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mr-nauseam · 8 months ago

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The Case of Lonely Mothers p. 1

A study about the "similarities" between Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen and their relationships with their respective children

Read only if you are interested in parallel Sejanus/Katniss. Otherwise just don't read it

For Juli (@julietasgf)

I should clarify before I begin that I do not believe that such "parallel" is something Suzanne put in the text. Most likely there was never any intention to establish a connection between Ma Plinth and Katniss' mother by this great author

This only a crazy idea of mine that arises from noting various overlaps between the two characters and is mostly based on assumptions and headcanon's about Ma Plinth - Mrs. Everdeen

I'm just doing this for fun

Now let's began

I know it may seem strange to make a comparison between Ma Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen

Mrs. Plinth is quite well loved in the fandom. Regardless of what people think of her son, most conclude that she is sweet and her fate tragic, as she was a very devoted mother. Mrs. Everdeen on the other hand is one of the most controversial and hated characters in the franchise, and although opinions about her are divided, most conclude that she was a bad -or even the worst mother

The proposition here is that they are a reverse mirror of each other

I. Without a Name

We know that the narrators' perspectives are the cause. Coriolanus has no interest in knowing Ma Plinth's name (and really none in knowing her or talking to her beyond what is necessary)

Katniss on the other hand has a complicated and conflicted relationship with her own mother, which is reflected in this conscious or unconscious choice to deprive Mrs. Everdeen of her name in order to lock her into the role she theoretically fills in her life

If we could have a narrative of Sejanus we might discover his mother's name but I would like to point out that every time he talks about his mother he calls her Ma

Which is an affectionate nickname yes but in a similar way to Katniss it is a way of locking his mother into the role she occupies in his life

In this case mothers have no name. They are mothers

II. Different circumstances same story

The Plinth are rich. The Everdeens are poor

Ma Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen live in totally different realities due to their socioeconomic status but I believe that deep down, their experiences are very similar

I won't delve too much into the traumas within the games (Maysilee Donner - Katniss) that Mrs. Everdeen has but I will contemplate them when talking about the disadvantages she faced in her life

Let's move:

Mrs. Everdeen is described as a very talented healer. Belonging to the merchant class of her district, which is a high social stratum in her District. Katniss mother then comes from a background of privilege -compared to other people in 12

She falls in love with a man, a miner. He is from a very different class than her own and out of love decides to marry him and move to the Seam; the poorest area of Twelve and in doing so it is implied that her family turns their back on her

So you could say that Mrs. Everdeen had to abandons her home, her past life to be with the man she loves. Leaving her with his husband and her daughters as her only support system

And then she lose Mr. Everdeen. Left alone to care for two children in poverty

(This situation is even worst in her case if you consider that her best friend was killed in the games and had already suffered severe trauma from such an experience)

About Mrs. Plinth:

One of the first things we discovered about Ma Plinth is that she is a very talented cook. We don't know nothing about her background, she could have come from the merchant class or the poor mining class in Two. For our parallel it might be interesting to lean towards the last option but it is indifferent.

The important thing is that Ma just like Mrs. Everdeen falls in love with a man: Strabo Plinth.

Strabo ultimately may have been of a higher class than Ma but in the Plinth's case that is not the scandal of their relationship. The scandal is that during the war Strabo, owner of a munitions and armaments factory, supports the Capitol.

And Ma, who loves him, decides to stand by his side. I should note before continuing that the war itself is a traumatic experience to live, it is true that the trauma may be less severe if you have money and privilege but it persists. Ma carries this trauma on her shoulders

Strabo makes the decision to move his family to the Capitol. The most influential and wealthy area in all of Panem. And although she has her doubts Ma follows him. Her family turns their backs on her (only one of her sisters keeps in contact with her, while the rest of her family has decided to make zero contact with Ma)

So we can see that Ma as Mrs. Everdeen had to leave her home and her past life to be with the man she loves. Leaving her alone with her husband and her son as her only support system

In the Capitol, Ma ends up as isolated and depressed as Katniss' mother at the loss of her husband. Both have lost their primary community and are on their own. They are now two lonely mothers

This is not to say that losing your partner and moving to the Capitol are equal and comparable experiences at all. Because they are not. The only connection that I establish between these events is that they were traumatic experiences, the turning points that will mark the life and the relationship that these characters will have with their children

I also considered it important to consider how different circumstances influence the experiences of these characters. Ma Plinth lived through the first rebellion, lived through the war and the first decades of the post war, but that does not take away from the fact that she comes from D2, one of the richest districts in Panem, which while oppressed by the government, its disadvantages cannot be compared to those existing in D12 as they face more severe oppression

Especially in a D12 under the direction of President Snow, in a Panem where games are a constant -and Mrs. Everdeen its a victim of them in many ways- but equally Mrs. Everdeen's "social descent" to the Seam probably involved its own challenges, and adaptations but these were very different from the "social ascent" that involved the Plinth's move to the Capitol and the violent xenophobia they had to deal with on a daily basis without any external community were to lean on + the severe rejection that it is implied people from Two had against them

III. Children surviving on their own

Before we delve into how Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen's response to a severe trauma - turning point eventd in their lives, mirror each other and define their relationship with their children (a mother who is completely devoted to her son, a mother who is completely neglectful of her daughter) we must talk briefly about Sejanus and Katniss and their relationships with their fathers

We could say a lot about these relationships (Especially in the case of Sejanus and Strabo) but this is a post focused on Mothers so we will limit ourselves to three aspects:

1. Who they look like, 2. Quality time, 3. Survival lessons

Katniss is a living portrait of her father. It is the first thing to inadvertently establish a noticeable distance between her and her mother (who is blonde and light skin and had color eyes). Our girl on fire possesses the typical traits of the Seam and the prejudice they carry, by her physical appearance Katniss is already confronted with a set of experiences that her mother will never experience and which intimately binds her to her father

There is an implicit recognition of being equals just because of how they look and they must navigate the world because of it. What becomes a more special and tragic bond when her father dies and Katniss has her own reflection to remember him by, she is in a way the only thing left of his appearance and it is this in turn that could also drive the wedge between her and her mother

For Mrs. Everdeen, her daughter had the face of a ghost

In the case of Sejanus and the Plinth in general the physical descriptions are vague and nonexistent. Again, Coriolanus' narration has its priorities according to his character -he inform us how badly the Plinth dress but not what they look like

We could go with the movie on this, and although they appear in only one scene, it is obvious that Sejanus is his parents' son, but his round face, hair and large brown eyes seem to immediately distance him from Strabo. He looks more like his mother and we can say that possibly Sejanus also moves through the world in the same way his mother does not only by his physical but by his manners. He moves in the manners of the District

Is relevant because even if we could not confirm it, there are gestures in the text that hint that Strabo has preferred assimilation to move around the Capitol. He adopts its ways, while his wife keeps an altar to her old house in D2 -where she has not been for more than a decade-, Ma its the one that spend most time with Sejanus and that would influence him. For example their time together probably make that Sejanus knows the traditions around Death in Two

Which ultimately leads to quality time. Before Mr. Everdeen dies, Katniss's family seems stable and loving, her problems with her mother are far from starting but it still seems that it is with her father and not her mother that she spends the most quality time with

As I said previously there is a good starting point for this to happen in the physical aspect. People will never treat Mr. Everdeen the way they will treat his wife, which translates into people will never treat Katniss the way they will treat Prim, Mr. Everdeen knows that and act accordingly by spending more time with Katniss to guide and teach her things she might not otherwise know -which will end up leading to survival lessons

It must be said that it also influences what appears to be a personality resemblance between Katniss and her father, which causes a greater understanding between them, and the reason of why Sejanus and Strabo couldn't work

I wouldn't say that Strabo was an absentee father but I think we can assume that his work is very time consuming and since he is the sole provider for his household, the chances of him spending much quality time with Sejanus are slim. Which drives a wedge between the two, a wedge that will only grow wider as Strabo tries to get closer to his son through survival lessons

Many will agree that Sejanus was not given the guidance or tools by his parents to be able to survive in the Capitol but we can't say they didn't try. Strabo did. It was just that his survival measures failed to communicate with Sejanus belifs -and we might wonder if they were the right measures in the first place

Strabo did a lot to ensure Sejanus' survival, and to teach him how to cope with the world. He left him an inheritance that would ensure his economic well-being and tries to teach him how to keep the business, took him to the Capitol where to "free" Sejanus from the hunger games and takes care to let him know how unique his position is, taught him how to shoot but Sejanus hates it. Every time that Strabo try to teach Sejanus a survival lesson he fails to communicate them and consequently his son never use his lessons 99% of the time

Why does he fail? There are many things that go into it. From literally the language he uses, the different ways Strabo and Sejanus handle the trauma of living in the Capitol while being from the district, but I think the primary thing in causing this fatal miscommunication is the similarities in their personalities and the fatal difference in beliefs

It's easy to see how Sejanus' character distances from Strabo's character; he's selfless, sensitive, gentle, and soft but also he's very similar to his father. His stubbornness, bravery, courage and pride come from Strabo. Fire with fire. This plus the fact that Sejanus is not being able to use the lessons of his survival from his Pa because they get in conflict with his thinking

It made that Sejanus had to figure out for himself how to survive in the Capitol

Katniss also gets her own survival lessons from her father (hunting, gathering, singing, etc) and Katniss unlike Sejanus uses them, although I should note that Katniss is partly forced by circumstance to use her father's lessons. It was literally a matter of life and death, she could not choose to alienate or distance herself from the lessons, and thus the symbolic burden of belief they carry, of her father.

Whatever, quality time, physical resemblance, a simple complementary match of their personalities, the way things were said and teach and gender along with other factors allow for more a effective communication to happen between Katniss Dad and her than the Plinths but still a fatal miscommunication takes place between them: death

While Katniss is able to survive thanks to the survival lessons her father gave her, their time together was very brief and the truth is that she was a child who only knew a handful of things about how not to die when she lost her dad. The rest she had to figure out on her own because the dead don't talk and can't guide the living

Understanding that, the question arises:

But what about their mothers? Couldn't they take care of them, or communicate with them once Sejanus and Katniss "lost" their fathers?

*Little note:

The gender also influences in this, because there is an expectation of masculinity that Sejanus is expected to fulfill and does not (being more typically feminine in his values) that Katniss in relation to her father not have (by the society in any case she is expected to be feminine and its curious that she kinda adopts instead typically masculinity values). And I haven't said it but I think it is visible that just as Ma Plinth and Mrs. Everdeen are an inverse reflections of each other, something very similar happens with Sejanus and Katniss AND I LOVE IT

Next part: The conclusion (I'll have to do another part because this is already too long HELP)

#sejanus plinth #katniss everdeen #ma plinth #strabo plinth #mrs everdeen #mr everdeen #the plinths #the everdeen #tbosas #thg series #thg #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #meta or something like that #paralells #ballad of toxic yaoi

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canmom · 9 months ago

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The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere 033-048

Previously: 000-012, spinoff post about entropy, 013-032, [all Flower posts]

Someone else died so it's time I write another one of these, eh?

Welcome back to my liveblog of The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, a serial web novel by @lurinatftbn. Here I'll be covering the Profane Ambition and The Chosen Children arcs.

So, Flower.

youtube

No, not that flower...

A lot of crazy shit goes down in these chapters! We learn a good deal more about Su, including an impressively believable suicide attempt! Some of that juicy Umineko-style metafictional shit starts sneaking in, even coloured text. Scifi 9/11 happens. Fang is there! And also, on a rather more cosmic level...

...it turns out entropy - the physical principle - is conscious. That's a whole thing.

Then Neferatuen dies.

So, let's take it from the top, stuff that jumped out at me in these sections.

Su flashbacks (cw lots of discussion of suicide!)

If it wasn't already evident, it seems clear by now that Su - the present Su - thinks of herself as having bodyjacked a person, and her goal across this whole affair is to set that right by visiting Samium the egomancer. To the point that she's willing to put just about everyone else in danger for the sake of that mission.

In various flashbacks, we start to get more of a picture here of how Su came to this suicide mission. In chapter 34, we see her growing close to an unnamed friend before she became an arcanist - a friend who found her on the beach during a bullying incident in a previous flashback and gave her a much needed dose of support and trust. It could be Ran, since she seems to fit into Su's life in a similar way? But the narration fairly conspicuously avoids naming this friend, and this friend does not aspire to become an arcanist.

In a later flashback in chapter 45, we see Su - post-arcanist - attempting suicide. Despite the extreme situation, she can't help being Su, going on fairly long digressions about architectural history to explain why she goes about the specific method she does. I found some passages of this, like where Su discusses how she imagines the aftermath of her suicide affecting people and how that affects her choice of method, quite relatable for the time when I was pretty deep in the suicidal ideation hole.

Maybe I should talk a bit about that actually. When I was at university - quite a lot deeper in the rationalist ideology, incidentally - I thought about suicide a lot (I never got so far as actually attempting, thanks in part to the kindness of friends who reached out to me and gave me a different context to exist in).

It's hard to say exactly why I was so convinced I should die, looking back. A lot of it was a sense of guilt, corruption, not deserving to exist? I was failing at uni due to undiagnosed adhd and had my mind full of very demanding social justice principles.

Anyway, I was still dimly aware that there were people like my parents who cared about me and would probably be sad if I died. And I also didn't want to inflict the traumatic event of finding a dead body on someone. So, I somehow convinced myself that it would be best if I were to just disappear. The method I dreamed up to achieve this would be to buy passage on a ferry to France overnight, and then jump off somewhere in the Channel. By the time anyone noticed, I'd likely already be dead. Though I still worried about the possibility that my corpse would wash ashore.

This is obviously completely and utterly bonkers in retrospect. Like, I really thought people would be less upset if they didn't have a body to say goodbye to? But uh, suicidal people aren't exactly in the most rational state of mind.

Suffice to say that when Su talks about the condition her body would be found in as a concern, even while disparaging it as a pointless concern for a suicide, it's kind of relatable lol.

I also appreciate the sheer awkwardness with which the actual attempt is depicted. Suicide is inherently kind of absurd as an operation. The scene ends a little comically - Su comes to the conclusion that she's selfish to want to die, falls off the branch by accident anyway, and then the branch breaks and she lives.

Ran is the one who meets her after the attempt. By this point she's clearly come to care about the current iteration of Su. But in Chapter 46 we learn that Ran is the one who reacted with a great deal of hostility when Su came clean about the whole situation to her, and did a lot to motivate Su's whole quest for self-annihilation.

"I still remember how you acted when we first met," I said, my face cracking into a strange, uneven smile, as I looked away and towards the ground. "When you called me a 'disgusting, perverse piece of filth.' I'd never seen anyone be so mad at me... And the next day, and gave me all those rules I needed to follow..." She didn't say anything. "I was really, really happy, you know? It was such a relief." My body felt like it was becoming very still. "That someone had finally noticed something was wrong. That someone knew how to fix it."

And now, we most explicitly see her getting cold feet...

"If it is what you want to do--" "Yes," I spoke, without even a moment of hesitation. "...then I'm happy," she said, after a moment. "If you really mean that, and it doesn't hurt you, then it's good." It's difficult to completely express how much that was the opposite of what I wanted to hear. The words were like acid poured down my throat. My gut ached with furious revulsion, like it'd been punched by a grown man. "That's disgusting," I said. "Sorry," she said. The word came out stiff, but there was no guilt in it. No shame. shame, it was more like a meeting point between exhaustion and relief. It made it even worse.

And from Ran's point of view... she's spent years with current!Su. Far longer than original!Su. It really seems like she hasn't properly confronted her feelings about this quest.

That said, there's something kinda off about this, isn't there? If we think of them as separate identities, it's not like current!Su asked to be implanted in original!Su's body - and even if current!Ran has been able to better assimilate to her body's memories, she'd be guilty of the exact same crime as Su, just a bit luckier. If anyone could be 'blamed', it would be the doctor. Su's situation would be tragic, but calling her a 'perverse piece of filth'?

Also in this arc we get a flashback of a different sort, in an epistolary format. This comes with a visit from the Playwright and Director to assure us that we can reasonably assume this is a genuine and correctly attributed letter, but we can't necessarily trust that the character writing it will tell the truth. In this case, the doctor who oversaw Su's ascension writes to a friend about Su's failure to assimilate, noting that some third party clearly interfered with the ceremony, and covered their tracks pretty well. (Of course he could just be covering his ass, if he was involved).

The only outstanding hypothesis at this point is that Su's grandfather tried to implant his own identity onto Su, but it didn't 'take' properly. This would explain some other things in this section - we'll come to that later. However, it also seems... unsatisfying, in that the way Su talks about her grandfather really doesn't come across like she's got access to his memories or anything like that.

There's other Weird Shit going on with Su, anyway. Towards the end of this section, Su sees something like a beaked human, hanging out in the ocean, and immediately passes out, skipping a significant chunk of time. Although there's signs that at least one other person has seen this entity, I have no goddamn clue what is going on with that.

Zeno

We get introduced to another couple members of the Order! These two have got the spicier transhuman stuff going on with them.

The first is Zeno, who - it turns out! - has discovered a means to puppetteer multiple bodies, though they retain one 'main' body, it's not a shared consciousness type situation. When we meet them, they're using a girl's body - Su has some gender hangups lol, and refers to Zeno with 'she' or 'he' pronouns depending on embodiment. I'm gonna go with 'they'. Zeno is brusque and overwhelmingly condescending, and seems to be convinced Su is somehow playing the fool by acting like a student who doesn't know what the hell is going on. This is fairly strong support for the idea that Zeno believes Su 'should be' her grandfather in a new body. If not that, then definitely she should know more than she does.

Anyway, Zeno says a bunch of grandiose shit about how they're about to create the Great Work or something.

"Utsushikome of Fusai," she said, her tone suddenly very soft. "Immortality is the least of it. There is a power which sleeps here that will remake the world. That will fold mankind as iron in a furnace, and usher in an age of glory. That will grant our species unfathomable and beautiful dignity, and liberate us from this decomposing corpse of a brane."

Exactly how this will be accomplished they do not condescend to say, because apparently all will be revealed shortly. But, out of a sense of loyalty, they give Su her grandfather's macguffin key to open... something, that will give her the right to benefit from whatever it is they're doing.

I appreciate that Su does her best to try and get some answers from someone determined to spout mysterious bullshit. Zeno is, nevertheless, not forthcoming. Su hates this - both being given shit to do with her granddad, and also Zeno's whole fufufu I'm an evil wizard doing schemes shtick.

So that's one element...

Balthazar again

Before meeting Zeno, Su runs into Balthazar again. For reasons that are inexplicable to her, she feels driven to treat him with hostility and suspicion. She drills him on the exact circumstances of what happened after the prosognostic event, where she thought he'd said 'I kept my promise'. After she pushes too far, Balthazar says...

"Dying Gods, you really are an unfair person, aren't you?" He said, ignoring my question and narrowing his eyes. " Right to the bitter end." My frown turned to confusion. "'Unfair person?'" Bitter end? "I don't like to think of myself as the resentful type," he said, now not seeming to be looking at me at all, "but I have to admit, I can't help but feel a little cheated. To struggle for such a long time, just to be saddled with a role like this, and left to-- Well, to be given to choice to either suck it up, or make the situation even worse. And to not even be allowed a few moments of catharsis as a consolation prize... It's cruel. There's no other word for it."

Then he calls Su 'Shiko', an abbreviation of her name which provokes a severely negative physical reaction in her - she almost vomits. At this point we probably think of the fact that the blacked-out name of Su's grandfather is also five letters.

Balthazar claims not to know something but be operating from context clues. What that implies, not clear. He clearly knows more about the situation than he's letting on. ... OK, unfortunately I think I glimpsed a spoiler suggesting he's aware of the time loop, so I can't claim to have organically guessed that idea, but it would make sense. In that case, maybe his 'promise' was to put himself at risk by causing the prosognostic event, allowing the 'control' scenario to play out correctly?

Still, even if he's aware of the loop, it leaves all kinds of questions about what his deal is. Like why this guy and nobody else?

'So much for your country, I guess'

In chapter 38, Su is helping her classmate Seth carry out a bribe to get Sacnicte not to dob him in for fighting, supposedly. This serves as a chance to introduce us to the existence of the fortified security centre, which has surveillance feeds on most of the facility.

Let's talk a little bit about computers!

We also learn that, in the absence of regular electromagnetism, computers 'logic engines' communicate with each other in this world through a 'logic bridge' which involves yet more Tower of Asphodel iron wonkiness. We have 'false iron' and 'true iron'; false iron can be converted into true iron by the connection to the Tower, which can be initiated by the proximity to a human. True iron can talk to true iron.

The upshot is that computers can't talk to each other unless there's a nearby human at both ends, or the Power is involved, and the power can't operate without human intervention, so it's hard to build automated systems in this world.

The other funky aspect is that, by law, the only type of remote computer connection allowed is basically fully immersive VR, because the old world might have collapsed because kids always be on their damn phones.

Iron had enabled people to communicate in radically unconventional ways, which was perceived to have furthered dehumanization and diminished common empathy. As a result, the law was that remote communication was only permitted if it sensually emulated reality, like what was happening in front of us.

This seems like it would be a very helpful plot point if they ever made a film adaptation of this book lol.

Anyway, Su and Seth take the opportunity to tune in to the parade back home while they're doing the bribe. Of course someone sets it up the bomb.

The kids have a little chat about terrorism - Kam holds forth in her usual way about how deplorable terrorism is, much to everyone's frustration, because nobody exactly is in favour of terrorisms here. Bardiya gives us the 'yes the terrorists are morally responsible but this probably happened because the government fucked everything' angle. Ptolema gives us the 'what if it was a false flag' angle.

Ezekiel

Ezekiel deigns to show up onscreen around here. It turns out there's a reason everyone avoided him so far: he's a colossal cunt who's super fantasy-racist towards people from the other planes, and also regular-racist to people from like, literally any other country. He gets away with it because he's able to put a sock in it somewhat in front of the teachers and also good at magic. I think racists call this 'hiding your power level', but I don't think 'being racist' is some kind of cool chuuni superpower.

Hamilcar

Hamilcar is the last member of the Order that we meet. He's got a bit of a techpriest sorta vibe. His general deal is 'golemancy', meaning in this case an approach of replacing human body parts with interchangeable parts and standard interfaces rather than growing perfectly biomimetic organs with biomancy. Fittingly, he is himself a big old robed cyborg, with a breathing apparatus over his mouth and a metal eye. Definitely feels like he missed his calling as a minor JRPG antagonist.

the cute bit with the books

There's a really good scene in chapter 39 where Ran talks books with Yantho, the younger member of the servants/aspirants who talks with a tablet.

