#also yes i did quote a mitski song in this

[krowspiracyanon]

The more I look at my most recent art the more the flaws pop out. It looks amateurish in a way even my really old stuff never did. Not helped by the new-to-me manga style.

The size of the head could be brushed off as perspective (viewer is standing slightly above, and Dorian is leaning forward) but no.

It was simply made too large and was not resized when I had the chance. His face was also made too wide for the three quarter angle, which in reality should slim a face.

I even think the angle was a bit off in an unflattering way, making the face appear as flat and wide as possible. Remind me to check out some guides on photography blogs to work out wtf I did there.

Putting his muzzle on him made it worse. I'm thinking that the horizontal bars drew the eyes sideways.

Also the black parts securing it at the sides of his face were high visual weight, being large, solid, and very dark. I quote the definition of high visual weight - your eyes will be drawn to the parts that are "bigger in size, simpler in shape, use dark colors, or have high contrast." Those parts of the muzzle are all of the above and at the bad angle both sides were shown.

So yes, obviously your eyes will be further drawn from side to side emphasising the width. Mental reminder to take this into account next time.

Packing more hair on the other side of his face in an attempt to cover up some of the width only made his head look larger and disrupted the diagonal created by his body and hair. It messed with the composition.

Also with the position of his features (especially mouth) and the angle of the muzzle the chin should have been angled further up, blunted and foreshortened. Otherwise the features should have been lowered and the muzzle angle less severe.

As a tall adult man he also needed to be longer and sturdier in the body and limbs. I was trying to make him strong without being bulky but he looks too compact and delicate.

I also need to study and practice the curve of fringes (bangs) at different angles.

The grey of his hair and PJs were different and had different finishes but a bit monotonous.

Dorian's hair was also too cool and dark grey. He's an albino with pale peachy white hair. Maybe very pale greige. I keep giving him iron grey because I haven't yet chosen or mixed the right colour. I skipped the highlights and it looked very flat compared to his shiny pyjamas. It's also too straight and not fluffy.

The picture does have its charm though.

Dorian's expression is less soft and dreamy than the original inspiration but he looks giddy and lovestruck. Cute. I originally wanted to have his face and hair illuminated by pink light streaming through the window, and call it 'Pink In the Night' after the Mitski song.

My favourite bit is his shoulders and his hands. I was making educated guesses at anatomy from the shoulders and underarms (I haven't studied that yet) but I did put some thought and work in there. The hand and fingers are a little simple but I'm pleased with them. (Going back I would have coloured that little gap as flesh though, to show his thumb. It actually was flesh coloured and I went and absent mindedly screwed it up.)

I did learn a lot of new things doing it by the book. Especially with the inking, which made me change some brushes to suit my needs.

I'm very happy with actually doing the figure drawing from scratch rather than chicken scratching or guessing the strokes by eye, and using the grid method was a good guide.

Dividing the canvas into a grid of thirds ('the rule of thirds') will also be good for original composition if I get to that.

And at least I'm working out why I'm not satisfied with my work so I can break down each part, rather than just hating it.

I was initially trying a manga style due to being intimidated by fine art tutes and hoping it would help me work more efficiently. (Rather than getting stuck on detail and never finishing, or attempting things too advanced and getting frustrated.)

But it seems a little of what I've read and seen has soaked in. Perhaps I should get back to the fine art angle more because it seems I'm decent at rendering but also literally never learned the fundamentals.

There's a video by Stephen Bauman called "I wish I knew this when I was an art student" where he brings up something called 'blocking in'. Other videos on the sidebar refer to this as a quick method and maybe it'll work for me better than the unfamiliar manga style that results in fat heads.

He also talks about the fear factor and intimidation that can put someone off from art, which is very relevant to me. It was reassuring to hear that it's normal and there are ways to manage it.

[marbleheavy]

here are some of my Nico headcanons that nobody asked for!!

He collects things. Not just Mythomagic stuff like he did as a kid, but cool shells, and rocks, and weird glass figurines that everyone else thinks are terrifying, and books. He’s got them in jars or lined up on shelves and he just has so many things (Because for so long he had so few things that actually belonged to him that didn’t have to serve a very clear purpose, so now he just wants to keep whatever he’d like)

He reads SO much as an adult. A lot of it is nonfiction because he’s trying to catch up on what happened in the world while he was pulled out of it, but a lot of fiction too (not really fantasy though, that’s too close to home) and a lot of poetry. He can recite poems from memory and will just randomly quote them sometimes and it should be pretentious but it isn’t and his friends think it’s amazing (cue dramatically saying "till love and fame to nothingness do sink" anytime he's told he has to wait) (Also, he will rant about why Ted Hughes sucks at any point in time)

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again!! He is a Dungeon Master! He’s got a binder for all the notes for his current campaign and a notebook for ideas and special highlighters and pens that he only uses for D&D. Also, dice are definitely one of the things he collects and he keeps them in those clear, plastic bead containers with dividers and they’re sorted by number of faces and also ~vibes~ (for example, do a backflip D20 and life or death D20)

leather jacket Nico di Angelo? seen, respected, and appreciated. CARDIGAN Nico di Angelo? underrated! He has a couple oversized cardigans with buttons and big pockets that he adores. The first one he ever had he definitely stole from Will but now, whenever he comes across another similar one, he buys it. The pockets are filled with rocks and worn, mass-market paperbacks and pens. (Basically, I’m leaning hard into English Major Nico with his annotated books and glasses and cardigans) (Also, cardigan Nico and flannel Will but sometimes they swap)

He definitely cuts his own hair in the bathroom and he's gotten very good at it. He's had a range of haircuts, from long hair to a mullet to the shaved sides and fluffy top, but he always ends up back with a shaggy mop that Hazel likes to put little braids in (or sometimes pull the very back of it into two little pigtails) and with bangs that always end up in his eyes.

Sorry to reiterate the same point that's been made forever, but his wardrobe is pretty dark-toned. Obviously black, but he does like a good jewel tone, perhaps a maroon or an emerald. Anything really bright was either a gift or belongs to Will someone else. Also, gendered clothing means nothing to him. He wears what he wants to wear and he thinks it's cool as hell when he's wearing a skirt while sparring and it flares out dramatically as he twirls.

He's kind of picked up modern slang but he also uses a lot of slang from pretty much every decade he missed. It's also a 50/50 chance he's using it incorrectly. (examples include: 1) Leo says something that is definitely supposed to be funny and Nico stares at him, utterly emotionless, and says "Gag me with a spoon" in an alarmingly monotone voice, and 2) Anytime he says something snarky to Jason or Percy he starts it with "hey bestie..." and honestly, they're both just touched Nico called them "bestie" at all)

He adores Studio Ghibli movies and can be found humming the Ponyo theme song anytime he goes swimming (Will standing on the shore, looking around for Nico and he eventually spots him in the water. He wades out to Nico, all sunglasses that shouldn't look so cool and golden hair and chest, and just greets him with "Hey there, Neeks, how's my fishie in the sea?" and Nico can't decide if he wants to drown himself or kiss Will on his stupid mouth)

Speaking of movies, shortly after the Giant War, all of his friends (the Seven, Reyna, Will, probably Lou Ellen and Cecil, too) showed up at his cabin with blankets and snacks. They each brought their favorite movie or movies they think he needs to see to catch him up on the modern age. At first, he acts disgruntled that they're all there but he very quickly settles into the blanket fort Annabeth constructs and is quietly very grateful and excited that they cared enough to do this for him. They're all holed up in his cabin for a full day until they've finished every movie. (Percy brought Finding Nemo, Annabeth brought Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Piper brought Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Jason brought Captain America: The First Avenger (and Nico definitely says "that's gay" when Steve and Bucky say there "Until the end of the line" shit and everybody absolutely loses their minds), Hazel also is behind on movies but she brought either a very scary movie or Moana, Frank brought A New Hope (though he considered Brother Bear), Will brought Spirited Away, Cecil brought Back to the Future, and Lou Ellen brought The Princess Bride)

He can play the piano! He gets a piano for the Hades cabin and on nights where he can't sleep and the nightmares are really bad, he plays piano.

He will cry if he hears I Will by Mitski or Wasteland, Baby by Hozier, for different reasons but also kind of not (he wants to be loved)

Also, Nico and Dionysus being buddies! Nico jokingly says he'll host a bacchanal if Dionysus excuses him from certain camp activities and that's how Nico and friends end up wearing togas around a campfire, all very hesitantly holding cups of wine they aren't actually going to drink. It is definitely not a bacchanal, it's just a bad toga party (barely) but Dionysus accepts it and decides Nico is a Good One.

(Yes I did very badly make this stupid meme that somebody has definitely made a variation of before)

This is definitely not a complete list of headcanons but it's what I've got so far!

[darlingohsweetdarling]

hey, you. yes you. are you between the ages of 16 and 24? did you grow up in a smallish town and yearn for that small city life? have you never been in an ACTUAL romantic relationship so you find yourself romanticizing situationships? do you dye your hair and then regret it because you secretly like your natural hair color more? do you scoff at “gifted kid burnout” but also acknowledge you share many of those traits? do you ricochet between self-acceptance and self-doubt? 

do you LOVE circe by madeline miller? do you secretly enjoy john green books? were you a percy jackson kid? do you read too much bad poetry on the internet? did you have a john keats phase? are you a big fan of netflix’s i am not okay with this? how about search party on hbo max? 

do you LOVE to post sad shit on tiktok to songs by boygenius, mitski, & fiona apple? do you love to make word webs of those artists plus quotes from that book you read one time? do you add in joni mitchell and bob dylan for taste? do you yearn to hoizier? are you questioning whether or not i spelled that correctly?

if you answered yes to all the above questions, please know you are in no way a burden to your loved ones. also, stream too far gone by asenath rose on spotify. yes, this is self promotion. i don’t really know how this all connects, either.

[sumire-bride]

LIQUID SMOOTH

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

TRIGGER WARNING- INCEST, MASSIVE SEXUAL ABUSE TW, MENTAL ABUSE, NEGLECT, PULLING OUT HAIR and if there's anything else please let me know so I can add em. I care about you guys so do not read if you this will make you uncomfy :)

CHARACTERS- Ena, Xaing, Kyuufu, Chousoka, Oroshi, Chen, Sumire, Shuu, Reiji, Ayato, Kanato, Laito, Subaru.

AUTHOR NOTE- Hooooh boy, my little diva made this a rollercoaster to write, I love writing for this man sm istg, AND YES I DID PUT THE TITLE A MITSKI SONG I couldn't get creative for that part of this. But enjoy :)) (Also I quote a few mitski lyrics in here, REALLY RECOMMEND YOU LISTEN TO LUSH ALBUM BY MITSKI WILL MAKE READING THIS SM MUCH BETTER PLZZ) again little surprise at the bottom.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

The third son, when Ena was first born Kyuufu could have sworn he had finally made a girl but no, Ena was simply a divine looking child. If it weren't for him saying it "needed to be a girl" Kyuufu might have just used Ena for the plan. The plan, the plan that not only will change those six bastards lives but effected ours as well. If it weren't her then it wouldn't be such a pain to just open his eyes in the morning.

Ena a gift from god, just as his name suggests. He was an angel no a unseen creature no one has heard of. The smell of him burned the room of these.. Evil horrible demons noses. Even if he was standing behind a silky curtain.

“Ena.. Fix yourself.” Xaing cleaned the smeared eyeliner from under his eyes. Those green eyes that not only haunted Xaing but Ena himself. “Today is a important night.. There’s no time for imperfections and crying right now..” Xaing put her makeup back into her pocket. Fixing the wrinkles on his red hanfu. “Ena.."

"Don't let those people ruin you."

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

Ena and his brothers sat outside near the garden. It was against the rules to anywhere further then that. They were once close when they were younger, in fact it was hard to separate the three of them.

"Ena..! Come look at this..!" Chousoka yelled to Ena who was collecting the flowers.

"..What..? I'm doing something right now if you couldn't tell". Ena did as he was told walking towards Chousoka who was holding his hands in a little ball.

"BAA..!!" Chousoka opened his hands, a bug flying out of them right onto Ena's nose bridge. Ena screamed and shouted to get it off. He suddenly felt someone gently take it off with their finger letting it fly away.

"Chousoka..!! Don't do that you moron...!!" Ena shouted insults, he turned to look at who took the bug off of him. Oroshi, a kind quiet boy.

"Chousoka.. Don't put the poor bugs in danger for little schemes like this.. Are you okay Ena..?" His voice soft, Oroshi had a massive soft spot for Ena. Although soon he would find out that's only because he was the younger one here.

"Stupid Chousoka.. Teasing me this.. How dare he Oroshi..! Hmph.. It seems I am only able to rely on you.." He put his face onto Oroshi's chest. "At this point we should run away together and forget about stupid Chousoka" He said in a snarky tone.

"Stupid..?! What are you on about..?! You're the one who's dumb here. Ugly ugly Ena" He shouted back.

"Ugly..?! Ugly...?! Mother says I am a beautiful gift from god, that's why mother and father gave me this name."

"Ena." The boys bodies froze. Even just by his voice it startled them. They turned around to see their father, Kyuufu Kanashi. The other two would fall to his word but Ena on the other hand.. Not so much. "You three are too far and far too close to the gates. Come back at once." Oroshi and Chousoka ran to him immediately, standing next to his side. Ena however, stood still. "Ena, come to me"

"No." Ena told him sternly, with Kyuufu no definitely wasn't a word you wanted to say to him. He was shot back by shock that his son would say this to him.

"What.. Did you say to me..?" Ena got a shiver down his spine, he still however stood tall and proud.

"No---" Before he finished, Kyuufu hit Ena with his emerald staff. It stinged and was hard enough to knock the kid off of his feet. "Ah.. Ahh..." He made little noises putting his hand to his face.

"Do not disobey me.. Boy.." He turned around walking back, "Chousoka, Oroshi.. Inside" Chousoka and Oroshi stayed still for a moment, giving Ena concerning looks. Tempted to go and help him but very soon thinking back on it. Following behind Kyuufu leaving Ena to sit there in utter shock.

"They didn't.. Hey... Come back you two.. Help me..." He spoke, he couldn't yell due to the fear of Kyuufu. "Uh..." He sat shocked at his brothers immediate response to their father. He didn't like it. Ena wiped his cheek glaring at the house.

I suppose you could say that's when he became hateful of his brothers.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

"Ena darling come to me, come.." Xaing softly said to a young Ena who barely learned words or how to walk. She held her arms out with a faint smile on her lips. A quiet maid held onto him making sure he didn't fall.

"Ahh.." The maid letting go still keeping arms around him. One step, two step, three step towards Xaing then he finally fell into her lap, Xaing very happily scooped him up into her arms playing with his hair.

"Yes yes Ena dear very good..! Very very good." She smiled heading closer to his face kissing it. "My lovely little Ena.. Fufu.."

—ɤ𖧷

Xaing was Ena's main role model, he found her so beautiful and Magnificat I mean who wouldn't admire such a goddess? In Ena's eyes she couldn't do anything wrong, no matter how much she yelled and screamed at him to go away, no matter how many times she would get horribly drunk off of wine and got all sad and scared and begin to panic mistaking him for 14yr old self, trying to kill him. She would always stay a goddess.

"How... How dare you...?! Don't you torture me enough..?! Just leave me be..!!!" She became his main reason for such hatred for Kyuufu. How dare he hurt such a wonderful women. How could he? How was he able to and she just sits there. Ena wondered that to himself as he sat knees to his chest his tiny hands holding onto them. Every yell Xaing gave Kyuufu him yelling back the loud bangs made Ena jump every time.

"No... No no no...!!! Don't touch me..! Unhand me at once..! Have I not done enough?! I gave you children why do you need more..?! Let go.. Haah... Let go of me..!! UWAAHHH....!!!!!"

Even when she screams and cries. To Ena she will never be less beautiful.

"Sniff.. Sniff... Oh.. Oh Chun..." Ena was going for a quick walk. However he'd heard his mother whimpering in a corner. He'd stopped quickly in his tracks looking at his mother. Confused and not really sympathetic.

"Mother..? Why.. What are you doing..? Oh mother your clothes are messy..! Father will be mad if he..---"

"Don't speak about that vile man..!! He.. He shouldn't get so mad at me when he's the one who did this... Kuh..." Her words cut short by sobs, just hearing about him made her shiver in fear. She sat there with Ena half naked holding onto herself her face in her knees.

"But.. Why did father do this...?" Ena questioned. He kneeled down about to reach for his mother, before he could really think she pulled him close to her roughly.

"Ena.. Whatever you do.. Don't trust that man... Don't trust him.. He's horrible look what he did to your beautiful mother... He's ruined me.. He.. He took me away from everything.. Please.. Don't be like him or your cruel brothers.. You can't...! Okay you can't..!!" He fell into her chest wide eyed, his body stiff softening soon hugging her back including the half on closed she used to cover herself. "Promise me.. Sniff.. Don't fall for his trap.. Don't let him ruin you the way he did to me... Promise me.. Ena promise me.."

"Yes mother.. I promise.. I promise I will hate those people with every fiber in my being.." He tightened his grip onto her.

"I'll do anything for you mother.. Anything..."

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

There was many times Ena walked in on horrible situations, however if he had to pick 13 different memories of his mother walking into the bedroom in which she gave birth was the worst ones. Because as every child came the worse she became. The more distant she got. And more hateful.

"Gr.. Gaaah...." Xaing groaned.

"You're doing very good Mrs. Kanashi..! Just a few more pushing okay..?" The doctor did his best to encourage Xaing. Yes yes just a few more pushing birth hopefully a girl pray it's a girl.

Ena and his now 5 younger brothers with Chousoka and Oroshi. They stood quiet listening to the groans and occasional shouts from their mother.

The screams got louder and louder, this isn't the first time nor will it be the last where she'll scream. He's gotten used to that fact. Though he hates it, louder they got the sooner he knew it will end. Even if it's not his 'parents' yelling at each other. He still flinches at the sudden yelling.

Just as he thought. Louder meant it ends, besides the fact you could hear the loud noise of crying and the heavy breathing of Xaing. Not only that but TWO cries of help in the room.

"No it couldn't be.. Twin's..? Are they both girls..?" Chousoka questioned. I hoped so, if he had two then he wouldn't need the rest of them and he could throw them away and leave them alone.

Kyuufu walked out. We all looked at his face to see what gender it was, the same as every try. He looked angry, stressed, and confused. They knew what that face meant. A boy, no two boys.

"Boys.. I see, a shame but you can simply do it again father I believe in you" Chousoka spoke more, trying to lighten his fathers mood. But per usual as their last name suggests he stayed upset. We are still no longer free from his grasp. Kyuufu walked past them walking into the distance.

Ena as well pushed past everyone, pushing the door slightly open. Only to see his mother softly and painfully breathing.

"What.. What do you want, get out of here." Xaing quietly shouted at Ena.

The more she had the worst she got.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

((GETS TRIGGERING FOR SEXUAL ASSULT HERE))

-

Father stormed out of the room in which mother had given birth to yet another boy, this one was weak looking definitely won't make it far in our household.

We still were not free. Chousoka yelled at me to get the poor man some tea to calm down. I hated this house there were too many hallways, too many locked doors, too many everything. Yet for some reason it managed to be so empty and so suffocating all at the same time.

The more I grow the more intoxicating I got for others, however the prettier I got the more the water rises to my face, reaching my torso at the moment. I open the door my nose meeting that burning old gross smell of man. An old man.

"Your tea." I harshly put it onto his desk. Not making eye contact with him, although my eyes are just as intense as his for some reason they give me more intensity more then anyone else. I don't think I've made eye contact with my father in such a long time and I'm glad about it.

"I've told you to knock multiple times Ena, you don't ever listen to me.." He spoke irritated. Out of everyone I'm more caplet of doing that and that makes me feel more proud then you think. He finally had some form of feeling for me.

I looked at him huffing and glaring before turning around to leave the room.

"You look.. Just like your mother when she was your age." He spoke, the sound of his voice makes me feel heavy. I stop, turning around looking at him with a questioning look. "You grew up very nicely"

He wasn't wrong. I grew me more beautiful then most, perfect even. Like a god amongst others, I was better then everyone else. I grew up with very smooth skin, like liquid. I can make anyone become puddy in my hands, it's not hard. I grew up with smooth and soft hair, it's long and it's longer and longer. I realize how much I try to imitate mother but just like the beauty in China myths and history Daji took form of a beautiful women but in reality was just a fox. My eyes however.. Ugly and horrifying. Beauty was my everything and because if I wasn't beautiful then I wouldn't know how to live.

"What does that mean..? You admiring such a perfect person like myself isn't surprising but when it's you.. It's disgusting." I continued to glare at him before touching the door handle. Before I knew my father was standing.. Right in front of me. "Uh.."

"Yes yes.. You look exactly like your mother. A little too much if anything. With both me and her looks I know now how daughter will be beautiful. " His voice was disgusting, his breath was warm and horrid. He got closer to me I stepped back more. This was like a fox and a rabbit, expect.. I was the rabbit. I didn't notice I was completely to the fall and my father was to his knees holding onto my hand. "Yes very very beautiful." He kissed my hand. I wanted puke his lips were so cold. I was taught from a young age beauty meant everything.

What good is beauty if no one desires it? My beauty would be wasted if it wasn't used and that's no good. I am completely unafraid of my situation this is normal right? This is someone who is simply using my beauty for good reasons. He kissed my wrist this time. The higher he got the more closer he got the more the water rised to my face. Now I am drowning in whatever this is.

Young beauty is the best to rip out of a young person. I have no were else to go, why should I fight it? I'm about to be ruined by age so it's best to get it over and done with. I'm ripe and my skin is ready to be ripped apart in the most painful way possible.

Little did I know that this was put me in never ending circle of loop.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

I found myself running back to him each time. He kept me in this.. Weird state of mind. For many months it started to get more and more constant where I felt if I wasn't near him I would pass away. He makes me feel this type of sickness I want to learn more about.

I wanted to learn more about this person who I call father. I was young and stupid I promise you I didn't know what I doing really. Or did I? I'm not really sure, but I still go back to him all the time. I knew I should cry about it but I can't help but adore this feeling of 'power'. However I still continue to have this burning passion of rage for him.

All my brothers knew except for one. Kai didn't know about it. Chen could careless including Sing and Ame. Everyone doesn't care. I don't care.

I was honestly just a little happy he finally showed me some form of feeling. Even if it was just this. However.. It was finally born.

"A girl..?! A girl you say..?! That's.. That is amazing..! My what a miracle this is..!" Father shouted it finally happened. The plan could finally be fulfilled none of us would have to die. However none the less.. He would die to from the mans hands. Chosuoka brought out the thing

It was.. Disgusting, gross, smelly, and.. Beautiful? But looking at this child only made me want to kill it. This here is.. The reason everything happened. The reason mother refuses to look at me. that thing is the reason. Upon seeing it my whole world went red and I felt dizzy.

I saw mother from the crack of the room mother looked finished. She looked done with it all. That is the reason.

It managed to ruin our lives with out even being born.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

-

Ena, his brothers, and Xaing were brought to fairly smaller house. Still big and it had a traditional Japanese vibe to it, it was placed on a hill and it was indeed a very nice home. They were still given maids, servants and such. Those servants were the ones that were fired from the other job.

All 14 of them were no use anymore. Although before leaving Kyuufu had pulled all of the brothers aside, well.. almost Everyone. The 12 stood there in his office. While Chousoka and Oroshi stood next to him behind the desk

“Finally.. After all of my constant tries my beautiful daughter is born.. My beautiful beautiful daughter” Beautiful. The very same words that repeated that Kyuufu used to describe Ena. How come he was using those words for it. He thought he was the beautiful one here. Why is he using those words for it? When the word beautiful belongs to him and him only.

“You called us all here.. Get to the point instead gettin’ all gushy about that kid” Kai said, if Ena had to get along with any of his brothers it would be him. “Get to the point.”

“Ah.. Right..” Kyuufu was silent for a minute. “I’ve had this discussion with Oroshi and Chousoka already after the birth of Sumire but.. I have a very special task.. For all of you.. It's quite a important task." Kyuufu told them, before speaking again he stood up using his staff.

"I am sure all of you are aware of him. Half of his plan, you were all born to his will although you now utterly useless to me. At least in that sense" Useless, yes very useless group of failed attempts. However Randoms' scarps can be reusable in some ways.

"Well.. Sumire is a very important figure in all of this." Just as Ena figured, his conclusion proved right his suffering was due to her having to be born. This strike a bigger anger into him. Please stop talking...

"You all have a choice, you choose between protecting and keeping her safe in the sanity of me and her home. Or you choose to be disobedient." Kyuufu had his eyes closed, he knew how much they frightened them. On purpose he opened them bringing a cold air into the room. "Although I do expect all you to keep her at a proper mind. Do I make myself clear?"

"Haha.. What a funny joke.. You can't serious father" Ena spoke, he laughed in denial. Protect it? Make sure she will stay 'pure'? What type of joke is that?

-

"Let me repeat it, keep her safe, make her know she isn't going to leave until I say so.. Keep her pure and ready for the plan. As you all.." Don't say it, please don't say it. Don't make me hate it more then I already do. Let me learn to love that thing.

"You all exist for her, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her so the least you can do is that. For his sake we must stay cautious and prepared." He said it. Was I only a product of it? Was what he told me many times a lie? I thought I was the pretty one.

Guess not. Now I sit here, alone and cold. No one to make me feel something, just something. It didn't matter if it was painful feelings, feelings that stab me through my chest feelings that are screaming scratching.

"Ena..!! Just what are you doing sitting there looking stupid..! Help me at once..!" Mother yelled, looked back to see she wasn't even looking at me simply yelling. At least.. She isn't trying to kill me.

My world went blurry, my mothers screaming got louder and louder for me. The louder she got the more ringing to my ears it brought me. My body shook my hands clenched.

"Ena..!!!!" She pulled onto my hair.

"Silence you stupid wench..!!"

Our relationship was never the same.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

Before mother, I met that.. Thing when it was 1, it was small and really pale. Like a ghost, welcome to that part of the family. Oroshi, Chousoka, and the twins gushed over it. It's now 2yrs old.

'oh she's such a angle sent from the very heavens above.' 'my whole life is right in front of me' 'My sworn duty is to protect this girl'. More and more, it disgusts me. Just the smell of it was fire to my nose.

"Ena.. Do you not desire to come see Sum--" The rest of it's name rang my ears. For some reason, I can't bring myself to look at it with happiness, or the feeling of safety from it. Although maybe that's a good thing. He seemed undyingly happy. Kyuufu that is.

"Hmph.. Just the sight of that thing is revolting.. My eyes feel like they are about to evaporate just from the mere sight it.. I'm leaving being in this house brings back unwanted memories." I turn back walking out of the door. He followed behind me reaching me like a wolf I didn't notice, and the circle was back in place.

A few months had passed, and mother I had seen was getting along a little too well with the thing. This monster this demon ruined her life no our lives yet she still.. It's weird. I walked passed her one day playing with it's hair, she was braiding it. My mother used to braid my hair, all the time. The more I saw her with it the more I get angry. Father called me into his office.

I feel sick. The mere sight and smell of him hurts me physically. I hate this stupid circle I've put myself in. He uses me over and over and over again, I've lost track of time. After everything was done I was all completely undone. I heard the sound of high heels walking near the room. There was a light from the side of my eye and two black figures, I didn't notice at all until a few seconds they had opened the door.

She looked.. Unimpressed with me. Disappointed, disgusted in me, I could only give her forgiving eyes and scrunched together eye brows. I thought she'd maybe just maybe cut the circle in half but she.. Just walked away with a huff.

I watched them walk away without knowing why.. Why..? Mother..

-

They got sent back to were they stayed, the rest of the boys left for bed and Ena was going to but before he could leave Xaing spoke.

"I know what you were doing you filthily animal." She said sternly.

"Wh-what..?" He stuttered on his words. He turned around and looked at his mother his eyes wide. "I.. Mother it is not what you think.. I don't.. I don't want to I just.."

"How long.. How long has this been going on.." She questioned, she clutched her fists not staring at him. Per usual. "How long.."

"Guh.. Uhm.. It's.. Ah..." He couldn't get the proper words out. Talking about it made his skin crawl and his organs do backflips. "A.. Few years, after.. Keiji and Shoji were born the same day.. While you were resting he.. He.. He hurt mother, you were right I was foolish, I feel for the monsters trap. I can't get out of it.. Please.. Mother.." He felt he was about to cry, cry tears of anger and relief finally someone wanted to help him. "It never stops.. I just want it to stop please forgive me mother.."

"You probably wanted it didn't you.." Ena paused for a moment, he looked up his shoulders fell "Always trying to copy me ever since you were a child. It was only obvious you would pull stunt like this. You truly are disgusting Ena. I can't even call you my child." Her words were harsh, brutal and a lie. Finally after many years of no eye contact. She looked at him with a look she had given everyone else but him and Chen, I horrifying glare. "You asked for it didn't you.. It is was you.. Showing yourself around like that, you have no shame.." She walked away. Disappearing in this very very.. Very dark house.

"..." He couldn't muster up words. I just stood there with his head low. That would be the last night Ena cried, but the first night he was began to be more aware of his anger.

One day he was going to kill these sons of a bitches.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

-

It got older and older and I grew more hateful. It was more nicer looking then me, everyone liked it yet no one bated a eye to me. Did I waste my beauty? I think I did. On a waste of space a man I called father. However I think it's because it's younger and I got older. They don't like you when your old and gross. It came to me one day at the age of 6. It looked.. Happy to see me.

"..Ena-nii... You look.. So.. Pretty.." It's tiny voice rang my ears, I couldn't make out half of what it said.

"Get away from me you rat.." I told it, it was just like a rat.

"Uwahh... Ena-nii has graced me with a compliment... I feel so blessed to be given such names..."

"Your such an idiot.. Has that man taught you nothing..? Goodness I should teach you a thing or two, get it together you dumbass, your useless to this world, a complete waste of space." I insulted once more. This felt so good. I've never felt more empowered. This meant I could tear apart her petals and father could deem her as 'impure' and I can ruin his plan. It's nice knowing that.

"..Fufu... Oh Ena-nii... You are so amazing.. I am deserving of such an amazing big brother... Fufu.." Amazing?

"Your filthy.. God.. Stop being so damn weird...!! Someone get this rat out of my sight..!" It didn't leave, instead looked at me with admiring eyes. It only made me grow Angier.

I picked up a vase and I threw it at me, she fell backwards and I began to shout at her more. "Filthy useless thing..! Who do you think you are..?! Crawl to my feet and ask for forgiveness..!!" It held onto it's head. It began to crawl towards me clinging to my legs.

"Forgive me Ena-nii... I did not mean to.. Cause you any harm... Forgive me... Forgive me... Forgive me..." She did.. Exactly as I wanted her to do. Her voice became weak as was her head was bleeding, I kicked it off of me she made a yelping noise, she looked as though she was about to cry. That made me so unreasonably joyful. Here I was smaller then everyone else and now finally I can make someone smaller. THIS is what power feels like.

"I hate you.. Don't look at me with those cursed eyes you filthy animal..!!" I smashed a cup to the floor, it flinched. Screaming more 'forgive me's'.

This child was a useless waste of space.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

The more time went on the more I got a hold of myself and the circle was more triangle shaped. On one or more occasions he'd call me into his office and the triangle would take it's proper shape again. I began making him upset on purpose, I avoid mother a lot.

I am now 18, meaning the ceremony must begin it's become my turn to be broken, to become a full fledged Kanashi. At least that's what he says. This wouldn't be my first time attending one as my siblings all have had one at 10 and then one at 18. Now it's my turn.

-

"My ceremony should be the very best looking, magnificent and all. No mistakes anywhere you understand..?! Someone as great as me deserves the most outstanding ceremony..!" Ena spoke proudly. His hand was on his fathers desk, Kyuufu's eyes closed in semi annoyance.

"Yes yes..." He sighed.

"It's the least you could do for me.."

"Ena.. You do know what this ceremony means right..? You know what will happen right..?" Kyuufu said "all of those clans including ours are there.. 'the moon ceremony', you understand don't you..? This isn't fun and games Ena.."

"I'm way more aware of that than any of you think I am. I'm ready for it, they can try all they want but I won't be tainted by the mouths of those creatures.” Ena told him, he had planned to not let himself become exactly what they wanted, he won’t cry, he look like he’s in pain. He won’t let them get what they want out of him.

“Remember something, we can not have any screw ups.. Don’t let your rebellious attitude get in the way of this.. If something goes wrong you’ll be the one making up for it understand..?”

"I get it.. Now leave me be, you smell like shit father." Ena looked his father, who was too close for comfort it would be a understatement to say Ena wasn't uncomfortable. Kyuufu leaned closer to him and.

"Guh.. You bit me.." Kyuufu's mouth began to bleed, Ena stepped back running out to find a bathroom.

