#and he knew that meant aqua

[navybrat817]

In a Red Dress

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female Reader

Summary: Bucky has to debrief after a mission, so you decide to stop in for a visit. In a red dress.

Word Count: Over 3k

Warnings: Established relationship, explicit sexual content, unprotected vaginal sex, possessive behavior, dirty talk, flirting, teasing, slight feels (it's me, okay?), Bucky Barnes (he's a warning, okay?).

A/N: Happy FriYAY! I started this in January for @tumblin-theworldaway and finally finished it today. Love you, Aqua! I hope you can relax soon. Could be considered a follow up to With a Bang. ❤️ Not beta read and written on my phone, so any and all mistakes are my own. Please follow @navybrat817-sideblog for new fics and notifications. Comments, reblogs, feedback are loved and appreciated!

Your heels clicked along the floor as you left the elevator, reminding yourself for the umpteenth time that it wasn't Bucky’s fault that his team extended their mission for another day. Unforeseen circumstances were to blame, completely out of his control. You also couldn't hold it against him that he had to debrief after he messaged you that he arrived back home safely and unharmed. It was part of the job. Still, you missed him and wanted a bit of attention.

Which was why you showed up at S.H.I.E.L.D. in a silky red dress and Bucky’s dog tags under your coat. No bra, no panties. Which he realized when you walked into the conference room, unannounced, and removed your coat.

It was fun to put the fire in his steel eyes.

“Welcome home, Bucky,” you smiled as the room went silent. “Don’t mind me. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Your burly boyfriend was out of his seat and didn't tear his gaze away from you, the tension thick as you tossed the coat away. Today was a good day for your self confidence. You wore it like a second skin, feeling as beautiful on the outside as you did inside. You knew you looked good enough to eat and you wanted him to devour you.

And as much as you loved him in his black shirt and tactical pants, it hid the wall of muscle you wanted to trace with your hands and tongue.

“Hey, baby. Fancy seeing you here,” he said, his eyes dropping to your chest. Your nipples hardened against the fabric and you wished he’d latch his mouth to them. “And speaking of home, I thought I was going to meet you there.”

Your shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I got impatient since you were late. Plus I wanted to show you my dress,” you said, doing a happy twirl. It was reminiscent of New Years. The soft fabric hugged your body tight like your black dress did, but this one left little to the imagination. “What do you think?”

Steve, ever the good friend, averted his gaze, but a scowl crossed Bucky’s handsome face when you both realized that other agents looked your way. You hadn't expected to be the center of attention for anyone else, but it didn't matter to you if others looked. Why would you want them when Bucky had you under his spell?

At least they were smart enough to look away when Bucky’s metal hand clenched.

“Well? Do you like it? I thought the dog tags were a nice touch,” you added, running a finger along them when he remained silent. “They really do go well with everything.”

“Come here,” he said, beckoning you with a metal finger. You knew he meant business when he didn't use his dominant hand. “Now.”

You maintained an aura of innocence as you walked toward him, watching him his lips as your hips swayed.

“I can see your nipples through your dress,” he said low enough for just the two of you, but poor Steve with his enhanced hearing likely picked up on it. “And I’m pretty sure I didn’t give you permission to wear a dress like that in front of other guys.”

Any other guy who said that to you would've been smacked, but hearing it from him only made your eyes fill with amusement as you tilted your head. “I didn’t realize I needed your permission to wear this, Sergeant.”

“Baby,” he whispered. You knew what calling him by his rank did to him.

“I should be able to wear what I want and when I want to. We both know that,” you continued, sliding your finger down his chest instead of poking it like he expected. “But you have my permission to break someone's fingers if they try to touch what belongs to you. Because I do belong to you.”

Your declaration fueled the fire within. There was no hesitation on your part. No doubt. And after being apart for a short time, you wanted him to hear you say you were his girl.

“Yeah, you do. You’re mine,” he said with a raspy touch of confidence that would’ve soaked your panties had you been wearing any. “And I’m all yours, but I still need to debrief.”

You huffed, but the conviction in his tone was admirable. “Fine. I’ll just wait here,” you said when he frowned. Both of you knew the classified information wasn’t meant for your ears, yet no one spoke up for you to leave. Were they afraid of pissing your boyfriend off? “You know, I really do love that grumpy look of yours. It gets me so wet.”

Bucky’s cheek twitched when one of the men coughed. “You're being a fucking tease.”

“Is it teasing if I let you have me?” You asked, tapping your chin. “Teasing you would be letting you go to bed with blue balls.”

Wordlessly, he lifted a hand and clutched the dog tags. He yanked on them hard enough to move you closer, his eyes not leaving yours when you gasped and shivered from the heat-filled look. You considered it a win that you didn’t collapse. Because he was going to destroy you and you’d love every second of it.

“Be very careful what comes out of your mouth next, baby,” he warned.

You smiled, more than ready to give him one more push. “I’m more interested in what’s supposed to go inside my mouth.”

His nostrils flared when you opened your mouth and showed him your tongue and throat. He put a hand on the back of your neck and tilted your head back, lightly nipping at your skin below your jaw. “I should put you on your knees and fuck your throat in front of everyone. Or put you over my knee and spank you ‘til you squirm. Show ‘em that you really are mine.”

You giggled, a soft and tempting sound. “Why fuck my throat when my pussy is nice and wet for you?”

“Gentlemen. I think the Bravo Conference Room is available. Let’s finish this up there,” Steve announced, his chair scraping against the floor and pulling you out of your spell. “Told you that you should’ve just gone home, jerk.”

“Fuck off, punk,” Bucky said, keeping a firm hand on you so you couldn’t look at any of the men filing out. The smirk he gave you was nothing short of predatory once the door clicked shut, leaving the two of you alone. “Since you need my cock so badly that you can’t wait until I get home, bend over that table and let me give it to you.”

Your giggle quickly died in your throat when you realized he was serious. “You’ve never fucked me in one of the debriefing rooms. Someone could walk in,” you reminded him.

Yeah, you showed up wearing what you did. Yeah, you teased him. But it was all in good fun. He wouldn’t actually fuck you on the table.

Right?

Your cheeks grew hot at the next words out of his mouth. “You think I give a shit about if someone walks in?”

He let go of your neck and grabbed your wrist, carefully dragging you to the table. You loved every part of him, but something about his unashamed want of you made your heart soar. Maybe it was because of how much he healed and allowed himself to have a piece of happiness. That some part of him from his past, the man he used to be, surfaced and blended in with who he was now.

Heaven sent and survived the depths of Hell.

“Now, I should spank your ass raw for this little stunt you pulled. Letting them see you in this dress,” he said without any real threat behind his words. “But I won’t do that until we’re home.”

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes,” you smiled, expecting him to bend you over. But he brought a hand to your cheek instead. “Bucky?”

His gaze moved to your lips as he murmured, “Not fucking you until I kiss you.”

His mouth met yours not in a frenzy, but with a smile. The kind that told you how happy he was to be back with you. It wasn’t long before he shifted, the hand on your cheek slipping to your chin so he could deepen it. The soft slip of his tongue ignited your entire body, feeling his heart beat faster as you brought a hand to his chest. A reminder that he was alive, home, and loved you.

You loved him, too.

Your eyes stayed shut for a few seconds after he pulled away. “Missed you, Bucky,” you whispered.

“Missed you, too,” he said, his voice rougher than before. “Now bend over.”

The air rushed from your lungs at the switch from want to tenderness to need, your chest pressed against the table as he pushed your dress. Part of you wondered if he would’ve made good on his threat and fuck you in front of the other agents. He liked to toe the line of wanting to show others you were his and not wanting them to see intimate parts of you.

Which made you wonder what he’d do if someone walked in. He said he didn’t give a shit, but would he stop and try to cover your body with his own? Or would he keep fucking you?

You wouldn't mind either way.

“Spread ‘em,” he ordered, which you immediately obeyed. The low whistle made you shut your eyes before he dragged a finger along your exposed slit. “Didn’t even bother covering your pretty pussy with underwear. Probably best since you would’ve ruined them with how wet you are.”

“You’ve ruined all of my panties, Bucky,” you said, the distinct sound of his belt buckle and pants zipper making you moan. “And I’m ready for you to fuck me.”

“Yeah? Your pussy ready to stretch around my cock?” He asked, making you shriek when he unexpectedly brought his flesh hand down hard on your ass. He only used the metal when you were in real trouble. “You better not have fucked yourself with a toy before you got here.”

“I didn’t! I haven’t even touched myself,” you promised before he stretched over your back. “I just need you in me.”

“That’s what I like to hear. And though you interrupted my debriefing and I may need to stab a teammate or two, you’re still my good girl. And good girls deserve rewards,” he growled in your ear, nipping it for good measure as you moaned. The head of his cock teased your entrance, your core clenching in anticipation. “I’ll fuck you and you’ll come all over me, just like you want and just like I need. And you’ll take it ‘til I’m done with you.”

You reveled in being his good girl, even when you were bad. How no one else could take his cock the way you could. How he made you soak your sheets day and night with your essence because being fucked by Bucky Barnes made you gush like a geyser. It was obscene.

“I’m your good girl and I’ll take everything you give me,” you said sweetly, knowing he’d fuck you whether you said it or not. “So let my pussy welcome your cock home, please?”

The soft kiss to your neck was almost like an apology before he pushed into you, both of you moaning. He’d check later to make sure you weren’t sore since he didn’t stretch you at all, but the slight ache when he bottomed out always bordered more on pleasure than pain. The overwhelming sensations of him inside you made your eyes roll back and he hadn’t even started thrusting.

“So fucking warm. And wet,” he grunted in your ear when he finally moved, his pants rubbing against your bare thighs. “Jesus fuck, you’re soaking me.”

Bucky robbed you of your breath when he leaned up and gripped your hips, hammering into you. You tried to grip the table, but all you could do was let him pull you back and forth. He was relentless like this, powerful, dominant. Making you take it, just like he said you would. Funny how minutes ago you were the one confidently teasing him and now you were a whining, needy mess. All because his cock shut your brain off.

You didn’t need to think like this anyway. You could be his doll, just for him to play with and love. In your pretty red dress or nothing at all.

“Harder, Sergeant,” you begged, your moans spurring him on.

“Not hard enough for you? Needy little thing,” he groaned, the sound of him burying himself inside you over and over echoing in your ears. “Missed this cunt. Missed you.”

Your pussy gripped him tight, the heady bliss making your vision blur. “Missed you. M… Missed your cock,” you slurred.

He chuckled, not slowing his pace as he leaned back down to tickle your cheek with his scruff. “So fucking cute when you get drunk on my cock.”

You wondered some days where he learned to talk dirty before you remembered that you had a large hand in that. He loved telling you how greedy your pussy made him. How he loved watching his spend slide out of you so he could fuck it back in. How he’s shocked some days that he can fit inside you, so he must’ve turned you into a perfect cocksleeve.

His cock made your mind numb, but your pussy made him run his mouth.

“Gonna make you sit on it when we get home. Fuck, gonna make you ruin the sheets when I fuck you into the mattress,” he rambled, making you moan louder. You didn’t care who heard. Let them hear what he did to you. What he turned you into: his needy slut. “Tell me you want it.”

“I want it,” you moaned, his thrusts pushing your breasts harder against the table, your nipples hard and aching for him to touch them. He would later. You could wait. But you couldn’t wait to fall over the precipice. “‘M gonna come.”

“Do it. Won’t stop you,” he encouraged. He no doubt felt how close you were with how you clenched around him, your back starting to arch. “C’mon, baby. Come all over me.”

Your eyes fluttered as your body tensed, your walls pulsing around him your orgasm surged like a tidal wave. The ripples tore through you, ebbing and flowing as you moaned his name. If you could drown in pleasure, you’d want his name to be the last word that spilled from your lips.

“That’s my girl,” he praised as your limbs went lax.

You throbbed around him until he pulled out, making you whimper since he didn't come. You wanted him to finish inside you. He had you on your back with your legs spread wide before you could beg for it, keeping your dress up as he speared you once again. He thrust fast, needing his release just as badly as you needed yours.

“Need to see your face when you milk my cock,” he grunted, licking his thumb and bringing it to your clit. You whined, jerking underneath him as he rubbed the swollen nub. “Oh, stay still. You can give me one more.”

You almost denied him before you felt the coil tighten within you again. You never thought you could have back-to-back orgasms until you started sleeping with him. But it shouldn’t have surprised you. He played you like his favorite instrument and you were his good girl.

You could give him one more.

“Come with me,” you panted, staring into his darkened eyes as his face twisted in ecstasy only you could provide him. “Please.”

He couldn’t resist that last bit of begging.

The waves crashed again, adding to your first high, as his mouth opened in a groan, filling you in hot spurts. Watching him tip over the edge was a sight to behold, his cheeks tinged as his hips stilled and both of you tried to catch your breath. He laid across you after a moment, the weight of him making you sigh.

“Welcome back,” you smiled as your breathing evened out.

He stayed inside you as he brushed his lips against yours. You were going to make a mess all over the table when he pulled out, but it was worth any grief either of you got. “Good to be back,” he whispered, his hand on your cheek again in a tender display as his eyes scanned your face. “So beautiful.”

“Me fucked out or the dress?” You smiled.

“Both,” he smiled back, your face warm.

“Thank you,” you breathed, your heart still racing fast. You suddenly wished you were in bed so he could properly hold you. But he’d have you home soon enough for that. “Hope I didn't get you into any trouble,” you added. That was the last thing you wanted to do.

“Steve gets it,” he assured you, briefly closing his eyes when you brushed your fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry we got back late. He’s right. I should've just gone right home.”

Your heart clenched a little at that. Missions were important and not easy on either of you, but it was his job. “It’s okay. I’m just glad you made it home safely,” you said, arching your back. The table wasn't exactly comfortable, but you were too fucked out to care.

You also didn't want to be apart from him since he was back.

He wrapped an arm underneath you to ease some of your strain. “Still teased me by showing up like this. I might fuck your throat and put you over my knee tonight,” he groaned, squeezing a breast through your dress before he straightened out the dog tags. “But then I’m going to hold you after and not let go.”

You smiled, looking forward to it. “Yes, Sergeant.”

And you'd be sure to thank Steve later for clearing out the room so you could welcome your man home.

Nothing to see here, lovelies. Go about your business! Hehe. 😇 Love and thanks for reading! ❤️

Masterlist ⚓ Bucky Barnes Masterlist ⚓ Ko-Fi

[takusan-no-ai]

The Good StepFather

PAIRING: Aqua/Ruby x Male Reader (Familia) (Fluff)

SUMMARY: (Y/N) is the boyfriend of Ai, and stepfather to Aqua and Ruby.

As an infant Aqua knew how much you meant to Ai. You encouraged her to follow her dreams of being a mother and an idol. And to make that possible you helped take care of them. You treated them delicately despite not even being related. It brought him back to his relationship with his relatives, and for a short period, Aqua treated you coldly; it was a measure taken to protect himself.

Aqua knew you were curious as to how knowledgeable he was for his age. But he appreciated that you still treated him like a kid. The true embodiment of a father, you didn’t want to see a kid grow up too fast. Even though Aqua wasn’t particularly moved by your efforts, it was still a kind gesture nonetheless.

He was fairly pleased at the interest you took in his hobbies. You encouraged him to do whatever he wanted, whether that was acting, behind the scenes work, or even being a surgeon. And you always tried to convince Aqua into doing father-son activities; sports, gaming, fishing, ect. After a while even Aqua had to admit it: he really liked you and that you would be there for Ai.

Aqua knew he could trust you from the day when you protected Ai from that stalker. It was thanks to that event that he even bothered opening up to you. Aqua and Ruby both trusted you to protect her whenever they weren’t there. And so, they confessed their origins of reincarnation.

Ruby was fairly on guard around you as an infant. Ai was HER idol and now her mother; not just anybody should have the honor to be her boyfriend. She wasn’t afraid to unabashedly simp for her mother though. Even with those walls she built up, they immediately crumbled when Ruby realized you were also a big Ai Hoshino fan.

Growing up was tough for Ruby. Being stuck in a hospital bed without her parents, even as she was dying, left her traumatized. She couldn’t handle falling down, fearing the worst. Ai was there to support her, but you were also there; her number one fan. “I’m so lucky to be the dad of an adorable idol”, glow sticks already made, coming to every single one of her practice sessions. Your commitment meant a lot to her.

Ruby had a whole bunch of hobbies, many of which were Ai’s. You made the effort of entertaining her past times: singing contest, dancing to Just Dance, dress up, and allowing her try out new makeup on you. Her favorite secret hobby however was shipping you and Ai; she’s still pestering you two to get married already!

Ruby already had an affection for you. In both of her lives you’ve been even better than her actual father. And she knew there was no going back on her trust in you on that day you protected Ai from her stalker. Since then Ruby made a promise to herself: if anything ever happened to you or Ai, she’d seek revenge on the person responsible. No matter what.

