeves as he looks at you, “what about your groceries?”

“Forget it, it’s fine,” he’s upset. Something is on his mind and you want to know what it is. You don’t really believe him to be the type to be so hung up on one of your insults. He’d never been before, and some had been far worse than this, and yet he’d never been so quiet towards you. 

“No, I think I should,” you reach for your purse and while you can tell he wants to leave, he doesn’t walk out. He waits for you to gather your things and then stares at you. 

“I really don’t need your charity.”

“It’s not charity. You cut my hair,” he looks like he wants to agree with you. Like he knows that he did and yet he doesn’t really want to acknowledge it. 

“Fine.”

It was already late in the evening when you got to the store, not realising how time had slipped away from you both while you were at home. You’d thought Changmin had been quick, but reality had been different and time had simply flown away from you. 

“This place is expensive.”

“Is it?” you shrug, never having thought of it as you step out of the car, waiting for him to follow suit though he hesitates for far longer before he finally comes out of the car, approaching you with apprehension, “does it matter? You’re not paying for it.”

Changmin huffs, nails digging into his knuckles while he stares ahead at the store in front of you. You weren’t ready to admit to him that you hadn’t done groceries in years because it was always done for you, and you were not going to admit that the corner store when you were missing some snacks was as far as shopping for food went for you. 

“I don’t need you to spend money on me.”

“I doubt I’ll notice it’s gone,” he scoffs, clearly unimpressed as he walks with you. You don’t like it, because it feels like he’s looking down at you again, like you’re lesser than him when that has never been the case. You don’t understand the issue or why it should even concern him if you’re spending your allowance on him, but for some reason it does. 

“You realise the problem with that, right?”

“What problem?”

His kind eyes are gone, replaced with the ones you know far better. The eyes that judge you, that see you as frustrating and annoying, the ones that hate you and think you’re unimportant. You hate that gaze, the way he looks at you, and yet it doesn’t go away, nor does it fade in intensity, even while you watch him grab a shopping cart and step inside because you simply refuse to do it yourself.

“What would you like?”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” he starts, clearly in thought before he adds, “I need cat food.”

It catches you off guard. Changmin feels selfless, in that regard. How his first thought for what he needs isn’t for him at all but rather his pet. It makes you look at him differently, even just for a moment.

“That’s at the back.”

He follows you, completely silent and now it feels awkward again. It’s almost amazing how quickly you both revert back to this. 

“What does he eat?”

“He likes tuna,” he reaches for something, a packaged box of cat food with an assortment of different flavours and you grimace. 

“Is that good for him?”

“It’s all I can afford,” he snaps back, putting it in the cart but you don’t seem pleased. If he had a cat, he should at least put in the effort to feed him well. You’d never understand pet owners who practically fed Mcdonald’s to them in jelly form. 

“I’m paying for it.”

“And I’m not changing his diet for a week or two just because it’s not on my dime,” well, you lost that argument, albeit begrudgingly because you didn’t agree with it. 

“Can I at least choose some treats for him?”

“Do whatever you want, princess,” you freeze up, briefly reminded of Juyeon and his voice and the way he calls you princess. How that’s his thing to do, not Changmin’s, nor anyone else’s. You didn’t want anyone else to call you that, yet you were so frozen in place by surprise that you couldn’t tell him to stop. Instead, you fall silent and pick something out for him that you hope he’ll like, placing it in the cart before you follow Changmin to another aisle. 

You don’t speak to him for a while, and it’s so awkward to watch him find random things, and even worse when he finds something only to put it back because the price makes him do a double take. And each time you make an attempt to offer to get it anyway or tell him it really doesn’t make a difference to you, he gives you a look of such discontent, like he wants you to keep your mouth shut and it surprises even you that you do. 

You were stubborn and weren’t one to back down, and yet you would find it so embarrassing if an argument ensued between you both in public. It was bad enough that you were both together with the potential risk of someone you knew seeing it, but even worse if you brought on that attention through your disagreements when you could’ve avoided it. 

“I think I’m done,” you look down at all the items and frown, wondering how the hell that’s meant to last a week. It makes you think again, if he really could make this last for a while or maybe he just really didn’t want to live off your dime and you’re not so sure what bothered you more. 

“Do you not eat?”

“Coming from you?”

Another insult and it leaves you angry, but you also wonder if he’d noticed. If he had, you wondered how. If he was simply attentive or watching you constantly when you weren’t looking like some creep, “I eat.”

“I’d hope so,” you want this evening to be over. It would be nice to go home and curl up in your bed, to maybe call Chanhee and hear your best friend’s voice, to maybe text Juyeon to get a goodnight that was kind and sweet, to maybe ask Hyunjae if he was planning a party any time soon so that you’d have something new to look forward to and redeem yourself and your reputation. 

“There’s nothing else you want?”

“Nope,” you look down at all he’d chosen again and it just doesn’t sit right with you, but you don’t say anything else. It’s none of your business, how he chooses to consume his meals or what his motive or intentions are in not taking advantage of you buying everything for him, but it feels like an insult to you and your money that he’s not using it properly. 

It also bothers you, how he’d seemed enthused earlier at the prospect of you getting groceries for him, how he’d even laughed while doing your hair and how when he'd smiled it even reached his eyes, only to stand here with him now and see the way his eyes seem lifeless, how his smile has faded and he seems so miserable and over being around you. 

“Fine,” is your answer, cold just like him as you both go to the check out, paying for all his things whilst he packs them up. You’re both so silent, the woman scanning all his items gives you both a look, as if she knows you’re both fighting and can feel the tension between you both. 

You don’t end up spending much at all, far less than you’d expected, and yet when you try to pay, Changmin steps up to you, “I’ll just get it.”

“No, I want to get it,” you push him away from you, but he surprises you in his strength and resistance, barely moving an inch while you try to tap your watch against the card machine. 

“I don’t want you to.”

“I said I would!” you snap and he finally stops fighting you, maybe in his shock because you’ve raised your voice publicly, but you manage to pay and the woman gives him a sympathetic look with kind eyes as if to tell him she’s sorry for your behaviour. 

It’s silent as you both go to the car but you can feel his anger radiate off him. You already know he might snap, the question is what his anger will look like. You’re not afraid of it or Changmin, because while you don’t know him well, you don’t believe he’d hurt you in frustration. But you do wonder what he’ll say, if anything at all. 

You try to ignore him by drowning it all out with music, occasionally glancing over at him though he’s on his phone not paying attention to you. It was like having a random strange man in your car, one that wouldn’t take any time to get to know who he was even with, but you supposed that was better than the alternative. 

“I don’t know your address,” you tell him eventually, realising you were just heading back to your place when you should very likely be going a whole other direction.

“Drop me anywhere. I’ll take the bus.”

“I’m already driving,” he sighs, but he doesn’t fight you either, reaching over to the touch screen in the centre of your car to find the navigational system so that he can type in his address. You knew the area by name, though you’d never done more than pass it by. When you were younger, your parents had insisted on avoiding places such as the one you were now going to, for it was full of criminal activity and rather dangerous at night. At least so they said. 

“Thank you for helping me,” it takes a lot for you to say it, so you hope at the very least he’ll realise how difficult it is for you and to appreciate that you managed to say it anyway. He doesn’t react at first, looking outside into the dark, up at the city lights and the way everything reflects, but eventually he pays attention to you again when the trees get boring and a droplet of rain falls onto the window. 

“It’s nothing.”

“Yeah but… you didn’t laugh at me.”

“There was nothing to laugh at,” he made things difficult. It was hard to speak to him, sometimes moreso, because he just seemed so indifferent when you didn’t want him to be. You also knew him to be different, just sometimes, because you’d had little glimpses of it, and you wondered where they went when he stopped smiling. 

“Juyeon would’ve found it hilarious.”

“I’m not Juyeon,” he interrupts angrily, this time turning his head to look at you properly and it distracts you. You were near certain though you’d gotten no real confirmation that they didn’t like each other at all, and yet his instant protest made it far more evident than you’d presumed it to be. 

“You make him sound like a bad person.”

“If he would’ve laughed at you, then isn’t he?”

No. You want to say no. Juyeon was flawed but not bad. He was always so kind to you, until the moments in which he wasn’t but you knew how to ignore those for the good things you got. But then you wondered why you’d broken up at all if he was what you wanted. It was hurting your head to think about it, to think about Juyeon was always so complicated and painful, yet here you were again wondering if you could ever have him back. 

“He’s not that bad.”

“Right,” you’re not sure why you wanted him to fight with you. To tell you you’re wrong, that Juyeon was fucking terrible and destroyed every little bit of confidence within you so that he could mold it back together into the perceived beauty that he wanted. Until you were created to be only his. 

You’re not sure why you want Changmin to say it, because you know you’ll resist him anyway. 

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t, really. I just don’t get it. I’ll never understand wanting to be hurt by someone you think should love you,” you fall silent first. You want to defend Juyeon but you’re not sure how to do it without sounding pathetic. 

“He does love me,” Changmin doesn’t say anything else. He rolls down your car window and lights a cigarette without even asking if he can though you say nothing about it. Maybe you might normally, but you stop yourself this time because your thoughts are muddled and you’re not sure you can even really think. 

“It’s just here,” he breaks you out of your thoughts and you park just a bit down the road where there’s space, watching him get out of the car but you stay put at first. You feel a little numb, frozen even, though when he opens the trunk of the car, you finally snap out of it and follow after him. 

“You don’t need to help me,” you don’t listen to him, grabbing one of the bags before shutting the back of your car and looking at him expectantly, “you’re not coming inside.”

“Fine.”

You’re a little disappointed. Mostly because your curiosity has grown and you really want to meet his stray cat, but Changmin seems determined to keep you away from the little furball, “next time then.”

He seems as surprised as you by your words, although deep down you think you both know they’re not meant. You likely won’t ever be here again, and so the final steps to the front door of the apartment complex is all you’ll ever get a glimpse of into his life. You wonder how he lives, what it looks like, if it’s neat or cluttered, dark or bright.

You wonder if his interior reveals his interests and hobbies, or if it’s monotone and hard to decipher. You realise you wonder so much in this moment, about Changmin and who he is, what he’s really like away from what you see. But maybe what’s inside is too vulnerable for him to reveal, that he keeps it to himself because it feels safer. 

You wonder even if just for a moment, what it would be like to get to know him beyond you both standing here in the light rain.  

“Well, thank you for the groceries,” you hold the last bag out to him for him to take and he does, leaving you to stand there with no real purpose other than to look at him. 

“Yeah… of course,” you don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve forgotten how to formulate a sentence and it feels suffocating to stand here with him. You really want to leave, though not because you detest Changmin in the way you might sometimes believe, but rather because it feels so strange to just stand there with him, with no real purpose or gain out of it, “goodnight Changmin.”

