#anyway i have...............Nothing to say for myself
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+ 𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗥𝗬
in which a quiet visit to her room turns into something else entirely. Hyun-tak finds her diary, and with it, the truth he never saw coming.
+ 𝗚𝗢 𝗛𝗬𝗨𝗡-𝗧𝗔𝗞 𝗫 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗𝗘𝗥
CH 1 , CH 2 , CH 3 , CH 4
✎ᝰ.ᐟ⋆⑅˚₊
September 7th, 2017
Dear Diary,
I haven't written in such a looooong time. I was really busy with school and exams. I hate exams. They are the worst. But hey? Now I can just write everything,
Okay so first —HYUN-TAK STARTED TAEKWONDO.
I didn’t even know until one day after school, he said, “Can’t hang out. I have practice.”
And I was like, “...Practice? Of what???”
And he just shrugged and walked off like it was nothing. So OBVIOUSLY I followed him 😤
I’m not a stalker or anything!! But like, what kind of best friend doesn’t tell you they suddenly became a karate master or whatever??
Anyway, I peeked through the window. And I swear, Diary, it was like watching an action drama.
He was kicking and shouting and the teacher was nodding and everything.
He looked so cool.
Like, not just cool... like COOL cool.
His uniform made him look taller (he’s still shorter than me, but WHATEVER), and his hair was all messy from practice and his eyes were all serious and he didn’t even know I was watching.
So yeah.
I came home that day and tried to do a round kick in the living room.
I hit the couch and knocked over mom’s flower vase 💀
(But I blamed the cat.)
Then later I told him I “just happened to pass by” his class and he rolled his eyes SO hard I thought they’d fall out.
He said, “You’ve been standing there for twenty minutes. Behind the vending machine.”
RUDE. RUDE. RUDE. 😤
But then he said, “You wanna try it?”
And I said YES. Immediately. Before my brain could say WAIT WHAT.
So now… I’m officially a Taekwondo student!!! 🥋
My uniform is a little big. The belt is confusing.
BUT I LOOK COOL TOO. Probably. Maybe.
Hyun-tak helped me tie my belt and said, “You’re gonna cry.”
I told him, “I’m gonna punch you.”
But I didn’t. Because he smiled. And it made my brain go weird.
I’m not dying or anything. I just felt… funny.
Like maybe I wanted him to smile at me like that again.
Okay now listen. This is the part I didn’t want to write but UGH.
It happened and I still feel like a soggy sponge about it.
So today during break, after our class, I brought honey butter chips to share with Hyun-tak.
I saved them. I was even going to offer him some.
But THEN.
That new girl, Jieun, who joined last week???
She walked over to him. All sweet and weird. And gave him a chocolate bar.
AND HE TOOK IT.
WORSE—
HE SMILED.
Like, really smiled. Like that soft smile he does when he’s not being annoying.
And I just stood there. Holding the chip bag like an idiot.
I was going to walk over and say, “Hey, want some?”
But I didn’t.
I don’t know why.
I just… didn’t.
I turned around and walked to the other side of the gym.
Sat behind the equipment box where no one goes.
Ate the chips alone.
They didn’t taste that good anymore.
Anyway.
I know it’s dumb. I mean, he can eat other people’s snacks. I don’t own him.
But still.
I wanted to be the one who made him smile like that.
Maybe that makes me selfish.
But I also think… maybe I just like him a little.
A lot.
I don’t know.
He’s still dumb.
But he’s my dumb.
And when he stands beside me in the mirror during practice,
I kinda feel like we’re something.
I don’t know what.
But something.
Okay. That’s all for today. I’m going to bed before I cry about snack crumbs.
(Next time, I’m keeping the chips for myself. Hmph.)
—Y/N (Age 9 and a teeny bit heartbroken 🥲)
✎ᝰ.ᐟ⋆⑅˚₊
“Idiot,” he murmured, voice barely above a whisper. But this time, the word didn’t come with a grin. It just… sat there. Quiet. He remembered that day. Not the snack thing—he hadn’t even noticed. But her first day in class? He remembered that.
She’d looked ridiculous. Her uniform sleeves were too long and she kept tripping over the mat. She saluted the teacher like she was in the army. He nearly died laughing.
But she’d been trying so hard. Eyes narrowed, brows furrowed, mimicking every move the teacher showed—three seconds behind but determined like her life depended on it.
And every few minutes, she’d glance over at him. Quickly. Like she was checking something.
And every time she did, he’d turn away. Pretending he didn’t notice.
But he always noticed. He remembered thinking, She’s really trying.
And then, She looks kinda cute when she’s serious like that.
He’d never said it, of course. Never even thought it clearly until now.
+ 𝗔𝗨𝗧𝗛𝗢𝗥'𝗦 𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗘 + 𝗠𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧
Hehehehe, do tell me if you liked it or not!!!
+ 𝗧𝗔𝗚𝗟𝗜𝗦𝗧
@keizvn @soobinbunnie5 @chaywkk @l5byrinth @inom17 @randomheyl @coffee-ii @mizxuqii @dna-black-and-blue @kyungjunnies @maxinehufflepuffprincess @deboizzzstay @coolasiangal123 @intoanothermind @satoru2716 @chenlegendj @changbinkisser @xh01bri @jww-sjzyeirie @thebatapex @itzcandy @ryeounistic @ruruyinn
#weak hero class two#fanfic#weak hero x reader#weak hero webtoon#gotak x reader#go hyuntak#go hyuntak x reader
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The Underdog - Chris Sturniolo



Pairing: Chris Sturniolo x Y/n
Summary: Chris is a rising star in the MLS - talented, charming, and known for being a player, both on and off the pitch. He’s never had a girlfriend, but always had a soft spot for Y/n, the girl who knew him before the fame but never took him seriously. Once their paths cross again, will history repeat itself or start to feel like potential?
It’s Thursday evening, and my apartment smells like takeout with a hint of unserious stress. A pile of open textbooks and empty pizza boxes are scattered across my bedroom floor, all of us pretending to study while slowly drifting into talk of playoffs. That’s what happens when you live in Houston and the Dynamo’s make the final, nothing else really matters for a few days. Not even our looming exams.
We’re all future biology teachers in theory, but tonight? We're just soccer fans, buzzing like the rest of the city.
“Anyone got a spare jersey?” Liv asks, digging through a drawer like one might magically appear.
“Yeah I’ve got one” Tasha says. “You can wear my orange home kit, it says Herrera on the back of it.”
“I’m just excited for the night out after if I’m honest” Liv grins, turning as she closes the drawer. “The city’s gonna be wild whether we win or lose.”
“Oh we’re gonna win!” I say without thinking, leaning back against my beds headboard. “I’ve got a good feeling about it.”
“Oh okay Ms.Manifestation, lets hope you’re right.” Tasha smirks. “So, who do you think’s going to start?”
Liv gives me a look. A slow, smug kind of smirk that makes me want to throw a pillow at her before she even opens her mouth. I know where she’s going with this.
“I think Chris Sturniolo will be in the starting 11.” she says, way too casually.
I roll my eyes immediately. “Please stop.”
“What?” she grins, “It’s a valid take.”
“I swear, if you lot start this again-”
Maya, who’s only just moved in from Utah this semester is still catching up with everything, so she raises a brow. “Wait, what’s the deal with Chris Sturniolo?”
The girls all look at me, waiting for me to explain.
I sigh. “We knew each other a few years ago. We were in the same school year, he used to try it with me constantly. Like.. wouldn’t let it go. But I never gave in. Ever.”
Tasha sniggers. “Yeah keyword is tried. Girl was made of stone.”
I laugh, because it’s true. Chris was.. persistent, to say the least. Always smiling like he knew one day he’d get what he wanted.
But he’s a pro footballer now. One of Houston’s most talked about rising stars, considered a wonderkid. But to me? He’s still that same guy who never took no for an answer, and always thought he could change my mind.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if he’s actually starting Sunday.
“I actually don’t hear much about him anymore, like.. on a personal level” I say, almost more to myself than anyone else. “Soccer fans absolutely idolise him now, but it’s weird not seeing him pop up anywhere else.”
Maya tilts her head, as she looks up from her phone. “Does he have a girlfriend?.. I mean.. he is a goodlooking boy.”
The rest of us shake our heads in sync like it’s a reflex.
“Nope.”
“Never.”
“Not a real one anyway” Liv adds, stretching her legs over the edge of the bed. “Chris was one for hookups and hookups only.”
I shrug, grabbing my cup off the floor. “That’s why I never went for him. Even back then, he just seemed like one big player. Flashy smile, smooth talk, always surrounded by people, and never the same girl twice.”
“Sounds like half the team then” Maya mutters, making us laugh.
“But seriously..” I continue, “he was the kind of guy who made you feel like you were the only one in the room.. and then did the exact same thing with someone else five minutes later.”
Maya whistles. “Yikes.”
“Exactly, I’m not falling for that one.”
Still, part of me wonders if he’s changed. Fame does that to people, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. Or maybe he just got better at hiding it.
I shake the thought off. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t spoken to him in years, and after Sunday’s final, he’ll be off doing whatever pro soccer players do in the off season. Probably in Miami, probably surrounded by beautiful women.
But all in the same breath, curiosity gets the better of me.
While the others argue over who’s going to score first on Sunday, I quietly grab my phone and search Chris on Instagram.
It doesn’t take long, his account pops right up, verified tick and everything.
His page is exactly what I expect. Clean, posed, very.. athlete. Rows of football photos, in uniform, mid training, post match grins with a mix of gym selfies.
As much of a player as he was, I have to admit it, it’s nice seeing someone from here actually make it.
Houston raised. Houston playing.
It’s not often a local boy gets the opportunity to be the hometown hero.
I scroll a bit more. He’s gained a ton of followers, influencers, fitness pages, fans from all over the league. Probably girls from everywhere too, which is why I tell myself if I hit follow, it’ll go completely unnoticed.
So I do.
Just a little harmless follow.
Nothing more.
I zone back into the conversation, locking my phone and tossing it to the side like I hadn’t just deep dived into Chris Sturniolo’s highlight reel.
The girls are still chatting, this time full swing into pregame plans.
“I’m thinking we start at Liv’s place” Tasha says, already listing off who’s bringing what. “She’s closest to the stadium anyway.”
“I’ll have shots ready before we leave” Liv nods with full commitment.
“And where are we going after?” I ask, taking a swig of my water and trying to act like I hadn’t mentally wandered off for five minutes.
Maya lights up. “Oh actually! My cousin said if they win, the team’s hitting Fire.”
“Fire Fire?” I repeat, eyebrows raised.
She grins. “Yup. Fire Nightclub. The whole team’s planning to go with the cup and everything. Shots, DJ, bottle girls, the works.”
“Oh we’re definitely going then” Liv says, already pulling out her phone to make sure her outfit's still sitting in her cart.
“Imagine getting a pic with the cup” Maya laughs.
“Or with Chris Sturniolo” Liv teases, looking directly at me.
I roll my eyes hard enough to see my own brain. “Don’t start.”
But part of me knows.. if Houston wins and Chris ends up at Fire that night.. the chances of running into him just got very real.
Just as Livs finishing her smug little smirk, I hear it.
Ding.
I glance down at my phone, lighting up beside me on my bed.
I look down.
Chris Sturniolo followed you.
Then, ding again.
Two notifications in such a short time.
A message.
Chris Sturniolo: “What’s up Y/n”
There's no way he’s just text me.
a/n : before we start i dont know how the MLS truly works and calling it soccer is making me SICK
taglist : @mattybearnard @sturn-33 @ncm9696 @yourfavsturniologirl @crazy4jewel @sodakid1234 @stupendoustreewinner @lovealwayssturniolos @matthewsturniolosss @m4ttsmunch @loveexxx @ilusa @starkeyszn @wonnieeluvvr @dylnblue @valxrieq @maggot3647 @cigarettecemetary @ribread03 @chrisstvrns @bandasaruswrx @noplaceissafeanymore @amexiass @witchofthehour @mattssgf @jetaimevous @v33angel @ivysturnss @urmom69lol @ashlishes @watercolorskyy @sturnioloshottiekay @amelia-sturniolo3 @imjusthereforthesturniolosmut @pvssychicken @alizestvrnss @chrisstxrnsaxe @sophand4n4 @vickytaa @marrykisskilled @bxtchboy69 @yourfavsturniologirl @julisturn @sydneyylainn @sophia-77n @trevorsgodmother @sturnslutz @yourmother29 @girl24cherry @astronea @pinkdyit @mattswrinkleton @asmine @sagesturns
#snowy speaks#sturniolo triplets#the underdog#chris sturniolo fanfic#christopher sturniolo#the sturniolo triplets#chris sturniolo#chris sturniolo x reader#soccer player! chris#nick sturniolo#matt sturniolo#nicolas sturniolo
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testing testing
I stare at her, almost certainly looking a fool. I swear, I can feel the ground, slick with blood, against my chin.
I don't know how long it takes me to pick my jaw up off the floor, but it's long enough that the sun is setting and the sounds of battle have faded to almost nothing.
She's finished with the harpoon and sits on a crate a few feet away from me, polishing it with a grimy rag. "Finished gawkin', sweetheart?"
"Uh...yeah." I can't find the right words (or, frankly, any words at all), and go back to picking shrapnel out of my body. Well. I try to, anyway. Have to pick out some with my knife. Apparently, I stared so long the wounds healed. "Did'ja have to shoot me? Blades are so much cleaner."
"Darlin', you got worms for brains? Didn't know there was another one like me 'til I shot ya five times and ya didn't fall over dead. That kills a normal person." She's looking at me like I'm stupid, and I feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment. I grumble something pointed and completely incoherent back at her while I pick the final pieces out of my flesh.
She goes back to polishing the harpoon - *my* harpoon - and I wipe my knife with the cleanest part of my shirt. She's very pretty, for a pirate. She's tied her full, curly hair back in a simple knot, leaving some small pieces at the front to frame her face. She has high cheekbones, piercing grey eyes, a slender nose, full lips...she could be a portrait model. "Ya got a name, sweetheart?"
Shit, she's caught me staring again.
"U-uh...yeah. Name's Claudette. Yours?"
"Elyse. Ya French?"
"No. Seaborn; English was most useful to learn."
She nods. "Nice harpoon ya got. Need one myself," she says, now inspecting it. "Not of'en I get speared straight through. Smithy?"
"Sir Artimus Blackshade on the Emerald Isle. Near Sligo."
"Never been." She looks me up and down a few times, almost lewdly. I can feel her eyes stick on my figure in more than a few places...but finally, she looks up at me again. "You should take me. Wan'ed a companion for a while, but mos' people freak when I get 'killed' 'n' keep fightin'. Seem like you'd be decent company too." Elyse catches my eyes directly, then tosses my harpoon back.
I catch it, then shrug as I load it back into the gun. "Wouldn't have to answer the same questions over and over."
She grins. She hasn't taken her eyes off me once, and I look away to try and hide. "Perfect. Let's go, sweetheart~"
"How are you still alive?!" "Same way you are." As you pick the bullets out of your Skull and heart, she puts the gun down and starts pulling the barbed Harpoon out of her rib-cage. Both of you are completely unfazed. "Always thought i was the only one." she smirks.
#my writing?#ig?#idk we're trying something new#sapphic#definitely didn't accidentally-on-purpose describe my gf...#also DEFINITELY didn't think of using her middle name for the other girl#shit i'm so gone for her#uhhhh#kinda vibing with this actually#might continue it later#if i do#it's gonna be so fucking irreparably gay
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Thanks for 2000 followers!
I wanted to share a followers gift before I went on vacation but...well, I didn't. Blame Steam NextFest + my ADHD + procrastination. (I'm procrastinating right now I'm supposed to be packing!). But anyway, before I go on holiday I wanted to say thank you!
I may not always respond to all your nice things but I do see them and I always really appreciate them. 🩵🧡 I limit my internet time for mental health and general quality of life reasons so I tend to go long periods without posting on here.
I promise to get to all your messages in my inbox. I just need to pick a night (or a flight) where I have nothing to do, take some mushrooms and then power through them!
Anyway, the follower gifts (yes, gifts plural) are a-coming! Not sure yet what I'll share but probably just a random assortment of small mods I've made over the years.
But I don't want to post empty handed so I'm also sharing a little teaser below of some other (bigger) stuff I want to share, all of them mostly (like 85%) done so I feel pretty comfortable committing myself to putting them out in the coming months.
Stay safe and cool wherever you are!
photo credits: (3) @frostedshore (4) @zemyna
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He Turned into a Cute Beast - Clavis Lelouch
As usual, can’t guarantee 100% accuracy on this
One day, I woke up to see that my beloved had turned into a beast.
Clavis: I'm back, Emma.
Emma: Thank goodness you're back, Clavis...Where did you go while looking like this?
Clavis: Well I heard that leopards were stealthy, so I went to test it out by observing the town. If there was anyone else in the same state as me, then we could exchange information.
Emma: I see. How did it go?
Clavis: Unfortunately, no one else in the country's been turned into an animal. Moreover, I caused quite a stir when I wound up on a main street.
Emma: You weren't even trying to be stealthy, were you?
Clavis: I was just curious, you know? It was like a fun festival with how everyone screamed in surprise.
(...Everyone, I'm so sorry for taking my eyes off Clavis for a moment)
Clavis: By the way, my lovely fiancee, shall we change locations?
Emma: Meaning you want to go somewhere else?
Clavis: Yes, I'd like to go on a walk with you. Will you follow me?
Emma: Okay.
(Where are we going? Hopefully we won't scare everyone again...)
--
(—There's no one here. That's good)
Emma: I never imagined climbing a tree.
Clavis: Despite saying that, you climbed with me. That's what I love about you.
(Because I don't want to leave Clavis alone if I can help it)
(I had help getting up, but I don't think I can get down by myself...)
Emma: So, why on a tree?
Clavis: Ah, I've heard that leopards live on trees to protect themselves. Now I instinctively feel relaxed here. It's even better with you here with me.
(I see, you weren't feeling comfortable on the ground or indoors)
Emma: That makes sense then.
Clavis: Haha, you adapt well. Unlike me, you're still human, but you're pretty brave.
Emma: Because you're with me. You chose a tree that's easy to sit on, so it's no uncomfortable at all.
Clavis: I see, that's good to hear...Is this love?
Emma: ...Possibly
Clavis: Haha, you're so tsun.