- Fin

[reilliane]

Septem (iii) ⊱⊰ Genshin!Various

✤ she/her - ✤ words: 3.8k

[ PART ONE ] [ PART TWO ]

✤ An Academy built to hone and prepare gods-to-be and blessed mortals for the world beyond — isn't it a dream come true, when a blank Vision greets you in invitation? ✤ News of your enrollment in Septem Academy reaches students who were dispatched for on-field training and expeditions. They are more than eager to return.

✤ neuvilette, wriothesley, freminet, lyney, gaming

a/n: for this part, mc is a part of hearth 'null'

It wasn't unheard of that there were students on official leave from the Academy, a handful of them coming from on-field training and expeditions [according to news/gossip central Kaveh and Childe].

It was the women that returned first, their new faces expressing surprise at the arrival of another 'Null' in their academy. They were all well acquainted compared to most, which relieved you. The rivalry in the Academy was no joke, so having more 'I-don't-have-time-for-competitions' ladies was a breath of fresh air.

You also wondered just how many students there were at Septem, it appeared like there were more than fifty or so—but then again, there really only was Septem that catered to people with elemental affinities.

You're still learning the ropes of being attuned to all seven elements by the time your first official semester met its curtain fall, right when the later group of men arrived. They were friendly, the whole lot of them, and compared to most of the men you've come to know who thrive in Hearth rivalries and competitions, everything was just a passing source of amusement to them.

It was rather disconcerting—but hey, so long as they were friendly, right?

— Neuvilette

Lo and behold, Hydro's Hearthleader in the very flesh.

A long, long time ago, according to accounts of the Hearthleaders, Hydro's authority had complications that led to the title being passed on to one after the other. Rumors even mentioned fraudulence and 'false' titles, who knew it had such a controversy?

Nevertheless, the past was the past, and all had been settled now. Kokomi mentioned that the issue was resolved a term before you arrived at the Academy, what are the odds!

Now, being the newest face around Septem meant being polite, so after your Potioneering class and after scrubbing away the residue of Lampgrass dew from your vest, you made a beeline to welcome the returning students along with Lumine and Aether.

Hydro's Hearthleader wasn't there, however, having reported to the Headmaster as soon as he arrived. Far from being chagrined, you make formal introductions with everyone else after an embarrassing trip down the stairs.

Your first official meeting with the one and only was during the Hearthleader's Assembly, a time of discussion over the next events, competitions, charity programs, festivals, and the whole shebang that takes place at the start of each semester.

Since there's no Hearthleader for the Nulls, Aether and Lumine take turns in attending; and since your enrollment, this happened to be your first Assembly.

Familiar faces you've gotten to know calmed your nerves, being in good standing with everyone else but that man who stared you down with inquisitive eyes.

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss [Name]. I am Neuvilette, Hearthleader of Hydro, I've heard wonders about you, and I look forward to your presence in the Academy. Should you be in need of any assistance, or have been wronged by anyone, I implore you to seek me.”

Long silver hair with streaks of aqua, a passive expression on his features, a walking cane that screamed luxury, and a cloak that billowed like the current—if you thought Ayato had an imposing aura as Hearthmaster, then you were terribly wrong.

Hearthleader Neuvilette appeared to be a man of a few words, his gaze oft inexplicable as he firmly shook your hand after giving it a thoughtful look. You thought you were a moment away from interrogation, but he only turned your hand over and kissed its back. Wha-?

You could manifest a question/exclamation mark out of your head at the gesture, Hearth Hydro's chivalry flying off the charts and rendering you speechless. Ayato, he did it with some sort of 'gentleman cunning' if that was even a word pair, Xingqiu did it out of sincerity, Childe was more playful with it, and Dottore—well, that man was peculiar. [He was misplaced and transferred to a different Hearth.]

You didn't expect this tall, handsome, intimidating Hearthleader to do the same. But then again, with a position like his, he was meant to embody what his Hearth represented, right? You shouldn't have been so shocked.

Throughout the Assembly, however, the awe remained. He even his tea, saying it was only right to extend good tidings to the newest student in Septem. He barely smiled, but his eyes were—well, they were softer than you realized.

He even apologized on behalf of his Hearthmates 'in case they did anything to offend you', which got you shaking your head wildly and responding that they were most courteous. Childe was more of a playful menace, but you omitted that part. And ooooh boy, with the subtly proud look he wore on his face brought about by your answer, you didn't dare say anything about Childe's flirtations.

Huh! Perhaps the man wasn't so bad after all. In fact, he was mellow. You realized that the air around him and Zhongli was a little tense though, and not in the good sense. Thankfully, they were composed and tolerant of one another—but you couldn't shake off the feeling that they had issues running deeply that they didn't want to address. At least not of late. Oh well.

The long-standing tradition of Hearth Hydro's invitation for tea parties ensued. With their Hearthleader back in their ranks alongside other returning students, the long winding table in their great hall was finally complete. Insert a couple of chairs for you—and Aether and Lumine whenever they join in—and everything was solid.

Hearthleader Neuvilette's return also had a significant impact on the rest of the Hearths, mainly Hearth Dendro's residents... and particularly Kaveh, who showed a bit more restraint when contending with Childe. Their rivalries didn't disperse into thin air, no, but it became a tad 'quieter'. That alone was quite alarming, but the ladies in Hearth Hydro said that it was frankly normal; with Neuvilette back in the picture, the Student Council's Iudex was basically in his seat again.

No wonder everyone's rowdiness suddenly got tamer.

Being a Hearthleader and the Iudex—practically accounting for as the Head of the Student Council—commanded authority. You heard that it was previously Zhongli, but he has long since stepped down. While Zhongli managed with more order along with lax but well-managed funding for events and programs, Neuvilette was more of an adjudicator, valuing justice and equality.

Reading the records of his just governance made you gulp. Really? That same guy who personally pulled your chair for you to sit? Who permits you to have the first sip of tea during his tea party even when his Hearthmades say that he's never done that before?

It was common courtesy! Common courtesy, yes!

“Since Hearthleader came back, those Dendro know-it-alls can barely do anything during our debates during Incantations class, hah!” “Are you implying that you've both gone overboard with your Incantations when I was absent, Childe?” “Wha- hey now, I didn't mean it like that... Hearthmaster was with me the whole time.” “You don't want to tempt our Hearthleader, Ajax. Do you recall the last time you provoked them? We had to disturb Sigewinne from her shift in the infirmary.” “You speak as if you weren't a part of it, Hearthmaster.” “Now, where'd you get that idea, lady Mona?” “Well, the past is the past. Whatever happened, I'm certain you were all responsible enough to handle the consequences. Let us begin the tea party—.. where is lady Furina?” “I believe lady Barbara was last with her.” “Oh! I, um- I have slipped up; I accidentally told her that since she wasn't here for the Theater Program that was being planned for the public, Hearth Pyro had to take the spot. I think she's contending for the main role...” Ding! “Was that yours, lady Kokomi?” “Yes, I just received a message from Furina.. she says to come and help her because the casting director put her on a list, and the temporary manager for the Theater is Madame Arlecchino...” “... This tea party is paused.”

— Wriothesley, Freminet

You did not want to admit it nor did you want to condemn the sweet guy, but perhaps lounging about Hearth Pyro's dorm had Bennett's catastrophic bad luck rubbing off on you.

Recently, you had a bout of stumbling into unfavorable circumstances that inevitably led to tons of false accusations. Of course, your innocence was easily proven given you had alibis and witnesses. But this time- ohoho, no.

It had been a relatively nice afterlunch and you were just about to head into the library for an arranged study group with Candace and the rest of Hearth Hydro's ladies when you chanced upon a waddling mechanical.. penguin? It had cute tiny gears for eyes and a winding key attached to its back.

You would coo—but that was if it didn't have a sword and buckler on and was terrorizing a frantic Itto and Gorou out of Ingenuity class. Thinking quickly on your feet, you cast a minor Cryo spell that froze the penguin's mechanical feet so it couldn't continue chasing after its victims. Then, you moved to pry the sword and buckler—but it was at this exact time that a cough came from the back.

Heizou and another student who looked far gruffer than expected looked on with equal parts amusement and disbelief. You only saw the latter in passing since he was a part of the last returning batch of students, but he had sped away to some office before you could get to him that day.

You did not think this would be how you'd officially meet him!

“Um.. good afternoon.” great, what a way to imply that you were not the perpetrator of chaos nor the inventor of a killing machine.

“Good afternoon, indeed.” Heizou mused, and the man beside him clicked his tongue with a shake of his head.

“I know you, miss [Name]. I need you to come with me though,”

There was a sound of metallic clinking and—hold on, were those handcuffs?!

“We can discuss this situation in a civilized manner in my office, yeah?”

Although Heizou promised that he'd do his best to investigate the situation with Cyno since you weren't the kind of person to have an incentive to end someone's life, you were far too restless sitting in what you could only assume was some kind of interrogation room.

What on Teyvat—the fact that such a place even existed was beyond you! What were the odds that this location was underneath the Academy? It felt like descending into a completely different environment; what with all the machines and metal that gave off a steampunk feel.

The man in front of you was fixing his cufflinks, unbothered by your presence. Wriothesley was his name, part of Hearth Cryo, and the Warden of the Student Council. Specifically the head of SC's Discipline Committee.

Septem's higher-ups loved designating lots of managerial roles to their students, huh? But well, you understood why; Vision-holders were preconceived to take on a majority of roles in their nations' government once they graduate, so this was some kind of field training for them!

.. Why did he have to go the extra mile and carry some handcuffs, though? And can a man look so stern and give off such a relaxed vibe? Somehow, he reminded you of a Hearthleader you met just recently.

Surprisingly, when the talk began, Wriothesley reassured that he wouldn't harm you—the handcuffs were just there to make sure you wouldn't be doing the harming. It was funny, you don't think you could even make a dent in his muscular—yeah...

He was also very accommodating?? Serving you tea and biscuits as if you weren't bound and were the primary suspect of a potential campus homicide. It wasn't true, of course, but still; if there were actual bad people that found themselves underneath the Academy, was he always this cordial?

Ah, well, he did say he liked things civilized. When Heizou and Cyno—who joined in on the investigation—entered the room and clarified that you were, in fact, innocent, Wriothesley was quick to offer his apologies... even sliding a few coupons he whispered gave a huge discount in Fontaine's restaurants.

“I certainly do apologize. I had to take precautionary measures. It eases me that Neuvilette's insight was true, though; you do come off as a good woman that likes to behave.”

ASDFGHJKL?? Boy, why was he smiling?

“I'm so sorry I dragged you into my mess... I shouldn't have left Thelxie alone when he was already malfunctioning. I ran off to get the tools I needed, but.. huh? You forgive me?”

A shy and downcasted student distracted you from Wriothesley's statement, and your attention was thrown off. The creator of the dangerous penguin machine was a guy who didn't even look to have any malicious intent. It was a misunderstanding with a dash of improper management and impairment.

He was carrying the recently tinkered penguin in his arms, which was free from its weapon and shield, and now that it was harmless, it looked cute.

The student shyly introduced himself as Freminet, and you recognized him as one of the boys that stood at the far back of the group when they returned a few weeks ago, willing himself to be invisible. He was Lyney's younger brother if you weren't mistaken. It was so amazing how siblings could be so vastly different in personalities.

Freminet was kind enough—or perhaps he did it because he was kicking himself over his blunder—to escort you out of the 'Fortress', leading the way back to the upper levels and to the ground floor of the Academy. He didn't say a word the entire while.

When all was over, he bowed his head and sped off. Feeling sorry for him, you didn't give chase. The guy felt so bad, you couldn't even be mad for today's fortune.

But since that day, little trinkets would appear on your desk during Ingenuity class. You never got to see who left them there, but judging by the waddling mechanical penguin you spotted trying to escape the door one day... you had a feeling you knew who it came from.

Wriothesley had a knack for 'apprehending' misfits, and you only later learned that there was an apparent reason for his calculated 'hunts'. Hearth Cryo, in their weekly gatherings bundled around the fireplace, liked to chat about a lot of things going on in the Academy.

They didn't mean anything bad, really, but the Hearthmembers were keen on observing, opting out of any outward actions unless the situation required their intervention. So of course, the only outlet for such a bundle of news—read: 'innocent' gossip—was during their get-togethers.

It was a den of information—and daresay, you wouldn't forget the time you were invited for a sleep-over and got a firsthand experience of Hearth Cryo's scary number of observations.

You reminded yourself not to look stupid whenever any of them were nearby.

“The windows are broken in Elementals Class again, and it had just been repaired last week... it gets tiresome to look out for the perpetrator... I often fall asleep..” “Elementals... supernatural entities can harm physical entities, so perhaps-?” “I don't think ghosts are the issue, Chongyun. But I do have an idea... hm, do you recall that bottle we saw underneath the table, Charlotte?” “Yes, yes, sir Kaeya! I took a photo of the room for documentation to send to the Student Council. It was a wine bottle!” “Oh.. I also saw a wine bottle tucked in one of the drawers in Ingenuity Class.” “Ingenuity Class? Duly noted, Freminet.” “Alcohol consumption is forbidden on school grounds so that clearly violates one of the terms in the student handbook.” “Such irresponsibility.. not to mention the lack of accountability. Vengeance will come upon them, surely. Tsk. Are rules not being reinforced enough?” “Precisely, miss Ganyu, Eula. That is why it is only right to search for said students and have them come in for a little questioning, perhaps also give them a due punishment. It's only right that we stand by the given order.” “.. That wouldn't be easy, right? There are so many s-students in Septem, and this has already been going on for so long..” “Yes, but it isn't impossible, Mika, after all..” “Wait, hold on, has anyone seen Rosaria?” “Oh, miss Ayaka, worry not. She's scoping out the potential rulebreakers as we speak.”

— Lyney, Gaming

You remembered the day you rushed out of Potioneering class to greet the returning students—and now that you're actually going down memory lane, your attempt at decorum was met half-heartedly midway. By the time you arrive at the front gates, most of them have already gone off to their own agendas.

The only ones there were a pair of boys that goofed around with one another, and another shy-looking one with a quiet girl. It was such an embarrassing introduction, really. In your delight, you may have hurried down the steps a little too fast... and ended up tripping and stumbling on your way down.

Your shriek took their attention, and the guy nearest to the stairs was quick enough to catch you.

Safe to say, you went back to your dorm that day unable to talk to Aether and Lumine, opting to flop onto your bed, red face first.

Since then, meeting those boys would always trigger that moment in your head and you'd scramble or shy away against your better judgment. It took a long while before you were able to talk to them without feeling like you wanted to throw yourself out the window.

Before that instance, they took it upon themselves to approach—sometimes corner—you for a stroll outside the Academy. They expended such a ridiculous amount of energy that you thought you spent a decade's worth of magic reserve.

Students in Hearth Pyro were no joke.

“Woah there! Glad I caught ya, you're fine, right? Better in my arms than the ground. Trust me... it sucks.”

Gaming was the one that caught you that day, a relieved laugh escaping his lips as he held you in such a way that looked as if he dipped you in a dance, it was humiliating. He didn't tease you or anything, though, bless his good heart.

Very extroverted much like his hearthmates, he blatantly called you over to sit with him in the cafeteria one afternoon. It wouldn't be a problem if he hadn't called from across the place and every head had turned to look at the two of you. Quick steps led you to the table he shared with Xiangling, Hu Tao, Xingiu, and Chongyun, with the Cryo student looking empathetic.

Now, being with Gaming didn't spell tons of embarrassing moments, of course. If there was a student popularity ranking in the Academy—you heard there was one a long time ago, but that got scrapped because certain people got competitive..—Gaming probably would've gotten the lead, or he would've tied with either Lumine or Aether.

Everyone knew the guy! Apparently, it was because he acted as the bridge to the Academy and Teyvat, escorting civilians in and out of Septem for respective visits. Sometimes, he worked alongside Kirara from Hearth Dendro, who handled the delivery of tiny parcels and souvenirs to and fro.

Boy, the energy he had was endless! Students coming from Hearth Pyro had this uncanny ability to mingle with other Hearths and not get tired; Gaming was the same, but he was taking it up a notch when even the professors adored him.

One time, he was showing you the ropes of Wushu Dancing when he tripped over a prop and ended up stumbling over you to the floor with his huge dragon head prop and all. Needless to say, Charlotte and Childe chanced upon you at the wrong time, and.. well, it was a hassle to dispel whatever rumor and gossip sprung then.

“What a stroke of luck that was, wasn't it, miss [Name]? Oh dear, you must've been frightened, here you are, a little magic to distract you~ Tada! A rose!”

This Academy wasn't so strict with its uniform policy, you realized. So long as they wore the standard fit with either the vest or the blazer, they could add whatever flair they wanted. And Lyney, well, he wore a top hat, selling the point of a charming magician quite well with his twin sister Lynette.

You never forgot the way he mischievously leaned over when Gaming had caught you in your first meeting, rubbing his chin and musing about 'a maiden having fallen from the steps of heaven'. It was flustering because he wasn't entirely off; the corridor you went from previously led to the Mirror Court, where the entire environment was the very sky.