He nods, reaching for his key rather awkwardly and you’d help if it didn’t mean reaching into the pocket of his jacket. You watch him struggle though he manages eventually, turning only briefly before he ultimately sighs, “I should walk you to the car.”

You want to ask why until you remember what your parents had said. Maybe they were right, that it really was unsafe and Changmin knew it too, “I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t care,” he puts his bags down in the hall right next to the door, letting it fall shut after him as he comes back down the steps to where you stand to begin the short journey back to your car. It’s so awkward between you both, so painfully silent and you think back to the woman at the grocery store again, the way she’d stared at you both. 

“Well, I survived the walk to my car,” you think you see a faint smile on his face, but you don’t want to comment on it in case he notices and lets it fade away again, “goodnight Changmin. For real this time.”

Changmin smiles. He genuinely smiles and his dimples show on his cheeks enough to make you want to mirror a similar upturn of your lips. It’s contagious, and he stands there as you shut the door though let your window down just a little in case he wants to say anything else to you. 

At first, you don’t think he’s going to. You think he’s going to let you leave but when you start the car, he leans his arms against the opened window and looks up at you again, carefully, as if his eyes are searching for something within your own and you wonder if your cheeks look as warm as they suddenly feel. 

“Get home safe, little doll,” you want to answer but you’re left completely stunned by him. The wave of emotions you go through in his company can’t be quite good for you. It makes you feel vulnerable and a little confused and you can do nothing to help it. It’s simply there, every single feeling is right at the surface and you can’t hide it. 

It makes you feel so exposed, enough that your words get caught in your throat and you have to simply drive away, seeing him in your rearview mirror, and you hope he gets inside and off the street if it really is as bad as you’d been told here. 

You don’t mean to do it, but after a few minutes you turn around just to check that he’d gone inside, slowing down when you don’t see him anymore, nor do you see the groceries he’d placed down just inside when he’d chosen to walk you back to your car. 

Which meant he was okay, and you could go home. 

You’re at another one of Juyeon’s parties and you’ve had a little too much to drink. You don’t know what time it is, nor are you sure on where you’re even going. It’s disorienting for you to even walk, dizzying in hallways you’re familiar with and yet you can’t make out where you are. Eventually you give up and try to roll a cigarette, but you swear you’re seeing double and can’t even imagine the state you’re in. 

Wondering if you look like a disaster, you try to see if you recognise anyone, though you’re alone aside from a couple making out not too far away from you. It bothers you a little, but you don’t want to bring their attention towards you and instead remain silently sat on the hardwood floor, beautifully dark and expensive. The music is still loud so you figure you must still be close to the main living room but you can’t be sure. 

“Little princess, I’ve been trying to find you,” Juyeon’s worried voice breaks you out of whatever daze you’re in, looking up to see him stand there in his dress shirt that clings tight to his thin waist. He’s beautiful, of course, and you become aware of the state you must look like, now that something so gorgeous is in front of you. 

What is happening to you?

“Am fine,” you mumble, wanting to close your eyes as much as you want to go outside to have a cigarette. 

“You look awful,” you know. He doesn’t need to tell you, and yet when he does it stings deep and makes you wish he hadn’t said anything at all. You wish for just a moment that he’d lie to you and tell you otherwise, in a way that makes you think that the opposite might be true. 

You want Juyeon to tell you that you’re pretty. 

“I know,” he stares at you, silently first before he crouches down to your level. Your eyes meet and his are dark but pretty, a certain glazed spark that makes you want to kiss him, but you don’t. 

“I can take you to my room,” you nod, holding your hand out to him so he can help you to your feet, and you stumble into his chest when gravity decides to not be in your favour, “when did you turn into such a drinker?”

You’re not sure, really, what had made you drink so excessively tonight, but Juyeon knew that you drank and could drink a lot so the question still takes you aback. Does he think you’ve gone off the rails? 

“Am not…” though your lack of coordination and the fact that you feel increasingly ill from being intoxicated seems to suggest otherwise. Remembering how much you’ve had would be impossible to decipher so you wouldn’t even attempt it. 

“Here… you should shower first.”

“Don’t wanna…” as if you’d trust yourself to even stand upright in the shower, but Juyeon seems just as persistent as you. 

“I’m not letting you in my bed in this state,” you scoff, thinking it’s unbelievable that his first concern would be his silken bed sheets though simultaneously you know you’d be just the same. No way you’d ever let someone this drunk on your mattress with the chance that they’d be sick. You understood perfectly, and yet it still made you angry. 

“Why’d you care so little about me?”

Juyeon doesn’t say anything first, leading you to the bathroom and you sit against the door, watching him move around without his attention ever going to you. It almost confirms the question, that he’s so indifferent and careless because you’re not worth even worrying about. 

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Am I?”

You’re getting angry and it shows, pushing your body up with all the strength you can possibly find in your body, Juyeon catching you the moment you threaten to fall back to the floor. Even if he caught you, he seems to push your body away from him, like he doesn’t want you any closer and it kills something in you to have him act this way towards you when he’d been so sweet before. 

“Why’re you doing this?”

“You should go home. I’ll get Chanhee,” normally, he would've let you stay. Juyeon would let you stay in his bed and the fact that he isn’t even offering it makes your heart sink deep, a heavy weighted feeling in your chest that’s just equally as hollow. Your heart is breaking and he doesn’t seem to care at all, nor does he seem to care for the consequences. 

You stand completely alone, looking around the bathroom before you get a burst of energy that has you looking for any remnants of cocaine in any of his drawers. Juyeon hid it well, just in case the cleaners rummaged more than he’d requested, because he did not need anything to get back to his parents in regards to some of his more worrying behaviour. Unfortunately, you come up entirely empty and the door opens to you surrounded by a mess of his things. 

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Juyeon is so angry, you truly want to fear him with how he looks at you, but Chanhee and Hyunjae both stand there too, with Hyunjae even moving to block Juyeon’s body from you. You’re not sure why he does it, but to know he seems more concerned for you than the man you loved brought a new pain to your chest that really made you want to cry. He was so careless and it hurt. 

“I’ll just take her home- don’t,” Chanhee glares at Juyeon when he makes an attempt to move towards you, and you’re grateful for your best friend when he helps you back up, albeit you have no way of really focusing in on him, your vision blurry and tired. 

“Did she take anything?” Hyunjae. You think it’s Hyunjae, his voice soft and gentle, sounding entirely sober and you wonder if he’d had anything to drink at all. Usually he did, a bottle always famously in hand yet he seemed so okay now, you couldn’t imagine it. 

“Don’t know,” cold. His voice sounds so cold and careless, it’s the only thing you can focus on. You can’t pay attention to Chanhee holding your body up or the fact that Hyunjae is right in front of you. You don’t even notice.

“It’s like she’s been drugged,” Chanhee. It’s Chanhee, and he sounds more angry than Juyeon, though for an entirely different reason. He’s concerned for you, but in a tone you’re not familiar with. 

“Just get her out then.”

“She’s about to pass out, Juyeon.”

“I don’t care, Chanhee.”

Your vision is spotted and you start to think that maybe Hyunjae’s question has merit. You’d had plenty to drink but in your mind it hadn’t been enough to act like this. Yet you were so out of it, so unaware and so ready to sink back to the floor where your heart already lay in pieces. 

“I’ll carry her. Let’s just go,” you can’t make out the voice anymore. You can barely make anything out as you feel yourself being lifted up onto someone’s back. He’s warm and strong, a cologne you recognise but not familiar enough with for it to belong to Chanhee. If it’s not your best friend and it isn’t Juyeon, it had to have been Hyunjae. 

You hope it’s Hyunjae. He’s the one you’d trust the most after the two other men in the room with you. 

You don’t remember falling asleep nor do you remember waking up, but there’s a sharp cold breeze and wind blowing through your short cut hair, earrings swaying with every step of the man who’s carrying you. 

“Should we take her to the hospital?”

“I think she just needs to sleep,” you think that’s Hyunjae. You hope it is. He’s so comfortable to hold and so warm if that’s the case. 

“I can’t believe Juyeon’s such an ass he can’t even let her crash in his bed.”

“I’m gonna talk to him about that,” the voice closest to you tells your best friend. At least you presume it to be. Eventually you let your eyes reopen, nuzzling deeper against Hyunjae’s shoulder once you confirm it really is him.

“You’re awake,” your best friend looks at you with a concerned gaze that has you wanting to turn away. You don’t like that look of pity and concern for your state. You’d much rather ignore the mess you are in favour of pretending it never happened. 

“Hi pretty,” Hyunjae says, turning his head slightly to look back at you. You have to admit it’s incredibly nice to walk with them like this though you’re not sure why they didn’t just get your driver or one of their own, “we’re nearly at my place”

“Mhmm, why didn’t we uber?”

“Figured you could use the fresh air. It’s not much further,” Hyunjae answers, Chanhee walking in silence with you both. 

“You’re really sweet Hyunjae,” you feel him laugh, the vibrations in his chest reaching you and it makes you smile against him. It’s nice, the way he laughs, the way it reaches deep in his chest and sounds so low and carefree. 

“That I am, darling.”

You make it to Hyunjae’s place not long after and you’re not really sure what happens beyond that. You think you remember Chanhee asking if he could stay in the bathroom with you while you shower, just in case you fall or hurt yourself, and you do remember agreeing and even telling him to leave the door open in case Hyunjae had to come in to help. 

After that, it becomes a little more muddled, though you do get a change of clothes from Hyunjae that swallow you whole because he’d already warned you ahead of time that it was too large for him too, and then you’re curled up in the centre of his bed with both your friends on either side of you. 

You’re turned facing Chanhee, far less space between you and your best friend than you and Hyunjae, though Hyunjae had insisted on keeping a larger distance because he didn’t want you to feel weird about sharing a bed with him. He was right, it was a little weird at first to be in bed with him, but you got used to it quickly because you think he made a joke and you know you laughed and then you must’ve fallen asleep before they followed suit. 

And suddenly you didn’t mind it at all.

You swear you’d been hungover for two days after that cursed party at Juyeon’s house. When you had first woken up in Hyunjae’s bed, you’d still felt drunk, and that drunk feeling turned into being hungover with a throbbing headache and the following day it still persisted. It had persisted but you needed to catch up on a lot of studying, having put it on the back burner long enough that soon your parents would notice and say something, or worse, take your allowance from you. 

So you found yourself back at the library, overdressed to compensate and hide how absolutely shit you felt from the amount you’d had to drink, trying to find somewhere to sit. You decided to sit on a table far in the corner, away from everyone yet still within sight of the main area, opening your laptop up and grabbing one of your many notebooks and one of your textbooks. 