-

"Cough.. Cough... Gaaahhh..." I found a bathroom, I fell to my knee's and gagged, coughed. I stuck my fingers into my mouth to puke I held onto my throat and squeezed, anything to get that toxic out of my mouth, off my lips. One single touch from that god awful man I despise with my being is enough to kill me. Like a world wide disease yet it only affects me. Wipes me out in seconds.

I felt this wet drips of something fall from my eyes, dripping into the toilet they fall from the upper part of my nose, my snake like green eyes had gotten blurry and suddenly my ears started to ring once more. I moved shakingly to put my hands onto my ears to silence the overbearing sounds. "A-.. Gnn..." My eyes shut tightly. These drips of water fell to me sounded like loud splashes. They were heavy and painful. During these bad times it was hard for him to realize he was being watched by a certain brother behind the door.

I have realized even more that I can't let myself be what they want me to be. I refuse to do what he wants me to. No matter what I won't.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

-

"Ena.. Are you almost ready..?" Ena, a very beautiful boy, putting on the rest of his makeup, he'd scared off the people whom were supposed to help him by yelling at them. 'you did this wrong' 'that's the wrong colour' he'd just decided to do it on his own. Xaing was watching, she herself dressed in a red hanfu.

Xaing got closer to him, pulling his face towards her looking down at him. "You learned from me.. However this shade doesn't suit you well, go for a darker red. This one." A blood colour of lip gloss. Xaing painted his lips with it. "See, look.. How better is that..?" Ena looked at himself in the mirror, he was covered in the colour red. The red colour matching his pitch black hair and ghost skin.

However he looked just as lifeless as his mother did. This was not a happy day. Xaing began to braid his hair a red ribbon intertwining with the locks of it.

"Now.. Are you ready..?"

"..." He paused. "Yes.."

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

There should be no reason I should get dragged into this. The plan that we were all born into even if us boys were the failed parts of it, I don't understand why Chousoka is getting all worked up over nothing.

-

Chousoka, Oroshi, and Ena all sat in silence in the car driving to see Sumire.

"I can not believe father.. Sending her away to.. live with vampires.. Vampires..!? Is it not in our blood to hate them..?!" Chousoka exclaimed.

"Chousoka.. You knew this would happen one day.. This is fathers business now, we no longer have to be apart of the plan." Oroshi responded. He was the most calmer out of the rest of them.

"Not the point here, do you three not understand..? She's gone.. I can't.. I can't just let her go like that, In can't let her slip past through just like that.. it's too soon... I will save her."

"You truly are a piece of work.. It's so sad how you actually think your gonna get away with this.. You do know who's sons those boys are from right..?" Ena sounded annoyed. "Karl-Heinze is no joke.. You are being a idiot per usual. Just deal with the fact that we are no longer useful."

"Who on earth are you calling a idiot..?!" Chousoka shouted. "You be silent at once, if father heard how you were talking right now he'd--"

"We're here.."

There stood a massive dark mansion, they felt a shiver up their spins from the cold and bad aura they'd gotten from the place. When the car door opened the smell of vampires was strong. Too strong, however the smell of a women was just as strong. Reconizing it immediately, Sumire.

"She is here.." Oroshi said, walking out of the car the other two following behind. The car driving away, there they were standing alone in front of this house.

"Hmph.. Fairly small. I've seen bigger.. For vampires I'd expect more then this" Ena mumbled. "Ugh.. And this smell... The smell of vampires makes me dizzy." There were pros and cons to have the nose of a Kanashi.

"Lets go.." They'd began walking to the entrance, the door had opened before they could. A female maid had opened it, looking generally pleased to these good looking men but none the less she wasn't going to let these good looking shady men into the home.

"Eh.. Please leave..." She said nervously.

"Now there isn't such a need, please let us in. No need to be cautious" Chousoka flashed her a smile, she felt herself swept off her feet. She was about to decline once more before the sound of a man came.

"Excuse me.. But who might you three be..?" They'd recognized the smell after a few seconds, hearing the voice of the person was much more helpful, it was him. Reiji Sakamaki.

"Ahh.. I thought we'd never meet again.. Reiji." Chousoka and Reiji left on.. Rather better terms then the rest of his brothers did with the other ones. However it was only better terms, not saying it was good.

"You.. Not only one but three of the Kanashi's, oh how I feel so honoured to have the three eldest's of Kyuufu Kanashi in my presence.." Reiji said sarcastically, Reiji truly pissed Ena off, he got reminded of Chousoka from him too much.

"Hmm.. How I enjoy your sarcasm Reiji. Tell your maid to let us in, if you'd be so kind." He gave him a passive aggressive smile, the maid moved out of the way.

"Ah yes.. Come to my house uninvited and me not let you inside, just were are my manners..?" Sarcasm. Ena had to laugh, it was nice seeing Chousoka with someone who could give him a run for his money.

"Yes well you do no how I enjoy doing what I please without permission."

"Haah.." Reiji pushed up his glasses. "Just.. Tell me what you three are doing here, I doubt you'd come here without any business here"

"You know why I'm here, where is she..?" Chosuoka had gotten a serious face. Meeting Reiji's glare at the mention of 'she'.

"Hoh..? So that's why huh..? You've in search of Sumire I see..? Haha.. Hahaha... I have to laugh that truly is such a funny reason to come here.." He laughed, Ena couldn't help but glare at that. "You do know.. That my father would kill you if you tried to get in the way of our affairs. That women belongs to us now, we can take it from here. She's become our loyal servant. You might as well walk out the door."

"I'm not leaving until I get her out of this hell hole. Your father means nothing to me, I could kill him if I pleased." Chousoka responded. Sounding more irritated then before.

"Hm.. You are laughable Chousoka Kanashi."

"Ugh... The smell of you in disgusting... My nose stings..." Ena put a hand on his mouth.

"I could say the same to you, the over sweet smell is too much." Reiji spat back.

"Ufu..~ Is that who I think it..? Three as well..? My what a surprise..!"

"Laito.." Oroshi noticed, "it's not just you either is it..?"

"Nope~"

"Tch.. You three..? The hell ya doin' in our home...?!" Ayato Sakamaki.

"Ne.. Teddy.. This sweet smell is so strong... Yet what's displayed out in front of me isn't appetizing." Kanato Sakamki. The triplets gathered together, following each other like little ducks.

"Haah... My sleep ruined for these freaks..? Annoying.. Very very annoying." Shuu Sakamaki.

"..." Subaru Sakamaki, standing at the top of the stairs, saying nothing but scowling look at the three. Light shining from him. He seemed as though he'd been hiding something behind him.

"Oh my, if only the rest of my dear younger brothers were here to experience such a amazing moment." Chousoka smirked, he seemed to be getting off to the fact he was seeing all six of boys he'd been told so many stories about.

"I'm gonna puke... This.. This smell is unbearable..." Ena's grip onto his mouth tightened. However add onto the smell of six of these, a smell of another catch to his nostrils. Not only him but Oroshi and Chousoka as well. A far too familiar smell hiding behind Subaru.

"The fuck you looking at..?" Subaru said. His glare getting worse then before, sending menacing looks their way.

"We all know who's behind you... You aren't slick." Oroshi gave a side glare to Subaru. He could be scary when he wanted.

"Tut.. Why should I..? What do you get out of it..?"

"I don't get anything, however... It is best you move." Oroshi was more stern that time. His glare shooting into Subaru, however he stayed where he was. "Sumire is no fool.. She knows better, I personally don't plan to take her away.. However I'm not sure how I like you keeping my sister away from me when I came all this way just to see her... Now move, before I do something about it." Oroshi sounded threatening. Subaru stayed still, looking anxious and wary.

"I see... I didn't want to play this way.. But.. You have left me no choice." Ena knew what tactic he was talking about, Sumire would fall for that instantly. Anyone would. "Sumire, my dear come out from there, I missed you so dearly." His words enticing. Noticing a little twitch at Subaru's arm.

"Sumire. It's best for all of us if you come out.." Words slowly fading from sweet and tender. "Sumire.. I'm not asking you." The sound of her name began making Ena's ears ring once more.

"Sumire... Sumire... Sumire this is a order...!! Come out this instant..!!" And that was that. Sumire came from behind running towards him immediately. Hugging him almost fearfully yet excited.

Oroshi used to do that to me. When I didn't listen.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

In the end, they managed to score a few nights here, by Sumire's request. Oroshi and Chousoka were over with Sumire. It'd been too long they felt they were about to rip their faces off. Ena stayed in his bedroom hiding. Brushing his hair in the mirror he caught onto a persons smell that entered the room as well as someone watching.

"Do you honestly think I'm a fool..? I know your there.. Laito." The calm face he had before became annoyed and irritated.

"That's my name don't wear it out." Laito spoke teasingly. "Thought I'd come chat, you know.. It's been so long.."

"Not long enough.. Get out. If it's nothing important then I don't care." Ena tried to get him out of the room. However this is LAITO sakamaki we are talking about. No means yes.

"Hooh.. How your words wound me.. You're telling me you didn't miss an old friend..? Oh how mean..~" Laito teased. Placing his hand on the chair leaning. "Drinking wine I see..? Are you doing that because of Sumi..--"

"Silence...!!" Ena shouted. "Don't you care say that things name.. Not in front of me.. She should be dead right.." Ena stood from his seat. Giving an angry look to Laito.

"Fufu.. Hit a nerve didn't I..? I knew you hated your sister but I didn't think this much. How sad.. I actually like her, maybe we aren't alike in that sense." He said. 'alike' who when where in what universe where they alike? Ena thought to himself, he stared at him confused. Before speaking once again.

"You think we're alike..? On what planet did you learn that on?" Ena chuckled. "I am not like some vile creature, don't put me to your level. Haha.. I'm not sure I enjoy your sense of humour." Ena stepped forward making eye to eye contact with him.

The air tense, bringing a weird aura that was tight around the air. "Do not assume I won't end you right here and now.. I would if I could." Ena deciding to play along with the little teasing tones. "Your a sad sad man Laito.. I wonder what poor miss Cordelia would have to say about how you've become.. She'd be pleased wouldn't she..? That her son became a year round whore just like herself. Laughable, like mother like son I suppose." Ena looked to his side keeping his pride.

Laito's smile dropped, while Ena's stayed. Ena's pushed onto the bed next to them, this position reminded him of someone. Who was it again? He wondered, the thought made his ears ring.

Laito squeezing his throat hard. Tightening the grip onto Ena's wrist with his other hand. "Your heart is racing.. Am I scaring you..?" Laito whispered in his ear. "You should know your place.. Ena."

"Look at your hands.. Pretty boy, what do they tell me hmm..? That you are a sad weak simple human." THIS was what Ena craved.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

Ena went back after the few weeks of being there. He soon learned if he stayed there any longer he'd explode. He never had to have any business with his father again, Kyuufu was officially done using his little scraps. No longer would he have to worry about being useful for something. Yet.. He's still able to hear the faint whispers of him.

His cold hands still linger onto him and even though he hates that man with his whole soul. He still yearns for him, he yearned for some form of love no matter how horrible it was. No matter no how much he'll be damaged over and over again. He wanted some form of affection.

Would or could someone spare him a glance, maybe he'd wasted his beauty, his youth. He was used up, dry and old. I refuse to let go of myself.

“Why didn’t you ask for help?” Kai asked Ena. They sat near a waterfall cherry blossoms fell. April was a terrible year.

“Ena.. Why..? I could’ve helped you if you just.. Said something” Kai asked again, why? Why although Ena sat there his legs crossed arms in his lap watching the waterfall from on the cliff saying nothing. Eyes full of nothing so empty yet so full it was strange. “Ena.. Why..?” He spoke again.

The wind blew causing more and more cherry blossoms to fall and dance around them. It was golden hour meaning he wouldn’t be up yet. HE wouldn’t be awake. Ena still sat there thinking. The wind was so strong it blew his ribbon away making his hair fall out now embracing the wind. He turned to look at Kai, for what felt like years of keeping quiet.. No not quiet but finally addressing that big elephant in the room he smiled and said.

“What help was needed?.”

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

Ena Kanashi, the the third of the Kanashi family son. A gift from god as his name suggests standing in front of the red silky curtain. His smell of sweet sweet blood entering before he could. His beauty like no other. At least.. For the son of the family.

For he was a scrap project. A recyclable piece of crumpled paper, he was once 'clean', he was once a very happy child. But because of the hands of man he has become 'unclean'. So now he stands here, 18yrs old in a flowing gorgeous very clean and unwrinkled hanfu. In that night he was covered in red.

One tear fell from his face from him blinking, was he sad? He wasn't really sure. Scared maybe but that's not what he wanted to do. His face stayed emotionless while a few tears fell. Xaing wiped them with a wipe.

"Fix yourself" Fix yourself. As if he wasn't trying to. He looked right in front of him, his mother going on. It was hot, he felt himself burning. His mother went on. "Ena.. don't let those people ruin you.."

There it was. The curtains opened and the eyes of many would see Ena in all his glory. One step two step three step. Stop. Get another good look of him. There laid a table, a table.. One step three four seven. Click and clack in the full moon of night.

"Lay here." He did as he was told. Sitting there with all eyes on him. All eyes on him. "Ena Kanashi.. The third son. The gift sent from god. Allow us to have our feast."

Ena moved down the side of his hanfu, showing his skin. "Eat me" Just let him let go of himself, let the ringing stop as tonight it was uncontrolled.

As if in instance, they moved to him like dogs. Held downwards,

-

"Haha..!! Do what you came to do.. You filthy disgusting animals...!!!" Spare me some mercy, spare me some mercy.

Tears fell from my face, i laughed uncontrollably. “Eat me..!! You filthy creatures…!”

I can take a little bit more. Just a little more, I believe I can take it. For I can take just a little more, I promise.

“Haahhh…. Haha… Have I.. done enough..?” It’s hot, open a window for me so I can breath. The world is gone and it’s simply me.

A gift from god, what my name suggests.

𖧷ɤ———ɤ𖧷

Admin- if you read this far, Ena and you will burn a house down

[thehealingsystem]

For this, just out of curiosity- what fandoms are you in? Just the ones that you might be willing to talk about, and stuff...

okay okay okay I'll be specific about this

Bendy and the Ink Machine - Sub Fandoms: Cracked Glass AU, Hell's Studio AU, into Creatorship (Henry x Joey), Henry Stein himself can be considered one I love him

Five Nights at Freddy's - Sub Fandoms: Blueycapsules (FNAF fanverse/comic), His Empire of Dirt fanfic (though I've separated myself from it bc of fear of being excluded due to my orientation/identity). I also love Henry x William

My Hero Academia - Sub Fandoms: BakuDeku ship (I've lost my hyperfixation on this tho trying to get it back, haven't caught up with the manga in months)

NateWantsToBattle (musician) - not much sub fandoms, maybe if nwtb's egos could be considered one? I ship Phantom x Natemare (also super hyperfixated on this one)

CG5 (musician) - idk he's super cool, not into the mcyt thing but I've been listening to him since 2017

Undertale - okay while I do like it a lot I did miss the fandom phase for it. I think I would adore it a lot more if I got into it sooner. Though I absolutely did listen to undertale songs I will quote To the Bone word for word

Literally Any Popular Indie Game During 2017/2018 - Hello Neighbor? Doki Doki Literature Club? Tattletail? Baldis Basics? All yes

Death Note - I decided to binge watch it one day it was p cool

The Walten Files - drunk by the living tombstone is totally felix kranken's theme song

Steven Universe - I was ACTIVELY in the SU fandom on twt at some point. Not hyperfixated anymore on it but I still like it. Oh and a sub fandom I was in was for the SU Gone Wrong AU

Resident Evil 7 & 8 - Not very into the other games but I loved these two and ethan winters. also ethan x heisenburg ❤️❤️

Some Animes - I've watched other animes such as Parasyte and The Promised Neverland but I can't remember all of em so if u name one I'll probs know it

Fanfiction In General - dang I love fanfiction. some of my fave tropes are: enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers, childhood friends to lovers, hanahaki disease, unrequited love, fluff/angst, hurt/comfort, hurt no comfort, and I kinda like fics who are more canon compliant than divergent

Some Other Bands/Musicians I Like: the living tombstone, my chemical romance, get scared, jt music, dagames, boy hero, mother mother, mitski

eh I probably have more I can't remember but yeah this is about it????

[radiorenjun]

my first and last || huang renjun

¤ pairing : huang renjun x reader

¤ genre : fluff, slight crack, major angst, romance, drama, slight fantasy! au, slight coming of age!au, first love!au, slight 1880s!au, adventure!au, painter!renjun x street singer!y/n. runaway!au

¤ synopsis :  Huang Renjun was born on the coldest day on earth, which causes his heart to be frozen solid, requiring a replacement. The makeshift Doctor, Madam Wendy, who provides midwifery and medical services to the poor and the desperate of Edinburgh, grafts a miniature cuckoo clock in order to save it.

However his newfound cuckoo clock heart was so fragile that it could end him in a terrible fate of death if he does not follow the three rules said doctor had provided for him. One of which was he must never fall in love. Do come and enter this adventure through Renjun’s eyes as he falls for a street singer who hates wearing glasses despite of her poor eyesight.

¤ warnings: character death, HEAVY angst, mentions of blood, loss of family member, reader has terrible eyesight and is painfully oblivious, Madam Wendy mentions about her abortion, maybe some swearing (do people even swear in the olden days?), historical inaccuracies is sexy, heartbreak, renjun is mentally exhausted, mentions of taking ones life (once), adults smoking, reader wears glasses at the end. shakespeare shaming because i have a grudge against that man. hISTORICAL INNACURACIES. Renjun gets slapped by Wendy once, renjun gets hypothermia. i feel like this was quite rushed idk

¤ word count : 29.2k

¤ heavily inspired by  La Mécanique du cœur (the movie, not the novel because I’m not that cruel)

¤ playlist: my everything - nct u, instagram - dean, wayo - bang yedam, francis forever - mitski mitski, anxiete - pomme, faded in my last song - nct u, line without a hook - ricky montgomery, moi cest - camelia jordana, my first and last - nct dream, beautiful time - nct dream, 

¤ a/n: special thanks to @lebrookestore​​ for making this sexy header

‘Love. What does that feel like?' Renjun would always wonder. 

As his paint brush strokes the canvas, eliciting a bright yellow mark on the object, Renjun continued to stare into his painting with a void of emotion. Whenever the occasional question 'what does it feel like to love or to be loved?' pops up in his mind, he would often furrow his brows and purse his lips in a small pout in confusion at the thought. 

Renjun didn't know what it felt like to love, for his caretaker, Madame Wendy, had always told him since he was a young boy that 'love is the last thing you need in this world, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.' Renjun didn’t care much for the aspects of love. How can he fall in love when he doesn’t even know what love is? What does it feel like to feel love? How can you feel love?

If you take one small glance at Huang Renjun, you would instantly have the assumption that he was a rather cold-hearted, emotionless young boy. Eyes so icy cold and void of emotion, it could send shivers down your spine. Though, fortunately for everyone else, it was quite rare of the young boy to walk out of his home. Some might say that he would step out of his home ‘once in a blue moon’ or whenever the sun shone brightly over the old town, which was quite rare considering it had been raining frequently these past few months in Edinburgh, France.

However, what they didn’t know was that the reason behind his infrequent appearance was quite tragic. He was an unfortunate young boy, really. Only a few people have known this, but long long ago, a sudden harsh snowfall hit his town on the day he was born. It was recorded as the coldest day on earth, for the snow had frozen everything in its path including the poor boy’s heart. Quite literally, not figuratively. 

Renjun’s biological mother had journeyed through the cold town to the house up the steeple. Rumors say, the quote unquote ‘witch’ of the town, who specialized in the medical department with her own unique ways that left doctors skeptical and poor. From what his caretaker had told him, she was holding her belly throughout the long journey as she tried her best to endure the cold without slipping on the frozen concrete. Muttering how if she could, she would’ve kept her child in her tummy safe and sound from the cruel world. 

How she slipped and fell unconscious in front of his current caretaker’s house with her tears frozen on top of her cold cheeks, how she was brought in and taken in just in time to warm up to gain consciousness and go through the birth process. He remembered being told how the moment he was born, he had to undergo intense surgery immediately for he almost didn’t survive. He remembered being told that his heart had turned cold. 

“Cold, not Gold, Renjun. A heart made of ice. As in cubes not cream,” as his caretaker would say. 

Since donors weren't available at the time as it was already way past midnight, he needed surgery before his heart stopped beating under the hard exterior of the ice growing around his heart. Luckily for him, Madame Wendy had improvised one with her excellent expertise. She built a small clock the size of her palm that nearly covered his whole chest at the time. Considering she was known for being a witch in town, (even though she tried to explain a countless amount of times that she was a mere mechanic with a medical degree) she miraculously provided him with a fragile heart made from scratch. 

However, the night of his birth was also the night his mother had decided to leave him with Madame Wendy, convinced that she would make a better mother for Renjun that she could ever have. It was quite a tragic tale. However, Renjun didn’t think much of it. Nor did he feel any sort of upsetting emotions like longing, curiosity and sadness. Why would he? He doesn’t even remember what his biological mother had looked like. He doesn’t know how to feel anymore other than the faux happiness his mother had taught him how to feel to ease the numbing feeling in his hollow, ticking heart held nothing but dust. 

A heart that was purely made out of strong wood, cogs and screws. One that makes soft, calming tick tocks that goes along with the soft pitter patters of rain drops with every beat, one that makes cuckoo’s every time it’s arrow struck 12. One that needs winding every single day with a golden key his caretaker had provided him ever since he was born. One with ironically three rules that he should always follow on a day to day basis. 

-

“Recite those rules once again, Renjun,” she ordered as she buttons up her adoptive child’s white shirt up to his neck. “Do I have to? I’ve been reciting this for years now,” Renjun would whine, looking down at his mother’s loving hands as she flicked her forehead softly with a face void of emotion. “It’s for your own good, Renjun. I can’t have you forgetting something this important, you know very well that your life depends on these three rules.” She tugged on the collar of her child’s shirt down. 

“Before I let you run off to town with me, I prefer that your heart would be much stronger,” she swiped her fingers through Renjun’s hair, swefting it to the side to make it neat. “Every beat of your heart is a minor miracle. You’re a fragile piece of work, far more fragile than glass,” the older woman explained, laying her hands on the boy’s shoulder with a grim expression. “I know,” Renjun replied with a sigh, shrugging his shoulders to release tension in his body. 

He sighed again, the young boy looked up at the ceiling to avoid his mother’s cold stare. “Firstly, never touch the hands of my heart,” he began, letting out an annoyed sigh as he felt his mother tucking his small key into the pocket sewed on his chest. “Yes, what else?” Madame Wendy asked, kneeling down to look at the child in the eye. “Keep your temper under control,” they recited in unison with the same emotionless tone. 

“And the last one?” 

“Whatever I do, I must never ever fall in love.” 

“Indeed, that’s why I’m so scared of letting you into town. You haven’t experienced love yet so far in your life, it is very important that you stay that way,” she said, standing up on her feet as her hand returned to Renjun’s shoulder. “I know,” he mumbled once again, looking up at his caretaker’s eyes as if to hide the fact that he wasn’t listening a total hundred percent to what she was saying. “It could be the very death of you, Renjun. Your fragile heart won’t be able to stand the emotional, mental and physical shock provoked with the feeling of love,” she explained once again, a worried expression glossing over her face.

“I know, I know. You tell me that almost everyday,” he muttered, playing with the small buttons on the clock that is his own heart. “My heart is not a toy, therefore it is not to be played with.” he almost rolled his eyes at the older woman, feeling her smack his hand away from his heart softly. “It is something that I want you to take seriously, Renjun,” she hissed, eyeing the small mechanic artwork on the boy’s chest. “How can I even fall in love when I don’t know anything about love?” 

-

To Renjun, today was like any other day of the year. The sun shining brightly against his skin, the cloudy grey sky accenting the sky’s beauty. His hair gelled to the side to reveal some of his forehead and leaving a few strands of his hair to tickle his skin perfectly, his calloused hand gripping his 60 x 90 cm canvas and his large box of acrylic paints to his side, his favorite paintbrush hanging against the skin in between his ear and his fluffy short hair. 

Spinning one of his smaller paint brushes in his free hand, right between his fingers as he walked down the sidewalk of his home town, trying to find a spot to sit and paint. It was his birthday recently, so his mother had delightfully just bought a fresh new set of acrylic paints, considering he finished them on his last painting which was the majestic dove fountain in the middle of the town less than a month ago. 

Renjun was only ten years old when his caretaker took him out to wander around town, which was on his birthday. It was then when Renjun was hitting the age of thirteen when his caretaker’s worry lessened when she saw that her child was nowhere to the point of Cupid’s next target. Therefore those annual town visits turned into monthly visits (under his caretaker’s supervision, of course) and when Renjun had turned thirteen years old, he had shown an interest in painting and drawing in his free time while Madame Wendy was working with a patient.

However, love can strike at any moment. And by the time Renjun became sixteen years old, he was finally allowed to venture into the town himself to paint landscapes and buy more art supplies at least once a week with a 5-6 PM curfew. Nothing more, nothing less. Cupid was cunning, therefore she believed that this was the best she could do. Considering he was a teenager, she couldn’t protect him as easily as she could back when he was still an infant. And that was what she had feared the most in her life. 

Renjun sighed heavily, looking around with emotionless eyes, a cold frown forming upon his lips as he leaned his chin on his palm, his elbow supporting on his thigh and his other free hand holding the canvas on top of his legs. He wondered if there was more to life than work and oil paints, eyes wandering on the busy streets filled with the latest carriages and the latest transportation vehicles. He felt as if his life had gone by boring and aimless without knowing how to express his emotions properly. Is this what life has come to in his 16 years of living? 

16 years of being almost completely isolated from this town without knowing what his caretaker was so worried about. Madam Wendy had absolutely nothing to be worried about. Renjun had witnessed love from time to time in the streets, watching a couple of different genders walking down the streets with loving expressions on their faces. Renjun could not decipher why you would be feeling such emotions. He had been venturing around town freely with his strict curfews for almost four months now. And all he’s done so far is wander around looking for something interesting to be his next muse or visit the local library to read books. 

One of the books Renjun was absolutely fascinated on reading was this book the librarian had recommended to him on his first visit, ‘The Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens. It was a small story of a young boy named Pip who went through amazing life changing experiences and going through hardships with his rather abusive sister, his blacksmith mentor and falling in love as well with a girl named Estella. (He would always snicker whenever she comes up in a scene as her adoptive parent, Ms Havisham, ironically reminded him too much of Madam Wendy) 

He often wondered if Madam Wendy’s strong dislike towards the aspects of love was merely because of his fragile condition or was it because of something deeper? However, looking back at when he found his caretaker’s family albums which were mainly pictures of her winning awards and bragging about her medical degree, he highly doubts it. (It was still fun to imagine theories while it lasted, though!)

“Ms Havisham stares at Pip coldly, and murmurs to the girl at her side: ‘Break his heart, Estella. Break his heart!’” Renjun read, his eyes moving as he read the brief summary at the back of his book. Looking down at the cuckoo clock heart hidden under his cardigan, he clicked his tongue before chuckling bitterly to himself. “‘Break his heart’, huh? What utter bonkers, you can’t break someone’s heart. That isn’t physically possible,” he shook his head in amusement, placing his book on top of the box of acrylic paints beside him.

Just as he was about to leave and head back home, a peculiar merry tune reached his ears, causing Renjun to pause in his step, looking around to find the source with furrowed brows. If this was like those small street cat sketches he would draw in his free time, it would seem like his ears perked up in slight interest. The merry tune turned on a bright spark inside of the young boy’s chest, curiosity growing in his veins at the tune he has never heard before. It was as if the angels above had descended to the earth while playing a symphony of flutes and harmonicas, making soft high pitched catchy tunes in the air. 

Renjun felt entranced by the music, it was almost as if it was pulling him- beckoning him to come towards it, towards its source. It was as if his feet had a mind of his own as he fought with his own rational thoughts to either go back home or find the source of the beautiful merry tune. He couldn't help but walk to where it's coming from, curious of who was making such a wonderful tune. Sooner than later, he found himself walking down a small alley that led him into a steep staircase that led him to another part of his town. And with every step he took, the music grew louder and louder. Soon, finding light at the end to see the small part of town he rarely visits.

He put his palm on the dirty brick wall, ignoring the uncomfortable texture against his skin, head poking out as he tried to decipher where the majestic music was coming from. Squinting his eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight for the staircase was dim enough to be mistaken for a tunnel with the broken rooftops covering the ceiling, he took a step forward. His eyes widening slightly in awe as he watched a young man his age push away a stack of crates to reveal the true source of music. 

A young girl, who Renjun figures is around his age, was cranking up a barrel organ right in front of the fountain. A hand going in circular motions on the crank, twisting the lever as she pulls it clockwise. The hand on her hip was soon placed on her chest when the music went on, clearing her throat softly as she began to sing along and harmonize with the melody. 

Renjun stood still in his place, baffled at the daunting beauty presented before him. The girl standing a few meters away from him was singing along merrily to the tune of the phonograph record, cranking up the lever as the other townsfolk that was walking by began to gather around her, enjoying the harmony that goes along with her soothing voice and symphony of flutes and harmonicas being produced by the portable barrel organ. 

As he sat down on the last step of the staircase to listen from afar, he couldn't help but pay close attention to the lyrics coming out of her lips. His paintbrush spinning in between his fingers as his mind focused on the words of the intro, smiling idly as he began to understand the words she was trying to convey. 

My vision's not quite right

But glasses make me look a sight

Enough to give the world a fright, like a sprite wearing specs

Renjun couldn't help but tilt his head in confusion. 'A sprite wearing specs? What the hell was that supposed to mean?' he pondered to himself as he found himself sitting at the last step of the staircase, leaning his white canvas against the dusty brick walls before putting his palm against his cheek, his elbow supported right above his knees as he gazed in awe at the little singer. 

His pupils never moved away from the young girl who began to twirl around with her hands on her hips. And that girl was you. He watched as you danced and sang as if you were in your own little world, almost clumsily bumping into an old man carrying two heavy wooden crates in his arms. He chuckled at the sight, a soft smile stretching across his face as he watched the girl apologize for almost bumping into him, making Renjun realise that she might have some sort of blurred vision with how she was squinting at the older man. 

‘Or she might just be an idiot,’ Renjun thought with a deadpan expression, laying his chin on his hand as he let out a soft sigh. Renjun had been living in this town all his life, despite the fact that he rarely goes out of his own home. He’s sure that no one in this town would blast such a merry tune so shamelessly in public while dancing and singing around like a fool expressing themselves. And it was quite rare for someone to walk around with a barrel organ out of nowhere.

The music stopped midway when you let out a small yelp and clumsily tripped over your own feet as you turned to your barrel organ when the lever stopped turning, eliciting a soft giggle from Renjun. You let out a soft grunt, huffing as you ignored the slightly concerned looks of your audience. You stood up quickly, hands coming up to brush off the dust and debris off your skirt, tugging on your suspenders as you attempted to ignore the embarrassed red tint on your own cheeks as you tried to play it off as cool. 

Renjun couldn't help but giggle at the sight, his cold emotionless expression morphing into one filled with the slightest bit of amusement. Though, it quite took Renjun aback when he saw you turn your head from your barrel organ to his figure sitting a few meters away from where you were standing, turning your head rapidly to find the source, raising a brow when your eyes met Renjun's. He stopped laughing when your eyes met briefly, eyes widening in shock as he began to fidget in his place as you began to waddle over to him, dragging your barrel organ with you. 

Wait, were you going over to talk to him? How did you even acknowledge his existence? Did you hear him snicker at your silly antics? Even if you did, how could you even hear him with how busy your surroundings were?

You stood before him with hands on your hips, lips pursed at him. "What were you laughing at?" you asked, a slight pout adorning on your lips as you looked down at the boy who raised his brow. Renjun felt his words pile up in his throat, trying to think of something to say without offending or upsetting the girl before him, as his Seulgi and Irene (his caretaker’s weekly patients) had always told him that ‘once you anger a feisty lady, there’s no turning back!’. 

Now that you were standing only a few inches away from him, he couldn’t help but take a small moment to observe your appearance more clearly. Renjun's eyes couldn't help but wander towards your figure, examining your facial features in full detail. The way the sunlight reflected upon your pupils, how your figure stood out that he could barely decipher that other people were present around them. The way your dress framed your body, lips pursed with a slight pout, eyelids fluttering softly as you blinked at him as you were waiting for a response. Renjun wondered how someone could look this entrancing.

"Hello? Are you listening to me?!"

Renjun blinked, snapping out of his thoughts. His mouth opening as his pupils went back up to catch the intense glare that the girl in front of him was sending. He closed his mouth when he realized he didn't know what to say in response, his mind turning blank when he saw you quirked one of your eyebrows up suspiciously. "I don't- How can you even hear me laugh from such a distance?" Renjun's voice faltered nervously, trying to avoid your question, furrowing his brows.

Your expression lightened slightly at the nervous boy, a bright smile of your own stretching across her face. "Out of all of my five senses, my hearing has always been the best considering I don't rely much on my eyes," you shrugged, sitting beside him on the last step of the stairs. Stretching your legs out as you used your palms to smoothen your dress before crossing your arms on your thighs and turning your head to look at the boy. "I saw you staring at me from a distance, was I that good?" you smirked, raising a brow. 