Some days, you wondered if Lyney was misplaced like Dottore was. With how he was acting, it felt like he belonged in Hearth Hydro. He wasn't a student who actively exhibited an interest in rivalries, but you learned that his smile served well in magic shows as it did with passive-aggressive goading. He liked playing innocent.

This guy also loved leaving roses on your desk. The first time it happened, you mistook it as something that came from Ayato or anyone from Hearth Hydro [the men there had a tradition of giving flowers to women]. They didn't really give red roses, but still.

Long story short, Lyney bounded up to you after class with Lynette and Freminet in tow looking so excited, only to have his eye twitch when you spoke about your due thanks to someone from Hearth Hydro.

He got so melodramatic over it that he reasoned the only way to make up for punching his heart was to—surprise surprise! Go see a movie with him on the weekend. You didn't have any problems with it—but you didn't know he meant it as going outside the Academy, to a mall. When certain people heard of it, well... suddenly there were other invites to the movies, too.

There was never a lonely day in Hearth Pyro, and the arrival of the rest of its members seemed as though everyone got twice as exuberant in their day-to-day activities. Alternatively, it also meant a lot more managing from Dehya and Diluc.

Lyney and Gaming offered another layer of elation and intensity in the Hearth's hosted events for Septem, and both had audiences even outside Septem Academy. They have tons of followers on their social media that they could almost pose as celebrity students, especially Lyney, Yoimiya, Xinyan, and Diluc. Hu Tao was also famous but.. for a completely different reason.

Anyway, Hearth Pyro was hosting a Theater Program that keyed on Romeo and Juliet, with musical scores and scenes held in collaboration with Yunjin from Hearth Geo. Anything theatrical was often hosted by Hearth Hydro, but given that Furina wasn't present in the making, the duty fell upon the hyperactive, exuberant group in the Academy. Amber invited you to sit in on their casting discussion, but never thought you'd actually get roped in the production process...

“Where's Amber? Oh, and Yanfei?” “Amber's fetching [Name]. Yanfei is passing on the documents for estimated expenses and all the jazz for this Program we're hosting.. say, lemme help ya with that, Diluc.” “No need, Dehya. It's fine—where's Bennett?” CRASH! “I'm here!” “Oooh, [Name]'s coming, is she? Are Aether and Lumine coming with?” “I don't think they're going to come knowing how you pulled them into one of your advertisements for your funeral service business, Hu Tao...” “Teehee!” “Chevruse, do you have prospects for our lead roles? Miss Arlecchino waits for the list. She appears quite fond of this play.” “Ah, Thoma. Lyney here was very vocal about wanting to try something new outside his magical shows, but he'll still have to audition for the role along with Venti, Xingqiu, Kaeya, and Ayato.” “Sir Kaeya and the Hearthmaster Ayato? How- well, the compensation for the lead roles is pretty big.” “I'm just as confused and weirdly excited, Xiangling.” “Hey.. sir Kaeya's trying out. Diluc, don't cha want to try and audition for Romeo, too-” “M'afraid not, Xinyan.” “Lyney's only choosing to audition because he made a bet with Lynette and lost. It wouldn't hurt if [Name] gets to be Juliet, though, right?” “Gaming, my friend, what's got you assuming? Ahaha...” “Hold on, why are there so many prospects, anyway? The last time a Theater Program was held, no one was this interested in acting. What gives?” “Huh? I thought Yoimiya and Hu Tao said that they got [Name]'s consent to be Juliet. Wasn't that why Amber was getting her?” “WHAT?” “Thoma, you ratted us out! D:” “I- I didn't know that they didn't know!”

a/n

LMAO yes, welcome to the harem, men. haaaah, this is finally out. it's been long! i ought to write septem scenarios just so i can write about every single character there is lmao! feels nice to write again. i have another idea in mind for this au and it excites me hehehehhe-

[aihoshiino]

chapter 154 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 11

Aqua Hoshigan Status: (Still) white

man

This is one of those chapters where, technically speaking, I should probably be tearing it to bits (AND I DEFINITELY WILL) - it represents a pretty substantial break in or retcon to the series continuity as it's been presented to us thus far and the actions of certain characters in the lead up to this event don't quite make sense if they've had access to some of the information that's seemingly been in their hands for a while but… would you guys forgive me if I said I didn't really care LOL. As I've said before, I'm the sort of reader who can excuse a lot of raw Plot Bullshit so long as I feel like the hearts of the characters are intact and for all its fumbles, this is a chapter I think is unerringly dedicated to the hearts of its characters. I've made no secret of the fact that Ai is and always has been my main avenue of investment in Oshi no Ko as a series and in this chapter, we uncover the final secret in her heart in particular after having the entire series thus far dedicated to laying it bare to us.

We pick up exactly where we left off last chapter with the reveal that the HKAI breakup was indeed founded on Ai's pregnancy, as a lot of us had predicted.

This, uh, does not quite line up with previous events!

From what we'd previously been told, in terms of placement in the timeline, the death of Airi and her husband happened after the twins were born and sometime in the leadup to the Dome concert, which would put it in the ballpark of Ai's 18th to 20th birthday depending on how long it was in the works for. But based on how this flashback section is structured, it seems to place their deaths before Ai even knew she was pregnant, let alone giving birth. If it was just clashing with 15YL's retelling then I could dismiss that as an element of the movie's fictionalization that we've seen and Kamiki alludes to but this also clashes with where this event was placed temporally by Ichigo, when remembering a real life event. So… What gives!!!!

Like, at the end of the day, the exact placement of Uehara's death only matters inasmuch as it needs to be before Ai gets her new apartment, since the point Ichigo is really making is that Aqua is pinning his hopes on a dead man who was dead before he could have ever contributed to Ai's murder. But placing it that far back in the timeline - before the twins were even born! - just makes Aqua's willful ignorance in relation to it come off as a lot sillier and more difficult to swallow than if it happened closer to Ai's actual date of death.

I'm also a little disappointed that we really quickly breeze past Ai revealing she's pregnant - it's not the point of the scene overall and it would be weird to go really deep into her POV in the middle of a Kamiki flashback but one of my big issues with the Movie Arc was that it ripped past anything and everything to do with Ai's pregnancy, including how she herself felt about being pregnant. Like I said in my 145 review, skipping over the parts of it we've seen makes sense but I think there's still a bunch of really fascinating potential in exploring how Ai felt when she realized she was pregnant - how did she hide it for long enough that she was almost halfway through her pregnancy and getting fucking enormous before her first checkup? How did Ichigo and Miyako react when they first got the news? There's so much juicy character and relationship work you could mine out of that but the story fails to do so. We sort of get a crumb of this in the DVD but her feelings there are all centered on the pregnancy in relation to Hikaru and even then she breezes past it so fast it's clearly not meant to be the focus of any of what she's saying and idk. For a character whose entire hook is her struggles with motherhood, familial love and all the rest of it, that's a little disappointing.

THAT SAID!!! All that makes me sound like I didn't like what went on with Ai this chapter but I actually loved it. It's so painfully in line with everything we've been told and shown about her thus far in the manga and in this chapter, we see all her strengths, weaknesses and human contradictions laid bare in a way I find incredibly rewarding and compelling.

The HKAI breakup especially is just soooooo deliciously cringe inducing. It's an echo of the argument with Nino that 15YL portrays, where Ai's good intentions, avoidant tendencies and absolute absence of tact all snowball and end up ruining one of her most important relationships. Like… I can't believe I'm about to say this about a conversation in which Ai is one of the people talking, but she really is the reasonable one here! She's right to identify that their relationship is not working, that adding babies and marriage to the mix will only make things worse - her intentions, as they always are, are good and she's making her decisions with Kamiki in mind… her delivery is just absolutely dogshit!!! GIRL, PLEASE, YOUR WORDS!!!! USE YOUR WORDS!!!!!

For all my issues with Akasaka's writing lately, I think he portrays these kinds of two sided failures of communication so well, where you can see exactly where both characters are coming from and why they are failing to get their feelings across to each other. From an outsider's POV it's clear as day that Ai views herself and her children as the burden, one she doesn't want to put on Kamiki for the sake of a girl who doesn't even know if she can love him… but is it any wonder why Kamiki took it the way he did and why his guts were so utterly wrenched out as a result?

Kamiki's attempted proposal and Ai's immediate rejection of it are really interesting with the context of 45510 in particular. Extrapolating from her talk of marriage there, she brushed him off so quickly because she simply didn't believe he was serious… and yeah, he's pretty clearly not fully cognizant of the weight of what he's trying to propose, never mind that he's meeting "let's break up" with "LET'S GET MARRIED" lol.

Also interesting to extrapolate from both 45510 and other material surrounding Ai is that, at that point in her life, she simply didn't understand what the point of marriage was. On top of her being Literally Sixteen And A Child right now, Ai is said to have come from a deeply dysfunctional home where her mother engaged in a number of equally dysfunctional relationships, at least one of whom was with a man who was creeping on Ai even as he was working up to marry her mom. It's no wonder she doesn't really take the idea of marriage seriously, but it still hurts so see her reject Kamiki so bluntly - even more bluntly in the Japanese text somehow, simply chirping 無理! (Muri!) in response, i.e, not just "no way" but telling Kamiki to his face it's impossible.

Honestly this whole breakup scene is so darkly hilarious just in terms of how bad Ai is completely beefing it. Congrats babygirl that's the worst anyone's ever done it!!!

And we finally get the "I can't love you" drop after just shy of 25 chapters of buildup…….. And honestly, it feels a little hollow.

I talked about this a little before so forgive me for repeating myself but that line - or rather, Aqua and Ruby's implied misunderstanding of it - from Ai to Hikaru was given a huge amount of weight in the story when it was first introduced. It was implied to be the lynchpin in which everything else about the HKAI romance rested only for the story to go UH WELL ACTUALLY IT'S ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT AI FORGIVES HER KILLER which is like… fine, it just feels very jarring on a reread or when trying to sew together a plot thread like this. It especially feels strange because the emphasis is placed on them not getting it right or at least that Gotanda disagrees with their interpretation, only for the manga to whip back around and not only return this line to its previous heightened importantance but also to largely not line up with what was established about this line and its place in the narrative when it was first introduced. It's just more evidence that Akasaka's plans for the Movie Arc and its resolution changed in some way during serialisation because these inconsistencies are pretty glaring.

Not just that, but like… it's hard to feel impacted by this line when we didn't even see it in the Movie Arc. In general, it's so fucking weird that so much about the main emotional resolutions going on right now revolve around Ruby's performance in the movie when most of the big emotional moments people are reacting to are happening entirely offscreen. This would already be bad even if it wasn't taking place in a manga like OnK with its increasingly frustrating habit of offscreening more and more bits of the story that are extremely important for the characters. Before this chapter I would've said that maybe we'd see some of it after the movie released but given that Kamiki's arc and the revenge play as a whole is pretty clearly wrapping here, what would even be the point of it?

Idk. It's just increasingly obvious (and just as frustrating) to me just how much of the Movie Arc was wasted time and how much of the setup that needed to happen to make what follows really land just… didn't. This chapter's resolution for Ai and Hikaru, both separately and as a couple, is still excellent, but it could have been a lot better if its foundations weren't so meager.

We also finally get concrete proof from the horse's mouth that Kamiki was the one who deliberately leaked Ai's address and……. honestly this is kind of a wet fart too lol. OnK has previously very strongly implied that "Kamiki is Ai's killer" was a red herring or that we should at least be slightly skeptical of Aqua's assertions and conclusions but… nope, he was right all along, I guess?? Alright………………………… I certainly don't believe his insistence that gosh he totes didn't think Ryosuke would go THAT far and I'm still wondering wtf the two of them were doing at the hospital the night the twins were born but like. Honestly at this point, I don't really think it matters and I care much more about emotional resolutions than I do granular plot details - and boy do we get one hell of an emotional resolution.

I haven't shouted her out yet because I was saving it for this section but fuck, man, Mengo's expression work told chapter is killer as usual but this final stretch of pages is just gutwrenching. Ai's gentle, rueful smile on the DVD contrasted with the look of shocked, dawning understanding on Kamiki's….. Jesus Christ.

And at last, we uncover the final secret hidden at the bottom of Ai's heart. The entire manga thus far has been a process of stripping away the viewer's willful ignorance with regards to Ai's humanity but the DVDs had been an oddly ominous mystery box floating around, containing some implied dark secret that would change the entire trajectory of Ai's character as we knew it… but of course, the person who tells us that is Ai herself, a girl who hates herself, thinks of herself as dirty and impure, irresponsible and incapable of love.

So is it really any surprise that her darkest secret, the thing she can only confess with her eyes shining with black stars is simply that she's a fallible human? That she was a lonely young girl, confused and hurt in her own ways and that she hurt someone she dearly cared for and wanted to take it back?

Is it a little convenient that she put all this in the DVD? Yes, absolutely, and I'll be the first to say that the DVDs existing at all are a pretty clear retcon in service of getting info onto Aqua's hands. But it's also perfectly in line with Ai's timid, avoidant methods of reaching out. It parallels both Viewpoint B and 45510 (moreso the latter) where she pours her heart out in words, waiting for others to read and understand her. In 45510 in particular, her leaving the blog post is an extremely clear and strong parallel to the DVD - love letters put into bottles and thrown to the ocean in desperate hope the person they're addressed to might find and understand them.

As Akane says, Ai is torn between secrecy and a desire to have her true self exposed, so she attempts to craft scenarios in which this must happen, even if her avoidance can only allow her to do so with indirect methods. With the blog and moreso the DVDs & their method of delivery, Ai attempts to create situations where the initiation confrontation and disclosure is out of her hands and she has no choice but to tell the truth.

Ai's entire speech here is just heartbreaking. If the start of the chapter didn't make it explicit enough, we see her here put her good intentions into words to better understand how they were misinterpreted.

This adds SUCH a fascinating additional layer to her death that has me gnashing my fucking teeth. One of the things I've talked about a lot in my Ai meta is that Ryosuke is essentially an agent or even an embodiment of the entertainment industry and the way it has exploited her - the misogyny, entitlement, purity culture and abuse that ruled her life went on to end it. With this additional detail, though, Ryosuke becomes an agent not just of the things that plagued Ai of B-Komachi, but Ai as a human, too. All her life, Ai is willfully misunderstood and mischaracterized by the people around her, assigned narratives and roles without her consent and punished for both living up to and failing to live up to them. Ai's death is the end result of a lifelong cascade of failure on the part of every system and individual that has had the opportunity and responsibility to care for her - and, as Aqua throws in his father's face, that includes Hikaru.

Hikaru's supposed understanding of Ai is not one based in empathy or love but projection and possessiveness - understanding in this context is ownership, exclusivity and frankly, arrogance. A claim to a piece of Ai that no one else knows. But as Aqua forces him to realize… Hikaru never understood Ai, even as she did her best to make herself understood. For all his arrogance of understanding Ai and the nature of their relationship, Kamiki is ultimately just the same as every other person who idolized and objectified her then discarded her when the image they'd created in their mind didn't match reality. Ai wasn't his pure and perfect soulbonded saviour - she was a lonely, broken kid like him, still struggling to understand love after a lifetime spent starved of it.

Once, Kamiki begged Ai to save him. And here, the bitter truth is laid out for all of us: the salvation Kamiki had wished for was waiting for him, reaching out with open arms and he not only desecrated it but irrevocably destroyed any path back towards it. In killing Ai, Hikaru Kamiki killed himself.

The imagery of this moment is so fucking gorgeous. The visual of Kamiki and Ai reaching out to each other, in mutual understanding at last but separated by time and death… the "what if" happy Hoshino family… Ai's words being framed as a 'love letter' that transcended time to reach Kamiki and Aqua's eyes blazing with white as tears pour down his face… Jesus fucking Christ Mengo I'm already dead!!!!!

Like I said up top, I make zero secret of the fact that I am primarily invested in Ai above everything else in the manga and the way her importance has been seemingly downplayed since the late 130s mark chapter wise has really bugged me. As such, this chapter was INSANELY cathartic for me. Not only do we get a really beautiful cap to Ai's post death arc (hopefully finally killing those dumbfuck Secretly Evil Ai theories for good) but it's done in a way that once again recenters her love and her wishes as the heart of everything. Even Aqua's revenge play is completely redefined in this context - no longer the childish, selfish and self destructive lashing out we've seen before but as a quest to both honor Ai and to punish the person arrogantly assuming ownership of her heart even as he so catastrophically misunderstands her.

This is a really fantastic end to Aqua's arc too… on paper, that is. I know for a fact that a certain genre of OnK readers are going to bitch and moan that Aqua didn't run his dad over with a 2003 Honda Civic but I really can't imagine Aqua's revenge quest going any other way unless OnK was intended to be a pure tragedy. Over and over, we have seen that Aqua's revenge is at odds with not just his happiness but with Ai's wish for him to live a full life with a bright future. It is self destructive, hurtful to the people around him and antithetical to any of them moving on and reclaiming what their futures. With the emphasis the story places on moving towards a happy future, in selfishly reclaiming your happiness even in the face of systems that seek to crush you and on honouring Ai's wishes and legacy, it would be flatly thematically incoherent for Aqua to choose killing.