Emma: A-anyway, do you have any leads on how to turn back into a human?
Clavis: No, unfortunately I don't know anything. Since I'm in this form, why don't I take this chance to share some leopard trivia?
Emma: Since it's your own crest, you must know a lot. Please do tell.
Clavis: Does this distinct pattern remind you of anything?
Emma: Huh...?
Clavis: Hint: It's something you like.
Emma: Oh, you mean roses?
Clavis: That's right. It's why leopard spots are called rosettes.
Emma: I didn't know that...! What a lovely name for it.
Clavis: Ah, that's a nice reaction. I knew you'd be impressed. I have the leopard's crest and I love roses, so I'm the perfect partner... It's like fate, isn't it?
Emma: Hehe, it does feel like it.
(Of course, most people in Rhodolite love roses, but I'm happy to have this special bond with Clavis)
Emma: It really is a lovely pattern.
Clavis: Well, my lovely fiancee...You're pretty passionate today, aren't you? You're looking at and even stroking my body so lovingly.
Emma: Can you not make me sound like a pervert?!
Clavis: What? There's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's fine being a pervert. ...Anyway, here's another bit of trivia. The only thing a leopard will bring up into its tree is its prey.
Emma: Huh, what do you—Eek! D-don't just suddenly lick my leg!
(His tongue's rougher than usual and oddly ticklish)
Clavis: Haha, you left yourself open in a place where you can't escape. You're lacking a sense of danger.
I felt a sense of danger when the leopard approached me atop the tree, my heart pounding as I looked into the golden eyes filled with amusement.
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namgyu x reader 𖹭 hyunju x reader || 9.7k
It takes at least twenty dead people before you acknowledge that this isn't a regular gameshow. Now, you have to decide who to align yourself with before you're the next to be eliminated.
001 - 13.5k || Six Legs - 9.7k || One More Game || O X || Ao3 link
cw: nsfw mdni, canon-typical violence a la the MG Coin to Thanos to 001 pipeline on the dancefloor, drug use, again, no explicit sexual content in this one but still mentions an: thank you for the lovely comments on the first chapter!! i was wanting to spread out posting a bit more to get ahead but now i'd much rather just share this with you all sooner!
Six Legs
Like magnets drawn together, the second you glance back over at the O team, you lock eyes with 124. He looks like the cat that got the cream. Overhead, the modulated voice of the leader announces that voting has concluded, and dinner will soon be distributed. 124 doesn’t so much as glance towards him. You half expect him to come seek you out again, to be sucked back into his orbit, but a single cuff on the back from player 230 breaks his concentration, and he begins animatedly celebrating with the rapper. In an instant, you’ve been completely forgotten, and it’s shameful how disappointed you feel.
Instead, you turn towards the older lady and her son. You offer the two your condolences. “And I realised,” you add, “I never actually introduced myself.”
After you’ve given the two your name, the woman speaks up, hand pressed to her chest. “My name is Jang Geumja. This is my son Yongsik.” She takes a deep breath, squaring her shoulders in grim determination. “We’ll be okay. We’ll get through this, and we’ll go home tomorrow night. Where are you from, dear?”
It’s an impossible question to answer, so you offer up a partial truth. “I’m staying in Daerim.”
Geumja gives a disapproving grimace and clutches your arm at that, then pauses. “I suppose you wouldn’t exactly be living in Gangnam,” she concedes. “Anyway, that’s not far from us at all. You can easily catch the subway. What say you come to our place for dinner tomorrow night?”
The sudden urge to cry hits you like a truck. Even if you really did all survive and successfully vote to leave tomorrow, casually catching public transport and having a family meal is so far away from your current reality. You bite down hard on the inside of your cheek to keep the tears at bay, and send her a warm smile. “I can make a killer oxbone soup,” you offer up instead with what you hope is a convincing smile.
“Ah,” she coos fondly, “I knew I liked you.”
Her small hand pressing gently against the outside of your arm and her kind eyes are enough to make you bawl, and you know you need to make an excuse to leave urgently before you lose it in front of everyone.
Glancing ahead, you see lines are already beginning to form as three tables laden with lunch boxes and water bottles are rolled to the base of the stage. “I, uh, I’m just going to find the bathroom before dinner.”
“Okay, dear,” she answers easily, and you immediately mourn the loss of contact as she steps back. “Yongik and I will find somewhere over on that wall, please feel welcome to come eat with us.”
“I appreciate it.” You can’t get away fast enough. Now that you’ve used it as an excuse, at least, you really do need to use the bathroom, and so you hesitantly approach one of the armed pink guards standing in front of one of the side entrances.
There’s no movement as you walk up. You have your hands raised slightly, almost in surrender, as you step close to the doorway. “Excuse me, is the bathroom through there?”
You receive nothing back more than a nod, so you slip through quickly and navigate down the short hallway. Few people are down here; you suspect the vast priority are focused on ensuring they don’t miss out on a meal.
The first door you pass is painted with a white circle on top of a larger white square. You scoff. Men’s . A good distance further is an identical push door, this time with an upright triangle instead of the square. “Real clever,” you mutter flatly.
Inside, the childish colour scheme continues. Gleaming blue floor tiles span the whole way down. There are two rows of pink cubicles, probably at least fifteen on either side - although you suppose that isn’t really that much in the scheme of things - but by the looks of it, they’re all toilets and no showers.
When you go to wash your hands, you catch your reflection in the mirror, flinching at the dark red, almost brown smears across the teal of your jacket. Somehow, you had forgotten along the way how much blood you’d been covered in. Thankfully, there are only a couple of spots just above the collar where the blood got onto your skin itself, but nonetheless you scrub at it with your wet hands, trying not to dwell on how it got there. Quiet as it is in here, you take the time to dampen some rolled-up toilet paper to wipe at the stains on the jacket, too, but it doesn’t lift it all off.
You fiddle with your hair, curling your lip when you feel grains of sand beneath your fingers. You spend a while trying to detangle it all, before realising you should probably get back to the dormitory, or you’ll really risk missing out on dinner. As the thought hits you, a few women file into the bathrooms and you take it as your cue to leave.
You curse when you pass the guard in the doorway to see the three trolleys being wheeled away in the opposite direction. “Hey!” Cringing at the way your voice echoes in the large room, you rush forward to catch up with the guards in charge of them. You step in front of the one at the back and give the pink suit an apologetic bow. “I’m so sorry, I actually didn’t get one yet.”
There are maybe close to twenty of the metal lunchboxes still on the trolley, but the guard just stands blankly as the squeaky wheels of the first two trolleys fade away. “So…” you start up awkwardly.
“The dinner service has concluded.”
You blink at the guard in disbelief. “Seriously? I could just take one and go now, they’re literally-”
“The dinner service has concluded. Please step aside.”
Your mistake is in reaching out for one as you move out of the way. A tell-tale click comes from the stage just above you, where another guard has taken aim at you, barrel pointed to your chest.
It’s been a while since somebody has pointed a gun at you, and it never gets any less alarming. Slowly, so as not to startle either of them, you pull your hand back to your side. Without a moment’s pause, the guard holding the trolley rolls it down the hallway, out of sight.
When the guard above finally stands down, you feel like a puppet with cut strings. All at once, the weight of the day catches up with you, and your eyes sting with tears of frustration. “Gotta be fucking kidding me,” you utter under your breath.
As you turn around to do the walk of shame back to a bed somewhere, your name is called out. Your eyes scan the room until you find Daeho, waving like a madman. Once you see him, he begins flapping his hand to beckon you over.
For their part, the rest of the room is either considerately pretending they didn’t see that whole exchange, or just generally don’t care. Either way, you still feel more comfortable once you’re out of the centre of the room and back into the flanks.
“Everyone,” Daeho announces magnanimously, “this is my friend.” He introduces you by name, though the others don’t offer up theirs. In his motley crew is player 456, the man who had defended him - 390 - and, strangest of all, player 001.
The latter two offer you a dutiful nod. 456 attempts a tight smile, but it barely even reaches his cheeks, let alone his eyes. You try to smile back. After the antics of Red Light, Green Light and the voting, it somehow feels a little like meeting a minor celebrity. “Thank you for helping us, player 456. I’m sorry more people didn’t listen to you.” You feel a curl of shame when your own vote wasn’t even really because of him. Still, he nods gratefully, eyes dropping again.
“Speaking of helping,” Daeho interjects, “the reason why I called you over is… this!” He pulls his hands from behind his back stiltingly, and you see a pile of food resting precariously on a flat metal lid. He presents it with a careful flourish. “I saw you didn’t have a chance to eat earlier-”
“So unsympathetic, those guards,” 390 whines, half to himself.
Daeho presses the tin lid into your hands as he continues. “So we scrambled this together. That’s 001’s rice, my kimchi, 390’s spam-”
“I never had a taste for it anyway, truth be told.”
“-and 456’s egg.” He furrows his brow in consternation. “We’d all finished our water too soon, though. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise,” you protest, quickly dipping into a deep bow for each of them in turn. “Thank you so much, this is very sweet of you all.”
As you begin to eat, the three older man fall into conversation among themselves - that is, 390 and 001 speak quietly amongst themselves while 456 stares blankly into thin air.
You turn to face Daeho, who is watching you while chewing on his lip, like he’s worried you won’t like it. “Daeho,” you ask softly, “why are you being so kind to me?”
He lets out a deflective hum and waves his hand. “It’s nothing.” He pauses, smile slightly strained. “Well. The truth is, you remind me of one of my sisters.”
You blink. “Oh.” Somehow, that was the last answer you expected, but it quickly warms your heart. “That’s so lovely. You must miss them already.”
For a moment, his whole face crumples in misery, before he forces it down and gives you a sad smile. “That I do. I bet you feel the same about your family.”
“I’m not close with my family,” you state mildly. It’s another partial truth, and you give yourself some buffer time by finishing off the small serving Daeho had put together for you. Once you swallow, you give him a warm smile. “It’s okay; I’m a lone wolf.”
His worry fades as he makes a self-satisfied noise. “See? Just like Chaewon.”
You chuckle, but the fond moment between you is broken when a shout echoes across the dormitory. To your shock, a young man is tackling player 230 to the ground. Ever the groupie, 124 jumps onto his back like a monkey to try and free his friend. The momentum knocks the other player 333 - to the ground, and in mere seconds 124 has the man arms behind his back, leaving him defenseless to the brutal punches the rapper sends to his face.
You curse in alarm. The crowd gasps, but nobody makes a move to do anything as 124 lets the player drop harshly on the floor. The rapper begins kicking him in the face, swearing at him, and even 124 himself tries to land a kick in there.
Behind you, Daeho clicks his tongue. “Oh, to have all that energy. It’s gotta be nice to be that young.”
Your stomach flips at the sight of how openly violent your ‘neighbour’ and his friend are being and your heart races as you try and work up the courage to intervene. Why you got a gun pulled on you for trying to eat, yet nothing is happening about this beatdown, is a mystery to you.
Finally, you decide to just take the plunge and go over. You’ll make a plan up on the way over.
You hear Daeho calling out from back at the beds, but when a hand rests on your shoulder, to your surprise, it’s 001.
“Stay out of harm’s way,” he instructs in a steady tone. Without further pause, he heads calmly into the centre of the room, catching the duo’s attention. “Hey, boys,” he calls out to them, “what makes you think you can behave like that? It’s mealtime; people are eating. In front of your elders too. Mind your manners.”
They look up as player 333 grunts in pain below, but 001 keeps advancing. “And two against one? Shame on you. Aren’t you embarrassed?”
As much as you find 001’s ever-tranquil demeanour slightly unsettling, you can’t help but grin at his words.
The rapper doesn’t take kindly to those insults, however. He strolls forward, arms raised high in an effort to seem intimidating. “You’re lecturing me when you ended up in this shithole too? Grandad,” he spits, gesturing mockingly with his hand, “stop running your mouth and take care of your own damn kids.”
“What did you say?” 001 asks in a low tone.
“I said,” 230 reiterates with a glare, stepping closer, “save the lecture for your own damn kids.”
Quick as a snake, 001’s hand shoots out and grips harshly onto the rapper’s shoulder, making him groan, struggling but unable to break the hold. From the other side, 124 swears and runs up with as much subtlety as a bull. Deftly, the older man sends one sharp kick to his shin, followed by another to his knee, making him crumple to the floor with a pained whine.
The rapper manages to break away, but is caught with two keen jabs to his torso. “Wait,” he heaves out, breathless, “wait a minute.”
But 001 doesn’t take his outstretched hand as an olive branch, instead he uses it to yank him to the floor, kick him while he’s down, and begin choking him single-handedly.
The entire dormitory is a rapt audience as the older man bears down harder despite 230’s strangled apologies. Your eyes dart up to the guards. Still, nothing.
Before you even really think it through, your own voice cuts through the hushed silence. “I think that’s enough.” Daeho hisses your name, and hundreds of eyes turn to face you - 001’s included - but you stand your ground. “An eye for an eye,” you state, hoping the older man has some sort of rational moral compass.
And indeed, he doesn’t make you object further. He lets up. Player 230 scrambles away from beneath him, coughing and clawing at his neck, but 001 keeps his eyes on you. As he stands, the crowd erupts into applause for him. Although intervening was the right thing to do, such raucous celebration for him nearly strangling someone seems distasteful to you.
As such, you avoid his gaze when he casually strolls back to Daeho and the others. Instead, you watch the two men in the middle of the room. The rapper’s chest rises and falls rapidly as he still fights to catch his breath. For a moment, he gives you a confused stare, before tipping his head back to look at 124. The raven-haired man puffs up his chest in what seems to be pride, then crawls forward on his hands and knees to whisper something in 230’s ear.
You try not to flush even as you feel both of their gazes on you, hot like melted wax. Instead, you say your goodnights to Daeho and the others to studiously find somewhere away from 001.
As you do, the doors swoosh open again, and the guards with trolleys - although impossible to say whether they were the same ones - start circling the room, instructing all the tins, cutlery, and empty bottles are handed in. To your surprise, they have what looks like printed inventories that they tick off as each person hands their items in.
Your earlier indignation at being refused food bubbles up inside you again, and you quickly scale one of the bunks a few levels up so you can keep your distance.
From above, you have a good vantage point, and you scan the crowd for the few familiar faces you know outside of Daeho, who seems to already have entrenched himself in that clique. You sit up in relief when you spy Hyunju moving in your general direction. You call out to her, and when she looks up, wave her over.
She dutifully climbs the ladder on the bunk opposite yours until the two of you are level. “Day one, and it’s already getting crazy out there,” you muse once she’s joined you. She gives a single, solemn nod. “Me forty-eight hours ago wouldn’t have believed such a thing like this could exist.”
Hyunju takes a slow breath, staring out towards the hall. “What is it you were thinking forty-eight hours ago, then?”
You pause, resting your temple against the cool metal support at the head of the bunk. “I was thinking, ‘what harm could it do to sign up for a game?’”
“‘Worst thing that will happen is I won’t win,’” she finishes sagely, briefly catching your eye to share a grim smile.
“Exactly.” You let out a slow sigh, feeling exhaustion catch up with you every second. “I mean, at least they’re providing beds and food. Could be worse.”
She lets out a quiet laugh of disbelief at your attempts to stay positive. “Could be,” she agrees with a small smile. “It’s been a while since I’ve slept in the same room as other people, though.”
“Really?” you question in a mock-surprised tone, “I can’t sleep unless I’m surrounded by at least three hundred strangers.”
“I meant at all,” she admits with a touch of embarrassment, though her eyes glitter at the joke.
A dull pang in your chest. “Me too.”
Straightening her posture, Hyunju looks around the room, as people slow down for the night, some falling into clusters while others get as far away from everyone as possible. “It’s like the world’s weirdest sleepover.”
“Well,” you begin emphatically, “if this is a sleepover, we have to do sleepover things.”
“Like what?”
You think back to your middle-school days. “Truth or dare, spin the bottle. Fuck, marry, kill.”
A snicker bubbles in her throat endearingly. “Fuck, marry, kill?”
“You never played it?” you ask in genuine surprise, smile faltering at the way her own expression drops a little. “Never mind, it’s a classic. You pick three people, any three people, and the other person has to decide what they’d do for each person.”
Hyunju’s cheeks are pink. “Okay. You go first.”
You nod solemnly, gazing around the room. “Alright, then. 456, the square guard and… the doll from Red Light, Green Light.”
“That’s-! Well, I have to kill the doll because she tried to kill me,” she begins.
“Reasonable.”
“I’ll kill the square guard too because he’s-”
“Can’t do that,” you interrupt smoothly. “It’s not fuck, kill, kill. One of each.”
“So I have to either sleep with him or marry him?”
You shrug. “Such are the rules. You can’t handle the heat; get out of the kitchen.”
Hyunju lets out a slow sigh in genuine consternation. Your heart skips a beat when you get this view of her. Distracted as she is looking down at the crowd, presumably trying to find 456, you’re able to openly take in every detail of her face.
Her cheeks remain slightly pink, a lighter shade than her lips. With her hair tucked back from her face, you can see the fine sweep of eyeliner that somehow hasn’t budged throughout the first game. Despite her strong jaw and tall frame, the way she carries herself is soft and gentle.
Before you can get too carried away, she’s looking back up with a resolute expression, eyes widening minutely when she catches you staring. “I’ll fuck 456,” she announces reluctantly, “and marry the square guard.”
You hum for a moment, trying to act casual despite the flustered heat in your cheeks. “Bold move. Why is that?”
“Oh, I’ll just file for divorce.” You can’t help but smile at her self-satisfied expression. “Anyways, I don’t think I’m cut out for this. How about… What’s one thing that you’re going to do with the prize money after you’ve paid off your debt? Not a necessity; something you’d do or buy just because you can.”
It’s your turn to mull the question over. “That’s a good one. How elaborate can I get?”
Hyunju shrugs demurely. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Your heart flutters like you have a playground crush. “Okay, here it is: once life is back to normal-” unfathomable, but you’re not going to bog your fantasy down with the details, “I’ll start up a cafe in a tiny seaside town somewhere further south. It’ll sell single-origin coffee and fancy pastries and artisan chocolates and dogs will be welcome. We’ll have seasonal menus, too, like strawberry lattes in January and sweet potato cheesecakes in September.” Her eyes are locked on you intently, crinkled around the edges. “I’ll know all the morning coffee regulars by name, and their orders off by heart. You’ll be one of them, obviously, because we’re going to share a survivor’s bond after all of this is over.”