“You saw me? I thought you said you can’t rely on your eyes that much?” he asked in a weak attempt to dodge your question once again. “I lied, some lady told me that you were staring at me even after this old thing gave up on me,” you huffed, kicking your foot lightly at the old barrel organ in front of you. “Stop dodging my question. I don’t want to assume that you were stalking me or something,” you turned your head back to the boy, pointing an accusatory finger at him, wiggling the finger in front of his face teasingly.

Renjun bit the inside of his cheek, a scowl forming on his lips as he rolled his eyes. "Don't get too cocky, I was just perplexed. I was baffled to see someone playing such a merry tune so shamelessly in this lousy, depressing town," he responded with a click of his tongue. "How so?" you asked, tilting your head in confusion at the boy before looking around at your surroundings. “This town doesn’t look that depressing to me. Just needed some lighting up, that’s all,” your positivity elicited another scoff from the boy.

Renjun turned to you, brows furrowed slightly, confused as to how you couldn’t see how this town was the literal epitome of the Great Depression itself. "You're not from here, are you? Come to think of it, I've never seen you around here before." Renjun asked with a curious expression, watching as a cheeky grin formed across your face. "You got me there." You let out a soft chuckle, shrugging shamelessly before gazing up at the cloudy grey sky. 

"My parents and I just moved in today. They told me to run off and go dilly dally-ing around town so as to not bother them as they set up the whole place,” you explained, nodding towards your barrel organ. “I think I made a great first impression as the new lady in town, don’t you think?” you asked, giving him a sweet smile, ignoring how Renjun gave you an affirming shake of his head to say ‘no’ bluntly. “Well I definitely knocked your socks off, didn’t I? That’s enough for me!” you exclaimed brightly, clasping your hands together. 

“You don’t even know me. I don’t even know you. And how would you know if I was moved by your oh-so-stupendous actions?” Renjun rolled his eyes sarcastically, gripping his canvas tightly as he spoke, looking down at his shoes. He had never spoken to someone his age before without being forced by his caretaker or having to meet them for the first time at Madam Wendy’s home. It was quite new for him to be talking to a lady as well, for most of them were too shy to even talk to the young lad for his cold glare struck shivers down their spine.

“The sound of your laugh was enough to convince me that my actions were indeed stupendous, good sir!” you shot back confidently, a proud smile on your face as you placed your hands on your knees. “Oh bother,” he muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes once again at you, ignoring how the confusion he felt when the cogs and gears of his heart were speeding up in action. “I’m Y/n, by the way! It’s good to know I made a friend on my first day in Edinburgh. Perhaps my mini shameless performance wasn’t entirely fruitless!” you reached your hand out, gesturing for him to shake it.

Renjun looked at your hand for a brief moment, pupils gazing back up at your happy expression, raising a brow at you before sighing heavily. He pulled his hand from his canvas before leaning over to shake your hand gently, “Renjun. Huang Renjun,” he introduced, his tone emotionless. Your hand was warm and soft unlike his own dry ones. Your hand had small specks of dust, which he assumed were from the dusty lever of the barrel organ while his own was covered with dry acrylic paint from his previously wet canvas.

Upon the warm feeling surging through his body at the touch, he felt the tiny mechanical bird inside of his cuckoo clock heart burst out from his clock in response when his skin touched yours, the sharp wooden beak hitting the fabric of his jacket alarmingly. Thus making a small, almost inaudible ‘cuckoo’ that only Renjun (fortunately) heard.

"It’s lovely to be your acquaintance, Huang Renjun. Though, I must warn you, I might not be here for long. My family has been travelling from town to town for years, searching for something.” You told him, pulling your hand back to your side with a small shrug. “Searching? Searching for what exactly?” Renjun asked, watching your expression turned unreadable. You shrugged, leaning your cheek against your palm, your elbow supporting on your leg. “That’s the thing! I’m not quite sure, they won’t tell me.”

“A treasure chest, perhaps?” Renjun suggested, putting a hand on his chin in thought. “Perhaps so. Though, I’m searching for something myself, as well.  I haven't found it yet and I doubt I'm going to find it here." you sighed simply, leaning your head up to gaze at the cloudy sky. Eyes watching as the sun was barely visible due to the thick grey clouds layering over it, signalling that it might rain soon. 

"Well, what are you searching for exactly? Treasure? Money? Wealth is considered as a greedy sin in this town, so I don't think this is some place where you can find those." Renjun hummed, his hand going back to gripping his canvas as he felt the cogs and gears in his heart working faster than usual. Hell, he didn't know why he was so curious about this. This was none of his business, after all. This was your problem, why was he so keen on keeping the conversation going? Why was he so intrigued in a young foreign singer his age he’s just met?

You shook your head, sucking your lips into your mouth before pulling your bottom lip out in a pout. "I’m not a fool, Renjun. I'm not really interested in wealth or fortune. Though, telling you about my life goal appears to be too intimate for us, don’t you think? We just met after all. So all that I can say at the moment that what I’m searching for is for me to know and for you to find out," you send him a teasing smile, causing Renjun to frown and roll his eyes in annoyance, leaning back slightly before sending you a deadpan expression, 

"Does your extravagant search involve spectacles? You might look like you might need them, I know someone that could handle that," he mused, his lips quirking up into a teasing smirk, causing a frown to display on your face. A dead panned expression morphing on to your facial features. "I may have really terrible eyesight, but that isn't a way to talk to a lady, Renjun." you pressed your lips on to a thin line, rolling your eyes at the boy as you let out a soft laugh with a shake of your head. 

"Besides, I look terrible in them. As I said in my song, which I'm sure like all the other folks in this world that doesn't pay attention to the message I was trying to convey in my lyrics, it-"

"It makes quite a sight, enough to give the world a fright like a sprite wearing specs?"

You furrowed your brows as Renjun let out a sheepish smile with a raise of his eyebrow, teasing you as a baffled expression laid upon your features at his words. "You were saying, Y/n?" he mused, waving his hand, gesturing for you to continue with your words. Watching as your baffled expression morphed into an amused one. “Oh, that was quite charming of you, Huang,” you shot back with a flirty grin, causing the ticking of his heart to quicken against his chest, sending him small jolts of pain which he attempted to conceal with small chuckles.

"I’m surprised you were paying attention to my lyrics instead of enjoying my song like a normal human being," you huffed, pushing his face away with your palm against the side of his face, eliciting a small laugh from the boy beside you. "You really shouldn't play games with your sight though. They say a blurry vision will leave you in the dark," Renjun recited, remembering the words his caretaker had always said to him about the patients who come in their quarters using spectacles or glasses. 

You shrugged innocently. "I prefer life all a blur than to look horrendous for a living. You and your pretty face wouldn't understand. Also, I tend to forget my glasses frequently despite the fact that my parents’ constant nagging to bring them around," you , causing Renjun's jaw to drop at your bold statement. He has heard compliments about his dashing looks ever since he was a young boy from Madam Wendy’s relatives but ‘pretty’ wasn’t one of them, he should’ve brushed the compliment off and focus on the context of your words and stop acting as if he hadn’t been complimented before.

But however, something about this felt peculiarly different than the times where his family complimented him on his charming looks.

"Pretty? I haven’t heard that one before," Renjun spoke rather hesitantly, still quite bewildered that a woman his age had shamelessly complimented on his looks to his face. Yet again, said woman has a terrible eyesight so he couldn't be too sure that it was a compliment. You laughed, bumping your shoulder against his softly. "That’s the only thing you got out of my words? Are you an insecure lad, Huang?" you chuckled, giving him a slightly sheepish smile. “Are you sure you don’t need spectacles?” Renjun snapped back. 

"I’m just pushing your buttons! I assure you that even without my glasses. I can confirm that you are quite an attractive young man, and that’s saying something considering I’ve been travelling here and there for most of my life. I'm not as blind as a bat, you know." you giggled, clicking your tongue before adding on. "Besides, it won't make much of a difference, really. Even with or without glasses, I still see a very pretty boy," you joked, laughing lightly.

“Out of all the compliments you could’ve chosen, you decided upon the word ‘pretty’? Sounds quite feminine, don’t you think?” he asked, leaning his head to the side, looking at you with half lidded eyes. He realised that he didn’t mind being called pretty, he didn’t mind being complimented by you. Despite the fact that you two had just met. But he couldn’t help but wonder why you had decided to choose ‘pretty’ instead of the other synonyms of ‘attractive’. 

“Is that supposed to be a bad thing? I think pretty can be used for anything. It’s just a word after all, why do things have to be differentiated by the littlest of things? It’s just a synonym of ‘beautiful’,” you shrugged, watching as small raindrops started to pour down from the cloudy grey sky, reaching your hand out to feel the water drops hitting and wetting your skin slowly. Renjun raised his brow at you, perplexed at how you could be so nonchalant about your terrible eyesight considering his caretaker would endlessly bicker until he was forced to use spectacles until his eyes magically got better.

"What's that odd pitter patter?" you mumbled, snapping Renjun out of his thoughts once again. His eyes widened when he realised that the sound of his clock heart ticking had increased, blending well with the sound of the rain as water began to hit the surface of the concrete. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone other than close relatives about his fragile condition, so his anxiety spiked when you turned to look at him, expecting an answer. "It's the rain." Renjun replied after a moment, gulping down his nerves before turning to you. 

"Do you like the rain?" Renjun asked, gulping afterwards when he realised how your eyes softly bore into his with an unreadable expression, the eye contact making Renjun’s clock heart steam up a bit as the gears worked even faster than before. Sighing as you felt the cold breeze that comes with the rain send goosebumps across your skin, you rubbed your arms before looking back to the pouring rain. You shook your head, "getting wet? Not really."

"But the sound it makes? Yes. It always reminded me of how I used to play in the rain back when I was still in elementary school," you nodded with a soft smile. 

The sound of the church bell pierced your ears, making Renjun’s eyes go wide when he realised that the clock had struck 6 pm. Quickly, he got up to his feet, his brushes almost slipping out of his fingers as he stumbled to get onto his feet. “Are you okay?” you asked, looking up at him in confusion, furrowing your brows at the boy as he gulped nervously. “I’m fine, I shouldn’t be out this late,” Renjun shook his head, biting his lip nervously when he realized that the rain wasn’t going to halt anytime soon.

“I don’t think the rain is stopping anytime soon, I suggest you wait here momentarily if you don’t want to catch a cold,” you commented, standing up as well as you stretched your hand out once again to feel the raindrops hitting your palm, smiling softly at the nostalgic feeling that came with it. He clicked his tongue, cursing at himself for letting his curiosity get the best of him as he contemplated on running all the way back home soaking wet. He wouldn’t want to lose his new found freedom.

Muttering a small curse under his breath, he stuck his book under his canvas before hovering it over his head. “Are you going to run? It’s raining cats and dogs out there,” you exclaimed, eyes growing wide when you turned your head to see him taking a deep breath. “Pardon me, unlike you, I have curfews. My caretaker would have my head if I don’t go back home soon,” Renjun deadpanned, rolling his sleeves out as he felt shivers down his spine when the cold wind blew against his skin. 

Right before Renjun was about to take a step into the pouring rain, you grabbed on the sleeve of his shirt, holding him back. “Wait, when can we see each other again?” you asked, eyes boring holes into the back of his head. He paused, his cuckoo clock heart ticking loudly against his chest at the small action. He slowly turned back to you, furrowing his brows as he felt the small machine heat up against his skin, causing him to wince slightly. Noticing his small reaction, you quickly dropped your hand, apologizing abruptly before clasping your hands before your hand. 

“It’s just- I haven’t been in this town for very long and I really need a friend beside me. I’m not quite fond of being alone. I know we just met, but I hope that we could be acquaintances at least?” you grinned up, your bright smile sending ominous effects to his heart as he took a moment to process your words. Renjun started at your bright expression, small steam coming out continuously from his mechanical heart as the seconds went by. His eyes dart from the rain before back to your figure standing right in front of him, waiting for his answer. 

‘Acquaintances?’ 

Renjun has never had friends before. His caretaker would introduce him to her client’s children from time to time but (luckily for Madame Wendy) he had never shown an interest in making colleagues.  But for some reason, something inside him was pulling him to say yes to you. Something inside of him wanted him to try and get to know you even more. It felt wrong. It felt very wrong. But yet again, it felt so right. 

Biting his lip, he gave you a soft smile. 

“I have faith that we’ll be seeing each other again very soon.”

-

“I just think it’s quite preposterous!” you exclaimed as you laid down against the smooth surface of the fountain basin. Renjun chuckled, pressing his paintbrush gently against his wooden palette to get bits of his white paint to add more details to his painting. 

It's been a couple months since the day you met, and since then, you two have been growing closer by the day. Your friendship blossomed as the weeks went by. Madam Wendy wasn’t very fond when Renjun came home soaking wet after curfew, but she excused his actions when he told her that he just lost track of time at the library once again. A rare occurrence but it still happens from time to time, and considering Renjun barely lies to his caretaker, she believed him when he told her so.

Every once a week, the two of you would meet up on the same exact spot as the day you first laid eyes on each other. Renjun assumed that your house was closer considering you were always there first, twisting the crank of your barrel organ, kicking your feet as you sat on the fountain base to wait for him to arrive in your usual dark magenta dress (which he assumed to be the uniform of the school you were attending). The two of you would always walk around town, searching for spots to relax yourselves and talk about random things as you watch Renjun paint whatever that catches his eye. Overall enjoying each other’s company as if the two of you were in your own personal little bubble. 

“What’s so preposterous about the infamous Romeo and Juliet, exactly?” Renjun asked, chuckling as he dabbed the brush on the canvas, blending the colours of the sky on his artwork. You clasped your hands together, huffing as you scoffed at him. “Ever since my school made us all read Romeo and Juliet for the next literature exam, I just realise how horrible this trope is,” you tossed your book to the floor with a click of your tongue, hopping off of the fountain to walk closer to Renjun. 

“Do explain why you think so,” Renjun giggled, watching you dip your finger against the white paint on his palette and kneeling down to smear it against the title on the front cover of your book with a frown on your face. “Why are the females always quote unquote ‘damsels in distress’? It’s very misogynistic if you ask me!” you tsked, grabbing your book and leaning forward to show Renjun the front cover of the book. “Mister Shakespeare was truly a legendary fellow to create a piece of writing this famous, but why use poor unsuspecting 14 year old Romeo and Juliet as the female protagonist?” you complained.

“Why couldn’t it be ‘Romeo romeo, let down your hair!’ instead of ‘romeo romeo, where art thou?” It seems a bit more fair to me,” you joked, causing Renjun to furrow his brows at you. “It might be quite improper for a boy to have tremendously long hair, y/n,” he had to lay the back of his hand against his chest in an attempt to calm down his mechanic heart, feeling it heat up against his skin as he noticed how close the proximity between you were. You scoffed at the boy before you, standing up straight and letting the book hand in between your fingers.

Putting your hands on your hips, you walked in front of him, covering his view of the town. “Well it doesn’t give Mister Shakespeare a reason to give the story an unhappy ending. The despair it brings when you found out they both died in the end? Absolutely preposterous, why would anyone like books with such unhappy endings?” you added on, poking your book with a scrunched up expression, bringing a smile upon Renjun’s lips as he found your figure poking the book in your hands as endearing as watching an small innocent child playing with their own food. 

He sucked in his lip, taking a moment to admire your beautiful form. The gears in his mechanical clock worked faster as his eyes wandered to your slightly pouting soft lips, wondering how soft it would feel against his own. He cleared his throat when he felt a sharp pain scorching through his chest when he realised he was starting to imagine things, patting his chest softly as he tried to bite back a smile. 

“Maybe you just haven’t read true masterpieces,” Renjun responded after a pregnant pause, opening his little bag and pulling out the novel he’s been obsessed with for the past few months, placing it in your palms. “Read this, you can thank me later,” Renjun smiled, patting the book in your hands with a light chuckle, looking up into your eyes for a brief moment before looking back at his canvas. For he feared that if he stared into them any longer, he would simply get lost in your eyes for ages, wincing silently when his chest started to ache. 

“‘The Great Expectations’? This sounds like those tedious books my parents keep on their shelf,” you raised your brow, sitting down on the fountain again as you began to observe the book in your palms, squinting your eyes at the summary written at the back cover of the book. “‘Break his heart, Estella! Break his heart!’ That sounds so cruel of her to break an innocent boy’s heart,” you frowned, looking up at your friend with the adorable frown Renjun came to endear. 

Renjun laughed, shrugging simply as he went back to painting. His fingers twitching against the brush as he coloured white clouds on his piece, feeling your eyes curiously on his content form. “You didn’t want the female protagonist to be the damsel in distress, did you? I just simply gave you what you asked for,” Renjun shrugged, feeling his heart do somersaults as you let out a loud huff of breath, scooching closer towards him so you can begin reading the book. “I suppose so,” you muttered under your breath. 

“Do you carry books like this around with you as you paint or are you a magician who can pull out rabbits out of that bag of yours as well?” you asked jokingly, pulling the cover open and flipping to the first page. “I-Wait hold on, a magician as well?” he furrowed his brows at you, turning his head towards you and leaning his head to the side in confusion. You shot your head up, giving him a bright expression as you nodded eagerly. 

“You might have half of the town convinced that you’re some cold hearted teenager living with the ‘witch’ or the makeshift doctor, as you would like to say, but you can’t fool me, mister! We may have known each other for less than a few months but I know for a fact that you are a magician!” you pointed an accusatory finger at him, wiggling your index finger around, your fingertip hovering right above his nose before poking it with a small ‘boop; coming from your mouth. 

He furrowed his brows, gently pushing your hand away from his face with a raised brow. “Do you mind explaining why you have come to that conclusion?” Renjun asked, an amused expression spreading across his features as he dropped his brush into the cup of water set right beside him before crossing his arms against his chest and leaning back slightly. You grinned, “you’re one of the few people I’ve ever known who can paint so majestically. Have you seen your own paintings, Mister Huang Renjun?” you exclaimed, giving him a wide smile as you threw your arms up in the air. 

He chuckled, adjusting the beret on top of his head. “You don’t know many people, y/n,” he commented with a small smirk on his lips. “Let me finish before I usurp you, Huang,” you frowned, furrowing your brows and squinting your eyes threateningly at him. “I doubt that you even know what usurped means,” Renjun chuckled, shaking his head profusely at you. “Don’t doubt my low vocabulary, Renjun,” you crossed your hands, letting his book lay on your lap as he let out a soft laugh. 

“Alright, what are you going to usurp me from exactly?” he asked smugly, raising a brow at you. “That’s not the point of this conversation, what I’m saying is that you and your aesthetically pleasing art skills are magical!” you shot back in a snappy tone, avoiding the fact that you used a word that you don’t entirely know the meaning of. (considering you only heard it from your mother when she was talking to someone on the phone every morning whenever your father was off at work)  

He swore he could feel the ticking of his tock stop for a few seconds at your words. “Pardon?” he spluttered, putting his hand on his chest once again as he felt the gears in his cuckoo clock turn rapidly against his chest. “The way you carefully apply to each and every detail on every crevice of your canvas is like magic, the way you know how much paint you should apply to get just the right colours and the way you focus on shading or blending the paints together to achieve the small shadows or to adjust the lighting of the painting is just-” 

You paused before letting out a loud groan, “superb! I can’t even find the words on how to explain your magical abilities, the simplest way I can put it in my own way is that you are equivalent to a magician!” you waved your hands around at the canvas in front of the two of you, your eyes going wide in awe as you stared at the half finished piece as if it was the first time you had seen a rare jewel in person. 

Renjun’s jaw dropped as he couldn’t find the words to express how flustered he felt. However, the way his cuckoo clock began to steam up was another completely different thing. He couldn’t help but look down shy at his own paint stained hands, wondering how you could find awe in something as messy as his artwork. “And it is an absolute crime knowing that you aren’t some kind of world wide painter, your paintings are absolutely beautiful!” you exclaimed, smiling up at him as Renjun stared wordlessly into your eyes. 

He couldn’t help but notice how close you have gotten when you began on your unceremonious ramble about his art skills, he couldn’t stop his eyes from darting up your eyes and down to your plump lips. Gulping silently, he scooched back a little bit, gripping the sleeves of his button up shirt tightly as he tried to take the ticking of his heart against his ears, a fuzzy feeling overcoming the slight jolting pain in his chest as he did so.

He watched your eyes go wide at his actions, realizing that you moved too far. “Oh crumbs!” you exclaimed, taking a large step back as you realised the close proximity between you attracted attention from the people around you, eyes watching you like a hawk. Some held disgust to see two teenagers of the opposite gender oh-so-close to each other as if they were going to share a sweet kiss. Some held awe in them, adoring the sight of the two flustered beings cozying up to each other like that. Some held shock as they had never seen the mysterious cold hearted boy who lived in the little house on the steeple that close to someone before.

“I’m so so sorry!” you rambled, feeling your chest swell up as you grew flustered by your own actions. “I didn’t mean to get over excited! It’s just that I was so happy to talk about your art knowing how you don’t think much of it but I just really adore your art and the way you paint- oh god that sounds very inappropriate of me to say. What I meant was-” your short nervous ramblings were cut off when you heard Renjun’s laughter filling your ears, the angelic sound sending warm feelings into your heart. 

“Pardon me for laughing, but that really caught me off guard,” he threw his head back laughing, his cheeks flushing red from laughing too much as he held his stomach, wiping his tears afterward. Your jaw dropped at his amused laughter, embarrassment overcoming your nerves as you huffed angrily at him. “You absolute jerk, I thought I did something wrong and invaded your personal space or made you uncomfortable!” you exclaimed, putting your hands on your hips angrily, only eliciting even more laughter from the sweet boy. 

“It’s really endearing that you find my art that interesting, you really did catch me off guard with your little outburst,” he chuckled, lifting his beret off of his head before running his free hand over his hair, putting the beret back on his head afterwards. You couldn’t deny how pretty he looked with that beret, but of course, you weren’t going to admit it (again) for the sake of your own pride. “I was just expressing my opinions like a normal person, you didn’t have to laugh at me like that, you know,” you crossed your arms against your chest. 

“I wasn’t laughing at your outburst, I can promise you that!” he exclaimed, shaking his head at you, ignoring the searing pain in his chest as he stared lovingly at you. You furrowed your brows, you couldn’t help but notice the slightly sad glint on his pupils, but you chose not to ask about it, focusing on the topic at hand. “Then what were you laughing at exactly, Huang Renjun?” you asked, furrowing your brows at the brown haired boy, who smiled sweetly at you. Leaning his chin against his palm, elbow supported on his thigh. 

“I couldn’t help but laugh at how sweet you looked while talking about the things I do in front of you as if I were moving the sun and moon with my own bare hands.”

-

“You know you have a lovely smile.”

Renjun looked up from his book in alarm, eyes wide at your sudden bluntness. “Excuse me?” he coughed, releasing one hand from the book cover to lay it against the rough surface of his clock heart hidden underneath his coat. “I really like your smile,” you gave him a tight lipped smile, putting the Great Expectations book on the desk you were sitting before laying your hands over the other, placing your chin on top of them before gazing up at him with an innocent shrug. “You’re being quite expressive today,” Renjun chuckled, looking at you with a perplexed expression, his brows furrowed as he kept his hand against his heart, suppressing the little bird inside from letting out a loud ‘cuckoo!’. 

“I don’t like to lie, you know that, Renjun,” you pouted, raising your head up to give him a knowing look. Sitting up straight, Renjun shot you a boyish smile, looking back down at his book. “Why, thank you. That’s quite flattering,” Renjun chuckled, burying his nose in his book in a futile attempt to hide how flustered he felt. Putting the back of his hand against his mouth, he coughed to clear his throat before removing his hand and putting it on his nape to scratch on it nervously. “How are you liking the book so far?”

Renjun cringed at the slight waver in his tone, biting back his tongue as he heard you let out a small hum. “So far, it’s pretty engrossing. It perfectly depicts the image of a young male protagonist losing his child-like innocence through heartbreak and hardship,” you clicked your tongue, folding the corner of the page you were reading before flipping through the other pages to see how many you have left to read. “A compelling coming of age story,” you nodded with a slight shrug. 

“Though, I still don’t understand why you recommended me this book,” you closed the book and placed it back down on the desk, furrowing your brows in curiosity. Renjun gave you a sheepish grin, shrugging as he went back to his own book before replying with a, “you’ll find out once you finish the book,” under his breath. You huffed in response, leaning your forehead against the hardcover of the book, letting out a dramatic sigh. He let out a silent smile, adjusting his glasses as he continued to read the last paragraph of his own book. 

Your eyes glared holes into his head as if he was going to tell you if you glared at him long enough, but you realised that he was back into his own little world now that he was fully immersed into the plot. Your eyes wandered back to the canvas on top of the desk right beside him, his set of acrylic paints and brushes gathered up into a small pile. He had just finished his latest painting of the statue of the founder of this boring town, his artwork never failed to awe you. 

“When I finally manage to finish the book, will you give me one of your artworks free of charge?” you piped up, outstretching your hand as you poked the canvas, trying to pull the large object towards you with a single fingertip in futility. Ever since you started spending your time watching Renjun paint while he listened to you rambling, you had often asked him to draw something for you for free. In which he would always reply with a brief ‘buy your own, acrylics are immensely expensive.’ before rolling his eyes and going back to painting. 

He wasn’t completely wrong. Madam Wendy always grumbled on how paint prices are constantly increasing as time goes on. And whenever Renjun would make a quick trip to the art store just to buy another bottle of white paint, he would always suppress the urge to sigh heavily in front of the kind store owner who would grin innocently (despite the fact that they know full well that they were being absolute gooses for increasing the price as Renjun was going to buy their products nonetheless.)

However it came as a shock to the both of you when he muttered a small ‘fine’ under his breath. Eyes blowing wide as Renjun slowly looked up from his book and eerily turned to you, right before he could open his mouth to retract his words, you shot up to your feet. Catching the boy off guard as you leaned over to cover his mouth with your hands. “No! You are not taking that statement back!” you exclaimed, shaking your head aggressively as you gave him a wide mischievous smile. 

Renjun furrowed his brows, eyes glaring daggers at you to let him go despite the fact that his gears were turning at a rapid speed at the feeling of your skin against his lips. “I’m not letting go unless you say yes,” you mused in a melodious tone, earning a shake of his head in response as he continued to send you his typical cold stare.

Renjun always had a really mean resting face, his eyes always managed to send cold shivers down everyones’ spines. However, there was something comforting in the way he looked at you. A familiar warm feeling blooming in your chest whenever he turned his head to look at you, even though his eyes barely held any emotion, even though his small chuckles and laughs held no genuine happiness in them, you couldn’t help but let a fuzzy feeling grow inside of your stomach. It was exhilarating.

“Come on, you probably have billions of canvases somewhere in town. Giving one away to your dearest friend shouldn’t be a problem, should it?” you whined, still refusing to remove your hand from his lips. He was internally enjoying the close proximity between you, but as the seconds went on, he knew his clock heart was going to burst out of his chest if he didn’t do something. With a small curse in his mind, he pulled your hand away from his mouth. “I would if you paid me. But considering you are currently penniless, I have to politely decline,” Renjun snickered, giving you a disgusted expression as he felt the heat around his mouth disappear into thin air. 

You frowned, pursing your lips as you sat back down on your seat, crossing your arms over your chest. “How could you do this to your most beloved friend?” you mumbled under your breath, loud enough for him to hear as you kicked one of the legs of the table in front of you childishly. Renjun chuckled, “‘Beloved’ isn’t even a word I would use to describe your existence.” Now it was your turn to glare daggers into his skull. “You’re incredibly mean, it’s almost bonkers,” you scoffed. 

“I know,” he shrugged casually, pulling his chair back to stand up. “Now if you excuse me, I would like to wash up to remove whatever bacteria you have oh-so-unceremoniously blessed upon my skin,” he bowed, pushing the chair back in the table as he tugged on the cuffs of his coat, giving you a small grin. “My hands are squeaky clean, excuse me!” you retorted, putting a hand on your chest in faux offense. “Keep telling yourself that, Y/n,” he nodded, abruptly walking towards the washroom at the back of the library with a hand on his chest as the effects of his emotions finally took place inside his mechanical ticking heart. 

As soon as Renjun turned to a corner, out of your line of vision, his whole body started twitching in pain. With a shaky hand he pulled back his coat to reveal the state of his clock. The hands of his clock were turning at a rapid speed, the small bird popping out of the clock and letting out a small ‘cuckoo!’. It was steaming up. Smoke was coming out of the contraption as if it was caught on fire. He felt like his chest was on fire. Renjun leaned his back against the wall, shakily blowing the smoke away and fanning it away softly with his hand. 

What’s happening to him? 

This has never happened before. What was happening to him? Why was he in so much pain? Why couldn’t he call out for help? Why couldn’t he make any sound?

Renjun wanted to cry out in pain, his body twitched as the tiny mechanical bird popped out of his clock with a loud ‘cuckoo!’. He gasped, patting his hands around his pockets for the key to his mechanical heart. He could hear the alarming ticking sounds of his clock with every second that went by, warning him something’s going to happen if nothing is done to stop this pain as he twitched in pain once again, clutching the clock with one hand, he felt something inside the pocket of his shirt. With a small grunt of pain, he fished out the small golden key inside. 

He pulled his hand away from his clock, gasping for breath as the pain in his chest increased with every tick of his heart. He plunged the key into the small hole connecting the arrows of the clock, quickly turning it counter clockwise as the pain started to lessen. Once the pain subsided, he dropped his hand to his sides, panting in exhaustion as his eyes blew wide with fear, his gears were working at their usual pace once again. His chest felt numb, a small throbbing pain lingering somewhere inside of him. 

‘What the hell was that?’ 

His eyes were glossy as he felt his emotions overwhelm his mind. His heart felt like it was going through a spin, as if the big hand of his core was going to pop out of his skin. His bones felt weak, as if it was about to implode at any second. The cogs and springs in his clock felt like they were about to explode. 

The loud alarming ticking in his ears made him wonder if he didn’t pull out the key in time, would his cuckoo clock heart halt for good?

-

“I’ll be off now, Wendy,” Renjun announced as he hopped down the stairs eagerly, gripping his fresh, new, empty canvas to his sides with one hand and spinning one of his brushes in between the fingers of the other. “Oh, you seem in a bit of a hurry, Renjun,” a familiar voice cooed teasingly, her words followed by another giggle. Renjun paused in his step, mustering up the energy to form a small smile as he looked up at the two women giggling at him. “Good morning, Joy. Good morning, Yeri,” he greeted with a polite bow. 

Joy and Yeri weren’t related in any way to Madam Wendy, but they are regular patients who would drop by weekly. And as far as he knew, they were one of the very few people who knew about his fragile condition (which is probably why they visit so often). “You look brighter than usual, what’s gotten you in such a rush, young lad?” Yeri grinned, sipping on her tea as she crossed her leg over the other with raised eyebrows. 

“It’s just a small trip to town, I need to buy more acrylics as well,” Renjun lied through his teeth, feeling the gears in his heart work faster at the thought of meeting you at your usual spot. “You haven’t had breakfast yet, Renjun,” Wendy spoke up, attracting the attention of the three in the room with pancakes stacked on three individual plates. “Do sit down! It’s been quite a while since you had a chit chat with your lovely aunts!” Joy giggled, patting the extra seat beside her before looking at her friend, who nodded in agreement. 

“I really shouldn’t interrupt-” 

“Renjun, go sit down,” Madam Wendy coaxed, placing a hand on his shoulder and nodding towards the empty spot on the sofa. Renjun looked back at his caretaker before sighing heavily, placing his canvas and brushes on the table near the entrance door and walking to sit on the empty spot the women had saved for him. “I’ll be upstairs cleaning up, if you need me,” his caretaker informed before exiting the living room, leaving her adopted son with the other two women in the room. 

“Okay, she’s gone!” Yeri exclaimed in a rather quiet tone before grabbing her fork and looking back at the teenager sitting beside them. “So how are you, honey? I just realised we didn’t even get to greet you last week considering you’ve been so busy lately,” Yeri hummed, shoving a spoonful of pancakes into her mouth as she spared a glance at Renjun. “Indeed! I assume you found something interesting in your great adventure in the outside world,” Joy giggled with an enthusiastic nod, causing Renjun’s eyes to widen. 

Renjun let out a small chuckle. “You two make it sound as if I was a protagonist of some weird story,” he mused, digging into his own stack of pancakes as he felt a warm feeling in his stomach at the memory of the day you first met. “Don’t beat around the bush and tell us!” Joy rolled her eyes at the younger boy, grabbing her cup of tea and pulling it to her lips. “How was this great adventure you’ve discovered?” she asked, her eyes flickering from her tea to Renjun briefly. 