You think an hour goes by when you briefly leave to grab a coffee from the cafe just down the street, coming back with a warm drink and another painkiller down your throat because the headache persisted and you had at least a few more hours to study before you could tell yourself it was enough. 

It hadn’t even been a minute since you’d sat when a shadow of a person stood across from you, completely still first as if debating before he speaks, presumably towards you, “you don’t mind, right?”

You raise your head to see Changmin with a coffee from the same place you’d just been to, his hair wet from rain and his glasses a little slanted, his hoodie too large for his body and covering even his palms to imitate little paws. 

“I guess it’s fine,” he sits diagonally to you, adjusting his glasses and you just stare as he gets his books and a notebook out, full of coloured little tabs and sticky notes. It was colourful, unexpectedly so, and very messy in a way. You wondered how he learned anything like that, but maybe he had a method.

“You got home okay last week?”

It’s a question directed towards you but it takes a minute for you to process it while you were in a daze, blinking out of it and focusing on him properly again, the way his hands rest under his chin, two of his fingers twisting one of his rings. 

“Well, I’m here, right?”

He nods, having some of his coffee before he starts to write something. You think that’s all he’ll say, so you turn back to what you’re doing and try to focus on literally anything but him. He was such an easy distraction, and yet he did nothing to be that. 

“Are you hungover?” Shit.

Were you really that obvious, or was Changmin just that good at guessing? You honestly couldn’t tell, and you weren’t sure what you favoured less. 

“I look like shit, don’t I?” Changmin surprises you when he smiles, not in a way that tells you he agrees but in a way that tells you he’s amused. Like he genuinely finds it funny that that was your conclusion to his question. 

“Is that what I said?” Well, no, you supposed not, but it surely felt like it first when he’d posed the question, “you just look a little out of it.”

You were. God, you were so fucking over everything and you couldn’t fully describe or explain what was happening to you. Something was, but you couldn't control it nor did you control your feelings or outcomes of the situations you put yourself in when you didn’t need to be in them. 

“I am, yeah,” he opens the lid of his coffee, as if trying to reach the foam that normally clings to the lid of the cup like glue. You stare at him again like a bad habit, only realising after a while that neither of you are attempting to argue with the other and maybe you don’t detest him so much. 

Just maybe. 

“Juyeon’s, right? I heard about it,” you look away from him in favour of finding your coffee and having some of it before it gets too cold and bitter to taste. You’re not sure what to answer to that, not more than a nod because it feels weird to know that he wouldn’t even have been invited yet he knows that it happened and that you were there. 

“Yeah,” it sounds weak and you try to clear your throat, coughing instead as a result and turning your eyes back to the words in front of you, the mathematical equations that make you want to die the longer you look at them and the scribbles you’re trying to decipher even though you were the one to put them there. 

“You look confused.”

“I am confused,” you tell him, and he surprises you by getting up and coming over to you, hovering into your personal space before you can ask him what the hell he’s doing. He’s close but never too close, and you hope no one is watching you both or peering in to the fact that you’re being friendly. “I can solve it for you if you want,” now it’s your turn to be amused and laugh, because no way in hell is Changmin able to look at your notes with anything other than a giant question mark over his head, “What? You think I don’t know how to do mathematical analysis?”

“Honestly, no,” you confess, and he looks at you strangely before reaching over for one of his pens. 

“I can do the first one. It’ll help you figure out the second question,” you’re not sure why you agree or why you let him so easily take control of your notebook, but he does and you don’t say anything first, watching the way he writes out the equation. His motions are so fluid, the way his fingers grip the pen with confidence in what he writes. There doesn’t seem to be a single mistake as he writes, like he knows exactly how to get the answer and it amazes you. 

“I didn’t know you were smart,” you’d meant it as a genuine compliment and genuine amazement but it’s clear to you that it sounds quite backhanded, which you suppose mirrors your personality towards him more. He doesn’t flinch, ignoring you entirely before he pushes your notes back to you.

“There you go,” he gets up before you can even say thank you, and it’s the sudden absence of his presence beside you that makes you realise you didn’t mind him in your space at all. You feel like you should, that you did just recently, but his closeness to you had felt like a safe presence, not a familiarity yet and not foreign enough to make you alert to it. 

It was just sort of there. He just sort of existed with you. 

“Thank you,” you’ve never sounded so sincere with him before, not that you had ever wanted to be nor meant it, but even when he’d been kind enough to cut your hair and not fuck it up, even then you hadn’t thanked him the way you did now, even if you’d argue that that gesture was far more important to you than this.

“You really don’t need to thank me. I find it weird,” what a way to ruin it. You roll your eyes and turn back to your work instead, using his method of solving the equation to help you figure out the rest. His handwriting was a little sloppy but you could read it fairly well, though the few times you struggle you still refused to ask him to tell you outright what it meant.

“How’s your cat?”

“You don’t have to make conversation either,” he adds, but it doesn’t sound troubled or annoyed, rather a statement that you don’t have to put in effort where you don’t want to. And then you wonder why you’re putting in any effort at all so suddenly, “he’s fine. How’s yours?”

“She’s fine.” “That’s good,” he never once looks up at you and it’s starting to bother you. Are you that ugly, that he simply didn’t want to see you at all? Was there something about you that was so easy to detest that even someone like Changmin couldn’t find it in himself to be decent and meet your eyes?

It’s like he could sense your thoughts and your bitterness of his refusal to meet your eyes, because suddenly his deep brown ones were staring into your own and you found it almost overwhelming to meet his gaze. His eye contact lingered and he didn’t falter with it, and eventually the way he stared back at you became too intense and you had to look away. 

“You’re terrible with eye contact,” you were, he was right. It wasn’t very comfortable for you, and the longer someone lingered on you, the worse it got unless you were angry and intimidating someone. 

“It’s weird to stare at someone.”

“You stared at me first,” fuck, so he’d noticed it. Of course he had. You knew what it was like, to feel that stare of someone enough so that you tried to find where it was coming from. In this case, Changmin had felt it yet there hadn’t been enough people around to hide that it was you. He knew instantly, because it had been obvious. 

“I daydream.”

“How cute,” it sounds sarcastic coming from his lips. You don’t think he genuinely finds you cute. Honestly, you’d take it as an insult if he did. Cute was for animals, not for a grown woman, and so you were glad to know that for once he was mocking you.

There’s no words said between either of you for a while. You finish your coffee and he finishes his, and after a while he gets up and grabs both empty cups once he’s sure there’s nothing left in yours, “where’re you going?”

“Bin,” he leaves you alone and you’re left staring at him dumbly, watching his figure disappear behind rows of books and shelves. But then he doesn’t come back, and a few minutes turn into a quarter of an hour and you want to start looking for him. His things were still with you, including his phone, and you wonder why or when he became so trusting of you. Surely you could take it all or worse, you could ruin it, and he just had faith that you apparently wouldn’t. 

Eventually he reappears, but you only notice because another cup of coffee is suddenly right in front of your eyes, held by hands you recognise because of the jewellery adorned, and it’s only further confirmed when you look up again to see him standing there. 

“You got me a coffee?”

“Why’re you so surprised?”

Many reasons. You don’t like each other very much. His money was tight, that you knew. Or just the fact that it was the last thing you naturally expected when he’d disappeared for so long.

“How do you know what I drink?”

“Guesswork. It’s skimmed milk, too.”

Even Juyeon messed that up. He’d mess it up nearly every time and you could always taste the difference, you swore it, and yet he’d lie and say he’d gotten it right just enough for you to want to believe that maybe you were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t him that screwed up.

Surely it was always you. 

“I really don’t want to keep thanking you today.”

“Then just get the next one in a few hours,” you’re rendered a little speechless on the silent assumption that you’d both be here for most of the day, but you suppose he’s being fair and that it’s very likely you’ll be here for a while, still. 

“I guess,” you mumble, bringing the coffee closer to you to warm your fingers. You hold it for a while, fingers laced together before you bring the liquid to your lips to drink. It tastes exactly like you would’ve wanted it to, and briefly it makes your mind wander on how he could’ve known it so well. 

You’re back to sitting in complete silence and after a few hours go by like that, Changmin seems disinterested in his work and instead wanders off before returning with a book to read. It brings amusement to your lips, an upwards smile that you try to hide under your hand because you don’t want him to comment on it. Thankfully he doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does, he ignores it. 

“Well… I suppose it’s my turn,” you mutter, reaching over for his empty cup before taking your own. He looks up at you with warm eyes, adjusting his glasses again and you start to think that it might be a habit given the repetition in which you see him do so. 

“I’ll have a cappuccino.” 

“Do you want it with the chocolate powder?”

“Yeah, just as it comes is fine,” you leave your things aside from your wallet and phone, as well as the two empty to-go cups and make your way out. It’s a strange feeling, running an errand of sorts you suppose for the both of you. And yet studying with Changmin across from you isn’t bad at all. Actually, you find it strangely peaceful, because he doesn’t bother you at all but his presence makes you feel less isolated. 

You like that he doesn’t really make an attempt at a conversation where there isn’t one to be had. 

“Here you go,” he mumbles something similar to a thank you, at least you think, his hand reaching out for you to place his coffee into. You do so, watching as he doesn’t once look up but his fingers dust over your own and it makes your heart jump to your throat because the feeling is foreign and strange but you want to welcome it. 

You don’t like that you do, huffing in frustration at yourself and your stupid mess of emotions that have been scattered ever since that forsaken incident weeks ago. Maybe you’d have to consider therapy at this point, if the mess that was your mind persisted and the results were hangovers spread over multiple days and heart palpitations because someone simply touched you. 

“Thanks,” you nod but he doesn’t seem to notice, so deeply caught up in his work that you think it might be something important, or at least incredibly interesting. He’d put the book he’d found earlier down and held his pen between his lips, fingers running through his now dry hair as he gripped the ends when he seemed frustrated.

Again, you were staring, but it was far too easy to do when he was right there and practically the only source of entertainment for your mind when your work was boring you to death. 

“Struggling?”

“I suppose,” he draws out, pen no longer between his lips so he could answer you. You want to ask him what he’s doing, what exactly he’s even majoring in because you realise you have no idea. Then again, it had never interested you enough to ask and you’re not so sure if you ever will. 

“Biochemistry,” he says outloud, presumably spoken to you. When you don’t answer, he looks up and stares right at you, “that’s what I’m studying.”

Wow, so he really was smart. 

“Willingly?”

“Surprised?”

“Maybe,” the back and forth felt a little like flirting, and yet you knew it wasn’t that. It was a back and forth simply because the conversation never really went deeper. It was quick because there was nothing else to say. 