“Obviously,” Hyunju repeats with a soft voice.
“I’ll make sure there’s a co-owner so I can take time off in the winter to visit my mountain chalet and just hide away from the world for a bit. Some peace and quiet and a log fire.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
You beam at her. “I’ll give you a spare key.”
She ducks her head, smoothing the sweatpants over her thighs. “I’d like that.”
“What about you, then?” you return, wondering if you’ve made things a little too forward too soon. “Your treat to yourself after we leave?”
“It’s not as exciting as that,” she defers with a small laugh, “but I’ve always wanted to own jewellery. Quality stuff, you know? Not the fake dollar store ones that leave green marks on your skin.”
Hyunju seems a little rueful offering up her answer, as if you’d brush it off, but secretly you’re already picturing her decked out in delicate chains and glittering jewels. “I think that sounds fantastic.” You pause, pretending to be deep in thought. “Maybe I’ll open up a jewellery store right beside my cafe.”
She laughs loud enough that you catch the disgruntled attention of some players a few rows across and a comfortable silence falls between you.
You bite your lip, sad the conversation is coming to an end. Before it fizzles out, you want to question her on something that’s been dwelling on your mind. Scooting forward to the edge of the mattress, you lean across and lower your voice. “Hey, Hyunju?”
Her thoughtful gaze has turned up to the partially-filled piggy bank above you. “Mhm?”
“Back out on the field, when you saw that man, what were you thinking about? I mean, how did you decide to risk your life for him?”
Her back straightens, and when she turns back this time, she doesn’t look away. “I didn’t think,” she explains simply. Unlike before, her voice carries a natural authority. “If you’re thinking about it, you’ve already wasted too much time. It’s instinct.”
You nod, slowly. “I think I waste all my instinct in life saving myself.” You feel a little embarrassed to have even said that out loud, but Hyunju just makes a small hum of understanding.
“That’s not a bad thing. People have worse instincts than that. Some people have instincts so poor they lead to their own deaths.” A wince of regret passes across her face in the context of the many deaths you’ve both borne witness to today. She points to your chest. “At least your instinct was to try and spare yourself and others with your vote.” Her hand draws back to rub self-consciously at the O patch she wears.
The two of you pause as a final lights-out warning rings from the loudspeakers. Below, everyone is settling in and making final bathroom trips. Hyunju is back to avoiding your gaze again. “I didn’t actually want to leave,” you admit, voice more hushed than it was just before. “I just wanted people to think I was a selfless person. For once.”
Another lull follows, before Hyunju softly clicks her tongue and gives a decisive nod. “We should both get some sleep. Maybe we’ll be selfless tomorrow.”
Despite your self-pity, you send her a genuine smile. “I did promise to be your Hyunju tomorrow.”
She’s already turning herself around to untuck the blanket, but you’re sure you catch her smiling too. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
–
This time, you’re almost the first in line to breakfast. You send the guard your most venomous glare as you snatch the tin out of their hands on the off-chance it’s the same one as before. The water feels like heaven down your parched throat, but you’re a little disappointed to see the food is the exact same. Nevertheless, from a few bunk levels up you and Hyunju eat in companionable silence as you watch the night owls shuffle around like zombies.
By the time the guards are coming back around to mark off your returned dishes, the air is buzzing with anticipation on both sides. Even your fellow X-voters seem to be in higher spirits as they congregate and strategise about how to make it through.
“What do you think the next game will be?” It’s the question on everybody’s lips, but you want to hear Hyunju’s take on it. From the few conversations you’ve had with her, it’s clear she’s incredibly sharp.
She mulls it over for a second, dark painted nails drumming against her thighs. “Nothing too physical. I’m sure each game is meant to test a different skill, otherwise those less capable would have no chance. Maybe a luck-based game? But then, that wouldn’t be very satisfying for those watching.”
That’s one thing you don’t hear many people talk about. You’d pick 456’s brain about it, but 001 has been at his side like a well-keeled dog. You and Hyunju had discussed at length what the cameras were for exactly, and how such an elaborate set-up and hefty prize were possible. You found it most likely this was some messed-up dark web snuff on a large scale. Hyunju suggested perhaps they betted on you like horses. The thought had made you shiver, but you’d found no good reason why that wouldn’t be true.
“Daeho said that 456 told him the second game was dalgona last time,” you offer up. “Which also doesn’t sound that entertaining to watch.”
She hums in concession, then shifts in discomfort, beginning to descend the ladder. “I might go freshen up before we get started. You?”
You shake your head. “I’m fine.”
After close to a year of trying to avoid people as much as possible, being in an enclosed space with endless interactions has you on edge, but Hyunju’s departure provides no respite as it’s moments later that a hand around your ankle makes you shriek.
You yank it up and onto the mattress you’re on as a kittering laugh peals out from below. 124 slinks up the ladder beside you like a cat, sprawling onto the bed so that his knees bracket your thigh and his hands rest on the bed either side of your hips.
His forward nature surprises you, but you don’t protest, secretly enjoying the heated proximity. It’s strange to you, how drawn you are to both him and Hyunju, though in vastly different ways. “Good morning to you, too.”
His lips slowly pull back into a grin as his eyes search your face. “My baby wouldn’t hide from me, would she? You voting like a coward,” he reaches out to tug on the X patch stuck to your jacket as his eyes darken, “really pissed me off , but I’m a forgiving guy. And after all, you tried to act all big and strong last night to save me and Thanos.”
“Who?” you ask instinctively. “Wait; that guy’s name is Thanos ?”
This catches him off guard. “You didn’t know his name?”
You could laugh at the genuine bafflement in his voice, but you know that’s a bad move. “You still haven’t even told me your name.”
His eyes roll away from you with that open-mouthed look of bemusement and he rocks back on his heels. That presses his full weight onto your leg, pinning it down, and you muffle a gasp as his hands slide back with him. No longer are they propping him up on the mattress; instead, they’ve found the tops of your slightly-parted thighs, thumbs rubbing back and forth so close to your crotch that the skin is sensitive even through your sweatpants. You have to fight not to part your legs further.
“Namgyu,” he drawls lowly, eyes heavy on you. “You know, you really should apologise for what you did. Say ‘I’m sorry, Namgyu.’ Tell me you feel bad for making such a stupid decision.”
For all you know, there could be an entire crowd watching the two of you in disgust, but you can’t break his gaze for a second. “I’m sorry,” you croon sweetly. “I do feel bad. If we won the vote and left, I would have never seen an old man kick you to the ground like a pathetic little dog… Namgyu.”
If you weren’t already so on edge, you might have missed the way he minutely rocks down his hips on you. Even so, the way his eyes diate is unmistakeable. “You’re such a bitch,” he whines reflexively and pushes himself off of you. You can’t help but mourn the loss.
As he leans back against the ladder, he rubs his nose and looks down at the crowd. An impish smile slowly stretches across his face as he focuses on a single spot. “That’s right,” Namgyu grins, “Thanos wants to meet you.”
He turns and descends the ladder, not even looking to see if you’re following as if he’s completely certain you will. And - speaking of dogs - you do.
The one advantage of Thanos’ obnoxiously-dyed hair is that he’s unmissable in the crowd. He’s alone on one of the ground-level beds, eyes tracking the crowd.
Namgyu snakes through the players to reach him before he’s seen, and springs up to grab him by the jacket sleeve, propping his chin up on Thanos’ shoulder. A few steps behind, you barely hear Namgyu utter ‘I caught her for you’ indulgently as the rapper catches your gaze.
“Hey, girl, my hero,” he announces in English with a melodramatic bow of gratitude. He switches back to Korean with a smirk on his face. “Congratulations, you earned a spot with the winners. I’ll take care of you now.” He pats the mattress beside him like it’s some great honour.
Namgyu’s face twists in dissatisfaction at that last sentence and he lifts up off of Thanos’ shoulder, reaching up instead. “They’re making us wait too fucking long,” he complains, swinging his weight under the bar on the bed above. “What did we wake up so early for?”
Like he conjured it, the PA system crackles out with a woman’s voice. “Your attention, please,” she recites formally. “The second game will begin momentarily. Please follow the staff’s instructions and swiftly make your way towards the game hall. I will now repeat the instructions.”
You tune it out as Thanos and Namgyu begin hyping each other up, jostling you in the process.
“You go ahead,” Thanos instructs, curling in on himself as he reaches into his jacket. Neither of you move.
Namgyu keeps his eyes on him in suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“Saying a little prayer.” You see the glint of a large silver crucifix that he lays in the palm of his hand. It seems like he thinks he’s concealing it better than he actually is, because even from your vantage point a few steps away, it’s obvious the way he opens it up at the hinge and slips a pill into his mouth.
Namgyu swings around in front of him, blocking your view and lowering his voice into a hush. “What is that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” the rapper brushes off, “it’s time to play the game. Let’s do this.” He stuffs the cross back under his jacket and pushes past Namgyu, heading towards the doors with the rest of the players.
As you watch him leave, two hands squeeze the tops of your shoulders, close enough to your neck that his index fingers rest in the hollows of your collarbones. Namgyu forcefully marches you forward, muttering under his breath to himself in excitement.
The previous interaction paired with this manhandling - while admittedly a little thrilling - is making you feel like you’re losing some of your control, and so you take a deep breath and duck down for a moment to break his hold. “See you later,” you say shortly without looking behind you, and stride forward out of arm’s reach.
You can’t track down any of the friends you’ve made, and you end up making your way through the corridors between two strangers, humming along to the cheery violin that serenades you all. Both of them are older men with impassive expressions so you opt not to strike up a conversation.
When you finally reach the broad doorway to the game hall, you immerse yourself into the crowd. You haven’t seen Namgyu or Thanos in the crowd yet, but your heart skips with the familiar thrill of a cat-and-mouse game.
The thought makes you almost reminisce your few encounters with Detective Hwang. You’ve had a few near misses and it was always him on the brink of finding you. Perhaps the genuine strife of being in so deep with the bad men you owed money to as well as how fucked you were if you ever did get taken into custody was so severe that something in your brain chemistry just broke , but the feeling of slipping out of his fingers at the last second is a stronger high than any pill Thanos may have in his pendant.
You can’t help but imagine what he would be doing in this situation. Of course he would’ve voted to leave, but you wonder if he would be rallying up the players like 456, or keeping stoic and alone.
“Players, welcome to the second game. We will begin shortly.”
You break out of your daydreaming at the sound of the voice overhead, and actually take in the space around you for the first time.
It’s not as large as the field, and there’s no open sky above you this time. The painted walls depict apartment-style windows and the sand underfoot is interrupted with two broad, swooping rainbow tracks that form mirroring circles.
The crowd slowly disperses as the PA crackles to life again. “This game will be played in teams.” Fuck. “Please take the next ten minutes to divide into groups of five. I will now repeat the instructions. This game will be-”
You stop paying attention to the voice and do a complete turn on the spot, seeking out potential teammates as large digital panels high on each walll blinks on, counting down from 10:00. Behind you, the doors slide shut.
As people begin to accumulate into groups, you feel someone patting you on the back. You whirl around, expecting to be greeted with one of the boys, but it’s the bespectacled Yongsik with Geumja beside him.
“Are you still looking for a team?” he asks hesitantly. “My mother and I…”
She steps past and reaches out to you, clasping your hands in hers. “I understand if you want to find other people. I’m sure not many want to be stuck with an old woman like me.”
Yongsik begins to protest, as do you. “Don’t be silly,” you chastise warmly, “you were more nimble than almost a hundred people yesterday. I’d be grateful to join you. Do you have any others?”
They don’t, and so you narrow your eyes to track somebody else down. On the other side of the room, Daeho is scouting with a determined gaze. You catch it, and he brightens, holding up a single finger.
Dammit. You sigh, and hold up two in return.
‘You sure?’ he mouths, and after a nod in response, he sighs and returns to his hunt.
As your hand falls down, you hear a sweet voice from beside you. “Excuse me.”
Turning, you’re greeted by a short, timid girl giving you a hopeful stare. “Was it two people you needed?”
You beam. “It is, thank goodness.” You swivel back to quickly wave the mother and son duo over, and when you right yourself it’s Hyunju you see standing protectively beside the young girl. “My Hyunju!”
She blushes, dimples coming out. With a quietly cheeky smile, she quips, “what a small world.”
The pleased expression on her face falters as she lifts her gaze above your right shoulder.
“You insolent fools!” a brazen voice calls out. From behind you, a shrew older woman with a harsh ponytail steps around to stare at the other four, ignoring you completely. “You should’ve sought me out first thing. But instead I had to come to you?” She steps up to them, voice ringing out louder than necessary. “I ought to cut you to shreds.”
It’s Hyunju that speaks up, clearing her throat and holding her hand out towards you. “I apologise, but we have a complete team already.”
Player 044 scoffs, and leisurely spins on the spot to face you. The black rimming her eyes makes them that much more intense as she glares at you. “Absolutely not.”
You straighten up in indignation. “Excuse me?” Your eyes dart up to the closest panel to you as the time dips below two minutes.
“You aren’t destined to be here, little girl. Run off to where you belong.”
In near disbelief, you follow her finger as she points decisively to a spot to her left without even looking. There, a few groups down, Namgyu is standing perfectly still with his eyes locked onto you. You can’t even see his chest move from breathing.
Behind him, Thanos is animatedly speaking with a striking young women with piercings who seems like she’s barely listening. To your surprise, he’s even acting welcoming to the terrified little player beside her. Trying unsuccessfully to catch Thanos’ attention is the guy who’s been stuck to his side like a leech, 256.
“Why would I go there? They have a full team too.”
“They aren’t nice men,” Geumja wheedles out, but her comment goes unaddressed.
The woman simply continues to glare at you until you resign yourself to the fact that she’s not going anywhere; besides, this is wasting precious time. “Fine, thanks a lot for the fortune telling.” You lift your gaze to the others, quickly saying your goodbyes and assuring them you’ll be okay, that you’ll cheer them on.
Like a spell being broken, the second you take a step towards Namgyu and his team he starts back into motion, bouncing on his heels. He turns his back to you at the last minute as if he wasn’t eyeing you up the whole time, so you’re forced to awkwardly clear your throat to catch the group’s attention.
“I, uh, I don’t suppose you could let me join your team,” you question ruefully. Namgyu gives a derisive huff like he can’t believe your audacity, but as his teeth toy with his silver ring, you catch his victorious grin. “I know it’s kind of last minute.”
“We’re at capacity, but thank you,” 256 states bitterly, but falls silent when Thanos places a hand directly in front of his face.
“Woah.” The rapper halts the protest as he furrows his brows at you, bemused as he playfully switches back and forth between Korean and English. “Welcome, my hero. We have space. You’re part of the Thanos family now.” He swivels smoothly on his feet and drops his hand to give 256 an expectant look.
The boy shuffles. “Really? But I’m part of the Thanos family too.”
“Of course ,” Thanos agrees emphatically, a faux expression of sorrow on his face. “But 123 saved my life. You understand, right?”
“Why don’t you get rid of those two, then?”
Thanos doesn’t spare a glance at 125 and 380. He drops his head, letting out a deep sigh. “We have to take care of vulnerable people, don’t we, Gyeongsu? I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t sleep at night knowing I left them to die. Could you?” He takes a breath to nod at his own sage wisdom. “I know you’re strong, my brother. You can lead your own team to victory.”
The boy goes to protest again, but sends an uneasy glance at the timer as it clicks below 60 seconds, and instead rushes off frantically.
380 smirks. “That was brutal.”
“Be grateful, bitch,” Namgyu spits out immediately, making her give a disbelieving laugh.
The young boy beside her dips at the waist, thanking the others profusely, which Thanos seems to find endlessly endearing. He gives a delighted clap when the female PA declares the selection period has ended.
Namgyu approaches, appraising you languidly until he’s close enough to reach out and fist two handfuls of your jacket. “Hey, little 123. I missed you.” A smile plays on his face, teeth dragging over his lower lip as he leans in closer. “If you leave me again, I’ll make sure you get shot.” His words are at odds with the soft way he says it, almost lisping. “You belong with us.”
Your breath catches in your throat at the phrasing eerily similar to what player 044 had said just minutes ago. There’s no time to reply - although you have no idea what you’d even say - as the announcement continues.
The voice directs you all to sit in your teams inside the circles. Wordlessly, the pink guards ensure even numbers on either side. You’re pleased to see your friends have been seated a few teams behind you, and you pump your fists in the air in encouragement. Geumja keeps sending the other woman foul glares, but pauses to wish you luck back.
As you all were settling, more guards had entered, each with black podiums they roll at set intervals around each rainbow track. You crane your neck to catch what they contain, but can’t make any details.
Thanos is antsy, huffing as the time for setup drags on. “By the time this is all done, we’ll be eating dinner.” His legs are splayed out as he leans on his hands behind him, taking up twice as much space as anybody else.
Namgyu concurs, rubbing at his mouth with the cuff of his jacket. “I’m hungry already.”
Still feeling weird about Namgyu’s prior intensity, which seems to have blown away like a stray cloud, you twist around to face the other two instead. They glance up as you introduce yourself.
380 is first to respond. “Semi. This is Minsu.” He makes a brief flicker of eye contact before returning his gaze shyly to his shoes.
“Did you know each other before this?”
“We’re new acquaintances,” Semi corrects. “You and those two?”
You throw your hands up with a defeated shrug. “Who knows?”
She chuckles, leaning forward to take another look at them before resting back again. “They certainly seem to want you around.”
As you return her laugh weakly, you pray your cheeks aren’t flushed. “I’m just ready to put all this behind us. I’ve been promised a home-cooked meal tonight if we make it out of here alive.”
“Jealous.” She lets out a deep sigh, then turns to her friend. “How about it, Minsu? If we get paid out, let’s share some barbecue. I can’t cook for shit.”
The boy in question is unable to hide his blush. He dips his head gratefully, agreeing so quietly you can’t make out any individual word.
Around you, the guards have all come to a halt; some at their stations on the loop, others blocking the closed doors. “The game you will participate in today,” the PA reveals, “is a Six-Legged Pentathlon. Team members will start with their legs tied together. At each ten-meter interval on the track, one member of the team will play a mini-game. If that player wins, the team can move onto the next challenge.”
The five of you - well, four - share glances as she begins to announce what you’ll be playing.