Renjun bit his lip, scanning the room to ensure that Madam Wendy was nowhere in sight. He knew he could trust these two, considering the countless times he’s gotten away with his lies and rants. He bit his lip, glancing down at his hands nervously before giving his aunts a genuine smile. “It was fabulous,” he sighed dreamily, a sheepishly wide smile stretching across his lips as he took another bashful bite of his pancakes. “Tell all! Tell all! Don’t miss any details!” Yeri squealed. 

“What made it all so fabulous?” Joy whispered, her eyes peering curiously at the boy who appeared to be in a dreamy state. “A little singer with glasses which she won’t wear,” he replied almost instantly without any hesitation, a little bit too fast for his liking. “She isn’t all that, is she?” Yeri gasped, leaning back slightly in shock to hear her little Renjun was talking about someone and not something. 

He shot up, straightening his back as he dropped his fork on his plate with a shake of his head. “She is! She really is!” Renjun nodded eagerly, his hands coming up to make grand gestures as he continued on with his words. “She reminds me of a… sparrow! Perched up on the toppest tree branch in it’s tiny little feet, it gives her this calming fragile aura like a twig falling off of a branch. Her voice- her singing is like listening to a nightingale singing a bird song but with words! Or those soothing musical numbers they would always play in the telly after a good show has ended,” Renjun described, his eyes filled with stars and his heart filled with passion. 

The two shared knowing looks, bewildered at how dazed the boy in front of them truly was at that moment. “And her smile it’s like a work of art! Far greater than all of my masterpieces combined, far greater than the artwork displayed on museums! Her laughter makes her seem so miniscule, I could hardly believe that such a light heartening sound could be elicited from a human being!” Renjun went on, his smile wide as he leaned back at the thought of your smile which made his stomach do somersaults. 

“Oh Renjun, I bet that once she catches the flu, you’ll change your mind. Whenever women like those who catch the flu, they cough up a storm and sneeze like a steam truck,” Yeri joked, earning a brief frown from Renjun who scoffed in response. “Oh nonsense! I bet if she does, it would sound like a majestic flute found in the mountains!” Renjun waved his hand off with a roll of his eyes in disbelief.

The two women laughed in response, shaking a knowing look. “So basically, to sum everything up. You went to town and instead of catching the flu, you caught a bug in town, you young lad!” Yeri raised her eyebrow suggestively at the boy, indicating that he’s very much caught the love-bug she’s always ranted about on a daily basis. “Oh deary!” Joy gasped before letting out another fit of giggles, cupping her mouth to ensure that her giggles weren’t loud enough for Madam Wendy to hear. 

“You know it’s forbidden,” Yeri lectured, her tone turning serious when she realised that Renjun was actually serious about this. “For-bid-den!” Joy emphasized with every wave of her finger with a disappointing shake of her head. “I know,” Renjun sighed, a frown forming at his lips as he sunk back against the seat he was sitting on, leaning his head back sadly. “It’s for your own good, you know,” Joy smiled sadly, sympathy lacing her tone as she patted the boy’s head comfortingly. 

“Indeed. Oh deary, I wish I could live without love,” Yeri sighed, pulling out a mirror from her purse to reapply her lipstick. “Oh no, here we go again,” Renjun chuckled, sitting up straight once again as he prepared himself for another sad tragic love story his aunt has to offer. “Every day, every time I fall in love with a patient here or a man, they would always fall for some other girl!” Yeri ranted with a heavy sigh, smacking her lips together to get an even coating on her lips. “I am not letting Renjun listen to another one of your sob stories!” Joy huffed, leaning over to cup Renjun’s ears with her palms. 

“You might taint the poor boy with your bad luck with love!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t my condition a symbol of this bad luck?” Renjun chuckled, gently tugging on the older woman's wrists to remove her palms away from his ear. “Oh hush you, I’m sure you’ll get over this little infatuation you have with this little singer,” Yeri waved her hand off nonchalantly, huffing slightly. “It’s not like you see her every day of the week, you’ll get over it in no time!” she added with an encouraging hum, watching as Joy nodded with her in agreement. 

Renjun bit his lip, biting back his tongue as he continued to shove pancakes into his mouth as quickly as possible. At that moment, Madam Wendy finally came down with a key in her hand. “Renjun, I’ve always told you to bring your key wherever you go. Why won’t you ever take my words to heart?” Wendy sighed, handing the key to his mechanic heart to the young boy, who gulped slightly and mumbled a small apology under his breath before tucking his key in his front pocket. 

He couldn’t help but shiver as the memory of him having a near death experience flashed through his mind, the image of the key plunging into his heart and winding it up to lessen the pain he endured had traumatized him. He was terrified of it happening again. He was terrified of what’s becoming of him. Was this the effects of falling in love? Was he falling in love with you? He hasn’t even known you for very long, he couldn’t possibly fall for you in such a short time.

Besides, why does falling in love feel so good but hurt so bad?

-

“So how was the book I lent you?” Renjun asked in an attempt to spark up a conversation. “Quite interesting, though, I’m not quite sure that I’ll finish it any time soon. I like to focus deep into the depths of the story, fully imagine the characters emotions and thoughts,” you exclaimed, pushing your organ barrel beside the tree Renjun was leaning against, sitting down beside him under the shade and crossing your legs, tugging the edges of your dress over your knees. You dusted the bits of dirt off of the fabric on your dress. 

“I understand, it’s the thought process, right?” Renjun nodded, flipping a page of his book as he hummed. “Indeed! Though, I can’t quite get the gist of why Ms Havisham is so devoted to making Estella break Pip’s heart. She should’ve just left the poor girl alone, besides, I really don’t want to see the poor boy heartbroken,” you frowned, clicking your tongue in thought. “I despise Pip’s sister, as well,” you added with an innocent smile. 

Renjun let out an amused chuckle. “Yeah, she’s a rather insufferable character, isn’t she?” he nodded in agreement, remembering how heartless Pip’s older sister was when it came to Pip and her own husband before she passed away in the book. “She’s exactly what my mother would consider as a bitch,” you added on, pulling your glasses out from your purse with a small giggle, earning a loud gasp from the boy beside you.  “Y/n, language!” he gasped, pulling his book back to gaze at you with wide eyes. 

You giggled, mumbling a small apology before fidgeting with the frames of your glasses mindlessly. Renjun watched you play with your glasses from the corner of his eye, internally wondering why you have never worn them despite carrying them around in your purse everywhere you go. Furrowing his brows, he turned his head back to his book, biting back his tongue before shaking his head at himself.

“You know, you really shouldn’t play games with your sight if it leaves you in the dark, y/n,” Renjun deadpan, not sparing you a glance as he licked the tip of his thumb to flip a page from his new book. You huffed at your friend, fidgeting with your new spectacles in between your fingers as you rolled your eyes at the boy beside you. “How poetic,” you scoffed, earning a soft chuckle from Renjun. “I think I prefer life all a blur, thank you very much,” you added on with a snappy tone. 

“What does that even mean?” Renjun laughed lightly, putting his book down on his lap to turn to you with a soft expression on his face. “I keep forgetting to wear my glasses and now my eyes are blurry, I can’t even see the outline of my hand,” you stated, raising your free hand up above to the sky and squinted your eyes at it in an attempt to get a clearer vision of your hand that was merely a few inches away from you. “Your glasses are literally in your palms,” Renjun pointed out, nodding his head at the hand holding the glasses in question. 

You opened your mouth to speak, slowly putting your glasses in your little handbag behind you before clearing your throat. “As I said before, I forgot to wear my glasses,” you repeated, giving him a cheshire grin in response. “Jesus Christ, why do I even bother?” Renjun muttered under his breath with a shake of his head, “won’t your vision get worse the lesser you wear them?” he asked once again, rubbing his temples in distress. 

Humming in confirmation, you shrugged innocently before leaning back against the tree the two of you were sitting against. “Though, I believe it won’t get worse as long as I close my eyes. My vision won’t get worse if I don’t see, right? Besides, it feels good to close my eyes,” just as you finished your words, you clasped your hands on your lap, leaning your head back against the tree bark and closing your eyes before letting out a sigh of content. Renjun let out an annoyed puff of breath, “I don’t think that’s how it works.” 

Your content expression was enough to send fiery sparks into his mechanical heart, he could almost feel it steaming up again. He couldn’t help but notice how close you were next to him, as if he were to make one little scooch, your shoulders would be touching. His eyes wandered to your beautiful figure laying right beside him, internally suppressing the urge to clasp you close to his body in a tight embrace. Your soft lips causing his stomach to do somersaults the longer his gaze lingers there. He imagines that he would scatter confettis on the both of you if he were to press his own lips against yours in a kiss. 

His mind couldn’t help but wander back to those times where you had to walk up close to the signs to see what street the two of you were heading, the amount of times you had to squint and lean over the table to read whatever paragraph he was trying to show you during your reading sessions at the library. He felt this sudden urge to protect you, to constantly remind you to wear your glasses in case your vision worsened. 

There was something inside of him screaming at him to not let you stray away from the happy path you were currently in. Something inside of him made him determined to be your only guide, to be your pair of eyes. In return, he knew you would ignite the flame in his heart. No, you would be the special flame that burns his heart. You’d be a conflagration in the night. A pretty arsonist. A fire blazing so bright you’ll see the light of the heavens itself. 

“Oh why bother. You know very well, out of my five senses, my hearings best. I’m pretty sure I’ll recognize you without relying on my eyes,” you waved your hand off carelessly, keeping your eyes closed, oblivious to the way Renjun was looking at you so lovingly. “Well I assure you, I don’t think you can rely on your hearing to walk down the streets without my assistance,” Renjun chuckled, recalling the time when you almost walked into the wrong side of town due to your poor eyesight. 

“You don’t know that! My eyes always lead me astray, anyways. Far away down the street, sometimes I can’t bear to steal a glance at the sun or even look the sky straight in the eye for fear that my eyes would deceive me as well,” you confessed dramatically, finally opening your eyes and turning your head to look at Renjun in the eye. Your eyes widened at the way Renjun’s eyes softened at the sight of your own pupils staring back at his in confusion. You straighten up your position, putting your hands behind you and leaning on them. 

“Then let me be your eyes,” Renjun replied in an almost hushed tone. “I won’t let you stray, I promise,” he gave you a sweet boyish smile, making your heart flutter in your chest at his words. “Aren’t you being a little flirtatious? That’s quite unexpected of you, Huang Renjun,” you said with a raise of your brows as the corner of your lips quirked up into a smile that mirrored his own. You turned your head, feeling your faces grow closer and closer with every second. 

“Is that supposed to be a bad thing?” he hummed, turning his body so his shoulder was leaning against the tree bark, a dreamy smile stretched across his lips as he leaned closer to you. You chuckled, shaking your head softly. “I don’t know, what do you think? Maybe it could be a good thing?” you shrugged, closing your eyes and leaning your face closer to his. Renjun followed your actions, feeling the gears in his mechanical heart work at a fast pace. He winced in pain as his body jolted and twitched in pain, the mechanical bird inside of the clock rapidly hitting the door of his clock.

He felt your breath hitting against his face, your lips merely an inch away from his as his body twitched in pain once again. Letting out a grunt of pain, he felt one of the gears of his clock pop out of his chest. Putting his hands on his chest, he grunted once again as his body twitched uncontrollably in pain. There was the sound of fabric being ripped before his vision darkened and he fell back against the concrete floor, falling unconscious within a few seconds.

“Renjun!” a voice yelled out in alarm, causing your eyes to jolt open in shock. 

“Oh god, not this. Please, anything but this,” an unfamiliar voice gasped in a panic. Your vision was blurry, you couldn’t see much happening in front of you. You quickly fished out your spectacles from your purse, putting them on immediately before your eyes widened in fear and shock, your body froze on the spot. You could almost feel your heart stop beating against your chest for a moment. 

Right in front of you was an unconscious Huang Renjun in the arms of an older lady on the floor. He was leaning against her lap, arms wrapped around him tightly in a motherly way. His eyes closed in content, it almost appeared as if he was just sleeping peacefully. There was steam coming out of his chest, you couldn’t see where it was coming from considering the old lady had blocked your view of him almost completely as she pleaded for him to wake up worriedly. 

The lady in question snapped her head at you, glaring daggers at you as if you had committed some sort of arson. “What have you done to him?” she asked, her tone filled with malice and hatred. As if you were the cause of Renjun’s current state. Your eyes widened at her sharp tone, fear and anxiety creeping up in your veins as you couldn’t find the courage to even open your mouth, let alone utter a single word. You shakily got up to your feet, grabbing the strap of your purse before running off away from the two.

-

Slap!

The loud sound of Madam Wendy’s palm making contact with Renjun’s cheek pierced the room, causing his head to turn sideways at the harsh impact, wincing slightly as he laid against the chair, which was commonly used for Wendy’s patients, shirtless. His body jolted at the sudden contact, his heart making a loud ‘cuckoo’ sound at the shock it caused. “What were you thinking? You could’ve died!” Madam Wendy scolded, her fists balled up in her sides as she walked over to her table tray filled with tools. 

Renjun couldn’t speak as he looked down in his palms, his mind blank and face void of emotion. He felt numb at that exact moment, he didn’t know if it was the aftermath of the sheering pain he just endured in front of you or it was because of the feeling of his heart being fixed by his own caretaker. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Huang Renjun. Whatever bloody happened to rule number 3? Did you forget?” Madam Wendy exclaimed in an alarming tone, her voice strict and angry. “No,” Renjun replied before breaking into a small fit of coughs, wincing as his chest burned with every breath he took. 

“Do you have a pain in your heart when you cough?” Madam Wendy asked, her tone filled with worry, eyes filled with disappointment as she searched for a pair of pliers. Renjun nodded slowly in response, gripping the armrests of the chair as he leaned his head back against the pillow set behind his head. “Well multiply that pain and your suffering to a hundred fold and you still won’t understand the pain love causes,” she snapped, using some pliers to pull a piece of fabric from the arrows of his heart, placing the fabric on the small tray beside him before walking off to grab some more tools. 

“And the greater the love, the greater the pain,” she sighed, opening the drawers from across the room. Renjun’s eyes flickered to the woman frantically trying to fix his heart before his eyes moved down to the white fabric on the tray. He reached his arm out to grab it, quickly snucking it in his pockets before looking back at the window. During your near-kiss under the tree, the arrows of his clock must’ve pulled against the fabric of your dress. Your dress wasn’t made out of the most durable fabric, the pull must’ve ripped the top sleeve of your dress when he passed out. 

“First, your sense of ache, followed by pangs of rage and jealousy then incomprehension,” she started to explain, sipping on her coffee as Wendy’s heart ached at the thought of her own child going through that much pain if this goes on.  “Rejection, the agony of heartbreak,” she turned to point her tweezers that was holding a gear in between it with a strict motherly expression. One that Renjun couldn’t bear looking into for too long.

“Your mechanical heart won’t be able to withstand it, you know this! I told you countless times, this is why I’m always so worried whenever I let you go into town,” she barked, walking back to the tools to drop the rusted gear along with the other broken metals she pulled out and replaced from his heart. “It will overheat and explode, I transplanted it with my own two hands, therefore I know it’s limits,” she went on, her tone falling deaf onto Renjun’s ears as his mind wandered back to your figure. 

“A single kiss. A brush against your lips could be your last! Just like that, bang!”

With eyes closed in thought, he wondered what happened after he fell unconscious, how did Madam Wendy find him in such a short amount of time? What happened to you? Did he scare you when he fell unconscious? He was worried you’ll  be afraid to talk to him now. Did Wendy say anything mean to you while he was out cold on the concrete floor?

Oh god, your presence isn’t even here and your existence is entering his heart and filling it with flames as if you were a little fairy wandering around looking for a new home to live in. A home which is his heart. He couldn’t help but let out a small smile at the vivid memory of sitting so close to you under the shade, how his skin burns at the feeling of touching yours, how your smile and laughter gave colour to his emotionless dark world. Oh how the thought of you made Renjun feel as if he was floating. It was as if you were carrying him up into the sky, he felt like flying by your side. 

“Do you know why I saved your life?” a voice snapped him out of his daydreaming.

His eyes opened, head turning to his caretaker who took a seat next to him, gripping her gloves in her hands. “You were the son I never had,” she confessed, giving him a small comforting smile. “Why couldn’t you have one?” Renjun asked rather hesitantly, his voice almost hushed as if he was whispering, despite the fact that it was only the two of them in the room. Madam Wendy shrugged, sighing heavily. 

“It was no one’s fault. It’s one of those tricks love and nature plays on us, you know that more than anyone,” she chuckled, gesturing to the cuckoo clock heart on his naked chest. “Though, the day your mother gave you to me felt like it was heaven sent. Oh god, I would lose my mind and my reason for living if I lost you,” she reached over and ran her fingers through her child’s hair, making Renjun feel some sort of guilt deep down in his chest. 

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry I fell in love and I don’t know how to get out.

-

Madam Wendy finally allowed Renjun out of their home a month after the incident. For the whole thirty days he was prisoned in his home, all that wandered in his mind was you. He wanted to see you, he longed to hear your sardonic humor, he longed to hear your angelic laughter flowing through his ears like music. He longed to ask forgiveness of what had happened between the two of you under the tree.

He wondered if you harbored the same feelings for him as he does for you. He doubted you’d still feel the same after the incident, however, a part of him had hope that you would wait for him all this time. He tried to prove himself wrong as he ran around town to all of your favorite spots. The library, the fountain, the art store, the tree. Anywhere his mind took him, his feet didn’t stop moving. His feet couldn’t stop moving. 

He wanted to see you again. No, he needed to see you again. He needed to apologize to you to release the guilt in his heart. He didn’t care if his heart would explode right then and there, he needed to see you and he wanted to finally embrace you in his arms. He needed to know if you reciprocate his feelings, he needed to know if you longed for him as much as he longed for you this whole entire time. He never got your answer, either. He asked to be your eyes, he wanted to be your guide. He wanted to tell you to rely on him if you can’t rely on your eyes, he wanted to hold your hand to keep you from straying to the wrong path. He wanted to feel his lips brush against yours, he wanted to feel love. He wanted to feel loved by you.

His heart fell even more when he realised he couldn’t find you anywhere. No one knew where you went, no one has seen you since the day he fell unconscious. It was as if you had disappeared off of the surface of the earth. The only thing he had of you was the fabric he accidentally tore off of your dress. He realised you left your barrel organ ride beside the tree. It was already collecting dust as leaves fell in between the spaces of the organ. 

You were gone. 

The owner of the library informed him that you had fled abroad. His heart sank to the pit of his stomach at the thought of you running away. You didn’t even say goodbye. You didn’t even have the audacity to tell him you were leaving? Surely you would have informed him that you were leaving. Yet again, you did tell him on the first day you met that you weren’t supposed to stay here for too long. But was it too much of him to ask you to at least say goodbye?

-

Two years later, it was Renjun’s 18th birthday. Two years since he lost you, two years since he went back to the hollow shell he formerly was before he fell in love. He spent months wallowing in his own sorrow, he spent months wondering if you missed him the same way he missed you. He no longer looked forward to walking out of his home to paint, all he saw was grey. The places he spent with you made his vision dark and grey, it was as if the joy inside of him were stripped from his vision. 

He didn’t know what to do. His heart grew numb, he didn’t know how to make himself happy again. It was as if he had lost a part of himself. He had lost something precious. Which he did, he lost you. He didn’t know what to do. Yet, on a rare occasion, he would take small walks into town. 

Madam Wendy noticed how Renjun’s whole existence grew dull ever since that day, his eyes were always dark as if he hasn’t slept for centuries, a frown permanently placed on his lips, his movements weak as if he didn’t have the energy to move. At this point he admitted that he was barely living, he was just a human body existing with a cuckoo clock as a heart. His days were no longer as bright as they used to.

To Renjun, the days felt like it was repeating itself. He wasn’t allowed to go to school, for Madam Wendy feared that he would be made fun of and bullied by his peers. Everyday, he would wake up and wind up his heart, take a long shower, eat his breakfast, paint or read his books, occasionally talking to the patients who attempted to make small talk with him (however that wouldn’t last very long considering he had no interest whatsoever in interacting with strangers he barely knew), eat dinner, go to bed. Repeat. 

It was an exhausting cycle. His mind was growing dull. Whenever his mental health became worse, he would take a walk into town to clear his mind to try and lift his own spirits (despite the fact that he knew it’s futile. After all, he’s been trying this for the past two years.) Today was unfortunately one of those days. 

Renjun had decided to take a small visit to the library. He remembered how he had to apologize to the librarian for lending you the Great Expectations book when he remembered that you’ve never returned the book back to him. He still felt guilty despite the fact that the librarian didn’t mind it very much. The librarian lady took a liking to both you and Renjun, she thought the two of you would’ve ended up together if it weren’t for the fact that you had moved away without a goodbye.

But fortunately for Renjun, today was a different day. Today would be the day to end his miserable lifestyle. 

“Renjun! Renjun, my dear boy! How are you, honey?” the librarian greeted, putting a stack of books on the counter as Renjun entered the library with a bashful smile on his face. “Same as always, Mrs. Dust,” he bowed to greet the older lady politely, snucking his hands in his pockets after tugging on his coat. “Honey, I have lovely news for you! You remember your old friend, Miss Y/n, don’t you?” the lady giggled, walking over to the young adult with an eager smile on her face. 

Oh how Renjun’s heart perked up at the brief mention of your name. 

“Of course I do, Mrs. What about her?” he coughed, clearing his throat to prevent his voice from shaking. “I’ve received a letter from her! Oh hold on, dearie,” she giggled, squatting down to open the small drawer near her desk and pulling out a small postcard which had a familiar handwriting written on the back. “It must be your birthday soon. Happy birthday, my dear boy. The least I can do is give you this,” she smiled, handing Renjun the postcard with a hum. 

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Dust,” he smiled, gripping the postcard tightly in between his fingers as he looked down on it. It was indeed from you. You didn’t write much on the card, nothing more than a simple ‘happy birthday’ and a small ‘I missed you’. You had written your name at the edge of the card and a small ‘R’ beside the happy birthday, indicating that it was truly for him. Fireworks erupted in his stomach when he saw small hearts doodled all over the card with a red pen. 

You remembered him. 

You missed him. 

You thought of him.

Those words were enough to revive the spark in his heart. Those were enough to spread a bright genuine smile across his lips. His cheeks hurt from how wide his smile was, he felt like jumping for joy. He was so ecstatic he thought he could fly to the sky, he felt his fingers itching as his eyes wandered to the address you have written at the bottom of the postcard, giving him a hint of where you might be living. 

Andalusia. 

You were half across Europe. You were so far away, yet so close. He wanted to see you. He needed to see you. He couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste, he needed to get a move on and he needed to find you. He thought sending you a postcard back wasn’t enough. He wanted to see the girl who managed to turn his heart without the key, he wanted to see the girl who produced a spark in his heart with only a few mere words.

He ran all the way back home, encountering Joy and Yeri on the way back and shooting them with an uncharacteristically bright smile stretched across his face. “Renjun, lad, what’s gotten you all jumpy?” Joy exclaimed, causing Renjun to stop in his tracks. “I got a letter from her!” he informed them, his voice high-pitched as if he just got told that he had personally won the sun, moon and stars all to himself. In his case, he actually did. He actually did.

“A letter?” Yeri squeaked up, a smile stretching across her face at the sight of the younger boy’s. “From who?” Joy asked, giggles bubbling up in between the two ladies as they watch Renjun suppress the urge to jump for joy. “Y/n! She remembers me! She sent me a postcard from Andalusia,” he exclaimed, waving the postcard in their faces. Joy’s eyes wandered down to Renjun’s chest, watching as the hands of his clock spun rapidly, indicating how excited the young adult was feeling. 

“Y/n? Was this the young girl you went on about a few years ago?” Yeri asked, receiving an enthusiastic nod from Renjun himself. “Renjun, that’s great news! What are you planning to do then? Write her another letter?” she asked once again, clasping her hands in front of her at the delightful news. The boy shook his head eagerly, his smile never faltering. 

“I’m going to find her, I’m going to find her and confess my love,” he breathed out, his own words taking his breath away. The thought of seeing you again was enough to send him flying into the heavens, oh for all things that’s holy, he didn’t know how he was going to proclaim his love for you in person when he could barely explain it in words himself.

“To Andalusia? Renjun, that’s halfway across Europe! Madam Wendy won’t be very happy about this,” Joy informed him, a sympathetic smile replacing her previously bright one. Renjun’s smile faltered at the mention of his caretaker, looking down at the postcard you had sent him, your messy handwriting beckoning him to come to you. He sucked his bottom lip, his heart racing at the thought of rebelling against Madam Wendy’s orders.

Yet again, if he did end up dying from this, all of Madam Wendy’s efforts throughout the past two decades would be in vain. She was practically his guardian after all, but yet again, he was a legal adult now isn’t he? He’s 18 years old, he didn’t have to live under her rules anymore if he didn’t want to. But he couldn’t help but feel guilty for wanting to flee Edinburgh just to see you again, something inside of him was screaming at him to run.

Maybe this time, he would listen to it.

“Joy, Yeri, will you help me escape Edinburgh?”

-

“Renjun? What are you doing up so late?” 

Renjun froze, halting his movements as he dropped another sweater into his suitcase. He shut his eyes tightly as his heart raced against his chest, taking a deep breath to compose himself before standing up to face his caretaker as he zipped up his suitcase tight. “Wendy,” he cleared his throat, gripping tightly on the saddle of his suitcase with a small cough, slipping the key to his heart in his front pockets. “Renjun, why do you have a suitcase packed? It’s past curfew,” she narrowed her eyes at the boy.

“Wendy, I am now a legal adult. I have turned 18 years old,” Renjun started, suppressing the urge to gulp down his nerves but he kept his ground. “Yes, I know that, Renjun. That still doesn't answer my question as to why you’re up this late with a packed suitcase,” she nodded, tone laced with confusion as Renjun took a step back towards the opened window, looking out at the moonlight. “Y/n sent me a postcard… from Andalusia,” his voice grew quieter as the seconds went by.

“I’m planning to travel half across Europe to see her again.”

“No, I forbade it.” Wendy shook her head, taking a step forward towards her adopted child, her hands balled up into fists at how Renjun’s determined expression didn’t falter at the slightest bit at her strict tone. “I expected you to say that,” Renjun sighed, walking over to the open window and looking up at the moon shining down upon the dark sky. 

“Nature was cruel to pray this silly little trick on me. I spent two decades wondering ‘what is love’? I knew I didn’t need to love in life, you showed me that throughout my whole 18 years of living here. I didn’t need love to live,” Renjun started, clasping his hands together as he held the saddle of his suitcase harder.

“But I realise, I’ve always wanted to feel love. To feel love, to give love and be loved back. Y/n made me realise that when I started falling for her two years ago, and if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have come to this realisation either,” he chuckled in disbelief, looking around at the decorations of his room, realising how much he’s going to miss living here. “I want to go out and explore the world, I know you have been dreading at the possibility of this day coming, but it has, Wendy.”

“Renjun, no. If you leave, this might as well be the last breath you’ll take! You have never travelled outside of town before, how are you going to survive travelling all across Europe for some measly girl? I won’t allow it, I can’t allow it,” Wendy shook her head, her eyes wide with panic as she watched Renjun walk backwards to the open window behind him. “I know you won’t allow it. But it’s time to let me go,” Renjun smiled sadly.

“Thank you for the 18 years you have spent trying to keep me alive. But the past two years felt meaningless to me without her presence, it felt aimless. I was honestly thinking about taking my own life at some point,” he chuckled with a shake of his head. “But now, I realise I rather risk my life for love than spend the rest of my days here with an empty, cold feeling in my heart,” he shot his guardian a genuine smile, the first genuine smile she has ever witnessed from the young boy. 

“Goodbye Wendy.”

“Huang Renjun!” 

Renjun fell back from the open window, causing Madam Wendy to let out a cry of his name, quickly running over to the window to see if her child was okay. She gasped when she saw that Renjun had landed on a mattress Joy and Yeri had set before hand, a loud joyous laughter eliciting from the younger boy’s lips, a sound Wendy has never heard from the boy from his eighteen years of living. He got up from the mattress, grabbing his suitcase quickly before shooting a boyish smile to his aunts. 

“I’ll send you a postcard, Madam Wendy!” he exclaimed as he began running down the hill. 

“Renjun, no! Come back! Oh god, please no! Yeri, Joy, what are you doing?! Stop the young lad before he-”

“You can’t blame me for falling hard in love, mother!”

-

“Now my dear boy, what a lovely contraption of a heart you got there!” a man exclaimed, adjusting his monocle as he squinted his eyes at Renjun’s mechanical heart. “Oh, why, thank you,” he smiled politely, bowing at the older man as he gripped his canvas in hand. “Where are you off to? You seem quite young to be travelling all by yourself,” the man asked in an attempt to make small talk.

That night, Renjun had run off to catch the nearest train to Paris, he planned to take a trip from there to Andalusia. It was a 7 hour ride but he was willing to do anything at this point to get out of Edinburgh. When he finally arrived in Paris, he stumbled upon this man while waiting for his next train. “Oh pardon me, where are my manners! I’m Kim Doyoung,” he outstretched his hand for Renjun to shake with a toothy smile spread on his lips. 

“Huang Renjun,” he introduced with a sheepish smile. “Ah, So, Renjun, where are you going, my dear boy? You seem a little bit too young to travel,” Doyoung took off his monocle, wiping it against his tie before putting it back on. “I-I’m trying to get a replacement for my heart,” Renjun said, poking his little clock with the tip of his finger, grimacing at the small ticking sound it was making at the small touch. 

It wasn’t a complete lie. 

He had planned to get a replacement for his heart for so long, he figured that maybe if he changed into a new one, this wretched curse of forbidden love might be lifted. Maybe he didn’t have to part ways with Madam Wendy or Joy or Yeri. Maybe if he replaced his clock, he could live his life happily in love with you. Though, for now, it was just a small hope he held inside of him. All he could do now was find a clockmaker.

“I’m trying to find a clockmaker somewhere to replace my heart,” he spoke in a bold tone, looking down at his unfinished piece. He made it during his seven hour train ride while thinking of you just to pass the time, though, he was honestly considering giving it to you the moment you get to reunite with each other. “Do you happen to know one?” he asked, his eyes going wide with hopefulness.

Doyoung hummed in response, tugging on the tip of his tie. “Unfortunately, I’m not a clockmaker. But I do like tinkering in the mechanics direction! Maybe I could take a closer look at your heart to see if there’s anything I can do,” Doyoung suggested, pulling out a magnifying glass with a nod of his head. Renjun sucked his bottom lip nervously before taking out the key from his front pocket, plunging it into the mechanical heart and turning it to open the door of his heart. “Alright then.” “Oh! You say that this was grafted by the famous Madam Wendy from Edinburgh? She must be quite the genius to craft and piece this all for you with her bare hands to save your life,” he exclaimed, leaning closer to observe the small gears slowly turning with every small tick tocks his heart makes. “Though, I don’t know why you’d want to replace such a thing. Everything works just fine, clearly, she made this out of love. I could see it within every crevice of art she puts into this clock,” the older man clicked his heart, putting his magnifying glass back into his bag as Renjun closed his heart shut and pulled his key out of the clock.

“Love, huh? That’s the exact problem I have at the moment,” Renjun sighed heavily, tucking his key back into his front pocket before leaning back against his seat. “It’s very dangerous to me. At least that’s what Wendy said to me for the past eighteen years of my life,” he looked down at his shoes sadly, pressing his lips together in a tight line as he felt the guilt catching up to him at the thought of his caretaker’s efforts going in vain. 

“Tell me about it,” Doyoung grinned, putting his hand on his chin as a smug expression spread across his features. 

“You see, mister Kim-”

“Oh no! Call me Doyoung!” 

“Uhm- You see, mister Doyoung. There’s this singer I met in Edinburgh a long time ago and-” “Ah yes, I see. These things do happen quite often.” Renjun bit back his tongue when Doyoung interrupted him once again, but nonetheless he continued on with his story. “As time went on, we grew closer. And soon, I couldn’t help but feel as if my whole world was going through a life threatening earthquake. My head was spinning, I couldn’t breathe. The ticking tock of my clock sounded almost alarming as if it was going to stop at any given moment whenever I’m within her lovely presence,” he explained, making grand, dramatic gestures with his hands as he went on.

Doyoung chuckled, assuming that Renjun’s poetic explanations were purely symbolic. “And how did that feel, exactly, Renjun?” he asked, causing Renjun’s expression to soften. “Extraordinary,” he sighed, almost dreamily as he looked down at the postcard he was holding in his free hand that wasn’t holding his canvas. “There you go, my dear boy,” he chuckled in response, leaning back against the seat next to Renjun’s.

“I don’t know, Mister Doyoung. I fear Wendy might be right, though, what if love was just a trap and my ticking clock is just a bomb waiting to be triggered by it?” Renjun asked, scratching the back of his neck nervously as he kissed his teeth. “Renjun, if you fear of getting hurt, you will increase the chances of getting hurt,” Doyoung laid a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder comfortingly. “You should enjoy the thrill, the danger! That pumps through your veins at the thought of falling completely in love,” he exclaimed. 