Ran talks, at first with Su, at some length about a fantasy novel about dragons. It is quite a thought-out premise in fact...

Ran shrugged. "When you read enough of this shit, all the gimmicks are basically just window dressing. What's important is imagery. Plate armor, big old-fashioned Rhunbardic castles, swords, fantasy creatures... That's what makes something typical." She yawned. "But anyway, in the actual plot, dragons have almost been hunted to extinction, which is causing a crisis since human civilization uses them for everything. They decide to start farming them instead, but the dragons always tear themselves apart rather than letting themselves be captured, and if they just steal the eggs, they die before hatching without their mother."

They talk about whether the premise - in which a special girl is made into a human dragon hybrid to breed dragons - is overly fetishistic before Ran renders her judgement...

She shrugged. "It's average. As far as I can tell, it's going for a bunch of high-minded themes about transhumanism, the cycle of hatred and violence, and society exploiting the bodies of women… But the actual delivery is pretty muddled, and falls apart amidst a bunch of stuff the author obviously only stuck in because they pressed some personal button. Also, there's a romance plot at the center of the narrative that's really pissing me off."

I like this because it's really funny to talk about the kind of book that you're reading inside the book like this. A lot of the time when fictional characters read books, it's very different books.

I sorta suspect that this is about a trunk novel that Lurina wrote? It's so specific! But maybe she's just really good at cooking up a plausibly interesting fantasy novel on the fly.

Yantho joins in and there's a whole convo about the book series. (Su angsts about how she can't really connect in the same way.) It's definitely kind of indulgent but in a way that, contra Ran's take on 'pressing personal buttons', I quite enjoy.

Fang

Finally in chapter 42 the much-delayed conclave begins and we get to see what everyone's little science projects are! Also Fang shows up.

We were already told a bit about Fang - they're a massive prodigy and also nonbinary - but what we didn't realise is that they are incredibly casual about everything. Very much 'TTRPG player who isn't getting into character' energy. They also act like they're gonna improvise their project at the very last minute.

I thought the earlier discussion of Fang implied there is some kind of recognised nonbinary identity in this world, but it seems to be less of that and more that Fang is really good at playing genderfuck. Here's how Su puts it:

It wasn't as though Fang even really asked people to refer to them in gender neutral terms, not that I would have really had a problem with it if they did-- Although that certainly didn't stop Kam and a few others from being varying degrees of shitty and passive-aggressive over the issue, as you saw back when we were grouping up outside the Aetherbridge. Rather, they just implied their feelings by presenting themselves in a way that was genuinely ambiguous. It's a delicate thing to try to put into words and probably even foolish to think about, but it really was difficult to tell what the... Makeup of their body was, uh, physically. They always wore clothes loose around the chest. They were tall, but not widely built. Their face was soft, but not small. They didn't have any facial hair, but their eyebrows were lower and thicker than you'd normally expect from a woman, and while their voice was pretty husky, it was more resonant and melodic than you'd hear from a man. Like Ran and I, Fang was Saoic - though from the Arcanocracy instead of the League - and a lot of foreigners in our extended social circle would say things like, 'oh, they're Saoic, so of course it's hard to tell!' which, aside from being vaguely offensive, was also extremely irritating, since I didn't feel like that had anything to do with it.

Su goes on for a few more paragraphs about how we parse gender and shit.

It's funny to me because... I'm someone who apparently reads a bit ambiguously in terms of gender. In my experience, people decide fairly arbitrarily what gender they think you are, and if something comes to change that impression (for me, usually my voice), they 'correct' themselves. If they're more caught up on trans shit they might ask pronouns or whatever. It's rare for someone to decide that they can't figure it out -and if they do they might be incredibly rude about it like demanding to know my gender or loudly talking about whether I'm a boy or a girl.

Fang apparently deliberately cultivates a nonbinary perception, undermining peoples' assumptions, but keeps subtle with it and doesn't actually ask anyone to use they/them. That's a hell of a fine line to walk lol.

Fang's prodigal talent also has an air of cheating to it. After some remarks from Su about how most 'prodigies' just happen to peak sooner than most (she puts an evopsych spin on this because Su is a bit too much of a lesswronger for her own good still), but aren't lifelong special talents, Su describes how Fang stood apart in schoolwork:

That wasn't how it went for them. They would come into class, sit down, and just write. Nonstop, without pausing even a second for thought. And the work was brilliant! Perfectly voiced, cited, and comprehensive to the point that it put even the wordiest of Kamrusepa's stuff to shame! And they just did it, like they were transcribing directly from the voice of God.

Certainly can't help but get the feeling that Fang might also be in on the time loop, or perhaps an even longer loop? Or maybe they have had their mind overwritten with someone as we're suspecting happened to Su? Or receiving some kind of 'external' information? Definitely seems like there's more to this than just 'Fang is good at academia'.

Anyway, they are super casual about showing up late for this all important conclave. Su's deja-vu feeling manifests into a highly specific prediction...

Fang will withdraw an item that looks like a sheathed blade, but covered in small pieces of strange, silver-white machinery. As soon as the inner circle sees it, they will react with shock and panic. Someone - in 87% of scenarios, Zeno, but sometimes Hamilcar, Anna or even Linos - will demand what they're doing with it and where they got it. Fang will explain that they were entrusted with the task of completing it by a departed member of the order, though they won't say who. Later, I will learn this was my grandfather, but that won't be until half way through the night. After this, the conclave will demand they hand the item over, but Fang will only do this under the condition they stall the conference until they've led everyone down to the sublevel to reveal its purpose. Kamrusepa will get upset and refuse to go. We'll travel to an elevator that goes deeper in the facility, and... And then...

This prediction does not exactly pan out, but we don't actually get to see what Fang's project is, because Hamilcar suddenly intervenes and sends everyone outside.

Some other shit happens before that though!

Ophelia's presentation is the main one to be narrated in detail. She's invented an external artificial liver which is kind of like a slug creature, and does a demo on herself, in which it pokes tentacles in to intercept heir failing liver. I feel like this thing is a Chekhov's gun. Also I am big into Ophelia's whole 'I will do this gross experiment on myself' thing. That's the spirit.

The witch's ultimatum

We get the equivalent of Beatrice's letter. In this case, someone hacks Kam's logic bridge during her presentation, giving a religiously inflected denouncement and ultimatum on behalf of an unnamed goddess. The message commands them to do some occult shit.

First, you shall lay this fel sanctum to waste, taking nothing with you as you abandon it save the clothes on your back! Second, you shall fall to your knees and prostrate yourself before Her glory from the break of dawn to high noon! Third, you shall make the traditional sacrifice of a black bull in the evening light, along with the proper rites! Do this, and turn your miserable lives towards virtue and godliness, and you may yet be afforded forgiveness."

If not, they'll all be killed one by one. We don't have a specific recipe for the killings as Beatrice's revival ritual in Umineko, but it's definitely a Beatricey vibe.

Su, who is one of the only two people who actually knows someone has been murdered (besides, presumably, the murderer!), has more misgivings than the rest, who broadly laugh it off.

There's also a moment of bathos at the end...

Then, the voice exhaled, and the head of the figure shifted to the side, jarringly shifting to casual, chipper tone. "That was pretty good! I really gave it my all, I think--"

Given that the Playwright later claims to have had a cameo, I'm inclined to think it's her 'playing' this ultimatum-giver? Though what that means for the 'integrity' of the scenario I'm not sure!

And then things get crazy

During this recess, Neferuaten comes out to chat with Su and Ran and Ptolema. Ran decides to take the chance to grill her on the real purpose of the facility, because most of what we've been told about it doesn't add up. It probably isn't underwater on the next lower plane. She concludes that the real reason for building a bunch of underwater domes here is something hidden in the caves underneath.

Neferuaten's answer is... to go on a long metaphysical tangent. So it turns out that before making this new universe, the humans in the 'timeless' space of the Tower of Asphodel made some observations of the 'depressed' physics of the post-collapse universe they'd left (seems like the commenters suggesting false vacuum collapse were probably right on the money). They essentially had to wait out the entire heat death of the universe before making a new one (presumably taking no subjective time). So they left some kind of monitoring devices in there creating effectively a complete record of the entire history of the old universe. It's considered a niche interest.

Someone called Saahdia made a study of this data and discovered patterns.

"Of course, I'm simplifying something very complex. One thing I hope you've learned by this point is that, in all forms of scholarly inquiry, nothing is ever clear cut. There were many false positives, and natural occurrences mistaken for something more. But the further she invesigated, the more she found anomalies which could not be easily explained. And the more those anomalies, too, began to form a recognizable pattern." She smiled distantly. "Just not one you usually see in interstellar physics. And then she reported that to Ubar, who ordered an investigation of the corresponding interplanar data--" (...) "What she started to suspect," Neferuaten explained. "was that, though in a form impossibly alien to human beings, entropy is conscious."

This is like... lmao crank shit but it's fine, it's a scifi story, we can have a little conscious entropy as a treat.

Still, it's time to talk physics a bit.

Seems that post I wrote about entropy is going to be very relevant huh. As discussed previously, entropy is a fairly unintuitive quantity that measures how large-scale averaged out models of a system relate to fully specifying every single one of its degrees of freedom.

The 'thermodynamic arrow of time' says that, in the direction we define to be increasing time, entropy always increases. This is justified by a statistical argument: when you have a huge enough number of particles ergodically exploring the states of a system, there are so vastly many more ways for entropy to increase than for it to not increase that the chance of it not increasing is infinitesimal. (This simple argument is considerably complicated by the issue of CPT symmetry, which says the laws of physics work the same way if you run time backwards. That would be too long a tangent for this blog post about a book.)

In thermodynamics, entropy is one of a number of state variables that describe a system. In classical thermodynamics, you form differential equations, relating changes in entropy to changes in other quantities such as internal energy, temperature, volume etc.

So what is entropy? Well, it's not some kind of cosmic processor that is monitoring the micro-level physics of everything. It's a statistical property that crops up in complicated evolving systems.

In our world, that is. In Su's world, entropy is some kind of god. So that's neat.

Naturally all the characters raise similar objections. Here's how Su describes known physics in her future:

"Um…" I said, hesitating as I was put on the spot despite the superficial simplicity of the question. "Well, as far as we know, the Timeless Realm, which contains all fundamental matter, has always existed - along with the 10 conventional dimensional forces, which intersect and overlap with each other around the matter. Some of those intersections were asymmetrical, creating instability and the 11th special dimensional force, time. The process of those intersections breaking down created the phenomena we describe as energy and mass, which at some point led to the first planes. Ours in particular came about when a large amount of energy was discharged from from somewhere else in the inter-dimensional landscape, and--"

We should probably talk a bit about dimensions here. A spatial dimension is basically an direction that something can vary, orthogonal to the other directions. e.g. to reach every point in a 3D space you need at least three non-coplanar basis vectors to add up. In a higher dimensional space, there are more directions to go in.

Mathematics has been describing higher dimensional geometry for centuries. This made its way back to physics around the turn of the 20th century. You had special relativity, which mixes space and time depending on your velocity, defining a 4D 'spacetime'. You also had formulations like Lagrangian mechanics which reformulated Newton's mechanics into a more abstract model of 'state variables', with as many as you'd need to solve your problem.

Much later in the 20th century, attempts to create a unified model of quantum field theory and gravity started observing that their theory could be really mathematically elegant if you added a bunch of extra spacetime dimensions. The problem was that we can't observe these dimensions - we can't move along them and they don't have any observable effect on shit like gravity. A solution for this issue is to say that all these extra space dimensions might loop back on themselves over an incredibly tiny scale. Supersymmetric string theory supposes that there would be 10 dimensions (the 4 regular spacetime ones + 6 extra ones which are all twisted up in something called a Calabi-Yau manifold), other theories add more.

I should say here that, despite decades of research effort and increasingly gigantic particle accelerators, we have found zero evidence for supersymmetry, which makes things dicey for string theory - a body of theoretical work that was already hard to meaningfully test in the first place. So '10 spacetime dimensions' is far from proven physics.

While I'm at it, since it's come up, a brane is basically a hypersurface of some dimension, that propagates through a higher-dimensional space. It's a generalisation of notions like 'particle' (point moving through spacetime) and 'string' (line moving through spacetime). String theory uses this mathematical construct heavily - notably, within string theory our universe could be a specific type of brane with various strings attached to it in a way that allows it to produce quantum mechanics from the way the strings and branes interact.

So, in Flower, the 'planes' seem to have been identified with the physics concept of 'brane'. In practice they function more like the classical fantasy notion of 'planes of existence', other worlds that you can travel to where the rules are different.

Now, let's go back to Su's summary. I don't really get what she means by 'dimensional forces' here, particularly when she describes time as a 'force'. The 'process of those intersections breaking down' is probably a way of describing the Higgs mechanism and spontaneous symmetry breaking. The 'large amount of energy' is presumably a reference to the Big Bang (the hot dense state at the beginning of our universe), coupled with the idea that the energy came from 'somewhere else'. Further, Su seems to be suggesting that they exist in a brane cosmology, in which our universe is a brane in a higher-dimensional space, and there could be other universes.

Su's description is kinda muddled tbh - it feels like the interpolation of someone who reads popular science magazines rather than a physicist.

Anyway, here's how Su defines entropy:

"But we do know what entropy is," I insisted. "It's just an emergent quality of energy in some planes in which gravity is exceeded by motion in terms of potential force, without anything else to taper it. You taught me that countless times yourself."

This seems somewhat odd to me - I'm not entirely sure why gravity would enter into it. I think it might have to do with conflating the thermodynamic arrow of time (the 'direction' along which entropy increases) and the cosmological arrow of time (the 'direction' in which the universe expands), since the expansion of the universe is determined by the balance of matter and energy in the universe.

'Emergent quality of energy' is somewhat accurate. Entropy could be more aptly said to be an emergent quality of any model that treats matter in the aggregate, abstracting over details. An atom in a gas interacting with other atoms has no concept of entropy in its dynamics. If you were able to perfectly track and simulate every single particle, you would not need entropy.

Since it's so contextually defined, it's rather difficult to describe entropy as a kind of entity that could be afforded a will. Neferuaten's response is to play the allegory of the cave card, something which Ran calls her on:

"This is the second time in the past five minutes that you've basically repackaged the allegory of the cave and presented it as your own concept," Ran said flatly. "Just putting that out there."

Kind of love this line.

However, despite the characters grilling Neferatuen on an idea which Su correctly calls 'closer to mysticism than natural philosophy', the fact that this is given so much time in the narrative seems to fairly strongly suggest that, as far as this story is concerned, entropy is a conscious entity or process or something.

Presumably, whatever the Order are about to try to do, they're going to change how entropy behaves so that it 'wants' to keep humans alive indefinitely. Somehow this is going to involve the Everblossom. I will say, that is a proper scale of magnum opus for a setting like this.

Neferuaten is honestly pretty up front about all this. She's like 'yep we're playing with fire and probably courting an x-risk*, but don't worry, we know what we're doing'.

"I'm just trying to be upfront, miss Rheeds," Neferuaten said. "I'm happy to be known as hypocritical, selfish, or even foolish, but the one thing that makes my stomach churn is the idea of miss Hoa-Trinh, and of course you and Utsuhikome, walking away from this conversation with the impression that we're all megalomaniacs without any degree of mindfulness of we're doing. It has been, if nothing else, among my foremost goals to promote self-awareness among the administration of this organization."

As upfront as she might be trying to be, she lapses back into the cryptic bullshit and refuses to explain much more about how the Order came to this mysterious location beyond 'there is an Ironworker thing here' that they can use to observe and interact with entropy, I guess.

Anyway, all of this ends with Neferuaten declaring that as long as she lives, no danger will come to Su et al. Signing her own death warrant with those words.

Neferuaten dies

So then Su sees the beaky thing and blacks out. When she comes to, she tries to figure out what she saw - about this point we also get another visit from the Playwright, who explains that Su can't have her perceptions messed with until we are shown the mechanism that would do it - and then Lilith shows up and drags her to go find help. The warning bell is going off. Su goes to shut it off. And we get... our second death!!

Su also learns that as far as other characters were concerned, she seemed mostly normal. It seems therefore that she's suffered amnesia rather than actually being unconscious. Maybe her alter took over? Or maybe her visit to Samium didn't take as well as she hoped?

We also get some new rules, including coloured text. Red text (actually a darker red, but this is the only one I have on here) is used to describe Su finding a corpse that is absolutely definitely the corpse of that specific person, ruling out misidentifications, subsitutes etc. whoops, I misremembered that part! the only guarantee we get is that they're human remains and dead, but not whose human remains they are. (so this could be someone else who died and then, say, post-mortem transformed to look like neferatuen).

We also get to have new POVs, starting with an academic guy from an early chapter who seems to know more than he was letting on. These segments begin with a letter in purple text if we're supposed to treat them as reliable.

Considering Su blacked out for most of the relevant period, I'm not sure if we're supposed to really be able to solve any of the 'dunnit' questions at this point. What we know is that someone killed Neferuaten and stuffed her body in the bell. Why? Well we have a 'witch narrative' (the members of the Order will be killed one by one if they don't do ritual blah), and we also have reasons to suspect there could be conflict within the order. The thing is nobody has an alibi at this point - about the only people it's unlikely to be are Lilith (who was probably near Su) and Linos (who is established as unable to climb the stairs of the belltower, though then again these are all flying wizards here).

We also learn about a thing called the Allagiypnou Process, which reduces how much you have to sleep at the risk of potential personality changes. Every member of the Order except Linos has had it.

So not much to say just yet. I liked Neferuaten. But we already know it's a time loop story, so I'm sure she'll be back in a future loop.

The Playwright and the Director and final mysteries

The story is getting increasingly frequent interruptions from the Playwright and the Director, adding an increasingly metafictional dimension to this. This is not really surprising if you're an Umineko-head, but it does seem to be causing a certain amount of consternation in the comments.

I definitely suspect there is more to these characters than merely a cutesy way to inform us of the rules of the Fair Play mystery we're allegedly supposed to be solving. There are obvious questions like - who is the audience? What is the connection of the characters to the situation? If this is all being orchestrated, to what end?

Given the earlier declaration that entropy is sentient, I wonder if this is some kind of anthropomorphised representation of the 'will' of entropy? But that seems kinda cheap.

Anyway, we end with another set of reveals - Nindar, the academic back at the uni which they all left behind, is clearly in on whatever conspiracy is afoot here, and had a hand in bringing Fang and their mysterious object with the goal of changing the mission of the Order.

And also apparently the boys' group didn't even go up the space elevator.

So like what does that imply?? Are all the boys replaced with imposters? If the boys didn't go up the lift, but made their way to the Sanctuary by some other means, why do they all seem to remember going up the space elevator and following a similar route to the girls?

I honestly have no idea at this point. Feels like way too many unknowns to reason deductively about.

In conclusion

Sure are a lot of balls in the air right now. I'm fascinated to see where they might land.

Maybe let's make a list of like, known mysteries?

the big one: what skulduggery happened with Su's ascension that made it go so badly wrong? why did Ran react so badly to knowing that Su can't assimilate? what did Su's grandfather have to do with it?

who knocked out Yantho and ruined his roast?

whodunnit #1: who killed the cook, and why?

who hacked Kam's phone with the ultimatum, and why?

what happened between Su blacking out from seeing Beaky, and waking up in bed in the evening? (what did Samium do to her?)

whodunnit #2: who killed Neferatuen? why? when?

what crazy Great Work are the Order plotting? how's the Everblossom involved?

what's under the Sanctuary that's so big and important?

how did the Order come to the Sanctuary? there's clearly a story there.

who is Su's unnamed friend from the beach in the flashbacks?

what are the Playwright and the Director playing at? (are they secretly Gog-Agog?)

what does Balthazar know?

what's Fang hiding?

who's Beaky?

what does the terrorist attack have to do with the Conclave?

There's probably more I'm forgetting right now.

Not sure how many of these - if any! - we're supposed to be able to infer at this point in the narrative, but it's definitely a spicy brew!

I expect the bodies are going to hit the floor pretty quickly from this point, but who knows... we're still quite early on in this affair.

...phew, these writeups are a bit of a project. I've gotten everything down now I think, so I can finally let myself read the next chapter.

#the flower that bloomed nowhere #tftbn liveblog #fiction #sff

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nutteu · 1 year ago

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kiss me with your lies (and baby i’ll love you even then) [Chapter II]

[AO3 Chapter I] [AO3 Chapter II] [AO3 Chapter III] [AO3 Chapter IV] [AO3 Chapter V] [AO3 Chapter VI]

They started out slow. With Sykkuno holding onto his bare hand, even throughout dinner. The guy seemed nervous and self-conscious when Toast told him that they were eating together with the rest of the house occupants.

“Do you think they’ll be annoyed at me?” Sykkuno asked, fidgeting with Toast’s fingers.

Toast ignored the flutters of warmth that seeped into his skin from the gesture, and said, “They will if you keep asking that question. Or at the very least, I will.”

That got him a quirk of smile from the man. He had showered, changed into Toast’s clothes, hair fussed out by Poki who sternly told him to sit on the couch so she could blow-dry it. Sykkuno kept glancing at Toast hesitantly as his hair flopped this way and that. He looked ridiculous, sitting so rigid in Toast’s shirt that stretched tight across his shoulder, before it went completely loose downwards. The pants were met with the same fate; Toast watched in fascination just how slender his waist was, as he pulled the strings tighter than Toast would usually have.

Yvonne was still at her family’s house, Michael still busy in his lab, and Scarra hadn’t come back yet from work. So Toast introduced Sykkuno to Lily and Brodin instead.

“It’s really nice to meet you,” Sykkuno said, earnest smile in place. He seemed a bit stiff when he shook hands with them. As if he wasn’t used to it, which was kind weird considering he held Toast’s hands just fine. He chalked it up to the man being shy. “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

“It’s no problem,” Lily said cheerily. She seemed to have taken to this hesitantly unfurled flower. Probably because she was sick living with a bunch of crazy people in this house. “You’re also helping Toast, we can’t be more grateful for it.”

The girls were busy cooing and deciding which hair pin to put onto Sykkuno’s head, poking his cheeks and arms and thighs while throwing brazen remarks about his pretty face and soft flesh. It was kinda disturbing, not to mention how overwhelmed Sykkuno looked. He looked at Toast with wide eyes, pleading for help to get out of the grasp of these hyenas. He sneered and smirked instead. Let him be, he needed to get used to this kind of behavior as soon as possible.

It was Brodin, who was leaning on another couch, deceptively relaxed, that broke the disgustingly soft atmosphere. He had been looking at Sykkuno, tilting his head a little. “I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere. Not just the face. Your name sounds familiar.”