“The mini-games are as follows. Game one: ddakji. Game two: flying stone. Game three: gonggi. Game four: spinning top. And finally, game five: jegi.”
Your shoulders sink more with every one. You vividly remember how fiery your cheek felt after you’d played ddakji with the initial recruiter. Somehow, in all your years you’ve never really developed a knack for sports, or even body coordination. Your heart begins thudding the back of your ribcage at the thought of screwing up and getting your whole team killed.
“You will have five minutes. To win, you must complete all mini-games and cross the finish line before the time runs out. Now, please decide which player will be assigned to each mini-game.”
As she’s speaking, Thanos sits forward and looks down the line. “You guys pick,” he whispers assertively.
“Is anyone confident in one of those games?” you offer up hopefully.
“Leave spinning top with me.” Namgyu lets out a proud huff, mimicking the motions of flinging the spinner.
“I have good aim,” Semi promises. “I can throw the stone.”
Thanos slides his palms together in approval, before his eyes find you. “And?”
You stiffen under four expectant stares. “I’m probably best at gonggi.” While it’s not the easiest one of the games you have left, it’s the one you’ve done the most.
“My boy Minsu, it’s all on you.”
He wilts under the pressure of Thanos’ words. “Ddakji? Unless you want me to do jegi.”
“No, you take ddakji,” Thanos concludes. “I’ll win at jegi, don’t worry, my boy.”
Sooner than you’re sure they’d like, the first two teams are called to the starting line. You watch in horror as black cuffs around their ankles are padlocked on, joining each player to the ones on either side. The hall feels too hot all of a sudden, and you jerkily unzip your jacket and yank it off, leaving it half inside-out on the sand.
Out of the corner of your eye, Namgyu tilts his head towards your chest, openly staring for a few moments before he turns his attention back to the players about to start.
The woman on the PA speaks up. “Team one and team two, get ready to play.” One of the teams tries to cheer each other up, though you see most of them have abject fear on their faces. “With that, let the game begin.”
While the guard in the space between tracks raises a black pistol to the ceiling, Thanos jumps up onto his knees, thrusting a fist in the air. “ Let’s get it! ” he yells, whooping in glee.
Even though you were anticipating it, you flinch when the gunshot snaps through the air.
Everyone else watches with bated breath as the two teams make their way to the first station. While one flips his ddakji on the first try and allows his team to continue onwards, the other misses several times. They get increasingly panicked, and you let out a slow breath when the card finally flips.
At the second station, the original team is caught up on flying stone. The man is so frantic, his throws aren’t even close to the small block ahead of him. Semi watches with a careful gaze, brows pinched together.
After each successful pass the teams celebrate, but most of the time you’re just filled with dread seeing fumbles, trips, stupid mistakes made from rushing.
By the time they’re down to two minutes, the first team is still stuck on the stone throw, four members yelling and scolding the man failing. On the other side, you hear the relieved cheers of passing followed by cries as the team falls over in their haste.
“Oh my god,” you moan lowly, almost unable to watch. They’re at a great disadvantage going first, and you know you have to stay focused to pick up on any strategies and shortfalls.
Past Namgyu, Thanos is up on his knees, an open-mouthed grin frozen on his face as he watches the two teams back and forth like he’s at a tennis match.
The throwing stone team have their imagined success cut short as the pink guard points silently at the player’s foot over the line.
Semi lets out a stiff breath, pulling back. “It’s already over.”
The team fail again and fall silent for a moment. You pretend not to notice Minsu crying silently, though that’s mostly because you’re blinking back tears yourself, keeping your eyes locked on a point on the painted wall well away from the timer.
You try to block out the increasingly loud shouts and cheers from the players and audience alike, but you can’t miss the hauntingly-polite voice of the announcer. “Time’s up. You did not pass the finish line.”
A moment of silence only makes the ensuing gunshots and panicked screams more deafening. Heartlessly, as the eliminated player numbers are announced, the guards reset their stations.
An X voter from the other side of the tracks stands up and cries out hoarsely. “We should have left! Now we’re all gonna die, we’re gonna die because half of you said you wanted to keep doing this!”
Another man steps up to voice his agreement as well, but your attention has been captured by Namgyu, whose face has gone grey. He turns from you and towards Thanos, supplicating himself to the rapper. “Can you… Can you please given me one of those?”
“‘Those?’” Thanos questions, rhythmically rocking back and forth like he’s listening to music.
“Those pills you took,” Namgyu clarifies. “You’re keeping them inside your cross. I saw it.”
With wide eyes, Thanos pauses briefly to give his friend a disbelieving look. “I don’t know what the fuck are you talking about.”
With a desperate whine, Namgyu leans in closer, wringing his hands together. Despite all the strange encounters you’ve had with him, witnessing him so docile - practically submissive - might be the weirdest one yet. “If I get nervous and screw up, we’re all dead. Look at my hands, dude.” From where you are, even you can see the way they’re trembling violently. “They’re shaking like crazy.”
From above, there’s an announcement that the staff will tidy up the game hall before the next pentathlon begins. Your stomach rolls when a door opens to allow a stream of black coffins to be wheeled out on forklifts.
“Look,” Thanos mutters, “Namsu-”
“Namgyu.”
“Right, Namgyu.” Unzipping his jacket, he tightly grips onto the crucifix. “You know what this is?”
“Ecstasy? Ketamine?”
Thanos shakes his head emphatically. “No, this is a new kind. It’s fucking crazy, man . It’s too much for you,” he finishes decisively.
Undeterred, Namgyu offers up his arm, rolling the jacket sleeve up to reveal a gnarly twist of discoloured skin in the crook of his elbow. You’re sure Thanos’ look of genuine shock mirrors your own. “Dude. When I was a promotor, I did all of it. You used to go to Pentagon when I worked there, I’d even bring in all kinds of that crazy exotic shit for you.”
You would laugh, if it weren’t for the occasional glimpse of dead bodies being lifted into coffins. It makes sense that Namgyu had met Thanos before by the way he seems so enamoured.
The latter sighs, and reluctantly reaches into the cross to hand Namgyu a small round pill. He takes it and eagerly crunches it between his teeth, sighing as he settles back into position. Physical or psychological, he already looks calmer.
Beyond the rational disapproval of drug addicts, there’s always been a guilty part of you that is jealous of those that get to waste their lives away on a high. If you don’t stay alert at all times out there, you’re as good as dead. You can’t help but wonder what it must feel like to put all your worries aside and just enjoy the hedonism.
Namgyu catches sight of you watching them and mistakes your expression. With an exaggerated sigh, he knocks Thanos’ shoulder. “Really? You’re not gonna offer your saviour a little happy pill either?”
“What?” you huff, Thanos across from you looking equally perturbed.
“Look at her, man,” Namgyu cuts his eyes to you, a sly grin curling his lip, “she’s scared shitless. You should be showing her your gratitude, not holding out.”
“Watch it,” Thanos warns darkly.
You scoff indignantly. “Not all of us are drug addicts, Namgyu.”
He chuckles low in his throat but looks right past you to Minsu, who’s been keeping an uneasy eye on the exchange. His smile widens. “What?”
Minsu quickly averts his gaze. “Nothing.”
Clumsily, Namgyu clambers around to sit cross-legged again, carelessly jostling you. “Hey, what’s your name again?”
“Minsu,” the boy softly offers up.
You feel a little awkward with them talking across you, but Namgyu clearly doesn’t mind as he leans right across until you’re forced to shuffle backwards a bit, legs bent in front of you. “Minsu… Minsu, what’s that old Admiral Yi-Sun quote?”
Behind Minsu, Semi lets out a barely audible ‘fuck’s sake’ and turns away, rubbing her temple in frustration. Expectedly, Minsu just sits in uncertain silence until Namgyu continues.
With a puffed chest, he declares magnanimously, “‘those who seek life shall die. Those who seek death shall live.’ Okay, everyone? Just go in like you’re gonna die anyway. Tell yourself you don’t care what happens to you.” He gives you all a broad grin. “We’ll win this thing, take our cash, and get the fuck out of here.”
Semi lets out a disgusted noise, turning to glare at him. “Hey, don’t order us around.”
Namgyu blinks. “Me?” His eyes flit to you for some reason, and as you bite down on your cheeks to hold back a smile, you wonder if he’s expecting you to come to his defense.
“Yeah, you.” Semi’s eyes dart down. “Nice shaky hands, asshole.”
“Look who’s on her period. Bitch.”
Minsu looks like he’d rather be held at gunpoint than sitting in between the two of them. Semi just shakes her head in response, opting to give up and just watch the clean-up crew.
“Hey,” Namgyu murmurs in your ear, and you jump hearing the rumble of his voice so close. Gone are the dead eyes that were insulting his fellow teammate. Instead, his tongue presses the side of his cheek as he reaches out to rest his hand on your knee. “You don’t have to pretend. You don’t want to get high, that’s okay. There are other ways I can help you to relax.”
His quick mood change-ups always give you whiplash, and this time is no different. “ Seriously? ”
You see the outline as his tongue keeps moving, over his teeth this time. You wonder idly if he’s chasing every last granule of the pill. Slowly, his hand moves further around, fingers pressing on the crook of your knee. Despite the relatively innocuous location, there’s something weirdly intimate about it, and you feel too hot even with just your T-shirt on as he pulls lightly, making your legs part just a bit more. “You can be quiet, can’t you?”
It’s the reminder that there’s an entire room of people that brings you crashing back down to reality. You don’t have to look away to know that - if no one else - Thanos and Minsu have absolutely witnessed this entire thing. You swallow thickly, trying to look unimpressed. “Has the pill kicked in that fast, or are you always such a whore?”
He sits back slowly, smile gradually falling. His hand, however, remains a warm weight on your knee. “Suit yourself.”
You can’t bear to make eye contact with your fellow teammates, but as the next announcement calls the following two teams to the tracks, you don’t have to.
It’s the team you were originally a part of. Hyunju, her friend, Geumja, Yongsik, and the woman that kicked you out. Your heart stops, seeing the terrified looks on their faces. Like an electric shock, the realisation flashes in your head that there’s a strong chance they’ll be dead in five minutes.
Before you have a chance to even think, instinct takes over. You’re springing up, Namgyu’s hand tossed off of you, and rushing over to them.
You barely notice two of the pink guards straighten up in alarm, guns at the ready. Instead, you throw your arms around a bewildered Hyunju, eyes stinging with tears so much you can’t even open them.
After a moment, she relaxes into the embrace, and even stretches a strong arm around your back to hold you close for a few beats longer. You pull back reluctantly and stare up at her. “I believe in you. You’ll make it out of here in no time and I’ll see you again when I’m done.”
She tries to give you a reassuring smile, but it falls short.
Down the line, heart thudding like you’re the one about to race, you tightly hug Geumja with her delicate but wiry frame, Yongsik with his awkward but well-intentioned pat on your shoulder, and the new girl. You may not have really spoken to her, but it’s clear she needs a hug too.
Finally, it’s the older woman that stands in front of you, with more dread on her face than you would’ve expected given how certain of herself she was before. “Ah, what the hell,” you mutter quickly, and pull her into a two-second hug as well.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Geumja point behind you with a worried face, as Hyunju calls your name in warning.
The tell-tale click of a gun ready to fire sounds behind you.
From above, the PA. “There are to be no interactions with teams that are competing in the race. All waiting players, return to your seats.” You could swear there’s a scolding tone hidden in her impassive voice.
You fight the urge to give the guard or the speakers ahead the finger, deciding it’s not worth the risk. It’s harder, however, to force yourself to go back and sit in the vacant gap you left behind, as you hear a set of padlocks slotting into place.
“Fraternising with the enemy?” Namgyu teases once you sit back down.
“Shut the fuck up.”
He recoils, but does the wise thing and falls silent, sulkily flicking the sand in front of him.
The gun fires.
#squid game fic#squid game x reader#namgyu fic#namgyu x reader#hyunju fic#hyunju x reader#cho hyunju
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I used to think it was enough to not give her money. I used to think it was enough to only engage with fan content. To OPs last point I'm literally NB and I was doing mental gymnastics to justify why engaging with fan content was okay.
I'll give you a hint: if you have to do those kinds of mental gymnastics just to "enjoy" your fandom content? You know you shouldn't be here. Your justifying it doesn't change that deep down you know you should not be here.
"I'm not giving her attention," I would say, "I'm giving attention to the fanartists!" The echo chamber went and still goes as such. Within HP Shipping spaces everyone was content to say "Fuck JKR" and create the fanart and fanfic, thinking they were calling attention to just themselves. Fandom attention within the fandom.
"HP is so old now, there's no way that anyone who wasn't already here is going to stumble upon this and get introduced to HP now."
But you're just lying to yourself. I've gotten into series because of fanfic. I started watching Supernatural way back when because of SPN fandom. The media doesn't always beget fandom and in the way things are going, more and more often, fandom begets the attention to the original media.
Parents read their kids HP still. That stupid game introduced people to HP. That stupid HBO show is coming out and will introduce yet more people. Young kids especially. New fans get bred every day and they might or might not have the development to understand that your fanwork is not a cosign. Even if you put "FUCK JKR!!!" at the top of every authors note or fanart, you still lovingly created the thing itself that puts the characters she made on a pedestal.
So its fuck her but not her characters or story. For a new fan who a) might not know what she is and what she supports or b) literally cannot understand why you would make a thing for a person you hate, this messaging is confusing.
AND ITS SO IMPORTANT TO NOTE - I WAS RIGHT THERE DOING THE SAME THING. THIS IS NOT A STONES GLASS HOUSES SITUATION. I WAS LED TO BELIEVE THAT WAS ENOUGH. I allowed my lens to be focused so NARROWLY that I missed the big picture FOR YEARS. Myself and other trans fans missed that fandom activity does not care about the boundaries of fandom, it'll go as far and as wide as it can.
Fandom does not exist in a vacuum. And JKR herself has made herself such an integral force over HP, that Death of the Author does not apply. You cannot remove her from the property she made, this isn't Orson Scott Card, and she did that on purpose. She and Harry Potter are intertwined forever.
Here's a video that more succinctly explains why 4 YEARS AGO.
youtube
And here's another video that explains even more how your justification means NOTHING because it is still giving her fuel for her transphobic fire.
youtube
Social clout is a currency. We live in an attention based economy. Now you might be thinking "Well Harry Potter has been so big for so long, its huge. Having all those people not involve themselves as one mass collective action is impossible. So I might as well enjoy it, its pretty much self sustaining."
If it takes a year, two years, three years, MORE! THE TIME. WILL. PASS. ANYWAY. Would you rather that time pass while she amasses more power? Or would you rather watch it slip from her fingers.
Yes, the HP fandom was huge, but i don't think its as huge as you think anymore. If the people who have stuck around all this time just let go? Move on, find something else to fixate over, and we COLLECTIVELY stop pumping out free content for her, it'll certainly make a dent in her audience. It'll make a statement. It'll start a push to help larger collectives understand that there is no standing for this. There is no justification good enough to completely throw trans folk under the bus.
Harry Potter is not the only thing out there for you to love. There's PLENTY. Go find it. Leave this behind. Stop giving her attention. Because whether or not you're saying "Fuck you JKR" until you're blue in the face, she will leverage it to hurt more and more trans people.
There are plenty of other good things for you to go nuts over. Plenty of things that'll bewitch you mind body and soul if you let them. HP does not have to be the be all end all of the things you love.

once again, if you like ANYTHING harry potter related: you did this
#attention is more valuable to jkr than money#if you give her work support you're doing something worse than paying her#she's already rich#she doesnt need the twenty something bucks from a book purchase#she needs people TALKING about her shit#and you ARE DOING THAT.#you ARE SUPPORTING HER#< prev has it right#Youtube
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A Long Diary Entry About Me and Recent Events
I wasn't planning on posting, but now that things have settled a bit, maybe i've changed my mind .... i dont know ... i am a very quiet person online. but it turns out i have a lot to say right now. So maybe it's good to put out a little blog every once in a while. maybe this will prove to be unwise ...
Intro
this will be fairly personal and not professional and not well written, so please do not over analyze it or think too hard. i only have good intentions, i promise. im also not a very organized thinker so this might be a mess. being perceived anywhere makes me profoundly nervous, so if you misbehave, i will continue to cease existing publicly online, and i shan't perform for you again... *disappears in a mist*
ahem...herm...
*comes back on stage, taps mic... clears throat... straightens papers...wipes away my blackened, exploded hair...*
this will be a little look into my world, and very honest... maybe a lot of what i have posted previously during my time at clash was overly sanitized cause i felt like i couldnt say anything publicly without repercussions.
hi, i hope you are all doing well... im mail but i geuss you knew that already. i haven't been on the clash team since functionally early last year due to various medical problems. i prefer to keep all of these things to myself, but, i feel that it's relevant to mention.
i have disappeared everywhere because of all of the "stuff" going on with me. this may be the first time some of my friends have seen signs of life from me in months, and i am so sorry about that. i care about you and think about you often. social media is still difficult for me to use right now, but i am trying to get better with it, and this is a step in that direction, maybe…?
there's other factors to me leaving clash of course (some of which have been mentioned by former staff recently). It’s freeing to speak so openly about corporate clash, especially its internal workings, because I felt like i couldn't say much here while actively being on the clash crew. it's why "nothing i say is canon" is plastered weirdly everywhere. it was probably, mostly, just my own nerves getting in the way though
ok well i'm taking it back everything i say is THE COMPLETE TRUTH!!!!!!! (i am joking) what i will say is true is that whatever you headcanon about any character i designed gets my HONEST AND TRUE stamp of mailman's approval. i am reclaiming them (Jokingly) (Lovingly) so that you can have them instead (Telling the truth) i also have not played toontown in like two years. If someone says you're a liar you can screenshot this and said "Mailman said so" and I won't care It's not like i'll be there. also i genuinely believe some of you are more qualified than me or anyone to speak on these beloved and often lgbt characters. Please consider yourself to be the only correct source of clash information from now on. i have no real authority here, but neither do they ... 'cause like what're they gonna do ....