“If you live your life worrying everything, you’ll get bored before you even die! Don’t you want to experience a life changing experience with this little lady you’ve been saughting after?” he asked, her tone encouraging Renjun’s spirit to get back up again. A smile stretched across Renjun’s face at the thought, he had flashbacks to the two years he spent without you. He couldn’t afford going back to the same depressing situation he got himself out of, and he’s definitely not willing to go back now that he’s almost there.

“If I can find her again. The last time I heard from her, she was in Andalusia,” he shrugged with a small laugh.

“I’d say,” Doyoung laughed. “When you’re eighteen and you’re travelling half across the continent for a girl, I’d say the rebellious genes in your DNA are highly developed,” he joked, retracting his hand from Renjun’s shoulders. “I bet I could make a whole film based on your cuckoo clock heart,” Doyoung whipped out an empty journal from his bag, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively at his newfound friend. “Why not?” Renjun chuckled with a small shrug. 

“Young love, what a beautiful thing to see. You see, I never had any fond memories when it comes to being in love. All I do is invent and invent contraptions, and my former lover never appreciated my expertise. Life is far from easy when you’re in love, my young friend,” Doyoung sighed, leaning his arm against the seat with a heavy sigh. “Why don’t you come with me to Andalusia then, Mister Doyoung? I’m sure anything’s possible there and I wouldn’t mind having a bit of a company on my way there,” Renjun offered, the thought of making a new friend giving some light into his dark path.

“You want an unprofessional mechanic with constant near mental breakdowns following you in your journey to find love?” Doyoung’s eyes went wide in shock, a smile that mirrored Renjun’s appearing on his face. “I would love to have an unprofessional mechanic with constant near mental breakdowns in my quest!” Renjun laughed, nodding eagerly as he sat up straight to shake Doyoung’s hand to make a deal.

Renjun had  made another friend.

-

When they finally arrived in Andalusia, they stumbled upon a small amusement park where you were rumored to be staying in at the moment. “Well, first impressions?” Doyoung asked, looking around the ominous park filled with performers and eccentric workers setting up their tents. “It’s.. quite different than Edinburgh, I must admit,” Renjun chuckled, pulling on his suitcase eagerly as he scanned his eyes around in hopes that he might see your figure at the corner of his eye.

The park, unlike his old town, was way more colourful than Edinburgh. There were animals in colourful cages, happily interacting with their inmates. There were jesters and mimes practicing for their acts in the middle of the streets, happily entertaining a few visitors. There were food stands everywhere, Renjun swore you could exit this park penniless under five minutes if you really wanted to. 

“Come one, come all! For tonight we have special acts starting from 5 pm to-” 

He walked past whom he assumed was the announcer of the park, who was enthusiastically using a tricycle to spread his message all over the place. And upon walking around he stumbled upon what seems to be a horror attraction in the shape of a train, the owner standing inside of a coffin as she smoked her cigarette, eyeing Renjun suspiciously. “Looking for something, you little runt? A job, perhaps? Cause, I’m looking for a new employee to hire,” she asked, taking a puff of her cigarette in between her sentences. 

Renjun took his words back about Madam Wendy resembling Ms Havisham. Because at that given moment, he felt like Pip when he was first introduced to Ms Havisham in the book, clueless as to what he wanted with her. Renjun shook his head, no, mustering up the courage to give the older woman a polite smile. “I’m looking for a little singer?” he answered with an innocent smile. 

“A little singer? Here? The chances of that is equivalent to finding a snowflake in hell,” she rolled her eyes, taking another puff from her cigarette and blowing smoke into Renjun’s face. He coughed, taking a step back in alarm but he bit his tongue to snap back at the woman’s rude actions. “Listen, I’m just trying to find a little singer who sings like a lovely bird in the break of daw-” 

“Enough jabbering about her! Do you want the job or not?” she sighed exasperatedly. 

As Renjun was about to give the woman a piece of his mind for being so rude, the announcer cycling around him caught his attention with his words. “Ladies and Gentlemen, up next in our line of performers will be the young singing sensation, Miss Y/n! A lady who has travelled far and wide with her infamous street singing career,” the announcer said with a booming voice as he cycled to another part of the park.

“Miss Y/n?” he whispered with a soft gasp. “Well? Do you want the job or not?” the woman asked with a raised brow. He frowned involuntarily at the woman’s abrupt tone, clicking his tongue before running back to wherever Doyoung was. “I’ll think about it!” he exclaimed loudly before sprinting off, calling out his colleague’s name with a bright smile on his face. 

“I found her!”

-

“It is her!” he gasped, watching as you slowly come out of your little private trailer, music piercing his ears and your voice making its way into his heart like a knife throwing attraction. It hit right at the target perfectly. “It’s her, I can’t believe it,” Renjun could feel his breath being taken away. You had grown to be a beautiful woman, your features changed slightly due to the years but nonetheless, it didn’t do anything to stop Renjun’s heart from swelling up with adoration like a balloon being filled with helium. 

“Go into her trailer, no one’s going to notice you. Talk to her after her performance,” Doyoung encouraged with a slightly hushed tone. “Excuse me?” Renjun’s eyes shot wide at the unexpected encouragement, his eyes wandering to the trailer you came out of. “I can’t do that! That’s a lady’s privacy!” he exclaimed, shaking his head aggressively. “Trust me, it’ll go smoothly! Just believe in yourself and try not to let the conversation die,” Doyoung hissed, nudging on the younger boy’s shoulder.

Renjun got up slowly, gulping down his fear as he quickly got into your trailer, eyes wide at his own stupidity. ‘God, why did I decide to do this? This is very uncouth of me to do so,’ he thought to himself, wincing slightly when he realised that the music had died down. A bouquet of daisies were in his hand, he didn’t know what to do at that moment as he observed your trailer. It wasn’t very far from you. It was decorated according to your liking.

Your favorite colour was splashed all over the walls, a mannequin standing idly beside the entrance, your dressing table with a gigantic mirror showing his nervous presence. He froze for a brief moment at the sound of your enchanting humming and your little footsteps coming closer to the trailer, making him stand behind the mannequin on pure instinct as you walked into the trailer with a skip in your step.

You were humming the same song you sang on the day you first met. Muttering the lyrics under your breath as you removed bits of dust from your clothing from the performance. Looking up at the mirror, you gasped at Renjun’s awkward figure standing behind your mannequin. You stood up abruptly, grabbing a perfume on your desk and raised it up threateningly at him. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” you exclaimed in alarm. You couldn’t see his face very clearly considering you weren’t wearing your glasses.

“I’m sorry! I was tying my shoelaces when I fell into your floor,” Renjun shook his head, waving his hands around nervously to give off the message that he wasn’t some weird creep or stalker snooping around your belongings. “Do you always fall into a girl’s quarters when she’s changing?” you snapped, lowering your perfume hesitantly as you narrowed your eyes suspiciously at the boy. “NO! No! I would never, I swear! I don’t even know why I’m-”

“You look suspiciously familiar as if I recognise you from somewhere,” you mumbled under your breath, squinting your eyes at him. “You recognise me?” Renjun perked up, a smile stretching across his face as he took a step away from the mannequin towards you. You scoffed, rolling your eyes before turning to the mirror to adjust your appearance. “What do you want anyway?” you sighed, as if you were used to this sort of encounter.

“I’d like to give you a bouquet of daisies,” Renjun bit his lip, pulling the bouquet behind him and leaning it towards your direction. “Daisies? I can’t say they’re my favorite flowers,” you chuckled, looking up at him with a more relaxed expression. “I have no idea why, but peculiarly, daisies always reminds me of my glasses,” you confessed, putting the bouquet on your desk and standing up towards the exit. “I stopped wearing them a long, long time ago. They make me look like some weird bug,” you joked, looking back at Renjun, who chuckled at your words.

‘You really haven’t changed, huh?’

“It’s fine by me,” Renjun chuckled, walking closer towards you in comforting silence. The way your eyes made contact with his softly made his stomach do somersaults, the gears of his heart felt like it was powered by a burst of energy. “Could we see each other again?” he asked hesitantly, “I’d like to get to know you even more,” he added, snucking his hands in his pockets. “Perhaps,” you shrugged, giving him a smile that mirrored his own. “You’re not from around these parts, are you?”

“Oh, no! I’m not, I’m the-I work at the ghost train,” Renjun lied through his teeth, letting out a nervous laugh. “Oh, you’re the new scarer? That’s wonderful news to hear,” you exclaimed, clapping your hands to congratulate him on his new job. “Yes, of course! Exactly, I’m the new scarer,” he nodded, a little bit too eagerly if you asked him. “Can I come see you in action?” you laughed lightly, observing how fidgety the boy in front of you is as he stepped out of your trailer.

“Of course!”

“Tomorrow? Around four?” 

“I’ll see you then.”

-

As the weeks went by, the love between you and Renjun blossomed like a rose. You bonded over your love for art and music in general, rekindling the friendship you used to have. But unfortunately for Renjun, you didn’t recognise him, not a single bit. It was against his beliefs to hit a woman, for that was very impolite of a man, but whenever you mumble how you couldn’t put your finger on how you recognize him from somewhere then proceeds to drop the conversation, he couldn’t lie. He wanted to smack you upside the head for your oblivious self. 

‘Oblivious, rather ludicrous and as blind as a bat. Why did I fancy her, again?’ he would always ponder to himself on a daily basis before watching you run around to try the newest food from each of the food stalls with a bright smile on your face. ‘Oh, right, that’s why,’ he sighed heavily before going over to you with his hands clasped behind his back, mentally preparing himself to fall head over heels for you over and over again.

Today, he was giving you a tour of the ghost train. (yes, he took up the offer with a roll of his eyes just so he can stay here and spent more time with you) “You’re doing a wonderful job here, by the way. It looked like people are having a lot of fun riding the ghost train with your assistance,” you complimented, giving Renjun a soft smile as you walk along the dark train tracks.

“Why thank you, my boss can’t say the same, however,” he grumbled under his breath, rolling his eyes at the thought of his boss being ashamed of him for ruining her quote unquote reputation. “Don’t mind her, she’s always been like that,” you waved it off with a small giggle, patting his shoulder. “Hmm,” he nodded, a pregnant pause settling between you two as you basked in each other’s company. “How did you like the glasses I gave you?” 

Everyday, Renjun would find the most ominous and peculiar looking glasses that were all twisted and broken to give to you, which always brought a smile upon your face knowing full well that you couldn’t wear them no matter how much you tried. “Awful, as usual,” you joked, clasping your hands behind your back as you skipped along the tracks, your shoes hitting the dark coal with a soft ‘tip tap’. “Wonderful,” he laughed lightly, shaking his head profusely at you.

“I still can’t shake over the feeling that I’ve been in this situation before, or maybe I dreamed of this moment before,” you blurted out, looking around the damp cave-like tunnel you were walking through. Renjun bit his lip sadly, suppressing the urge to tell you that he was the boy you met back in Edinburgh. Yet again, what if you left for a reason? What if you left because you didn’t want to see him again? He feared the worse as time went on. 

“I’m sure we’ve met before but I don’t know where,” you turned to him with a smile tugging at your lips. “Really,” Renjun looked down at his feet, kicking the coal as you both paused in your step and turned your bodies to look at each other in the eyes. You somehow found comfort in looking into Renjun’s eyes, but you couldn’t pinpoint why they constantly gave you a sense of deja vu whenever you stare into them for too long. “What’s that odd pitter patter?” you mumbled, hearing a familiar tapping sound in the tunnel.

He bit back a smile, “it’s the rain.” 

He knew those words all too well. “Do you like the rain?” he asked, putting his hand behind his back as he adjusted the top hat on his head. “Getting wet? No,” you shook your head, giving him a tight-lipped smile. “But the sound it makes? Yes,” you nodded enthusiastically, making Renjun laugh at your slight eagerness. “And I’ve heard that noise before somewhere,” you whispered, loud enough for Renjun to hear. 

“That’s because it’s my heart,” he couldn’t help but blurted out, putting a hand on his little coat. “Pardon?” you furrowed your brows in confusion, watching him tug on his coat to reveal a miniscule cuckoo clock on his chest. “My heart, they made it for me on the day I was born. It’s a bit cold and a little fragile, but it works,” he sighed, watching as you observe the small contraption on his heart with a curious expression, pulling out the key from his pockets.

“You can open me up with this little key,” he grabbed your hand and placed the key in between your fingers, letting you push the key into his heart and turning it to the left before opening the door of his clock. “Fascinating, do you always let other girls walk into the train tracks with you and let them open your heart?” you chuckled, raising your brow at the boy in front of you, whose eyes widened in surprise as you pulled your hand away from his heart. 

“No, not really. In fact, you’re the first one,” Renjun shook his head with a sweet smile, closing the door shut and pulling out the key before placing it back into his pocket. “Oh, thanks,” your eyes widened slightly at his blunt expression, putting a hand on your arm shyly. “You’re welcome,” he chuckled, patting the key in his pocket. Renjun’s eyes wandered from your eyes to your soft lips, his heart racing against his chest at the thought of finally picking up where you had left off all those years. He didn’t even realise that he was leaning his head towards yours. 

“Wait- no,” you pressed a hand against his chest, pushing him away as you turned your head to the side with guilt glossing over your eyes. “Don’t,” you shook your head as you took a step back. “I really like you. There’s a warm fuzzy feeling growing in my tummy that’s making me pull towards you like a magnet, but,” you paused, looking down at your hands nervously as they lay limp on your sides. “My heart belongs to someone else,” you gave him a sympathetic smile. 

“Someone I met a long, long time ago. You always reminded me of him. “I’m still waiting until the day we reunite once again, embarking on a romantic adventure with you would just be unfair,” you sighed heavily, rubbing your arms nervously as you slowly let Renjun down. A great pang of pain pierced through Renjun’s whole body at your words, he could almost feel his heart tear itself apart as he watched you walk away and out of the ghost tunnel. 

Away from him.

-

“Renjun! You’re back! So? How did it go?” Doyoung exclaimed, fixing his latest invention with a cough, dropping his tweezers in his bag as he wiped his hands on a nearby cloth. Doyoung had rented an empty building so that he could introduce his new inventions to the public and entertain them with them. “She loves someone else,” Renjun mumbled under his breath, tossing his top hat onto one of the seats they set up as he sat down on the steps of the small indoor stage Doyoung had built over the past few weeks.

“I travelled halfway across Europe for her for absolutely nothing,” Renjun laid his head on his palms, sighing heavily as he tried to keep himself from screaming in pain. His heart was hurting. It was way different than the pain he felt two years ago, it was a whole new level of emotional pain he didn’t know he was capable of feeling. “Did you at least confess your love for her?” Doyoung asked, taking a seat next to the boy as Renjun gripped his hair tightly in distress. 

“Why bother? Her heart’s filled to the brim, there’s no way I could empty it out like a sink,” Renjun pulled his head out of his hands, his elbows laying on his legs as he threw the golden key to his heart against the carpet floor out of frustration. “You can’t just let your efforts go to waste, Renjun. Did she at least recognise you?” Doyoung asked, leaning over to grab the key and place it back into his younger friend’s palm with a heavy sigh.

He shook his head, turning it to look at the older man who adjusted his monocle. “No, I’d prefer her not to remember who I am than to remember me and not love me in return,” Renjun leaned his cheek against his palm, eyes looking down sadly at his feet. “You can’t just give up like that, Renjun. Love is like a shooting star you’re supposed to seek after, a wish you must grant yourself with the fifty percent chance of getting the outcome you desire,” Doyoung encouraged, leaning back against his palms behind him. 

Renjun chuckled softly, a sad smile appearing on his lips. “I never felt so sad yet so happy at the same time,” he shook his head, pressing his knuckles to his temples hard. “Ah yes, two of the most powerful and impactful emotions of the human soul combined into one,” Doyoung mused, raising a brow at his lovesick friend. “If only she believed me about my heart, her expression tells me that she thinks it’s some kind of sick joke,” he scoffed, kicking the air with one foot as he let out a huff of exhaustion.

“Well, did she say who has captured her heart?” Doyoung asked, raising his brow, causing Renjun’s eyes to shoot up wide. 

The impact of Kim Doyoung’s words have never failed to get Renjun’s adrenaline rushing again through his veins as he walked into your trailer with a small push against your door. “Do I know him?” Renjun asked abruptly, wanting to get straight to the point as he was very eager to know who has captured your heart. “Could you stop barging into my trailer all the time?” you retorted, turning towards him as you put down your makeup brush on your desk. “The boy you’re in love with, do I know him?” Renjun repeated, the gears of his heart racing against his chest.

He doesn’t even know if he wants the answer to that question. “No,” you replied bluntly, adjusting the laces on your dress. “So you’re not in love with him anymore?” Renjun asked, raising his brow as he crossed his arms against his chest and leaned against the door. “No, that’s not what I meant!” you huffed, feeling yourself getting frustrated the more he edged you on. “Look, it was a very, very long time ago when I first met him,” you rolled your eyes.

“It was back when my parents still made me move from city to city. Oh god, that city was practically made for him. The aura of the city radiated the same aura he had back when I first met him, cold and depressing. Nonetheless the more I got to know him, the more I realised that inside he was just a warm human being that needed someone to light up his perspective,” you sighed, clasping your hands together right in front of you. There was a loud ‘cuckoo!’ that pierced both of your ears, and suddenly, a small gear shot from Renjun’s heart and hit the wooden closet right beside you. 

“Would you stop playing with your clock? You could injure someone, it won’t hurt to take it off occasionally, will it?” you exclaimed with a gasp, looking up at him with bold eyes as you put your hands on your hips. “I can’t help it, it’s not some bloody toy! It’s my heart,” he snapped back, his hands balled up into fists as he felt his blood boiling in his veins at the sound of you talking so highly of someone else that wasn’t him. The way you talked about whoever this boy is was the same way he talked about you to everyone else. 

He took a deep breath to calm himself down when he saw your taken aback reaction, “I’m sorry.” You let out a deep sigh as you stood up from your desk, putting a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort the poor fellow. “Look, I would really appreciate it if we could become friends. How about we go down to the theater tomorrow? I heard Mister Doyoung made a new contraption to add to the cinematic universe,” you suggested, giving him a kind smile as you took his hand in yours to try and cheer him up a bit. 

“I’d really like to go together.” No matter how much his heart was telling him to rest for the rest of his life, no matter how much in pain he’s currently in, but the moment he looked into your eyes, he knew he couldn’t say no. 

-

“Would you care to share more information about your romeo?” Renjun asked, holding his wrist behind him as you two walked outside of the amusement park together after the show. “Oh, don’t call him that. I absolutely despise that specific work of Shakespeare’s,” you scoffed, rolling your eyes as you hopped over a pebble, grunting as you caught your balance. Renjun chuckled, “why so?” he asked, raising his brow at you. 

“The typical damsel in distress trope never failed to make my blood boil like a pot of water on high heat,” you huffed, crossing your arms. “I prefer to call him my Pip,” you giggled, climbing up a small hill before sitting on top of the grass and laying your head down with a content sigh. “Pip? Why Pip to be exact?” Renjun asked, raising his brow as he took a seat next to your lying figure, leaning back against his palms. “A couple years ago, right before I left. We had this small debate on happy endings and shakespearean works,” you started, gazing up at the starry night sky. 

“I would constantly babble on and on about how women shouldn’t be the damsel in distress, then one day he whipped out this book out of nowhere like some sort of magician! It was called the Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, I finally finished when I left the city so I never got around to returning the book he let me borrowed,” you sighed, placing your hands on your tummy as you giggled at the thought of your first love possibly getting mad at you for leaving without a goodbye with the addition of not returning his book back. 

Renjun’s heart raced at your small story, his body froze as his ears grew a slight tint of pink (which wasn’t very visible, thanks to the dim lighting of the moon shining down upon the two of you) when he realised that you were talking about him. You were talking about him all along. “I realised why he let me borrow the book though, I asked for an unhappy ending without the female protagonist being the damsel in distress. It was a beautiful story, really,” you sighed, closing your eyes as you thought back to the times you shared back in Edinburgh.

“He would always listen to my rambles as he painted some random landscape in town, showing me his talents as well as listening to my words as I ranted about the foolish decisions of the characters. He reminds me of Pip a little bit. A bit childish, a bit foolish, a little bit misunderstood,” you went on, before pausing briefly, eyes opening to look up at your new friend. “Should I stop? I don’t want to bore you with my story, I tend to ramble a lot unintentionally,” you asked, receiving an aggressive shake of Renjun’s head. 

“No! No! Keep going, I’m getting very interested in your story, do continue,” he laughed lightly, looking down at his clock, biting back his lip to keep himself from jumping for joy. “The last day I saw him- oh god, I remember it every night before I go to bed. I never had my glasses on around him, so my memory of his physical appearance is rather blurry. But I remembered it like it was yesterday. Sure, I might not recognize him today with my own eyes but I remembered we almost shared a kiss,” a wide smile stretched across your face as a warm feeling bubbled up inside of you at the vivid memory. 

“Yeah?” Renjun couldn’t help but let a wide smile spread across his own lips at the thought, turning his head to the side to suppress the urge to tackle you in a strong embrace. You remembered. “He offered to be my eyes, he offered to keep me from straying down the wrong path. I never got a chance to say yes,” you giggled, rubbing your palms against your eyes as you felt a giddy feeling inside both of your chests. “Guess he was too eager to kiss you before you could say yes?” Renjun joked, grimacing at his own childishness. 

You chuckled, shrugging simply. “I guess so, I didn’t mind though. It felt exhilarating. I didn’t know how it happened but he also tore a little bit of my dress as well,” you shook your head, looking back up at the stars scattered across the sky. Oh how Renjun was using all the strength vested inside of him to keep his heart from going ‘cuckoo!’ right in front of you right now. “He might not remember me, I sent him a postcard a couple weeks ago. I never received one back. But someday, when we reunite, I’d like to thank him for the lovely book and for teaching me what love feels like.”

“Everytime I’m near his company I would always feel so safe. So happy, so loved. Genuinely happy and genuinely loved,” you sighed, closing your eyes once again as you took in the fresh air. “I’m sure he felt the same,” Renjun felt his cheeks hurting from how wide he was smiling. “Hey, can we see each other again?” he spoke after a moment of comforting silence. “Alright, when?” you opened your eyes, squinting your eyes suspiciously at him. “Noon? At the theater, I have something to tell you,” he grinned. 

“Alright then, is something wrong? Why the funny face?” you chuckled, sitting up from your laying position, cocking your head to the side as you raised your eyebrow at him. “Nothing, I’m just really excited to show you this,” he shook his head, he couldn’t hide his big smile from you any longer. 

Just like how he couldn’t hide his longing and love for you that he has been harboring for the past two years. 

“She’s in love with me,” he said to Doyoung, who gave him a proud grin in return. “Congratulations, my dear boy! You tamed the spark in your heart,” he gave Renjun a pat on the back, who smiled sadly in response. “But there’s a problem. She’s in love with the other me, the one back in Edinburgh,” he sighed, sitting down on one of the seats in the theater. “I don’t see why this is a problem. The ‘you’ back in Edinburgh is still the same ‘you’ now!” Doyoung furrowed his brows in confusion. 

“I assume so, but what am I supposed to say to her?” Renjun ran a hand through his hair in frustration. 

“Tell her how you feel! ‘It’s me! Renjun! The boy you loved oh-so-dearly for all these years! Your first love from Edinburgh, I have travelled far and wide all over Europe to find you, my love. So now let me take your hand and let’s venture and sail for the skies! In each other’s loving embrace!’” Doyoung boomed, throwing his hand in the air to make grand gestures as he spoke, standing up in the midst of his words. 

“Quite poetic, but I tried. The words are jammed at the back of my throat and I can’t let them out,” Renjun huffed, internally cursing at himself for holding himself back because of a small guilt lingering in his chest. “You’re still afraid of what might become of your heart once you fall completely, aren’t you?” Doyoung sympathized, putting a hand on his hip as he frowned upon his young friend’s unfortunate condition. “A part of me is still guilty for putting all of Madam Wendy’s efforts in vain,” Renjun laughed bitterly. 

���I thought you wanted to love and to be loved back, you mustn’t be afraid!” Doyoung encouraged, using the same tone he used previously to influence all of Renjun’s previous actions with a wide toothy smile. “You’re eighteen, you deserve the love you’ve been longing for, Renjun.” 

Renjun bit back a smile, shaking his head out of his insecurities as he stood up to his feet. “You’re right, I should’ve just told her who I was at the start. You have to help me come up with something.”

-

“Renjun? Are you here?” You called out, entering the theater bashfully. “Right here, Ms!” Naeun, Doyoung’s new friend, coaxed, waving her hand to tell you to sit on the front row, right in front of the stage. A familiar merry tune played in the background as the curtains were pulled back to reveal two puppets of what appeared to be you and a familiar little boy from Edinburgh. Doyoung came into view, clearing his throat as Naeun strummed the chords of the song you sang on the day you met your first love with a ukulele in her hand. 

“It was a lovely day in Edinburgh,” Doyoung began, looking towards the puppets. “Little miss y/n who was sixteen years old was dancing around in her dainty shoes, getting her feet all in a tangle before tumbling down to the floor due to her own clumsiness,” Renjun added with a small nervous laugh, moving his own little puppet around and towards the mini puppet version of yourself. “On the day they first met, she would ask ‘what’s that odd pitter patter?’ ‘What’s making that noise?’” Naeun hummed melodiously, causing your eyes to widen with every single word that comes out of their mouths. 

“It’s just the rain, do you like the rain?” Renjun asked, shooting you a short glance as if to say ‘sounds familiar?’

You furrowed your brows, lips pressed into a thin line as you silently watched the performance in front of you, taking every single last bit of information they were sharing into your head as took in the meaning of their words. “Miss Y/n adored the sound of the rain, but however, all this time she didn’t realise that the sound she came to adore came from the tick tock of Renjun’s mechanical heart,” Doyoung recited, looking down on his little card before sharing a knowing look with Renjun and Naeun upon seeing the flabbergasted expression etched on your face.

“Oh, how if he had told her where that pitter patter had come from, would she recognize him the instant they reunite? Would Renjun have to suffer the pain of travelling half across Europe to see her only to not be recognized for the little lady could not rely on her own eyes?” he added on, adding a bit of suspense as the settings on the puppet show changed slightly to the two of you sitting on top of a crescent moon side by side, sending you flashbacks to the last day you saw your first love. 

“Perhaps, if he had told her, would she have believed him and sampled the magical intimacy of blending dream and reality?” 

Soon, your eyes got glossy with tears. Your heart racing rapidly against your chest as you sat there in complete silence, the new information overwhelming your sentences as you watched the two puppets kissed on the crescent moon, the exact same way you were supposed to kiss two years ago. You sniffled, putting a hand up against one of your eyes to keep your tears from falling as Renjun walked up towards you and off of the stage with his hands behind his back. 

The curtains closed as he gave you a boyish smile, outstretching his hand to show you the piece of fabric he accidentally tore from your dress and the postcard you had sent out almost a month ago. You gasped, delicate fingers gently grabbing the postcard to inspect it. It was indeed the postcard you had sent, it was indeed your handwriting, it was indeed the same filthy postcard you sent a month ago. 

Within a few seconds, you fell unconscious as all this information was too much for you to handle. 

“Oh bloody hell, we killed her!” Renjun cried out in panic, taking a step back in alarm at your sudden concussion. Doyoung and Naeun’s head shot from in between the curtains, hissing at him to not panic and carry you back to your trailer. He sucked his bottom lip as he hesitantly wrapped his arms around your knees and your back, making you lean against his chest, your head so close to his. He gulped as he walked out of the theater, nervously praying to whatever God up there is watching him to not make him drop you in the middle of the streets. 

But fortunately for him, he managed to carry you back to your bed safe and sound. Laying your head on the pillow, he stood idly on the side of your bed, watching your sleeping features. You looked so content, his fingers itched to run themselves around your hair and to caress your cheeks. Oh how he longed to nuzzle his nose against yours lovingly and how he longed to press his lips against yours-

‘A single kiss. A brush against your lips could be your last! Just like that, bang!’

He grunted as his body twitched as his guardian’s words flashed through his mind like lightning and thunder, Madam Wendy’s sorrowful expression couldn’t help but make its way through his mind, causing his body to twitch once again. He took deep, staggering breaths as he palmed his heart in pain, eyes moving over to your sleeping figure before Madam Wendy appeared once again in his vision. 

‘Do you know why I saved your life?’

“If you really are the boy from my time in Edinburgh, why did you wait all this time?” 

His head shot up at the sound of your voice, his eyes wandered to your figure as you stared down at the piece of fabric. “What can I say? You’re an idiot, I feared you won’t recognize me considering you’ve never actually used your glasses during our small encounters,” Renjun chuckled sadly, sitting on your bed as you sat up and leaned on the headboard. “You didn’t even say goodbye, I thought you left because you were in shock of my sudden concussion on that day,” he said half-jokingly, putting a hand behind his neck.

You gave him a sad smile, caressing the postcard with your thumb. “My parents were tricked that day. They trusted the wrong person and the police got a hold of them, my mother left me outside all alone so the police wouldn’t find me and take me away too,” you explained, pulling your knees to your chest as you leaned your chin on your arms. “I remembered being so alone, so cold. That’s why I decided to flee Edinburgh, we weren’t allowed to stay for too long. Our neighbour told us they were going to get us permits but the next day… unfortunately that happened.”

Renjun’s heart ached for you, he never wanted to see you sad. Even though you weren’t supposed to be in Edinburgh in the first place, he felt slightly selfish for it. If it weren’t for the fact that your parents had moved her, maybe your parents would still be by your side to this day. However you can’t change what’s been done, the past is the past. He couldn’t do anything to make the pain of losing a parent go away that easily. 

He placed a hand on yours, rubbing his thumb soothingly against your knuckles in a silent attempt to comfort you. You smiled at him, scooting closer to Renjun without hesitation. “I’m so sorry about that, I didn’t know,” Renjun spoke briefly, letting your fingers intertwine with his own tightly. He reached over to his pocket, pulling out the key to his heart and tugged your intertwined fingers together. “I can’t make the pain of losing your loved ones go away like a magician could, but the only thing I can assure you is that I’m not going anywhere and this key is the living proof of it.” 

He laid the small golden key in your palm, tucking your fingers against it. “This is the key that winds me up, without it, I would be knocked out for good,” he chuckled, gazing his eyes deeply into yours. “You can wind me up, open up my heart, do whatever you want,” he shrugged, watching you scoot closer to him and mirrored the same actions as the ones he showed you on the Ghost Train. “If it hurts, don’t hesitate to tell me,” you informed him, turning the key to the right slowly. 

“It doesn’t usually hurt,” he laughed lightly, eyes filled with love and adoration. He felt his heart spark up with the same comforting flame you manage to set. He found comfort in the love of his life gently caressing his fragile heart as if it was made out of the rarest jewels in existence. 

He found comfort in you. You really are the key to his heart. 

“There you are, you little brat!” the owner of the ghost train spat, entering the trailer quite rudely. “You there, what are you doing holding back my employee? As if he doesn’t slack off enough on the job,” she sighed exasperatedly, taking out another cig from her pocket before lighting it up. “You have ten minutes to get there, it’s almost starting,” she hissed, her tone filled with anger and malice as she made her way out of the trailer with a huff of breath.

You and Renjun shared knowing looks, giggling softly as you pulled the key out of his heart. “I think we should get going,” you said in an almost hushed tone as if you were to make a louder sound, you would break the comforting silence between the two of you. You outstretched your hand to give him back his key but Renjun shook his head at you, chuckling softly as he gently curled your fingers against the key in your palms and gently pushed your hand back towards you. 

“Keep it, I insist,” he shook his head. “What? No, don’t be silly! It’s the key to your heart, Renjun. It’s yours, I can’t keep it,” you shook your head receiving the same chuckle from the boy in front of you. “No, from now on, it’s yours,” he grabbed your free hand in his, intertwining your fingers once again. “Let’s run away together,” he suggested, squeezing your hand in his as he crossed his legs together. 

“Excuse me?” your eyes widened at his words. “After your show, run away with me and let’s make the world our oyster,” he gave you the widest grin he could muster, his cheeks was starting to hurt from smiling too much and for too long. He didn’t know where the sudden suggestion came from his mind but he wanted to do what he’s always dreamt of doing with you, to sail for the skies hand in hand with you by his side. (And maybe live a content life in a cottage with three cats and a whole art studio, but that can wait. After all, he’s waited this long to finally reunite with you)

“This is going to sound very cliche but where would we even go?” you giggled, finding his eagerness quite adorable considering it was a rare sight to see, even back when you were still in Edinburgh. “I don’t know, anywhere! The seas, the trees, as long as I’m with you I’m willing to make do with anywhere. As long as you say yes,” he squeezed your hand encouragingly against his, loving eyes pleading for you to say yes. And the smile you gave him was enough to give him his answer.