It’s early in the evening when you decide that you've had enough. Changmin had left a few times for a cigarette, always rolling one at the table with you right there, making lazy conversation before he’d leave for a few minutes and then return. You debated asking if you could come with him just once before you remembered where you were and who you were with, so instead you sat and accepted the nicotine withdrawal. 

“I think I’m done for the day,” he looks up at you briefly before he stretches his limbs, turning his shoulder either direction to warm his muscles and rid them of the tension from being mostly sat all day. 

“That’s fair,” you start to pack up and there’s something in your mind wondering if you’d end up doing this again. You wouldn’t entirely mind it, as annoying as he is, when you simply sit with each other it’s rather nice and easy. It’s when the two of you start to speak to one another that problems arise. It’s when you realise again who he is that the calmness in your veins turns into something else. 

“You’ll take a break at some point, right?” 

“I plan to, doll,” his eyes meet yours again and you’re left staring, unsure what to make of that nickname anymore. It still bothers you and yet you perceive it as a compliment just the same, for if he calls you a doll, surely you’re delicate enough to be one?

“Don’t forget dinner,” he adds when you start to walk away from the table, and it brings you to a halt. Changmin doesn’t look up from his work, although you know that he’s aware that you’ve stopped, that you’re probably frustrated and that you want to tell him to go to hell when you let out a frustrated sigh. He has no right to tell you that, and yet the very fact that he’d brought it up at all with such casual nonchalance yet clear determined voice makes you think he might say it because he’s worried but doesn’t want to push a boundary further than he thinks he needs to. 

He wants to remind you without pressuring you into a corner.

First you think of saying something, to maybe make a comment back but for the longest time you’re left standing there with nothing coming out of your lips. You simply can’t find anything to say. 

“I’ll remember dinner when you forget to smoke,” he looks up from his textbook but you’ve already turned away from him, disappearing behind the shelfs and he’s left staring after you, a little lost before a faint smile falls back to his lips and his dimples become prominent despite just the faintness in which his lips curve. 

You’d never know that he didn’t smoke for the rest of the night, but you did have dinner before you curled up in your bed with a book and your cat sat lazily beside you. 

Changmin was starting to interest you. Not because you liked him but rather because he left you curious and a little stunned because of how strange he was. You were also wondering how or why he always managed to read you so well, it was all guess work and yet it was simply always correct just the same and you had no idea how he did it. Aside from the thought that he might be stalking you but you were always more than certain that he’d claim to have better things to do than follow you. 

You hadn’t studied with Changmin since the hours spent in the library together but you had used the few notes and solutions he gave you the next few days as you revised. It was incredibly helpful, annoyingly so and you were beginning to feel a little dumb because why couldn't you have just written this out yourself? It wasn’t difficult now that you saw the answer.

Sunday night comes around and you’re lazily hanging around in bed listening to the rain outside. You’re so bored, but there was no party to attend and nothing else to really do. Chanhee said he was too busy and you weren’t going to ask Hyunjae, even though you had his number. You considered it truly, but ultimately didn’t want to give him the wrong idea of you nor were you sure how that would look if Juyeon found out. 

Juyeon. A thorn in your side that pinched and twisted. He wouldn’t go away and you were conflicted on whether or not you wanted him to. You cared for Juyeon deeply and yet he seemed to prove the opposite in return, that you were worth the minimum if nothing at all. The final bit of evidence wasn’t even too long ago, when he left Hyunjae and Chanhee to carry you home instead of simply letting you stay in his bed to recover. 

It was starting to feel, just a little, like Changmin might be right. Maybe the bad did outweigh the good though you weren’t ready to face the consequences of that being true. You weren’t ready for any of it. You didn’t want it to be true, because if it was you would have to grieve something only you seemed to love and you really didn’t want to be faced with that reality. 

The doorbell rings and it breaks you away. It takes you a minute to realise that you’ll have to be the one to answer, as your parents are out and none of the staff remained given the late hour. You wondered why your parents still didn’t invest their money on a live-in butler, but they insisted he would attempt to steal with all the extra time given to him in which he simply stayed here. 

When you come downstairs you’re already a little annoyed. The ringing persisted and whoever it was was incredibly impatient with you getting there, so you’re already ready to yell at whoever it is but when you finally meet the gaze of who it is, you stop in your step and stare.

Juyeon. 

act iii

this chapter was meant to be longer but tumblr said no so I apologise for the cliffhanger it's not my fault and also apologise that this won't be three acts only pfff

taglist: @sanaxo-o @mosviqu @sunramzi @tbzhubrecs @caratsmatic @synnocence

again, let me know if you wanna be on the taglist 💜 comments are always appreciated

series masterlist || tbz masterlist

©️strayed-quokka, please do not steal, translate, reuse or rewrite as your own

[armisteadrevellion]

hello where can i read your Lucia LDB story i am so interested and it is all i’ve been thinking about for the last 10 minutes lol

Hello! I left a comment on the original post but I’ll reiterate it here so more can see:

I’m currently in the middle of my uni semester and I’m pretty swamped with work, but I’m going to try and figure out a plan for starting the story soon! It’s not on any platforms yet, but I’m going to post it on AO3 whenever I get chapter one written. If anyone has tips or recommendations for large-scale writing I would greatly appreciate it as I have not written a fanfiction to this degree before. Also if you have ideas you’d love to see, I wouldn’t mind implementing any that would fit in with the story that I have planned!

[edenvillee]

Eden Hcs☆彡

I made random hcs for my ss oc cuz uhh ermm I can

Full name is Eden Harlow

She’s arab, a mix between Libyan and Algerian. She doesn’t speak Arabic all the time, but sometimes curses in it, especially during tough matches

Definitely uses it w skarra just to fuck with him

She’s about 5’7-5'8 ft tall

Graduated with a master’s degree in computer science and sports science double major at Cornell, NYC

She owns a flip phone, IU always makes fun of her when she gets a phone call /aff

Has a cat named rice cake

A huge workaholic, you’ll almost always find her in the lab, sometimes even spending the night  

LOVESS bad jokes, sometimes throws a joke or two when the team lost or is in a bad mood, they never work tho

Except on dingaan

Actually a decent cook, compared to Akira and Nalani at least, but not as good as skarra

she prefers his food on days she doesn’t feel like cooking

Her favourite super league teams are either Orion or Cognito FC

Is actually rather muscular and athletic

Generally dislikes physical affection, unless it’s with people she’s close with, like Akira and Nalani

Cannot read social cues for shit

Skarra aswell, she also doesn’t mind physical gestures from the team (high fives, fist bumps, ruffling her hair, etc…)

Loves the beach and rainy days, those two are her go-to whenever she goes out or on a date

Sometimes babysits dee

She helps her get away with pranks on skarra

“Where is that little shit?!” “Idk what you’re talking abt”

They are best friends, eden almost being a mother-figure 

She has the fashion style of a homeless man

A bit of an angsty one, but her relationship with her parents is kinda complicated

They weren’t all that close when she was young, and hasn’t heard from them since she went to uni

She sometimes stays up at night wondering how they’re doing, but it doesn’t bother her too much

She wonders how she could’ve turned out if they were closer, but at this point has accepted it.

Akira and Nalani are her only family, even if not by blood, she feels closer to them than anyone else

Back to the silly stuff !!! ^_^

Her room is a NASTY mess, last time she saw the floor was when she moved into the apartment

She has a couple of bookshelfs in her room filled with all kinds of books(Astronomy, psychology, chemistry etc…) and a few old notebooks filled and ruined from how much she writes/draws in them

Realistic aside, her dream is to be a cowgirl in a small town with zero problems

She seems cool and chill in interviews or from afar, but she’s an awkward anxious mess

Not much into PDA, she prefers the privacy of her own home

Good friends with kat <3

Absolutely adores Sonya, she even gave her a sticker for her laptop

PLAYS THE ELECTRIC GUITAR, sometimes with skarra too

Both lazy and a perfectionist, not a good combo.

Overall, she’s just a silly genius w her silly totally peaceful team

I have more but this list is getting long so i’m stopping here

[hayjeon]

🥹

hi everyone, i know it’s been quite a while.

i don’t even remember how to use the app/site well enough to find when the last time i posted a fic was (like, where did the time stamps go?!)

i bet this won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s been following me for a while because i clearly went MIA for a few years. just wanted to pop back in and clarify a few things and let yall know i am alive and well 🫶🏻

WHERE TF R U

i have, unfortunately, moved on from my ff writing era of my life. i’ve seen all your messages of support and reactions to my writing and constantly see the reposts and recs made in my email inbox, and i cherish each and every one of them and do miss yall very often. i am currently now working and traveling full time, and am just past the era in which i used to absolutely love bts/kpop. i’m actually now an avid ao3 dramione reader 😂 and have devoted a lot of my time to getting physically/emotionally healthier, furthering my career, and just pouring love into myself and everyone around me 🤌🏻

DO YOU EVEN LIKE BTS ANYMORE

i still do love/listen to bts, but i’ve also been feeling like i’ve outgrown them a bit and no longer actively read bts fics myself 🥹 but to sometimes come back to my own blog and my homepage to see that other writers are still here and dedicated makes me feel so giddy and happy for them. watching bts grow from their boy in luv era when i first became a fan to the degree they’re at now and even when i stopped actively writing (probably when they started breaking into the US/english lyrics, or covid era) was such a big life landmark for me, and i will always cherish them in my heart for that. i will also always cherish this blog, that kept me actively writing, throughout uni, and actively creating content anonymously, for helping me through some hard times emotionally, physically, and mentally.

WHATS GONNA HAPPEN WITH UR FICS

i don’t think i’ll be updating any of my wips: any writer out there who feels inclined to continue the stories, i give you full permission (pls don’t plagiarize!) and would hope that you drop a quick msg in my inbox when you post so i can read them (better than tags!) 🥰 would also be happy to share where i intended a lot of my fics to go plot-wise. i also deem it would be a disservice to a lot of you for me to release unfinished drafts, but im happy to share that as well to anyone who wants to pick it up, or just are curious where the plots went (lmk if ur into that?)

WHAT ABOUT THIS BLOG

i will be keeping this blog up and active. anyone who wants to pop in and re-read anything: thank you for your continued support. feel free to translate, repost, use as inspiration, continue the stories yourselves, and do whatever you want. i’m sending these fics as a love letter to everyone who’s supported me thus far, and anyone new to the fandom (welcome! i know army has increased so much since i left) into the universe and all i can do is release them with a sense of peace and love, although it’s a bit bittersweet.

CAN WE STILL ASK QUESTIONS

of course 😍 i love seeing them in my inbox so continue to ask away!!!

to conclude:

thank you to everyone here.

thank you to bts and hope for a quick and safe army service to all of them.

and happy new year 🫶🏻

[musette22]

Hi minnie, found out from one of the posts that you did your master's in the UK. I'm doing the same currently. How was your experience?? I love my uni studies and all but fuck the weather!!!. I'm in the northwest of England and I haven't seen the sun in ages. I experienced sun, rain, cloud, blue skies and fog all at once in the uk. It was a bizarre experience.