The issue is not with this as Aqua's end point but with the path we've taken to get here. As was the issue with Ruby during the Movie Arc, we don't actually see any of the internal work that happened in service of this arc, just the big emotional end points of offscreen development. But it stings especially bad with Aqua when such a huge chunk of the last few arcs locked us out of his head, sharply contrasting the start of the story that lived and breathed his interiority - AND when this is more or less the capstone to his series long struggle to choose love or revenge. It's not that I dislike this as an emotional payoff for Aqua's revenge - this is more or less beat for beat what I'd expected - but that it lacks proper support from the rest of the story. In general, this chapter falls flatter than it should because all this heightened, dramatic emotion rests on arcs and setup that simply have not been shown to the reader, save for Ai.

Speaking of Ai, the info in the DVD here potentially represents a pretty major break in the continuity of Aqua's behaviour based on when we're told he had access to it but I'm willing to bite my tongue and see if that gets filled in, if only because this chapter review is already so fucking long. Let's just say that I Noticed and I sure hope Aka or his editors did too.

And finally… Oh, hey there, Ruby! Aren't you an interesting little snarl to this chapter. Or maybe "snarl" isn't quite right, but her presence here is potentially interesting either way. I'm not quite sure how to read both her expression and her presence - the expression on her face looks VERY displeased and it looks to me like she's outside the room, so is she maybe eavesdropping and not happy with what she hears? Or is she in on Aqua's talk with Kamiki here and just struggling with her emotions with regards to it all? I'm quiety hoping it's the latter, because it would confirm that Ruby DID recognize her dad in 147 and Akasaka wasn't expecting me to believe he was hitting her with the stupid stick quite that hard lol.

In either case, I'm actually excited to see what Ruby takes away from this. In the ways that AQRB has echoed the HKAI dynamic, Ruby has always been in Kamiki's shoes - the one desperate to be saved, clinging to her oshi and relying on him as her sole bastion of light in the world. So what will she think now after being faced with the logical endpoint of this wished-for codependence? When she sees how destructive and self destructive it can potentially be? Just as she saw Ai reflected in herself, will Ruby see her father in her own reflection - and if so, what will she do about it?

Break next week! So we'll be sitting pretty for two weeks to find out. Not that I actually mind this time because with a chapter like this on top of season 2 of the anime coming back today, a week without a break might have actually killed me… please, akamengo, i'm just a little guy!!!!

[oshinohoshi]

Regarding Hikaru's culpability in Ai's death

The question of whether Hikaru meant to hurt Ai is still up in the air but in this post I'm going to make an extremely messy argument that Hikaru loved Ai and didn't mean to kill her!

Above: Hikaru said Ai had selfish and cruel sides (more like extremely avoidant tendencies but I digress) but there's no menace to his tone. He believed it was only natural for her to leave him.

I will say that Hikaru's below statement from ch 160 is pretty weird, especially after just learning that Ai loved him. Is that how he saw Ai? As a woman who deceived him and tried to make him obey her?

It does kind of align with the below Fatal lyrics which I can't see as anything other than a Hikaru song:

You have given me a fatal flaw Selfish giant star, ruined lives

I think both things can be true. He didn't hate Ai. He loved her more than anything. But he was bitter because he thought she didn't care about him.

He created a warped view of their relationship in which he was never loved or needed. But that bitterness, even anger at times, never appears to have devolved into murderous intent. Not when he was still so soft on her despite some of his more accusatory statements.

OK you're saying he didn't mean to kill her. But what about this?

I don't know, man. I just don't know. It's so antithetical to everything we know about him. It's one thing to lash out in a moment of pain but a slow burn manipulation like this requires intention. There's two explanations I can come up with.

He was twisting the screws for another reason. Maybe he wanted to exert control because he felt so powerless over the situation with Ai. Or perhaps he wanted a fellow Ai fanatic. Someone who would understand her significance.

Aqua is wrong.

But why did he change his story from stating he wanted Ryosuke to scare Ai (you fucking idiot, Hikaru) to just giving her a bouquet?

I'm a bit stumped here too. This guy is supposedly a master manipulator yet he couldn't keep his story straight?

Perhaps both of these were his motives but I don't know why he didn't say that from the start. I just don't think this is proof that he lied because it's not hard to keep such a basic story straight.

The best explanation I can come up with is that he told Ryosuke the address in a fit of anger and despair. He thought Ryosuke would scare her. He then gave him the bouquet. It was an "I love you/I want you to feel my pain" message for Ai.

OK, but if Aqua was right about Hikaru manipulating Ryosuke, then he knew Ryosuke was an Ai fanatic who could go off the rails in an instant. Especially if he learned that Ryosuke killed Gorou. And anyway, what the hell did he think he was going to do to scare her?

Augh. I'm just going to hope that Nino filled Hikaru in on Gorou's murder after Ryosuke died and therefore he didn't realize that Ryosuke was dangerous. As for what he thought Rysouke would do... I dunno. Give her the bouquet and glower at her? Tell her he knew about her kids?

My man was an idiot but I don't think that makes him a killer in this case. I mean, it would be scary enough for a fan to show up at your door with flowers from your ex.

My last piece of evidence that Hikaru didn't want to hurt Ai is that he was desperate to ensure nobody would surpass her, he wanted to feel her presence, and imo he was trying to preserve her memory.

Offing Ai is the opposite of all those things. He said that he killed Ai out of spite but I don't think that we're meant to take that literally.

Those panels at the top of my post and his obsessive adoration of Ai make it hard for me to believe he would try to harm her. Instead, he blamed himself - rightfully so - for sending Ryosuke to Ai's apartment and that's what he meant by killing her out of spite.

But this goddamn back and forth is why I'm so frustrated with Hikaru's characterization.

Is he a man who loved Ai, inadvertently caused her to die, and then spiraled into madness fueled by grief and guilt? Or is he a man who loved Ai, used Ryosuke to kill her, and then spiraled into madness because he regretted his actions?

Well, aside from all the reasons presented above, the story never explicitly tells us that he tried to kill Ai. Given that Crow Girl walks around spouting monologues about who is doing what and why, and Hikaru never thought about how he tried to murder Ai in his final moments, I've settled on: Hikaru is by no means an innocent man but he never wanted Ai dead.

I rest my case. It was shaky but I did my best.

[officialdaydreamer00]

House fire

ROLLO FLAMME — in which one can predict a student exchange program might go south real quick

COLLAB WORK with @unfictinalnightmare for [The chimes of comfort]

CONTENT — takes place after glorious masquerade, our yuusonas (hillary and irene) are yuu, silly shenanigans with hillary and irene, rollo will show up soon :)

TAGGINGS — @cloudcountry @identity-theft-101 @xen-blank @esmerulia-chantelle @dove-da-birb @cookiesandbiscuits @vioisgoinginsane @siren-serenity @loser-jpg @axvwriter @aqua-beam @edith-is-a-cat @minimallyminnie @thehollowwriter @taruruchi @cyanide-latte @ferris-thewheel + others :3

Do reblog or comment if you enjoy my work! ^-^

Chapter 1: An undeniable request || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4 || Chapter 5 || Chapter 6

"WHAT?!"

"As I have just said, I want the two of you to act as our representatives when Mr. Flamme arrive to Night Raven College in the next student exchange."

The headmage offered the two girls in front of them a smile. Black and white, blood red and sea green, both were staring at their 'beloved' headmage with a look of utter disdain.

"Wait, pause- Who the hell is Flamme?" Hillary gave the girl next to her a confused glance before averting her eyes back to the headmage. Irene only sighed, taking off her round glasses as she rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Rollo Flamme, Noble Bell's rep and School Council President, he was our guide in Fleur City."

Irene was still haunted by that incident in Fleur City. She thought it was a rare occasion to relax after weeks and months of doing errands for the damn crow, but no. Seven knew he was plotting such a devious scheme.

"Indeed, ahem... Since the student body were rather, well, hesitant when speaking about him, so I believe you two are the best option as his guide in the upcoming exchange program." Crowley said joyfully. "Oh, and by the way, Mr Flamme shall stay at Ramshackle Dorm in the short duration of the program, I truly hope the two of you can do your best to accommodate him."

The headmage went on and on with his monologue, ignoring every signs of refusals from Hillary and Irene.

With Irene and her unforgettable experience in Noble Bell College, she was rather afraid of Rollo still. Who knows what could happen during the entire program when he faced NRC's students, especially her upperclassman Malleus. It would be one hell of a meeting, and like hell she wanted to be the one cleaning it up for the nth time.

With Hillary, who wasn't on the list of students on that trip to Fleur City, her impression about Rollo was practically zero. And it wasn't like she could ask Irene or the others since they wouldn't peep a single word. Though perhaps that was enough signs to guess this Flamme guy was anything but a saint.

———————————————————

"I refuse."

Hillary immediately shook her head, cutting off Crowley's ramblings as he squawked in surprise. Not like he could force her to do his biddings anyways.

"I also refuse."

Irene followed her lead and answered as well, seeing how Hillary gave both of them a way out. It wouldn't hurt to work with that troublesome girl if it meant one less baggage on her shoulders.

"Oh no... Why must you two treat me, the kindest and most beloved headmage, that way? What a hurtful thing to hear from the Prefects themselves..."

Hillary and Irene could only watched in exasperation as the headmage blabbed on about his so-called kindness and hard work. However, the headmage was never an easy person to deal with, he gave them an unreadable smile.

"Nevertheless, as a careful teacher I am, I have come prepared! So I am counting on you two, Trein-sensei, Crewel-sensei."

———————————————————

Only after one long session of persuation from two most respected professors on campus, using various tricks and techniques, did Hillary and Irene agree to it, albeit reluctantly. Though it was a golden opportunity for them to upgrade Ramshackle dorm even more. They couldn't let that infuriating headmage win that easily.

"Fine. I promise to lend you some ingredients for your magic research." Crewel shook his head and sighed, looking at Irene with a tired stare.

The little dark pup excelled at everything and destroy every challenges thrown her way, which he was proud of as a Professor. Only that she was so damn stubborn and had a penchant for dark magic.

"Thank you, sir!" Irene smiled as she happily accepted the deal, thinking about all the things she could get from the Potions professor's laboratory.

However, if Irene was already headstrong, Hillary was completely, utterly a hardhead. Trein and Crowley even had to use the library key and give her free reign to it for her to agree.

And so the preparation the student exchange program began...

[unabashednightmarepizza]

𝑀𝑦 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑒 𝐻𝑜𝑚𝑒

A/N: Okay, I got inspired again and this piece is just me, pouring my absolute and eternal love to the favourite place of mine: Mondstadt! This could be read in sagau or just any other normal piece of work but I wrote it with Creator!Reader AU in mind.

Because let's be honest, they welcomed the Traveller albeit a bit hesitantly, with open arms even when they were really busy with Dvalin situation... And I might be sick of writing/reading Mondstadt as one of the nations who tortured Creator!Reader 👉👈

"Mondstadt."

One might be wondering why the Creator was telling the nation of freedom's name right in front of the said nation but the answer was pretty clear to you as you stood before the entrance of the city with Venti next to you, looking pretty surprised himself with his aqua eyes wide open.

And no, it wasn't to punish someone.

Why was it that everyone thought you enjoyed torturing people when all they ever did was... to make you drunk?

"I'm choosing Mondstadt."

Because, ever since your arrival to the Teyvat, though most didn't trust you and rather tried funny things on you... The people of Mondstadt welcomed you with open arms, even if they were facing a crisis at the time which was "magically" solved very soon.

That was also a test on them and their Archon Barbatos, who went by the name Venti to honor a friend he once did and was unaware how badly things could have turned out had they been...

Well, you got the idea.

Now, Barbatos often prided himself to be your favourite which often got on the nerves of other gods and Archons. But he didn't give much thought to it as he floated around you as a little spirit at the time. Besides you wouldn't have specifically asked him to accompany you to everywhere you went if you didn't feel safe and secure, if you didn't like him, right?

"I see..." Zhongli said somberly while standing right outside the Gates of the city, his amber eyes filled with jealousy and anger directed themselves onto the shorter Archon next to you looking both surprised and proud as he held your hand. He had to pull himself together, however much it affected him, as he thightened his hand into a fist and looked at you with unconditional love and undetering loyalty, no matter whose nation you chose to stay.

"May I ask why, Your Grace?" He softly asked you, with no hint of anger or malice directed to you as you shuffled on your feet anxiously but held your head high. You were obviously the Creator, come on!

Venti looked at you with a turn of his head, his usually pouty lips forming a thight line as his hand naturally found yours. He remembered the first time you arrived, all the Winds and waters were singing and there was a feast of falling star in the sky. He remembered how he rushed to where you landed, the Tree of Vennessa, and were trying to get your balance back on your wobbly legs. His heart thumped inside his ribcage violently at your etheral body, the fact that you chose his land, the three that meant the world to him to ascend down...

He could have fallen on his knees in gratitude eit tears flowing down his soft cheeks and round eyes right then and there.

But what stood out the most was... The fact that you were scared.

And that damned fact made him almost collapse beneath your feet and beg for forgiveness, for something he didn't even know he did.

Please don't hurt me, one simple sentence that he never knew that could cause so much pain to him even after all the battles he fought. How could someone dare to hurt you enough to think that your Archons would do the same, as if they couldn't sense and feel you and your warmth they all once basked in?

Mind you Venti, you awkwardly thought after he explained everything, standing there like a shy kid, that you were the Creator and you had golden blood and he felt you, and cried on his knees for you to believe him as you patted his back and let him hug you thightly. The amount of fanfics I read about this situation made me a little paranoid.

But... Was he grinning and nuzzling closer to your neck?

After that, you were more relaxed. By now, everyone in Teyvat knew of who you were and already started to plan for your arrival in their nations. So far, Liyue and Inazuma were the most eager ones to have you while Sumeru and Fontaine just let you decide when and how you wished to come to their nation and you were glad for them giving you this choice.

But... Well, you didn't really want to leave here.

Mondstadt always stood out to you the most, even after seeing every other nation. Of course they were all special, but Mondstadt was... Home.

Every time you would get hurt in the game, you would immediately seek out to go to one of the Statues of Seven in Mondstadt. Every time you just wanted to stroll around, you would go to Starsnitch Cliff or Windrise and just listen to the nature, absolutely beaming and glowing with you there. It was cozy and warm here...

Then you would always pay a quick visit to the Dawn Winery and Wolvendom to see Diluc, his staff and then Razor and his family. Every time you suddenly appeared in the Winery, or insisted on helping Adelinde out even though the woman begged you not to do that since she knew Diluc would have a heart attack, yet you still did it.

After all, you were the one who cleaned your own home in your world.

Which, by the way, he did just as Adelinde thought every time as you pampered him with a sweet ringing laughter and swiped his soft hair away from his flaming hot face, all the while fawning over how soft and amazing it was and wanted to learn his secret at keeping it so tame.

And may You forbid it if you tease him about the color of his face and even kiss his forehead affectionately?

Now, you would have a very shy and flustered young man clinging onto your touches and love, something he was mostly deprived off, and warmth that couldn't even compare the one his body had because of his vision.

And sweet Razor? The clueless boy would always tug on your sleeves and run around with you, showing every hidden place and then stop and make a makeshift camp for you, eating whatever you found or hunted together. Other Archons would have had a stroke at seeing you sitting down on mud, eating and cooking simple food as you exchanged stories with him from your world as he listened intensely with wide eyes and animated voices.

He was especially into the Supernatural creature stories for some reasons.

Scolding Jean because she never takes a day off, telling Lisa that she was exceptionally bright, assuring Kaeya that he was enough... And then getting yourself into trouble with them by pranking, some adventures and even more... These were all the reasons why you loved here.

Because often, a place feels like home because of the people you met there and those who had an Impact on your life.

With a soft sigh and looking back to the lively city that welcomed you, you spoke with a voice that held many memories. Both from your world, days spent with farming and wishing for them and from this time when you were... Their God.

"Because all of you always saw me as something I have never been for the entirity of my time... A God, the Creator, The Divine, Godslayer, The First Who Came... Which is fine, really, having a lot of cool titles are amazing but..." You rambled off without realizing, worried that your words might piss the Archon off. But why would it?

You were his Creator anyways, and even if you weren't, you didn't deserve to feel bad for thinking the way you did, right?

But they both were just looking at you with soft eyes, clear devotion and understanding crystal clear in them as they only basked in your etheral voice that could bring them to their knees just by itself. Though Zhongli was bitter that you didn't choose to stay in his nation, it didn't mean that you would never visit and have some tea with him, right?

But Venti? Oh the shorter Archon was grinning like a cheshire cat as pride, joy and love filled his entire being.

All for you and because of you.