-

Renjun ran all over the amusement park with his suitcase in hand, the sound of your voice booming through the speakers as he felt the adrenaline rush through his veins, happiness surging through every part of his body. He was finally living, he was no longer going to live in the same, miserable hollow shell he had been living his whole entire life. A bright smile spread across his face as he entered the theater, panting heavily.

“Well then?” Doyoung pipped up, putting his hands at his hips as Renjun gained his composure as though Renjun’s wide smile hadn’t given him the answer he was hoping for. “She loves me, the real me,” he sighed exasperatedly, putting his hands on his chest as he could hardly believe it himself. “Congratulations, my dear boy! I’m delighted for you, absolutely delighted,” he gave Renjun a hug and patted his back as if he was his own younger brother. 

“We’re going to run away for the hills together after her show, I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I’m sure I wouldn’t have done this without your help,” Renjun beamed, pulling away to shake his old friend’s hand enthusiastically, his mechanical heart racing rapidly against his chest at the thought of eloping with you all over Europe. “I’m going to miss you, Renjun. Do write to me from time to time,” he gave him a nod, a proud smile etched on his face, causing Renjun to chuckle and nod. “Of course.”

As Renjun was in the middle of packing, your show had finally ended. You snuck back in your trailer to pack your own clothes, but then you saw none other than one of your fellow performers, Choi San, sitting on your desk with a small piece of paper in hand. “San? What on earth are you doing here?” you asked, furrowing your brows as you took out your suitcases from your closet. “I heard you’re going to run off with that new boy,” he grinned, chuckling slightly as he smacked the paper against your desk. “Renjun? Oh! Turns out, he was the boy I fell in love with back in Edinburgh,” you giggled, shoving random clothes into your suitcase, your makeup bags, your shoes, anything you could possibly fit into one single bag. 

“I need to tell you something before you get into serious trouble,” San informed, giving you a hard expression before hopping off your desk to hand you the piece of paper. “I was doing my daily letter checking at the post office and I found this in the mail, it was from Renjun’s guardian from Edinburgh,” he sighed, crossing his arms as you opened the piece of paper to reveal a fancy handwriting underneath. “It tells you everything you need to know about Renjun.” 

You squinted, pulling your glasses from your purse and putting them on. “What are you going on about here, San?” you furrowed your brows as you read through the letter. It was indeed from the ‘Madam Wendy’ Renjun would always rant to you about during your days together back in Edinburgh. “That thing he calls a heart, it’s not what you think it is. It’s a grenade, a ticking time bomb waiting to be triggered, he’s dangerous, y/n,” San informed, his hard expression turning into worry.

“I'm just glad I came here before it was too late,” he sighed in relief, looking down at his feet. “No, San, you must be mistaken. Renjun wouldn’t hurt a fly, he’s absolutely harmless!” You shook your head, refusing to believe his words as you looked down at the letter. “For now, but until he loses control of his heart and therefore fails to abide by the three rules Wendy had given him on the day he was born,” San informed, his eyes narrowing at the letter. 

“The three rules?” you furrowed your brows at him, watching as San’s expression grew dim with sympathy. “Everything you need to know is in that letter, I’ll give you some time to yourself,” San patted your back with a comforting smile before exiting the trailer, leaving you with the letter and your own thoughts. 

-

“Are you trying to make me a murderer?!” you exclaimed, exiting your trailer with your fists clenched up tightly by your side. “Excuse me?” Renjun furrowed his brows in confusion, being taken aback as he took a step towards you with his suitcase in hand. “What are you even talking about?” he asked, letting the air sink back into his lungs from all the running he had to do all over the amusement park. “Madam Wendy told me everything in this letter,” you shoved the letter against his chest, watching as shock took over his features.

“Wendy sent a letter?” he gaped, his jaw dropping to the floor as he inspected what seems to be his caretaker’s handwritten letter. “She told me about the three rules, how you ran away against her wishes, everything! Were you not going to tell me these important details?” you hopped off of the first few steps of your trailer to come closer to the boy you love deeply in front of you. “Or did you forget to tell me something as serious as that?” you snapped, sadness and betrayal flossing over your eyes.

Renjun felt his heart sink into his stomach at your hurtful expression, he was so caught up in the fantasy of running away with you, he completely forgot about his fragile condition for a brief moment. “Who even are you, Renjun? I want to know who’s the man I’m falling in love with,” you gripped the hem of your dress to keep yourself from screaming at him out of pure frustration and anger, feeling your heart ready to explode at the fact that you had the potential to kill him if your relationship proceeded from this far on. 

“I wouldn’t ever forgive myself if you died,” you tried hard to swallow the lump in your throat, looking down to hide your glossy eyes as you tried your best not to think of what would happen to him if you hadn’t received that letter. 

Renjun froze in place, his eyes turning glossy with his own tears as he watched you speak, the words jammed at the back of his throat as he knew, deep down, there was nothing he could do to change your mind. It was far too late, he can’t do anything to change your mind anymore. “I refuse to love you, I refuse to be a murderer. That’s not my idea of love,” you shook your head at him, putting the back of your hand against your eyelids to wipe away the tears. Every word that came out of your mouth felt like a dagger into his mechanical heart. It hurt. Renjun was hurting. His heart was breaking right in front of you, and you both knew it. 

“It’s selfish,” you couldn’t help but splutter out. “No, wait. You got it all wrong, y/n,” he finally spoke up, frustration filling his veins as he found the courage to speak up. “Oh, so you didn’t escape your guardian’s home without permission, thus causing her to worry about you for the past few weeks with no information whatsoever?” you snapped, putting your hands on your hips after you wiped your tears away. “Yes, but that isn’t the problem here!” he shook his head, taking a step towards you as he groaned in frustration. 

“There you go! Oh, so now you’re going to disobey another rule and lose your temper?” 

“It’s not like that! Just listen to me-” Renjun reached his hand out to your face before his body started twitching in pain, causing him to drop on his knees as gears and screws popped out of his heart. You gasped, watching as your lover writhe in pain on his knees, letting out pained grunts for the next fifteen seconds right in front of you. Thus, giving you a brief image of what was going to happen if you continued on. 

“You’re scaring me, Renjun.” 

“I’m sorry.” he breathed out, putting his hand on his knees as he ignored the steaming state of his cuckoo clock heart. Your eyes softened at his guilty figure, your hands laying limp by your sides as you let out a sad sigh. “Goodbye, Renjun.” Were your last words before you walked away from him, leaving him to deal with his own pain. 

“I did the craziest things for you. My life isn’t always topsy turvy when it comes to love, but I put my life in your hands because I truly love you,” Renjun confessed, causing you to pause in your step. You inhaled deeply, not giving him a spare glance. “Yes, I agree, your actions are inhumane at this point, but count me out, Renjun,” you hissed back, wrapping your arms around yourself to keep yourself from shaking and breaking down right in front of him. “I’d prefer you to be hurt like this than dead, I can’t live with myself if I was the reason for your passing,” you sighed, looking down at your shoes briefly.

“Please just leave me alone. I’m not running away with you.”

You didn’t look back as you walked away, ignoring the sound of a distraught Renjun getting to his knees, holding his heart in pain. His eyes scrunched up in pain as he let out small grunts, trying to get to his feet back to make his way back to the theater. He collapsed back to the concrete ground as soon as he got to his feet, the ear piercing sound of his clock falling apart before him lingered in his mind as cogs and screws popped out of his makeshift heart. He wanted to scream out your name and plead for you to come back into his embrace, but he knew you wouldn’t turn back. 

So he did the only thing that came into his mind in order to stop this unbearable pain. He got up to his feet, putting two hands on his clock and pulled hard, ignoring the physical pain it brought him as he tried to rip out his own heart from his chest. Letting out a scream of pain as he collapsed to the floor, pieces of wood and metal scattering across the floor and drops of blood dripping from the doors of his heart. 

“Renjun!”

Doyoung and Naeun came up to Renjun as quickly as they could, holding him up as he coughed heavily. “I want to change into a new clock, I’m so tired of this one constantly falling into bits every time I feel the slightest bit of joy,” he mumbled almost monotonously, letting out another fit of coughs afterward. “Madam Wendy was right,” he added with a light painful laugh. “I suppose I have some spare parts to help you fix your clock from my camera, I’ll go get them-” Doyoung insisted but Renjun gripped on the older man’s wrist urgently. 

“No, I want a new heart. I’m tired of this one. One that works. I’ll never fall in love again,” he leaned over, cupping his mouth as he coughed once again, feeling more gears pop out of his clock like a confetti from a canon. “You’re running out of time, Renjun, you must seek help immediately. Is there anything you can do to salvage what’s left of your heart until you get back to Edinburgh?” Doyoung asked, furrowing his brows. “I can’t, I gave the key to Y/n. She left me, I can’t get it back anymore,” Renjun shook his head sadly, looking down at his own blood staining his fingertips.

“That key is your life, Renjun! You took a huge risk,” Doyoung shook his head at how deeply in love the boy in front of him was. “I know,” he mumbled, his words becoming more breathy by the moment. “You must return to Edinburgh and have Wendy patch you up again, it’s the only way to save your life,” Doyoung slung an arm around his shoulder, lifting him up as Naeun helped with carrying his suitcase. 

Doyoung led a heartbroken Renjun onto a carriage to the nearest train station. He insisted on coming with the young lad but Renjun wanted to face the consequences of his actions alone, he couldn’t bear to rip his friend away from the path of success he was walking into. So, with a heavy heart, Renjun rode the train back to Edinburgh with his eyes closed and his heart hurting like hell against his chest. 

‘This must be the same feeling Pip went through when Estella finally broke his heart to elope with some other man she didn’t love.’ he thought bitterly to himself.

-

“Madam Wendy what?” your jaw dropped as San shared a new bit of information. 

He leaned over, showing you the newspaper he was reading which informed you that Madam Wendy had passed in her prison cell. Apparently, she was caught for tampering with mechanics on a dangerous level with her other patients and was thrown in jail once again, but the disappearance of her adopted child had a great impact on her health, therefore she left her body in the cell she was staying in. 

“Oh, no. Oh dear god, no,” you hopped out of San’s performance tent, patting your pockets and pulling out the key that belongs to Renjun’s heart. “What’s wrong?” San asked, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth as he stood up as well, worried as his brows furrowed in confusion. “Renjun gave me the key to his heart, I forgot to give it back,” you yelled back, running as quick as you could to the theater, the only place where Renjun could be at the moment. 

You knocked as hard as you could, calling out the boy’s name in a panic. “Miss Y/n? What are you doing here?” Doyoung asked, opening the door as he rubbed his eyes from the lack of sleep. “Can you tell me where I can find Renjun? I still have the key to his heart,” you asked in an abrupt tone, showing the older man the key in your palms. “Nothing to worry about, Miss! He’s on his way back to Edinburgh as we speak, Doctor Wendy can patch him up in a jiffy!” Doyoung smiled. 

“That’s what I’m afraid of, oh god, no. But Madam Wendy’s passed away,” you informed, clenching your fists with the key in your hand. Doyoung’s eyes widened in surprise, his face turning pale at your words. “Oh boy, that isn’t good news. Go after him, hurry! Save Renjun before it’s too late, that’s what he wants more than anything. I put him on a carriage to the nearest train station. If you’re lucky, you might catch him on the train before it departs,” Doyoung rummaged through his bag, pulling out a random journal. 

“Here, take this. In case you don’t catch up to him, here’s something to read on the way. It’s a journal I kept ever since the very day I met Renjun,” he handed you the journal as Naeun called another carriage for you to ride to the train station. You sighed, your head filled with worry as you looked up at the two adults willing to help you save Renjun despite the fact that you were the main reason why he was in this mess in the first place. 

“Thank you.”

-

Renjun laid in the snow, near the house where he used to call home. Sniffling as he leaned against the tree at the bottom of the hill. Joy and Yeri had contacted him and brought him the news of his caretaker’s passing. Sulking as guilt took over his body, regretting every single decision he had made the past few months. And now he’s going to suffer the consequences of dying all alone. He couldn’t walk into his own home after the news, choosing to lay down under the snow to let himself slowly freeze to death and possibly hypothermia. 

So now, he was taking his last few breaths, enjoying the bright sky as he watched his skin froze, tears slowly turning into eyes as he laid there all heartbroken and damaged. His hair was white from the snowfall, with bits of brown peaking out in between as he sniffled and sobbed over the loss of his mother. Taking deep breaths to regain his composure, as his skin grew numb against the cold. 

“Renjun! I’m here!” 

It was as if the God above had decided to send an angel back to help him, he slowly looked up with half lidded eyes, a small shaky smile spreading across his lips as you fell to your knees to help him. “Renjun, oh dear god, no,” you whimpered, leaning close as you laid a hand on his jaw, making him lean his head up to look at you weakly. You grimaced at his cold skin, it felt like ice to you. It was as if he was turning into a giant ice cube right in front of you.

His appearance made your heart break. He looked so pale and broken since the last time you saw him. His eyes were red and swollen from the tears, snow gathering on his eyelashes, eyebrows, hair and clothing. Hell, he was wearing nothing but the thin coat he wore the last time you saw him. Dried blood was stuck to his cuckoo clock heart which was in a worse condition than it was back in Andalusia. You ran your thumb over his soft cheek, making him lean his face against your warm touch as you wiped the snow away from his skin. His breathing was slow, as if he was taking every breath he could before his last. 

With a shaky hand, you placed what's left of his heart back into their original place, your breathing becoming shaky as you held back your tears. It truly hurt you to see Renjun in this state, you knew he was on the brink of death. You didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if you had arrived much much later.

You pulled out the key to his heart from the inner pocket of your coat, leaning forward to press the key into his heart. But alas, his hand stopped you as he gently gripped your wrist and pulled it away from him. “No, I’m not too late. I’m not letting you die here, just let me turn the key,” you shook your head, blinking back the tears as you pushed your glasses up from the bridge of your nose. “I came back to save you, please just let me do this,” you pleaded, caressing his cheek with your thumb in a futile attempt to convince the love of your life to let you save him. 

“You came all the way back for me,” a tear streaked down Renjun’s cheek which froze under the cold atmosphere, sticking to his cheek. “That’s the most extraordinary turn you could ever give my heart,” he laughed slightly, half lidded eyes trying their best to stay open as his vision began to grow blurry and he wasn’t sure if it was because he was losing consciousness or if it was because of the tears he was holding back.

He tugged the key out of your hand before tossing it over the hill. “No, Renjun, what did you do?!” you panicked, your eyes growing wide at the key disappearing from your line of vision. “No, why did you do that?” you shook your head at him, pressing your body close to him as he leaned his back against the tree. “From now on, whatever happens to me,” Renjun spoke, giving you the same boyish smile he sent your way on your last day in Edinburgh two years ago. “I’ll only have myself to blame,” he sighed, intertwining your free hand with his icy cold one. 

“So now you can kiss me.” 

Your heart broke as you finally let your tears go, squeezing his hand tightly in yours as you sniffled. “As I said before, the things you do are absolutely inhumane,” you pushed your forehead against his, feeling your tears hit his wet clothes as you felt his other hand go to your jaw. “I’m just upset I never got to give you the painting I’d been working so hard on for all these years,” he chuckled, his eyes growing even more red as his tears streamed down his face like a leaking tap.

He caressed your jaw in his hand, eyes scanning your face one last time as he came with the fact that this was your last goodbye before he leaves for good. “If we were ever to be reborn again, I would still wish and pray for the gods to make you my first and last love,” he couldn’t help but laugh to stifle a sob that erupted from his throat. “And if we were ever to be reborn again, I hope you can always continue to smile like that until the day you close your eyes for good,” you nuzzled your forehead against his, sniffling hard. 

Thus with eyes clenched shut, you and Renjun pressed your lips together in unison for a passionate yet innocent kiss. You could hear the last strike of Renjun’s ticking clock, a loud ‘cuckoo’ piercing the quiet atmosphere as Renjun pulled you closer to him by wrapping an arm around your back and leaning his head to the side for a better angle. Your warm soft lips pressed onto his cold chapped ones, wet from the snow.  Your intertwined hands squeezing each other as you felt his mechanical heart put a ring on your own.

The next time Renjun opened his eyes, he was at the gates of heaven, standing in front of an actual angel with a bright expression on his face. “Huang Renjun, I assume?” the angel greeted, a soft smile spreading across their face as Renjun nodded. “You seem a bit too young to be up in heaven. Aren’t you just 18 years old?” the angel asked, pulling out a clipboard to look through Renjun’s life data. “I was almost nineteen, though,” Renjun shrugged, his wide smile never disappearing from his facial features.

“I’m so sorry you had to leave life so soon, young man,” the angel cooed, taking out a pen from their desk as they began to fill out Renjun’s form for his plans now that he’s in the afterlife. “Care to tell me what happened while I do the paperwork for you?” the angel asked, sticking their tongue out as they wrote Renjun’s life information on the glowing paper with a messy handwriting, reminding him of the postcard you had sent him less than a couple months ago. 

Renjun looked around the bright place he was in, sighing heavily as he stared up the gates of heaven with a content expression. He swiped his tongue over his pink lips as he finally felt his heart no longer empty, 

“I fell in love.” 

a/n: i didn’t like how this turned out lmfao but oh well HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, HUANG RENJUN MWUAH

¤ taglist: @leetaeyonglover @lebrookestore @oifelixcmerebrou @vera-liscious @kunrengui @thats-a-jen-no-no

[yamsfrecklvs]

haikyuu characters as my favorite artists/bands : headcanons !!

i just needed to talk abt this okay

includes: kuroo, sugawara, yachi, tsukishima, oikawa, yamaguchi, kenma

warnings: nothing much, just a bit of swearing maybe

kuroo as arctic monkeys:

he just ... gives that vibe.

i just KNOW that he’d listen to them, probably while practicing alone or while doing homework because they give him the right amount of energy

i’m pretty sure he jams to some of their songs in front of the mirror while imagining to play the guitar and mimicking it because he’s like that and we all know it !! he does it in the locker room too and the other guys walked in on him doing that shit a million times but who cares he thinks it looks cool </3

probably got to know them thanks to kenma

thought abt learning guitar because of them

listens to the slowed and reverb versions

blasts their songs in random car rides

his faves would def be: fluorescent adolescent, suck it and see, arabella, you’re so dark, snap out of it, teddy picker and my propeller

sugawara as lana del rey

classy but CHAOTIC and just the right amount of spicy

he has all the vinyls. i just KNOW it.

he’d just sit there and enjoy the music calmly, maybe outside at night or in the morning while he walks to school

def forced the team to listen to some songs

i think he’d also be really into her whole aesthetic and the old 50s hollywood vibe, her music surely influences his personal style too

has some of her songs in a hypothetical makeout playlist to get in the mood

HE LISTENS TO THE UNRELEASED SONGS AND NO I DON’T TAKE ANY CRITICISM.

his faves would be: blue velvet, salvatore, cherry, gods & monsters, freak, yes to heaven, florida kilos and smarty

yachi as mitski:

i don’t think i really need to explain this one

i’m sure she relates to some of the struggles in her songs :(

class of 2013. yeah.

she listens to her when she’s really sad and maybe needs to let everything out, her music is so moving, emotional and intimate and that’s enough to make her feel better after a long day

also listens to her whilst doing her homework

probably makes playlists for the team with some of her songs in them :(( she’s so cute i can’t

uses some of her songs to calm herself down when she’s nervous

def scribbles quotes from her songs on her notes and thinks it makes them prettier

her faves would be: class of 2013, my body’s made of crushed little stars, townie, carry me out and two slow dancers

tsukishima as cigarettes after sex

will never admit it but he’s a huge fan

knows every song by heart

nobody knows that he listens to them except for yams and he often gets teased for it

is overall just a sucker for their cheesy slow romantic songs because deep down maybe he just wants love yk

is not good with words so he WILL dedicate their songs to show affection to people he truly cares about

probably listens to them to relax or even sleep

listening sessions at 3am when he can’t sleep

probably walks around in early winter mornings with his earphones in blasting their songs because they help him start the new day

secretly dreams about love with their songs ... sigh i know that he’s a softie but he will never admit it

his faves would be: john wayne, young & dumb, crush, i’m a firefighter, k., each time you fall in love

oikawa as taylor swift:

he STANS taylor to an uncomfortable extent

probably listens to her old music while practicing and her newer songs when he’s at home

definitely cried while listening to some songs

mirrorball is the song he resonates with the most. idc (“I’ve never been a natural, all do is try, try, try”)

totally listens to her while getting ready

his playlists are full of her songs

he definitely made a playlist full of her songs for iwaizumi (you can take this as just platonic or romantic, take it as you will, i just think he’d do it either way <3)

they give off the same vibes tbh <3

his favs would be: mirrorball, style, lover, i did something bad, love story, cardigan, you belong with me, paper rings and ‘tis the damn season

yamaguchi as poppy:

i JUST KNOW that this boy would listen to her. i feel like he’s really into any sort of alternative music even though it doesn’t really look like it (am i influenced by the punk yamaguchi au? maybe.) so her metal sound is just *chef’s kiss*

he just sits there silently with a little smile on his lips with metal music in his ears. it gives him lots of energy

when he’s alone he def gets up and screams at the top of his lungs to all of her songs. all of them.

also enjoys the old albums like bubblebath

is in love with her style but probably too shy to even try doing the same

has playlists full of her songs to go FERAL to

likes her covers too and was probably in the poppy fandom since the beginning so he basically knows everything

his faves would be: i disagree, fill the crown, money, lowlife, am i a girl?, iconic, BLOODMONEY, computer boy and girls in bikinis

kenma as penelope scott

great music to play games to

the anger in her songs sometimes resonates with him

the hyperpop influence in her music scratches his brain just right

probably likes that she’s not that well known

sweet hibiscus tea. that’s it. it’s his song.

probably listens to her entire discography in one sitting sometimes

listens to the unreleased songs too

his faves would be: dead girls, cigarette ahegao, sweet hibiscus tea, lotta true crime, born2run and moonsickness

[mmmleckerlecker]

Character songs for HP big 3:

I was listening to Mother Mother, thought it would fit Felix, and then it spiraled from there. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

It’s Alright by Mother Mother and Creep by Radiohead for Felix

THIS MAN NEEDS THERAPY 😭 I feel like it represents his current state of mind. Especially after the last chapter, he thinks of himself as this awful monster that’s just going to spiral into something way way worse

Creep because the lyrics “I don’t care if it hurts, I want to have control” fits Felix SO much and the rest of the song highlights his unhealthy dependence on Benji, how he sees him as this idealized version in his head

Tired by Beabadoobee or Motion Sickness by Phoebe Bridgers for Benji

Tired because I think it depicts Benji’s thoughts last chapter fairly well. The lines “You haven’t felt right for days. Is it the fact you never say what comes in your mind that day.” and “You haven’t been good for long. Is it the sound of your own thoughts that always keeps you up at night? Maybe it’s time to say goodbye? ‘Cause I’m getting pretty f*cking tired.” stand out to me the most and made me change my decision from Me and My Husband (Mitski) to this.

Motion Sickness because the first line “I hate you for what you did and I miss you like a little kid” is so so perfect for Benji’s feelings about Felix.

House of Memories by Panic! At the Disco and Monster by dodie for Camille

I’m annotating these songs now, but the lines “I think of you from time to time, more than I thought I would. You were just to kind, and I was too young to know” fits Camille/Felix so much! Especially with her position in Epomis, Felix at the Facility, how she pretty much grew up around Felix and he was basically another brother to her…until she found out the truth years later.

Monster because her passion for Epomis and making a difference for prey society fits the narrative of this song. I can see her singing the lyrics to Felix, whom she basically is saying that she’s not the person she once was and she’ll do whatever it takes for Epomis

HI IM SORRY THIS TOOK ALMOST TWO WEEKS TO ANSWER. I just wanted to make sure I listened to all the songs a few times to get into them properly!! And also that I took the time to respond to each song in a satisfying way. (Rest of the answer under the cut cause it got long…)

Okay so “It’s Alright.” I know this artist but I didn’t know this song. Tbh I think it’s my favorite of the ones listed. It’s also one of the few you didn’t give a direct quote for but after listening to it…. I understand. You’d probably quote the whole song. You’re so right about it reflecting his state of mind. I imagine he’s like quoting it to himself to get him through the day

And “Creep”! This was like… one of two songs here I already knew lol. I was a little hesitant of this one since i feel like this song is sort of an overused anthem for Misunderstood Sad Boys but then! Your analysis of why it fit made me think about it and yes I can def see it. Especially the quote you gave. And ESP the line after that? “I want a perfect body, I want a perfect soul” like YEAH. I’m sure Felix WOULD appreciate having a body that didn’t crave killing people every day sjskdkdld. also ironic you mentioned this song cause I’ve been listening to the Tom Ellis cover a lot lately cause I’m Lucifer trash

For “Tired” I really liked this one. Slow and soft. I would say the quotes that seemed most relevant to me, but honestly I agree entirely with the ones you sent. And idk in general like I feel like the whole vibe matches Benji. The first time I listened, as soon as she started singing, I was like “yeah this seems about right.” (I also listened to “Me and My Husband” once or twice just to check out that vibe as well and I see it.)

Okay! I also liked the “Motion Sickness” one too! I has the same soft, slow vibe as “Tired” and idk if that was intentional, but I thought it was pretty neat. I deffo agree with your lyric choice! But also consider! “I'm on the outside looking through/ you're throwing rocks around your room/ and while you're bleeding on your back in the glass/ I'll be glad that I made it out and sorry that it all went down like it did” As Benji watching Felix basically make bad choice after bad choice and just digging himself into a deeper hole, and Benji being glad that he got out when he did even tho it wasn’t really a Good Ending the way it happened…. JUST A THOUGHT!!

For “House of Memories”… oho! I honestly never would have thought of this one. This is the only other song i knew beforehand and I love that whole album but I’ve never been particularly attached to this song, so this is a cool choice that made me listen more carefully. Thank you for the annotations because those lyrics match perfectly! I very much agree it fits Camille. (Also funnily enough this isn’t the first time someone has recommended for a playlist a Panic! song that I previously didn’t think much about. The other one was “Casual Affair” which I now also listen to much more closely.)

Okay so “Monster” I think was my second favorite. It has a certain vibe to it that’s like… happy sounding but also in a little Take No Shit type of way? Idk it’s just a Camille Vibe. I feel like I wouldn’t have connected it with her unless you hadn’t said it would be addressed specifically to Felix cause like…. yeah that checks. Now I just associate it with her wholly and my brain keeps imagining that’s how she would sound singing so THANK YOU FOR THIS (but like actually).

Okay there’s my little analysis of your songs! Thank you for sending them in. I liked them all! 🥰💕

[seokljin]

ult group tag  💕

tagged by the sweetest @jintae @kooseokss & @dnaez \ @dnaes

rules: answer the following questions for your ult group

who was your first bias?

- hobi

who is your bias now?

- 2seok, sun & moon.... i'm just the typical astrology loving gay (but also yoon is trailing v closely by)

what was the first mv you watched by them?

- black swan art film

what’s your favorite mv?

- first of all, fuck you. second if we don't include mixtapes; black swan, ego & run

if you could listen to one of their songs for the rest of your life, which would it be?

- good day but also jamais vu, baepsae, outro: tear, ugh!, every cypher, trivia love, every seokjin\hobi\tae solo

who would you want to see them collab with?

- mitski, kim petras, shinee and oh my gosh i will sell my first born for rap line x clipping. 

what mv concept do you want to see them do?

- victorian gothic vampires 🖤🥀⛓🔪🩸 but also super pink soft gentle eternal gleaming fairies 💗✨🩰🧚🌸 and hobi taking the boys to hopeworld!! if it's to dis-ease bonus points 👌

have you ever had a dream with any of the members in it?

-  v recently!! for the first time ever!!! a incrediblely sweet dream where i attended their masterclass? lecture? and yoon was sitting in the crowd behind me (i guess bc of his shoulder? idk) and while the boys talked on stage he "secretly" played around with the audience using these huge cards against humanity cards like he held the answers to audience members black cards and as the boys wrapped up on stage i leaned over to ask him if i could ask him v small quick q and he was all smiles and said ofc!! and i asked if he himself recorded the birds in set me free and if yes what birds were they and if he wanted that breeds specifically; r they the ones he hear every morning outside his window or did he went somewhere especially to record them....and he got really excited abt my question and replied he did recorded them himself and he won't tell me all now bc it's smth he wants to talk abt lengthily "i promised i'll do album review right? that's going to be the first thing i'll talk about i promise i really want to" OH MY GOD I'M TYPING TOO MUCH (shout out to rachel the only reason i remember this is bc i wrote it down to her as soon as i woke up, ty for putting up with me ily 💖) but if you've read till here i'll finish: basically after that i thanked him and was bubbling about what this song means to me and he was smiling huge and thanked me back, and namjoon came along as he was talking (and he was all smiles as well as he heard our exchange) and as i was getting up to leave i still tried to pry out a lil bit "could you tell me what bird or birds were/they? were there a few or just one? and was it one breed? or few types of birds?" yoongi laughed and said smth to nj in korean and nj translated "it was just one type" and yoongi repeated that as well in eng and they were super happy and laughing as i was leaving

2 quote ksj okay thank you finished! this is such a tmi oh my gosh i really wrote all of it sorry 🙊 such a overshare but it's bc i was so overjoyed abt this dream!!!!!!! bc i've been having really bad sleep for the past few months (like literally waking up sweating from nightmares most mornings) and this was so cute but also i'm so sad bc in rl he already did a d2 vilve so i gues we'll never know the real answers for all my birds questions 😔

if you could spend the day with one member, who would it be and what would you do?

- yoongi. i think me and yoongi are the most similar and i find it difficult to maintain friendship with ppl who are like me, tho we do get close really fast- and so one day where we hang out and talk about art\music\film\history.. anything

which member do you think you’d get along with the best?

- tae and namjoon. yoon 2 but c above :((

which member do you think you would argue with?

- namjoon, but friendly arguments; discussion and disagreement abt our shared interests

if you had to let one member scroll through your tumblr, who would it be?

- this blog?? idk hobi? my main definitely yoongi, i think he would enjoy it very much <33

tagging: as always only if you feel like it ilysm mwah <33333 @daechwitas @eternal-bangtan @slipped-away @ambivartence @honsool @jung-koook @jingetspegged @syubb @kimtaehyunq  and @ anyone else who wants to! consider yourself tagged <3

[sircarolyn]

ooh then i will also ask about “someone to watch me die” and “unity”?

<33 again, the other gallifrey ones hehe! the first is leela/romana, and the second is self-explanatorily about unity, that episode that i’m getting dangerously close to committing to memory aha

what can i say... given enough time and relistens, i will start to just have a database of gallifrey quotes memorised and ready to go at any second. unfortunately, that is just what i’m like <3

someone to watch me die

stolen from the mitski song ‘i bet on losing dogs’: I'll pay for my place by the ring / here I'll be looking in their eyes when they're down / I wanna feel it / I bet on losing dogs / I always want you when I'm finally fine

this is where all my other misc romana/leela ideas have gone to die, ranging from scraps of dialogue that have come to me, little scenarios that i may or may not explore at some point, and some little notes that have nowhere else to live. oh, and my itemised list of romana/leela moments that make me scream with timestamps. it’s an unfortunately long list... they just tell each other they need each other so much...

there’s also two halves of two different little fics i started and never returned to (yes, there’s a common theme in all the documents, and that’s that i don’t like finishing anything, oops). the first is like leela and romana hanging out in the cia offices somewhere after enemy lines, and it fizzled out because it really wasn’t going anywhere

the second is in a much more abstract note form, which isn’t so much a fic as just a moment with them just standing together in Romana’s room, and i’m not sure where it’s going except it’s kind of a bit sad, obviously - it doesn’t really live anywhere so i think that’s why it ground to a halt, because it didn’t have a real direction except ‘i want them to stare at each other and not talk about how they’re feeling because they’re idiots’

however it does includes these classic lines, which is the sort of nonsense i should hope you’ve come to expect from me: 

Romana’s white nightgown rippling loosely against her body as the night breeze catches the light fabric.

and 

Romana lets her eyes wander up and down Leela’s body, tracing the lines of muscle in her arms, her legs.

i’m just a simple and weak lesbian ok.... i love them... 

unity

this one doesn’t come with a playlist, i’m afraid, because it’s just one or two little notes of bits i think are worth overanalysing from unity, as well as a little bit of background thinking about the actual place

and then the rest of the document is about 2/3 of a transcript of Unity the episode that i need to get round to finishing one of these days, because i was sick to death of having to try and skip through the episode to remember a specific line i was thinking of, or try and remember if they did actually say what i think they said, and because to my knowledge no-one has actually done full transcripts of Gallifrey, or not that i’ve ever found anyway, i said to myself ‘right, guess i have to do it’. so i did <3

[sunflowerliberty]

Thirty Questions Tag

Tagged by @write-the-stars - thanks so much for the tag, this was fun!! 