As an ex-international student in the uk can you suggest some tips and tricks to manage the crippling living expenses and earning some cash 🤌🏻 🤌🏻 🤌🏻

Hiii darling! That's right, I did! How exciting that you're doing it too right now! 💓 I hope you're having an amazing time, I definitely did 🥰

I don't know what your situation is exactly, but personally, but I spent quite a bit of time in the UK before I moved there to do my masters (I'm Dutch, but I'd already done a semester abroad and an internship in Wales and I had friends in London who I visited frequently, and I've just always been something of an anglophile/UK lover), so I was pretty familiar with the UK and London and its weather 🙈 Although the weather in Northern England is definitely a bit more gloomy than it is in the South, there's no doubt about that! I really love a lot of things about the UK, but the lack of sunshine definitely isn't one of those things 🙈 So I feel you on that one, even though the Netherlands honestly aren't that much better! You might be from a sunnier part of the world though, so in that case, you definitely have my sympathies 😬

As for earning a living and dealing with the high costs, I was lucky enough to get a government loan as well as a scholarship for my degree, so most of the costs for the 12 month duration of my masters (it was a full year one) were covered by those. Towards the end of my degree, though, I decided I wanted to stay in London, so then I looked for a job. A friend of mine was, at the time, working with a small company who were looking for someone to temporarily replace one of their employees and the job was right up my street, so she arranged an interview for me and fortunately, I got the job. It was only supposed to be for the last few months of my degree, but then the person I was covering for decided they weren't coming back after all, and I was hired permanently. So basically, I just got really lucky 😭🙈 I worked at that company full-time until I moved back to the Netherlands a few years later for personal reasons, so I'm afraid I never really had to look for other ways to earn some cash at the time!

However, a couple of things that helped me save money during my studies in the UK (but which I assume you're already doing too, as they're super obvious student things): I lived with other students for a while, which meant cheaper rent, I did most of my groceries at Lidl, Aldi and Tesco, I got a student Underground and Railway card and used every possible student discount on other things I could get, and I also knew exactly where the happy hours were at what time 😅

I'm so sorry I can't really offer any other advice in this regard, but maybe there are others reading this who might have tips for you?? If anyone does, please feel free to chip in and help nonnie out! 😊 In any case, I hope you're loving your masters and your time in the UK as much as I did, lovely!!! Wishing you lots of luck and fun and please feel free to tell me more about your experience!! 💓💓

[caffinecommander]

I need to re-read The Prince for uni, and I wanted to hear some thoughts on this:

The Prince (1532) was over-hyped for its supposed tyrannical outlook and semi-applicability to regular modern life.

(For background, the "book", was actually a letter, sent by Machiavelli to the young Prince of Florence, Lorenzo de' Medici. The letter was intended to help Machiavelli get into the prince's good books, to make himself seem very smart and worth having around -also to help him get out of exile lol-. At the end of the day it was a suck up letter, which really goes against the whole idea of Machiavelli being a powerful and tyrannical idealist).

The book was recommended to me a few years back, claiming it was a "guide to power". That sort of claim could interest anyone, regardless of their own, actual, megalomania. I read it, looking for that sort of thing, but found that the historical value was way overlooked. It looks into combat strategies, organisation, and expectations of leaders in Florence in the early 1500's.

It is continuously advertised as a "guide to power", without the important specifications of history and politics.

Beyond this, there are the words "it is better to be feared than loved". Sure, it is a controversial take that could totally be backed up with logic, however even the author doesn't agree with the way the idea is being communicated. He has an entire section about how and why one should avoid being hated. Sure, a leader is better off having control along with fear, than they are to be without any control and the public's approval, but this way of looking at things implies they are mutually exclusive, which is stupid.

The ideas of this book are not being communicated, and instead those who romanticise authoritarian behaviours, in notably small scales, are sharing the book like it is a two step guide to getting power, when it's not. It doesn't even go into the ways of attaining power because that's not how it worked back then. They were born with power, and seeing as how his letter failed, and was likely not even read by the prince, Machiavelli should not be a reference for how to become powerful.

You wouldn't ask a cat how to bark, so why would you ask Machiavelli how to gain power?

The book is still important for historical analysis. He goes into decent depth about how one would take land and maintain power over it and its people. He was reallllyy into expanding their land (probably could have used some galvanised square steel). This is where we can trust him. Sure, he wasn't exactly involved in war or politics to the highest degree, but he had a decent education, especially in humanities and history. He would have been close to the experiences.

Ultimately, the book needs to be advertised as such, and not described as a guide to power.

[notyaslol]

okay, yas, for the ask game:

🧃,🍬, 🦷, 🥐, 🦋, 🌸

<3333

Hi ivy! Thank you for the ask!! I’ll try to answer as best as i can.

🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before

I don’t know if i have ever said this on here but I’m a swiftie, although i think that could be supposed. I’ll give you two more facts for that. I’ve been two times to the eras tour, one in my country (Spain) and the other time i actually had to travel to Portugal while i was finishing my last year of uni, in between finals and writing my end of degree project. And one last fact about me is that i love to dye my hair, honestly i have dyed it too many times to count by now, i don’t know how I haven’t fried it.

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

I’ve seen many headcanons in which Remus is gay and Sirius is bisexual, for me both are bi. There’s just something about Remus that screams bisexual for me, i don’t know.

🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on

Actually i was talking about this with my cousin the other night, I’m a firm believer that the uglier you go to bed the prettier you wake up. Go to bed with your hair in socks if you want curls, wear that facemask, that eye cream, the pimple patches, whatever you want! Also, another one from personal experience: the moment you notice the slightest bit of toxicity form someone, run it’s only gonna get worse.

🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh 

There’s too many but lately i can’t get the “do you wear wigs? Have you worn wigs? Will you wear wigs? When will you wear wigs?” video about of my head.

🦋 ⇢ share something that has been on your heart and mind lately 

Much like you Ivy, lately i can’t stop thinking about how I’m a hopeless romantic and how i have this idealized idea of love and that most likely I’ll never meet anyone that will meet my standards or love me like people love in the books/fanfics i read.

🌸 ⇢ do you have any pets? if you do, post some pictures of them

Actually, i do! I have a cat and her name is Ada

[sunriseverse]

get to know me 🌻

tagged by @killerandhealerqueen (thank you sass!)

do you make your bed?

i mean, i guess if you count "smoothing out my duvet" as making my bed, yeah.

what's your favourite number?

thirteen and eight :)

what is your job?

eternal suffering (working on my second uni degree).

If you could go back to school would you?

[laughs like a hyena] bold of you to assume i've ever left school. unfortunately i think i'm doomed to academic pursuits for the rest of my life. that said if i could i would go back and force myself to realise i cannot do applied maths, that would have saved me time.

can you parallel park?

yes :) i actually like driving, i find it calming.

a job you had that would surprise people?

i actually was an after-school tutor for elementary students for a year! it was terrible, because i get overstimulated very easily by children, who are loud and insistent, but they were all very sweet. i didn't get paid nearly as much as i would have liked, though.

do you think aliens are real?

i am an alien agnostic, by which i mean i haven't seen proof, but if i were to, yeah.

can you drive a manual car?

not at the moment but i could probably figure it out if i had to.

what's your guilty pleasure?

generally i feel no guilt for my pleasures but uh. i remembered i actively read the sci novel on purpose, so. yeah, that. (would not recommend)

tattoos?

not yet! i want a couple, though, when i have more time and money.

favourite colour?

black and purple! and gold. and...........green and blue. i actually like a lot of colours haha.

favourite type of music?

i have been known to like mandopop u_u but i also like darkwave, goth, and anything that makes a compelling amv.

do you like puzzles?

i do! people used to gift me thousand piece plus puzzles when i was younger, and while they've mostly been lost in moves, i do think of them fondly.

any phobias?

lack of autonomy, which i think is a reasonable phobia. aside from that, no.

favourite childhood sport?

swimming! i was actually a decent competitive swimmer for years, and placed a number of times in regional meets (i didn't go any further because i hated having to be in meets due to the unique horrors of being wet and cold and half-nude around large crowds of people. and also life-related bullshit stressed me out so much i had to quit).

do you talk to yourself?

yes :) not as much as i used to because i live with people i'm not close to at the moment and i tend to stim a lot if i'm speaking to myself and i'd rather not have that conversation.

what movie(s) do you adore?

pacific rim (2013), the old guard (2020), the diptych finale of dijia aoteman/ultraman taiga (1997????) which isn't a film but was formative to my childhood.

coffee or tea?

tea!!!!! tea my beloved.............i will drink a lot of different types but i am a black tea lover at heart.

first thing you wanted to be growing up?

fashion designer, actually!

tagging: @krownest @lesbianlanval @jaybirdsdelight @malewifefirestar @tatchling @impishglee and anyone else who wants to play!

[neverbelessthan]

15 QUESTIONS FOR 15 FRIENDS

I was tagged by @adickaboutspoons and @edsrosetattoo. Thank you for thinking of me! ❤️❤️❤️ I love this shit. And sorry for taking so long to do it, I had so. much. uni. work.

Are you named after anyone?

Katharine Hepburn. And my mother gave me her middle name ('her' as in my mother's, not 'her' as in Hepburn's - although, Houghton? What a bitchin' middle name jfc), which has pissed my sister off literally from the day I was born because she got given a(n arguably lovely) random middle name instead. Suck it.

When was the last time you cried?

Today.

Do you have kids?

Yep.

What sports do you play/have you played?

I’m an equestrian (dressage, specifically) although I’ve been out of it for a while because I had to have some surgeries, also because I’m broke, and horseriding is basically like burning money. Also figure skating. Group sports are the devil.

Do you use sarcasm?

I honestly wouldn’t know how to get through life without sarcasm. I’m like, 75% sarcasm (in person, at least - online I tend to be a bit more sincere because I generally obsessively re-read anything I post or comment before letting it loose in the world and if it comes off too sarcastic in my own head I’m like dude … stop being a dick).

What is the first thing you notice about people?

I’m hyper-sensitive, and I have acute sensory-sensitivity issues, so generally I pick up on the minutia of how someone presents at any given time (sometimes because it’s all my brain can take in, because wider general observations are too much), like I’ll pick up on shit people aren’t even aware that they’re putting down. Ask me how much fun I am at parties.

What’s your eye colour?

Brown. Very much towards the uniform brown/black end of the spectrum though, not hazel.

Scary movies or happy endings?

Neither.

Any talents?