Anyways Whew! Glad that's over! No offense i am just joking around...i went through a lot but overall, Clash changed my life for the better. in some ways i am a bit sad that this chapter of my life has ended. but i will always love toontown and gay furries forever and ever. i am so, so happy that people like what I have contributed so much to.
oh and of course, i agree with the statements from former staff. like 90% of them are my friends after all so maybe i am a little biased here... i prefer to keep personal matters to myself but i experienced a lot of trauma there. im sure it was accidental on the part of others and i would never blame just one person for it. theres something that is just foundationally not working with their structure and it is hurting people, and I hope they're able to mend whatever that is. i am sure you leaderships are reading this, so, hello, i hope you are doing okay. im sorry about how stressful this all must be and i hope things improve. its true that most of us 1.3 developers left, but for those of you who knew me on the team, hiii i hope you are well
but ummm hmm how do i say this.
*Gets a puppet out to speak for me so i can remain blameless for whatever information i say because it may or may not be true*
and i am just a little puppet after all, using comedy to deflect any accusations of personal wrongdoing.... But this is my theory.
Because it is not a professional project, corporate clash will always be ran by volunteers who have never worked on a project on this scale. I think this results in accidental mismanagement. It’s really difficult to run a volunteer video game like this when it isn't structured like a close-knit friend group. In fact, “volunteer video games” do not really exist in any other context, so there’s nothing to reference. The more people there are, the more they may get neglected. so, i am sympathetic about how difficult it is to keep this game continuing and to be a lead for it. Especially on volunteer time.
Who said that. Throw that freak in the trash.
BOOM...
...
...
*Mailman returns and is picking off pieces of garbage*
well anyways. you have to imagine this has been a really strange, difficult, weird, upsetting, past couple of weeks for me. Especially me, who really doesn't like being perceived at all, being perceived... the horrors... i am still trying to return to normal, but it feels like something has changed in a cosmic sort of way, and i cant stop feeling it.
Clarification
ive been thinking about whether or not to include this next section, but i have decided to do so as briefly as possible, because i feel like it is important for me to clarify it. this piece of context feels important to me. please be responsible with it, and please don't use it to hurt others.
as you are all probably aware, stuck the duck did a stream recently covering the statements made by former staff. of course i agree with former staff, as I am former staff myself and i share some of their experiences, and many of them are friends of mine. i think stuck is really cool and he is a very kind person.
at the end of his stream, a statement was made regarding a situation where i was allegedly receiving poor treatment from cranky during a severe bout of illness.
i was not involved in making that statement, it was based on someone else's perspective on how i was treated at the time because i do not remember the situation for myself. i was so sick that i do not really remember what happened in detail.
all i remember is really wanting to complete the illustration because it was important to me, i wanted the community to have it with its corresponding update. i feel like cranky's statement regarding it is probably more accurate to my memory but i didnt read it in detail because these past few weeks have been a little nerve-wracking. i have been told by others that the situation appeared worse than what I remember, but again I cannot verify any of this.
but with how hard i worked on that illustration through illness, i do think it was disappointing and a little hurtful to forget about it until one of my friends reminded them it existed. but i understand things slip through and i have also made mistakes. i truly don't hold grudges because i lack the emotion of anger. I just get really scared.... . i am not completely happy with how the picture came out anyways, but thats probably because i was so sick when making it ….
i cant say whether or not it's true, or if cranky's participation was somewhat exaggerated. i think as community lead (?) he was in control of its distribution though. the only part i can verify is that they didnt use it for a long time despite my working very hard on it. but things happen in development all the time, and i am not really interested or comfortable in being centered in this situation.. i actually do not really want to receive any attention at all but i would feel bad ignoring this statement.
but please also understand this. cranky may have made mistakes in leadership, and he may have hurt people, including my friends, but based on what i know, which of course is not everything, i really don't believe he's an evil person, and i would ask that you please do not publicly attack people you do not know. i believe that everyone working on clash has its best interests in mind, even if i don't agree with all of their approaches. they are there, working for free, because they care about it.
there is a difference between attacking someone and sharing information with others. this is just my perspective, but as ex-staff, we are allowed to speak on this because we knew them, and these are our experiences, i hope you understand where i'm coming from here. a game of telephone starts happening and dishonest things are said by mistake. it may be best to just link to an individual's statements. Please treat all clash staff fairly.
with all of this unfortunate stuff going on, i saw someone i do not know claim that some clash staff would make fun of me behind my back, which is sad if true. but i dont know if its true or not so i wouldn’t hold it against them. at this point i have grieved about clash over and over again so there’s not much grief left to have. I only mention it because i hope its not true, and i have no way of knowing, because for the most part, i like everyone at clash, and i just want whoever allegedly said those things about me to know that.
i am not perfect either though. i try to do right by everyone nowadays because it's all i can do. so of course i would forgive them immediately.
thats all i have to say on the clash situation. thank you for listening to us. many of us thought these stories would never be heard. so i appreciate you listening if nothing else.
Me and What I am doing Now
i always felt like i would have a lot to talk about once leaving clash, but i actually dont. i dont have anything to say that i, or others, havent already said. once again i agree with the majority of ex-staff / my friends, but im talking about even casual stuff about development or whatever. i dont think its all that interesting to people that weren't there, and i'm not interested enough in clash anymore to make posts about it publicly.
i would post my personal work to other accounts, that could be cool, but i don't have much to say, and Im not able to make as much stuff as I used to. … i also do not get anything out of seeing a big number (Likes Or Reposts) on my drawings. so id be posting maybe once every four months ... or once a year … i have really bad time blindness which doesn't go well with social media. maybe i'll get back into it anyways some day. it's theoretically possible that a few people would like to see my drawings, but yet i post nothing ever, and thats a little sad.
if i do make a brand new account, i will probably be stealing this url. Sorry for any potential confusion in the future.
most of the time i am just doing my own thing working on my original, personal projects. i really love my characters and i do a lot of stuff with them. i make comics, stories, drawings, 3d models. You know how it is ... im working on a 3d model right now that i will probably go work on after i post this. i plan on integrating the 3d model into a little website that tells you all about the character and i think that will be really fun. I love making interactive stuff with my characters. youll be able to rotate it all around and stuff. i definitely wont be able to do that for all of them though ... i'm probably not capable of making as much stuff as i used to in general, but i am at peace with that.
i also plan on making this next 3d model into a VRchat avatar (like i usually do) but this time hopefully itll be my "main" model so i can feel less embarrassed logging in to hang out with friends. maybe You and Me can play vrchat some day. i am really shy online though so we’ll see. anyways its going to be a really cute dragon thing and i'm going to make it wear my clothes. i like to collect vintage clothing from thrift stores and i have an outfit in mind. He's actually just one of my regular characters that i turned into a cute dragon, but i'm forcing him to represent me for now.
umm what else has been going on with me ... i played a lot of "fantasy life i" recently. and deltarune. i watched a lot of deltarune theory videos on youtube. i watched a whole documentary the other day and i have memory problems so i only realized at the end that i had already seen it before. I recently customized my web browser and im using “zen” now its kind of cool. Just now, I wrote a lot about these two metallica concerts i went to a few months ago (after much preparation) but I decided to delete all the stories from it in favor of just mentioning that i went.
anyways. it probably goes without saying, but i am not a social media person, and i cannot make as much stuff anymore, so all the stuff i make now is either for myself or is for one of the various projects im working on.
i will now talk about one of the various projects im working on. this one isn't a personal project though because im making it with my friends, many of whom made up some very large slices in that 1.3 pie chart:
FriendOS
So. Of course i am still a game developer. i really love working on games, and i dont think that will ever leave me. 3d modelling and animation, making assets, and character design are among the many things i do and want to continue doing. i suppose you could just consider me the "lead 3d artist" for this project.
my main project is now "FriendOS", a really advanced furry character creator with 3d platforming and bullethell battles.
I mean, a 3d platformer with bullethell battles and a really advanced furry character creator.
our game has a lot of cool stuff in it. For instance, we put a lot of work into the really advanced furry character creator, ensuring that you can mix 'n' match whatever pieces you'd like. And this time it's fun
I will give you a rundown as quickly as possible before you lose interest.
in friendOS, you play as a "Friend". Friends are a species of "digital avatar" that navigate a world made to represent an operating system.
Friends are wild, technically indestructible, and poorly mannered creatures. We are still researching their natural behaviors, but we do know that a friend has never been reported dead for long. They cause problems, yet they are the problem solvers, tasked with exploring the deepest parts of a computer to cleanse it of its rotten, virus-infected core.
Within FriendOS, the computer is accessed via "Bliss", an interactive 3d interface known for its heavenly lands full of rainbows, flowers, and files. It is a safe pasture for which the friends shall graze. The residents of this utopian town are very curious themselves. I heard one of them claims to have been a racecar driver, but I think he's lying.
Astron is our beloved god dog. He takes out the trash and tells the truth
Who is this and why is he doing that
This world is very real to the residents of "Bliss". There's a lot of unique struggles that come with knowing you are living inside of a computer and being okay with that.
So, you are running around inside of an old computer. It's a land full of mysteries, collectables, gay people, very customizable little friends, and minigames. Minigames including fishing.
Yes Everyone in this game is gay and no one is going to get mad at me for saying that. In what way they are gay is for you to discover or decide for yourself.
I would go into more detail, but we still have a lot to work on, so it will probably change a lot. However I encourage you all to roleplay in a lobby some day. It's really fun
if you're actually reading this entire thing and send me a suggestion with some type of item you think friends would look beautiful wearing, i can't say it won't influence me. which, thanks for reading all of this by the way, it's very nice of you. the way i have designed this 3d artstyle is so that assets can be created as efficiently as possible, considering our team is very, very small. its all round and flat so they can be made quickly.
it's so nice to work on a team where we really get each other. now that i think about it, we've been making games together for like four years. we are all very confident developers which makes us very efficient at making things. everything we do is highly collaborative and we're always listening to each other.
i have been working on friendOS for like 8-10 months and we haven't fought over anything this entire time. its so beautiful. im sure that we will continue to only ever agree with each other, our team will remain motivated, and nothing bad will ever happen.
If you are interested in following the development of friendOS, I encourage you to join the official friendOS discord server. We have a long ways to go, but it’s read only, so you can comfortably ignore it at the bottom of your server list for as long as you want!
Closing
there is a good chance i will not be very involved in toontown after all of this. Clash was a little traumatizing for me and my friends. at various points in the timeline, things happened that i cannot talk about. i was treated poorly, my friends were treated poorly, and i'm sure no one did it on purpose, but it still happened. things happened that made me cry on behalf of others, which i haven't told many people.
but you know... there isn't much more that i want to make for toontown anyways. i feel like 1.3 was already my "dream update." i'm uninterested in working on any toontown private server in the future because i already know exactly what i would be doing, and i have done enough of it. I appreciate the freedom i have in creating whatever i'd like. for both myself and friendOS, i can make whatever designs and items and characters i want, and that's really cool.
clash has taught me so much, and it has even made me grow better as a person, but i feel like i need to move on as an artist. i'm thankful for what i have learned there and I apply it every day.
i hope that doesn't make anyone sad, because it doesn't really make me sad. I think it’s an exciting thing. i will probably always be around in some way, and clash will continue on in whatever way it chooses for itself.
I have been into toontown since around 2007. as of 2025, i think thats like 18 years of my life. Jeez ... so i have watched this game go through "cycles" a few times now. the first time was when TTO closed. then TTR opened in like 2014. then everyone felt like it was dead again, and clash opened in like 2017, then they released 1.1, and 1.2, and somewhere in there, TTR released field offices. and now we're working on friendOS, which is not toontown, but saying we are taking zero influences from our previous work would be an obvious lie. ....honestly in some ways, it is too similar for comfort....
and now, with all this stuff going on, and all these things being said, people seem to be low in spirits again. so i will give you some words of encouragement as a guy who has played this game for far too long:
you have a lot to look forward to. i mean, you certainly have more to look forward to regarding this game than i did in 2015. clash has gotten through many "difficult" circumstances and it will probably have more. there were points during 1.3 where i didn't know if it would even come out. but they are still here working on stuff. and of course, there are other private servers too. i am sure EVH will put out something really cool. some of my friends worked on "grindworks" but i have not played it for myself. TTR is still working on their next thing i'm sure. the game will probably always exist in some way. toontown has a much bigger fanbase than many of the things i'm into, which is really kind of crazy!
yes, as that one blogpost article pointed out, many of us 1.3 devs are gone. clash still has a team full of new, passionate people working on future content and im sure they will continue to create cool stuff. i hope you will support whatever they put out just as passionately.
in all truth, i care about you all much more than clash. mostly the gay players, and the furries, and all the artists, and the few of you who draw sexy duck shuffler on twitter. but of course, i am biased towards my own kind. i too am just some gay artist on the internet. you are the people important here, who are keeping the game alive. so remember that your passion is what fuels your game (all of toontown) to continue. i have never, not for a moment, taken any of you for granted. i am just some guy so anyone interacting with stuff i work on is amazing to me. i hope im able to buy a keychain from you some day. i don't even know if its possible for me to see all the fanart of the characters i designed but i still love and appreciate it all. ive seen quite a bit though. including some i saw on accident that i dont think you wanted me to see. Sorry
and the creative team. i am by no means perfect and i make my share of mistakes as we all do, but i always did as much as i could. you guys are the best and your contributions matter. every asset you create will forever be a gift to clash from you.
There are many people i could list out individually to thank, but i wouldn’t want to miss anyone. Because of my spontaneous health problems, I never got to give a formal goodbye to the clash crew so i couldn’t say thanks to anyone myself. I suppose none of them really know how i feel about any of this in general…. So if you worked with me on clash, i think very highly of you to this day.
for now i will leave you with this.
i love you very much.
thank you for playing our game.
thank you so much for loving the characters i put so much of myself into. it has not gone unnoticed from me.
please continue to be kind to the volunteers who work on clash.
please thank the moderators who moderate corporate clash. They see *everything*.
please be kind to yourself, be respectful to each other, and forgive yourself, and just for me, remember the poor Parrots who are going extinct due to the destruction of their habitats and homes (They are my favorite animal) and adopt don't shop. thank you.

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Pearl Necklace
"No you are going to wear it until you learn to do what you promise" My wife, Allie scolded me as she put a pearl necklace around my neck.
"Allie, I can't" I whined.
"Yes you can, you should of stuck to your promise and let Mike give you a temporary one" she told me. There was no way to hide this necklace it was short and rode high on my neck. I would need a turtleneck. But it was June. I had promised but when it came down to it I just couldn't suck her lover, Mike's cock. Allie had been cuckolding me for a few months now. It had started as a threesome with one of her old boyfriends. Where I found myself watching rather then participating. At first I was into it. But soon stepped back like I was in the way. I watched as her ex. Nick fucked her. There was nothing gentile in what he did. He used her for his own pleasure. Before he just got up and left. Allie was pissed. She had gone thru all the trouble of setting it up and I just sat and watched. So it wasn't long till she bought home another guy she had picked up and made me watch. She teased me how I got off watching her get fucked. She cut me off completely instead allowed me to watch her get fucked by real men. This led to her having me clean up after them.
Since she told me I enjoyed it so much she arranged for me to suck a cock. She wanted to see him cum on my me like I loved to see them cum on her tits. But when it came time to do it I chickened out.
"Allie, please I can't wear this" I wimpered.
"Well I guess if you agree to" she smiled and pulled out a strapon. My mouth went dry.
"Allie you can be serious" I said softly. She just smiled and picked up lube. As well.
"I gave him my ass because you wouldn't suck him, time to repay it" she told me. I had watched Mike fuck her ass several times. She walked up to me grabbed my ear and shoved the toy into my mouth.
"Show me show me how you should of sucked his big cock" she told me smacking me gag in the toy. Tears where running down my face when she finally pulled spit out of my mouth.
"That's right bitch cry it out" she told me asg she stepped into the harness and tightened the straps.
"What are you waiting for bitch get naked" she yelled. I stood wiped the tears and removed my pants. She was going to do this. She pushed me on the bed and spread my legs.
"Hold them" she told me having me grab my calves opening wide for her she pushed three lubed fingers in my ass.
"OH too big" I wimpered she didn't stop just started to work them in and out. She removed her fingers and lubed her toy. Then pressed it against my hole.
"Ready" she giggled and shoved it in she buried it deep in my ass.
"PLEASE!!!!!" I cried as she pushed the toy deep inside me.
"Stop crying it's only half the size of Mike" Allie told me smaking ass.
"Now sweety next time it may be several men. I tell you to pleasure." Allie told me as she pounded away on my virgin ass.
"Ever since you just watched me recieve better pleasure then you ever gave me. Now your loving getting fucked in the ass. You are just a closet faggot" she told me. She grabbed my cock that was rock hard to prove her point.
"I want to see you cum on your own face" she said all giddy like a school girl she pulled out. I felt empty for a moment she positioned me with my ass way in the air my dick pointing at my face. She slid her toy back into my add and stroked my cock. I came in a few strokes and shot my load of my face.
"Like that?" Allie laughed. She laid next to me and played with the pearl necklace I still wore.
"Want to wear this for me anyway?" She teased. She took a pic of us together cum still on my face.
"Sending this to Mike" she told me. "Would you like me to say him if he has any gay friends that will fuck you?"
"Baby my cock is still hard " she teased. As I got out of bed.
"Ignoring me" she sat up. "Bitch stop right there!" She told me. I turned. Since your a little faggot now. You should wear these" she picked up her dirty panties. "And leave the necklace on" I sighed but did as she commanded. Her panties where tight the panties slid in between my ass cheeks as i moved.
"You look so cute" she told me. She grabbed my hand and led me to the bathroom. She sat me down on a stool we kept in the bathroom.
"Let's shave this, it's time you stop pretending your a man" Allie smiled her finger ran across my mustache. She shaved my whole face. "Should we keep going" she asked but not waiting she applied shaving cream to my chest. I just sat and let her shave the little bit of chest hair I had.
"Arms up" she told me shaving my pits as well.
"Allie" I complained.
"Stop you know you deserve this" Allie told me. For the next hour she shaved all my body hair. Several times I asked her to stop. She just ignored me. I was fully naked and hairless standing before her. I was again rock hard.
"Do you want me to fuck you again?" Allie asked. I just looked at my feet. "Clean this?" She handed me her toy" I took it and scrubbed it in the sink.
"Is that how you play with yourself?" She asked rubbing my ass. I realized I was jerking off the toy.
"At least suck him off sweety" Allie teased. She guided my hands towards my mouth. "Go ahead" she told me. I looked at her and let the toy slid in my mouth. "Good boy" she smiled her hand on my ass again. For the next ten minutes she gave me tips on how to suck her toy.