1. Name/Nickname: El

2. Gender: Woman

3. Star Sign: Aquarius sun

4. Height: 5′5.5″ and I stand by that half inch

5. Time: 9:26 pm

6. Birthday: February

7. Favourite Bands: I don’t know if have any? I’ve been listening to a lot of Varsity lately, some Metric, The Smiths, U2. I’ll leave it there.

8.Favourite Solo artists: Hmm, maybe Mitski, Girl in Red, and David Bowie.

9. Song stuck in my head: L.O.V.E. by Frank Sinatra has been stuck in my head since I watched The Parent Trap, and doesn’t seem to be leaving any time soon

10. Last movie: I watched The Parent Trap (1998) on Friday

11. Last Show: ..I can’t even remember. I’m not sure if that’s because it’s been so long or because my memory is failing me. I don’t watch a lot of shows during the school year so I don’t have an answer for this one, sorry

12. When did I make this blog: July 2020

13. What I post: Um, a mess of things that interest me. Art, writing, quotes, literature, personal ramblings. I try to post my own writing but writers block and busy schedules make that more infrequent than I would like

14: Last thing I googled: Can sleep deprivation make you dizzy. And yes, it can

15. Other blogs: Nope, just the one

16. Do I get asks: No, not really

17. Why I chose my url: I came across a hippie-name-generator (the ones that are like, birth month for the first word, first initial for the second word, you know the drill) and my result was actually Karma Liberty (which I personally think would be an amazing band name) but I substituted the karma for sunflower because I love sunflowers

18. Following: 113

19. Followers: 71

20. Average hours of sleep: Anywhere from 4 to 7, depends on the day and how much I procrastinated

21. Lucky number: 9 and 13

22. Instruments: I used to play both the piano and the violin, but haven’t played in a while. I also played the recorder in seventh and eighth grade and was terrible

23. What am I wearing atm: very old sweatpants with a hole in the knee that I keep forgetting to patch and my favourite enormous green sweatshirt. very comfy clothes

24. Dream trip: There are many! But a big one that I’ve been dreaming of for years is going backpacking across Europe

25. Favourite food: Pasta. Pizza. Chile. Any kind of cake and anything with chocolate.

26. Nationality: Canadian

27. Favourite song: The audacity of this question. I’m too indecisive to even try to answer

28. Last book I read: If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor, for an essay due next week for my English lit class. I loved it a lot and cried at the end both times I read it. Highly recommend.

29. Top three fictional universes: This is.. an incredibly difficult question. 1) Howl’s Moving Castle universe, specifically the book but honestly both are amazing. I love them and would very much like to live there. 2) Ok I don’t know if this is actually canon but in my head I like to imagine that all ghibli movies exist in the same universe, and that would be the ultimate universe. Let me live there please. 3) I have a soft spot for the Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children universe (even though I’ve only read the first three books. The fourth one is staring at me from my shelf as I write this). But also, I would not want to live there, there’s a terrible war going on for a lot of it so it’s not really a good time. Oh and honorary mention to the Harry Potter universe which was basically my entire childhood. The basic consensus of all these answers is that I want to live in a magical world and have magical powers. If anyone’s looking for someone to grant magical powers to, I’m here 

30. Favourite colour: Light blue and any and every shade of purple. Give me all the purples.

Tagging anyone who wants to do it!!

[hauntedwoman]

rules: tag ppl u wanna get to know better

tagged by: @hotelghost (thank you sm <333) 

1. your name and then what you wouldve named yourself - my name is maggie (short for margaret which i Hate) and hm i love the name calliope a lot and its totally not a coincedence that i would go by “cal”

2. astrological sign (sun/moon/rising if u know) - virgo sun/libra moon/scorpio rising and yes me having an earth sun and a water rising is why i have m*ntal illn*ss </3

3. when did u join tumblr and why - i joined in 2014 i think ?? and i joined bc i wanted to get deeper into the titanic fandom 

4. top 5 fandoms - a) titanic b) filmblr (?) and i guess c) taylor swift except i am swiftiephobic and proud :/ and well that’s it bc i have no other personality traits than loving titanic (1997) 

5. top 5 favorite films - a) titanic b) clue c) the sound of music d) baby driver except fuck u ansel elgort and e) knives out 

6. go to song when u wanna Feel Something - either “a burning hill” by mitski or “the archer” by taylor swift or “fine line” by harry styles or “as the world caves in” by matt maltese or “sleep on the floor” by the lumineers

7. what’s your religion/faith if you’re religious - i was raised cath*lic and let;s just say that i have come to my senses and i do not support or endorse the Church at all except for its slutty slutty aesthetics 

8. a song that makes you feel seen - “two slow dancers” - mitski

9. if you could have any career - i simply do not dream of labor </3 but i would love to be a screenwriter or director

10. do you have a type - it’s just billy zane in titanic (1997). that’s it. that’s all there is. no one else is doing it like him.

11. what does your heart/soul yearn for - to move away to a city far away from here and finally feel peace 

12. if you had to describe yourself in 5 words to someone who doesn’t know you -  chaotic, feral, unhinged, lonely, melancholy

13. favorite subjects in school - rn my fav subject im learning is my screenwriting/digital video production class

14. where does your soul feel most at home - at my grandmas house tucked away in the tennessee hills 

15. top 5 fictional characters - a) caledon hockley b) victor vale c) ransom drysdale d) rose dewitt bukater e) agent dana scully

16. top 3 moments in a show that made u ugly cry - bold of u to assume i remember any details of any piece of media that i have ever consumed 

17. the earth, the sun, the moon, or the stars - the moon........... i love her so much 

18. favorite kind of weather - a clear summer day perfect for going to the beach, the kind of heat that exhausts you but also makes you feel held

19. top 3 characters that you kin with - okay the only character i rlly ~identify~ with is cal but it’s just bc we both use sarcasm to cope with our feelings and we both put the bi in bitter :P

20. fav medium of art - either film or music but i cant chooooossseeeeee

21. introvert/extrovert/ambivert - introvert 

22. a fav literary quote - i dont have one rip im such a bad english major

23. some of ur fave books - “the glittering hour” by iona grey, “normal people” and “conversations with friends” by sally rooney, the raven cycle series, “vicious” by v.e. schwab, “my year of rest and relaxation” - ottessa moshfegh 

24. if u could live anywhere in the world where would it be - probably nyc or 

25. if u could live in any time in history when would it be - probably the 1910s but i am a woman and mentally ill so uh i would be Institutionalized for not only being sexy but hysterical <3

26. if you could play ant instrument masterfully what woukd it be - piano or electric guitar 

27. if you have one, what mythological god/goddess do you feel a connection to - aphrodite or persephone

28. favorite recent selfie in your camera roll 

tagging: @peakatseven @titsoutforsunmi @romanced @greek-mythologies and uh anyone else who wants to do it ? (ofc it's not required that you participate <3333)

[metalbatandzenko]

All of them. All the questions.

oof

1. Do You Sleep With Your Closet Doors Open Or Closed?

I have sliding doors on my closet so it’s one open one closed.

2. Do You Have Freckles?

Nope!

3. Can You Whistle?

Nope (:

4. Last Song You Listened To.

I...don’t remember lmao, I think it was 6 Inch by Beyonce

5. What Is Your Favorite Color?

I don’t know if I have one tbh.

6. Relationship Status.

Currently juggling seven reply guys bc rona has everyone acting out of line, but single.

7. What Is The Temperature Right Now?

46º

8. Did You Wake Up Cranky?

Yes sdkjfhdlkf

9. How Many Followers?

215.

10. Zodiac Sign.

Aries/Aries/Cancer.

11. What Is Your Eye Color?

Brown.

12. Take A Vitamin Daily?

No.

13. Do You Sing In The Shower?

Yes, usually it’s Mitski or songs from musicals because you know. Former theater kid.

14. What Books Are You Reading?

The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch.

15. Grab The Book Nearest To You, Turn To Page 64, Give Me Line 14.

“As in earlier days” from the poem The Walk by Thomas Hardy

16. Favorite Anime?

OPM is the only anime I watch. Being Japanese American and fem aligned means having. Not great associations with anime tbh.

17. Last Person You Cried In Front Of?

I honestly can’t remember the last time I cried in front of someone

WAIT YES I DO

It was November 23rd and my little cousin and I watched Over the Garden Wall. Both of us cried at the end.

18. Do You Collect Anything?

I have a knife collection and an old rock collection from when I was younger. I also unintentionally have a major makeup collection. My lipstick collection is borderline embarrassing. In my defense it started in 7th grade.

19. What Did You Have For Lunch?

I uh. I didn’t have lunch skfjhdsljfh

20. Do You Dance In The Car?

I do!

21. Favorite Animal?

Dude I fucking love crows.

22. Do You Watch The Olympics?

Some of them! My mom was really athletic growing up (as in one of those kids that plays a sport every season in high school), so she watches a lot of them. We tend to watch figure skating (which I know little about but have strong opinions on), gymnastics, synchronized swimming, track, and judo.

23. What Time Do You Usually Go To Bed?

Usually I’m in bed by 11 but I don’t go to sleep until 2am. Recently I’ve been getting to sleep at 7am.

24. Are You Wearing Makeup Right Now?

It is currently three in the morning so no akslkjsahd

25. Do You Prefer To Swim In A Pool Or The Ocean?

Ocean. I grew up in Northern California near the coast, and now I’m in a landlocked state. And you can kind of feel it, you know? The air doesn’t smell like salt and redwoods, the mountains aren’t there to hold up the sky so you just feel it pressing down on your chest. I miss the ocean.

26. Favorite Tumblr Blog?

I don’t know if I have a favorite. erikkillmongerdontpullout is funny and insightful, and I love dostoevskydocs’ poetry compilations.

27. Bottled Water Or Tap Water?

I grew up somewhere with access to really good tap water, so I’ll go with that.

28. What Makes You Happy?

Writing, spending time with friends, the feeling of dappled sunlight through the tree canopy.

29. Post A Gif Of What You’re Currently Feeling Right Now.

30. Do You Study Better With Or Without Music?

With :)

31. Dogs Or Cats?

Dogs but I love cats too!

32. If You Were A Crayon What Color Would You Be?

Moss green!

33. PlayStation Or Xbox.

Xbox.

34. Would You Swim In The Lake Or Ocean?

Ocean. I don’t trust lakes.

35. Do You Believe In Magic?

I believe in the supernatural, I don’t know if magic’s the right word. It’s more like a belief that there’s something more to the world than what we’re able to perceive. 

36. What Color Shirt Are You Wearing?

Charcoal grey.

37. Can You Curl Your Tongue?

Yes! I can also make my tongue into a clover.

38. Do You Save Money Or Spend It?

A bit of both. I can be pretty frugal when I’m by myself but I inherited the need to pay for everything for my friends from my mom, so if my friends are around, I will try to muscle my way into paying for everything. This is usually unsuccessful bc my friends are in the same boat.

39. Is There Anything Pink Within 10 Feet Of You?

Yes. I’ve got a pink water bottle on my bedstand.

40. Do You Have Any Obsessions Right Now?

I mean. OPM lkjshdflkjdh I’ve been hyperfixating on it, but I also am pretty obsessed with OTGW (I have been for years).

41. Have You Ever Caught A Butterfly?

No but I’ve had a few land on me.

42. Are You Easily Influenced By Other People?

Depends on the person. Overall, I’d say no, but my friends have significant sway over me.

43. Do You Have Strange Dreams?

Yes.

44. Do You Like Going On Airplanes?

I actually do. But only for short flights. Anything longer than 4 hours makes my body really hurt.

45. Name One Movie That Made You Cry.

Moana.

46. Peanuts Or Sunflower Seeds?

Sunflower seeds!

47. If I Handed You A Concert Ticket Right Now, Who Would You Want The Performer To Be?

Orville Peck or Carseat Headrest.

48. Are You A Picky Eater?

Nope!

49. Are You A Heavy Sleeper?

Yeah.

50. Do You Fear Thunder/Lightning?

No, I actually love them. I sleep best when it’s thundering.

51. Do You Like To Read/Write?

Yes to both. I’m a Creative Writing major so dkljfhljkdf

52. Do You Like Your Music Loud?

Yeah! Though not as loud as some people, my ears are sensitive.

53. Would You Rather Carve Pumpkins Or Wrap Presents?

Wrap presents. I’m not a big fan of the smell of pumpkin, and wrapping presents is a tradition for my mom, brother and I. We’d put on some music, drink some hot chocolate, and wrap as many as possible. Then my brother and I would smuggle some wrapping paper to our rooms and wrap our mom’s gift.

54. Put Your Music On Shuffle, What Is The First Song That Came Up?

Somebody that I Used to Know-Gotye (listen the song still slaps)

55. What Season Are You In Right Now? (Weather)

Winter/Spring transition. It hailed for 15 minutes straight yesterday.

56. What Are You Craving Right Now?

A popeyes 5 piece spicy chicken meal with fries and ranch. Can you tell I’ve thought about this?

57. Post A Screenshot Of Your Tumblr Feed.

I don’t wanna.

58. What Is Your Gender?

Nonbinary, but vaguely girl adjacent. 

59. Coffee Or Tea?

I think coffee. I drink more tea, but I also drink exclusively green tea and chai (like the traditional chai made with milk not the chai teabags) and I really am not a black/white/earl grey tea person.

60. Do You Have Any Homework Right Now? If So, What Is It About?

OOF Yeah I do

I’ve got a thousand word readers response to “The Other Boat” by E. M. Foster, a one thousand word journal about WWI, a reflective journal check in and a powerpoint I have to make for Sense and Sensibility for Brit Lit and I also am tutoring a few of my classmates

In my biological anthropology class I’ve got a Unit Exam and a few lectures to watch

For my internship/Teachers Assistant position I’ve got 17 10 page rough drafts to read and give in depth comments on as well as a portfolio I have to assemble for next year’s TA bc I’m transferring, phone meetings with the 17 students who wrote those rough drafts, and I’ve gotta compile some resources for my professor

I need to finish my memoir for my independent study and I have to present. my nonfiction memoir. to my classmates. on Zoom. I’m one of two people doing a nonfiction memoir for their independent study the rest are doing fiction, poetry or a literary analysis paper so like. My classmates are gonna be talking about their fiction piece and then I’m gonna be giving a 15 minute reading and Q&A about a piece that focuses on my trauma and being hate crimed so that’s fun.

I also gotta get some stuff done for my school’s lit magazine.

61. What Is Your Sexuality?

A known bisexual™

62. Do You Make Your Bed In The Morning?

I try to but I forget.

63. Favorite Pokémon?

Togepi, Blissey and Togekiss.

64. Favorite Social Media?

I hate to say it but it’s tumblr.

65. What’s Your Opinion On Instagram Stories?

If it’s longer than six stories, I’m not watching it. Unless I know they’re gonna be fun or we’re really close then I will.

66. Do You Get Homesick?

A bit. I’m still really homesick for my hometown tbh because that’s where all my family except for my parents are. I’m really close with my extended family, so being isolated from them feels like there’s an emptiness at my side.

67. Are You A Virgin?

No.

68. What Shampoo And Conditioner Are You Using Right Now?

Redken Frizz Dismiss. I got those big fucking bottles you can get at Ulta where it’s like a gallon of shampoo so I haven’t had to buy any in over a year.

69. If You Were Far From Home And Needed To Sleep For The Night, Would You Choose To Rent A Crappy Motel Room For $60 Or Sleep In Your Car For Free?

I’ve slept in my car before and I will do so again most likely. Also $60 is too much to spend for a motel room.

70. Are Both Of Your Blood Parents Still In Your Life?

Yes. Though I’m much closer to my mom than my dad.

71. Whats The Next Movie You Want To See In Theaters?

Idk shit about movies tbh.

72. Do You Miss Your Ex?

One of them yes, the others no. But the one I miss I also acknowledge is someone who had their place in my life at the time and helped me through some rough shit, but no longer has a place in my life. I appreciate the hell out of him though, and we’re on good terms.

73. What Is Your Favorite Quote Right Now?

I’ve got two!

“I don’t know how to stay tender with this much blood in my mouth” –Ophelia, Hamlet

and

"Suffering feels religious if you do it right." –Chelsea Hodson

74.  What Eye Color Do You Find Sexiest?

Brown. Especially the almost black-brown eyes.

75. Did You Like Swinging As A Child? Do You Still Get Excited When You See A Swing Set?

Yes to both.

76. What Was The Last Thing You Ate?

Chocolate covered pretzels ljhflfsd

77. What Games Do You Have On Your Phone?

Toon Blast and 2048.

78. Would You Give A Homeless Person CPR If They Were Dying? Why Or Why Not?

Holy shit I hate this question. Yes, of course I would. I don’t know why mentioning that the person is homeless is relevant. Homeless people are not somehow less worthy of CPR?? What the fuck.

79. Been On The Computer For 5 Hours Straight?

...yes

80. Stalked Someone On A Social Network?

I’ve briefly skimmed over someone’s page after meeting them but I don’t lurk.

81. Do You Like Meeting New People?

Depends on my mood.

82. Do You Wear Rings? If You Do, Take A Picture Of Them.

I hate my hands so this was pushing it.

83. Do You Sleep With Your Bedroom Door Open Or Closed?

Closed.

84. What Are Three Things You Did Today?

Corrected papers, walked my dog, did some writing.

85. What Do You Wear To Bed?

T-shirt and shorts.

86. List All Of Your Different Beauty Products You Have Right Now.

Dude I can’t do that I have too many, I’ve been buying makeup for 7 years and I used to work next to a sephora

My makeup routine pre-rona was:

Sephora brand moisturizer

Milk Hydrogrip primer

Fenty Pro Filtr Hydrating Foundation

Maybelline Age Rewind Concealer

Anastasia Brow Definer

Glossier Cloud Paint

Fenty Sunstalkr Bronzer

Fenty Liquid Flyliner

Fenty Flypencil

Fenty Full Frontal Mascara

Fenty Glossbomb

It’s...an expensive routine.

87. Are You A Day Or Night Person?

Night to early morning.

88. List All Of Your Video Games On Your Phone, Console Etc.

I answered this one and I don’t want to reanswer it tbh ldkjfhds

89. Tell Me About A Dream That You Had And When It Happened.

I genuinely can’t remember any of my dreams right now. I remember a snippet of one where I was in a cave and I looked at the wall and I could see water running down it, reflecting in the torchlight but that’s literally it.

90. Favorite Soda Drink?

I’m a big pomegranate person, so Italian soda’s my go to.

91. What Sounds Are Your Favorite?

The sizzle of meat hitting a hot wok, rain, hail, thunder, the crunch of dry leaves. I also love the sound of Simone de Rochefort’s laugh. It’s so good.

92. Do You Wear Jeans Or Sweats More?

Jeans.

93. How Do You Look Right Now?

Shitty.

94. Name Something That Relaxes You.

Skyrim ldskjfhd

95. What Tattoo Do You Want?

I really want to get my family’s mon on my ribcage and my mom’s Japanese name somewhere. I don’t know how my pain tolerance is but if I can handle it, I’d want to get at least a partial sleeve.

96. Favorite YouTuber?

Polygon and Watcher.

[stuckwith-harry]

hey you, i only followed you recently and I really like your hinny fanfics and your poetry. Would you mind telling me about your process when you write? I really wanna learn how to write properly and you seem to take your craft so seriously. How do you built a story, how often do you edit, how much time do you spent on your work, what do you try to go for,...? Thanks xxx

Anon, this is the coolest ask I’ve EVER received, and I’m hanging it on my wall next to all the colour-coded flashcards with poems on them. This is going to be LONG, and by no means exhaustive - I’m gonna jump around and ramble a bit and if there’s anything specific you wanna hear more about, please ask! I fucking love talking about writing!

I’m gonna put most of this under a cut, but before we dive in: yes, I tAkE mY wRiTiNg sErIoUsLy in the sense that I’d like to publish some original bodies of work in my life and to have physical copies of them exist on a bookshelf that’s not my own. I don’t need it to pay the bills, but if you googled my full name I’d like for, like, a poetry collection to show up and not, I don’t know, the two poems I got published in a regional newspaper when I was eight.

(And please let the record show that they’re fine poems for a primary schooler. The cringe years came way after that, kids.)

So, even having some ambitions in the industry, the reality is that I’m a 19-year-old kid with a keyboard and a dodgy internet connection who discovered fanfiction when she was twelve and got hooked for life. We’re going to retire the idea of “writing properly” for now, because writing is supposed to be fun and I haven’t actually gotten accepted into that Creative Writing Bachelor’s degree I so desperately want to do. YET. Don’t let the fancy writing blog (@jessicagluch) fool you into thinking I know what the heck I’m doing. But, okay, with that out of the way, let’s get into what I’m personally doing right now, yeah?

Fanfiction

You asked about process, and the truth is, I don’t … really have one. For the Muggle/FWB AU called “Let Me love” I just published, I actually wrote a pretty detailed outline that I then filled in, which was fun, but it’s not a habit exactly. I’d written a lot of assorted scenes and pieces of dialogue for that one, too, so I had a lot of material and just had to put all the scraps and pieces in order and stitch it all together. After the brainstorming, word-vomity part of writing Let Me love, my #1 task was figuring out where everything went, and making sure it’s all there.

As soon as I’d written a full first draft, no gaps, and the anatomy of the whole thing had somewhat clicked into place, I moved away from it for a while. Wrote something else. Came back maybe a week or two later, polished up the prose a bit very late at night.

Figure out when your creative hours are, if you can pinpoint it at all. Mine are precisely “I was supposed to be asleep two hours ago and I’ve got an important thing tomorrow” o’ clock. Sigh.

Just - leave it alone for a bit, come back with fresh eyes. I love writing Let Me love - I’m working on part 2 right now - but after you’ve fucked around with the same sentence fifty times, you get sick of it. And I did. At some point you have to decide to put down the pen and let it be.

Especially because fanfiction isn’t something you’re writing for a publisher - hopefully, you’re writing it mostly for you - no one is holding a gun to your head to get rid of every last adverb or stuff like that. I can do what I want, MOM. I am allowed to make the thing I’m writing as tropey and campy as I want and hold up a big old middle finger to the rules, if that’s what I want to do.

Fanfiction, to me, is this grand, batshit writing playground. That’s why I fell for it in the first place - it’s inherently self-indulgent and hedonistic and that you can write everything EXACTLY as you please is the primary purpose it serves as a genre. So go wild.

(Process-wise, the one thing I do very consistently is making moodboards and playlists. I like having some inspiration material to swim around in, which helps me figure out what the story looks and feels and sounds like in my head. 

Every fic has a soundtrack. SOUNDTRACKS ARE IMPORTANT, PEOPLE.

Like, Let Me love is all coloured lights and night-time London and texts left on read. It’s neon signs and wearing somebody else’s t-shirt, messy bedsheets and hangover breakfasts and quarter-life crises.

This is the Pinterest board.)

What I pay most attention to is the stuff that gives the text depth beyond the surface. I look for metaphors - and I personally prefer the ones that carry through the whole thing, ideas we explore throughout the story and revisit at the end. I look for themes that hold a story together beyond the plot. I look for subtext and imagery and I want symbolism, goddamnit. 

(That’s the poet kicking in.)

And of course, I’m a product of my generation, so I love referencing other bodies of work and subverting tropes and stuff like that. Hey kids, intertextuality is fun!

(Like, do you see what I did there? See how the phrase “hey kids x is fun” in itself is a reference to something? See??? I’m a fucking genius.)

I think we need some examples. Allow me to toot my own horn for a minute.

In the Halloween 2018 oneshot I wrote, which is about Harry grappling with the anniversary of his parents’ death when he’s a little older, he visits the graveyard with Ginny and Lily Luna. Ginny comments that “it’s freezing”, to which Harry responds with the titular, “you’re warm”. And yes, it’s October, it’s probably cold. They’re keeping each other warm. And yes, it’s maybe about comfort in harsh situations in general, a more metaphorical warmth, if you will. I get it. 

But when you remember this exchange is taking place on a graveyard, you might start to wonder about warm, living bodies as opposed to cold, deceased ones. And then you think about how this whole story is about the living remembering - in a sense, living with - the dead. And how it’s about death as a part of Harry’s life. And you can probably guess by now that all my literature teachers fucking adored me.

(But he’s also choosing a side here, maybe. But I’m merely the author, you don’t have to listen to me at all. My words beyond the words don’t mean shit unless you decide they do and even then you’re going to find yourself knees-deep in a debate around authorial intent in record-time. In the age of “Nagini was a cursed human woman all along”, I’m not sure I want that.)

I also reference other pieces of work a lot. Often poems, and even more frequently, songs. The songs in Let Me love are VERY IMPORTANT and I can’t show you the full playlist right now because SPOILERS. But the chapters are split into sub-sections via song lyrics. Those are part of the playlist. There’s also a lot of referencing songs in general because Harry is a big music fan in this one, but that’s just indulgence on my part. If I want to make a 21st century Harry a Mitski stan, then I will. And I did!

(AND Let Me love has a Friends reference. For funsies, but also, for much more than funsies.)

“I love you / please do not use it” was inspired by a poem by Savannah Brown called “organs”. (It’s linked in the author’s notes at the beginning.)

“It’s two sugars, right?” borrows and/or references a ton of lines and phrases from T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Most noticeably:

Sublety isn’t my middle name, exactly. (The forget-me-not-blue sky in The Bride On The Train, anyone?)

In short: I like when my fanfictions are worth rereading. I like when you can come out the second read having found a little more than you did the first. I like when you can wander around a little, and, like a treasure hunter, make some strange new discoveries.

Lastly: of course, writing from your own experience helps. Spy on your own life. Collect all the ways in makes you feel, like a thief, write it down, memorise it, put it in the story. Reuse! Recycle! ✊🏻

I fortunately don’t relate to Harry’s childhood trauma, but the feeling at the beginning of “We’ll figure it out” - which is a story set shortly after him and Ginny find out she’s pregnant and he’s struggling to connect with everybody else’s simple bliss, because he’s terrified, and he’s terrified of admitting he’s terrified - that was real. That “wait a minute, this moment is amazing. I’m supposed to be the happiest person on the planet right now. Why am I not feeling it? What is this emptiness? Am I not happy right now? Why am I having doubts? I’m not supposed to have any doubts! What the fuck is wrong with me?”, that was lifted from a specific experience.

Side note, I’m really proud of that one.

Okay, poetry! 

Where there is even less rules and more fucking around ensues!

I read and promptly lost a quote recently about how explaining a song sort of defeats the purpose. (I’ll link it here if I ever find it again.) In some ways, poems and songs work really similarly, and I think it applies here as well: if you could really explain the whole poem in one sentence, or a few sentences, if you could accurately and concisely summarise exactly how it feels, then you wouldn’t really need the poem. My favourite poems (or songs) tend to be the ones that outline a really specific emotion via a few powerful images, but I couldn’t precisely tell you what the emotion is. Like, I know exactly what this thing is saying, I know this exact feeling, I GET-GET it, but don’t ask me to explain the thing, just READ the THING, and you’ll KNOW.

Mitski does this really well. Like, I couldn’t explain to you what Last Words Of A Shooting Star makes me feel, but it does. I can tell you that “I am relieved that I left my room tidy, they’ll think of me kindly when they come for my things” cuts through me like a hot blade but I can’t pinpoint exactly why and I don’t want to. All I know is she Gets It, and that I want her writing chops, goddamnit.

Or, like, look at Laura Gilpin’s Two-Headed Calf. Yeah, I’ve read that poem a hundred times and thought a lot about all the themes it’s presenting me with. But I have zero desire to explain those themes to you, because I’d kind of be robbing it of its magic. I don’t want to tell you what it’s about. I want you to read it and I want to simply sit with the knowledge that we know, we Get It, that “twice as many stars as usual” kicked you in the shins, emotionally speaking, as much as it did me.

Few words, max impact, is key.

In Mary Oliver’s words, we want something inexplicable made plain, not unlike a suddenly harmonic passage in an otherwise difficult and sometimes dissonantsymphony - even if it is only for the moment of hearing it.

I’m realising right now that leading with these shining examples and then following them up with my own thing is nerve-wracking. But I like to think that I accomplished something like that with a little poem I wrote called Basements.

It’s is based on the prompt “back to nature” and follows that, uhm, somewhat loosely, a little subverted. I think it’s about impermanence and nostalgia and the fact that the places we lived in continue to exist even when our lives in them don’t anymore. It’s about that and a lot of other things. Maybe. The truth is, I don’t want to explain it to you: I just want you to read it, and then I hope that it made you feel something, and I’m going to trust that you Get It. Maybe you don’t get the same things I did, but that’s great. I’d love nothing more.

Before it was all those things, it was a poem about my life. The neighbourhood with the yellow house across the graveyard that I spent nine mostly happy years in. (The house, not the graveyard.) Every single thing in there is true: my sister really bust her lip and we both cried; wild lilac really grew there; we did spend most of our summers catching tadpoles, and yes, that neighbourhood was a construction site from the first day we lived there to the very last.

And I really sat in the driver’s seat of the family car about a year ago and watched it from afar. I didn’t come up with that - it’s my life. I only went on a scavenger hunt through my own memories, through the places and records and mementos of my life, and arranged a few specific anecdotes in a way that would give them meaning.

It’s kind of what I’m proudest of when it comes to my poetry - that I get to just live my life and see the metaphor and the meaning and symbolism as I’m experiencing it. I sat in the car and I thought, huh, that’s definitely making me Feel A Thing right now, that I’m sitting in the driver’s seat looking at this place I haven’t really been to in years, my childhood home, where I don’t live anymore. That I drove here myself.

I think that, when done right, specific makes universal. If you arrange a kaleidoscope of memories in just the right way, what it’s making you feel will speak for itself, and you won’t have to explain it. Most people who’ve read “basements” probably didn’t spend countless summers playing in literal holes, originally dug out for basements that were never built because no one wanted to move there. Holes that then grew full of weeds and wild lilac and felt like miniature jungles right outside our parents’ houses. It was perfect, it was specifically mine, but the feeling behind it is universal, I think.

Like, that’s how half of Taylor Swift’s RED works. That’s how most good Taylor Swift songs work. That’s why the bridge in Out of the Woods is so good and why I love New Year’s Day so much and it’s EXACTLY why All Too Well is considered her best song by so many people. Because she zoomed in on the details of her life and let the world take a look. Because “we dance around the kitchen in the refrigerator light” is a line in that song. THAT’s why it MAKES YOU FEEL THE THING.

Back to poems? This:

So we tell them all about the dayWe planned revolutions on my bedroom floor, or how we onceSpent an entire Monday lunch break making life plans over ice creamAnd most of our parties talking politics over beerWe both paid for ourselves.About the days you drive me to school. In your carI am the girl, front-seat passenger of our lives,Who does not need reach for the steering wheel –The road is alright. 

isn’t fiction. These are my memories, carefully selected and re-arranged for Politics at Parties Boy.

I didn’t make up these film stills of a non-romantic relationship that never became anything other than non-romantic because neither party ever made a move. What I did is look at my own life like it’s a piece of fiction. If these memories were a movie, you could pluck them apart and say, see, the screenwriters put this scene here to communicate that.

The truth is, I am the screenwriter and the protagonist and the actress and the director and the camerawoman. I looked at a teenage girl who refused to let her friend buy her a beer at a school party and decided “huh, I guess that tells us everything we need to know” because I was that girl. 

And I did pay for the beer, so we’d never move into “let me buy you a drink” territory. He was already driving me to school.

That’s my best lesson on poetry, really. I look at my life like it’s a piece of fiction and then I make it one. I put personal memories in poems meant to be read by other people, I overinterpret everything that happens to me, am literally constantly thinking about how to work every knock-back and struggle into my narrative arc and look for symbolism in anything from the date, the weather, and the colour of my front door. I watch myself in third person all the time and thus become my own muse. I’m the painter and the painting.

It’s a somewhat narcissistic and masturbatory approach to poetry, but as far as writing about your own life goes, it’s what works for me.

As far as writing about not yourself goes - well, I’m a narcissist and I’m bad at that, but I wrote a poem about the Mars rover Opportunity that shut down this February called Spirit shuts down and Opportunity feels no tremble, no ache. For stuff like that, if you don’t happen to be Struck TM by a lightning bolt of inspiration (which is the exception, not the rule), a good old-fashioned mind-map helps. I just let my robot grief go wild on the page for a bit and what I ended up writing about was death and the human condition and being a teenage girl, maybe.

I really enjoy taking two concepts/ideas and juxtaposing them, watching a theme unfold in the overlap. Like, it’s a poem about a robot AND about being a teenage girl and in between those two lies a poem about the futile attempts to teach a robot human emotion. Maybe.

It’s a poem about how my mum always cries at the airport and about me making my own happiness my priority and it kind of ends up being about my intense guilt of making my parents watch me change and grow and leave.

It’s about the night I wandered through a quiet street in Central London at 1 a.m. and realised that the city of my dreams sleeps like any other place, that people wake up early and make coffee and go to work and have bad days here. That it’s not all dream. It’s some people’s lives. But it’s also about watching another person sleep - the way someone’s face changes when they do.

In the middle lay a poem about finding a friend in a lover. Not the daydream, but my life.