But a part of him was also smug and all knowing. Because who else would you go to? He was the first one to get to you, help you and protect you. You arrived to his city first, you asked help from them first and you blessed his city, his people, he himself first.

If Zhongli, or other Archons didn't get it then, it was their problem.

Not his.

Besides, he needed to have someone to dedicate his love songs to, after all! And what a coincidence it was that all those songs were about you and you had to listen to them as... The muse itself.

Zhongli was able to read all of these, at least most of it, since he once spent a lot of time with the childish yet strong archon. Unaware of the silent battle between these two that was ready to tear mountains apart for you...You remembered all the times you got to spend with Venti under the tree he usually sat down whenever he needed to pick his thoughts and spend some time with himself.

Alone, as only his winds companied him.

But, after you showed up with bright smiles and a promise to take his mind off of things with your stories or your flower crowns you made just for him because it would compliment him and his pretty face well to which he only accepted with a bashful smile and flushed cheeks, these lonely moments when he would think back to the past and all the mistakes he did turned out to be... A session where you both learnt to accept yourselves as the way you were.

Mistakes and all.

And that was why you were so sure of your reasoning as to why you chose them.

"They have seen me as Y/N..."

They stared at you shocked with wide eyes, perhaps even the other Archons who weren't present heard you and you were sure you heard some people falling behind you...

Must be your imagination.

You shrugged your shoulders and stared ahead of yourself with a small smile and slightly squeezed eyes, both a result of the bright sun that seemed like it felt your own happiness.

Though Zhongli seemed like he didn't understand what that sentence meant... Venti did, and his face visibly softened as a small oh left his lips. His hand silently sought yours to squeeze in assurance, to tell you that he knew what you meant and felt, your own eyes turned to look at him with your own shy smile as you accepted his slightly calloused hands.

Which made the Geo Archon seethe at him even more since... He wished to be the one in Venti's shoes, the one who had your love and affection, the one who you held dear to your heart and close to yourself, much like now.

"They know me as the one who always tripped on their own feet, the one who got so flustered because Kaeya was flirting with them but was being genuine and always made sure I was comfortable. And never once did he hold any malicious feeling as he showed the city to me, I really didn't have the heart to tell him that I already knew every nook and crevice..."

You mumbled shyly with a flush, remembering how it was the first time Kaeya had genuinely laughed and smiled wide as you both came to a stop under one of the trees near Springvale to catch your breath and then eat whatever you wished to do in the village, which was ecstatic to have the Creator in their humble village and served you the best they could.

You didn't have to know, but as Kaeya watched you play with children and then look around yourself as if you were searching for something-no, someone- his heart beated faster as his tan skin darkened in embarrasment when he understood that you were looking for him.

He was the one you wanted to have close to you, he was the one who brought that wide smile to your face... He was worthy enough to spend the whole day with you and you never for once judged him, his past or whatever weight that had been forced on his shoulders since he was a young boy.

But rather chose to drag him towards an opening to watch the night sky and point every star to him, telling him giddily that it all reminded you of him and his one visible eye sparkling at what you said

He made you swear to never tell a soul about the way he cried onto your shoulder and landed a kiss on your forehead affectionately while you patted his back, his almost whole body on top of yours as he resembled a cute koala to you. Because one, Venti would kill him. Two, Diluc would kill him. And three... He couldn't hug you anymore :(

The third one was obviously the biggest reason why, as he pouted at you when you laughed hard at his reasoning, all the while assuring him that you would protect him...

Which gave him yet another thing to think about before he went to sleep, a lovesick smile being glued on his face as he chuckled and giggled like a teenager girl all the while hugging his pillow thightly, hoping that perhaps one day... There would be someone, you, for example, to take over that empty spot.

"They saw me as the one who always made sure that those around them were comfortable, happy and well-taken care of even though they were struggling with their inner demons and in exchange, was equally taken care of and pampered by delicous food."

Because you knew all those young men, women and teens had one hell of a traumatic life and since you weren't able to erase that part or rewrite it... You wanted to at least let them know that you were there for them.

As a shoulder to cry on, a friend to listen, an ear for them to vent... Whatever they needed at that moment. And though they might have been skeptical about your true intentions at the beginning, they quickly found solace within your presence, hugs and love, slithering to your light like moths did to a flame.

Even Diluc, who usually wasn't one for " idle chit-chat" often found himself before you, drinking grape juice together as he told you about his frustrations... More specifically about Kaeya, his brother with whom he re-connected thanks to you.

"The one who was befriended the fastest by the little kids, because they obviously had immaculate sense in new games and story telling from other worlds an enjoyed making an adult suffer for their entertainment."

Indeed, you learnt it in the hard way while playing with Klee. Though you had an amused face as you said this out loud, you underestimated her energy and love to... bomb things, at that time. It was your fault really, Albedo and Jean warned you about it and how she got excited whenever she went fish-blastimg with someone she loved, but even when you met her... You just thought they were exaggerating it.

You were wrong.

They could only slap their foreheads in affectionate anger as you ran away from Klee who was holding yet another Dodoco bomb that was about to explode because she changed her mind from catching the fish to showing you how amazing it was.

And for a second, you indulged with her... That is, until you realized the bomb was about to set off.

"Klee, dear, I think we should really let go of that bomb!"

"But... Mr. Dodoco only wants to meet you! (⁠✷⁠‿⁠✷⁠)" you nervously sweated, thinking how to dodge her without hurting her feelings when the bright eyes of the bomb caught your attention.

"Maybe in better circumstan-WATCH OUT!"

*cue you and her covered in ashes, Klee holding onto your hand as she rambled about how amazing it was throughout the whole time back to Mondstadt while you were shaking from the adrenaline*

"Yeah... It was amazing, dear."

"The one who was always there to pick up the broken pieces of those who acted noncholant and cold, but held the warmest hearts ever." You pointedly looked at Diluc at this part, who came over as soon as he heard that the ex-Geo Archon was here to have a talk with you, watching as his pale cheeks were blossomed with an adorable pink. To be seen as such in your eyes, as a warm hearted man rather than the cold and uncaring one he showed himself to be...

It was an honor.

To hear such lovely words leave your lips was an honor.

Because you were all he had left, after he lost his father and cut all ties with his brother who came clean to him... The only constant thing he had was you.

You who came to him after days of being in Mondstadt, knowing that it was the same night of the same day when he had that fight with Kaeya and comforted him with soft words and your presence right before the fireplace as you both sat together, knees touching. Even though his breaths were laboured, chest contrasting painfully...

"I know it was hard for both of you... But you only have each other, is there really no way for you both to talk it out?"

He listened to you and his heart caved in. How couldn't he, when you were quite literally begging him with desperation and tears in your eyes for him to accept Kaeya back?

Besides, thanks to you... He had his family back now, and both Diluc and Kaeya couldn't be any more grateful for it.

"The one who knew what loosing a loved one meant, but never pushed too far into their comforting and instead let them come to you."

Diluc couldn't help but nod aimlessly as tears slightly dampened first his eyes and then cheek. It was true that you only left there with one question only, knowing how sensitive the topic around Kaeya and his father was for Diluc.

But you just... wanted to pay them back for all the good they did for you, every time they gifted you something heartfelt, made you your favourite food, indulged in your hobbies even though they might not be as interested as you were to them.

And all the time they spent to help you, with quite literally everything since everything was new to you.

You smiled at the fond memory of Albedo and Sucrose, who were trying to explain to you one of their experiments excitedly. Well... As excited as Albedo could be, of course.

But even as a scientist and an artist, there was one thing Albedo didn't realize at that time but much later when he thought back to it: Though you seemed like you understood what they were talking about... You were actually pretty clueless at whatever the hell they were telling you about.

You never were good at chemistry, okay? Not your fault that Albedo was so damn smart!

"The one who didn't always understand what was spoken to them, whether it was way to smart for them or the language barrier but had people to patiently teach them... And later forced to eat all together in the city with others."

Albedo smiled as the same memory replayed in his mind too. The way you often were distracted by the fresh snow in his lab or a colorful show of his newest experiments which made you grin widely with amazed eyes, always brought a smile to the usually stoic blonde man. He might not exactly understand the human nature, and even saw you as some kind of experiment to work on so that he could better understand you, he really liked... The idea of having you around.

He didn't even know when he started to seek for your praises, of your presence whenever you would touch his shoulder softly and urge him to take a break and come with you to either play with Klee or have some warm "sahlep", a warm winter drink from your world that you specifically made for him.

To which he would always agree, no matter what, under the shocked, jealous and impressed eyes of... Well, everyone in Mondstadt.

Because the Creator was offering him something They have done, specifically for him and was looking at him expectantly for his reaction as they swayed a sleepy Klee from side to side on their lap after she drunk the hot liquid.

Did he use Klee to have more of your attention? Maybe... Did he make even more experiments just to have you in Dragonspine? Yes... Yes, he did and he had absoultely zero shame for it.

You clasped your hands together after talking so much, your throat starting to hurt from using it so much since that irritating raspy feeling had made itself visible slowly.

The disappointed face Zhongli had broke you, he looked like a kid being rejected of something sweet. Just because you chose Mondstadt, it didn't mean you hated other nations.

They all had other reasons to love about!

Liyue had more of an enigmatic aura with all the rituals, temples and over all Divine Vibe in them but they also had a lot of rules, though you didn't have to apply them to yourself.

You already dealt with enough rules and strictness in your world, really, so though you liked the over all traditional vibe... It wasn't your first choice.

Inazuma was much like Liyue, though once the strictest one with rules and eternity in all over the Teyvat. Fontaine, though you liked hanging out with many people there, seemed... Cold, though Tsaritsa's land was the one considered to be cold because of the constant snow.

Maybe Sumeru could have been your next choice, but you were still pissy about those mages and scribes who treated your precious baby Nahida like that-

But Mondstadt... It had been the first your created, the first one you saw and stepped foot onto. The first to welcome you and teach you everything, the first to give you a family and a whole lot of friends, the first ones to allow you to be yourself...

They were the apple of your eyes.

"The one who is just... Y/N. That's why I'm choosing them... I'm choosing my home, but that doesn't mean I love any of you less." You patted Zhongli's back with a sorry look that said please understand my point as he did and smiled back. Your comfort and happiness was the most important one after all and if you were the happiest here, though he still sent daggers to a certain half-drunk-of-you bard who was looking at your back with literal heart eyes, he thought he could be... Fine with it.

At least, for you.

"I understand, Your Grace... I just hope that you will come to Liyue soon, which will be waiting for your arrival quite eagerly."

And as you reassured again and again that yes, of course you would... You were yet to know that Venti already carried your words to the certain people you talked about and the whole people of Mondstadt with his winds as the city cried out in joy from having your blessing and love.

And who knows... Maybe, they could have your blessings and love through one another way.

In a more... Romantic and free way.

Bonus Part!

"Oh, but I'll visit Liyue soon! Can you prepare Osmanthus-"

"Nooo~ Your Grace, Dandelion Wine is much much better!"

Zhongli: ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ 😒

You: (⁠ʘ⁠ᴗ⁠ʘ⁠✿⁠) 🤭

Venti: ಥ⁠╭⁠╮⁠ಥ 😭🥹

Also Zhongli: "As you wish, Your Grace..." 😎

[kurogxrix]

Neteyam falling desperately in love with a metkayina girl that is already promised to someone but he doesn't know until he confesses to her 💔 how about that? Have a great day love ~

All The Stars

Neteyam x Metkayina!reader

IN WHICH you are Tonowari and Ronal’s eldest daughter, and no matter how much you and Neteyam love each other, you will always belong to another.

Warnings: ANGST, ao’nung being ao’nung, misunderstandings, loveless betrothals.

THANK YOU FOR 1K FOLLOWERS, means so much to me🫀

Neteyam couldn’t exactly recall when he had fallen so desperately in love with you. He did know that he was infatuated with you ever since he and his family had set foot in Awa’atlu. You were the eldest daughter of both clan leaders, Tonowari and Ronal, so you shared more common traits than you could imagine. You were both just young adults that were overwhelmed with duties and kids who could only wish to fit into their parents expectations. 

Your brother had been the biggest jerk towards the omatikaya family at first, but you and your sister had both been their guardian angels. You just loved to scold your little brother for acting so badly towards the poor family that just seeked safety and peace.  

Even though you would be nice to the family, Neteyam couldn’t help but notice how you would stay away from them when it wasn’t time to train them. He thought that maybe you were just busy with your duties, but in reality it was way more than that. 

You just had to get away from the eldest Sully son, because you hated the way his luminescent freckles and warm yellow eyes made your stomach flutter. You just couldn’t allow yourself to fall in love with the omaticaya man, because you were already promised to another man. It was your duty to lead your people after the fall of your parents, and your mother had chosen the most suitable Metkayina man for your betrothal. 

Sayko was one of the strongest hunters among many, he wore his own Akula tooth proudly on his necklace, much like your brother. He was tall and well built, given his many years of hard training. Though he was an attractive man, you just did not feel any love towards him. You told yourself that maybe you were incapable of liking him because you were forced into a future relationship with him, but you knew that it was not that. 

The loveless feeling was reciprocated on both sides of the promise, but Sayko was a very competitive and possessive man, and what was his was his. It didn’t matter if he didn’t feel any sort of romantic feelings for you, if any other na’vi tried to sweep you off your feet, he would always be there to remind you who you were promised to. 

Now that Neteyam had arrived and had practically swooped you off your feet, it was hard for you to explain to the man how you were already taken. Soon enough, you had begun meeting Neteyam in the midst of Eclipse as you both rode your ilus towards a new destination everyday. He couldn’t deny the feelings that you brought out of him, how your doe-like aqua eyes made him feel things that he believes he shouldn’t. 

You had to physically refrain yourself from telling your little sister about your infatuation, squealing like a little girl as you recalled everything that you both had done. You knew that if any of this got out and through the ears of your mother, she would probably restrict you from seeing the boy, in any way that she could. So you continued to meet in the middle of the night, and tonight, he had told you that he had something special to tell you about. 

You were excited, nevertheless also anxious. Because this meant that tonight would have to be the night that you come clean to him about your betrothal, and you feared what his reaction would be. 

You had not even arrived by the sandbank when something had ‘attacked’ you. The figure wrapped their skinny arms around your waist, stuffing their face into the dip of your neck. You laughed loudly at that point, already knowing who it was. Though you brought a hand to your mouth in an attempt to cover up your laughter, because you were supposed to be sneaking out right now, not informing the whole village of it. 

“Must we go?” he told you, digging his face deeper into the crevice of your neck. His warm breath fanned over your neck as he stayed there for a second, his arms still wrapped around you. Your ears flicked back at his affection, feeling like a swarm of butterflies were flying through your stomach. Cross that, a whole group of Akulas were, because butterflies were not enough to describe the effect that the Sully boy had on you. 

At times you felt undeserving of his attention, because you had found yourself falling hard for the boy. You feared what your mother would tell you if you revealed those feelings to her, because Ronal was no easy woman. She would probably tell you to suck it up for the sake of the clan that you would then have to guide alongside Sayko, that your feelings for the boy were temporary. 

It didn’t help the fact that she completely despised Neteyam’s family with her whole heart. She hated them for being descendants of a demon and the trouble that followed their tails constantly. Though she had lumped it because of your father, it didn’t mean that she had accepted them with open arms into her home. 

“You good?” he questioned when you didn’t respond, too busy overthinking the issue in your head. You smiled at his concern, thanking Eywa for having gifted you such a man. God, you would fight tooth and nail anyone that even dared to try and take him from you. You turned around in his arms, making them fall off from your waist to join the side of his body. 

His gaze on you felt overwhelming, stuffing you with emotions that you could not even describe. He looked like an angel, hand-moulded and assembled by the hands of Eywa herself in nirvana. The soft breeze made his braids sway as his beads clanged together. His warm yellow eyes were like pools of honey and they held much more emotions than he could express. 

You moved your finned-hand to grip onto his bigger one, dragging them between the both of you. You watched as his ears raised at your touch, swiftly dropping back down as he was embarrassed of getting caught being so enamoured by you. 

“How about you get running, forest boy.” he had not even had the time to process your words inside of his brain before you had set off running towards the forest. His eyes widened once he had caught on to your little game, a cocky smile making its way onto his face as he watched you disappear through the many bushes. 

-

“What’s up fish girl, too slow on land?” Neteyam yelled from before you, running backwards as he faced you. He was about an impressive distance in front of you, but that was the props of being a jungle boy. You were fast in water and he was fast on land. Though that was an obvious verity, he couldn’t help but tease you for it.

The forest here in Awa’atlu was nothing like back home for Neteyam. The trees were smidgen and the branches were comparably thinner than the ones back in the rainforest. The trees were taller and fuller at home, bushes full and lands covered in moist moss. Though it was the closest that he had to his birth land, and that would do for now. 

You, on the other hand, were struggling a bit to catch up to him. Through the many plants that kept hitting relentlessly against your skin and the rocky path, there was little that you could do to catch up to him. He didn’t even seem to falter at each obstacle that would present itself before the both of you, but that didn’t mean that you didn’t put on a good show either. 