"That's enough Paulie. Now let's go get you some clean panties to wear" Allie led me by my dick into the bedroom. She picked out pink frilly lace panties. And watched as I put them on. Allie was still naked.
"I am so horny" Allie pushed my shoulders till I was on my knees. And guided my head to her crotch. I licked and sucked her clit.
"You are going to try again with Mike in the morning. This time you except a lovely pearl necklace. Or Mike is going to fuck your ass all fucking day" Allie told me. "You can wear pretty panties for him"
"You are going to be my little faghubby" she told me. As I made her cum.
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a prescription for romance (l.jh)
☆ established romance: neurosurgeon! lee jihoon x cardiothoracic surgeon! reader ☆ w.c: 8k ☆ genre: non-idol au, established relationship (or is it) slice of life, fluff, comedy masterlist (also the characters from resident playbook make an appearance here because i was having major brainrot)
☆ a/n: TWO fics in two days? who is this, shakespeare? anyway, the first installment of this fic is here, after way too many breakdowns and copious amounts of tears involved, because of course i had to cry ☆ huge thank you to cel @mylovesstuffs for betaing this as (without her i dont think there would be any new fic from user shinysobi), thank you to the people i hosted this collab with, yuki ( @eclipsaria ), tiya ( @gyubakeries ) and rae ( @nerdycheol ), without them, there would be no fic at all <3 ☆ credits to @seungnm for the banner, and again, as part of yuki's 100 followers event, check out the rest of the fics here! also thank you to everyone who helped brainstorm this, alta( @haologram ), and emita ( @hannieoftheyear ) <3 and well, tell me how you like it!
It all begins, as usual, in March.
“The interns are arriving today,” Jaeil announces, stepping into the fourth-year resident’s lounge, “who wants to bet on how they’re going to turn out?”
“Not me,” Sabi replies from her corner of the room, focused on taking notes for the surgery she’s supposed to be assisting in the next day, “they’re always frazzled on the first day, so make sure they’re not going around jumping in on surgeries they’re not qualified for, Chief Resident.”
“As if you stuck to that rule,” he makes a face, “hey, it’s good that I got to be the chief resident, right? I’ve been preparing for this for so long, but it still feels like a dream that they chose me.”
“They didn’t choose you,” Sabi finally looks at him, from the book she’s been poring over, “out of the four of us, you’re the best fit for managing the new residents. If they came to me they’d run away crying.”
“You’re not wrong in that,” he mutters, “anyway, we got two new ones this year!”
“Two?” Sabi’s interest is piqued. The previous two years had been devoid of any new residents joining OB-GYN, and they had been overworked and understaffed, “we never had new residents since Tak Gi-on joined OB-GYN two years ago.”
“And now we have two more!” Jaeil grins, “what surgery do you have tomorrow?”
“C-section and cardiopulmonary bypass,” she mutters, leaning back, “this is the first time I’m going to be assisting in a surgery like this. The mother has been taking blood thinners for the clot, but this might put her into postpartum haemorrhage if not managed properly. Professor Kim wants me to do well on this one, so I can become more familiar with leading such surgeries later on.”
“Ugh,” he shakes his head, “Cruella is still going strong, huh? She’s doing most of the work of the head of her department, no one expects her to work on so many cases at once. She’s also doing VIP surgeries that no one else wants to do.”
“Where are Namkyung and Yiyoung?” Sabi grumbles, “and don’t tell the first-years that her nickname is Cruella,” She narrows her eyes, and Jaeil is, inexplicably, filled with a strong sense of fear. “What nickname did you give me?”
This one is easy, “We all called you AI for the whole first year,” he grins, “you didn’t lighten up until the final month of second year.”
“When I ignored my huge fibroids, overworked myself, and collapsed in the middle of the ward?” she groans, “really, you bring it up all the time, and I was only exhausted, there was nothing wrong with me.”
“Still, that made you a lot easier to deal with.” He bumps her shoulder slightly, “there’s still half an hour before the residents come.”
She narrows her eyes again, “no.” Sabi checks her watch and says, “Namkyung and Yiyoung are in surgery, right?”
“Yes, they went in half an hour ago. Please,” he bats his eyelashes at her, and Sabi giggles, hand clasped over her mouth. “One time, please?”
“You’re annoying,” she mutters, but gives him a small peck on the lips all the same. Jaeil smiles to himself, because of course he’s going to, because who the hell can resist anything when Sabi is like this?
“One more,” he wheedles, “please.”
She narrows her eyes at him, and he braces himself for the inevitable scolding that’s going to follow. She’s always been a stickler for rules.
—
“Welcome to the OBGYN department. I am your senior, Kim Sabi, and he’s the Chief resident, Um Jaeil,” Sabi says, a smile on her face. The two of them look fairly terrified.
“This is nothing to be scared of,” Jaeil assures, looking at the list of people who joined their department, “oh, you both were top students in your departments, Kyu-young, and Jae-min, right?”
They both nod, and he has to suppress a smile. Cute. Sabi just nods, looking at their profiles, “since today is your first day, you’re not going to get a lot of tasks. Instead, all you have to do is join the professors on their rounds, make notes, and do whatever they tell you to do. It’s important that they don’t notice you at all.”
“What happens if they notice you?” Kyu-young asks, “they don’t seem all that bad, right?”
“Listen up,” Jaeil sighs, with all the seriousness of a university professor delivering a lecture, “there are a few kinds of people in this hospital, and the worst of them come to surgery. Our OB-GYN department also has some weird ones, which means that they’ll notice you either to yell at you, or to assign you more tasks than is humanly possible.”
They both nod, and the girl, Kyu-young, pipes up, “how are the professors? I’m sorry, I didn’t do my internship from here, so I don’t really know.”
“They’re all normal,” Sabi counters before he can reply, “Professor Jo can be a lot, but it’s fine. He usually does not care about the first-year residents enough to yell at them too much.”
“Professor Jae-hui is a total sweetheart, though,” Jaeil hurries to inform them, “she’s usually the one who takes care of all the newbies in the department, making sure they’re settling in well. Even when on rounds, she’s making sure they’re rested well and all that.”
“She can be tough, but she’s fair,” Sabi concedes, nodding, “if you’re on rounds with her, it’ll be fine.”
“I heard the newbies are here.” The door opens to let the sole remaining fellow of the department, Eunmi, enter. “Already yapping about the professors, are you?”
“No!” He protests, but she is already lounging in one of the chairs, “I’m the only fellow in the department, Dr Ki Eunmi. Whatever these people have told you, it’s all false.”
“All false?” Jaeil gasps, “of course not! We told them only the truth!” He wants to grumble, but Ki Eunmi has become a lot more relaxed since she became a fellow, even though she’s retained the whole angel aura, as he’d once said. Still kind to a fault, just a bit more spirited.
“And you’ve been telling them about all the nicknames for the professors, have you?”
Both Jaeil and Sabi freeze in place. Gossiping about a professor, especially one of the youngest in the hospital, was not something they strictly should be doing, but let’s face the facts, the object of their interest was one of those people who struck fear into the hearts of everyone, including fellow professors.
“Nicknames?” the two newbies echo. “What nicknames?”
Eunmi sighs, “no, you sillies. This hospital has given nicknames to every attending professor, especially the ones who directly deal with the residents.”
“We haven’t told them about Cruella, though,” Jaeil pipes up, and both Sabi and Eunmi look at him as though they want to beat the shit out of him. He claps a hand over his mouth. Too late.
“Cruella?” one of the residents says, “is that their real name?”
“No, it’s a nickname,” Eunmi sighs, “because in the first week of being in this hospital, she managed to make Professor Jo Joon-mo cry. This may or may not be true, but I’m betting all my money on it being the real deal.”
“Don’t scare the residents, Um Jaeil,” Sabi gripes. “Professor Kim Sowon is really tough, but she’s fair. She also makes sure that the residents get to learn as much as they can, while they’re working here for four years. She’s one of the only experts we have here on Cardio-obstetrics.”
“Work them to death, you mean,” Jaeil begins to say something else, but one look from his girlfriend, and he’s silent. Better keep my mouth shut over making Sabi angry. I don’t like it when she gets pissed off with me.
“She’s tough all right,” Eunmi nods her head, “if you’re on rounds with her, you’re going to learn a fair amount. She does so many surgeries in a day it’s almost a wonder how she’s still on her feet after a week.”
“The name was supposed to be Ghost, but another fellow coined the term Cruella, just because he didn't like the way she grilled him after he screwed up in surgery one time,” Sabi smiles, “she’s so good, it’s wonderful watching her work.”
“She does pediatric cardiac surgery, cardio-obstetrics,” Jaeil lists them off on his hand, “she’s pretty much a regular at the OBGYN department. She’s scary, but she’s great.”
His phone rings, and he stands up, “just make sure no professors take note of you today.”
“I’m going to go on pre-rounds before scrubbing in,” Sabi stands up, “let’s go do some charts.”
—
“What do you mean you’ve not put in an order for the medication yet?” Professor Jo barks, and Sabi, walking over to the nurse’s station, cringes, because of course he’s yelling at Kyu-young, who doesn’t know how to read a chart properly, if at all.
“The first day, and they’re going at it already,” the head nurse mutters, “imagine the poor residents. They’re all going to resign within a year.”
“Someone needs to shut him up, and it’s not going to be me,” another nurse mutters, “he can be really scary when he wants to be.”
“Professor,” a voice pipes up from the corner of the station, “scolding the first-years on their first day is a bit much, don’t you think?”
Both Sabi and Kyu-young look up, and Sabi can feel Kyu-young’s jaw drop, because standing casually, leaned against the side of a wall, is Professor Kim Sowon—wearing her trademark black scrubs, an anomaly from the hospital-issued blue ones, “I was coming here to consult with Dr Kim Sabi about the cardiopulmonary bypass scheduled for tomorrow, but it seems as though you’re busy scolding the first-year resident on their first day.”
“Excuse me?” Professor Jo, still not used to her presence, barks, “why are you interfering in the matters of the OBGYN department when you’re from Cardiac Surgery?”
“Because it would be a shame if both the residents who I’ve asked to scrub in for my surgery tomorrow, are incapacitated,” Professor Kim says evenly. Even Prof. Jo looks shaken by that. Yeah, they normally don’t allow first-years into a co-op surgery, especially if it’s a high-profile one.
“You want the first-year to scrub in for the co-op surgery?” Prof. Jo sounds incredulous, as if he can’t really believe his ears, “isn’t that a bit too tall an ask for a first-year?”
“They’re only going to observe,” Prof. Kim shrugs, pointing to Sabi, “let’s go, Dr Kim, and bring the first-year with you too.”
Sabi nods, and Kyu-young scampers off behind her as well, grateful to be escaping from the scolding she was receiving, “Professor, we weren't supposed to have a first-year observe on this surgery.”
“It’s fine,” she shrugs, “the case got enough attention from the press for all of us to be on edge, so I was thinking of adding a first-year to help during the surgery. It’s nothing, really.”
Beside her, Kyu-young stiffens, likely understanding the gravitas of the situation, and asks Sabi, “what are they saying?”
Professor Kim sighs as they make their way to Professor Seo’s office, clearly amused by the cluelessness of the resident, “Dr Kim Sabi, go on.”
“Kim Se-kyung, age 30, developed serious complications while pregnant with her first child,” Sabi says, looking at the chart, “she developed pulmonary embolism during her thirty-eighth week of pregnancy. In normal cases, this would require emergency major surgery, but since it’s close to the delivery due date, we’ve decided to operate on her after observing her, as she can’t be on blood thinners anymore.”
“And what happens when there are too many blood thinners in a patient’s bloodstream and they undergo major surgery?” Professor Kim asks, knocking on the door.
“Uh,” Kyu-young looks confused, “they need more blood during the surgery?”
The door opens, and Professor Seo steps out, a frown on her face. “No, they run the risk of PPH, especially in a C-section,” She turns to Prof. Kim, “really? Harassing the first-years with questions? They haven’t even been here for more than an hour.”
“It’s fun, though,” the other professor smiles, “shall we start the meeting?”
Sabi as usual, takes copious notes during the meeting in case any of the professors ask her for some, and Kyu-young barely holds on while the two professors go on and on about possible complications during surgery and post-op care, even have a small argument about whether they should work on the blood clot before or after they’ve extracted the baby.
“The mother’s health comes first, oh my god,” Professor Kim argues, “Professor Seo, I understand why you’d want to save the baby first, but the mother’s health is more important to me than the baby.”
“The mother wants us to save her baby first,” Professor Seo argues, “and in the OB GYN department, what the mother wants, the mother gets.”
“Ugh, fine,” Professor Kim holds her head in her hands, “fine. We’ll put catheters in her thigh before you start the C-section, and divert blood flow to the oxygenator. You’ll have to work hard, though.”
“Forty minutes.”
“Thirty, that’s all I can give you.”
“Fine, thirty,” Professor Seo concedes, “wait, you didn’t get any new residents this year?”
“Zero.” Professor Kim sighs, “why they don’t want to come to the Cardiology department, I wonder. You can study and make a lot of money.”
“It’s the study part they hate.”
“Fair enough,” Professor Kim shrugs, “lunch?”
“I need to scrub in for an OR in an hour,” Professor Seo waves, “see you tomorrow, Professor Kim.”
The three of them leave the office, and briefly, Sabi recalls what she’s supposed to do that day, and how much she’s already done. She’s finished half the charting she was supposed to do, and the surgery she was scheduled for, wasn’t until three in the afternoon. Both Yiyoung and Namkyung were supposed to be out of surgery in an hour, so she could just wait until then to have her lunch.
“Lunch, Dr Sabi?” Professor Kim’s voice shakes her out of her thought process, “they’re serving western-style food in the cafeteria right now.”
“Lunch?” Sabi looks at her, confused. “Are you offering to buy us lunch right now?”
“I get paid more,” she shrugs, “might as well put it to some use.”
—
The cafeteria is half-empty by the time they get there, but even before they can make their way to order, Jaeil comes running, a big smile on his face, “Kim Sabi! Do you want to have lunch together—oh.”
“Come on, Dr Um Jaeil,” Professor Kim laughs, “you can join the three of us for lunch.”
She goes off to order for everyone, and Jaeil turns to her and Kyu-young, “she’s buying us lunch?”
“She is,” Sabi nods, “she said she gets paid more than all of us, so she should make the best of it.”
“She really does,” Jaeil sighs, “imagine being one of the few specialists in cardio-obstetrics in Korea. The consultations alone would bring you a ton of money.”
“Really?” Kyu-young, intrigued by this piece of information, pipes up, “she makes that much?”
“Both of them do.” Jaeil sighs, “ugh, the legendary cross-departmental rivalry.”
“Are you making up stuff for fun again?” Sabi frowns, “there’s nothing like that, is there?”
“Don’t you know?” Jaeil, who spends half his free time getting information out of others and being the social butterfly that he is, scoffs, “looks like there is something that Dr Kim Sabi does not know.”
Sabi scowls, but before she can scold him, another voice calls out from the other side of the cafeteria, “Dr Kim Sowon!”
“Who’s that?” Kyu-young cranes her head to look, “doesn’t seem like someone from our department.”
“Professor Lee Jihoon, Neurosurgery.” Jaeil grins, “told you. Legendary cross-departmental rivalry.”
She cranes her neck, too—for all she wants to be known for, she isn’t immune to the allure of high intelligence and competency, but Lee Jihoon of Neurosurgery seems like someone who would fit into an idol group instead of a hospital. He’s all perfect features and long limbs; she’s maybe been slightly enamored with the paper he wrote about fetal brain development, but he’s known to be a grump in his department.
“That’s Sauron.” Jaeil whispers in her ear, making her roll her eyes. Typical. If it were two years ago, she would have jumped. Now she just rolls her eyes.
“Sauron?” Kyu-young asks, moving ahead in the line. “That’s a weird nickname.”
“They love Lord of the Rings over there, actually.”
Sabi, who’s still looking at Lee Jihoon, who is dressed in similar black scrubs as Professor Kim, narrows her eyes. This is interesting. Professor Kim, grumbling, makes her way to the large empty table where Professor Lee is sitting, and they all follow suit, “Looks like your department abandoned you again. Jihoon.”
“Terrorising the residents on their first day?” Professor Lee grins, “don’t let her boss you around, you know.”
“They do what I ask because I’m nice,” Prof. Kim smiles, “not because I'm terrorising them.”
Sabi wants to be anywhere but in the cafeteria. She really does not want to get in the middle of a professor’s argument, but both Jaeil and Kyu-young look amused as hell.
“When’s your next surgery?” Lee Jihoon checks his watch, “or are you still intent on ruining your own health to fix your patients?”
Professor Kim scoffs, “look who’s talking. As if you didn’t end up in the ER twice over our residency period.”
“It was once, and you knew exactly why I ended up there,” he grumbles, “you were the one who put me there.”
Professor Kim sighs, and Sabi finds herself sitting upright, “what do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” Professor Lee leans forward, “your Professor Kim here, she once got into an accident in the ER, and landed the both of us in the hospital actually.”
“That was a mistake.” Professor Kim scowls.
“It wasn’t, and you know it.”
They both end up bickering again, and Jaeil leans to whisper in her ears, “do you think they’re going to notice if we just left?”
Sabi shakes her head. They’re already too preoccupied to even notice our presence at the very table, let alone our absence. They’re probably going to be just fine.
The three of them get up from the table, and they’re just about to leave the cafeteria altogether, when Professor Kim’s yell makes them stand at attention, “what the hell do you mean? I need the OR on that day!”
Sabi and Kyu-young, both spring to attention, scurrying back to the table, Jaeil following in their footsteps. Professor Kim has her head in her hands, “look, it’s an important surgery. Both the OBGYN department and the Cardiology department had notified Anesthesiology a week ago, so don’t take this from right underneath our noses, okay?”
“An emergency patient came in this morning,” Professor Lee shrugs, “look, I don’t want to be the one demanding an OR from another department, but the surgery cannot wait. The patient requires emergency surgery, and we’ve already delayed it as is.”
“Then delay it another day!” Prof. Kim sighs, “Jihoon, you can’t be doing this to me.”
“It’s not a matter of what I want, it’s a matter of what the hospital thinks is best,” Prof. Lee makes a gesture, “there’ll be other ORs tomorrow, so just adjust the time for that one, yeah?”