I’m weirdly excellent at claw machines? Someone pointed out to me the other day that I’ll need to budget half a suitcase and a not-insignificant amount of my travel budget to The Claw Machines because Japan is full of them, and it honestly hadn’t even occurred to me. And by ‘weirdly excellent’ I mean weirdly excellent - like I can’t remember ever having started on one and not ended with a sizeable audience. I recently had a worker at one stop me mid-game to open the box and reshuffle the toys and then watch over my shoulder because he thought I was cheating. I’m also really good at mimicking people’s handwriting. I don’t have a gag reflex. I have full-body hyperextension, so I can do weird/terrifying joint-related things. Are we supposed to be picking weird stuff? I do have normal talents but they’re boring.

Where were you born?

Sydney, Australia.

What are your hobbies?

Sculpture, photography, crochet, knitting. I like small-scale art - miniatures, origami. Music (I play the piano, cello, guitar, and sing). I like plants (hoyas, particularly). Is travelling a hobby (my brain would like me to accept that no, it’s a coping mechanism for escaping the nihilistic futility of existence :)? I’m doing two university degrees right now, so I find that my hobbies don’t get much bandwidth and when I’m not reading about neuroscience or philosophy I’m usually just staring into the middle distance letting my brain power down for 5 minutes. Is that a hobby?

Do you have any pets?

I have a cat. And some tropical fish. And a semi-domesticated water dragon named Richard.

How tall are you?

5’2”. Or, as people often enjoy pointing out: pocket-sized.

Favourite subject in school?

I hated my school, and therefore generally hated all subjects by extension. I loved anything creative: art, music, drama, creative writing, but I was too much of a social weirdo to not get bullied about it all, so I stopped bothering because I wasn’t willing to make/do what I really wanted to because I was too terrified of getting shat on about it, and there didn’t seem much point in doing any of it halfway. Plus it was an academically selective smartypants-assface school, so they didn’t put much stock in anything creative, unless you could top the state in it, and I didn’t really want that sort of pressure, thanks.

Dream job?

Some sort of very well paid, very infrequently required consultant.

I tag, with absolutely no pressure at all (and with profuse apologies to anyone who hates these things or who has already done it and i somehow missed you doing it because i’ve been buried under research and only on here sporadically the past week): @jessystardust, @majesticartax, @follows-the-bees, @theangelyouknew, @iamadequate1, @jeffsinnbythesea, @tositandadmire, @ameryth74, and literally any other mutuals who I haven’t tagged and who haven’t done it that would like to do it. I get such insane social anxiety about participating in these things, but also I love them: The Horrors. Also I know that I didn't tag 15 people, but … anxiety (I've tried to not include people who I've already seen tagged, and have literally gone through the last 50 or so posts of the people I have tagged to try and make sure they haven’t already done it, because i’m an idiot, and you know, being an idiot like that takes time).

[sanddusted-wisteria]

I have a crack theory that has absolutely no bearing on the story whatsoever: Qi never got his doctorate/PhD.

[Put the rest under a read more in case you don’t want to read like 3 pages of straight up speculation over nothing holy shit]

(to preface, getting a PhD is basically what separates a student and a professional researcher in academia. You most likely can’t be a professor without one, and research jobs in non-academic labs aren't likely to take you either. Getting a PhD also earns you the title of "Dr.", same as an MD.)

Even though Qi is referred to as “Dr. Qi” by several people, when he’s actually called that in his earshot, he insists on being called “Director”.

The way Qi speaks is very “technically correct” and literal, according to one of the writers.

[taken from an Ask the Dev segment on the Pathea discord.]

So maybe he insists on being called “Director” because it’s technically the only title he actually holds. Your college professors have doctorates, but you can probably call them “Professor” or “Doctor” interchangeably and it’ll still be okay with them. So why doesn’t Qi also operate like that?

PhDs also typically take 5 years to complete (and that’s assuming nothing goes wrong…). You’ll probably be in your late 20s by the time you’re done. But…how old is Qi? He hasn’t been assigned a canon age yet, but we can make a few guesses.

There’s a photo of his family in his room that is dated from year 80. MTaS starts at year 98 (or 97, I have to check). Considering that adult Qi is about 5’11”/180 cm, he’s definitely younger than a teenager in this pic when we see his relative height here. I say he looks around 8-10? That means that by the start of MTaS, he’s around 26-28. It should be around this time that he finishes his doctorate and has a successful dissertation defense. But he’s in Sandrock… There’s also this line from one of the main missions (no spoilers) that implies that Qi’s been in Sandrock for around 7 years. So he potentially left Vega 5 and came to Sandrock when he was in his early 20s.

But when did he graduate, then? It’s a bit more possible that he got his Bachelor's degree super early. Maybe he skipped a few grades, maybe he sigma grindsetted his degree plan. With the more course-based and structured nature of Bachelor’s programs, it probably would’ve been easier to speedrun. A big research effort like a dissertation takes more time to properly do and can't really be sped up that much, since it's intended to be a culmination of all the knowledge you've gained on a particular subject.

But then what happened after that?? He started work on his PhD, but then…his dissertation work got stolen. In The Assistant, Qi says at some point while he was at uni, his work was stolen.

He doesn’t specify what it was, but it was bad enough that he refused to work directly with anyone else since. Losing your dissertation is…bad, to say the least. It could’ve been stolen, you’ve might’ve lost it, or someone else just happened to do the same thing you were doing and publish it first. Whatever the case, if that happens, at worst, you need to start from square one. Years of work, straight into the garbage. It’s also a matter of money, too. Do you have enough to pull you through a couple extra years of tuition? Can you renew your assistantship? Considering his parents are humble fishermen, Qi probably couldn't secure the funds to keep going. So he threw up his hands and quit school, and tried to find research work on his own merit. Without a doctorate, though, he probably was only able to take low-rank or assistant jobs. Instead of being assessed on his talents as is, his lack of a title barred him from making any advancements. So he left. It would explain this line, where he talks about leaving Vega 5 due to “bureaucratic pedantry”:

Qi’s the only researcher in Sandrock, and is therefore Director by default. He might be in Sandrock to find the Olympia, but is he also there because that’s the only place he has any authority? Is Sandrock the only place where people will take him seriously? Is he clinging to that? Is that why he insists on people calling him Director…?

…Well now I’m sad. I’ll end this on a higher note with an even crackier theory: Merlin from MTaP was the one who stole his work. There is absolutely NO evidence for this, I just think it’d be funny.

Merlin was “the most promising apprentice” at Vega 5, but was kicked out for performing an experiment so egregious that even Vega 5 wanted nothing to do with her. What if she had a rivalry going with Qi while they were in school, and it culminated in her stealing his research? Whatever the hell Qi was planning to do was so off the cuff that she took the fall for him when she actually did it. And Qi was planning on leaving Vega 5 anyway, so he’d be free to continue his mad scientist shit elsewhere. Alternatively, Merlin stole his work, he saw that she got kicked out, and he decided to skedaddle knowing that he’d probably be next if he kept going.

okay that's enough spitballing thank u for coming to my ted talk

[meirimerens]

hi, i know you headcanon some pathologic characters to be homosexual, like Daniil, Artemy, Yulia, Stakh... what do you think their relationship with their sexuality were throughout their lives? also, i remember in one of your older answers you mentioned Daniil coming out to his mother... how exactly did that happen in your vision?

hello darling this reply has made tumblr give me that "there was an error processing your post" over 15 times now for no good reason. it's like it was too big at first but this is the same length and if you read this it means it sent. anyways.

i had posted something kiiinda similar here (below the cut) including bi characters (eva + the twins) but i had forgor to include stakh + by god i can repeat myself/elaborate (i love. repeating myself <3 for real honestly especially on this) so ooh baby here we

Dankovsky (longest because i'm writing about him so the thoughts are many) knew at a young age (like 11-12) he didn't like girls and instead did boys so he had to come to terms with it in some way Pretty Quickly. to me he was raised christian eastern orthodox, which like all christian denominations comes with its fair share of religious-specific homophobia, he wasn't particularly like. Thrilled per se. + the familial/ancestral culture comes with its own set of expectations around masculinity which homosexuality inherently challenges and the fact that he was already more into cello than like war as a kid made his father raise an eyebrow on him right. so from ages like 11-16, dankovsky was like Well i'm going to have to pretend i don't see it and hope the sky doesn't fall on my head. at around 17 it became evident that was IT really that truly what he was and there was nothing he could possibly do to not make it be this way. it came with a sort of like. acceptance that it just was going to be how it was, but he was already starting to think how he could push the Acting on It part long enough for him to maybe become busy with something else. i think as he grew up he shed the concept of "sin" as he actualized himself atheist so no "hate the sin love the sinner" for him, but you can't really pull the religious guilt out of a man raised religious ykwim. eventually as he accepted that He Was, and that by god it wasn't even a bad thing to be/started Embracing it as one more of his Transgressions (when it. not really is, a transgression comes with a degree of consciousness and will to violate a law or code, the fact that he's gay is just. how it is. that's him forever and that'd be him regardless of context etc), he started assimilating gay codes for himself (the red tie…) to be like. Yes. ykwim. he still had not met a gay person in his life so it truly felt like Him Against the World, but he started being more comfortable with the fact that he was gay. however, it still didn't stop him from started a whole… "i'm not in a relationship rn bc i'm focusing on my studies" mindset. at uni, he truly like. came into his own internally while still trying to maintain a certain ambiguousness outwardly. andrei saw right through that and, even if he's like not gay but bi, he was the first dude daniil met who was also (Loudly) into dudes. dankovsky owes andrei the first like. actual coming out to Someone else than his mommy when andrei would bait him into hanging out with other gay and bi men, dankovsky would sit in a corner not fuckin wit anyone just Soaking In The Homosexuality In The Air, and when andrei went "u got a problem with that? you homophobic?🤨" dankovsky had to go like "i don't have a problem with it at all… when it's other people" [implied: i might deal with it not too well when it's me myself]. and from that point on he was like ah fuck me [not literally] why do i bother being insecure about it. from ages 20+ he was still very much in his Married To My Work Era + as he founded Thanatica he tried to lay low to not get investigated and being very loudly homosexual was not the best way to "not make waves" so even as he settled in himself with the fact that Well he's gay and he's gonna be gay forever so he better live with it, he still stayed closeted for his safety. i think from ages 18 to current game-day 28, not getting laid pardon the frankness led to him developing like an internally Fucking Crazy relationship with love and eroticism and he might have kept himself from entering relationships because he needed someone who Understood He'd Want To Eat Him. (love wins!)

re:coming out to his momma i think she had had her Doubts for a while yknow has had her Doubts. his dad too, but from his dad's perspective it felt deeply Painful (bc when the son is gay it is the father's masculinity that is threatened.. i've spoken about it on the post i've linked in the beginning) whereas his mom didn't have that My Masculinity Threatened. dankovsky knew he was gay since age like 11-12 but only came out at around 14-15, when it became obvious for him and hard to ignore, especially as people begin to have little boyfriends and girlfriends at this age. he told his mom first because he was closest to her and she was like.

she believed him from the beginning because she had had her Doubts. for a while she didn't quite know what to do with this information as it all dawned on her that it likely meant no grandkids, no daughter-in-law to whom she could give her pretty jewelry and so on… but also i think she like. could relate her son's homosexuality to like. fucking Tchaikovsky. who attempted suicide because his marriage to a woman made him so miserable. so she was like… well. that's just how it is isn't it. she's just gonna have to make peace with it whether she likes it or not. i think eventually she came to the conclusion that she spent 9 months building him from her blood and bones and a full day putting him out in the world so it would be stupid to be mad at him for that. + that's god's doing isn't it. she can't be mad at god. and if god's mad at her son he can take it to himself. etc .