You dropped both of your hands down on your knees once you arrived, bending over to catch your breath. You wondered how the forest na’vis did this every single day, and you could sweat your ass off at the mere thought. The sound of his soft chuckle was what had got you looking up, only to meet his amused gaze. 

He raised an eyebrow bone at your struggling and you could only roll your eyes at his teasing. Your breath stuck in your lungs as you viewed the scenery before the both of you. If the previous part of the forest that you were both running through had reminded Neteyam of his home, then this definitely made him feel at home. 

The bioluminescent vines enveloped the place with a soft multicoloured gleam which reflected perfectly off of his skin. He looked so adorable as he stared longingly at the nature between you both, making a surge of feelings rush in your stomach. 

“Did you even know where you were going?” you breathed out a laugh as the boy shook his head no. 

“I was only running away from you, because you ran oh so fast.” he laughed at your struggle earlier, and you broke out in another eye roll. Though you couldn’t help but laugh with him, because you had already made fun of him for being slow in the water. God, he really needed swimming classes because you were sure that an akula would get his ass square and fair if he ever breached the reef. 

Neteyam picked up the pace as he started investigating the place, and you could only stay back and watch him with curiosity filled eyes. You watched as he picked up stones, observing them like he knew some sort of hidden meaning behind them. But rocks were just rocks, and he was just a curious kid. You had to bring a hand up to your mouth to stifle a giggle as you watched him throw a flat rock onto the land before him, imitating a ricochet. 

He looked so carefree that you didn’t have it in you to bother him in his curious time. Though somewhere at the complete back of your mind, you could hear the faint sounds of a clock ticking, getting closer and closer the more time went. It was a foreign sound to you, for, you had never heard such ticking until now, and you pushed away the obnoxious feeling at the back of your thoughts. 

Neteyam started moving again, exploring parts of the Awa’atlu forest that he had never seen before. His footsteps led him behind big bushes, or even behind the old trunk of an aged tree. 

Suddenly he stopped before you, and there was something else then curiosity that filled his eyes. There was something deeper than just interest, there was love. A love that he had failed to express to you from the day he had known that his heart was beating for you and you only. It swirled in his eyes like no other feeling, and Neteyam could only wish that you saw through him like a piece of clear glass. 

“Listen, Y/N I-,” he cut himself off, suddenly feeling self-conscious under your stare. He knew that you had no expectations of him, that you appreciated him for who he really was, but there was always this nagging feeling at the back of his head that told him that he wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough for the chief’s daughter and no matter how much he tried to prove it, he would never be. 

You raised your eyebrow at him as he hesitated with his words, the clock ticking to no ends. You were both running out of time without even knowing it, the final sand grains falling from the hourglass that tied the both of you together. The sky had now fully darkened, leaving space for the bank of stars to shine light onto your land. 

The sky was clear and full of them, painting space like a beautiful art piece. Though, through the millions of tiny stars that illuminated the night skies of Pandora, there was one star that shone brighter than all others. It captivated you like no other, making your eyes strain away from Neteyam for longer than you would’ve liked them to. 

Once you felt his palm resting on your cheek, your gaze had immediately turnt back towards him. The upside down smile present on your face made him aware of your shyness, and the closing of your eyes could only solidify his observation. His thumb ran comforting circles upon your cheek, making you lean lovingly into his palm. His actions spoke more emotions than his words could ever. 

Though his touch was gone just as fast as it had arrived, and the booming voice of a third party had erupted through the fond atmosphere. 

“Get your hands off my woman, forest scum.” 

his nickname for Neteyam sounded belittling than the one that you had for him. Both yours and Neteyam’s ears dropped at the boy’s interruption, his voice disturbing all peace nearby. His presence was unwanted, and Neteyam was not afraid to make him aware of such a fact.

“What’re you doing here? Following us around like a freak,” he threw back the words that your people had carelessly thrown at his family, calling them freaks for things that they could not even help. Your chest tightened with guilt as you thought of the way that they had been treated, before focusing back on your current problem.

Your betrothed was now standing before you and the boy that was about to confess his everdying love to you. The fear of getting rebuked by your parents quickly caught up to you, and your breathing picked up as you thought of all the ways your parents would punish you for breaking your promised path. Sayko looked like he was overflowing with anger as he stared between you and the Sully boy, clearly not liking as the boy was so closed to his future matez 

Just then, the words seemed to have clicked inside Neteyam’s head. Sayko’s confession was like the final sand grain that hit the bottom of the hourglass. It grounded you, made you feel bitterness for not using your time like you had to, like you could’ve. It left you feeling empty as you gazed towards the boy whose heart you had just involuntarily broken, the same boy who’s heart had learnt to beat for you. The same boy that you had shown a whole different definition of life to. 

Of course you were already someone else’s, how could he have been so stupid. You were the chief’s eldest daughter after all. Everything was laid down before you and you could have anything that you wanted, including the attention of many warriors and townsmen. Though he knew that it wasn’t truly like this, that you had worked hard for where you were today, anger clouded his judgement before he could even do anything. 

“Neteyam…I was going to tell you, I promise.” you tried, but it fell deaf to the warrior’s ears. 

“No,” Neteyam breathed a humourless laugh out as he pinched his nose bridge between his fingers in conflict. “We are not even together, I am stupid for getting upset at you. You are allowed to live the life you want to.” he tells you, as though it was truly your choice to be with Sayko. He looked at you with a foreign look in his eyes, one that you had never seen him look at you with before. 

His glare was not hateful, but the trace of betrayal was overpowering. It swarmed his iris that was once filled with love, both feelings that you had inflicted upon him. Neteyam turned to look between you and your betrothed in an attempt to depict if you were pulling some kind of joke on him, trying to catch if this had been all fake.

But no, all that was fake was the moments that you had spent together. All that was fake were the scenarios that you would replay in your mind as you imagined a future where you would be happy with the boy, but life was never that easy. 

“Your parents are waiting for you at your marui, i’m sure your mother will be glad to see you ma Y/N.” the nickname threw you off, but the fact that he had already made your family aware of your little escapade made you sick to the stomach. He really had the audacity to not only stalk the both of you, but also make your parents aware of it? It made you want to recoil as he brought a hand to lay down you back, pushing you forward. Your eyes burnt as you turned back to look at the crestfallen Neteyam, who he could walk behind you both and watch as your future mate escorted you back home. 

Sayko’s touch felt like fire upon your skin, but not the good type of warmth. His hand felt like the ravaging flames that only brought devastation, and you4 growing hatred towards the boy could counter that heat. You wanted nothing more than to rip the hand that laid against your lower back, but you knew that you were already in so much trouble, and your parents' wrath was not something to be messed with. 

Your heart soared with guilt and resentment as you didn’t have time to properly explain anything to Neteyam before Sayko had pulled you away. You feared that you would never have the time to explain anything to him, because you knew that your mother would keep a sharp eye on you to prevent you from escaping to meet the boy once more. 

-

You had not even had time to properly enter your family’s marui when your mother had begun to bombard you with questions. The marui was vacant of anyone other than your mother, your betrothed and yourself because your father had escorted everyone outside. Tonowari knew that Ronal would’ve been better at dealing with this situation herself, so he left her to scold you. 

Neteyam had not even had the chance to enter with you because his own father had grabbed him by the base of his ear tightly, punishing him like he was a little kid once more. You did not know what was bound to happen to the both of you, but you did know one thing, and it was that your mother was standing fuming before you. 

“Is this true?” your mother seethed as she stood next to Sayko. The man looked down at you, his tall figure towering over you. Your ears flicked back as you looked down, unable to look at the fierce glare that your mother had casted upon you. 

She curtly grabbed onto your finned-arm, pulling you towards her as she forced you to meet her eyes. Your lips wobbled at the sheer disappointment in your mother’s eyes, because you were just as sensible as your little sister and a mother’s discontentment hurt more than any wound could. 

“Is this true, daughter?” Ronal repeated again, more stern with her tone. You nodded slightly, intimidated by your mother’s dominance. Many were scared of Ronal in your clan, and thus why she made a perfect leader. A single tear ran down your soft cheek but her eyes failed to soften at your vulnerability. 

Not even an hour ago, you had been sharing a special moment with the boy that you were so in love with. A man that you could picture a future with, unlike the warrior that was currently towering over you cowering frame. You wanted to tell your mother all of Neteyam’s accomplishments, how he was already trained to lead a clan, or how he was the second best warrior after his mother. Though you knew that she’d just shut you down, because there was nothing more important to your mother than duties, not even your own heart. 

It didn’t matter to her if your heart was beating for another, she’d pull it out with her own hands and pump it manually if she had to. Your silence was enough to tell Ronal what she needed to know, and her disappointment was practically flowing freely off of her. You had never seen her this angry, not when Ao’nung had gotten in any fight, or when Tsireya had returned home late because she had gotten lost in time while looking for pretty shells. 

It was unfair, everything was. You wanted to be able to love who you wanted to, and have a future together. You wanted to move into your very own marui with Neteyam and decorate the place together. But you couldn’t for as long as you were the chief’s daughter, and nothing in this world could change that. The Great-Mother couldn’t rebirth you as another even if you begged with your entire will, and she couldn’t fix what had happened between the both of you either.

Sayko had been dismissed immediately after your confirmation of the events, not without Ronal informing him that she’d talk to him and his family once everything was resolved. She stood before you now, her pregnant belly being the only matter of space between the both of you. 

“You have disappointed me daughter,” she stared into your shaky eyes, running a hand down her face. She was exhausted from her duties, and your betrayal to your betrothed was not how she had expected her night to end. “I plan out your future, give you an easy life and this is how you thank me, by affiliating yourself with those demons!” 

You couldn’t even defend Neteyam even if you wanted to, because you knew the bigger grave that it would dig you. You couldn’t even say anything as the rest of your family had re-entered the tent, silence suffocating you all. You couldn’t even get yourself to shift your gaze towards your little sister that had called out for your name, distantly hearing your brother telling her to leave you alone.  

Tonight you had lost someone very special to you, and death was not even in the frame. The feeling of hurt enveloped your heart and squeezed it so hard that you were sure you could physically feel your chest tightening with anguish. Now nothing could undo what was done now, not your apologies, not your begging, and surely not your lies.

As you laid on your mat at night, you couldn’t help but observe the night sky through the open window of your marui. Tears running freely through your silent sobs, staining your delicate skin as they flowed unceasingly. You couldn’t help but be entranced by the stars on this night, noticing how they seemed closer tonight. 

Neteyam was just like a star, beautiful and bright from afar just as from up close. Though he was only meant to be appreciated from afar because he burns when you’re at close proximity. But that never happens, because you never get close enough for it to burn, and so you’re left with the resenting feeling of never being able to get close enough. 

-

[xuchiya]

this song is one of my favorites and this was played while my team and i were having fun showcasing our prototype on our university week and yeah .. it is meant for my crush so too bad he didn't hear my message bc he wasn't there .. jk

fluff (based on a real life experience)

   as i walked around, smiling and handing students flyers of our work, who were walking around looking at the computer science and engineering inventions or prototypes created by groups of amazing individuals with intellectual minds.

"hey girly!" almost dropping the flyers, carla—one of my good friends tackled me in a hug. i chuckle, wrapping my arms around her small figure, "hey how's the booth? how many signatures did you guys have?"

she puffs an air out, rolling her eyes, "gosh as much as I want to pass, this is hard. we're still at 50 signatures. what 'bout you guys?"

i look over my shoulders to see 2 of my group mates missing while the other 2 explain our work to wandering and curious students. i turn back to her, "not sure to be honest, ron and james are missing so we could still be around 30? not much."

"oh ron and james? they're holding the guest book paper before they leave." my head clicked immediately and laughed quietly, "smart bastards."

"martin saw what they did and is going around the campus too. anyways ..." her voice trailed off. i look at her confused, leaning on to my other hip, holding the flyer close to my chest "what?"

her lips curled up, bumping her hips to mine with a teasing manner, "wooyoung is walking around ... he's checking out all of our prototype." my eyes suddenly widen at the mention of wooyoung.

wooyoung is 4 years ahead of all of us hence the level year he is, which he is now graduating soon. because of the pandemic and short incomes, wooyoung stopped his studies until both of his parents got back up and let him continue his studies, even though he is already a few years behind though his other friends have work or have their own business, they didn't let wooyoung felt that he is out of place just because he is still studying. they knew his story and they understood him well. good friends indeed.

"oi! you're smiling like crazy, you're in love again ah!" she teases, slapping my bicep playfully. i scoff, turning around to walk back to my booth, "stop and I am not—it's just a happy crush."

as soon as i place the flyers down and face her, my two members plus her look at me with 'oh really?'. i pick up some discarded candy wrappers and threw it at them. they laughed at my reddened face, "geez girly if it wasn't for the heat index here in Manila, we would assume it's for wooyoung."

 i turn away from them, grabbing my aqua flask and drinking the ice cold water defending the scorching heat of Manila’s summer. turning the mini fan brought by james, using the back of my hand– i wipe off the sweat trickling down the underside of my chin and jaw. as the days go on, so does the excessive heat, working outside is difficult to do without breaking TOO MUCH sweat.

  “here.” a voice called out, i look up and to my surprise, wooyoung crouched on the same level as i was. i stared at him then to his extended hand where a handkerchief was reaching for me, my brows furrowed, “huh? no no i don’t want to. i mean thank you but it’s like .. i mean personal hygiene?” 

 i rambled without realising it until he chuckled softly, he moved forward– patting the sweat gently. the small distance we had, had my heart flying off the cage of my chest and the heat that was burning people’s skin was now all over my cheeks as wooyoung’s hand, surprisingly soft and gentle, held my sweaty face. his touch sent a jolt through me, and i could’ve sworn his thumb brushed against my cheekbone. a blush crept up my neck, and i stammered, unsure of what to say with our faces so close.

  his touched lingered as he pulled away, his eyes searching mine with intensity that made my breath catch, “do you have an extra hanky?” i cleared my throat, pointing at the handkerchief wrapped around my hair, “no, i was in a hurry because i had to set up our prototype that i forgot to bring my clamp or my hair tie.”

he hums, “have you eaten lunch?” once again i spoke, “no …” he clicks his tongue, standing back up, i followed his figure to which i saw him approach my group mates and spoke to them. my head was all over the place, his touch, his voice and the way he cares for someone. so much luck for that person he will be with, breaking my heart in the process that this is all just a stupid “happy” crush, nothing more and nothing less—nothing to take serious. i sigh, shaking my head and scolding my hopeful heart.

“you’re so blind girly…” my head snapped towards carla, she smacked my head gently–playful way. i pout, “what? I’m not trying to hurt myself by giving myself false hope that he feels the same way.” carla sighs, “he wouldn’t go beyond those boundaries if he doesn’t feel the same way or he wouldn’t do those if “friends” act so much beyond that.”

“carla is right.” carla and i turned to wooyoung with a smile, perfect timing, my stomach growled loudly, shattering the silence. my cheeks burned with shame as carla claps as she cackles beside me. wooyoung raised his eyebrow, amusement dancing in his eyes, “look’s like it is telling me you did not eat breakfast to.”

i scoff, looking away,”told you i’m in a hurry…” i heard him chuckle before i saw his hand reaching out for my wrist, pulling me up, “huh?”

“i ask for your groups permission to let you eat first then after that they can eat.” i turn to my group mates to see them giving me a thumbs up, then looking back at wooyoung, “are you not busy?” he shakes his head, “i can make space for our first date.”

   And that my folks, is how he had taken me breathless by being effortlessly romantic and being a sweet gentleman.

[skania]

OnK Chapter 152

Soooo as someone who reads this for Akane and for Akane only, I have to say that I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about her role in the upcoming arc.

We're entering the final arc and she has yet to get her second volume cover. If she doesn't get Volume 15 (and I'm praying she doesn't), then that should mean that whatever happens in the upcoming volumes (the final volumes!) will involve her enough to warrant saving her second cover to this late in the game.

We're entering the final arc and she just narrated the lead-up to it.

We're entering the final arc and it's happening right alongside the Second Season, which is the season that will cover most of Akane's important chapters. So if Aka wants to deliver parallels, then there's a lot of potential for Akane to be involved.

...Watch Mengo and Aka stick her on the cover of Volume 15 and call it a day 🤡 But for now, I'll keep praying that we get a Goro/Aqua cover so that Akane is free to be used in better volumes.

I don't have much to say about the chapter this time around. I think we all knew that Aka was getting ready to end the manga, so I for one was happy to see that we're entering the final arc. The sooner we're freed, the better!

It's hard to gauge how long this arc will be, but I'd bet on ~30 chapters plus an Epilogue Arc. Coincidentally, there are exactly 28 weeks left until Christmas. In the manga, they are in November right now and Kana's Graduation (the most important moment in the manga, apparently) will take place on Christmas. So I can totally see Aka wanting his fictional Christmas to happen during, well, Christmas.