Lastly, I can’t talk about my own poetry without talking about my darling poem 5 disasters. It’s my pride and joy. Like, you could kill me write now and I’d be like, it’s okay, I’ve written the poem I want to be remembered for and it’s this one. I wrote it in less than a day and every time I think about the fact that I wrote

I cravedsomething more violent than death, somethingviolent enough to bea beginningand for my life to be thousands of themI wantednothingto remainexcept the girl that sentthe disastersand survived -may this wasteland bewhere I find her.

… I lose my shit a little bit.

(5 disasters was a rarity in how quickly I wrote it. It often takes me weeks. Sometimes months. There’s poems I’ve been meaning to write for years now and I still haven’t found the words. Take your time.)

5 disasters is a lot of things, but within the context of the poetry collection it’s hopefully going to exist in one day, it serves as almost an instruction manual for metaphors: here, the floods and rainfalls are always change and the forest fires are always my highschool demons and my friends and how they look the same. The colour yellow is always referencing the same love. Basically, I like pinpointing my symbolisms and then crafting a poem around them. You end up creating something like an in-poem universe that you get to navigate like a fantasy novel. Like you’re telling a story about a natural disaster, but it’s all a metaphor, Hazel Grace.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I do.

I hope this serves as a starting point of sorts, anon. Most importantly, have fun, don’t concern yourself with all the rules too much. Experiment, be bold, read lots.

Again, if you’ve got any questions, I’d be thrilled to help. Thanks for the opportunity to toot my own horn to this outrageous degree, it’s been a blast.

[paulsolorzano]

12.31.18

Last day of the year. I’ll be working like an asshole. I need to innovate my way out of this. 

How long have I been saying that? 

I found some old goal sheets going through stuff yesterday: 

“Piano virtuoso” - I don’t even have a keyboard in the house to mess with. Haven’t played on anything since I was in Alaska. 

“Published writer” - ain’t done shit with that. Although I do love writing and of course it’s always on the list. Been working on lyrics one line at a time haha

So, it got me depressed to look at these things. But goddamn if it doesn’t have me inspired also. 

I hate being one of those ‘new year new me’ people but I just want to use the new year as a springboard to gain some momentum on what I already have going. 

What i did toward the business today:

What I did toward managing Tokyo Elvis:

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Axxxxx reaching out and then me blowing it (again, but not really because I wasn’t trying)

24 hour romance (bumble and tinder and okc)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Jeff Rosenstock - we cool?

Sufjan Stevens - come on feel the Illinoise

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Coffee 

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.30.18

The pen has ahold of me. Before work, after work, and sometimes during work toward the end of the evening. I reckon I’m a certified weed head currently. 

What i did toward the business today:

Worked on the spam solicitation 

What I did toward managing Tokyo Elvis:

Worked on the spam solicitation 

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Axxxxx reaching out and then me blowing it (again, but not really because I wasn’t trying)

24 hour romance (bumble and tinder and okc)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Fugazi - 13 songs 

Kate Bush - the sensual world 

Roots Manuva - slime and reason 

Ozma - spending time on the borderline 

Aloha - little windows cut right through 

Small black - best blues

Jeff Rosenstock - worry. 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

“Singing is the same as talking; it’s just moving your voice up and down” - Tina Turner from STK 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.29.18

Bagged up some more random figs. I should get a booth going somewhere at this point. I have all these little lunchboxes filled with random shit I’ve accumulated. I’ll have to get little stickers for pricing.   

What i did toward the business today:

What I did toward managing Tokyo Elvis:

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Axxxxx reaching out and then me blowing it (again, but not really because I wasn’t trying)

24 hour romance (bumble and tinder and okc)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Pentimento - s/t

Hot rod circuit - sorry about tomorrow 

Hot rod circuit - if I knew what I knew then 

Schatzi - death of the alphabet 

Roots Manuva - run come save me

Roots Manuva - awfully deep

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“If you sniff magic marker, your mind grows darker” - Schatzi 

“Waiting for pain to not be a constant” - Jeff Rosenstock 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.28.18

Bagged up some older Dragon Ball Z figs. Chilling at the space. 

Officially done 30lbs according to the scale this morning. 185 down from 215. All Keto diet. 180 will be here soon. And then... the 170s? Shit I don’t wanna get ahead of myself. Let’s get to 180 first. 

What i did toward the business today:

What I did toward managing Tokyo Elvis:

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Axxxxx reaching out and then me blowing it (again, but not really because I wasn’t trying)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Tiny moving parts - this couch is long & full of friendship 

Mitski - puberty 2

Hum - downward is heavenward

Sunny day real estate - diary

The Beatles - abbey road (just the b side)

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Dunkin donuts coffee  

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“When you’re old you’re just bummed that you’ll never be happy enough” - Jeff Rosenstock 

“I spent a long time down in the basement, instead of rolling with the riffraff” - PUP 

“Crack baby you don’t know what you want

But you know that you had it once 

And you know that you want it back” - Mitski 

“The way your headstone shines, I only wish that it was mine” - HUM

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.27.18

I’ve got some pain in my neck for the last two or probably three days. Probably from sleeping in a weird bed for the last few nights, maybe the stress from seeing Saul again (whether I relapse it or not?), and also from Axxxxx ending things again due to my past transgressions (this time involving her cousin; remind me to tell you the story)

I’ve been sleeping in weird beds for quite some time now. 

When will I feel at ease? 

When will I feel at home?

My brother and Saul have their homes. They’ve had that base for years. I’ve always been moving, albeit in Orlando, every couple of years. 

I’ve had a storage space in the same building since January 2012. So this place is basically my home haha. Also all my shit is here. So yes. 

My life in a cube. 

—-

Smoked flower before leaving the house today. Been on the pen the last few hours at my storage space. 

—-

I’m craving pizza. I haven’t really had a craving since I’ve started this diet, I think I’m just getting bored with eating the same shit. So it might be time to start improvising. 

I haven’t really had a taste for the green drinks either. Also I haven’t been to Walmart, and something keeps keeping me from going there.

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Falling in reverse - the drug in me is you

The Beatles - let it be

Jeff Rosenstock - we cool?

National skyline - live letter for the disenchantmented

Antarctigo Vespucci - love in the time of email 

Weezer - make believe 

Gungrave ost 

Trigun ost second donut happy pack 

Margot & the nuclear so and so’s - the dust of retreat 

Kanye west - the life of Pablo 

Neutral milk hotel - in the aeroplane over the sea

Mitski - puberty 2 

Mitski - Be the cowboy

Watching:

Star Wars episode VI

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

FFXIV 

Purchases:

Aleppin Sane from a goddam fye for 11.fucking99 after discount! Wat!

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“I just wanna kiss your lips; the ones between your hips” - falling in reverse 

“I got so tired of discussing my future, I started avoiding the people I love” Jeff Rosenstock 

“My heart’s not yours just because you need it” - Antarctigo Vespucci 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.26.18

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Notable places visited:

Saul’s house day 2. I stayed Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day night there. First time I’ve been back there since I moved out there 

Listening to:

Macross 82-99

Aloha 

21 savage 

Reggie and the full effect 

The pixies 

Jeff Rosenstock 

Hiromi

Wednesday Campanella

The never ending 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

La Granja, with Saul Mayela and Danielito. First time I’d been there. It was pretty tasty. I wish I weren’t on a diet as I had to pass up rice and beans and maduros and yucca. I actually had a couple bites of the yucca but nothing crazy. 

Playing:

FFXIV 

Purchases:

M.a.s.k action figures off eBay 

Packages received: 

Hello kitty loot crate 

Robotech action figure

Buffy the vampire slayer ReAction figures: Spike, Buffy Summers

The Terminator ReAction figure: T-800

Assorted Kenner Ghostbusters action figures 

Jermaine Rogers Choices vinyl toy

Assorted Keith P Rein prints from his Patreon 

 eBay obsessions: 

Action figures, Kenner and Star Wars 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.25.18

Long fucking double at work (STK for reminder purposes)

Highlights: 

shitty amateur tables

A lady at my table cried because she was like the fifth wheel with family members. Crying about being 38 and single. And naturally I offered my services and got her phone number so we are probably gonna link up before she leaves

—-

Also, once again Axxxxx hates me. It sucks because things were going really nicely. She found out that I was messaging her cousin Naomi. She found this out from her cousin Naomi. I’ll go into more detail later  

To discuss still: 

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“My body’s built for bad behavior” Reggie and the full effect 

“You smell bullshit from twenty paces” Reggie and the full effect 

“She was everything, and now everything’s gone” Reggie and the full effect 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

11.24.18

To discuss still: 

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Wednesday Campenella - Galapagos

Van Halen - jump, from 1984

Aloha - little windows cut right through 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Apple cider vinegar shot 

Wheat grass juice powder 

Playing:

FFXIV 

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.23.18

I may have to listen to Jimmy Eat World clarity because of today’s date. Also, Travis Schmeisser’s bday is today. 

—

Spent some time at the space. Took pics of the rest of the records I found at the vinyl garage sale at BAMF 

Been trying to hang with my girl Genesis the whole weekend. She was gonna stay last night but didn’t. Tonite is also supposed to happen, but now I’m gonna meet up with Axxxxx as, she always takes precedence haha. And she’ll be done early because she has to wake up early. 

And Genesis is flaky, but she seems to want to.  

—-

Hung out with Axxxxx fur a good chunk of time. We went to our usual rounds: goodwill, Walmart, Ross, DD, Plato’s closet. We had some good laughs and she even touched me when joking. She hasn’t really been like that since we started hanging again. 

I wonder what it means. Is she opening back up to me? Shall we continue down this road? 

She wants to go to Disney on Wednesday or Thursday when I’m off. I’m down always to spend some time with her.

To discuss still: 

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Jimmy Eat World - Clarity

The pixies - surfer Rosa 

Frank n dank - 48 hours 

Aloha - little windows cut right through 

Watching:

DaThings1 YouTube poops

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

FFXIV 

Purchases:

Ghostbusters Kenner vintage action figures 

Star Wars Power if the force (potf) card backs 

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“What comes easy never stays” - your new aesthetic by Jimmy Eat World 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.22.18

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Notable places visited:

BAMF - my toy store that I recently discovered; went there today because they were having a vinyl record garage sale. 

Listening to:

Sense Field - Tonite and Forever

Jeff Rosenstock - worry. 

PUP - the dream Is over

Deadmau5 - random album title 

NOFX - punk in drublic

Pocahontas soundtrack  

Giorgio Moroder - metropolis soundtrack 

Aloha - little windows cut right through 

Bjork - telegram 

Slow dancing society - my blue heaven

Watching:

DaThings1 YouTube poops

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

FFXIV 

Purchases:

Vinyl record find from BAMF vinyl garage sale

J Dilla / Frank n dank - 48 hours instrumentals

Piebald - accidental gentleman

Piebald - all eyes all ears all the time 

Beatles - white album early 70s apple press 

Giorgio Moroder - Metropolis soundtrack

An assortment of toys including a broken Nakanari Spiki

Ghostbusters vintage Kenner figures 

Vintage Robotech Macross figure 

Star Wars hologram Darth Vader figure

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same river twice, the waters always changing always flowing” - just around the river bend from Pocahontas 

“Cause i’m a weed connoisseur, smoke the weed du jour, you might yak up a lung  if the weed is pure” - Frank n Dank

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.21.18

Traffic. Fuck the traffic. 

I turned in the Altima today. I’m going to use Tina Watkins’ car until she comes back from out of town. Which will be Jan 2 I believe. I miss the car. It was nice. Pretty much made it my own for the time I had it. Probably like two months. 

Work was slow. 

This Walmart is damn full of people. They actually have multiple lanes open. This is at 12 am mind you. 

To discuss still: 

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.20.18

The rental car has been draining my funds; Tina Watkins is out of town for a couple weeks and left her car, so I just worked out a deal with her to use the car until then. 

Your boy needs to get a vehicle. I’m planning on getting one with my income tax return for sure. 

—-

“The death of Santiago”

My uncle died today. Saul’s brother.  

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.19.18

Waiting in line at my P.O. Box post office. Apparently I have a windfall of packages being held back there. Which isn’t too uncommon but it says there’s something too big for the box. Which everything is too big for the box, that’s why they have the lockers. 

This is amateur month at the postal service for sure. Christmas and the holidays and all that. People packing things while they’re IN LINE. Shit is blasphemy haha. People grabbing random tape and using it putting it back. 

I have to pee. Should’ve gone before getting in this line. 

Work later. I’ve had a few days off and I don’t particularly want to get back in the groove, but your boy needs monies.  

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Hobo Johnson - the rise of hobo Johnson 

Some Stevie wonder / Beethoven mashup YouTube vid Frank sent me

Alton Ellis & the flames - mr. soul of Jamaica 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.18.18

My sister sent me a snap asking when I was coming to Bradenton for Christmas. I have to respond. 

She’s going through a divorce. Well she’s at the end of it. She’s ok, so no worries. She didn’t want to get married in the first place. 

I just texted her ex husband Ryan. I’ve always liked the kid. 

Long story short the divorce is probably gonna work out for my mother in terms of her health because now the three grandchildren won’t be there half the week. 

Ryan wrote back. He’s ok, and appreciative I wrote. Well good. 

—

So, once again the universe works in interesting ways. I decided to take the scenic route to my space from my P.O. Box; I wanted to drive by where the old studio apartment I used to live (c. 2004) in was. It’s since become a 4 unit rental property. But I wanted to drive by it for the nostalgia. 

So I get to where it is, and one house over, on the corner house, I see the Sushi and Seoul on a Roll sushi truck parked in the driveway. 

This truck is own by one Alfred Ruiz, also known to me and Aaron Tobin as our ex best friend and one time bandmate. 

A rush of blood came over me. Perpetuated by the fact that as I drove by, Al himself walked out of the house and popped into the truck, presumable with some provisions in tow under his arm. 

I drove on by. 

Halfway up the road I said to myself, fuck it, I’m going to go back and say hey to him. So I threw the Altima in reverse and rolled back. 

The was still in the truck so I honked twice and came the popped out. 

I’ll say that he and I haven’t spoken in years. Properly anyway. 

So I basically made my peace with him. I’ll have to tell you the backstory at some point. I’ll add it to the list. 

I told him if the ever wanted to open a dialog that I as open to it. 

I know I really shocked the shit out of him showing up randomly. 

Sorry to have sprung that on him but damn, to randomly drive by a place, and then for a landmark (the food truck) to say hey, here’s your boy occupying the same space you have earlier in time, and further, for him to be walking out as I was drying by… I had to stop. I felt compelled. 

—

And I spoke to Aaron Tobin today. He hit me up on the phone earlier and we chatted, but the got interrupted by a phone call. I called back but no answer. I told him I was just gonna come over if the kept acting like this, and I did. 

Showed up to the house and he was just getting out of the shower. I chatted with his mom for awhile, let her know I’m thinking about cutting my hair, and i’ll have to get back to her on a day I’m free. 

So we went on our normal rounds: Starbucks, and Walmart. I was messaging with Axxxxx all the while, and it was at this point that she took the time to mention that I drink too much coffee. I can easily confirm that, especially the last two days where I havent been eating much of anything until the later hours in the day, and as sci have been feeling the effects of too much caffeine on an empty stomach. it just gives me an all over general icky feeling.

So Tobin. he’s been seeing a girl, as it turns out. Now he mentioned this a few weeks back, that he was going on a date with someone. This is still the same someone. Ashley is her name. 

Story here is that it seems to have been little hot and heavy between them, which I can support this for him because its been a hot minute since he’s had some nice chemistry with a girl.  

To discuss still: 

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Making peace with Al Ruiz (the back story)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Hard Girls - floating now 

Jay Z - 4:44

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Macross new action figure from GameStop. Togo. Was with me

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“What’s the point of having a voice when it gets sick inside your throat?” - Jeff Rosenstock

“I’m a Dutch landscape painter painting pictures of the hillside in the eighteenth century where I was wishing I was living so I wouldn’t have to face all of the things I’m trying to ruin” - Katie Ellen 

Quote of the day: 

“Heyy hope the grind isn’t brutal. Hope the workers aren’t annoying or dramatic. Hope you’re not in the truck. And I hope that they started allowing headphones so you can tune out the world while you’re there” - me

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.17.18

To discuss still: 

Rachel getting a divorce

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

The world is a beautiful place & I am no longer afraid to die - harmlessness

American Football - lp2

Lifted bells - minor tantrums 

Blue oyster cult - Spectres 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“Born as a data mine for targeted marketing, and no one will listen up until you become a hashtag or a meme” - Jeff Rosenstock 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.16.18

Interesting day. Currently at a Christmas get together at this girl I’ve been mentioning Sxxxxxxxx house. 

—

Before that I was with Axxxxx. She hit me up today while she was at work and wanted to hang afterward. She was initially going to get food with her friends from work or some other, but she ended up linking up with me directly after work to get food. She doesn’t have to put on a game face she said, or something along that line. 

She and I chatted. We met at a steak and shake off Semoran and then went to a Chinese buffet which was horrible, we both agreed on that. 

We chatted and smoked in my car afterward. She doesn’t know what to make of her feelings. I can respect that. We have a history and while she says she currently hates me, we seem to be getting along when we do meet up. 

—-

5:30 am and driving home from Winter Garden to Altamonte Springs. I ended up getting Starbucks because it was so damn late/early that they’re open. Made it all the way home from Winter Garden, late as shit. 

6:40 am and I have FFXIV up and running. 

Also Tina is gone as of today, out of town to Ohio until a couple weeks go by. 

To discuss still: 

Rachel getting a divorce

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Notable places visited:

Sxxxxxxxx house for a Christmas get together. 

Listening to:

National Skyline - love letters for the disenchanted

Hum - downwards heavenward

Eagle Scout - new hands 

Black belt Eagle Scout - mother of my children 

Kanye west - the life of Pablo 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Vintage star wars figures:

Leia

Logray 

Teebo

ReAction Buffy the vampire slayer toys 

Breaking bad Walter white figure 

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.15.18

Finally got down to 189 lbs! This is a milestone getting down into the 180s. Brilliant. Nice progress son. 

—-

Remind me to tell you about what Sxxxxxxxx wants to do with her remains. 

Cremated 

Ashes imbued into art to be viewed by people on lsd/shrooms etc

To discuss still: 

Rachel getting a divorce

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“I’m like a magnet pulling the storm,

Where can I move when it always finds me?” - Jeff Rosenstock 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.14.18 

Randomly encountered Sxxxxxxxx from work over in my current hood, Altamonte. She was at some Christmas party as a plus one. She was having a great time as indicated by her snaps, until she wasn’t. 

And then she called me. 

Her tears spilled into my lap through her phone. She went in to her woes. 

To be continued mañana. Your boy is falling asleep.  

Remind me to tell you about the dope sick lady and Sxxxxxxxx dying wishes. 

To discuss still: 

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Action figures 

Lyric of the day:

“Hope is a scheme” - Jeff Rosenstock 

“As much as I definitely enjoy solitudes, I wouldn’t perhaps mind spending a little time with you” - Bjork 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.13.18

So Axxxxx messaged me earlier in the afternoon, chatting about this and that. She had been crying and hysterical about the loss of our child (refer to the Alaska diary)

Long story short we are now meeting for a late lunch at her behest. Again I don’t know what to expect. She says she hates me but I feel like she says it to try and remind herself that she does. But I don’t think she has it in her heart to harbor such feelings, not on any permanent basis. 

I mean listen, the last time she wrote me and we met, she said she was tired of having the hate. 

—

So we hung out for a good seven hours. 

To discuss still: 

Rachel getting a divorce

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“ I haven’t felt quite like myself, for months on end, I spend more nights on the floor than in my own bed. And I never see my family or friends anymore,  and I write more apologies than metaphors” - PUP 

“You know I’ve never been good at anything, except for fucking Up and ruining everything” - PUP 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.12.18

Met with frank yesterday. Always a good chat. He is coming around finally to the idea of getting me caught up with music. Also we are going to work on him getting more success with Tokyo Elvis. Meaning, were gonna work on the marketing aspect etc. 

—

On a wild goose chase to get weed for Tina and Gxxxxx.  And some for myself because why not I guess. Even tho I like wax and oil. 

So the short story on my mother have g a heart attack is that it was very mild. She thought that she was having pain related to a gallbladder issue she was having. 

I don’t want to say that our sister Jessica was a contributing factor to our mothers deteriorating health but, it’s got to be. 

My mother worries about my sister because she’s burned all bridges and lives on the streets mostly. 

—-

I need to get back on grinding. The somm course took up my time and energy this past month. I was a little anxious but overcame. 

Now I need to focus 

—

I think your body knows when you like someone when your dick gets hard while you’re on the phone with em. 

Befriended a kid at a smoke shop, whilst buying a grinder. It came up that I worked at STK and the was like, ‘you must know Yaqeen’ and I just had a smile come over me. 

That mofo knows everyone. 

To discuss still: 

Mother had a heart attack

Rachel getting a divorce

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Getting back into FFXIV 

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

American Football - LP3 pre release track

American Football - LP2

Jeff Rosenstock - we cool?

PUP - PUP 

ALL - problematic 

Voodoo glow skulls - symbolic

Tash Sultana  - notion 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

FFXIV baby

Purchases:

An ounce of weed for $180, to be divided up amongst me and Tina and Gxxxxx 

A legit pink grinder that Axxxxx would be proud and jealous of 

Good Fuck pre order (a Tim Kinsella project)

Robotech Macross loose figure 

Nightmare before Christmas pumpkin king figure 

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“I live in a two way mirror, I am backwards, you are forward” - birthmark 

“And I dreamt of you in Montreal, in places I’ve never been before” - PUP 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.11.18

To discuss still: 

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Playing:

Purchases:

American Football LP3 records and tape and shirt

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

“Name one genius that ain’t crazy” - Kanye 

“Steve Jobs mixed with Steve Austin” - Kanye 

“Crazy were the words that scribbled out your mouth” - coheed and Cambria 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.10.18

Coffee. Traffic. Dying to get my weight down in the 180’s. Old woman liberally using the word ‘fuck’ in my storage space. 

—

This guy at the outback bar said said to the woman bartender  ‘whenever you get a dull moment I’ll take the check’; I enjoyed that phrase. 

—

Just chipped off part of what I believe (and hope) is my back right bottom wood tooth. Around 7:15 pm at the Outback Steakhouse by the Orlando airport. Eating a wedge salad. Must’ve been a piece of bacon. 

—

And the night continues to get interesting. Just hung with Gxxxxx for a bit... and I must say it was an interesting turn of events. 

How about the bullet points:

She’s done with her husband (honestly the short story is she done been done)

She wants to bang me

We are going to meet tomorrow 

I was bringing her some weed earlier tonite and she comes out and grabs me and kisses me on the mouth. We go to the car (my rented Nissan Altima) and chat. She catches me up on the whole thing. The short story here is that right before she got cancer (she’s done with it now, all healed up) she was on her way out of the relationship anyway. She told me that as it was happening. 

She is apparently really fucking into me. Now she and I have always had more than just friendship between us. And it’s pretty much been understood that we were going to bang at some point. 

That being said it’s going on ten years. 

This is going to be interesting how this plays out. She wants to steal me away from Tina as a roommate, which I am on board with. 

To discuss still: 

Mother had a heart attack

Rachel getting a divorce

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Memories created from memory (instead of what actually happened)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Chris Farren - can’t die 

Small brown bike - fell & found 

Small brown bike - the river bed

Kanye West - the life of Pablo 

Watching:

Reading: 

Eating:

Apple cider vinegar shot 

Wheat grass juice powder 

Kale/spinach/radish/parsley/celery/lemon juice/stevia drink 

Ribeye from outback steakhouse. Lots of meat this week haha. Wedge salad extra crumbles and dressing. 

Clear American ice cherry lemonade 

Playing:

Purchases:

ReAction toys: 

Predator

Terminator 2 John Connor

Terminator 2 t-800

Terminator 2 t-1000

Firefly: Zoe, Jayne, kaylee 

Firefly Washburn

Robotech Dana sterling action figure 

Edward Scissorhands weird Japanese figure, Hobby Base Yellow Submarine toy company 

Charles Band’s puppet master ‘blade’ toy. Another weird company called Full Moon collectibles 

Also, I didn’t really ‘purchase’ it, but I got a iPhone XR on lease with option to buy. Upgradable any time I want. Got the red one. 

Packages received: 

eBay obsessions: 

Action figures 

Lyric of the day:

“ you are the ocean, I am the sea; what drowns in you will float in me” Small Brown Bike

“I know there’s bitches you wish you could unfollow,

I know there’s niggas you wish you could unswallow” - Kanye 

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

12.09.18

Starbucks. Ribeyes. Storage space. Habits. 

Sorting through the space a little. I need to make some room for the giant Game Cube display my brother  is bringing up 

To discuss still: 

Mother had a heart attack

Rachel getting a divorce

Back to Orlando 

Becoming awesome

the ‘roast’ culture Yaqeen and I  cultivated to keep morale up

Managing Tokyo Elvis 

Escape as a coping mechanism 

Minus the bear farewell concert

Sleeping on couches when under emotional distress 

“Inventory” night

10 second romance (rearview mirrors at red lights)

Notable places visited:

Listening to:

Gwen Stefani - love angel music baby 

Jeff Rosenstock - I look like shit 

My chill mix

Fake problems - real ghosts caught on tape 

Antarctigo Vespucci - soulmate stuff 

Antarctigo Vespucci - love in the time of email 

Kanye west - life of Pablo 

Kanye west - graduation 

Watching:

Somm on Netflix 

Reading: 

Eating:

Apple cider vinegar shot

Wheat grass juice powder 

Kale/spinach/radish/parsley/celery/lemon juice/stevia drink 

Outback ribeye and wedge salad and green beans 

Playing:

Purchases:

Final Fantasy crystal chronicles, Japanese version for Game Cube 

Squid head - vintage Star Wars

Packages received: 

No post on Sunday 

But I opened these:

Devil boy by Iconoclast

 eBay obsessions: 

Lyric of the day:

Quote of the day: 

8 ball questions and answers:

Hashtags: 

[mmakehappy]

2017

1. What did you do in 2017 that you’d never done before? i’ll try to do this chronologically again: so at the beginning of january one of my best friends left to study abroad in rome which was sad and i missed her a lot. i saw rory scovel do stand up. i took an animation class which was fun for the first few weeks until i failed it lmao. actually my classes from jan to march did not go so well tbh but whatever i made it through. my sister came to visit me the weekend before st paddys day which was super fun and then we saw panic which was soooooooo fuckin rad i love them still wow! i went home for spring break and visited a local winery w my dad which was a lot of fun and then a week later uhhh me and @carrot-gallery became gfs!!! and my whole frickin life changed bc i love her so much wow!! but then a week after that i turned 22 and spent my birthday alone! which i tried to pretend didnt make me sad but by the end of the day i was very sad about it and thats when my sweet gf called me to sing happy birthday and i sobbed on my couch and ill never forget that!!! so okay then spring quarter classes started and i was a part of depaul’s visiting artist series which was super cool... i met a lot of new awesome people (both at depaul and the industry ppl that were our guests!) and made some great friends in that class! i was a house manager and camera op which was super fun. i went to a screening of my fave professor’s short film which was also rad. i saw a ghost story at the chicago critics film festival, which was amazing. i saw idiocracy in 35mm and then mike judge did a q&a! the very next day i was house manager for depaul’s student film festival at the music box! i saw chris gethard do a live recording of beautiful/anonymous and then also do some standup, that was awesome. i saw day wave live!!! amazing! i spent an entire dystopian day dealing with megabus. that was hell! i sat at an outdoor amphitheater and even tho i couldnt really see him i got to listen to seu jorge sing david bowie covers and life was magical for a few hours. my sisters came up to visit me and we saw aladdin the musical and had our minds blown, it was soooo fun! i went to the chicago pride parade for the very first time but i went by myself and at one point i was sitting on the curb just crying! not a high point but still memorable. i won a ticket to an advanced screening of the big sick where kumail & emily were there to do a q&a after the movie.... had a fuckin blast OBVIOUSLY and then saw the movie 9 other times in various theatres. i also made it into a commercial FOR the movie i just loved it that much lmao! i moved into a new (and my current) apartment! lorde released melodrama and fucking murdered me in my own home. otherwise i had a pretty uneventful but anxiety filled summer bc of financial aid stuff so that really sucked. i saw good time w taylor and the safdie brothers were there to do a q&a and they were such interesting guys i could listen to them talk for hours honestly. my mom and sisters came up to visit me and we took our mom to her very first cubs game which was sooo so much fun and they won that day too!! it was awesome and we had a great time :) watched the eclipse (or tried to anyway!!) fall quarter classes started and i honestly kicked ass at them, i got on the deans list (i almost typed honor roll lmao i mean its basically the same) i hung out with ari again which was cool!! we went to the aquarium! me and taylor saw beach fossils which was honestly the most buckwild concert ive ever been to i think, it was good shit. i got jobs at AMC (which i have since quit lmao) and starbucks and left my job at the paint place which was bittersweet! me and taylor saw mbmbam live!!! so fun!! and we watched trolls that night and goofed on it so hard!! i went home for thanksgiving and found out my big sister is gonna have a baby this year!! :D i saw mike birbiglia do stand up! which was soooo incredible of course (except i felt bad bc my mom was supposed to come w me but she couldnt go! so i brought taylor lol) UMMMMM MY DAM GIRLFRIEND CAME TO CHICAGO TO VISIT ME AND STAYED FOR A WHOLE DANG WEEK AND IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER SHE MAKES ME SO HAPPY WE HAD SO MUCH FUN AND I MISS HAVING HER RIGHT NEXT TO ME EVERY SINGLE GOSH DANG DAY <3 ;_____; and that was my year!!

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? last year i said id like to read at least one book each month and watch at least 100 movies - i did neither! im keeping the movie resolution though bc cmon 100 movies should be EASY for a film major wtf am i doing!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? no but it will happen in 2018! 

4. Did anyone close to you die? not a person but we had to put down my sweet doggo, flash :(

5. What countries did you visit? still none :/

6. What would you like to have in 2018 that you lacked in 2017? More confidence that I actually deserve to be in college and that I can do this shit and I’m awesome <– that was my answer from last year and the year before but yeah. same. also money.

7. What dates from 2017 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? ummm march 25 when me and gf became gfs and also dec 17 when she came to visit :)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? putting myself out there by doing VAS/Premiere, getting on the deans list for the first time since freshman year and then also getting a new job

9. What was your biggest failure? this summer i didnt do shit besides wallow and cry and it sucked!

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? nope

11. What was the best thing you bought? every movie ticket and the bras i bought for natalie ;-)

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? natalie’s because she’s amazing and works so hard!!!! and she can always cheer me up and im so in love w her

13. Whose behavior made you appalled? mine bc i could never just get my shit together and do my homework when i was supposed to :) < thats from last year but lmfao same!

14. Where did most of your money go? RENT, movie/event tix, food, in that order

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? THE BIG SICK, the new season of sv, p much all of the events that i listed in the first question lol

16. What song will always remind you of 2017? umm honestly probably any song from melodrama

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer? I’m a. happier, b. probably thinner? or maybe the same idk, and c. definitely DEFINITELY poorer

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? read and write and watch movies and write and read about movies

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Spending money and also being bitter about everything for no reason <– last year and the year before that AGAIN and also same!

20. How did you spend Christmas? working at AMC which i hated every second of :)

21. Did you fall in love in 2016? yes with my amazing girlfriend @carrot-gallery

22. What was your favorite TV program? silicon valley, AMERICAN VANDAL, the good place, great british bake off

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? nah just politicians who like. actively want me to die lol

24. What was the best book you read? bitch,

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? mitski like why the fuck did i sleep on her..... tbh thats about it bc i still listen to the same music i did 10 years ago

26. What did you want and get? I wanted a steadier/better paying job and i have it!

27. What did you want and not get? idk i wanted to be financially stable on my own and i still dont have that

28. What was your favorite film of this year? ugh i hate this question! ok in no order: THE BIG SICK, GOOD TIME, A GHOST STORY, GET OUT, THE FLORIDA PROJECT

29. What one thing made your year immeasurably more satisfying? uhhh having my sweet girlfriend by my side each and every day 

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2017? sometimes chic, always sweaty

31. What kept you sane? Sydney, my best friend in the entire world. (This was my answer from last year and the year before that and the year before that AND THE YEAR BEFORE THAT but it still holds true) also everyone in the sv discord chat still AND natalie of course of course

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? kumail nanjiani duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, taika waititi, and martin starr always and probably more but i legit cant think of anyone rn lol

33. What political issue stirred you the most? yikes all of it. all of the issues (this was from last year but same lmao)

34. Who did you miss? i miss my dogs and my family and my girlfriend 35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2017. You can set goals for yourself and talk about it all you want but it’s nothing until you actually start working towards it and doing something about it. <– answer from last year and the year before that and the year before that, still true!! imma keep that. also idk just like, there are good days and super bad days and ive survived all of them so its just a reminder to myself that ill be okay.

36. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. These days will all seem better in time Waiting on that hindsight