Burakh for the longest time um. Didn't know. i think he realized that about himself genuinely age 26 in the 12 days. he's going through an entire coming-of-age/coming-into-place story and i think that includes a realization story lol. i think for the longest time he just thought he didn't love anyone period. up until 20 methinks he was like "well i'm just a late bloomer". then he went to war as a medic and was like "well i'm just so fucked up in the head my mind's full of corpses that's why there's no place for love". then he went home and… lord almighty. for years he thought was just not made for love because he truly. hadn't looked the other way (he's just like me fr fr). he went from not knowing what a closet was to realizing he was in it and the door was ajar to being out and in a man's arm in the span of 12 days. he didn't really have the time to brood about what it meant for his future/himself/his relationship to his people for him to be homosexual because love slapped him across the face and he fell on his ass. as his whole story is about finding his own path and learning to cope with doing things that might not be approved of him and living with choices that are of love regardless it's truly just like. learn to cope FAST. you have way more problems. + as i think the herb brides Know i think he's not given too much grief by his community and doesn't have the religious trauma background of dankovsky. also since his parents are. well dead. he doesn't have to respond to them + his dad textually is like You're gonna have to do something boy. (and that something might displease him but that's out of his hands. and into burakh's).

.

Yulia knew early too like 12-13. she always was a tomboy as a kid and almost just like… naturally blossomed into a masc lesbian. i think from early on she was like. ok well we're coping with that. she already was going against social conventions by being an educated woman a woman in ""typically"" male professions a masculine-dressed woman so at this point the fact that she liked women that was like. well if you don't like it tough luck buddy. she always had a relatively distant (if loving) relationship with her parents so she didn't feel the need to justify herself to them + won't lie they saw it coming. they had it comin… she was not in any relationships for a while because she's kinda like Dry of a person/passionate about things most people just don't see/don't fuck with so while she is charismatic and handsome and knew she could be desired she didn't have any long-term relationship before eva because you truly need a girl who's a lil bit crazy to handle her. and vice versa. so love wins. i think that while she might not have frequented lesbian spaces like bars because her ass does not do well with crowds i think she never felt like she was So Alone like Only Lesbian on Earth. i think she did feel a sense of loneliness about it but it was also mixed with a deep sense of Well I'm Here and I'm One So Someone Like Me Exists.

.

Stakh for a little while was also that "well i'm kinda too fucked up for love" and he was also fighting for his life to be seen as a good student a good protégé a good foster son so romantic love was Far from his mind. i think he realized he was gay around age like 15-16 when it all starts to Dawn on you y'know everything Dawns on you. he was very quickly like. well that's how the cookie crumbles. i think there was a sort of immediate acceptance about the Being Gay factor but more of a restraint about acting on it because he too was like Married to The Student Behavior and didn't want to risk losing his place by isidor's side, especially since he didn't know how isidor would react to him being gay (i know what isidor did to that old man so i know he wouldn't have cared but rubin is not a mind-reader). it was truly like. well i am and i can't do much about it but i'm soo focused rn. as 18-20 came around the corner and his relationship with isidor truly felt like he was fighting for his life trying to be seen as a good student he was like I'm either going to war or becoming a monk. he was fully willing to commit to lifelong monkish celibacy because he's always been. kinda dry. kinda with issues. + i think subconsciously he was trying to not let Desire creep up on him because it would distract him from the menkhu way (nice dichotomy idiot what lies outside of it etc). he went to war [p1 lore which i abide by] and. well when you put a bunch of fit young men together away from the women of course something like this would happen. anyways he comes home having acted on his homosexuality which he is fine with + feels kinda like a weight being lifted off his shoulders but he stil hasn't tasted Desire ykwim. Want. Hunger in the lover sense. but he's like. shrugs. whatever. monk it is. he doesn't become a monk. he clings to being isidor's foster son until his knuckles go white. it ends up being for nothing. grief and anger scythe him right. and in what follows he bonds with someone who's Fucked up and who Knows Hunger and Desire and omg flushed emoji etc. (+ my belief when dankovsky comes to peter's loft to talk about god-knows-what they kinda realize pretty fast He's Just Like Me Fr and dankovsky appreciates his + peter's company kinda like he appreciated Just Sitting There surrounded by gay and bi men even if they barely talk. just knowing you're like. Not Alone. etc)

.

bit long. sorrey.

[arcielee]

Interview With a Writer

Thank you @theoneeyedprince for giving us some behind the scenes perspective on your brilliant writing 💜 As always, Interview With a Writer is my ongoing series of the talented souls on Tumblr and ao3, and their brilliant writing!

Dividers by @saradika 💜

Name: theoneeyedprince 

Story: A Refined Taste

Paring: modern Aemond Targaryen x Female!Reader

Warnings: Explicit/18+, be mindful of chapter warnings!

So, when did you start writing?

I have been interested in story telling and writing since I can remember. My first story that I've ever written was for a class in my third grade tilted "A Tale of a Little Droplet". I don't really remember why I decided to write a story about the journey that water goes through. Perhaps our teacher gave us this topic or I was just funny like that.

The thing is that I think that I've always had a soft spot for fiction. Then as the years went by I wrote everything from prose, to lyrics and poetry. Then I went to university and I started writing scripts, which became my new favourite form of writing, if I have to be honest.

When it comes to fanfiction it was the Harry Potter fandom that introduced me to it a decade ago. I read Dramione, Harry and Hermione and The Marauders fics first in my native language and then switched to writing those in English.

I didn't write at first but after months of being a reader I decided to give it a go and posted my own Dramione fic. Unfortunately, I believe that it got lost in the Internet ether because I didn't save the chapters on my computer-I wrote everything on the fanfiction site I used back then.

My fanfiction experience stopped or rather ended abruptly when I was in my senior year of high school and during four years at uni until my final year of my Masters degree began in October 2022. Funny enough it wasn't only the year when House of the Dragon premiered, but also the month when the older Aemond Targaryen appeared in the show.

The moment I saw this character on screen it was as if an old friend whispered in my ear telling me to come back. So after years and years of absence in the fanfiction community, I was finally back. All thanks to a new ASOIAF universe show and an incredibly intriguing character of Aemond Targaryen, played by Ewan Mitchell who I already knew from his role as Osferth in The Last Kingdom.

I took it slow however, searching fics and getting to know AO3 and the fanfiction side of tumblr. And as I was doing that, an idea for my own HOTD fanfic came to me. At that moment I felt like I was truly back.

What made you decide to start writing in English? Do you have any advice for budding new writers where English is not their native tongue?

I'd talk about bilingualism and literature written in English by non-native speakers for hours on end!

In my country (Poland, for anyone interested) kids start learning English in kindergarten so it became my second language pretty early on in my childhood, a constant since I was 6 years old. Lucky for me, it sunk into my brain with ease so the more I studied it the more comfortable I became with talking and writing in it.

Also, growing up with British and American shows, films and Internet helped me with that. I stopped reading translated books in high school (in English that is) 'cause I thought that if I watched visual media and listened to songs without having them translated, then why not try that with literature.

My journey with writing prose and poetry in English started then too. For some reason, writing in my second language (English) comes easier to me than in my first. I'm not sure how to describe it, it's still a mystery to me. Maybe it's the fact that I've been familiar with English for so long that my brain simply prefers it. Also, I got my degrees in English literature and translation studies so that helped me a lot with understanding this language at a level that feels like my second native tongue.

I'd say that as an author who writes in English I have an advantage because of how much time and space English occupied my life in the past and in the present.

My advice to anyone who wants to write in English but isn't a native speaker would be to simply start. Start writing and reading and get familiar with the language through these activities. The saying 'Practise makes perfect' is one hundred percent accurate!

To those who already write in their second or third language - I applaud you because by doing so you show everyone a skill that you should be proud of! In our modern times English is a global language and so available for everyone to learn that people take it for granted when someone says they read or write in it. How hard could it be, right? Well, the latter takes time and expertise and requires love and devotion for what you do. And doing that in another language is worth praising.

Where did the plot for A Refined Taste come from?

The idea came to me after devouring every modern AU that came my way. Summer was around the corner and I thought 'What if I wrote a modern AU myself? Can I do it?'

I was writing my in-canon Aemond fic at that time but started feeling a little burnt out and needed something else to focus on with hopes that it'll fill me with new inspiration and motivation. I wrote two short scenes but for what turned out to be a completely different fic at the end–the action took place during summer holidays so these scenes ended up in ART's Part 4 and 5.

The inspiration for A Refined Taste particularly came from Pinterest and Lana del Rey. A still from The Talented Mr Ripley showed up on my dash, while I was listening to Lana's Honeymoon album. Soon enough I was adding tens of pictures to my 'old money aesthetics’ board and then it dawned on me. This is perfect–a modern AU about the Targaryens being an old money family who lives in a big mansion by the sea and owns a private vineyard!

I had the title at the ready because it was one of three that I considered for a completely different modern AU but luckily it fit the theme and aesthetics. 'A refined taste' is a reference to the vineyard and their private wine collection, the old money lifestyle (the romanticised one, of course) and as we later find out in the story to the people we choose to spend time with and love.

So, in short the idea started with a desire to write a modern AU fic and old money aesthetics.

Explain your interpretation of Aemond. What drives him? Why is he the way he is in ART?

Aemond from A Refined Taste can be described in two different ways depending on who you ask about him. If you're like the reader at the beginning of the story, so someone who doesn't know him personally, no connection despite shaking hands with him once, he seems distant, so quiet that you might think him pompous and judgmental and there's this cocky attitude that comes to the surface from time to time.

However if you get to know him closer or manage to break down his walls, it turns out that he's more of an observant than a participant that's why he barely talks around strangers. Well, except for when there are his siblings around, then he might join in the conversation or crack a joke (whether it ends up being genuinely funny or mean that's another story 'cause our guy spends more time with books, he's an academic scholar after all, than with people that aren't his family).