Toast could see the moment Sykkuno’s body went absolutely rigid. He glanced up at Brodin, licked his lip, and offered a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m a- I’m a game streamer. You might have seen me once or twice on social media.”

“Could be,” Brodin nodded, opening the arms that he had folded in front of his chest. It made Sykkuno relax slightly, but not completely. Even he knew that this wasn’t over. He was terribly perceptive of the things around him, and easily adapted to unpredictable situations. Toast watched the movements of his lips, his eyes, the way he tried to not fidget. He knew that Sykkuno hid things, which was understandable, but he didn’t seem like someone who ran away from home; he seemed like someone who was chased, hunted.

“You’re very good at concealing yourself,” Brodin continued. “Doesn’t it drain down your reserve quickly?”

“It’s only a simple concealment magic,” Sykkuno said, voice smooth despite how uncomfortable he was. “It doesn’t take much.”

“If you say so,” the other man said, shrugging. He flowed with the conversation easily, knowing that he had pushed Sykkuno’s buttons far enough to make him clam up. “What games do you usually play? I’m familiar with several streamers, but those are only the ones that I work with.”

This time, the smile finally reached the crinkle of Sykkuno’s eyes as he explained the general overview of his streaming career. When Lily checked his phone, she let out a screech. Toast scooted over to see what the commotion was about. “Holy fuck,” he said when he saw the numbers.

“You can literally buy this house with us in it with that amount of money,” Lily exclaimed. “Maybe I should start streaming too? I only uploaded my videos to YouTube.”

“You should,” Sykkuno said, content to let the sunflower perch on his fringe. He looked terribly ridiculous and terribly cute like that. Toast understood why millions of people were enraptured by this person. He had this sort of calm, easy-going charisma with some willingness for daring things. His acceptance of Toast’s curse and him readily helping was already a testament to that. “I used to do the same thing too, before I started streaming. My parents don’t really approve of it, but I’m not hurting anyone and I’m sick of not doing anything at home. So, eh.”

“Eh, indeed,” Poki laughed. “I don’t have that kind of parents, but I’ve heard enough stories from Lily and Toast to know how stressful expectations from Asian parents can be.”

“Yeah,” replied Sykkuno. There was a frown marring his little sunflower. “They have my future mapped out, things planned without my consent, and full expectations of doing that regardless of my feelings on the matter.”

“Why don’t you move out then?” Poki asked. “You can even move in with us permanently. I mean, you’re an adult already. You’re- what? Twenty-four, twenty-five?”

“I’m twenty-eight,” came the small voice, accompanied with a wry smile.

“Holy shit,” Poki said, a laughter trailing behind. “You and your blessed genes, I swear to God. But, yeah. You’re old enough to take care of yourself. And you evidently have your own income to support yourself financially. You’re allowed to be a little rebellious, you know?”

“I can’t,” Sykkuno said, faint like a wisp. There was such profound sadness and resignation in his voice that made even Brodin fall silent. “This is as rebellious as I can get. I need to be back soon, but I- I guess I can allow myself to be selfish sometimes.”

“You can,” Toast said, surprising himself. He had spoken before he thought better of it. But now that Sykkuno was looking at him, he couldn’t possibly just stop at that. He looked like he needed to hear it from someone else, a confirmation that it was okay to prioritize his desires. He remembered that instead of reverting into himself in order to not hurt people, Sykkuno did that to avoid getting hurt. “You think it’s selfish because you’ve been raised to think that your life is nothing but fulfilling responsibilities that aren’t even yours to begin with. You are your own person, you can do things that you actually wanted to. It’s not being selfish—it’s you knowing your limits and what you need.”

Poki and Lily looked at him with dramatic bats of their eyelashes, looking disturbingly like their problem child was finally maturing. The fuck. Brodin just nodded, acknowledging the bits Toast slipped in because of their previous conversation.

“It actually is my responsibility,” Sykkuno said, smiling softly. “But, thank you for telling me that.”

There was something that looked like tears in his eyes, but none of them fell down. Toast figured that he wasn’t the only one getting desperate and hopeless here. Someone as polite and obedient as Sykkuno wouldn’t just run away a few cities over just for the heck of it. He must have been pushed too many times, and decided to save himself before he broke apart completely.

“There are three more people who aren’t here,” Toast said in lieu of an answer. He didn’t quite know to handle gratitude, when there was nothing as a trade off. “Yvonne is with her family, but Michael and Scarra will be back soon. We’ll meet them over dinner.”

“Okay,” Sykkuno said, smile pulling his cheekbones up. He smiled so much. Was it a habit? Or was he genuinely this positive? Toast couldn’t relate to any of the possibility. “Can we rest before that? I’m still a little bit exhausted.”

He nodded, reaching out a hand, marveling at how he could do that. By the look on his friend’s faces, they might be thinking the same thing too. He grasped at Sykkuno, pulling him up from the couch, and led him back to the room.

“Remember, Toast!” Poki called out. “A cuddle a day, keeps the touch starvation away!”

“Shut your damned mouth, Imane,” he hissed through his teeth. “There is no cuddle going on. Keep your nose out of my business.”

“Uhuh, sure,” Poki called out, teasing evident in her voice even after the door was shut.

“There could be though,” Sykkuno said then, smiling that sweet little smile that Toast now realized held a certain edge of it.

“You spend five minutes with them and you’re already like this,” Toast lamented, sighing as they lay on the bed. “Don’t talk to Michael, or Brodin, or anyone for that matter. They’ll just give negative influences on you.”

Sykkuno laughed. “I can handle negative influences just fine,” he assured, patting the back of Toast’s hand. “I’m not teasing, though.”

He looked at him, searching for any kind of mockery or tease. But Sykkuno’s eyes were clear, and he leaning far too close than Toast was used to from other people. “You want to?”

“Yeah, sure,” the man said, biting his lower lip when he whispered, “I’ve never cuddled someone before. Aside from my sisters, but it was only for a short moment. My family made sure that my time was spent pouring over lessons and practices.”

“Not even with a partner?” Toast asked. Sykkuno was only a year younger than him, and going by his words and the way he looked when Toast told him about the curse, he might find the reason why he was drawn to this person in the first place. Sykkuno might be as deprived of touches as he was, though in a different situation. Maybe something in him just found the same loneliness in this man. Maybe even his curse realized it, too.

“I’m not allowed to have one,” Sykkuno said, “aside from marriage. But my responsibilities come first before any demand for heirs. As long as I stay home, and fulfill them, then it’s enough. But it’s easier said than done, as all things are.”

He frowned a little. “That severe?”

“Kind of,” the man said, not really answering his questions. He would make a good politician; with the way he was dancing around his words. “My sisters are allowed to have partners, even going out of town to pursue their career. I envy them, sometimes.”

“Why does it have to be you?” Toast asked. “Is it because you’re the oldest child?”

“No, I’m the second child, actually. It’s just—“ he stopped, then sighed, giving Toast a bland smile instead.

He hummed, slipping a hand under Sykkuno’s head to wrap around his back, pulling him closer. “Is it about your lineage?”

“It’s something along those lines, but not quite,” he said, hands flailing in his confusion of where to put them.

“Will you ever answer my questions with definite explanation?” he laughed, guiding Sykkuno’s hands to curl between their chests, to drape over his waist. “You can put them anywhere you’re comfortable with. It’s like sleeping on your sides, but with more hands.”

“Okay, I’ll try not to accidentally slap you on the face,” Sykkuno replied, scooting closer to close the gap between their legs. He ignored Toast’s question entirely, but he didn’t really mind. It was only a day, with a handful of interactions between them, but even from that he could garner that Sykkuno was a difficult book to interpret. He was open, honest, welcoming, but he was standing too far away for Toast to properly come to him. Someone so physically close yet so distant, wallowing in his own world.

He had forgotten, how it felt to have someone in his arms like this. How the hands and legs could be awkward, how the tension would melt over the time, the cramp on his arms and sides from holding a position for a long time, the tufts of hair that tickled his nose, the warm breath that hit his skin. He tightened his hold on Sykkuno’s waist, and the man went willingly when he pulled them flush together.

There was a hand patting his back as he buried his face in Sykkuno’s hair, recognizing the kiddie shampoo that for some reason Michael liked to use. It smelled like artificial strawberry scent on candies and ice cream. He liked it on Sykkuno. Slowly, as if he was afraid of scaring Sykkuno away, as if he was afraid of being startled himself, he wrapped his arms completely around the slender body; feeling the warmth and texture of muscles and fabric beneath his fingertips, the tangle of legs as he pressed one of Sykkuno’s between his own.

“Why do you like kneading fabrics so much?” Toast finally asked when he felt Sykkuno doing it again on the back of his shirt and his chest. It occurred to him that it nearly felt like groping, but the fingers were gentle and never quite closing in before pulling away, and then grasping again.

“I can’t help it,” Sykkuno said, voice small. “It comforts me.”

“You’re like a cat,” he said, voicing out what he had been thinking the whole day.

“Is that so?” There was thing again, in his voice. Toast bit away his climbing frustration, and sighed.

“You can do it all you want, rub your face or just bask in a sun for all I care,” he said, then grinned lightly when he said, “claw some people’s faces if they tried to touch you. As long as you stop groping my nipples.”

Sykkuno let go of his chest, squeaking like a dying mouse on the verge of a grisly death. “S-sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“I’m joking,” he chuckled. He was feeling tired himself from his constant thoughts and anxiety, and the smidge of hope that he kept close to his heart. He bunched the front of his shirt, and hooked Sykkuno’s hand with his little finger. “Knead your shirts and rest.”

“Okay, Toast,” Sykkuno sighed happily, rubbing the side of his face on Toast’s arm underneath his head.

Toast fell asleep to the soft lull of breathing, the constant gentle tugs on his shirt, and the warmth that penetrated through his walls in trickles.

He was woken up to Sykkuno snuffling in his sleep, arms too lethargic to reach for something to grasp. Toast blinked sleepily, slowly registering Brodin’s voice calling for their names. He mumbled as loud as he could manage, before turning to Sykkuno and grabbed his reached out hand, interlinking their fingers. “Sykkuno, wake up,” he croaked out. “Dinner.”

The man sniffed a little before opening his eyes. In the dim light, his brown eyes were shining with an unnatural sheen to them. Toast blinked, and the glow was gone when he looked at him again. It was akin to cat’s eyes in the darkness. Maybe it wasn’t that there weren’t people with cats in them, but they just existed sparsely in America. Who knew? The world was gigantic anyway. He knew the foxes and cats were rumored to still roam around in Japan and China, but they were never confirmed nor proven.

The world had changed too much, especially for sentient, shapeshifting yōkai cats and foxes in Japan—that had been nearly eradicated because of superstition and folklore. Cats in America were either ghosts, gods, familiars, or just plain menace. Supernatural creatures or not, cats would always give him a headache. This one curled up on his bed, grasping his hand, was no exception.

He forcibly pulled Sykkuno up, laughing hoarsely when the man yelped and clung onto him for dear life. His hair was a mess, his little sunflower hairpin had migrated in his sleep and was on the verge of slipping off completely. He looked bedraggled when he pulled away to scowl at Toast. Yeah, a menace indeed.

“Dinner,” he said, feigning innocence.

Sykkuno groaned softly. “I know,” he said pitifully. “I was hoping we can skip it altogether if we sleep long enough.”

“They’re not gonna eat you,” he reassured, then hummed. “Probably.”

“Your bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired, Toast,” Sykkuno deadpanned, losing a little of inhibition and politeness from his sleepiness. Now, he behaved more like a cat that Toast was familiar with.

“It’s the best you can find in town,” he drawled, getting out of the bed and pulling Sykkuno’s prone figure along with him. Toast had considerable strength now, but Sykkuno was gripping the sheets with sheer stubbornness alone. Curious how someone so slender could be this much of a deadweight when he wanted to. “Fine,” he said, pushing Sykkuno to the mattress roughly and unceremoniously lay on top of him.

He heard the small gasp when he sunk his entire weight onto the man, smirking as Sykkuno tried to struggle almost immediately. Serve him right. But it was also a source of contact that he didn’t know he had missed—being pressed from head to toe like this, completely. He gripped both of Sykkuno’s wrist, using a little bit of force to keep him still. When he lifted his head, Sykkuno looked pissed enough to actually claw his eyes out.

“I know there must be something under that pretty smile,” he laughed, low and teasing when Sykkuno’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t want to go to dinner, do you? Then we’ll stay like this until breakfast.”

“You’re joking,” the man said, eyes widening when Toast let his torso went lax, pressing even more weight and unnatural strength into him. “It’s not fair that you use your curse to keep me in place like this, Toast.”

“Why not?” he said, eyes twinkling with mirth. Gods, it had been so long, huh? To be able to play around like this, with anyone. Though certainly not with the same kind of intensity. “It’s given me enough shits to last a lifetime. I should use it to have fun sometimes.”

“I don’t think being suffocated by your weight is fun,” Sykkuno whined, using his legs to struggle now. Toast easily kept them in place by trapping them between his.

“It’s not fun for you,” he pointed out. “I’m feeling pretty good right now.”

“You’re a poop, Toast,” Sykkuno said scathingly, though it was considerably dampened by his choice of words.

“Forget cuddling, you don’t know jackshit about cursing too, Sykkuno,” he taunted, humming low in his throat as he watched Sykkuno pathetically try to set himself free. “Cease your futile attempts. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes—“ Sykkuno started, then stopped suddenly as his eyes darted out to the door. There was a click, and then the flush spread like a thousand vermillion on his skin.

“I see,” Toast heard Poki’s voice tease. Even without looking at her he could tell there was a shit-eating grin stretching across her lips. “It’s not cuddling. It’s way, way worse. Well, dinner’s ready, lovebirds. Come over as soon as you’re done with whatever it is you’re doing.”

He groaned. His grip loosening as he dropped his head next to Sykkuno’s on the pillow. “I thought I told you to stop using the spare key as you pleased.”

“I recall no such thing,” she said with conviction in her voice, then walked away with ringing laughter and most possibly a gossip to spread at the dinner table.

“Um,” Sykkuno said hesitantly. Funny how he wasn’t complaining now that Toast was completely leaning into him. “Are- are we in trouble?”

“Why would we—“ oh, right. Sykkuno was not used to having this kind of thing without being reprimanded in his home. He sighed out for a thousandth time, and propped himself up on his elbows. “No,” he said, “she’s just nosy. You see that perfectly sculpted nose of hers? It’s not just for aesthetic, it is also to be placed into business that isn’t hers.”

“All I can imagine is Miss Poki with a detachable nose,” Sykkuno said, honest and earnest.

Toast let out a short bark of laughter. “You’re ridiculous,” he told him, but the ghost of a grin stayed on his lips anyway. “Up, or she’s going to bring in the camera.”

“Does she use it often?” he heard the man ask as Toast easily pulled him to his feet this time around.

“She has a wall in her room exclusively for embarrassing pictures she's taken of us. She wakes up to it every morning to feel refreshed and superior,” he stated flatly, even if that was true. Her work was tedious and people kept underestimating her because they only saw her as this eye-candy. He figured that he didn’t really mind; a woman needed her vices at times.

“She’s really dedicated,” Sykkuno said, eyes crinkling. His hand was tugging at the hem of Toast’s shirt again. He let him. As long as he actually walked to the kitchen.

And thus, they were back to the predicament of ‘will they/won’t they’. Sykkuno shut his mouth when they were nearing the kitchen, trailing after him almost shyly in the way that he tried his best to hide behind Toast, despite being taller than him. It really wasn’t a good tactic, who the hell taught this kid of playing hide and seek anyway? He was terrible in choosing a hiding place.

When he pulled out a chair and had to bodily maneuvered Sykkuno’s body onto it, the dining table was already in a state of chaos. Lily was gripping her head with both hands as Michael kept throwing bits of boiled vegetables into her hair; Brodin was pouring himself a cup of blood—yes in a fancy tea cup complete with ornaments; Scarra and Poki was no doubt gossiping about Toast judging by the way she was giggling conspiratorially in his ears. Thank God Yvonne wasn’t here. She might be another human, but the humans in this house were even worse than the creatures.

He took a seat himself, and pulled the mashed potato to Sykkuno, telling him to start scooping with a glare. The man wilted with a soft sigh, before he started to pile up food onto his plate.

“Don’t,” he warned when Poki was about to open her mouth. She just giggled at him instead of being offended. Lily didn’t even bother to look up from her state of despair. “This is Sykkuno. That’s Michael, that’s Scarra, introduction done. Eat now.”

Michael, as always, disregard his thinly veiled threat completely. He had developed a selective hearing for everything that he considered as rules. He was intent on breaking every single one with the stubbornness of a bull. “Why do your eyes look like that?”

“Uh,” Sykkuno paused in scooping the salmon. It hung sadly between the fork. “Like- like what?”

“Like that,” he insisted, gesticulating with his hands to the general direction of the newcomer’s face. “What are you? Where do you come from? You don’t smell like the magic in America. What are you?”

“Michael,” Lily sighed, then put her hand to lower down Michael’s accusing finger. “Stop bothering Sykkuno, eat your food, please.”

“Fuck you,” Michael replied, though he did go back to his dinner.

“Um?” Sykkuno asked, eyes wide and so, so confused with what he had just witnessed. “Are- are you sure Michael is a human?”

Toast shrugged. “I did warn you beforehand.”

“So, Sykkuno,” Scarra started, faux cheer in his voice as his eyes glinted with delight. Toast suddenly had a flashback on their drunken nights and the fear he had felt in his bones looking at Scarra chugging bottle after bottle of alcoholic beverages. If he wasn’t a supernatural creature, then surely his liver was supernatural, okay. “I heard you’re helping Toast with his, ah, ‘little problem’.”

“Stop making it sounds like I’m having a genital dysfunction,” he groused, brandishing his fork towards the man.

“Stop making people think that you have something to make up for your genital dysfunction then,” Brodin quipped from the end of the table, sipping his cup of blood and hummed in satisfaction. Toast was so used to the sight of him dipping biscuits into his blood that he no longer felt the churn in his gut. Sykkuno didn’t even bat an eyelash, thankfully. He didn’t need to cater to the guy throwing up half of his dinner.

“I’m going to disown all of you,” Toast said slowly. “Rest assured that I’m going to contact each one of your favorite shops to blacklist your names. They’ll listen to me. I won’t open the goddamned door even if you’re begging at my feet.”

“Point taken,” Brodin said decisively and chugged the rest of the blood.

Sykkuno watched in amazement when the table suddenly went into an amiably chatter, orderly for once. He glanced at Toast. “What do you do?”

“A media consultant,” he answered. “Their favorite shops have worked with me before.”

“That’s amazing,” the man breathed out. “I can barely handle the stress of media exposure from my job, and you’re even managing it for other people.”

He smirked. “There are idiots in this world who have the right tools and chance, but too little knowledge of what they’re supposed to do with them.”

He watched as Sykkuno’s attention turned to Michael as he mouthed, ‘he’s a pompous ass motherfucker’. Sykkuno held back a laugh, and was intensely focused on his dinner all of the sudden. It really was inevitable, the corruption of these freaks.

“What do you do, Sykkuno?” asked Scarra, looking at Sykkuno like he was trying to figure out a particularly intriguing puzzle.

“Oh, um, I stream,” he answered with a small smile.

“Huh,” Toast heard the older man said. He looked up from his dinner. Sure, it was surprising enough that someone was able to touch him, but the contemplative expression on Scarra’s face spoke of another thing entirely. “Maybe that’s why I feel like I’ve seen you before. It’s not quite that, though. Have we met before? In person? Like maybe a supernatural community gathering?”

“Um, I-I don’t think so? I don’t remember ever meeting you, I’m sorry,” Sykkuno said, stammering as he let go of his fork and reached out to grasp Toast’s shirt. With the way he was clenching so tightly, this conversation wasn’t going to end well.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Scarra reassured. “There were a lot of people, and a lot of communities. I think I remember that one particular festival a few years ago, in Vegas. There were a lot of celebration, and announcement for the successor of chief priest for Nikko Tosho-gu? Yeah, yeah, I think that’s the one.”

This time, when he spoke again, there was a confidence and determination in Sykkuno’s eyes. The little lilt in his voice that kept bothering Toast was apparent, stronger than before. He smiled; sweet, gentle. Toast didn’t like, somehow. It felt terrifying, artificial; like the smell of strawberry from his shampoo. “No, I don’t think I attended that one. I do live in Vegas, but I don’t really go out much, and big festivals tire me out quickly. I’m sure it was really exciting, though. Can you tell me more about it? My parents rarely let me come to such gatherings.”

Toast frowned a little, hand unconsciously seeking out Sykkuno’s as his tight grip was unrelenting. The whole table was listening to Sykkuno, eyes on him, as if entranced. Even Brodin, who notably only watched something with detached interest. He looked at Sykkuno, dinner long forgotten. It was another one of his evasion tactic, he knew. But this one worked so well, too well, even. He kept talking pleasantly, and Scarra was already in his long tangent of retelling the story.

They quipped and joked between the story, and before long the conversation about it had dispersed into thin air, replaced by some mundane thing Michael did in his lab. He was testing an automatic operation machine on dolls, baby dolls to be specific. He let the table got wrapped up in Michael excitedly telling them how he just threw the dolls against the wall when he was frustrated.

“What did you do?” he whispered, voice so faint to avoid Brodin’s and, strangely enough, Michael’s sensitive hearing. Their walls were barricaded with magic to protect their privacy, and to protect Brodin’s ears from being overwhelmed by too many sounds. They had to renew it annually, and it was more expensive than he thought, but it was worth it for their comfort. This one, he just had to ask, immediately.

“It’s a secret trade,” Sykkuno whispered back, eyes alight with mischief that only now Toast could see so very clearly. “Works wonder every time.”

He grinned, despite himself. He shouldn’t have forgotten that Sykkuno was still a supernatural being despite him not wanting to disclose of his lineage. “Is it the cat?”

“What makes you so sure it’s a cat?”

“That’s the only thing I can feel when I saw you,” he admitted. “I’m not really good with sensing other creatures.”

“Ooh, because you’re not one to begin with,” Sykkuno nodded. “The curse just grants you the ability to sense them. Either to prey or to recognize a threat.”

Toast was about to reply to that, when he heard an exaggerated cough from across the table. Michael looked at him gleefully. “Whatchu guys talking about? Share with the class, now.”

“Yeah, Toast,” Poki joined in. “Don’t deprive us of your romantic endeavor.”