If he does it, then we could be getting 3 more volumes worth of content plus 1 volume for the Epilogue. Maybe.

Or maybe he will try to rush it and end it even sooner so that whoever gets hurt gets hurt when the anime adapts Chapters 64 - 65. That would be so rushed even for his standards that it would be wild, but anything is possible when it comes to bad writing lmao

Leaving that aside, look at my girl.

I love her. I love her so much. She has got quite a few reasons to be making this face, IMO.

Ruby was able to find a peaceful way to have her revenge and is thus ready to start healing, and the answer she found is healing those around her, too. Like Gotanda and Kaburagi.

Ai's heart was presumably portrayed in an accurate fashion, which is sure to pull at her hearstrings.

And considering that Aqua was the one who edited the movie, I think it says something about his current disposition that he respected Ruby's take and left the movie as it is, so that may be giving Akane another reason to smile.

Speaking about Gotanda and Kaburagi, I feel like their conversation foreshadows a lot of what this final arc will be dealing with.

Making amends, overcoming regrets and moving towards the future...

... people lying to themselves and "bottling themselves up"...

yet still holding out onto hope, deep down, of being able to fulfill the dreams that they have been denying themselves of all along.

This comment in particularly reminded me so much of Aqua lol

Which takes me to: Aka's writing is so clumsy that his star changing colors every other chapter comes across as flip-flopping 😂

Back when his stars briefly became white only to turn black again, it served a purpose. It showed that while Ruby's words pacified the "Goro" side of him, he hadn't fully healed yet. If Aqua having his white star again is meant to signify that Kana's words managed to pacify the "Aqua" side of him, then... why in the world didn't we see his eyes go white last chapter? 🤡 If Kana is the reason why Aqua seems to have hopes for the future now, why not show it?

For my own sanity, I have to believe something happened in the time-skip. Maybe editing the movie was actually cathartic or something, who knows. I'm not even going to theorize anything about this, because the writing is giving me whiplash lmao so I'm just going to take a moment to point out that while Mengo took the time to give Aqua the haircut he is supposed to have here as per the prologue, she left out the piercing.

And I find that kind of funny, honestly, that this is where Aka seemingly draws the line. With all the stuff that Aka off-panels, Aqua getting a random piercing off-panel wouldn't have been shocking at all 😂

Another thing I found funny:

How many times does Aka need to repeat the same thing? Does he think our attention span is that short? 😭 Not to mention these words feel empty right now because he just went on a data with Kana with zero issue. Apparently, for Aka keeping his distance is only a thing if it involves making sure Aqua interacts with Akane as little as possible lmao

Oh, right!

How could I forget the big twist!

Wake me up when Kamiki interviews Akane 😂

[melonminnie]

Hello! I really love your Oshi No Ko x Reader fics! Especially ones with Aqua! Honestly I love the guy, but I can't deny that the man is a major red flag- And that got me thinking, what if:

Yandere!Aquamarine x Reader (who eerily looks like Ai Hoshino)? Plus, she doesn't act anything similar to Ai because all her life she was just compared to the late idol-?

Anywho, keep it up!<333

GET UP 🦢 ‧ ₊ ✧ Aqua x fem! Reader

-TYSM FOR REQUESTING sorry for the late request and I’m sorry if this is bad I didn’t know how to end this on a happy note 😓

Aqua thought it was strange, or a coincidence to be exact, maybe even a gift sent from above, gracing him with a second chance with his favorite idol.

But to say he was disappointed was an understatement. Your personality did not, in fact, match that of his late mother, but your looks did, so that was all he cared about.

If he couldn't have her, he would just make do. That was what he told himself over and over again countless times whenever he saw your face.

Sure, your star-like eyes and purple hair matched hers greatly, and he did try really hard to separate the both of you from each other.

He knew how much you hated it when he asked AI Hoshino-related questions that would unleash your short temper on him, causing him to groan in annoyance every time you yelled curses at his face.

Although Aqua hated your short temper and how your eyes dulled with the mention of the late idol, how they looked exactly like hers before she died, and how he despised that you were the exact opposite of the cheery, always happy, and pretty idol – the idol who knew how to act around people, but you didn't – he couldn't fathom why you were so upset. He had no idea.

All he knew was that he hated it so much, to the point where he wanted you. He wanted you, the AI Hoshino that he imagined would be you.

And even if he had to go through all that trouble, he'd try. He'd try his hardest to make you the closest thing he had to the idol.

"Ai wouldn't act like that," he blurted, staring at you blankly. It had been mere minutes before he said that that you two had been arguing.

Without even thinking, you raised your hand, slapping him across the face, leaving a red mark on his cheek.

"Just… just how many times do I have to explain to you that I'm not her? Whatever she meant to you, I'm not her. I'm my own person. Can't you comprehend that?" She questioned, staring at him, her hands forming into fists, waiting for a response from her boyfriend. But he just sighed as if this wasn't worth his time.

"Aqua, you know I thought you were different, that you wouldn't compare me to a dead woman! But that's all you do, and I hate it. Sometimes I wish I never met you," she broke the silence, tears in her eyes, frowning at his silence.

"Look, Ai—" he didn't get to continue his sentence when he realized his screw up.

"Ai? Ai? Are you being serious with me, Aqua?" she screamed at him through tears before walking away, upset and hurt.

Perhaps Aqua wasn't the perfect person for her.

Hope u enjoyed sorry if this is bad I can’t write a good thing abt aqua

[guardkeywolf]

keegan p. russ with flirty male reader 👀

Flirty!Male Reader X Keegan P. Russ (CoD: Ghosts)

Thank you for the request @1yyyan !

This was my first time to write for Keegan, so I hope I did well!

Please enjoy!

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Since the Ghosts Team had finally gotten some time off, Y/n had more than enough time to get to know the Sergeant.

From what he could see, the man was by far one who took his job very seriously in everything he did. Plus, he was much more quiet than the others, like Logan and Hesh. If anything, the only time the man really spoke was when they were on missions and had to give orders.

Y/n guessed it was from his background of being a marine and all probably.

Fear me, fear that, and of course the infamous "Rah" sounds they make.

He had a tendency to annoy the Sergeant with it often, especially when Y/n began to add "rah" to the end of every sentence he finished.

Despite his constant teasing of the sniper, Y/n also felt something in him change.

Since spending more time around the man, his emotions altered to something different. So, to test his theory of if Keegan liked him, he went to the only option available.

Flirting.

"Hey Sergeant," Y/n voiced, happy when Keegan turned to him, giving him his full attention.

"Are you the moon? Because even when it's dark, you still seem to shine," he heard Logan and Hesh bust out laughing from behind him but ignored it as he kept his eyes on Keegan only.

"W-what?" The sniper was flustered now, a light blush painting his cheeks, obviously caught off guard.

Y/n decided to push his luck even more.

"The sparkle in your eyes is so bright, the sun must be jealous," Y/n spoke, and he meant it.

Keegan really did have beautiful eyes. Those lovely aqua blues nearly had him tripping in the field when he turned to him.

Even with the slightest emotion, they were gorgeous to look at.

"Y-Y/n...get back- get back to work!" The man's voice betrayed him as it got higher with each word. The Sergeant got up from his seat and stormed off with a face of red.

Y/n didn't know what to think but he knew the man wasn't mad at him.

Now Y/n could only imagine how else he could get Keegan to become rosy-red, and not just by flirting either...

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[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2024: Day 18 - Water

Duke Was Never the Same:

The lake was blue. It was very blue, as if someone had plucked the purest sapphire from the deepest mine in Australia and carefully placed it into the place where the Skarloey lake was meant to be. It shimmered in the sun, barely a single ripple in the surface to betray the mirror that the lake seemed to pretend to be. It was gorgeous, and yet Duke couldn’t help but avert his eyes.

Rheneas liked gazing out towards the lake. He claimed it healed something within himself, that it made him feel at harmony with the world. It was one of his favourite topics, when he got the chance to get a word in edgeways in between Duncan’s complaining and Peter Sam’s chirpiness. Rheneas seemed to think it was the water, as if it had bubbled up from the earth’s core purely to soothe his soul and bring peace and serenity to the world around it. And sure, it had done just that – Skarloey Lake was surrounded by the lushest greenery on Sodor, thick oaks and vibrant flowers blanketed the banks of the lake where humans hadn’t cut them away to dot their resorts and villages along its coastline. The lake was their lifeblood, it’s waters a siren luring tourists and locals alike up to gaze upon it.

And yet, Duke could barely look upon the lake without feeling like spitting out all his coals. He knew there was something wrong with that – something truly wrong with a steam engine disliking water. It singled him out in a way that just… wasn’t normal. At least the lake was crystal blue or aqua green, depending on the season. Such colours were bold, natural.

It was the inky blackness of the lake at night that made Duke feel truly ill. The darkness of the water, the way that it rippled just enough to remind him of that day. Duke would do whatever job was asked of him, of course, but he tried his absolute best to avoid being out past dusk. This worked out well for him – he got the morning train, when the rising sun would blind him and made it impossible to see the lake for the glare reflecting off it – and in return he was back before the sun had dipped beyond the horizon.

It wasn’t the lake itself that was the problem, no. It was the water. Duke was fine with winding rivers and rushing rapids – the Rheneas Waterfall was really quite beautiful when Duke saw it – but when water was still, it was wrong. It was uncomfortable, it drew memories up from deep under the surface, ripping them out from where they’d been shoved deep down between his boiler tubes and taking everything with them. Duke knew he needed water to run – he was not like Henry, with such an intense phobia that it blinded him from his duties like the rain blinded engines when they were forced to run in it. He was merely… uncomfortable with it.

A new boat was unveiled on the lake. It was a bright, eye-catching red. Duke instantly hated it – red and water did not mix well within his mind. Nothing good came of the two mixing. Red-painted metal was not meant to touch water, not meant to come into contact with the very substance that would corrode it into nothingness. Water was a powerful force, after all. It rusted and it eroded. It pulled entire embankments down when it so desired; it flooded the valleys and left people with nothing left but broken dreams and sodden houses.

It left Duke with nothing.

The boat was shiny – it was not quite the same colour as James, or even any of the other Skarloey Railway engines. It’s red was entirely different, in a way none of the others recognised. Of course Duke was the only one to make the connection, he was the only one who could have ever known. No one else was alive who could say the same thing, they’d all been buried deep under the earth or torn to pieces by scrappers long, long ago. Duke was the only one left, the only one cursed to bear the burden of knowing, of caring.

Peter Sam and Sir Handel liked the boat way too much. Said it was oddly familiar, in a way they just couldn’t quite place their buffers on. Duke hoped they would never remember – not that they would be able to, he had only really been a story and a small hole in a brick wall to them. They’d not been witness to any of the truth, not been around for what really happened. At one point, Peter Sam almost found out, but Duke had been able to redirect him, protect his young puffling from the ugliness of reality. Sure, Peter Sam had suffered in his life – but at least the images that haunted Duke’s nightmares were confined to him alone. Peter Sam could be free, could live his life without ever knowing.

They all could.

Only Duke remembered.

Only Duke knew.

The red boat was not as waterproof as its owners had intended. When the autumn storms rolled through the mountains, thunderclouds beating their chests and hurling rain and lightning down upon the railway and all it served, the rain got into the red boat. It hadn’t been roped to its jetty properly, and one evening it got loose, floating out into the lake as rain pounded it from all sides, tearing at it and trying to find a weak point.

Duke had been the one to find it, on his early morning train. It had capsized, revealing its hull as it smashed against the craggy rocks and sunk until only a small chunk remained visible. Duke had gone as white as a sheet, his eyes far away from the scene of destruction.

They’d had to hoist the red boat out with a crane. By then, the water had begun its natural process, ripping into the boat and rusting anything not waterproofed properly. It happened so fast, aided by the unnatural number of contaminants in the water from the harsh rains. Or maybe they were only seen by Duke, who wasn’t really seeing the red boat at all, but rather something else far, far away and a good fifty years ago. It was placed in the back of the yards, awaiting some unknown order to repair or dispose of it. Duke could only spare sympathy for the poor pleasure craft – the water had done it in.

Water was all too cruel.

The rains left great muddy puddles everywhere; Duke begged off mine duty, desperate to avoid the murky, dirty waters of the mine.

Desperate to avoid the memories.

Duke managed to get his way, taking trains anywhere but the mine. He did the army-camp trains, leaving loaded vans at the entrance to the formerly abandoned slate quarry and picking up empty ones in their place. One time, he was even directed into the slate quarry when the little WD ‘Beetle’ broke down, steaming into a military camp and being oh so thankful for the huge tarps that were strategically hung to keep as much of the camp as possible dry, directing the rain to distant, out of sight drains.

Duke had never been allowed back inside that camp though, not that he wanted to after he spotted an old steam boiler in the corner of his eye and been punched out of his own mind and into memories he was trying to avoid.

Still, the rains continued. The red boat was taken away, and never returned. Scrapped, or so Skarloey said. Peter Sam held out hope for its return, the optimist he was. Duke couldn’t find it in himself to do the same. Not when the red boat had been in such a sorry state, great gashes torn in it by the rocks and creeping rust beginning to form on its interior, now open to the world due to the way it had been tossed around and ripped apart.

Not when it was too similar to before.

The trains ground to a halt, tourists not wanting to venture far from their hotels and the mine not wanting to attempt any major work in the dangerously wet conditions. The entire railway slowed to only its most essential services, and only the fewest engines possible were called upon to handle the work. Duke was one of them, a fact he privately was thankful for – he couldn’t stand being inside the shed for too long, not when it would only ever remind him of those years spent underground, unable to see the outside world, confined to the darkness without even a hope or a prayer of rescue.

Instead, Duke handled the bulk of traffic along the Skarloey Railway’s ‘main line’ while Rusty handled trackwork and Ivo Hugh the few trains needed at the mine – mostly made of equipment runs and hauling away what amount of the rock had been dug out. It was not much, and Ivo Hugh got enough time in between his runs to help Duke out. Sandbags were supplied to the villages in danger of flooding – not that Duke thought they would. Duke knew flooding, and these were not the right conditions.

And Duke was right. The weather cleared up right before the river could burst its banks, leaving the valley to breathe a collective sigh of relief even as Duke kept his eyes determinedly on the way forwards.

The intervention of the rain had distracted Duke from the time of year, and by the time he remembered, it was already too late.

Duke started seeing him everywhere, in flashes of red that ensnared Duke’s attention and drew him in like a moth to the flame. Duke hated it. Duke hated the rain. Duke hated water. Duke hated knowing the truth and never being able to repeat it. Duke felt his boiler tighten with stress, the steel contracting even as his fire tried vainly to warm him through.

It was a losing battle.

And then finally, Duke simmered over. It was that day, after all. It was fifty years exactly. Duke said nothing as the day progressed, leaving the other engines worried for his health. And then he volunteered to pull the last freight of the day; a line of empty trucks for the mine. The others all were stunned. They couldn’t even find a way to voice their shock – or perhaps that was Duke being unable to hear them. He couldn’t hear anything over the scream that had rattled in his smokebox for fifty years, anything over the words that had haunted him since they’d been uttered.

The trip up was quiet. The afternoon was cooling into night, and the trees had only just finished having all their leaves turn brown and red. Within the week, they’d be barren – but for now it was a festival of colour that broke up the traditionally green landscape. The river babbled along by the line on one side while a few cars rumbled by on the other, racing to get home for the end of the day. Only Duke seemed to know what day it was. Only Duke seemed to care what day it was.

Then again, only Duke knew what happened. Only Duke every truly saw it.

Duke slowed to a stop at the mine, shunting away the trucks. Dirty pools of water littered the lineside, him reflected in each. Of course he was – dirty water was what took him in the end. Duke waited until his driver had gone inside to log their arrival before creeping forwards to the beginning of the mine itself.

There were two entrances to this mine: one was a large vertical shaft with elevator that hurtled down deep into the earth, while the other was a long, twisting tunnel dating back centuries. The tunnel was just slightly too small to fit Duke, but the perfect size to push long lines of trucks in. Once upon a time, horses would have hauled the trucks from deep in the mines, but now a conveyer belt ferried everything up to the surface elsewhere.

Duke gazed down the tunnel, and sighed. Fifty years truly did go by fast, and it was everything he could do not to cry.

“I’m… sorry. Stanley.”

***

Once upon a time, there was a little engine named after His Grace, the Duke of Sodor. The little engine worked hard, and kept his little railway in order – but it was clear to all he needed help.

The engine they brought was named Stanley, not that many used his name. To the manager and his crew, he was simply “Number Two”, a rough-riding scoundrel of an engine who never really did anything but derail. Stanley and Duke knew better – they knew something had gone wrong when Stanley had been regauged to work on the little line.

Despite their worries and pleas, nothing was done and Stanley’s condition deteriorated. Crashes and derailments became more common, and Stanley lashed out at Duke in frustration. He hadn’t meant to – goodness, even Duke knew that! But the manager didn’t, and he didn’t care. To him, Stanley had simply been a nuisance who needed to be dealt with. And when Duke tried to keep them from selling Stanley off, they got creative.