When Aemond trusts someone or falls in love with them he lets them see this vulnerable and caring side of him that he keeps locked deep inside due to the trauma and heartbreak he faced in the past. He was raised by his mother because his father was always absent so one might assume that being doted on by Alicent he'd be more in touch with his feelings but unfortunately for him it was the opposite. Especially after losing his eye it became obvious how little Viserys cared for him.

Also, he became a shell of himself, locking himself from the world, in consequence becoming a very lonely boy who later had trouble finding friends outside of his siblings. That is why he focused on his studies.

When it comes to his romantic life, he had crushes but his low self-esteem constantly pulled him back from shooting his shot with those girls. He went through some sort of transformation during the summer before his first year at Oldtown University with the help of Aegon who was finished with his B.A. at KLU at that time. That's when he met Alys, his first serious girlfriend and a cause for the return of his bitterness and insecurities (it was a long, on and off toxic relationship). After that he was with Cass who was only a rebound for him, turning him into a cold and selfish dick in her eyes, which he was at the end. Aemond simply couldn't think of any way to cope with his previous relationship and treated Cass like Alys treated him. And that is one of the reasons why he enjoys sex, because he can be in control of a situation and forget everything just for a moment.

Then, there came the reader who showed him that he doesn't have to be at odds with the world and people in it only because he's hurting so much, that if he gave someone a chance they can surprise him in a good way.

His love language is acts of service (and quality time, at the same time)–he offers to teach the reader how to play tennis, notices what book she's been reading and gives her a first edition he's sure she'd like, shows his attraction to her by providing her pleasure without wanting anything in return (Part 4 and Part 5), takes her on a date on a boat and at the vineyard, chooses the PHD program that is closest to where she lives, shows up with flowers at her work in order to surprise her. Words of affirmation are something new to him though, but seeing how open she is with her feelings, he decided to grand her the same in return.

He's a very contradicting character in canon, so I wanted to convey that in ART too.

Was there anything in specific that inspired your Reader?

I wanted the character of the Reader to be someone who is independent on her own but would benefit from ending up in a relationship with someone who shares her interests and challenges her. I'm not going to lie, her love for literature is the author showing themselves in the fictional character. But that's totally okay because every writer leaves a part of themselves in the characters they create.

I tried to make her as relatable to the person reading as her as I was able. Besides a couple of mentions of the quite big difference in height between her and Aemond, I decided not to describe her physical appearance so you the reader can see yourself in her, act in this role even. In this I got inspired by some amazing modern AUs where a reader can wholly become The Reader.

On the other hand, I needed her to be three-dimensional at the same time. In the process she became a mixture of my favourite characters and the women in my life. Confident in what she wants and needs but not free from self-doubt, realistic but romantic, in touch with her feelings but sometimes too much that it causes her distress, empathetic but prejudiced in some cases (Aemond at the beginning). Indeed it was the women I'm influenced by that inspired to write the Reader in this particular way.

Why do you think your Reader complements Aemond so well?

I think that my Reader and Aemond complement each other because they're interested in literature and relate to each other's love for their siblings, but also because they differ in so many aspects. They naturally challenge each other and not only in a fun way that excites them, but also so they're able to grow as individual people–find and reveal hidden sides they were too afraid to act on.

Was there another characters in your story you enjoyed writing?

I really enjoyed writing the Reader’s sister Argella. She was the only OC in this story–besides the Reader of course if we can consider her to be an OC–that i made from scratch.

Argella and Reader’s relationship was inspired by the one I have with my sister but changed slightly into something even more special, deep in understanding of one another. A truly profound sisterhood. Besides that I loved throwing in these little moments of her and Helaena together and I can’t wait to write a one shot where we’ll get to know Argella as a character and which will delve into the girls’ relationship.

Do you think there be a sequel? Or do you have anything else you are working on next?

I don’t think there’s a need for a sequel. The Epilogue was written in a way that both concludes the story but allows us to imagine their life after it. There might be one shots if anyone requested something that would added to the story.

For now I’d like to focus on the rewriting of my first Aemond fic titled Of Blood and Fire which I’m currently in the middle of and an upcoming Tom Bennet story - As The World Burns. In both cases the romantic interests are original female characters, which are just so fun to create. Also one shots are to be always expected because my mind comes up with too many ideas. It’s just too little time to bring them all to life.

But one will be posted soon as part of your/arcielee’s 1k celebration! All I can say is keep an eye on my blog 🤭

Do you have a personal favorite story you'd like to share?

I thoroughly enjoyed @adragonprinceswhore 's “Warm Me Up” one shot and I see she’s got a series inspired by Fleetwood Mac, which sounds amazing!

"Come Back To Me" by @assortedseaglass has a special place in my heart because it was the very first Billy Washington fic I have ever read. "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" was the first fic of @humanpurposes that I read and in my top 5 of favourite modern AUs.

Also, @endless-ineffabilities series Maroon captured my heart! It’s been months since I read it and I’m still thinking about it.

[devsgames]

Hi! I saw your post and decided to ask for an advice. I'm an aspiring level designer, but I have yet to start working on a portfolio 😅 I've finished level design course on my uni, and they taught us a lot of different things, but my question is, should I do a lot of level design for different games (like FPS, stealth, platformers) or just focus on what truly interests me? I worry that if I don't broaden my portfolio it will look bad, but then I think that designing for every single genre out there is kinda eh

Hi, thanks for the ask and congrats on finishing your course!!

First off I've answered some more generic portfolio advice in previous asks so I'd recommend checking some of those out too for wider advice on the subject of portfolios. I'll also include my obligatory plug to Anthony Panecasio's excellent "Pointers For Anyone Wishing to Build A Better Level Design Portfolio". Advice that works for most types of Portfolios, but written by an LD!

Per your question on LD specifically: I've absolutely been in your exact position as a level designer in college and I empathize - it's super stressful! A lot of this is pulled from my own experience:

The biggest thing I usually recommend is figure out what studio you want to work at and setting that as your goal, which will help to inform your portfolio work. Once you know where you want to end up it's much easier to tailor the kind of work you should be showcasing in your portfolio based on who you expect to be reading it.

When I was first building my portfolio I started wide and it just didn't work. I had CRPG mods, mobile arcade games, prototypes, narrative games, platformers, and everything else. I enjoyed making everything (and considered myself more of a general developer than an LD), and while I managed to get a co-op position at an excellent local indie studio, my portfolio was just too busy and a lot of people said my skillset seemed too broad.

Eventually I drew a line and made my goal Ubisoft, since they were a big developer who was also local to me. This made it way easier to know what to build: I designed some levels in Far Cry and focused my portfolio on showcasing them (which coincidentally the local Ubisoft branch was in the process of developing). It definitely wasn't the only thing that got me the work, but it made it way easier to design my portfolio knowing that I specifically wanted people from Ubisoft or a AAA to look at it, as opposed to a local indie studio who would have different ideas of what an ideal candidate would be. Instead I specifically made a portfolio that a AAA recruiter would look at and say "oh this person's work looks perfect for what we're doing".

It doesn't make it less stressful knowing you're potentially cutting out an avenue of interest from some recruiters from your portfolio, and it's a hard choice to make on what you want to focus on, but it's much more realistic than building a portfolio that tries to appeal to everyone. Like you said, it's hard to know how to focus a portoflio when taking a wide approach, and it's also something that will be a knock against you to potential hiring managers since it could represent you as someone who has an unfocused skillset or doesn't know what they want. So a portfolio that's too wide can mean you're shooting yourself in the foot to some degree.

This also doesn't mean "only plan to apply to one studio". Odds are good that if you make a portfolio that say, leans heavily into something like AAA 3rd person adventure level design work, it will still likely appeal broadly to many AAA studios working on similar projects. In that case, genre is more important than studios specifically. You still have many avenues to apply to, you just need to decide which types of studios you want to focus on applying to most, and which ones you're okay with potentially being less interested.

Also I think this is super worth mentioning:

I think one of the more frequent complaints I heard from peers in college was "I wish I didn't leave making my portfolio so late".

In my program we had a co-op class in our 3rd year which involved sending out applications and (since I have really bad anxiety around finances) I was determined to land a position that paid, so I started making a portfolio at the end of my 1st year. By the time I graduated I think it's safe to say that I had entirely re-designed my portfolio from the ground up maybe 4-5 times, and probably spent several hours every week modifying, adding and removing things from it. It's a constant, ongoing process and a big pain in the butt, but completely worthwhile.

No portfolio is perfect but getting it to a point where it's actually representative of your work, usable from a UX perspective for recruiters, and makes you seem like someone who has their stuff in order is really really time consuming. Portfolios can take a LOT of work and it's a time sink I think most people frankly don't see coming.

Not trying to put the Fear of God in you or anything, but the more time you give yourself to really start that process of chipping away at it the stronger it's going to be (and the less stressed you'll be about it on the whole!). You'll be thanking yourself the sooner you start it! :)

Anyway yeah, focus on establishing your goal and a studio to target and build from there, and give yourself as much time to work on it as you can.

Good luck!

[chippdhearts]

15 Questions, 15 Friends

tagged by the lovely @singinprincess, @katebeckets and @moxyphinx

Are you named after anyone? not technically but like i have the feminised version of my dads name. but he wanted me to be called smth else.

When was the last you cried? properly, like end of dec when i rewatched hill house. but i teared up reading a fic yesterday

Do you have kids? no

What sports do you play/have you played? none, i am a non sport doing person. if I lived somewhere warmer I would probably swim though.

Do you use sarcasm? me? sarcastic? never!

What is the first thing you notice about people? this si weird and oddly specific but like hair, then nose, then eyes (of we get to the point where I can make eye contact with them.)

What is your eye color? really dark brown, almost black (asian genes)

Scary movies or happy endings? scary movies

Any talents? idk like I write and erm I do origami.

Where were you born? England

What are your hobbies? being depressed watching tv/movies. going to the theatre (like musical theatre, not the cinemas/movie theatre). I game occasionally when something catches my interest.

Do you have any pets? two cats. Patchouli and Peregrine.

How tall are you? 5'4"

Favorite subject in the school? Probably Maths, but also like I did my degree in English/writing because I had a whole crisis between finishing school and going to uni.

Dream job? Like if money was no object I would want to write for theatre and/or TV. OR be a dramaturg, which is similar i guess, but more reasearch based.

I don't have 15 friends 😂 so I'm tagging some friends, no pressure, and whoever else wants to do this 🩵 @torturedpoets, @katherinebeckettrodgers, @emilylprentiss, @jackietaylors, @renrapp, @catstrophysics