“I have a conference tomorrow, you dimwit,” Prof Kim seethes. “You’re going to pay for this, I swear to god.”
Sabi looks at Jaeil, who’s staring at her, looks confused as hell. She doesn’t blame him. Even she doesn’t know what the hell to make of this dynamic.
—
“This is Choi Gaeul, the third-year Cardiology resident,” Namkyung, who’s apparently got connections in every floor of the hospital, introduces, “this is Kim Sabi, she’s the one who’s going to be assisting Professor Seo on the surgery tomorrow.”
Sabi gives a tired wave, looking at the equally haggard resident in front of her. Yiyoung, who’s looking suspiciously refreshed, sits up properly, “Oh Yiyoung, fourth-year, Obstetrics. Sabi’s in Gynaecology, but she’s better at this than I am. Plus I have three labour deliveries assigned for tomorrow, so Sabi got this one.”
Choi Gaeul sighs, sitting down heavily on one of the chairs, “Professor Kim’s going to chew me out if I don’t get an OR by tomorrow morning.”
“The original slot was for eleven in the morning, right?” Jaeil, who’s apparently got no work, pipes up, “I heard Professor Kim arguing with Professor Lee of Neurosurgery this afternoon. Did they have to push the surgery?”
“Both of them are emergency cases,” Dr Choi says, “Professor Lee’s patient came in this morning, with a tumor pressing down on the optic nerve. They were aware of the tumor, but didn’t think it would progress this fast, this soon. The surgery has to be done by tomorrow at the latest.”
“And Professor Kim has a conference to attend tomorrow at three in the afternoon,” Dr Choi sighs, “I really don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to schedule the OR without getting yelled at by Anesthesiology. They already hate me after all the time I’ve asked them to arrange ORs at zero notice.”
All four of them nod, because who the hell has not been chewed out by the grumpy Anesthesiology fellows after asking them to arrange for an OR? Yiyoung and Namkyung, from Obstetrics, have been on the receiving end the most—Gynaecology did not have too many surprise surgeries.
“Anyway, I don’t know how I’m supposed to pull this one off,” Choi Gaeul sighs, “all the fellows I know are not answering my phone, because they already hate me, or something like that. And I doubt even Professor Seo could get us an OR at eleven in the morning.”
She smacks her head on the table. “Hey, do you guys think if I change my name, they’d be able to find me? I could change my name and move to a different country. They won’t be able to find me then, right?”
“Professor Kim could,” Sabi mutters, “she’s got contacts in every continent.”
“She does,” Dr Choi groans, “why the hell did I opt for Cardiology? This whole rivalry between Prof. Lee and Prof Kim, this is going to kill me.”
“Rivalry?” Namkyung pipes up, clearly interested, “wait, I never heard of this rivalry before.”
“Professor Lee joined this January, of course you would not know,” Jaeil replies, “They were both classmates in university.”
“That’s when it started?” Yiyoung pipes up, “that’s a long time to be holding a grudge.”
“They’re both so annoying, god, it feels like I’m talking to toddlers, not Assistant Professors,” Dr Choi sighs, “they’re so intelligent, but they just don’t know how the hell to behave.”
Namkyung has a glint in her eye, and Sabi knows what that glint is. It’s the same look she got when she arranged a ‘group dinner’ for all the residents in their second year, and ‘accidentally’ gave Jaeil and her the wrong address, so they spent a whole evening in an upscale steak restaurant, wondering whether or not this was a setup. Spoiler alert: it was. Namkyung had even roped in the fellows on her bullshit, the little snake. She would never forget the teasing smiles of Dr Gu and Dr Ki the next morning, commenting on whether they had a fun ‘group dinner’. “Don’t even think about it,” she warns, “whatever you’re thinking, it’s not going to end up well.”
Right at that moment, the door opens, and another resident walks in, looking equally haggard. “Dr Baek Jung-Hwa, Neurosurgery, third-year.” Dr Choi introduces, and the man just drops into a chair without any proper greeting.
“He works under Prof. Lee.” Dr Choi offers, “he’s one of the only third-years who’s taken him on.”
“Do something about him and Prof Kim of Cardiology, I beg you,” Dr Baek groans. “Today it was the OR, last week, they argued for so long about what kind of approach to take on an AAD, even the patient asked them to shut up in the end.”
“AAD?” Yiyoung asks.
“Acute Aortic Dissection.” Dr Choi replies, “they were arguing in the middle of the ward, you guys. The patients were worried they were going to die. The nurses thought they were going to start an all-out fight in the middle of the day.”
“As if there’s an appropriate time to be fighting.”
“You get it. They’ve been here for a year, at the most, and the whole hospital knows about their arguments. It’s not even restricted to surgeries—they fight over what to get for lunch, too.”
“Lunch?” Jaeil asks, “who would fight about lunch?”
“Not everyone is like you,” Yiyoung snipes. “You only order what Sabi wants.”
“That’s a given! She’s my girlfriend!”
“Everyone, shut up,” Namkyung waves, “what I’m getting is that we have two professors, who cannot seem to stop arguing, and three departments, who are fed up with their antics.”
“Four, if you count Pediatrics.” Yiyoung offers, “they had another argument outside the NICU about post-op care of a co-op surgery.”
“Yes, so,” Namkyung claps her hands, “we need a solution.”
“Make them transfer?” Dr Choi offers, “if one of them were in another hospital, they’d not be arguing for an hour daily.”
“Where’s the fun in that, though?” Namkyung grins. “Hey, let’s set them up.”
“Huh?” even Yiyoung is confused, “they clearly hate each other, why on earth would you set them up?”
“Because it’s fun.” Namkyung shrugs, “and besides, if they manage to get together, they’d be a lot more forgiving of their residents, and the whole hospital, actually.”
“Or, they’d start adding their relationship arguments into the mix,” Jaeil shakes his head, “this is a bad idea.”
“Then you give me another one!” Namkyung makes a face, “you’re an idiot when it comes to dating.”
“Yes, you can’t be a judge, Um Jaeil,” Yiyoung agrees, “you’ve only dated Kim Sabi here.”
“Statistically, they have more experience,” Dr Baek nods. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
“About thirty percent,” Namkyung sighs, “but hey, this is better than nothing, right?”
—
Ploy one: mechanical intervention. (day seven)
“This is not going to work,” Sabi mutters, watching furtively over her shoulder, “are you sure about this?”
“Positive,” Dr Choi mutters, also on the lookout, “she doesn’t come out of her office for about three hours after a surgery. She’s reviewing notes right now. And Dr Baek told me Professor Lee was about to head out at one as well. Hey, is your friend done yet?”
The last sentence is addressed to Jaeil, who’s holding a torch over his head, throwing a light directly into the hood of Professor Kim’s car, and his friend, who has been working on it furiously for the past ten minutes. Sabi takes another look over her shoulder, confirming that there is no one spying on their little ring, and Jaei’s friend emerges from his work, slightly worse for wear.
“Why did you need a favour like this?” the man asks, “never thought I’d have Um Jay of Hi-Boyz asking me to destroy someone’s fan belt on a Wednesday morning. Wherever it was, they must have pissed you off royally.”
“It’s for a professor, actually,” Sabi blurts out, unable to keep a secret for very long, “this is a professor’s car.”
“Well then, good luck to the professor. Getting their fan belt destroyed in the middle of the night,” the man whistles, picking up his bag, “well then, I gotta be off. See you around, man.”
And he leaves, not before giving Jaeil an awkward side-hug and waving goodbye to her and Gaeul, but Sabi isn’t exactly convinced with the whole thing. She still cannot see the appeal of forcing people in strange situations together and forcing them into a semblance of a relationship, but this is not her idea, and it’s been vetted by three separate departments, so she’s going along with it, for the time being.
“She’s here,” Dr Gaeul says, half-panicked, “I’m going to hide, see you!”
With that, she’s off, leaving behind Um Jaeil and her in the parking lot. Sabi is not feeling awkward, she really is not. She just doesn’t want people to see and think they were slacking off, when they clearly were not. Jaeil, on the other hand, has no qualms sidling up to her, grinning widely.
“Do you think this is going to work?” he whispers, holding her hand, “I mean, they’re all going through a lot.”
“I don’t understand why we’re doing all this for another department,” Sabi shakes her head, “it’s not as if either of them have a direct impact on our lives or our patient care.”
“Remember last year, when they arrived here, and had to work on that one complicated case of a pregnant woman with a heart condition that was affecting blood flow to her child’s brain?”
Sabi nods. She was not supposed to be assisting on the case, but they had enough overlap between the departments; making it a four-way collaboration between Pediatrics, Ob-GYN, Cardiothoracic surgery, and Neuro. The two of them—Professors Kim and Lee, had fought bitterly even then, resulting in Professor Seo telling them to either get it together, or to leave the meeting room and come back another time. They had fallen silent after that, but Sabi still remembers the look on everyone’s faces when the two of them were arguing; waiting for something horrible to happen. Calm before the storm, or whatever they call it. Professor Seo had muttered underneath her breath about ‘stupid idiots’ and Sabi, who had volunteered to scrub in in place of Namkyung (busy with her three deliveries that week) had watched the two distinguished professors, each armed with a considerable number of degrees and papers under their belt, fight on their way to the cafeteria.
“They didn’t fight at all in the operation theatre,” she mutters, allowing herself to squeeze Jaeil’s hand the way that he likes, “I saw them operating in tandem. She worked on the mother’s heart while he examined the baby seconds after birth, making sure the restricted placental blood flow did not impact any neurological activities. They didn’t speak either, but the way they worked, I'm sure they’ve worked together before.”
“Impossible,” Jaeil shrugs, “those two and working together? I think you’re mistaken, Sabi.”
But before she can even retort, they’re face to face with Professor Kim, who smiles widely on seeing them, “getting off work?”
“Ah, no, not yet,” Jaeil laughs, “we just had a bit of free time.”
Professor Kim looks at their joined hands, and nods, “I understand. These days it’s all about dating publicly, right? We couldn’t even look at the person we were seeing.”
Sabi wants to ask who it was that you were looking at, but Jaeil beats her to the punch, staring innocently at the professor, “did you date in medical school, professor?”
Professor Kim suddenly grows a little bashful, shrugging, “no one important,” and then reaches into her pocket to extract her card, “get yourself a coffee with this, yeah?”
Jaeil accepts it, and the two of them stare at her as she walks over to her parked car, none the wiser about her destroyed fan belt. One, two, three. Sabi wants to kill herself, but if she does that, she’s not going to become the youngest Gynecology professor at the hospital. She watches, horrified, as Professor Kim attempts to get her car to start, and fails three separate times. She then comes out of the car, sighs, before turning to look at her and Jaeil. Beside her, Jaeil is the picture of innocence, looking wide-eyed at her, “is there anything wrong, professor?”
“Yeah, my car is refusing to start,” she grins, “I’ll just get a taxi.”
“No!” Jaeil yelps, loud enough for even Sabi to raise an eyebrow, “I mean, it’s already one in the morning, Professor, getting a taxi will be next to impossible right now.”
“Yeah, and they usually have a surcharge,” Sabi nods, finding herself going along with Jaei’s stupid plan, “you could ask for a lift from someone?”
“A lift?” Professor Kim muses, “but I don’t think there are people in here who can give me a lift—”
She pauses, and Sabi follows her line of sight to see Professor Lee, dressed in casual clothes, walking out of the lift. He walks over to where the three of them were standing, taking a look at Professor Kim’s car, “totaled it, have you?”
“I don’t think you really understand what that means,” Professor Kim snipes, “and no, I did not total my car, it does not start anymore. Just makes a sort of sputtering noise when I hit the ignition.”
“Serves you right for getting a diesel car,” Professor Lee shrugs, “how long have you been driving this monstrosity? People graduate medical school in the time that you’ve held on to this stupid car.”
“Who the hell are you calling stupid, you jerk?”
They were possibly going to argue for longer, but Jaeil jumps in right at this moment, smiling, “Professor Lee, I was just telling Professor Kim here how it would be difficult to get a taxi in the middle of the night.”
“In the middle of the night!” Professor Lee shrieks. “Hey, you were thinking of going out in the middle of the night like that? What if you got hurt?”
“Why the hell would I get hurt?”
“The world is a scary place!”
“It’s scary because of men!”
That makes him pause, and he shrugs, something like a ‘fair’, but then starts arguing again, when Sabi interrupts, “could you give her a ride, please? If you are going in the same way.”
She feels horrible for doing this, but out of the corner of her eye, she can see Dr Choi whooping for joy, and Sabi thinks that this is okay.
“A ride?” Professor Lee stares at Prof Kim, “don’t drool on my seats.”
“Your faux-leather seats,” She snipes, “why the hell do you even care? It was one time!”
“One time too many,” he replies, “why the hell should I even let you into my car?”
“Because the world is a scary place,” she smiles, taking out the key fob from his hand and walking away. Sabi swears she can hear Professor Lee mutters, “damn woman,” under his breath before running behind her to catch up.
“They’ve got history,” Sabi says, offhandedly, as Dr Choi runs up to them, “did you know they had history?”
“They do not have history,” Jaeil snorts, “even if they did, it clearly never ended well.”
“They say married couples were enemies in a past life,” Dr Choi shrugs, “anyway, this means we might get them to at least warm up to each other instead of fighting all the time.”
“Might be a good change around these parts,” Jaeil smiles, tucking his arm underneath Sabi’s before walking back into the hospital. They’ve got history, Sabi can’t help but think, no one fights that pointlessly with anyone, that much. It’s either that, or they hate each other so much that even looking at the other person is unbearable.
—
Ploy two: team dinners are an excellent way to foster interdepartmental relationships. (day 20)
Dr Choi Gaeul was actually looking forward to becoming a doctor her whole life, thank you very much. Her parents were poor, which meant that she only had one way of getting out of the mess of her life; studying. She studied like a crazy woman all throughout her life, finally landing into medical school, the first one from her seaside town. It also meant that she had the burden of striking it big, and as her parents told her over and over again, failing was not an option when it came to her. Everyone else could go to hell, but she had to survive.
And she had. She’d finished medical school, landed in one of the most competitive disciplines, Cardiothoracic surgery. She’d even gotten into a Seoul hospital, cementing her success in the minds of her whole town. And the best part? She got to work directly under one of the few female Cardiothoracic professors of the entire country, Professor Kim Sowon. Her life was going swimmingly.
Until of course, the first day of Professor Kim, when she realised one little thing—surviving college and university was far less complicated than surviving the workplace.
“This is pretty much guaranteed to make me spend hours sitting around on my ass,” Prof. Kim seethes, looking at the consult for the co-op surgery. “What the fuck is Lee Jihoon up to? Does he think that being the neurosurgery professor means he can order us around? We have our lives too, damn it.”
It was over important things, at first. Arguing over long-running surgeries that would force Professor Kim and her residents to wait around for ungodly periods of time while the Neuro team finished up their part of the work, or co-op surgeries where their presence was not required beyond staying on standby, and the Neurosurgery department asking the professors to stay in the operating room until they finished working on the patient, for any kind of emergency. That was fine. She could understand that.
But what do you mean there was an argument about what dinner menu they should stop serving in the cafeteria? Was that even something professors got interested in?
“I’m telling you, tonkatsu has no place in a hospital cafeteria. It’s unhealthy, raises the risk of heart disease, and frankly speaking, they don’t do it that well here.”
“And I think they should stop serving oyakodon. Why the hell should we spend upward of an hour waiting around for a Japanese dish where I burn the roof of my mouth?” Professor Lee snipes back, “just because you like it, you can’t terrorise the lunch ladies into keeping this here.”
Dr Gaeul was shocked. Why the hell were they here in the first place?
Which brought them all to—today. Where Professor Kim was arguing with Professor Lee about Neurosurgery getting less residents than usual. They’re seated in the cafeteria, where the neurosurgery department is coexisting peacefully with the cardiothoracic surgery department, chewing on their bland meal, too exhausted to say a word.
“I don’t think your stellar personality did the hospital any favours, Jihoon,” she says, idly turning the page of a research paper (how the hell did she even get that in here?) “scaring off all your residents with the speech about how Neuro is more important than one’s family has got to have ruffled some feathers.”
“I don’t think I should be taking advice from the woman who regularly quizzed interns in the elevator,” Professor Lee snaps, “are you laughing at the extra workload? Are you?”
“I’m just saying that all this could have been avoided if you were a little bit kinder to the interns. You’re not supposed to scare them off at the beginning of their stint. You’re supposed to make sure they want to enter your department at the end of the period.”
“You used to grill them at every point!” Professor Lee snaps, “you even got a nickname because of it. How the hell did your department still get more applicants for residency?”
“Maybe I wasn’t an unmitigated asshole, like you,” Professor Kim sighs, “god help the residents who are shackled to you for four years.”
“Hey, don’t you say shit about my residents!”
Dr Choi wants a hole in the earth to open up and swallow her. Why am I saddled with two of the brightest doctors, and why do they behave like children? It’s incredible, how two of the most-decorated surgeons in the country, and one with multiple certifications from the USA, could behave like kids when dealing with each other. Then again, it’s probably the high stress of the job, she reasons, they don’t get any time to be themselves, so they make do wherever they can.
Her phone rings, and her sigh of relief is audible, “Professor,” she leans in to whisper to Professor Kim, who’s suddenly debating the benefits of daily consumption of red ginseng with Professor Lee, “we’re getting a call from Emergency.”
Professor Kim nods, standing up, “we’ll talk about this later, Lee Jihoon,” and sets off, Dr Choi right in tow. She wasn’t lying, of course, the call is from the Emergency Room, and they need to be there at the earliest, but she’s also not going to lie and say that she was not relieved she didn’t have to stay any longer than she had to, in the cafeteria.
“What’s the situation?” Professor Kim asks, walking into the Emergency ward, “you would not call my resident and me if this was not something important, right?”
The fellow who actually put the call through to her cringes, and Gaeul sighs. She’s angry because they used to call us for random things before, and it wasted a lot of time. Well, the intent is good, but she could have said it a bit differently, right?”
“Three-car pileup, ten minutes out,” Dr Bae, the ER attending, comes forward, “hold on, I’ve paged Neuro for this as well.”
“Stroke?” Professor Kim asks, “how bad is it?”
“Preliminary CT shows the presence of two blood clots, one in the brain, one in the aorta. The heart one is dangerously close to blocking heart function, so I doubt we have a lot of time before we can do emergency surgery.”