Stanley was locked away behind the shed as a pumping engine, Duke spent a year without a new coat of paint – and then the old engine had a pair of new younglings dumped on him. They were so young, and so eager, and so good, but Duke feared for them. He feared what would happen if they too acted like Stanley or even showed a hint of being incapable.

So he went to Stanley, and the pair made up their story.

It worked – Stuart and Falcon behaved impeccably, and all was peaceful on the little railway. Duke and Stanley breathed a sigh of relief, and life settled into place. Sometimes, when the young engines slept, Duke would creep around the back to spend time chatting with his less fortunate friend. He did his best to hide these visits, both Duke and Stanley afraid of what wrath the manager would bring on them if he discovered that they were fraternising.

And for a time, all seemed well. But fate is not that kind.

The pair were discovered one evening during the war, when the manager came out late one evening to warn them of the increasing workload. His punishment was swift and harsh – he made Duke unearth Stanley in the middle of the night and cart him down the line to the biggest mine on the little railway, where they needed a new pumping engine to look after the water in the deepest parts of the mine.

Duke was forced to watch as Stanley was lowered down, down, deep into the mine where he would be run forever more.

Time continued on. The new pumping engine helped the mine reach a new vein deep underground – however to do so they had to constantly pump away a ruptured spring which gushed water constantly. The river the railway ran alongside grew weaker above where the mine’s outflow pipe dumped gallons of water into its rapids; Duke feared that the spring the miners had hit was really the source of the river, though he was unable to voice his concerns.

Duke would never forget his friend, buried alive in the deepest depths of the mine and unable to call for help. The manager made sure of it too – he put Duke on all the trains heading up to the mine, no matter how busy his schedule was. Duke took it all on without complaint – he could see the direction the wind was blowing. When His Grace returned from the war, Duke would plead his case, try and rescue Stanley and the two young engines he’d come to see as his own and make a run for it – maybe get His Grace to transfer them as far from the little railway and its sadistic manager as possible.

Life was not fair though.

It was a cold morning when Duke arrived to chaos.

“There’s something wrong with the pumping engine!” bellowed a miner, sprinting across the yard. “It’s gonna blow!” Then came the scream. It was guttural, full of agony and completely unlike anything Duke had ever been forced to hear before. It echoed through the mine, stunning the men into silence. A thick cloud of smoke belched out of the tunnels all at once, followed by miners running for their lives while hacking and coughing.

The smoke was blown away by the wind, and Duke peered into the mine. He wanted to venture in, to try and find his friend and save him from what he knew to be coming next.

The water that Stanley had been dutifully pumping flooded the mine in a great gushing wave. It’s force caused the entire yard to tremble, and Duke was forced away from the entrance to the mine in fear of it all collapsing. Duke watched on in horror as the mine flooded right the way to the top, the second pumping machine breaking under the strain. Dirty, sludge-filled water began to trickle out of the mine’s entrances, revealing tools, equipment… and one dirty, grime-ridden nameplate.

Stanley’s nameplate.

Duke felt a sob break free. He couldn’t let his youngsters see this. He couldn’t let them see the damage, see what had become of Stanley.

But worse was to come.

Two weeks later, the water level dropped, the spring flushing back out into the river and draining out of the mine. Duke brought a flatbed up, confused.

“Sir? What’s this for?” he asked the manager carefully. The manager didn’t answer. Instead, he simply nodded to several miners. A large crane winch was lowered into the mine, and attached to something.

The crane heaved with all its might, and the something was lifted up into the dusk light. It was what remained of Stanley. His dusty red paint had been washed clean by the surging water – but that same water had also rusted poor Stanley right through. And then Duke saw it. Stanley’s firebox had been blown clean off when he’d broken down, pipes mangled and sticking up at jarring angles. Poor Stanley’s boiler had exploded from the pressure, the dome flying off and his firebox blowing out. He’d been in agony, and then the water had come rushing in.

The water had drowned him slowly, then rusted away at what had been left.

Duke was forced to drag Stanley’s remains to a scrap merchant’s barge at the harbour; thankfully neither Stuart nor Falcon saw him. He wouldn’t have been able to survive them seeing his face twisted in pure sorrow, sobbing as he brought Stanley’s remains to the harbour and watched as they were taken away.

Duke was never quite the same since. He’d been even more protective of those he had left, running himself into the ground for Stuart and Falcon. He’d watched them get sold off, then watched as the world was reduced to a small shed and nothing more.

Stanley never got the recognition he deserved, the manager saw to that. He embellished the story Duke had told Stuart and Falcon and ensured the Reverend heard it. Stanley’s name was forever tarnished, and Duke was left with the guilt.

Duke wasn’t sure if he would ever stop seeing Stanley’s twisted remains and haunted expression gazing up at him from in the water.

Back to the Master Post

[the-real-treasure]

Wish Wish! One Shot #1

A Picture Says A Thousand Words.

Main Masterlist: Here

Drabble Masterlist: Here

Read on AO3: Here

Zeff discovers something about one of the kids that he had been stranded with after they all get off the rock.

(One-shot #1) [Baratie Age 8] Zeff's POV Trigger Warnings: Mention of starvation, residual trauma from starvation, issues with eating, possible eating disorder Word Count: 1493

"What letter is that?"

Zeff looked up from the delivery slip that had just landed in front of him. The Baratie was still under construction and bills were coming in left right and centre for every little thing. He didn't much care, the gold he had kept, the sack of treasure that he had feigned as food, was more than enough to pay for all of it, as well as get those kids some new clothes that actually fit and shit while things were still being worked on. They had all lost a lot of weight over those eighty-five days, and while he and the little eggplant were slowly but surely returning to a healthy standard, he worried a lot about the other one.

The vicious freak of a thing was little more than a slip of flesh, any and all clothes hanging loose and limp over bone and sinew that he couldn't get coated in fat no matter what he feed them. Even now, a bit under a month off the rock, they still refused to eat until both he and Sanji had started their plates. They were like a feral kitten, screaming and yowling and scratching those first few days on board the ship that rescued them, stalking the little blonde boy and almost force feeding him if he did so much as offer them a crumb of bread before he began, their ringed eyes of gold and aqua swirling with unrestrained panic every time.

He breathed out a sigh. There wasn't much to be done about that but keep up the food. One of these days the kid would realise the rest of them wouldn't die if they took a bite whenever they were hungry. Instead of continuing to worry, he instead stood up from the desk and peeked his head around the corner.

Where he had set up camp in the still to be fully fitted kitchen, the two kids had made themselves at home in what will be the dining hall, in the shadow of the twin staircases that hug the opposite wall and curve with it. He could see them squatting next to the new sign, the light filled letters dull for now until they get hung outside. They really weren't meant to have arrived for another month or two, but the guys knew Zeff by name and hurried the job along to get themselves away from the, still notorious, pirate. Y/n was staring at the first one in extreme consternation.

"...B...?"

"Yeah, told you you'd get it!" Sanji gave their joined hands a shake, pointing to the second one that was propped up against the wall, the large capital 'R' wrapped in plastic but the shape still visible. "Next one!"

"What are you two doing ever there?" He watched as the two of you leapt away from each other like you were being burnt, your h/c haired figure, long messy mop pulled into a ponytail that fell down their back before looping back up to be held in place by the same tie, spinning on him with a glare as you leaped between him and Sanji, the little eggplant snarling at him as well.

"Mind your own business, you nasty old pile of fish food!" The wee boy shouted from behind you, and he squinted down at the pair of you, hobble extra pronounced due to his still new peg leg as he walked out to meet yous.

"Little eggplant, honestly, just swear like a normal person."

"Least I don't use so much oregano I could kill a person." He snarked and Zeff presses his eyes and mouth closed and blows a sigh out his nose. He is a scared little boy trying to act brave, not a disrespectful crewmember. He doesn't need hit. Opening his eyes again, he finds your eyes burning into his skull, searching his eyes for an intention to harm. You wouldn't find it.

"I'm gonna ask again." You drop your eyes away from his, "What are you doing out here?"

"I said, mind-!"

"-Practicing."

"Eh?" Their eyes dart from his feet to theirs, scuffing the toe of their shiny new boots on the tiles floor.

"I was... practicing my letters." His eyes flick over to Sanji, the boy already glaring heatedly at him, hand clasped in theirs squeezing so tightly that their claw like nails dug into his skin.

"You haven't been able to read this whole time." Their shoulders scrunched up to their ears, head ducked down further and Sanji pulled them into him. "Fffffff-" The kid doesn't swear, Zeff, let's keep it like that. "-Fflip sake, could'a told me. Would've got you books or something." Your eyes snap up to him, and even Sanji glare fades to confusion.

"...What?" He rests his curled fists on his waist as he looked down at the pair.

"You think I would want you running about taking orders and counting stock not knowing how to read or spell? Thought you were smarter than this, come on." He turns back to the kitchen, not knowing if you would both follow, but there was no use standing and letting you struggle, just the pair of you.

"To do what?" He can hear your boots on the tile behind him and can picture you dragging a stumbling Sanji behind you.

"To learn, you little donkey. I don't have any books but I have notes and stock lists so we can start with actual words instead of fumbling with random letters."

He pushes open the doors to the kitchen and lets the pair of you pass, hands still grasping each other, with you leading the boy into the kitchen, the few counters already installed littered with papers.

"Come over here, you can show me what you can make out so far. That'll let me know what we're working with."

"What about me?" The blonde boy chirped up beside you, still not parting your intwined hands.

"Either help, or stay out of the way. It's not hard little eggplant." As you pulled a small stool up to the counter to sit alongside his chair, Sanji inserted himself between them, inspecting the papers. Zeff tugged off his overcoat, draping it over the arm as he settled into the chair and handed you a small order slip over Sanji's head. "Start with that, read it out loud and we'll go from there. I'll see about getting a couple of books ordered for yous to practise with properly. These'll have to work for now."

Your voice, which had spent the evening stuttering and stumbling over the names of different companies and construction costs, had fallen silent. Zeff was finishing up filling a few more receipts in the dying light cascading through the kitchen when he looked over to the pair of you.

Sanji's head was flat on the table, his grey-blue eyes, normally covered by the long floppy fringe, were shut and he could make out the curl on his other eyebrow with the slant of the hair. His bones and new wooden peg leg creaked as he stood, stiff from sitting for so long. Pulling the fabric at his arm up with him, he opened it and settled the warm fabric over his charge's shoulders before his eyes met yours, aqua and gold light illuminating the scene as you peered at him. In the growing darkness that crept its fingers up the walls of the room, the sight in front of him was spooky.

It reminded him of being on that rock, the light from your eyes piercing the cloying darkness at him over the ridge of rock separating you all. Now, instead of a barren expanse of rock creating distance between your eyes and his, the only thing that stood between you was a sleeping boy that had hollowed a space out of Zeff's heart for himself and completely encompassed yours.

"He knew I was embarrassed." Your voice was a whisper, not wanting to break the quiet that had fallen over the room. "The ones on the Orbit made fun of me for not reading. I can count fine, but letters and words are... hard."

"I get that." His voice is as hushed as yours, "We'll work on it. The three of us, we look after each other from now on, yeah?"

"Until we go to find the All Blue?" A smile quirked Zeff's face at your misty glowing eyes and whispers of the shared dream.

"Nah. I'll still be keeping an eye on yous even when you head out." He reached over you and ruffled your carefully tied up hair and you whacked his hand with more ferocity than he expected. "For now we'll just worry about getting your reading up to scratch." He smiled as your nose rolled up, and you followed him as he lifted Sanji into his arms and moved towards the stairs to your little loft rooms.

"You can work on chasing dreams later."

[yuseirra]

I was drawing something about Ruby and how she'd be feeling but while I was jotting things down, it made me think: is it really worth it?

I mean even the writers just brushed it off.

She lost a family member and the story handles it with a bystander going she cried a lot but she overcame it with friends, and started shining, became everyone's idol! She's truly someone sent by a god to bring light to darkness! In a few panels

That's it.

They could have had this same idea going but illustrated it with some depth into it. She lost her TWIN. Someone who she lived with all her life right beside her! And he was someone who she had a very unique and special type of bond with over the span of not just one life but two. But Aqua's presence and significance is just nonexistent in the final chapter. What he meant to Ruby was huge and it's not illustrated very well because Ruby doesn't get to speak for herself in the last chapter.

If that's what the authors deem is for the best, then what is the point of me trying to make it out? They clearly don't want to share it so much in depth even when they have the skills to, so this is what they want to do with their work and handle Ruby. I think this is coined this way to portray the nature of how idols "appear" as. Ruby isn't... Handled like a human being in the last chapter or the past several chapters actually. I'm not even sure if Aqua understood her well because he viewed her very idealistically the way he described her. Yeah.. Ruby did turn out the way Aqua described her as but that's how she appears outwardly. It's her shell. So sending out love is a role of hers now huh? But where is her personality as a person? She gives out love to people but... That can be achieved through anyone who has those "eyes" or "talent" isn't it? It actually doesn't have to be Ruby or herself as a person if it's about the eyes, it's more about the ability? You can put out a pretty doll out there and if it's charming enough, wouldn't it achieve the same effect?

I liked the movie arc a lot because it showed Ai was a human being but people wished her to be a cute, perfect and a convenient doll that could love anyone. Isn't THAT exactly what Ruby's become in the end? I didn't really take Ruby to be that way but the ending makes it seems like she's worshipped for a shell she's developed. It doesn't feel genuine. And I think that's intentional so why... What point does the author want to make about this industry~~~ Ai sends out a way better message in terms of what an idol goes through!!! This is so unfair to Ruby!!!

Everything Kamiki said was so right I just. Everything played out the way he said it would. People don't see Ruby as a person, the same way it was like for Ai. Ai wanted her truth to be out there though!! Ruby isn't following her mom's legacy~~~ I went oh he had insight!! He knew what was going to happen to his daughter!! He saw the same thing happen to Ai of course he would have. Aqua should have stayed beside Ruby and cheered her on. There is no point. On everything. Kamiki SAID he should go watch Ruby's journey as an idol? Doesn't that mean!!! He'd have let her live through it!! Dunk him later then!! Or is it that Aqua wouldn't be able to find him later? Honestly I really think!! The guy tried to bring back Ai, that was what he was gonna do- considering mephisto and fatal's lyric I feel the guy was going to die anyway even without Aqua having taken those measures??? He doesn't seem like he had a will to live ANYWAY but sure, Aqua sure. take your dear life along with him. This isn't explained.

It does make me think: why should I care about a work the author has dropped...how can this writing be something that isn't ditched. Let's face it, it is. That's the sad part. If I could feel the author did their best within the abilities they have, I'd still feel it's loved. But I'm not sure if they care for their own work?;; what's the point on trying to work with something the writers themselves don't care for?; I want to be convinced they do. But it's pretty hard to believe so. You have to love what you create or have some sort of passion in it to get it across to people. I couldn't really feel it in the end. So despite the art being very good.. I can't feel so much about it and it doesn't really give out a better message than it already did in the beginning of the series either. That's quite saddening. I hope they don't do something like this ever again in the pieces they write in the future, I'm not going to follow them because it's too risky to follow an artist who does this about their piece, regardless of how talented they are.

[oshinohoshi]

So I'm thinking about my rather silly better end to Oshi no Ko and how I made Hikaru kill himself. I went this route for a few reasons:

- I was working off what Aka gave us about him trying to hurt Ruby

- Just taking him to jail at that point felt pretty anticlimactic

- I wanted to give Hikaru a proper sendoff where he was able to feel Ai's presence before death

- I was thinking of what he meant about doing something for Ai, like he said, and the way he didn't seem to care much for his own life

But what I really wanted for my sad boy serial killer was a relatively good end. If we scrap everything about him being a manipulative killer and go with the hypothesis that he was only involved in Yura's death, then his 154 characterization stays intact.

I was hoping that on the cliff with Aqua he was simply posturing and taking the blame for Aqua's accusations about Ruby. If he already knew he was responsible for one death, felt guilty for how he accidentally got Ai killed, as well as if he felt that Aqua was not going to listen to reason, then he could have decided to play into being the villain. Or there could have been some truth to not protecting Ruby. For instance, if he suspected Nino's intentions but didn't make enough of an effort to stop her.

Perhaps at that point, he may have tried to jump and Aqua would stop him.

Whatever the case plotwise, I was truly hoping for him to be forgiven in the end. Not for Yura's death, which he would need to go to jail for, but as a person who is not irredeemable. I think there's a difference between forgiveness and redemption. Hikaru didn't need to be redeemed in order for the violence to stop with him.

And in putting down his revenge, Aqua may have realized that he, himself, was never at fault for not being able to save Ai.

With an end like this, Ai's wish would have been fulfilled, Hikaru would have been brought to justice, and nobody needed to die.

Is that too cheesy? I dunno, maybe. But I really wanted Ai to get her wish for Hikaru and for her kids to grow up happy and healthy. Unfortunately, it was an impossible dream.