“You,” he said, throwing a pea at Poki’s aforementioned detachable nose with quick precision, “are a menace. Stop scaring the new kid. I haven’t experimented on him yet.”

“I like the sound of it,” Michael said, as Lily sighed and tried to get the vegetables out of her hair.

“W-what?” Sykkuno squeaked out, eyes wide as he clenched and unclenched at Toast’s shirt.

He grinned; they ought to start early to train Sykkuno’s adaptability for their daily life. But he looked so lost and actually afraid, so Toast put a hand to cover his, telling him without words that it was all only a jest. Sykkuno let out a breath of relief, and went back to his dinner happily as the conversation started anew, kneading at Toast’s thigh now.

The rest of them wanted to watch something as they pretended to do their work, but Sykkuno was nodding off not even twenty minutes into the movie. He leaned his head on Toast’s shoulder, tugging at his shirt insistently that Toast lifted up his hand that had hindered it from being gripped to death in Sykkuno’s hands. “Go back to the room if you’re tired.”

“No,” the man mumbled. “I’ll wait for you.”

Toast thought that he heard the faint retch that sounded suspiciously like Michael, and this hybrid of squeaky hamster and hummingbird from Poki. He elected to ignore both, and focused on the subtitle even if the movie was in English.

Scarra retired first; Poki eventually got roped into her reports; Lily was already two parallel universes ahead of them in her own head as she plucked the string on the guitar absentmindedly. Michael was gone, Toast didn’t particularly care about it. When Sykkuno startled awake for the third time, he pressed the remote and heaved him up. It was late enough that it was only Poki talking sternly into whoever poor sap that had called her first. She remembered all the terms and conditions of her contract, had found the loopholes, and was unabashed in reciting a whole paragraph about contacting employees directly after their shift had long since ended to her superior. That woman was fearless.

But Brodin sidled up to them, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, and stopped in front of Sykkuno’s sleepy, soft face. When the man was alerted of Brodin’s presence, he sobered up pretty quickly. “Did you lie about not going to that festival?” the man asked without preamble.

“I didn’t lie about not meeting Scarra,” Sykkuno said instead, a polite smile adorning his face. “Good night, Brodin.”

He almost expected Brodin to push. It was rare that the man was this intrigued about something. He was consistent and passionate about his work, sure. But never about things like this. And yet, instead of pushing further, Brodin just shrugged easily and waved at them. “Good night,” he said, and strolled away into his room.

Sykkuno sighed against his neck when they finally retired to bed, wrapping his arm around Toast and gripping the comforter with the other. “Brodin is a weird one.”

“Says you,” he replied absentmindedly. Then, he asked, “Did you? Lie about it?”

Sykkuno was already kneading away at the comforter, scooting closer to press against Toast. “I lied about things I should only lie about,” he said as an answer.

When he felt the rhythmic breathing, Toast stared at his ceiling. In his haste to grab the chance that he had been deprived of, he had willingly ignored all the possible sketchy things about Sykkuno. Was it possible that it wasn’t a cat that he was bringing home, but another kind of monster entirely? He really wasn’t sure about it. Would he be willing to let this chance go to find out about who Sykkuno was?

No—no, he wouldn’t. Sykkuno hadn’t killed any of them yet despite having numerous chances to do so. He ran away from home because he was crushed under the responsibilities his family had put on him. He was reluctant to talk about his lineage because those responsibilities were closely tied to it. It was a chip on his shoulders, his own baggage. Toast was not responsible in finding out about his identity. If he wanted to tell him, then that was good. He didn’t need to be snooping around. He could hardly help the way he took in the cues and overthought about them over and over again. But he didn’t have to.

He wasn’t about to let this go, not when he knew that Sykkuno was in the same boat, in his own ways. They both could benefit from this. And wasn’t that the point? Mutual benefit? They were strangers who lay in bed together by the night, and he had to admit that he had never felt this settled and at ease for years. Whoever this man was, Toast was willing to cling onto this chance with nails and teeth.

This was a stray cat that he picked up from a bench in front of a convenience store, lost and desperate to run away from home. And to Toast, nothing mattered beyond that.

It started out easy enough.

All of them were used to Sykkuno holding onto his hand, or his shirt, or anything soft on Toast that he could grip and knead. They even got used to Sykkuno rubbing his face on Toast’s shoulders. They knew that they slept in the same bed, and that Toast would randomly reach out to the other man just because he could now. Sykkuno helped with the house chores, got the Disappointed Stare™ from everyone when he tried to cook anything beyond spaghetti and anything that wasn’t microwaved or fried. He did the grocery trip because he was the most agile out of them, and the clerks on the shops seemed to like him enough to give him extra vegetables or milligrams of meat.

Whenever Toast needed to go out, he stared at his gloves with dismay. He left Sykkuno to entertain himself, and got used to the sight of him practically sleeping everywhere around the house when he went back. No, really, it was everywhere. The kitchen, the couch, on the carpet in the living room, his bed, the floor, the grass on the backyard—Toast had panicked and sighed out in part annoyance and relief when he found that Sykkuno was sleeping in the tub, or on the hallway of the second floor. There was one time that he just conked out on the stairs, and whined pitifully to Toast afterwards about his cramped muscles.

“You sleep so much,” Toast said, caressing Sykkuno’s newly washed hair. It was soft, and no longer smelled like strawberry. It smelled faintly of jasmine now. He had bought Sykkuno his own toiletries and clothes the first chance he got. The man was reluctant on using his credit card even through online means because he was afraid it could be tracked. So he just promised Toast he’d pay for everything after he went back home. Toast honestly hoped that he wouldn’t repay it for a long time.

“I got sleepy,” Sykkuno said, already halfway asleep even as they were talking. “Honestly, every surface is comfortable when you have enough will.”

“And still you have the gall to complain to me,” Toast teased, jostling Sykkuno’s head on his shoulder to disturb his sleepiness. He laughed when the man grumbled and moved to lay his head on his chest instead. Sykkuno had gotten the hang of cuddling, in any place, after a few weeks of living with them.

“Well, who else can I complain to?” the man muttered, digging his nails through the shirt to get back at Toast. “Scarra is busy and scary, Michael is busy and crazy, Lily seems to have her hands full with Michael, Brodin is nice but he keeps looking at me like he can read my mind, Yvonne will just take me to Starbucks, and you’re right. Poki will smother me with her cleavage.”

He grinned. Glad to know that Sykkuno had adapted well to the house and its occupants. They had also taken to Sykkuno like he was this exotic penguin pet that they marveled, prod at, and fed as much as they could, in any chance. Sykkuno smiled and brightened up at their attention, but there were times when he literally ran away when he sensed that any of them wanted to talk or coo at or be in close proximity with him. He would run to the other end of the room, squinted at them with this little glare that wasn’t really effective, and then curled up on whatever spot he was standing at, looking at them warily all the while. And then he fell asleep, again.

They had learned to just let him be, slipped a pillow under his head or covered him with a blanket if they got close enough. The rest of it was just a variation of Toast hauling him to the couch or their bed. It was weird to know that he had spent so many nights here with this not-so-much-of-a-stranger-anymore in this bed, enough to call it as theirs.

He was almost tempted to call Janet, see how she had been doing, and talk about Sykkuno. But Janet was a bright witch despite her soft-spoken front. She would know how to ask the right question, and though it would be good in discovering about Sykkuno’s capabilities and his possible help with the curse even more, Toast really didn’t want Sykkuno to run away from him to the other end of the bedroom. So he just settled with asking about how she was doing. They still talked, sometimes. As in, about five to six times a year.

There was one time after Sykkuno had warmed up to Brodin enough after nearly two months, that Toast looked out to the backyard to see them laying side by side on the grass. Brodin had his sunglasses on, and Sykkuno was sniffing curiously the handful of grass that he had roughly pulled out from its patch. Toast raised an eyebrow when he licked it, content to just watch from the doorway, knowing that they both knew he was there.

“It really isn’t as good as it looks,” Sykkuno complained, throwing away the grass. He looked hateful for a second, before his hand found another patch to grab onto.

“Try it with milk next time,” Brodin suggested.

“Huh,” the other man said, pulling out the patch and looking at it as if it contained the secrets of the universe. “I’ll bring milk next time. You can go out in the sun? Which part that you inherited from the human, and which part is the vampire?”

Toast edged closer to them, sitting on the patio as he listened to Brodin. He had found out, that once Sykkuno was curious, he would keep at it with terrifying focus and efficiency. He was brazen, and wasn’t afraid of being insensitive with his questions. Basically, he was a worse version of Michael, mainly because he got more charm. It really was hard to say no when Sykkuno had looked at someone like they were his entire world, like it was the most interesting things for him to hear them speak, like he would be so, so grateful if they just told him about this one thing, please?

“Still need to drink blood, can only be killed with stakes and decapitation, I like garlic, I can go out in the sun just fine but my eyes are sensitive to lights,” the man said, listing things off of his fingers. “I don’t need to be invited, but there are certain wards and places that I do need to be. Sensitive hearing, elongated fangs when preying, I can’t shapeshift, don’t have the allure, can’t read mind either.”

“I’m not so sure about the last one,” Sykkuno said brightly, though there was a note of annoyance hidden between the tilt of his lips. “What else?”

“I don’t shimmer in the sun,” Brodin said flatly. Out of everyone, he was the one who could withstand Sykkuno’s charm the most. Probably because he had very good awareness of himself, and because the half of his kind had a lethal allure once the prey allowed it to be let free.

It startled a laugh out of Sykkuno. “I like the actors and actresses just fine, but that movie is awful.”

“It’s essentially a complete mockery and racism for certain lineages,” Brodin agreed. “It’s fun to watch, though. If only to point out where they got it wrong.”

“Isn’t that the whole movie?” Sykkuno said, sniffing his handful of grass again. He looked about to lick it again, but seemed to remember the trauma. So he just scattered it on the front of his chest. “What does blood taste like to you?”

Toast sighed, finally getting out into the sun and lifted Sykkuno’s head to put it on his lap. This was the personal questions that he had mentioned before. Brodin didn’t seem to mind however, despite the fact that Sykkuno himself absolutely refused in sharing his own lineage.

“Different each person,” he said. “With supernatural creatures it’s also tied to the taste of their magic.”

“Is it true that blood can be likened to aphrodisiacs to you?” Sykkuno inquired, squirming to get more comfortable on Toast’s lap. “Have you killed someone by draining their blood?”

“No, and yes,” Brodin answered patiently. “Have you?”

“Almost, but not quite,” Sykkuno said with a ghost of smile on his lips. Toast took away the grass from his hand when he stuck out his tongue. He looked up at Toast with a more genuine smile, before ripping away another patch. By the time Sykkuno was gone from here, their entire lawn would also be gone.

“That doesn’t really answer the question,” Toast told him, despite being used to these kind of answers from Sykkuno.

“I’m not lying, though,” he replied, blinking his long lashes away. Sykkuno’s eyes were bright under the sun, the brown lightening to the point of almost reddish-yellow. It wasn’t quite the right way of turning, as far as color went. But this wasn’t exactly a human. Toast wouldn’t fret, even if he kept that information away for later thoughts. “Here,” he said to Brodin, offering the underside of his wrist. “How do I taste like?”

Toast stiffened. Okay, this had been going too far. He was about to snatch the wrist away, but Brodin was already moving, taking Sykkuno’s offered hand and nosing softly around the faintly visible veins. He had to admit, he was curious, too. There was a lot that could be told about someone by the taste of their blood. When it came to supernatural creatures, it could tell about their power and intimate things about them. There wasn’t any way to accurately analyze someone’s personality through blood, he remembered Brodin saying. But there were a lot of way to find out about their environment, and the essence of themselves.

Sykkuno didn’t flinch when Brodin’s fangs pierced his skin, watching with rapt attention as blood trailed down his skin and fell down onto the patch of grass. Toast was gripping a patch himself from the tension. There was a myriad of emotions on Brodin’s face, before he let go of the wrist. Toast watched in fascination as Sykkuno brought it to his own mouth and licked the wound clean. There wasn’t even a trace of where the fangs had sunken into flesh when he was done.

“You taste horrible and amazing at the same time,” Brodin said. Even with his eyes hidden by his sunglasses, Toast could see that he was struck with confusion and wonder. “You blood taste like despair, pines, and something bitter and disgusting—like a curse.”

Toast’s heart stopped at that. Sykkuno did say that he had dealt with a lot of curses, though he wasn’t a curse breaker. Had it really been that many, to the point of them seeping into the very blood that coursed through his veins—he had inexplicable feelings about his own curse as one of them.

“That’s pretty accurate,” Sykkuno said with a deprecating smile. “Incredibly accurate, even. It’s interesting how you can tell from my blood alone. Do you need to find a specific taste of blood to be satiated or is any blood okay as the source?”

“Any blood without sickness,” Brodin clarified. “Be it human disease or magical ones, I’d rather not. I can’t stand the taste, and it will leave bad aftertaste for weeks, too.”

“How much blood do you need to feel full enough?”

“Two human’s worth of blood, and I can go on without it for three months. Three, if the quality is not too good. I need a lot more from animals. By the rate I’m going now, I drink a cup of blood everyday, because, you know, modern access to blood banks and all.”

Toast wasn’t really listening to the conversation anymore as Sykkuno asked about how much blood Brodin would need from a supernatural creature. His mind was stuck on a specific part: as a supernatural being, Sykkuno’s blood would also tell about his magic, but he glossed over that with his barrage of questions. Brodin said that he tasted both awful and wonderful. He never really got to the second part. He swallowed, put a hand on Sykkuno’s chest to draw his attention.

“Can you get my phone in my room for a second?” he asked, voice belying nothing of his emotions. “I think it’s on the nightstand.”

Sykkuno looked at him for a moment, with his bright reddish-yellow eyes, as if he was searching something on his face. Toast forced himself to breathe naturally, didn’t smile even when he wanted to, just to soothe his own nerves. It’d just tell his lies. After a moment, though, Sykkuno just smiled and nodded. He got up slowly, almost lethargic, stretching for a moment before he waddled himself inside the house in the search of a phone that Toast knew he had left in the space under the table for magazines.

“His magic,” he said directly to Brodin. “What about it?”

He nearly squirmed in discomfort when Brodin contemplated at him with the same intensity that Sykkuno had. “Why didn’t you ask when he was still here?”

“You notice it too,” he said. “He knows you’re not going to say it if he keeps up your attention with enough questions.”

Brodin nodded, looked at the direction of the house as if waiting, then turned back to Toast. “His magic is potent, but it doesn’t quite feel like his own. It tastes like lightning and rain, something else that tastes like nothing but feels fulfilling to me. There are different kind of magic in Sykkuno. The one I’m describing right now is the bigger one that resides in him.”

“What about the other one,” Toast said, voice nearly shaking. It really wasn’t his responsibilities, and he wouldn’t mind having Sykkuno here regardless of who he was. But these… little coincidences that just kept piling up since the start, he couldn’t just ignore it. “The one that feels like his own.”

Brodin was silent for a moment, and Toast anxiously wondered if Sykkuno had finally realized that the phone wasn’t in the room in the first place. Brodin pulled down his sunglasses a little, enough to properly look at Toast. He squinted his eyes a little from the glare of the sun, but his they were solemn when he said, “It tastes like death and deceit.”

Toast swallowed around the sudden lump of truth in his throat. He nodded at Brodin, and the man pulled back his sunglasses. There was a faint connection that he had made. He really wasn’t that familiar with other supernatural creatures from other places than America, and even those were only based on what he had heard about and ones that he had actually met. It was up to him whether he wanted to pursue this or not. He had enough basis of information, he just really had to dig up a little further.

But Sykkuno’s voice calling for him from inside made the decision for him. He straightened up and left the backyard, with Brodin just humming to a song while he basked in the sun. He walked like he was a man to the rows of gallows. He would keep these little clues and coincidences to himself. He would ask when he was curious, but he would let them unfurl by themselves when the time came.

Right now, all he really needed to pursue was to calm Sykkuno down when he grappled at the front of Toast’s shirt, a guilty look in his eyes that Toast thought cut a little deeper than just his inability to find a phone that he had lied about. He shushed him gently, patting at his back as Sykkuno pawed at his chest.

“Let’s try to search for it again, then,” he said, smiling a little when Sykkuno nodded furiously. “Maybe I forgot and put it somewhere else.”

Like the truth about Sykkuno, that he had scattered all over the place, but truly wasn’t there; hidden somewhere else that he had never told to anyone. If Sykkuno was willing to overlook his obvious lie, then Toast was willing to overlook the truth that had been bared to him, and glance somewhere else instead.

When Sykkuno finally found it under the table, Toast gave him a sincere smile that made him stutter and flushing vermillion all over again. He followed even as Toast sat on the couch, thoroughly exhausted mentally. He didn’t sit next to him, didn’t go back to sleeping with his head on his thighs. Instead, he carefully lowered himself down on Toast’s lap, arms slung around his neck, looking at Toast with soft eyes when he said, “I’m sorry.”

It felt too much, too intimate for such a small mistake that wasn’t really his fault to begin with. But it also felt like Sykkuno knew what he was thinking, that he was apologizing more than about the matter at hand. He let out a soft breath, and nodded, pulling Sykkuno closer by the waist. “It’s okay,” he said, then debated with himself about his next words. “I’m sorry, too,” he finally decided to say. “For making you worry. You don’t have to think about it anymore.”

“Okay, Toast,” Sykkuno whispered, and laid his head on the crook of his neck.

Toast inhaled the faint scent of jasmine, thinking how mundane and generic it was compared to the man who was wearing the scent like a sharp karambit. One that pulled Toast closer and closer by the second, with each smile and hand that touched him like a massive shadow wasn’t engulfing him whole, with each unreadable look in those bright, red-yellow eyes.

When the truth had unfurled, blossoming completely in the harsh winter, he wondered what color Sykkuno’s eyes would be; whether he would taste the electric shock of lightning in the air, or tasting the inevitable pull of death instead.

#video blogging rpf #shiki writes #from ao3 #toastkkuno #disguisedtoast #sykkuno #brodin plett #pokimane #lily pichu #scarra #michael reeves #yvonne ng #supernatural elements #chaptered fic #kiss me with your lies

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greysfall · 3 years ago

Text

My 4444-word review of NEO TWEWY (with personal illustration + heavy spoilers)

My overall critical score for the game is 7.5/10, while my personal enjoyment score is 8.5/10. This review is posted as I have 80% completed the game, got the secret ending and achieved the Angel psychic rank. I’ll first start with the main pros and cons as follows.

PROS:

- Enjoyable as a whole, still upholding the first game’s spirit in world building and sharing the same backbone - which was mostly revealed in the Secret Reports, it’s impossible to grasp the story without reading them.

- The new cast and new game is charming in their own way

- The old cast’s return is one of the biggest highlights for sure, it was fun and impactful. Everyone stays true to themselves and also had their own stories wrapped up nicely.

- Boss designs are cool, new pins are fun to use and collect

- The connection between the old and new cast is well written and executed, including but are not limited to the tension between the old and new protagonist, the weird but fun interaction between the 2 Composers, the new friendships revealed and formed

- Sho being in the main cast is something so uniquely TWEWY and uniquely Sho

- Still good music

- Still many fun side quests, some of them really uphold the same quirky spirit of the old game and some are surprisingly touching

- Many new nice stores and yummy looking foods to explore

- The map is really easy to memorize for me, it’s fun to travel around the “current” Shibuya to see all the differences compared to the past

- The social network is crazy and interesting to read through

- Has an anti-frustration system to help 100% complete the game more easily and earn money faster, so post-game is relatively managable.

- Overall, I really feel the efforts the team poured into making this as their passion project, not just during the development process but for all the last 14 years. They showed the vision of what they wanted to make, at the same time giving something to both the old as well as new fans.

CONS:

- The biggest problem with the game is scenario writing. The story is so heavily back-loaded. The director himself thought it would be better to balance out the tension flow by adding more at the beginning but gave in to the scenario writer in the end, probably due to time pressure. This results in an underwhelming execution of characterization and lots of wasted potentials for the first half of the game.

- I struggle to view it as a stand-alone game, since the backstory and the old cast both play such an important role in the core of the game. If someone plays this game without having played the OG, they can only enjoy it on surface value at best.

- The new cast is nice but most of them aren’t quite as intriguing as the old cast, maybe it’s cuz they’re all too nice deep down that they lack a little bit of an edge, of that batshit craziness that everyone in the OG used to have? I think some characters (Fret, Nagi) ended up weaker in terms of characterization because the writer is too afraid of making them unlikeable – which kind of backlashed cuz they only became likable in the most expectable way to cater for a specific group of fans. I would have wished for the other team leaders to be more crazy too, had they not suffered 30+ loops of the Game…

- The CAMERAWORK IS HELL.

- Gameplay does get tedious at certain points with all the time travels.

- Shiba is so badly written as a villain, some Shinjuku characters should be given more screentime cutting into Shiba’s– like Hishima or Kaie or even, Hazuki (though his limited presence also solidified his importance).

- Some of the main character designs, for example Beat’s hairstyle and his food reactions are hilariously bad. What’s the point of covering up most of his unique facial features?

- Some of the minor/side characters’ design are too cool for them to have such a small role (eg: Ayano, Eiru). Ryoji did get much screentime but is nowhere as fun as Makoto was.

- Overall the scope of this game is made a little too big for the team to handle as perfectly as the last game that was very compact, it felt somewhat rushed in development too so the missing pieces are clearly there in the final picture

The entry fee versus paying for it all in the end

An important difference between the Neo game and the original Shibuya game was that the Shibuya rule asked for an entry fee that is the Player’s most important asset, stated as a chance the Composer gives them to reexamine themselves. Meanwhile, the Shinjuku rule neither encourages nor allows personal growth and ultimately aims to erase as many Players as possible. It’s a pity we were never introduced to the full Shinjuku rulebook, as it seems like the system there focuses more on building up power and a grand government to compare with the individuality-driven system of Shibuya.

When you have to compare the new game and the original game (OG), this is an important factor to consider. Also, the OG has a serious storyline running through and through, locked with a different partner/GM creating unique atmosphere for each week and you don’t get to see your old partners again until the end. NEO’s team system does not allow such deep insight and communication between the Players. All of your teammates are always there throughout, the dynamic does change with each new addition but it is not as prominent as a partner change.

Another important factor is how the OG was built from scratch for a new platform as “something no one has ever seen before”, while Neo recycled a lot of old unused ideas from the previous development (check out this interview for more details). The development team for NEO lacks 2 key members and had a change of writer so the final product is not as strongly bound together as the last game.

The new cast is definitely inspired by today’s teenagers (from the view of creators), compared to the old cast they’re more sociable and always seem to take whatever works for them despite feeling unstable inside. They are all innocent and genuinely nice kids, avoiding to hurt each other to a degree that they end up keeping some sort of distance. They’re also unable to communicate at deeper levels, always stagnant at this half-baked stage of equilibrium without any motivation to get to the core of things. That is the cost of entering the game without an entry fee, without even dying or having a reason to be there/to fight seriously. These kids were stolen from the RG into a Game that was decidedly the worst environment for them to change or develop, just wandering around cluelessly to find a way “out” until tragedies started to unfold one by one and they ended up being charged the total sum of the price for their actions – ultimately losing everything in the end.

That is, I believe, a story arc which can resonate more to the youth of today rather than of my generation. If the message of the old game was to “listen”, enjoy life to the fullest and accept to trust others, the message of the new game is to “speak up” from the inside, trying to understand yourself and take actions instead of just going with the flow and finally, to take responsibility for such actions.

If Neku was handpicked by the Composer for being the special one with an all-dense soul to ensure victory of the game then Rindo was just a normal kid chosen out of random by Kubo to be his back-up plan, who just happened to have a high enough imagination to awaken the incredible power from his pin. Rindo was then officially chosen by the Composer as Josh picked up and handed the pin to him again, this time not as Josh’s personal Proxy – but as the Proxy to represent the normal people of Shibuya and via whom he could gamble if humans can fight for their own fate.

The underworld heroine and the hero with little of his own

Shoka is for me a refreshing and layered heroine. She’s the kind of character that took at least 3 trials of creators to form as a complete individual – that included Nomura who gave her the base design and Reaper background, Gen who gave a more cunning touch and the writers who made her English dialogues more punchy. Dishonesty equals “tsundere” is such a cliché, so the English writers tried really hard to avoid that trope in my opinion, while still letting her good intention come through.

She serves as the character who is informed of everything the players should have known, and there was almost nothing she could do about it. Almost. Until she met Rindo.

They were drawn to each other by sharing a state of “not having anything of their own”. They both started out with not being able to truly know themselves, Shoka even hated her RG life but also managed to mature from that stage before Rindo. She must have vibed with Shiki’s love and passion in the Gatto Nero threads, initiating her connection with Shibuya and understanding herself more. With Shoka as Swallow, they were able to open up to each other and offer mental support… but was still not getting to the centre of their problems because for all this time, Shoka could not tell Rindo the most important things about herself.

How did Shoka feel when she met Rindo at the UG? She probably didn’t want to hope that he would live the day until she witnessed the Twisters’ potentials. From the very beginning, they were both incredibly conscious of each other and also constantly frustrated that the person they happened to “notice” was such a condescending bitch/a clueless loser. The Shinjuku Reapers are overall quite drunk in power and uncompassionate to Players, Shoka included. She is also a master of dissociation, which results in her constant boredom, tone swings, haughtiness and subconsciously distancing herself from the friend – the boy she cares about – from false hope, as she judged from facts that it was a hopeless situation where nothing could ever be. Maybe she is naturally a bit of a chameleon just like her name suggests (Shoka 紫陽花 = hydrangea, the color-changing flower), so putting on an act and always dissociating herself from what’s important was easy, while hiding her contradiction was impossible. It was the ex-Reaper Beat who broke it out to her, that she should decide whether she really cared and wanted to do something for a change. He knew how it felt like to cross that line, and knew she wanted to too.

Shoka is endeared by many of the Shinjuku Reapers and has shown independent acts of kindness (the Shinjuku ghost), proving that her kind and truthful side is as real as her harsh and dishonest side – which makes her a nice mirror to the previous heroine Shiki, who also embraced a dichotomy of self-complex and self-love within her character. In the end, she was the first of the new cast to ultimately accept all that is important to her and independently made the decision to help save Shibuya despite all costs.

She was jealous at Rindo’s interaction with Tsugumi and Kanon but remained silent cuz she wasn’t at a place to have any say about it. She also didn’t reveal about Swallow because that would only add an awkward irrelevance to their current situation, as she was too ready to face erasure at the end of the Game. She only wished to “play a game” with him, be it FanGo or the Reapers’ Game. The tension that the team could only feel at the end, she’s felt it the entire time. The song “DIVIDE” is applicable to not just one bond in the game, but it always makes me think of theirs. There is always a “divide” between her and Rindo throughout the course of their journey, as the living and the dead, as a Player and Reaper, as someone who has a place to return to and someone who doesn’t, someone who knows little but wields too much power and someone who knows a lot despite not being able to do much.

“If only I had the chance to connect with you on the other side

But time goes on, and without us realizing it

The battle is getting heated

Time goes on, and without us realiazing it

Divided again”

To be honest, maybe I didn’t grow any affection for the new main cast from Rindo’s perspective but from Shoka’s. Since I started to sympathize with Shoka, I started to see the boy in a more “real” way. The real Rindo, behind his peaceful façade with others, would lash out on Shoka for her unfairly harsh attitude while none of the others cared. He could also subtly feel that mantle of unspoken secrets from her, her own contradictions, the unresolved chemistry between themselves – and not knowing what to do with it rather than to feel angry with all the unfairness he could not process. (As a Libra too, he’s triggered the most by unfairness!)

It is actually a positive development as he’s at least “reacting” to something strongly now rather than to keep evading his problems. During my replay, I clearly saw the difficult situation Shoka was in, her remaining harshness after the Motoi incident was due to her internal struggle with a mission to save her own life, versus a chance to really be with the team. Her decision was to do both at the risk of losing favour from both sides. Rindo started to accept her layer by layer, as the person who resonated the most to her contradicting nature from the start and knew that via learning her resolve, he has learnt his too.

Later into the game, she even got too much of his attention. Maybe even without knowing she’s Swallow, he’s familiar with her thinking direction and Swallow had always been closer to him than any other friend. It was only after she had to betray her important ones twice that she could start being truly honest. The scene when she died a 2nd time left a strong impression in me, the little reveal let Rindo know that he is also losing Swallow as he’s losing Shoka – and that only death could drive the last secret out of her. Her final “Later, loser” echoed through Rindo as it was the final truth, with only him remaining to hear it: they had actually, already lost everything.

Rindo was the boy who never dared to face all that matters to him until he lost it all, fighting an unfair battle in the faith that they would somehow still win. Shoka was the girl who always knew what was dear to her, but never dared to think she could be together with them ever after and still threw her all into a battle she knew was losing. I think they stir each other on naturally to fill out their gaps, similar to what the Shibuya game partner systerm would have aimed for. The end reward was a little divine intervention to help close up the divide between them once and for all.

During the game there was not enough space to process anything personal so at the ending when they officially became “friends”, it was an important affirmation of their bond. Some people complained it was friendzoning but it’s not, they just have arrived at the perfect place to start something more. “From now on, we will truly be together” – I read it as that kind of message.

The heroine from a lost battle, with her story taken away

After reading the secret reports and playing the game to be surprised of how small a role Tsugumi had in the main game despite being the “Hype-chan” thought to be a major character of the next TWEWY installment, many fans would feel sad at a missed opportunity to see the Shinjuku arc in full depiction.

It was shown clearly that, a Shinjuku arc was very carefully planned out and is a vital part of the whole story, yet it could not be made due to various circumstances behind the development scene. I would assume, that the team were not able to make a TWEWY game that ended on a despairing note, but it already happened in their mind, thus becoming a mental burden that forced them to break away from it and started the game anew with NEO. A significant part of NEO became the healing arc for the Shinjuku characters, especially for Tsugumi though I really wished more emphasis should have been placed on her rather than Shiba. We didn’t even get to see her brother – Shinjuku’s Conductor who had a vital role and instead was given the clueless Shiba, who had absolutely no idea what’s going on all the way until the last day in NEO. It’s as if Tsugumi has had her story stolen away from her, because her own battle ended with a saddening loss.

I think every time the game creators look at Tsugumi, they would feel that sadness too. Maybe to them, she is a bigger character than what is seen by the fans, as despite their failed effort to depict her story, she’s lived in their mind for all these years through periods of destruction, healing and rebuild. Though it is a pity we could not get to experience the full scope of the Shinjuku story, the creators was clear about the place they wished for it to arrive at.

Individuality, connection and the social network

The team system adapted from Shinjuku rulebook does not allow much room for personal development, as the team dynamic is closer to a work relationship forced to bear results, than a spiritual bond to max out all corners of understanding as found in the partnership system. The old Shibuya system allowed only 1 winner and 1 week limit per game, while the new rule declares for a 1 winning team and only the team at last place will be erased – the other teams will enter another loop. Furthermore, whichever team to challenge the unwinnable Ruinbringers will face the risk of ending up dead last followed by erasure. As a result, the longest-standing teams are most likely not the strongest ever recorded, but the ones who have figured out a strategy to simply survive until something changes, enjoying their newly found social constructs while they are at it. Basically, it is a system to hypnotise players into the illusion that they are still “living”.

Therefore, we as players would not get to the core of each Player individually as fast and directly as we did in the last game. The Twisters were able to stand out not because they’re powerful, they only started to have a real chance after growing enough to each form a meaningful and personal connection to another teammate. It did not come as a team, nor did it intiate from the existing friendship between Rindo and Fret. In fact, I did not find much solidity or anything truly note-worthy about the main team and new characters within themselves until they started clashing with other team members, Reapers and new recruits from week 2 onwards. Rindo found his personal development with Shoka (via a clash with Motoi and pretty much a mini dating sim between them), then via the confrontation of his role with Neku; Fret found his with Kanon then Nagi, the team learned about the real Neku via Beat, Neku entered the UG via Coco’s wish to save Tsugumi… it was not the team but their personal links that empowered them to fight and solve each of their problems.

The other team leaders may have failed because they did not form such personal links, after 30+ hopeless loops Fuya’s team all fell apart to pursue their own interest even at the cost of erasure, Motoi quit his KOL façade to work like a dog for the Reapers (probably to save just his own ass not his team), while Kanon dropped her tricks to find changes via honest cooperation in acceptance of a fair loss. The despairing note in that is huge without making much of a scene because their failure didn’t happen at their best effort to “win”, but in their last attempt to find a way “out”. Even Shiba got his way “out” in the end thanked to his personal friendship with Hishima and Tsugumi.

Something has shifted in the mindset of the game creators in the last 14 years, as both games are about “connection vs individuality” but the last game focuses more on connection between just individuals and this one on the overall network that is formed out of those individual connections.

The introduction of Beat into the main cast was truly the bridge between old and new, they helped each other out in several turns before officially recruiting him. Beat is a character whom a lot of fans including myself have felt somewhat concerned about after Neku disappeared from the RG, so when the new kids welcomed Beat with warm and organic interaction and Beat seemed happy, I started to feel like I wanted to help them out too! I think the overall team chemistry is enjoyable enough for new players, but I could warm up to the new kids more from the pov of a returning character – whom I’m glad to be Beat, as the older brother figure who is genuinely kind, fun, serious and upbeat at the same time; who is needed and needs the kids in return.

The social network is a fun and refreshing feature. You can read all of the crazy tidbits about Shibuya and the links each character have formed with the town people, it’s also fun to visualize how the characters act off screen. Characters’ profiles provide extra insight into their background too, like how it reveals Tsugumi has been friend with Coco during her time in the RG. During the game when not all characters have showed up, you can sometimes guess which empty spot will belong to whom. For example there is a 1 character linking to Neky that is not linked to anyone else, so I could guess that was Joshua, and that another character linking only to Joshua was probably Hazuki, hinting that the 2 Composers are related before either of them even showed up.

Hazuki only showed up for 5 minutes, but his presence is so vital and true to the game that I think he is the most memorable out of the new cast. The two Composers have such an intriguing bond, with their yin/yang or phoenix/dragon themes, opposite color design, the sempai/kouhai tone and the way they keep some sort of distance/work relationship as if it’s mandatory between Higher beings, yet at the same time they can talk so casually because they are truly equal – and different from one another. I have written a separate meta on them here.

Some people pointed out, that all Shinjuku characters’ names and themes are based off Hanafuda cards and the Phoenix in Hanafuda belongs to the Paulownia suit – which is Joshua’s name flower. This is so interesting because it feels like the creators somehow saw it as a sign to interweave the Shibuya and Shinjuku storylines together. Though it doesn’t come out much on the surface, it’s fascinating nonetheless considering both Josh and Haz had at some point interfered with the other town’s affairs.

“Shibuya tour with Haz” was such a special scene, as it happened between 2 characters who do not/no longer have a reason to care about Shibuya, on the subject of what is worth saving about Shibuya. Hazuki carried out the purification of Shinjuku and stepped in to restore Shibuya just as part of his job and unlike Hanekoma or Joshua who both possess profound understanding of humanity, he really didn’t know humans at all. Rindo’s irrational wish invoked in him a sense of curiosity, to try gambling on something irrationally and learning a bit of what his senior have experienced. With all the pieces put together, it provides an overview on Higher beings as a whole, and that Joshua and Hanekoma are really the odd ones out with Hazuki being somewhere in between them and the rest.

The old friends

It’s easy to have returning characters overshadow the new cast as they have already matured out of their personal story arc and stayed in our hearts for all this time. In the end, I have managed to enjoy both the old and new cast separately and altogether, and they will both find their own place in our memory of this game for the long term.

Sho is truly as crazy as ever, the game wouldn’t be the same if Sho is any less of what he is. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like Neky or Beat is younger than Nagi at all, with moments when it seems like Neky has aged 14 years instead of 3 years. His friendship with Coco surprised me pleasantly, and their interaction together with Beat was fun to watch. Rhyme’s found a new dream and her friendship with Kaie is precious too, especially considering that she can still talk to him online after the game ended. Josh and Neku’s interaction suggested that they have resolved the past and are on equal terms now, they even parted ways in good spirit and I don’t feel any worry about them like I did before.

Neku and Shiki’s reunion scene was beautiful, theirs is such a special bond that it has grown and supported them even without being able to see each other. I am so happy to see them all again and that they stay true to who they are, albeit looking more grown up, cooler and happier than ever before.

Overall, NEO can’t become a classic on par with the OG, but is definitely a good sequel and a good game in its own rights. I’m happy with whether or not there will be a 3rd game to complete the 3 monkeys theme, but if there will be – I hope the creators can really find the time to learn from the last 2 games and start over with a fresh mindset and strong core.

#neotwewy #neotwewyspoilers #ntwewy #ntwewy spoilers #neo the world ends with you #twewy #review #meta #neo twewy #shoka sakurane #rindo kanade #tsugumi matsunae

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pies-writes-and-more · 4 years ago

Note

Hey I have a request!! Can you write a scenario with Bokuto, Tsukishima, and Sugawara where reader has a LOT of moles/beauty marks? I have 5 on my face alone, 3 in a line on my neck and more. It makes me insecure because it looks weird. Anyways, thank you sooo much! I absolutely love your writing!!!

Warnings: potential swearing as usual, insecurities about beauty marks/moles

Characters: Bokuto Kōtarō, Sugawara Kōshi, Tsukishima Kei, all with a Gender Neutral Reader (let me know if you find something gendered so I can fix it!)

A/N: thank you for the request darling! Sorry for the long wait!! Hope this is what you had in mind :) Also, all of them are right: you are beautiful!

Haikyū Masterlist

You didn’t understand why Bokuto seemed to only ever kiss your face exactly where you didn’t want him to.

You could stand in the mirror and point out things you didn’t like about yourself but your beauty marks were something you were self conscious about. You used to cover them up with light makeup every now and then but lately you hadn’t had the time or patience for it, so you just avoided looking at them.

But Bokuto, even after months of being together, seemed to somehow feel the opposite. He would press a kiss exactly on the moles on your face and when you were in private, he’d kiss the ones falling down your neck. He seemed so infatuated with them and you could never understand why.

One day he caught you trying to apply makeup again, finally sitting down and trying this new method that could cover up anything according to a makeup artist you’d seen on social media. His eyes wide and you could’ve sworn his hair drooped, “What’re you doing???” He screeched, immediately snatching your makeup from you.

“Bokuto!” You whined, huffing as you paused the YouTube video playing in front of you to pout up at him, “Give it back!”

He shook his head like a four year old, stomping his feet slightly, “Why’re you covering them?” He asked you, hands on his hips now.

There was no point avoiding the topic now. You sighed and glanced at yourself in the mirror, half of them covered and the other half just staring you in the face. “They’re ugly,” you whispered quietly, avoiding his eyes.

“Ugly?” Bokuto scoffed and sat down next to you, hugging his knees to his chest and setting your makeup down. “How could they be ugly?”

You had heard this before. All of your friends and family always went, “No Y/N, you’re perfect!” But it was always so fake. You knew they were just saying it to be nice.

But Bokuto just paused, watching you for a moment and handing you back your makeup. You blinked up at him in surprise, noting his small smile. “If it makes you feel better, go ahead. I want my love to always feel their best. But...” he let out a nervous sort of chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. “I really like them,” he admitted sheepishly.

You knew he was being honest just because of the rosiness that was touching his cheeks. He squirmed in his spot, now avoiding your gaze. “Why?” You asked after a moment.

Bokuto straightened his posture for a moment before carefully choosing his words, “Someone once told me they were places your partner kissed you the most in your past lives. And...” he hesitated, cheeks glowing red now. “And I’d like to think I was with you in every one of our past lives so I want to keep kissing you there so you’ll love me in our next life too!” He blurted out quickly, rocking a little in his seated position.

You just stared at him. Sure you had heard of that little theory too, but you hadn’t ever had someone seriously retell it to you. But hearing it from him... you looked at yourself in your mirror again. It didn’t change how you felt about them. You still weren’t a huge fan. But hearing Bokuto genuinely love them... at least it lessened your insecurity about him hating them.

“I think you’re beautiful, Y/N,” Bokuto continued after a second, smiling at you and scooting closer to you. “If you need this makeup to help you see how beautiful you are, then go ahead! But I think you’re the most perfect human being out there!”

Your eyes teared up slightly, just hearing how sure he was. He smiled at you, pressing a kiss to your cheek before immediately looking through your makeup bag, “Can I try?” He asked excitedly, holding up a mascara tube and lipstick.

“You want to try wearing it or putting it on me?” You laughed, your face no longer feeling hot with embarrassment and shame.

“Both!” Bokuto grinned, begging you to teach him what each product was. He always knew just how to cheer you up, no matter what.

He knew you still disliked your marks, but Bokuto would continue to kiss them every chance he got unless you ever asked him to stop. He still wanted to recognize you in his next life, so even if those weren’t the marks you’d have, maybe he could give you some others you’d like more.

Sugawara’s fingers always traced over the beauty marks on your face, beaming when he pointed out that you two were twins for having moles together. He always had a smile on when he talked about it, always spoke about it so proudly like it was a mark of status or beauty.

But unlike Sugawara, you weren’t all that proud of it and you didn’t just have one. You often just gave him a smile and switched the topic, and though you always loved the feeling of his fingers dancing along your skin, sometimes you’d pull away to do something or distract him with something else if you felt like he was touching your marks too much.

He hadn’t realized it before, but came to the realization that maybe you didn’t like your marks when he caught you editing a picture of the two of you, your fingers magically causing those little spots to just disappear.

“What’re you doing?” Sugawara frowned, hugging you from behind and peering from over your shoulder.

“Just editing that pic of us before I post it!” You told him happily - it was such a nice photo and with a few simple touches, it would be perfect.

Sugawara watched you for a little longer, confirming his suspicions before knocking you on the head with the side of his hand.

“Hey! Suga, what the hell?” You groaned, rubbing the top of your head slightly. “What was that for?”

“Stop erasing my baby!” He shouted at you loudly, making you laugh nervously at just how loud he was being.

“I’m not erasing your baby!” You insisted, shaking your hands in front of you. “Just... my marks.”

Sugawara’s frowned stayed on his face as firm as ever, “They’re a part of you. And I love all of you. I love every single inch of your skin, whether you have a mark or not. I love you because you’re not like a cookie cutter version of a person, you stand out in the most beautiful of ways. I want you to be different, I want you to draw all the attention so I can say that one is mine.”

You smiled a little at his words, hearing the conviction in his voice. But your eyes glanced sadly at the photo, just wishing you didn’t have them.

“Hey,” he spoke softer this time, touching your chin up to look at him, “If you really don’t like them, fine. We all have our insecurities after all. But please don’t tell yourself you’re less beautiful because of them.” His hand slipped your phone from your own, peering at your editing work. “You looked like a completely different person,” he admitted with a sort of sad smile. “Still beautiful. But different. I like the version I have here with me.”

Sugawara’s arms were suddenly wrapped around you in a rib-crushing hug, his voice telling you firmly all the things he loved about you and how much he wanted to scream to the world every single thing that made him crazy about you. Eventually you were practically unable to breathe in his arms as they just got tighter and tighter and the two of you fell on the floor laughing after wrestling for a bit.

The photo is eventually posted unedited like he wanted, and now when you look at it, you feel just a little bit more loved, regardless of your marks.

Tsukishima knew even before you two were going out that you were self conscious of your marks. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with them, to be honest, they made your face that much more attractive, but you hated them so he always pretended like they weren’t there for your sake.

But he had caught you picking at one of them, as if absentmindedly thinking you could tear it off and everything would be okay.

His eyes narrowed as he realized what you were doing, reaching over to swat at your hands, and glaring at you from across the library table where two of you were supposed to be studying.

“If you start bleeding, I’m not taking care of you,” he scolded you, though you knew for a fact that he had started keeping bandaids in his bags for you cause sometimes you were that clumsy.

“Sorry,” you responded sheepishly, folding your hands in front of you in an attempt to stop picking at them. Your eyes focused on the sheet of paper in front of you, but you weren’t able to actually pay attention to anything on it. It was like an itch you couldn’t get rid of, an obnoxious little bump in your otherwise relatively smooth skin. Why did it have to be there?

Tsukishima watched as your eyes stayed still on your homework, obviously not actually reading anything. He sighed and reached over again, poking at your nose, “If you think I’m going to let you destroy your grades and your perfect body, I’ll hit you harder than I have before,” he threatened. He meant to say it gentler, in a somewhat more supportive and comforting way but his words were still as harsh as ever.

You gave him another shy smile, trying not to show just how uncomfortable you were, “They just get annoying sometimes,” you told him after a moment when he didn’t immediately go back to his work. “I feel like if I could tear them all off... maybe I’d look better.”

Tsukishima’s nose scrunched up slightly in annoyance, tilting his head up so his eyes were glaring down at you, “Do you think I’m going to let anyone talk about my partner like that? Idiot, if I heard those words from anyone else I would have your head by now."

You laughed a little, thinking about how Tsukishima got upset if anyone even said something remotely mean about you (”The only one allowed to bully you is me, Y/N, forget anyone else’s opinions. They’re all beneath you anyways”), “I just feel so... spotted with them. I feel like everyone always looks at them and there’s so many of them I can’t even hide them all.”

Tsukishima listened, he really did. He didn’t wave you off like usual and tell you to forget your insecurities because you were definitely the most perfect person out there so you had nothing to be insecure about. He listened and then just sighed, leaning back in his seat slightly and watching you.

“I think you’re magnificent,” he stated quietly, his eyes dashing away from yours as a blush brushed over his cheeks and nose. “I don’t want you picking at them because you’re just going to hurt yourself and I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” He paused for a second and then finally met your eyes. “Yamaguchi used to hate his freckles, but it’s probably the thing that I notice the most about him. They fit him so well in a way that I can’t describe. He wouldn’t be the same without them, he’d just be... someone else. Without your marks, you’d be someone completely different. I’m in love with you and all of you.”

You watched him as Tsukishima actually told you his emotions and spilled his love for you, a smile gracing your lips eventually, “I love you too, Tsukishima,” you mumbled after he finished, playing with your fingers.

“You better. Now come over here and give me a kiss before we start studying again,” Tsukishima smirked a little and you just rolled your eyes. You were going to argue back that he could just lean over the table and kiss you but he refused so you ended up having to go over to him, where he just pulled you on your lap and placed a quick kiss on your lips then on all the marks on your face. “Now go study.”

Haikyuu taglist (let me know if you’d like to join!)

@al0ehas @aurumk @devilkittymusic @thisnoodlewritesao3 @satan-ruler-of-hells @trashy-simp @jeppiet @lucyheartfilias-wife @darkvadeeer @haikyuutothetop @wolfishwriting @livy384 @babyshoyo

#bokuto x reader #sugawara x reader #tsukishima x reader #bokuto kotaro #bokuto kotaro x reader #bokuto x y/n #bokuto x you #sugawara koushi #sugawara koushi x reader #sugawara x y/n #sugawara x you #tsukishima kei x reader #tsukishima x you #tsukishima kei x you #hq tsukishima #hq fluff #hq x reader #hq fics #pies writes

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shorkbrian · 4 years ago

Text

Guided

Okay I’m posting on mobile so bear with me

Was gonna do a thanksgiving feeder fic but I’m tired lol

So instead like imagine Kuroo helping Kenma lose his virginity 😳

(Warnings - NSFW! Rape, obvious denial (by Kenma, he knows it’s bad), Kuroo bein a creep, Kenma being a creep. Just general not good vibes)

Like Kenma isn’t exactly anti-social, it’s just he’s a lil shy and prefers to stay in his comfort zone, which involves gaming and little else.

One day the team will not stop bugging leetle Virgin Kenma about getting a girlfriend (“online girlfriends don’t count!”), and he gets a bit self conscious.

Goes to Kuroo, his best friend, his bro, his homie, asks Kuroo what’s the process - how does he get a girlfriend and lose his virginity?

Kuroo is almost taken aback at first, simply cause he assumed Kenma was either gay or just plain not into dating. But after he gets over his shock, he’s so pumped to show his bro the ropes.

Kenna’s expecting like, a talk, or maybe Kuroo will give him tips about how to pick up cute girls, or something like that.

What he was not expecting, was you.

Sitting on the edge of Kuroo’s bed, sniffling, hands balled into fists on top of your skirt.

And Kuroo’s so excited, quickly ushering Kenma into his room to proudly show off his cute little neighbor. You don’t seem happy, but Kuroo ignores that, so Kenma does too.

There’d be no buildup. Just Kuroo pushing Kenma towards you, before taking a seat in his desk chair.

“Go ahead and touch her.” He prompts.

Kenma hesitates, looking at Kuroo with knitted brows.

“Do you not know how?”

Kenma shrugs. He stands in front of you, raises a hand to your shoulder. You flinch when he touches your shirt, when the weight of his hand rests against you. He plays with a piece of your hair, looking at your face, your body, the cute way you’re trembling and shaking like a scared little kid.

“I’ll talk you through it.” Kuroo offers. He’s clearly impatient, but in an excited way, foot tapping against the ground as he leans forward.

Kenma’s glad Kuroo will be giving instructions. He feels a bit awkward like this, and he doesn’t want you to laugh at him.

“You’re sure she’s fine?” Kenma checks. You look scared and you’re crying a bit, which is kinda hot, but Kenma doesn’t want you telling people he assaulted you or something.

“Yeah, she’ll be alright. We had a little chat before you came over - she’s good with this.”

The way you glare at Kuroo through your tears confirms to Kenma that you probably aren’t as okay with this as Kuroo makes it seem. But Kenma kind of doesn’t care, because he’s chubbing up in his pants as he thinks about what’s about to happen.

“Alright, (Y/N), scoot back on the bed so Kenma can sit.”

You promptly obey, and Kenma slides onto the bed in front of you, following Kuroo’s implied suggestion.

“You should always give ‘em a kiss first. You can use tongue if you want, don’t be afraid to really get into it.” Kuroo continues.

Kenma shuffles closer, gingerly grabs your shoulders. He’s starts out with a peck to your lips, the stereotypical sound of kissing is made as he does so.

Kuroo encourages him to do it again, this time for longer.

Kenma indulges, lets himself linger over your lips. He can taste your chapstick, and it’s not unpleasant. Your lips are soft, and your warm, and Kenma quickly decides he likes kissing.

Then Kuroo tells him to use tongue, which Kenma does, and the younger man cringes at the feeling. He doesn’t like using tongue.

But he enjoys kissing, so he goes back to that, almost sucking at your lips, pressing himself close to you. It’s intimate, and it’s kind of exciting, and Kenma finds himself wanting more.

“You can use your hands y’know. Feel her tits, they look nice.”

Kenma does exactly that, and you squeak into his mouth when his hands grab at your chest. Admittedly, he’s probably a bit too excited, cause the second he feels soft flesh under his hands he’s pinching and groping and pulling, and you’re making pained little noises that Kenma discovers he likes.

Kuroo chuckles. “Damn, you’re going pretty hard there. Didn’t take you for a sadist. You can touch other places too, by the way. Anywhere you want.”

Anywhere?

Kenma pulls back from the kiss, his hands abandoning your breasts to roam over your sides, feel the curve of your waist, circle around to palm at your ass. He’s never touched a girl like this, it’s so different from what he knows of his own body.

That goes on for a little bit longer, but Kuroo’s quickly moving him along.

“Okay, you can lay her onto her back now... or I guess you could go doggystyle.” The older man leans back in his chair. “It’s up to you.”

“Okay.” Kenma breathes. He’s fully hard now, and it’s a bit uncomfortable, his cock tenting his pants like that. But he doesn’t know if now was the right time to undress, so he just does what Kuroo says.

He pushes you to lay down on your back - he wants to see your face. It’s a bit puffy and red from the crying, but it makes you look pretty. Plus, Kenma likes your eyes.

He looks over to Kuroo for what he should do next.

“She’s not wearing anything underneath the skirt.” Kuroo grins, and he looks so utterly pleased with himself, but Kenma doesn’t even register that because he’s flipping up your skirt to see for himself.

And fuck, you really aren’t.

He’s seen porn, he knows what he expected to find. But it’s so different in person. He wants to touch, to feel, so he does. Kenma grabs one of your legs, carefully pulling it to the side so he can see a bit more, and you let him, thigh muscles clenching.

Then he’s running a single finger over your folds and holy shit, you’re so warm and pink and his cock is throbbing and he doesn’t know how much longer he can wait.

“You can take your dick out now. She’s all prepped and stuff, so just go for it.”

Kenma pushes his sweatpants just far down enough that his dick can spring free - Kuroo knows how he is about his body, and Kenma doubts you’ll say anything because you’re staring blankly at the ceiling.

It’s a new experience, so it takes him a second to figure out that he has to part your folds with one hand, guide his dripping cock to your home with the other. You keep... fluttering down there and it’s driving him crazy, he can’t even imagine what that’s going to feel like

The second he pushes inside (you’re all wet and hot and tight and - oh you feel so good) he can’t stop the embarrassing noise the tumbles out of his mouth. His cheeks color red, but Kuroo’s quick to reassure him.

“Don’t worry, keep making noise - girls like hearing that you’re feeling good. And you can talk to her you know.”

“You’re-you’re cute.” Kenma blurts, voice shaky. He’s too overwhelmed to do much, he can hardly breathe right now, he can’t think.

“.... how does it feel?” Kuroo prods.

Kenma has to take a second to calm himself before stuttering out “G-good. Really good.”

He was barely a third of the way in, and the way your walls were pulsing around him, sucking him in, trying to milk him was almost too much. He groaned, hands coming to grip your hips, push your legs up and out of the way.

“Kuroo, it feels so good, she’s so tight. H-holy fuck, oh god, this is-“

Kenma gave a little thrust, and whined, almost crumpling over top of you, panting.

“Take your time, there’s no rush.” Kuroo reminds him, and Kenma huffs.

He’s right next to your face like this, and so he moves just a little bit so he can kiss you again. You don’t do much, but Kenma doesn’t know if you’re supposed to. He just hopes that he’s doing an okay job. Maybe you’re a virgin like him, and don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like? Kuroo would be considerate like that, take into account Kenma’s insecurities.

“Yeah, there you go. Move your hips a little.”

Kenma does, gives a few tiny, explorative thrusts. Then a few more, a bit more confident this time. And then he keeps going, and he finds his cock rutting into you steadily, and he doesn’t know how else to describe it other than it feels fucking divine.

He breaks from the kiss with a low moan, looks at your eyes. You’re crying again, cheeks red, avoiding his gaze. That’s okay. Kenma knows eye contact is hard.

Faintly, he registers the sound of Kuroo’s heavy panting, the low curses coming from where his best friend is sitting. He can’t focus on that though, not when his system is short circuiting.

It’s too much stimulation, and his dick has never been this wet and warm and massages like this before, and then Kuroo’s telling him to pull out and jack off over your face, or your skirt, or wherever, and Kenma doesn’t want to because you keep sucking him in hungrily.

But he knows in the back of his mind that pregnancy is a thing, and he’s not thinking straight, wanting to stay inside you forever. That’s why Kuroo’s here, to tell him what to do.

So Kenma pulls out, whimpering at the temperature difference his cock encounters. He’s so sensitive and keyed up that it barely takes a stroke or two (holy shit, your cream is all over his cock and it’s so wet and he’s going to die of pleasure, fuck) before he’s cumming hard.

He hadn’t moved, so his cum shoots onto your skirt, some of it falling onto your bare skin at your hips.

Kenma finishes, and he doesn’t know what to do. Seconds pass, and his breathing evens out, and he can think again. The younger man pats your cheek softly. “Thank you, you uh, did good. Felt nice.”

Kuroo snorts.

Kenma’s incredibly thirsty, and his dick is still out, and he wants to clean it off.

“You have tissues?”

Kuroo scrambles out of the chair, digs in his bedside drawer before a travel size packet of tissues thumps into Kenma’s lap.

“I’ll go get you some water.” He offers. “You did good sweet cheeks, knew you would.” He tells you, before exiting the room.

Kenma clumsily cleans himself off, then tries to wipe his cum out of your skirt. That’s pretty much hopeless, so he quickly gives up. He notices the slick shining over your folds, so he holds up a tissue.

“Do you uh, want me to-“

“Please stop.”

You’re barely loud enough for Kenma to hear. The man shrugs, before tucking his cock back into his sweatpants, pulling them so they’re snug against his hips again.

He clambers off the bed to throw the tissues away, gets met at the door by Kuroo, who’s holding a cup of water.

“So? You feel like a man now?”

Kenma gives a lopsided grin. He feels proud - the other guys can’t tease him about this anymore, he’s fucked a girl.

Kuroo pats him on the shoulder, before handing over the cup of water. “Hell yeah man! Here, I’ll go finish our girl off.”

Finish her off?

Kuroo catches Kenma’s confused look, and he does his best not to chuckle, but Kenma’s known him long enough that he can’t hide his laughter like that.

“She didn’t cum.” Kuroo offers. “Not your fault, it takes a bit more practice. But hey, you can watch how I do it, yeah? Pick up some technique for next time.”

A quick glance to the bed shows you’ve barely moved, just curled up on your side, arms wrapped around your chest.

“Oh, okay.”

Kenma sits in Kuroo’s desk chair, takes a sip of water while he watches Kuroo unbuckle his belt.

He feels good.

#yandere #yandere haikyuu #yandere kuroo #yandere kenma #nasty kenma #nasty kuroo #idk tags lol #yandere thoughts #yandere imagines #tw noncon #dead dove #haikyuu smut #kenma x you #kuroo x y/n #kenma x kuroo #but only kind of #kenma x y/n

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stray-kids-react · 3 years ago

Text

They try to teach you how to dance

Masterlist

Some are crack some are fluff.

...

Bang Chan

° You were very clumsy, but still determined to look just as amazing as Chan did during the last performance they did on Kingdom. Specifically at the beginning when he is held upside down and made his way to the floor smoothly.

° You kept falling flat on your stomach each time Chan tried to lower you down, you'd get scared at the feeling of no control and end up kicking Chan which led to him losing grip on you. He'd get worried after your third fall, and somewhat beg you to stop.

° You were determined to look as badass as he did, and even convinced Felix to help you out since Chan was too scared of hurting you. Your boyfriend watched as you and Felix both managed to fall to the floor while creating a hole in the practice room wall.

"I think I'll take a break for now."

"I'm sure you'll get it love, we'll just get some safety mats next time."

Lee Know

° Minho is very sweet towards you, he'll still tease you but over all everyone can tell how much of an effect you put on him. Being the main dancer though, it was intimidating dancing next to your very talented boyfriend. And he notices your stiffness.

° That is why he was showing you the Miroh dance step by step, insisting that he'll teach you. Minho didn't want you to become awkward around him at any point, and so when he saw you begin to stiffen whenever you danced. He stepped in immediately.

° You thought it would be sweaty and frustrating, but it ended up being very fun and sweet. Whenever you got a move right he'd reward you with a kiss, and he'd be close behind you throughout it all. Guiding your movements with his hands as he reassured you in a soft voice.

"Good work bun bun. Do you need a break?"

"Can I still get more kisses on break?"

Changbin

° You were an upcoming model in Korea, constantly praised for your look but some critiquing you after a viral video of you. The video was of you at an award show dancing, you looked like a dying chicken when you attempted to dance and everyone knew it.

° You wanted to be taken more seriously, and decided to ask your boyfriend to teach you Get Cool. Changbin knew why you asked him to do this, and didn't hesitate since he's seen companies decline you after the video went viral all over social media.

° You were still slightly wobbly and stiff, but you were able to get the basics down. Once you were confident enough, you went live on Instagram to show your hard work. Changbin reading the comments out loud from behind the camera.

"Wow the chicken has turned into a Phoenix."

"*Laughs* stop, I'm gonna lose my rhythm."

Hyunjin

° You were out partying with Hyunjin, Jisung and Jisung's Girlfriend. The spotlight seemed to focus on you as your tipsy induced brain convinced you to dance your heart out. The crowd around you beginning to cheer you on.

° Hyunjin recorded you as you began to recreate double knot, missing a few steps but still looking amazing nonetheless. He was enjoying the show you were putting on, until a random man tried to dance up behind you. Attempting to grind against you.

° Without a second thought, he pulled you out from the spotlight and tucked you infront of him. Shielding you away from anyone interested, it was getting late anyways and he would've pulled you away a couple minutes later if it weren't for the man.

"Did I do good Jinnie? ~"

"You are always fantastic angel."

Han

° You were rehearsing your stage before the main event, the weather was drizzling which led to a slippery stage. You thought it wouldn't effect you much, that is until you hit the dance break. Where shaking your hips turned into falling on them.

° Jisung felt bad he truly did, but your frustrated sighs and curses always amused him. Especially when you were wearing a mic where everyone could hear you, he'd laugh but always help you back onto the stage nonetheless.

° Jisung went through the steps with you. Making sure the rain wasn't the only problem, afterwards you soon realized you were taking to many large steps which led to the slipping. You were thankful he helped you go through the steps, even if you still fell.

"Why are you laughing ~"

"Because everyone can hear you swearing."

Felix

° You wanted to learn back door and surprise your boyfriend with your new talent, the only problem was... You couldn't get the steps right. This frustrated you immensely, wanting to impress Felix just as much as he always impresses you with his talent.

° Felix got you some cinnamon rolls from your favorite bakery, he walked by the store and decided why not. That's when he noticed you looking sulky on your couch, he sat next to you gently. Waving the scent of your favorite treat near your face.

° Felix asked what was wrong, and tried his absolute hardest not to show off the brightest grin when you admitted to wanting to impress him. You always impressed him and he found it adorable how determined you were to learn the dance.

"C'mere lovely, I'm going to show you the dance."

"Can I finish my cinnamon roll first Lixie?"

Seungmin

° You had a crazy side to you, a side only few got to see and this people who saw it were only the ones closest to you. Seungmin had the pleasure of seeing this wonderful side of you, watching you make a fool out of yourself for his entertainment alone.

° Seungmin came home from a hard day of rehearsal, JYP critiquing the group rather harshly even though he couldn't do half the stuff they could (all tea all shade☕) he felt his spirit crack a bit from the hurtful words. Wanting nothing more than your company.

° You found out the song was All In, the one JYP had somewhat of a say on what happens in the song. You decided to recreate JYP's dances in front of Seungmin to cheer him up, purposely making them look more sloppy than they actually were.

"Join me Seungmin!"

"No *gasping for breath* you're too much sometimes. Laughs"

Jeongin

° You out the Self in self-conscious, meaning you were a very introverted and anxious person naturally. It took over a year for you to warm up to your boyfriend Jeongin, but he was patient with you and got the best reward by having you by his side.

° This is why he was so shocked when you asked him to show you the side effects dance, since you've never really mentioned an interest of any type of dancing. Not even dancing at a party or simply bopping out in the car. But he wasn't going to waste the rare opportunity.

° Before you could second guess yourself, he pulled you to the dance studio. Hooking the song in the speakers, he stepped in front of you so you couldn't see the mirror. Knowing you would want to back out once you saw yourself. He wanted to make you feel safe.

"Maybe I should try this another time."

"But I want to hold you for a bit longer."

#stray kids #kpop #skz scenarios #stray kids reactions #changbin #han jisung #hyunjin #lee know #bang chan #jeongin #skz requests #skz reactions #felix skz #skz seungmin

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spookybias · 4 years ago

Text

[ attractiveness everywhere, stupidity everywhere ] — kang taehyun

pairing: kang taehyun x gn! reader. genre: fluff, crack. warning: mention of bugs, mc doesn't have any friends. for: @ficscafe's dialogue prompt event. word count: 1960 note: obviously i wasn't sure how to end this T_T

prompts: #22: "stop staring, it’s creepy" + #23: "what the hell are you wearing?" + #25: "you got something on your face." "what? where?" "your stupidity. it’s everywhere."

You shrieked at the sight of a tick crawling up your leg, and immediately began swatting at the skin in an attempt to slap it and any comrades that might have kept it company off of you. As a cold breeze passed, you brought your knees up to your chest and wrapped your arms around yourself in a hug. The thought of more ticks crawling all over you, consuming your blood and body in their tiny, red glory, sent shivers to your spine. The wait for your guardian to come pick you up from school was beginning to feel endless, and although the sun was shining, the warmth was certainly not existent on this particular day.

The thought of having to wait longer in the chilly weather only produced more thoughts of ticks and ants and other bugs finding the time to crawl on you. Anxiously, you dusted off your tutu skirt and legs once more, and even your jean jacket every few minutes. You thought that waiting at a nearby cafe instead of at the high school grounds was a better option, considering you refused to let any of your peers find out that you were still being picked up by someone. But you weren't expecting to become the seven course meal for some ticks.

The sunlight began to beam down. You were gracious for the heat to finally be hitting your shivering physique, but immediately became irritated at the brightness that you were sure would blind you if you sat at the table for another half and hour. You rose a hand to your head, trying to block out the sunlight, and caught sight of a boy from your school making his way over.

You realized who it was, and your knees began to tingle. You were eighty-five percent sure that the tick hadn't bit you, and that the twinkling panic in your body was due to the pretty guy plopping down in one of the seats across the table. Taehyun shuffled through his backpack, pulling out some snacks.

The desire to impress one of the cool kids from you school flew in like a pigeon at the sight of bread. You leaned back in your chair, legs crossed in what you hoped was a sexy angle, and twirled a piece of your hair around your fingertips. Before you realized what you were doing, you made a mental note of everything that was attractive about taehyun; his half brown, half blonde hair, his pearly whites, and his gentle but assertive hands. overall, his face was amazing. You mumbled to yourself as you watched him eat his animal crackers, unaware of just how creepy you appeared.

"Is there something you need?" Taehyun looked up from his notebook and sighed. He picked up his pack of crackers and held them out to you. "Are you hungry? Do you want some?" He waved the food in front of your face.

You were left dumbfounded. The tone of his voice made you feel like you were some kind of wild animal trying to prey on him, and he was trying to distract you in order to escape. You knew you weren't the best around people, but never predicted that the boy you'd seen people swoon over for ages talked to others like they were beneath him. "No, I don't want anything from you." It came out much more rude than you had intended. perhaps you were something feral, and your defensive instincts had kicked in.

Taehyun blinked twice before setting his pack of crackers back down. "Stop staring, it's creepy." Then he looked down, taking note of your appearance. He had never seen someone combine a jean jacket and a tutu skirt in forty degree weather. "What the hell are you wearing?"

Feeling self-conscious, you pulled your knees up to your chest again, tugging at your skirt. "What? You think I'm weird or something?" You weren't trying to sound so targeted, but you were used to people picking on your taste in everything, and attacking first had become your immediate reaction to others. "You don't have to sit here."

"Calm down," Taehyun held his hands up with a look of so much disbelief that you wondered if you seemed like you were about to shoot. "You seemed cold, even from all the way over there." Your eyes followed his thumb pointing over his shoulder to the nearest crosswalk, the direction he had come from earlier. "And it's no wonder. You're wearing a skirt in weather like this."

"I thought I looked cute..." You mumbled into your arms crossed over your legs. "Besides, you have no control over what I wear. I can show as much leg skin as I want to." You ended your sentence with a pout.

"I'm not saying you don't look cute." Taehyun looked directly into your eyes. "It's nice seeing an already attractive person in a strange, but nice outfit." Your face started to feel hot. "And you're right, I have no control over what you want to wear. I was just concerned is all. It's freezing and I know you're cold in that skirt."

"So you care?" The words tumbled out of your mouth before you could catch a hold of what you were saying. You weren't exactly used to people who weren't your guardian worrying about you.

Taehyun rolled his eyes and flipped to a new page in his notebook. "I would rather you don't pass out from the temperature right in front of me."

"My guardian usually tells me if it's hot or cold," You went on to say, no longer remembering that Taehyun was one of the cool kids, and instead eating up the idea that someone seemed interested in you. "The sun was out, so I assumed it would be better weather today."

Look at me, you thought to yourself, talking about the weather with someone handsome.

"You have a phone right?" Taehyun suddenly questioned.

Your eyes widened, a tiny bead of sweat dripped down the side of your face. You managed to stutter out, "Y-yes. I do. W-why?"

"Phones have weather apps, idiot. Start checking yours." Taehyun didn't bother to look up from his book. You wondered if he was still interested in what you had to say, if he had more questions after this one. "If you don't have the mental capacity to do that, then at least open your window and stick your hand out."

"Oh ok." You screamed into your skull. You had let yourself get a little too excited about Taehyun's question. You were brought back to reality. Taehyun was a cool kid, and you were a weird new student, an outsider. There was no way he'd give you his number.

The clouds moved in, blocking the sunshine that had previously been annoying you. Taehyun's appearance had made you forget about your irritation entirely, though. It was silent except for the occasional sound of the cafe door a few feet away swinging open joined by the sound of a customer's footsteps as they power-walked out with whatever they had bought. You wanted to talk to Taehyun some more, but wasn't sure what you could possibly say that hadn't already been said to the boy a million times —that day.

He was just that popular.

Taehyun jumped at the sudden sound of a slap on skin. You shrieked at the sight of an ant on your leg. Taehyun could distract you from the cold and the sunlight, but not from your worst nightmare coming true.

"Oh my gosh, they're eating me!" You wailed.

"What on Earth are you talking about?" Taehyun closed his notebook and put it away. It was impossible for him to get some studying (and snacking) done with you around. "You really are crazy."

"There was an ant, and earlier there was a tick. Am I gonna die? They've been attacking me all day!"

Taehyun squinted. He wondered if you were mentally okay. Maybe the lack of social interaction was the cause of your eerie behavior. "Ants aren't much of a problem, but did the tick bite you?"

"No, I don't think so." You patted down your clothes.

"Then you're fine," Taehyun started to pack up his things. "I mean, if the tick did bite you, it's possible that your legs could go numb and you'd never walk again—"

"WHAT?!" You weren't sure if your life was flashing before your eyes or if the sun's demonic brightness had finally gotten to you.

Taehyun stared blankly at you. "You got something on your face."

"What? Where?" Panic began to strike again at the thought of a bug crawling on your cheek.

"Your stupidity. It’s everywhere." Taehyun grabbed his bag and stood up. "And I'm starting to believe it might be contagious, so I'll go now."

"You're leaving?" You scrambled around for your bag on the back of the chair and followed suit.

"Yeah, my ride should be here in a few minutes. I'm just going to stand by the corner." Taehyun walked off. You stood frozen in place.

"T-Taehyun!" You called out.

"Yes, ____?" He looked over his shoulder expectantly. "I don't have all day," He reminded as he took a look at the invisible watch on his wrist.

"You know my name?" You didn't think anyone at your school knew your name. No one talked to you unless they hadn't been paying attention to what the teacher was saying and needed a recap.

Taehyun turned around and looked at you. "Of course I know your name. We're in the same grade."

Oh. You had gotten ahead of yourself again. "Taehyun." You fiddled your fingers and lowered your voice. "Can I stand next to you while you wait for your ride?" It was silly, really, but that was the kind of person you were.

Taehyun continued walking. "Yeah, sure. Stop being creepy about it." There was a hint of teasing in his voice and a growing smile on his face. You were so stupid and weird, and that made him want to learn more about you.

And so you stood beside Taehyun for the next three minutes, utter and comforting silence surrounding you both. You thought you looked like two strangers who talked to each other and stood next to each other like they weren't strangers at all. You shook your head, letting the desire to be close to Taehyun shake. He'd probably let anyone stand next to him on the sidewalk.

A black van with tinted windows pulled up to the curb. It looked suspicious and you wondered if Taehyun was quite the suspicious character. You also wondered if you should probably run as far away as you could from the van. Then the door opened, and you caught a glimpse of an older guy with red hair sitting inside.

"Hurry up, Taehyun. We're gonna be late to game night, and I just know Beomgyu and Kai are hiding all the good cards." The guy peaked his head out and eyed you. "Taehyun you have an interesting taste."

"Your hair is weird," You immediately shot back.

Taehyun turned around. "Do you need a ride?" You gulped as you watched him put his bag in the car.

"Uh, no my guardian should be on their way. And I'm not allowed to take rides from strangers." You scratched your head awkwardly. "Not that I would want to ride with that weird guy in the back," You managed to finish.

Taehyun chuckled. "I'll leave first. Don't wait here on the corner by yourself, though. Someone might mistake you for a prostitute. It's not exactly safe," Taehyun warned. "See you at school."

"Got it." You retreated back to your empty cafe table, and watched from afar as Taehyun's car drove our of sight.

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egcdeath · 4 years ago

Text

checkmate

summary: you’ve always refused to lose, and love was no exception. (gone girl-ish au)

pairing(s): ransom drysdale x dark!reader, a special mystery guest ;)

word count: 3.7k

warnings: 18+ because of heavy themes! faked death, framing of crimes, manipulation, alluding to sex, alluding to cheating, terrible relationship dynamic, very loose usage of the word crazy/psychotic, implied mention of self harm, brief choking & slapping (in a non sexual way lol), pregnancy trapping (idk if thats the right term), the reader is a very bad human being, overuse of italics *please let me know if i’m missing any warnings!

author’s note: this is my 2nd submission for @stargazingfangirl18’s 5k soft dark challenge, i decided to make the reader dark >:) but ransom is also not a good person. I used these prompts: “I’ve waited a long time for this, sweetheart.” & The town golden *girl isn’t as sweet as everyone thinks.

this is definitely the most unhinged thing i’ve ever written, but blame @literate-lamb for making me write this because when i pitched this to her and said that i’d probably never write it, she enabled me.

okay that's enough from me. join my taglist if you want :D

“I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings: the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband. I've always hovered above their stories, nodding in sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women, to let these things happen, how undisciplined. And now to be one of them! One of the women with the endless stories that make people nod sympathetically and think: Poor dumb bitch.” Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

Your whole life, you’d considered yourself a competitive person. Constantly overcompensating for one thing or another, whether it was the chronic desire to achieve perfection that had been installed in you since you were a little girl, or your persistent internalized sense of inadequacy. You realized early on that it was much better for you to win than for you to lose, no matter the physical, emotional, or mental cost of the prize of perfection.

For the most part, this mindset worked out for you. You graduated as Valedictorian from your high school, neared the top of your graduating class at Harvard. God knew you earned it, all those tears you shed into overpriced textbooks, all the popping of unprescribed Adderall, and robbing yourself of the parties and social events that the rest of your peers gladly indulged in.

You were just different, which was why you gained a job nearly immediately after your exit from school, quickly climbing to the top at the Blood Like Wine publishing company after only a few years of being there.

And one night, at the party celebrating the release of A Thousand Knives when you laid your eyes on Hugh Ransom Drysdale, the grandson of your boss, you knew that you needed to have him. Rich, hot, a bit of an asshole. You deserved to finally complete your image, and that socialite flavored eye candy seemed to fit the part perfectly. Luckily for you, he was desperate. It only took a few tugs on your dress’ V-line, and a number of knowing smirks to find yourself being finger-banged in his family manor’s bathroom.

From there, you wormed your way into his life. Leaving belongings at his place as an excuse to come back, and offering booty calls in the middle of the night. Ransom must’ve been much more desperate than you originally thought, as it really only seemed to take one night of stroking his hair while he vented about his family to make him want to be with you. Men with mommy issues were always so easy.

Except, he wasn’t that easy. The longer you got to know Ransom, the more fucked up you realized he really was. He had no boundaries at all, became jealous and enraged at the drop of a pin, and occasionally told you things that made the hairs on your arms rise.

This of course all came to a head after the night of Harlan’s 85th birthday party. When the news broke of his tragic death, you’d immediately known it was the works of your Hugh. If your intuition wasn’t enough, his confession in the shower, where he’d demanded you take off your clothes to display that you were without a bug, certainly was.

You were completely devastated. The man that you’d invested so much into for years had thrown both his and your reputations down the drain in just a matter of hours. Of course, you felt bad for Harlan too. He was a good guy (when he wasn’t instigating a family fight).

Still, you showed up during the funeral in your best mourning clothes and dawning your biggest crocodile tears. You rubbed Linda’s back while she mourned the loss of her father, and the new truth about her husband. You played dumb when interrogated by some Southern private investigator, even giving Ransom an airtight alibi. You testified on his behalf in court with enough conviction to grant you an Emmy.

You’d gotten so far, devoted so much energy into him, that you simply refused to lose now.

To your friends, you’d seemed to lead a near perfect life. Dream job, dreamy boyfriend, dream bank account, but it wasn’t enough. You wanted more, you just didn’t know what.

It dawned on you while sipping mimosas at the country club, Ransom playing tennis with his friends just a few yards away from you while Danielle showed off her brand new engagement ring, a .59 Carat Asscher Diamond, that if you heard her speak of again, would probably make you lose your shit.

You zoned out as she droned on and on about the shape, and how Matt proposed to her in their own private room in one of the most exclusive Parisian restaurants, instead focusing on how you could find yourself in the same position as that airhead next to you. In all honesty, you couldn’t stand the idea that someone was doing better than you, let alone someone in your own social circle. Dani got all the bragging rights of being engaged to the heir of some tech giant, being the first in your friend group to get eloped, and worst of all, Matt wasn’t even making her sign a prenup.

You blankly watched Ransom from afar, taking occasional sips from your sweet drink, while you thought of how you deserved all of that and more, and you were going to get it one way or another.

——

It didn’t take much to come up with something, your first and most obvious plan being to simply ask Ransom when he was going to propose to you. Of course, this wasn’t the first time you’d tried to approach him about this subject, you just wondered if maybe this time things would be different.

Panting heavily after a rather rough night in bed, you rolled off of your boyfriend’s chest and gave him a messy, yet sincere kiss. You knew your man well, and if there was any time to pop the question, it was in his post-nut haze.

“Baby,” you said breathily, “I wanna ask you something.”

“Shoot,” he responded casually, glancing over at you.

“When’re you gonna propose to me?” you hummed.

Ransom groaned and shook his head, rolling his eyes, “this is about Matt and Dani, huh?” he tutted, then extended a hand out to your warm cheeks so he could gently caress one with his thumb. “Thought we agreed marriage is just a piece of paper and it’s stupid.”

You huffed in response.

Of fucking course.

“I never said that,” you muttered, setting a hand on his broad chest. “Besides, it’ll be good if you get pissed and decide to like, kill your dad or something. Y’know, spouses don’t have to testify against each other in court.”

Ransom chuckled as if this whole thing was funny, like your feelings were some kind of sick joke to him. “You know my lawyers, babe. They could prove that bees don’t make honey. That bears don’t shit in the forest. I appreciate your attempt, though. This has been some really nice pillow talk.”

“Whatever,” you muttered, pinching his nipple in retaliation before turning your back to him and yanking the blanket onto your side.

You weren’t sure why you were so surprised that he was being stubborn, most of the time you felt like you were pulling teeth from the man. But that’s why you had a backup plan! You always had a backup plan. That’s what separated you from your boyfriend. Where Ransom was extemporized and impulsive, you were calculating and prudent.

Although you devised your plan that very afternoon while watching your partner backhand small green balls, you were going to need some time to get everything in order, to prove Murphy and his stupid law wrong in making sure that everything that could go wrong wouldn’t.

After all, love was a game. And you sure as hell weren’t losing to Hugh Drysdale.

——

You sacrificed too much to have your plans ruined by some trust fund baby with impulsivity issues. You deserved your dream marriage, the stability you wished you had as a child. You wanted the white picket fence, and everything that came along with it. Your desire to be the best, to be perfect was what drove you to poke holes in every condom in the box, what led you to draw liters of your own blood in hopes of staging a fake crime scene, to buy a cheap getaway car and burner phone off of Craigslist, and reach out to a high school boyfriend who you knew was in a position as desperate as you.

You planted seeds of doubt in your friends throughout the following weeks, feeding them lies about Ransom’s behavior, how you were afraid of telling him that you did in fact see two faint red lines on that damn plastic stick– only half of the statement truly being false–, telling them that he was behaving erratically lately.

It all was going without a hitch. Ransom didn’t seem to notice anything was off, despite your frequent visits to the bathroom and newfound affinity for true crime documentaries.

You almost felt guilty, knowing the world of pain you were about to throw the man into. Granted, he deserved the pain. You were in a relationship with a genuinely terrible person, and that person had made a conscious effort not to commit to you. You tried to make this easy for him, give him a chance to say a few words to you and slide a ring on your finger, but no, he always seemed to take the hard route.

You slept like a baby the night before you were setting your plan in action. You made sure to uphold the facade of everything being fine, making Ransom a nice breakfast before sending him halfway across town to the hardware store with an oddly incriminating list.

Once he was out of the house, you hurried off to the fridge in the garage where you’d been keeping a small stash of your own blood. It wasn’t pretty, but it had to be done. You poured the blood throughout the kitchen, splattering bits of it on the counters and cupboards. You poorly cleaned the mess, just as he would.

You put your next move in motion, falsifying a home invasion. You tossed over a table and some chairs, throwing books and photos onto the floor, but left some aspects slightly untouched, like an upright picture frame to give yet another hint that things were not exactly what they appeared.

You left a tiny blue post-it note on the nightstand of Ransom’s side of the bed, a quick and simple doodle of a ring along with the first initial of your name inked onto the tiny piece of paper.

With that, you were off. Technically missing, soon-to-be presumed dead.

----

The days following your disappearance had gone even better than you’d initially planned. Local news coverage had been all over you, search and rescue groups were assiduously looking for you, your parents had opened a tip line, and begged for you to get home safe on news segments. But the best part of it all was that Ransom had been briefly found himself in police custody, only to be released shortly thereafter. His past of an accused murder quickly made your disappearance even more of a national story, and you watched the whole thing unravel from the safety and comfort of your high school boyfriend, Andy Barber’s Newton home.

Of course, you fed him the same lies you’d given to your friends, and seeing the rather lonely position he was in, he gladly let you stay with him. You were absolutely having a hay-day with it all, dedicating hours of your day to watching Ransom slowly unravel. Maybe it was a bit sadistic of you to enjoy torturing your partner so much, but he needed to learn his lesson. You deserved better. You needed Ransom to rise up to your level, allowing you to finally complete your image. To let you two appear to be the perfect couple. Really, this was all on him.

Andy, for the most part, had been a good host. He was gone for the majority of the day, dedicating himself to his work while you lounged around on his dangerously cozy couch. Around two weeks into your stay, you were sharing a box of pizza in the living room with your old lover when something interesting on the television caught your eye.

Ransom, broadcasted on CBS, being interviewed on your disappearance.

You watched with wide eyes as Ransom begged for your return on national television. It was one thing seeing your mother plead for you to come back, the same woman who had installed such toxic behavior in you sob for your return, but Ransom. You’d never loved him more than in that moment.

“Hugh, if you could tell Y/N one thing, what would it be?” the interviewer asked.

Ransom turned, looking straight at the camera, directly into your soul, “Y/N, I love you so much. More than you’ll ever know. I need you to come back safely, to see you, to hold you again. I’d give anything in the world for that right now,” he looked down, a tear falling down his cheek. “I can’t live without you in my life, I-”

His sentence was cut off by Andy grabbing the remote, and turning off the TV. You turned your head and frowned deeply at him.

“Why’d you do that?” you asked with a bit of a pout.

“I just couldn’t stand listening to him talk about you like he hasn’t treated you like shit for the past few years. C’mon, let’s get ready for bed.”

Your blood boiled. Andy was once a means to an end, but now he was interfering. He was clearly much too selfish to see that you and Ransom were quite obviously soulmates. A match made in hell.

You followed him to bed regardless, curling up on what had been your side of the bed for the past few days, and staring at the wall until Andy’s breaths moved from a soft and rhythmic pattern to loud snores. God, those snores were obnoxious.

You slipped out of bed and to his dresser, grabbing two soft ties from the drawer, and daintily tying his wrists to each side of the bedpost.

“What‘re you doing?” he mumbled, instinctively yanking both of his wrists as he awoke.

“I’m going back home,” you whispered.

“You can’t be serious,” Andy huffed, tugging on the restraint attached to the headboard.

You shook your head, “I am.”

“I should’ve known. Why would you do something like this? Do you know how much trouble you’ll be in with the law?”

“Do you know how much trouble you’ll be in when the world finds out that you kidnapped me?” you retorted.

This threat seemed to wake him up right away, “what about this was kidnapping? I gave you a nice home, fed you, I didn’t even make a pass at you. I didn’t do shit to you,” he hissed. “You think I can’t prove that? I’m a lawyer, for god's sake!”

You nearly laughed, “Okay, Andy,” you paused for a moment, “As a lawyer, who do you think everyone’ll believe? Someone who the world was on a wild goose chase for in the last two weeks? Or the man with a family history of violence? Must I remind you that your father and your son have killed people?”

Andy shook his head, face pinched in sorrow at the mention of his deceased son, clearly a low blow. “You’re insane,” he muttered.

“Swear to god that you won’t tell a soul what happened here,” you leaned over him, getting right in his face. “Or I promise, Andrew Barber, I will ruin you. You’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars, or disbarred, or whatever the hell I decide to do with you. So keep your goddamn lips shut.”

You pulled away and he solemnly nodded, not bothering to put up a fight. You loosened the fabric around his left wrist and walked out of the room. You picked up the keys to Andy’s Audi on your way out, checking the time as you adjusted the driver's seat.

9:45 PM. Fatherhood really changed the man.

You pushed that thought aside and began your drive home, which turned out to be a surprisingly short trip. When you pulled up in front of your home, you were met with a slew of reporters outside of the house, along with a police car that seemed to be permanently camped there.

As you slowly got out of the car, a gasp, followed by a loud silence fell across the crowd. You limped for dramatic effect up the driveway as cameras followed you, and glanced back at them pathetically. From your peripheral view, you noticed the officers get out of their vehicle.

You finally got to your door, ringing the doorbell and waiting. You blinked harshly a few times, conjuring up the tears you needed to really make a spectacle of the event. After a few minutes, Ransom opened the door, eyes widening as he looked at you. He stepped out, and you wrapped him in as big of a hug as you could manage, genuinely missing his embrace. It was possible that you even let out a few real tears in the moment.

Your emotional embrace was interrupted by the man you recognized as Lieutenant Elliott, the same officer who’d been assigned to Harlan’s case.

“Ma’am,” he began, only to be shut down by you.

“Please, just let me be with my boyfriend,” you pleaded, crocodile tears streaming down your face as you spoke with the officer. You still needed time to get your story straight.

“Just give us the night, Lieutenant. We’ll come in first thing tomorrow morning,” Ransom added, furrowing his brows at the officer that he’d come into contact with far too many times.

He looked to his partner, who shrugged, then to you, “enjoy your night.”

Cameras flashed around you as civilians, journalists, and newscasters alike attempted to catch your attention. You grabbed Ransom’s hand and dramatically pulled him inside, insincerely attempting to hide your face by ducking and covering half of your face with your arm.

As soon as you were in the privacy of your own home, Ransom threw you against a wall.

“Why. The fuck. Would you pull a stunt like that,” he hissed through gritted teeth, eyes wild, and a hand around your throat.

You whimpered as he tightened his grip, rage clearly flowing through his system uncontrollably.

“Do you know what you did to me? You almost had me thrown in fucking jail. Do you understand that?”

You nodded weakly, “Ran,” you whispered, “the baby,” you glanced down at your stomach.

He paused, dropping his grip on your neck and staring at you in awe, “no…”

You nodded again.

“How…? You told me you were on the pill… You- you made me use protection…”

“Surprise?” you said weakly.

“You’re a psychotic bitch.”

“I’m your psychotic bitch. And no child of mine will be born out of wedlock,” you taunted.

“That’s what this is about?” Ransom laughed manically. “You did this all because I won’t fucking marry you?”

You didn’t even have to respond.

“I should send you to the loony bin right fucking now.”

“What happened to all those things you said to me on TV?”

“You’re fucking delusional. I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can. And you will. I’ve had to put up with you and your stupid little antics for way too long. How do you think I felt when you killed your own grandfather?”

Ransom scoffed, throwing his hands up in exasperation, “you are so fucked up.”

“I’m the fucked up one? You killed your own blood in cold blood! You’re unhinged!”

“You faked your own death for attention, and got pregnant while doing it! Is that baby even mine?”

“The fuck are you trying to say, Hugh?”

“I asked if it’s even mine.”

“Really. You’re accusing me of cheating on you. That’s rich considering Mia, Layla, and whoever the fuck else. You’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m being ridiculous? You couldn’t have a normal adult conversation with me!”

“Are you kidding me? I asked you time after time to marry me and it was always some bullshit excuse!” you wagged a finger in his face as you spoke. “Oh, commitment scares me, oh, marriage is just a piece of paper, oh-“ you mocked his voice in a deeper tone before you were cut off by the sting of his hand against your cheek.

“Can you shut the hell up?” he growled at you as you held your own cheek, before you reached out and slapped him back, “I can’t believe that I’m stuck with such a deranged bitch for the rest of my life.”

“Maybe work on your vows a little, dear. I don’t think that those words are as charming to me as they’d be to the rest of our family and friends.”

“You can’t be serious,” he groaned.

“But I am,” you hummed, rubbing your cheek softly once again. “Look at how fast your life fell apart without me here. How quickly the public turned on you. Imagine how upset they’d be if you left me. I love you, Ran. I really do. You and I are perfect for each other, can’t you see that now?”

Ransom took a step away from you, pacing slowly in front of you. He ran a stressed hand through his hair, and took a long and drawn out breath, clearly at a loss for words.

“So when should we have the wedding? I’ve always wanted a Spring wedding, and I know it’s a little short notice, but I don’t want to be showing too much in my wedding dress,” you grabbed Ransom’s bicep gently, as if you were just having a regular old day with him, as if you hadn’t been choked and slapped moments ago. “But we can make it work. We always make it work, right?”

Your now fiancé stared vacantly at the wall ahead of him, giving you a slow, empty nod of agreement.

“It’s settled then,” you smirked. “I’ll start looking at venues. You find me a nice ring, okay Honey? One that puts all those other bitches’ rings to shame,” you sighed pleasantly to yourself, “I’ve waited a long time for this, sweetheart.”

You pressed a soft kiss to his cheek before hurrying up the stairs and into your bedroom. You heard a distant shriek of “fuck,” from Ransom, but you truly could not care less.

You hopped into bed, grabbing your laptop from its charger and promptly opening it. You couldn’t help but to smile at your own reflection on the empty black screen. This wasn’t how you imagined your engagement, but you did the impossible. You tied yourself down to Hugh Ransom Drysdale, he went down kicking in screaming, and you were likely in for a lifetime of cheating and resentment, but you did it nonetheless.

You finally won.

#ransom drysdale x reader #ransom drysdale x you #dark!reader #ransom drysdale x dark!reader #ransom thrombey x reader #ransom thrombey x you #knives out #knives out fanfic #siris5ksoftdarkchallenge

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kaistarus · 4 years ago

Text

The Only Exception

Pairing: NishinoyaXReader

Words: 2.2K

Summary: Nishinoya was genuinely happy with his life. He’d gotten used to being by himself and had accepted the fact that that was how it was supposed to be. Until you came along and threw everything he thought made sense out the window.

A/N: I really like this fic. It’s one of my favorites Nishinoya ones so far just because it’s his pov and timeskip and the amount of love feels makes me happy. i got a lot of serotonin while writing it :D

Masterlist

Nishinoya had never been someone’s first choice.

He knew that sounded dramatic, but it was just a fact of life. The sky was blue, Tanaka could chug three-fourths gallon of milk before vomiting, and Nishinoya was never anyone’s preferred option--which never bothered him so keep the pity to yourself.

He learned to accept this when he never got scouted for the All-Japan Youth Camp and after the only person Nishinoya ever even kind of loved ended up loving his best friend. It taught him to keep his expectations low and to focus on things he could control, which was what led him to solo-traveling Japan and then the world. He realized things might be better on his own, and with the constant itch that he was missing out on something bigger traveling alone just made sense.

But then you came and ruined everything.

Hold on. That came off way more aggressive than Nishinoya wanted. He meant there was a perfect vision for how his life would go-pyramids in Egypt, Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, deep sea fishing in Italy-until he toppled over you in the streets of Italy. He’d been sprinting toward the docks when you stepped out of a marketplace and he collided into you, knocking you flat on your butt and sending your groceries all over the sidewalk. Nishinoya fumbled through his best apology in broken Italian while shoving produce into your paper bag, but froze in surprise when you snorted rather than began an enraged lecture.

He swore his heart actually stopped when your eyes met. You were clearly amused by his flustered behavior and when his heart started back up it was abnormally fast. Not once had he understood what Tanaka meant when he explained the first time he’d seen Kiyoko, but the first time Nishinoya saw you everything Tanaka said clicked. If Nishinoya had been fifteen he probably would’ve proposed to you on the spot.

But he wasn’t, so instead he shakily handed you your groceries with furiously red cheeks.

“Come ti chiami?” You asked with a raised brow.

Nishinoya blinked several times. He racked his brain for what he’d been taught on his last fishing trip, but it was mostly curses and inappropriate sayings he should probably avoid using. He was pretty sure Duolingo mentioned ‘chiamo’ as name though.

“Nishinoya?” He answered like a question and felt relief wash over him when you nodded.

“What are you doing this weekend, Nishinoya?”

He stared blankly before pointing at you with wide eyes, “I understood that.”

“Well you obviously don’t know Italian,” you rolled your eyes and he pouted at the incredibly accurate jab, “so, are you free?”

He looked around the empty street before pointing to himself. “Are you still talking to me?”

“Is there another Nishinoya around here?”

“I mean, there could be.” He looked up thoughtfully. “The odds would be crazy though.”

You laughed lightly which made a warmth creep up his neck. “I’m talking to you. I’m trying to ask you on a date.”

He looked at you like you’d grown a second head. “Why?”

“You’re attractive and you seem nice,” you cocked your head to the side. “Is that not a good reason?”

He stared at the ground intensely. “I guess… It is?” Then his original reason for being there struck him and his eyes widened. “Oh shit. I have to go,” he started leaving before quickly coming back. “Wait, I, uh, yes. Yes to the date thing.”

You chuckled, pulling a cellphone from your pocket to let him hurriedly create his contact before continuing his sprint to the docks-with a teasing recommendation not to knock anyone else over. That literal run in was the moment his entire world view became out of whack.

It wasn’t that he thought he was immune to liking someone-high school Nishinoya fell for any breathing human that gave him attention-he just lost the ability to imagine someone liking him. Maybe he’d been by himself too long or maybe that was just another fact he’d grown used to. He didn’t know anymore.

He did know that when he showed up at the restaurant thirty minutes early-there’s only so much pacing someone can do before they go insane-he hadn’t expected to see you. Just sitting on a bench beside the main entrance, looking too perfect while bouncing a knee and nibbling on your thumb nail as if you were nervous to be there.

Except it was only him, so that wouldn’t make sense.

“Hey,” you said when you spotted him standing in the middle of the sidewalk like an idiot.

“You’re here,” he raised a brow. You took it as the time, but he meant it in a general sense. He truly hadn’t expected you to show up.

“Oh,” you chuckled awkwardly, twisting the material of your clothes. “Yeah, I was kind of nervous.”

He mulled that over for admittedly too long, but it just seemed like such a stupid thing to say. It wasn’t that you looked stupid, but that’s what made it so confusing.

“You’re also early.” You pointed out when the silence became awkwardly long.

“I was nervous.” He said like it should have been obvious.

“At least we’re starting on equal ground,” you said with a shaky breath.

Equal ground? He wasn’t sure his brain was cut out for this type of critical thinking. He’d even spent the past few days planning for every scenario-even you sneaking out the bathroom like in the movies-but he never pictured you being nervous.

“Uh, yeah,” he tapped against his leg while glancing through the window at the half-filled dining area, “we can probably go inside.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” you gave him a quick finger gun before whipping around with shoulders to your ears.

Nishinoya blinked several times before looking back down the street. A part of him thought about running, saving you both from the shitty date to come filled with awful conversation starters he’d pulled from an online article for high schoolers. However his fate was sealed the moment you sent a gentle smile over your shoulder and his feet began following you through the door without his permission.

Ever since that day he’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Ever since you giggled behind your hand instead of wincing at the terrible jokes he regretted the moment they left his mouth; ever since you weren’t burdened by the need to translate for him the whole night; and ever since you were amused rather than annoyed at his nervous rambling and awkward icebreakers.

It was just too good to be true.

Like the first time you came over and teased him for the cheesy dialogue in his favorite action movies. How his chest ached when your head rested in his lap and you gazed at him with overwhelming amounts of affection. He’d never dreamed he’d have this-couldn’t have if he tried. Sharing his favorite things with someone while they traced designs against his palm and occasionally sealing them with featherlight kisses. The fire it sent up his arm was too much and not enough and he hadn’t realized how much he’d wanted this.

It was a little scary how much Nishinoya didn’t want to lose it.

And that thought started keeping him up at night. Nishinoya was never really scared of anything-it was kind of what he was known for everywhere he traveled. If anyone needed something done they asked the foreigner with a death wish. So, the idea that you had that effect on him was, again, terrifying.

But what was Nishinoya supposed to do when you press your forehead against his in the middle of the night? Running your fingers through his hair and paying special attention to the blonde strands he’d always been secretly self-conscious of, whispering low how they were one of your favorite things in the world. How could he regret anything when you rubbed your nose lazily against his and kissed him softer than he ever deserved? He didn’t give a shit how scared he was if it meant he could stay like this, with you, for as long as you’d let him.

Because his heart raced a million miles a second when you mindlessly held his hand under a table or leaned against him just to be close. Because for some reason he was the first person you called when you were excited or when you needed comfort. Because when he rambled too long about spearfishing or an old friend’s volleyball game your eyes lit with genuine interest rather than annoyance. And because he was in love with you.

Which he both wasn’t prepared for and had known was inevitable. Falling for you had been like getting hit by a semi-truck he’d seen coming for miles.

It probably happened sooner than socially acceptable, but that didn’t surprise him given his all or nothing nature. This outcome was decided the moment Nishinoya knew he’d be fine with you breaking his heart a hundred times if it meant he could keep waking up next to you cascaded by the rising sun because he was still too lazy to invest in curtains. Just you cuddling closer to him for warmth in your sleep would make every ounce of pain worth it.

Once Nishinoya’d acknowledged his feelings it was nearly impossible keeping them down. With every breathtaking smile, or brush of your hand against his, or bubble of laughter that rang throughout his apartment it nearly spilled from his lips like a breath. It took all self-restraint he had to hold it back. And it wasn’t that he didn’t want you to know because you deserved this piece of him-every piece of him.

He just wasn’t sure you’d want it.

His resolve lasted nearly a month-a month longer than he thought he was capable-before the feeling was too intense for him to keep down. And it wasn’t anything drastic that made him break. No, it was something so absurdly casual that he was almost pissed at himself when the words flowed from his mouth.

It had been a completely average morning, nothing crazy, the weather was actually gross with rain pounding against the windows and the sky a depressing shade of grey. But then you stepped out of his bathroom while rubbing the sleep from your eyes, giving him a lopsided smile before slurring a soft request for breakfast. It was like time froze and he was in a stupid romcom except you were there so it was actually an oscar nominated masterpiece.

Your head lolled to the side, half-lidded eyes filling with concern at his silence. “We can cook together. I didn’t mean it like-”

“I love you.”

That seemed to wake you up. Your body straightened while your mouth hung open in stunned silence. Nishinoya had expected this kind of reaction, so he clenched his fists tight in preparation for the worst.

“Are you sure?” You asked, barely above a whisper. “That’s a pretty serious word, Noya.”

He knew that. Nishinoya had spent too many nights losing sleep over that.

“You scare me,” he confessed, deciding if he was going to dig his grave he might as well make it deep. “I’ve never really been the one someone chooses. More like deal or settle with.” He grimaced when his heart squeezed painfully in his chest, “but I love you more than I thought I could ever love anyone and that scares me. You make me feel wanted and I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Because I do want you.” You whispered and his stare locked on yours so quickly, meeting your loving gaze while his heart started racing. “And everyone you know must be really stupid because I feel lucky I got to choose you. I get to love you.”

He stared at you wide-eyed while his chest swelled with so much emotion he was surprised he hadn’t passed out.

“Sorry, that sounded really lame.” You placed a hand against your forehead and Nishinoya shook his head vigorously.

“I think that was the greatest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

You stepped closer and cradled his face, gently brushing your thumbs along his cheeks. If he wasn’t so manly and awesome he may have teared up, but he definitely didn’t. Which was why you obviously weren’t wiping any water off his cheeks before pulling his lips against yours.

Nishinoya set a languid pace that turned desperate when you tangled your fingers in his hair. He pulled you as close as he could, which was never enough, snaking an arm around your middle and sliding one to cradle the back of your head.

When it got heated enough that he decided he’d very much like to move it to his bedroom Nishinoya’s stomach growled and you snorted against his lips. Nishinoya pouted, whining when you pulled away with a playful smirk.

“Later,” you said, pinching his cheeks and waving his head around. “Food first. We’re both hungry.”

He did love food.

He disrespectfully watched you leave him in favor of searching the fridge for food that could be thrown together for breakfast. A dopey smile covered his lips because he loved you. He was lucky enough to get to love you. And for some ridiculous fucking reason you were dumb enough to love him.

He would do whatever he could to keep it this way. For now, that was helping you cook breakfast. Tomorrow, who knows? But whatever it was you would be there, so it would be pretty god damn amazing.

#nishinoya yuu #nishinoya yu #nishinoya x reader #nishinoya yu x reader #nishinoya x you #nishinoya yū #nishinoya imagine #nishinoya fluff #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #haikyu!!

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secretbangtnn · 4 years ago

Text

summary : Getting a letter from a very prestigious school was something that you could have never expect, and even more unexpected was that you didn’t need to pay a penny for it. Beautiful news that were too good to be true, but oh how stupid you were to not question such a perfect chance to get away from your shitty life.

notes:

Guys i would be more than happy for some feedback, its my first time writing in english and im more than nervous. Im not sure if what i wrote is good or even understandable. + i would be more than happy to start an ask game with this book

Chapter one

Living or in your case existing was always somehow calm. Everything you do had a plan and everyday had the same pattern, like a boring vase that stood in the same kitchen you actually were. Blue marble tiles awfully similar to tears that run down the woman's cheeks, making them a little bit more redder than before.

Not that they weren't that color before, always blushy and ready to be seen. And maybe that's why you had that sour taste in your mouth while watching them, knowing that your own were as beautifully red as hers.

"why?" a simple question sounding now like the last call for help. Voice groggy and nose runny making the sight before even more unbearable to look at. But why weren't you moved, why the tears didn't make you guality like they should. "you planned this?! You planned to leave me alone like a selfish bastard!"

Looking down didn't seem like the best option, knowing that it could just take the nerves in the room to a whole new level but you could not stop yourself. She was always one to guilt trip you into everything.

A little shout left the chapped mouth making you jump a little while lifting your head simultaneously. Sight before you seems to worsen and as you took a step back the woman took another two in the end catching your small wrist in her clawed hand.

Hissing and looking dead in her eyes made you somehow more conscious of the whole situation.

“I didn’t know.” and you really did not. Gritting your teeth so hard that it felt like some of them could fall out at any moment seems to stop you from doing sudden movements.

Breathe in and breathe out.

“Of course you think I am stupid! Just like your father, bringing me to insanity step by step. But that’s what you wanted from the beginning, am I right?”

“Stop being delusional mom” Oh how hard it was to say the name of that woman. Mother of child that she forgets most of the time, only to remember at the most shitty time. Today was exactly one of the examples of why your dream was just to wake up not seeing or better not having to think of that woman.

“Am i now? It’s you who wants me like this.” She laughed, throwing her head back in the motion. Elegant column of her neck now easy to see, showing purple and red marks similar to those from claws. “You thought I would not know, you thought you could just run away like a scared little child. Now tell me, how long were you planning this o-or maybe it was your father’s plan from the beginning.”

“I didn’t know about it, I didn’t even apply to any of the schools and you are the one that should know that.” toxicity leaked from your voice in big streams, but it was something that u could not stop at that moment. She was doing it again, acting crazy and psycho making everyone question why she wasnt getting hospital help yet.

“So you are saying that it’s my fault? You were supposed to care for me, for your ill mother, not that you are useful for anything else. How could you even think of disappearing, going to school so far away and leaving me to rot here myself like you were not meant to end like this too!”

Snatching your hand you looked at the woman once again, tears in eyes making you look fragile. Her own body looking weak, nearly dead limbs hanging from a malnourished body, showing the world wrack of a woman she was. Complexion ill looking, but what was not in her case, pale looking with green, purple and blue spots everywhere the skin was shown.

“Why are you being so shocked? Don’t tell me you thought you were going to leave someday.” Her laugh made you grit your teeth, jaw starting to hurt from the tension you were keeping. “Once again you showed how foolish you are, just like your father, just like that scumbag.”

“You are insane.”

“That we already know, so why don’t you come back to your room and start preparing for tomorrow. I want to eat a really nice breakfast next morning and maybe then after we can talk about what job you are going to have to make a living for us.”

And that was your sign to go, not looking back at the sick smirk on your mother mouth momocking your whole being. Step by step you saw the old stairs, in some place missing the color. Your room was nothing special, at least that what people said, for you it was some type of heaven. Peace that you could only catch while being there, laying on your old bed while looking at the dull ceiling.

Closing the door, you exchaled a heavy breath, sliding down on the flat surface of the door. Eyes closed like you have always done after an intense situation, today was not an exception to that.

Asking yourself what just happened, how and why. Unconsciously you looked at the letter beside you, laying so weirdly on the piece of not carpeted floor. The big fault in a little piece of paper. It was funny how this thing made such a bad influence on your life just by arriving on your doorstep.

The fact that the only person you could compare yourself to now is a story character of the name Harry was nearly not as funny as it sounded. However how u can explain getting a letter from a prestigious school you for sure did not apply or even looked up not even thinking about getting a scholarship to having a chance to think about it.

By any chance you were not stupid, but your ambitions flew away with another day in this shit hole you called home. Main reason being your own mother, which not only made it clear but for sure would kill you faster than let you leave.

You took the letter, keeping it in your hand like some unknown object you have never seen before. The texture itself is weird, making you shiver in some way. Big letter stood on the black piece of paper meaning only one thing.

Oh yes, that definitely was unsetting.

You remember clearly the first time you read the words that were put in this blank envelope. Big chance waiting for you, welcoming you with big arms and assuring you that you have nothing to be scared of.

And maybe those words were the one that brought you to that situation. It was not even three hours after the fight with your mother. Sun long down now moon shining on your pale face. Packing everything you tried to be quiet and quick hoping that your mother again ate too much of those big pills.

Big bag now laying down on your bed with a small letter beside it looking as innocent as before. You were not even seventeen making decisions that would cost you more then you can imagine. Living hell with possibility of going to another but in that moment nothing mattered like running away from old monsters.

Floor cracked under your feet even thought you were considered as a lightweight. How could you not be so malnourished when your mother forced you to teach yourself how to cook, never letting you eat before her. You tried to reason her moods or harsh behaviour to you but no matter how many times you tried it always ended in another reason why your life was just simply sad.

Running away was a good decision. You tried to say it so many times to actually believe in those empty words. The truth was that you were an innocent little child, not even a full adult that has never tasted a social life or had a friend.

“It will be alright.” Taste on your tongue after saying this a little sour with a heavy backpack danglin on your right arm. One step and then another, you touched the cold handle of your white doors. It was the first move to make and probably one of the hardest.

Bag on your arm is even more heavy making you realise what is happening. Silent breath flowed past your lips preparing you for your next step.

You pushed it closing it carefully while hoping that the oldish touch to the wood wont make an appearance in a loud noise. Silly smile now seen on your face with big relief in the back of your mind. The hardest part was just before you.

Your mothers room, not fully closed - like always, she needed to make sure nobody would come uninvited. It was just one of her weird characteristics that came with such a messed up mental health.

Small noise came out under your feet, not loud enough to wake up the woman next door but audible enough to be heard from closer.

Photos all around you telling you that you were getting near the main door. Little pictures with you inside faded from ears of hanging, making you stop for a while.

Smooth glass now under your fingers as you touch a specific photo. You and your mother being in the green garden of your grandmas. Happy vibe and pretty smiles now nearly unbelievable to witness on either of faces. It hurted or maybe it was just the adrenaline escaping from a sudden stop.

Oh how the sweet monet was quickly destroyed by the harsh noise from one of the rooms, and you exactly know which one. Loud thud rang out in the quietness of the house, making the silence even more noticable. Your breath escaped leaving you in a big ball of nerves and anxiety.

One...two...three

Silence like the one before big storms but maybe just this time it was not that. You couldn't withdraw now, you were too far and too close to the feeling of freeness. So you did the only thing that came to your mind.

Catching a sliding backpack, you turned to the door in front of you, knowing that just behind them is waiting something so much bigger than your old mother. How stupid for you to not rethink your decision, and believing your innocent mind that its just a good thing, better life that could only make you happier.

So you did it, you took the heavy steps that echoed in the narrow corridor. Light breeze touched your face, and just like the first time you gasped at the feeling. Door closing not that gently as you started running as fast as you could.

Silly smile now on your face with a bouncing bag on your shoulders keeping you on the hard ground. It was feeling similar to the first sight of the ocean or the first taste of sweet ice cream on a hot summery morning. You were in ecstasy choked by the overwhelming emotions.

And maybe because of that you were completely unaware of the danger that waited for you on that chilly night. How could you think about it when everything seemed so distracting almost as you were dreaming and in that moment you probably were closer to believing in this being a slumber.

So as you sat on the cold bench of one of the parks near your home, realization finally came silencing your beating heart. Colder weather now felt more real, as it bit your rosy cheeks. You shivered, keeping your backpack on your lap, trying to hide behind it from a chilly wind that seemed like it came from every side.

Being alone hit you like a truck and the little noises of the night didn't help your rising nerver. You started to lose your breath, feeling your tears sliding down your numb cheeks. It was terrifying now with the knowledge of your wellbeing and adrenaline wearing off with every second.

“Mom?” A silent plea that came out of your lips with shakiness that was more than noticeable. You didn't know why you said that, but the woman was probably the only person you knew. Such a sad truth that you needed to understand. You were alone now, and with that thought a more shameless sobs left your mouth with an occasional whimper.

You were sure you were going to end up dead. That you won't see the new sunset with how your body shivered. Not knowing how life worked or what is bad or good you were a little lamb that waited for hungry wolves to eat her whole.

And maybe one of those predators just saw his next meal. Long strides brought him just in front of you. Your sobs are too loud to make you hear his boots coming closer and closer. His breath just centimeters away from your head, brushing your hair like the not forgotten wind.

“Sweetheart?” It was a calming voice, not too deep but definitely belonging to a grown man. Your posture momentaly stiffened, as your closed eyes now looked at the big leather shoes before you. Your whole body is not moving, only shivering because of the chilly weather and light clothes. It was funny how suddenly you have forgotten about being alone, now wanting just this, wishing for all of this to be a big nightmare.

A deep sight left man's lips reminding you about the realness of the whole situation. You could not move, completely scared, your fingers clutched the bad praying for something to happen. The plan to just act like you were not there, ignoring the man fastly ended, when he sighted once again and crouched just to your eye level.

Deep brown eyes, looking at you with nothing but softness. If you didn’t know better you would say the man looked as if he knew you, cared and was in big relief finding you. But your mother's words echoed in your head, making you believe that every man walking on this planet is bad.

“What are you doing here sweetheart?” Once more this deep voice pierced you. Your mouth opens to answer, deeply knowing that nothing will come out. You just looked in his dark eyes, wishing that maybe he will be the one who can read minds. His eyes now on you, more concerned than before, observing your shivering body.

He was tall and broad for sure, towering over your figure surprisingly even while crouching down. His huge shoulders covered by a creamy coat which now was getting dirty by laying down on a pavement, as it partly hid his expensive looking boots.

Too distracted you didn't notice his hand coming to touch your red cheek, now gently stroking the redness of your skin.

“What a poor soul, so cold and left alone without a coat. Tell me sweetheart would you come and let me warm you a little?”

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