“Heart rate?”
“Sixty-five and falling,” Dr Bae holds out the chart, “it’s not looking very good.”
“I’m here,” Professor Lee walks in, followed by Dr Baek, “dual clots? Result of the accident?”
“Yes, we’re assuming that, but she’s already pretty bad,” Dr Bae holds out a clipboard to him, “I think we should prepare for emergency surgery.”
“Let’s scrub in right now,” Professor Lee nods, turning to Dr Baek, “I’ll be late for the departmental conference.”
“Ask Anesthesiology for an Operating Theatre,” Professor Kim tells her, “tell them it’s an emergency case, and both Neuro and Cardio are co-operating on it.”
Dr Choi nods, before hurrying off to make the call. As expected, Anesthesiology makes a fuss initially, given the influx of emergency patients, but once they hear the words “both Neuro and Cardio requested it,” they’re hurriedly assigning her the first available operating theatre they have.
“Operating theatre is prepped, so we just need the rest of the labs to come back before we can begin preparing for the surgery,” Professor Kim says, nudging Professor Lee with her shoulder, “hey, scrub in with me.”
“Right now?” Professor Lee sighs, “you know what? Let’s do it. We need to scrub in for surgery in about ten minutes anyway, best get it done.”
And they’re off, which leaves behind her, Dr Baek and the Emergency surgery fellow, who seems nervous and not at all happy to be here. Dr Choi sighs, before taking off at top speed towards Pathology.
—
That was the first time she had seen the two professors collaborate on a surgery, instead of working one after the other. They were a revelation, if she was being honest. None of the bitter arguments that seemed to be the norm every time they met, or the vitriol that they seemed to reserve specifically for each other. They worked in total silence, only asking for surgical tools, and Dr Choi could swear she even saw Professor Kim sigh in relief once it was over, but it could have been a trick of her mind too. Professor Lee, on the other hand, seemed equally steady, navigating around the blood clot with a practised ease that made the resident visibly nervous. The both of them seemed to be in their comfort zone, with the practised ease that only comes from hours put in the job. She can only watch in wonder, as Professor Kim finishes up the open heart surgery in a couple of hours, a thrombectomy that would take three hours for even the most senior of surgical fellows.
The whole process is over in four hours, and after the patient is carted off to the ICU, Professor Kim reaches over to pat Professor Lee’s shoulders, “you did good, Jihoon.”
Professor Lee sighs, agreeing with her for once instead of arguing, “good work on the thrombectomy. I thought the patient was going to die there for a moment.”
“Not on me, they are not,” Professor Kim grins, “I don’t know about you, but I would rather no patient dies on me.”
“Why are you insistent on pissing me off?” Professor Lee had sniped, and that was that; the tender moment had gone, replaced by the same annoying arguments that made Dr Choi rethink her choice of specialty at least once a week. She could have gone to general surgery at the main branch. They had such good professors there too. She could have gone intotaken nuclear medicine too; there was always more research to be done in the new and upcoming areas of medicine. They even had better funding. In short, she could have gone anywhere, instead of coming here to Jongno.
Which brought them all to this morning, when Dr Choi was sitting in the lounge, eyes vacant as she regrouped after a night shift. She was cursed, because two patients had coded in the middle of her shift, and three of them had complained to her about post-op complications,and she knew for a fact that no one had problems the previous night, when Dr Bae had been in charge. Everything horrible happens to me, she moaned, I’m the only one being mentored directly by Professor Kim, and on top of that, she’s the one with the most random beef with Professor Lee of Neurosurgery. There’s nothing going correctly in my life, and for once I want to go back to my home without being scared shitless of what fresh new hell the future has for me. Is it too late to write a letter of resignation and move to a different city to practise medicine on my own? If I managed my finances well, I could move to a mountain town and practise in peace. I’d much rather deal with old men than two bickering professors who did not know when to stop.
This reminds her of a sentence she had seen in a movie a long time ago: Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Which explained the string of post-op complications that she had to deal with this morning, not to mention the timing. The convenient timing of all of them to be suffering from bleeding, when she only had about ten minutes left to the end of her shift. There was no doubt about it, the universe hated her. The universe had a grudge on her. If she had been more religious, she would have named a specific god, but the universe was good enough for the job.
“Dr Choi,” the intern rushes in, and she braces herself for a disaster, “Professor Kim asked you to scrub in for emergency surgery.”
Choi Gaeul groans at no one in particular. The universe was kicking her ass in the most spectacular way lately. And she’s going to go outside and run into Professor Kim, who’s probably arguing with Professor Lee all over again. Maybe this time it’s about the vending machine drinks.
Someone has to force those two to get together as soon as possible.
—
#ro: writings#svthub#keopihausnet#thediamondlifenetwork#lee jihoon#svt fic#woozi x reader#seventeen fluff#seventeen comecy#woozi fic#woozi imagines#woozi seventeen#resident playbook#all the characters make an appearance because im freaky like that
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I made the mistake of posting this on Reddit. Would not recommend, i ended up looking like this:
But it made me realize something: Kris and Berdly's unclear relationship might be a 4D chess move from Tricky Tony as a way of hammering Kris' identity to the player. But why would that be the case? The game already makes it pretty clear that Kris is their own person and is different from the player. Anyone that has played the game with their eyes open should've gotten this by now, right? Yes, and despite knowing this, we still project our own feelings onto Kris (myself included, i'm not innocent). Think about it, why would Toby make such a vague scene as the one with Ralsei? Why is it left so up to interpretation compared to everything else? Except... the scene is not really vague, it's only vague because it's Berdly. What if we change the names up a bit for the sake of argument: What if it was uhmm.... (let's pick someone random) Jockington!
❤️ Jockington * Jockington? (Ralsei would be just as confused, he doesn't know shit about Jockington or how absolutely cool he is) * Umm, you don't have to repeat yourself so loudly, Kris. * ... * I - you don't have to repeat yourself, Kris. * If, it's what you really want, Kris! * I'm sure Susie would be happy to see you, um, spread your wings sports? If we don't asume anything about Kris' opinion on Jockington, this reads more like Kris is making their choice clear while Ralsei is the confused one. Especially those last two lines, why would Ralsei say that if it wasn't out of reluctant understanding? It almost sounds like he's saying "You have shitty taste but i'm happy for you anyways".
Then, why is this scene vague anyways if the text is written like a sitcom gag?
Easy answer: Berdly is fucking annoying. Toby wants us to hate Berdly, he's egotistic and constantly tries to piss Kris (and by extension the player) off. His arc in Chapter 2 is not even dignifiying considering his "tragic backstory" barely justifies any of his flaws, he still acts like a douche up until his very last line of dialogue, and in Chapter 4 he REGRESSES back to being almost as bad as he was before. It's SOOOO easy to hate him, even the people who like him often say things like: "He's funny as a character but if he was my friend in real life i would hate him". So when the average Player comes across a scene like this one, they think "This can't be, Kris must hate Berdly just as much as i do! Surely there's an explanation for this!" and so everyone interpreted this scene as "Kris screaming while confused and angry!" even though nothing in the text confirms this at all. But we have proof that Kris doesn't hate Berdly at all, they play video games together on a regular basis: - If you check on him in his second battle it says "He usually only gets this mad when you play games together." - He mentions Kris wavedashing in Super Smashing Fighters - They played Minecrap together in Noelle's blogpost from the Spamton Sweepstakes. - They both compete in speedrunning leaderboards. Not only that but it's implied that Berdly berating Kris, is actually a mutual thing: - "He usually only gets this mad when you play games together." - Berdly seems used to being taunted by Kris. - Kris prank calls Berdly in Noelle's blogpost but helps him reinstall Minecrap after he accidentally uninstalled it. If you take all this into consideration it recontextualizes Kris and Berdly's entire dynamic, THEY'RE QUIPING! The thing is, this is all FLAVOR TEXT, and very easy to miss for the average player! So when Berdly taunts Kris, we only see Berdly's side, and it comes across as insults! We don't have the context to understand it until later! Even dialogue options like: - Telling Berdly to stand outside Rudy's hospital window so he can throw something at him. - "Running away as fast as possible" instead of talking to him in the Librarby. - Singing the wrong number song. What initially comes across as "Kris hates Berdly" options, is recontextualized as just their usual quips! This recontextualization hammers in the fact that WE DON'T KNOW KRIS, we don't know Berdly in the same way they do, and as a result of that, we don't experience things in the same way they do. Just like how Kris' gender identity is commentary on how people project gendered stereotypes onto nonbinary people, Kris and Berdly's relationship is commentary on how people project their opinions onto characters even when we don't know the full picture. Even if i'm wrong (I'm not) and Kris actually does hate Berdly or there's a secret third option, my point would still stand! (I would just be at the butt of the joke).
I'm tired of all the Kerdly deniers coping. I've seen so many people interpret this scene as Kris repeating Berdly's name out of confusion, disbelief or even anger, even though there's nothing in the text implying this.
Usually the other character's make it pretty clear that Kris sounds confused when we make them say something they don't want to say. There's a very specific choice of words here, "repeating yourself loudly" is very different from just "screaming", this specific wording implies Ralsei is the confused one and Kris is repeating themselves as clarification. But, i guess you could say Ralsei is not the most gifted when it comes to understanding social cues, you could kinda make a case for Ralsei either not understanding Kris' tone or maybe even purposefully avoiding mentioning it as to not "upset the player" or something. So how about hearing it from the bird himself? When Berdly asks Kris to join Queen's team, Berdly is perfectly capable of reading Kris' confusion.
But, if you choose to go with Berdly to the festival...
Berdly is INCREDIBLY FLUSTERED, and there's absolutely ZERO mention of any confusion from Kris.
Kerdly is inevitable.
#im going insane#dr#deltarune#deltarune spoilers#deltarune theory#kris dreemurr#kris#kris deltarune#berdly#kerdly#krerdly
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I've been following this discussion about Eddie, the writing and racism and figured I'd contribute my own 2 cents.
I think the thing about machismo/toxic masculinity culture and Eddie is that it would be a super valid way to, well not excuse, but explain Eddie's behaviour and still make him sympathetic to the viewers. This already has worked in the earlier seasons and it was connected to his upbringing in a strict Mexican Catholic family too, but there is a problem:
This only works as long as Eddie is unaware of it. It works as long as Eddie thinks it's normal to repress his more complicated feelings and mask the soft parts behind a tough attitude, sarcastic humor and anger because that's what the man of the house is supposed to do.
If Eddie recognised that this is in fact not healthy then he would have to actively work on doing better to keep the viewers' sympathy. If he was like: "I know I'm being an asshole by yelling at others and refusing to admit my own flaws, I know I'm not being fair to the people around me and that I, too, deserve better, but I'll just keep behaving like a textbook example for toxic masculinity anyway." Then why should the viewers still sympathise? Having a character flaw is fine, but recognising your own flaws and leaning into them on purpose even though it hurts the people you love the most? Sorry, but that's where my capacity for sympathy has reached its limit.
And this is where the show fucked up because Eddie has had his whole "my parents should've done better by me, I should've done better as well and from here on out I will do better both for myself and my son" arc in season 5. He repressed, had a breakdown, went to therapy, confronted his dad and decided that the cycle would end with him.
Now to say race has nothing to do with this conversation wouldn't be quite true, there is racism in this fandom and Eddie's character has been a victim to it, but I think we've passed that point. By now it's not a "the fans are racist" problem anymore, it's a "the writing is terrible and makes Eddie look like an arsehole" problem. Eddie's tendency to mask his "weakness" in front of other people is of course valuable representation of the way machismo culture in Latino families is alive and well and nobody can blame Eddie for how he was raised. But. Bringing this topic to the show, giving Eddie an entire storyline about it and addressing how harmful it can be should logically result in Eddie growing as a person and working on shaking off that tough guy persona. It's a struggle to overcome and we'd all cheer him on. (I for one really enjoyed Eddie's season 5 arc.)
That's not where the show went though. They addressed Eddie's flaws and how the Diaz parents' parenting played into it, gave Eddie some lines where he claimed he'd work on himself and then they dropped the whole thing. So now Eddie knows how his own behaviour hurts himself and others and he seems very content with not changing it.
YES.
I have no sympathy left for him anymore. He is actively aware of his harmful behaviours and yet he makes no attempt to curb those habits or even apologise for them. In season 8 alone we have seen him consistently degrade his "best friend", and lovebomb his son, without there ever being so much as a second of self-reflection. That, to me, is exhausting to watch. And to be told that we're supposed to cheer for that? For him basically being handed everything he wants with very little effort on his part? By the end of season 8, he has his son back, he's dunked on his parents (who, let's be real, weren't doing anything wrong), he's got his job at the 118 back, and he got his house back from Buck. And all of it, without even a fraction of thought or consideration into how his actions and behaviours affect others, even though he's supposed to be aware of it.
It's exhausting, and it makes for an extremely boring character. There's nothing interesting or special about a man getting rewarded for the bare minimum.
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professor o'connell: the mini series - 13



college prof!billie x student!reader
word count: 3.3k
warnings: older!billie x younger!reader, slowslowslow burn, eventual smut, college life, hella tension, quiet/shy reader
masterlist
----------------------------------------------------------------
the voicemail came at 1:07 a.m.
liora saw the missed call when she woke up—phone face-down on the nightstand, the screen still glowing faintly in the dark.
she stared at the name: billie eilish (office)
not her cell.
not a text.
a call.
and a message.
she hesitated before tapping play.
the audio clicked in softly.
then silence.
then—
"hey."
just that.
one breath.
"sorry. i know it's late."
liora sat up slowly, blanket slipping from her shoulders.
billie's voice crackled faintly, like she was outside. wind in the background, or maybe just static.
"i'm not even sure why i'm calling," she said, tone low. "just... couldn't sleep. which isn't unusual, so don't make it a thing."
a small pause. not awkward—just tired.
"you're good at making people feel seen," she said, softer now. "even when you don't mean to be. even when you're trying not to."
another beat.
"which is... kind of inconvenient."
the sound of a car door maybe. a sigh.
"look, i'm fine. i just... felt like saying something. anything. maybe that's the problem."
the voicemail clicked.
cut off.
liora blinked.
it ended there.
no goodbye. no explanation.
she stared at the screen.
replayed it.
once.
twice.
a third time, slower.
she didn't save it.
didn't send anything back.
just pressed delete.
watched the icon vanish.
then sat still in the silence, phone resting on her chest, heart loud beneath it.
the coffee shop was one of those half-forgotten campus spots — warm lighting, scratched tables, the faint smell of espresso ground into the furniture. liora didn't go there often. not because she didn't like it, but because it felt too exposed. too honest.
today, she didn't have a choice.
she needed caffeine. and quiet. and somewhere nova wouldn't find her.
the bell above the door jingled as she stepped in.
and froze.
billie.
already at the corner table. earbuds in, hair in a messy knot, thumb tapping against a chipped ceramic mug.
she looked up.
their eyes met.
she pulled the earbuds out without flinching.
liora almost turned around.
almost.
but then billie said, "you always show up when i'm trying not to think about you."
and it was said lightly—teasing, even—but something in it stung.
liora walked over, slow.
billie gestured to the empty chair across from her. "you can sit. i won't bite."
"that's... reassuring."
billie smirked. "it really isn't."
liora slid into the seat, wrapping her hands around her drink even though it was still too hot. her fingers ached from the sudden heat.
billie leaned back, arms crossed.
"you didn't respond to the voicemail," she said, voice even.
liora didn't look up. "you didn't leave a message."
"i left something."
liora said nothing.
billie watched her.
then added, quieter, "you flinched. when i made that joke."
"it wasn't funny."
"i know."
a pause.
then:
"are you scared of me now?"
liora finally looked up.
"no," she said, too fast. then slower, "i'm scared of myself."
billie's gaze didn't shift.
"because of how you feel?"
liora nodded.
billie didn't blink.
"me too."
liora felt her chest seize—like the moment had teeth now.
they sat there, the air thick with everything they weren't saying.
billie looked down, fingers tracing the rim of her mug.
"you don't have to pretend with me," she said.
liora whispered, "i'm not sure i know how not to."
billie reached for her napkin.
slid it across the table.
one word written in ink.
"same."
they didn't talk for a while after that.
but something unspoken passed between them anyway.
not forgiveness.
not confession.
just—understanding.
the bench behind the café was damp from earlier rain, but they sat anyway — coats zipped, knees nearly touching.
liora picked at the frayed edge of her sleeve.
billie sat still, arms stretched across the back of the bench, gaze tipped toward the cloudy sky.
"i used to be really bad at silence," she said. "like i thought if i didn't fill it, it would fill me."
liora looked over. said nothing.
billie didn't look back.
"my last year of grad school, i almost got kicked out," she continued. "not for grades. for..." she exhaled. "personal boundaries. or the lack thereof."
liora's stomach flipped.
"was it—?"
"yes," billie cut in. not harsh. just definite.
she finally looked at her.
"not illegal. but messy. and painful. for both of us."
liora held her gaze.
"i'm not her," she said quietly.
"i know."
"do you?"
billie's jaw clenched.
"i keep reminding myself."
liora turned back to the sky.
a plane passed overhead — too far to hear, just a silver flicker through cloud.
billie's voice came softer.
"sometimes i think i'm not meant to have... the soft things."
liora frowned. "what does that mean?"
"i ruin them."
silence again.
the wind picked up slightly, pushing billie's hair loose from its tie.
liora reached out before she could think—tucked the strand back behind billie's ear.
their eyes met.
the air between them was electric.
but still—
no touch.
not quite.
liora's hand dropped back to her lap.
billie's breath caught. barely audible.
"i'm trying," she whispered.
"i know."
"and i don't want to lie to you."
"then don't."
another silence.
but this one didn't hurt.
they sat there until the clouds started to clear, patches of pale blue opening like breath.
the track was sent at 11:38 p.m.
no words.
just a link.
'slow dancing in a burning room – john mayer (live acoustic version)'
billie saw it when she parked in the lot behind her apartment, the inside of her car lit blue by the glow of her dashboard.
she stared at the message for a long time.
no emoji. no explanation. no sign-off.
just—sent.
deliberate.
she pressed play.
the song opened quiet, raw. strings aching beneath the weight of something almost gone.
billie leaned her head against the steering wheel, eyes closed.
outside, the lot was still. empty except for a flickering lamppost and a pair of raccoons near the dumpster.
inside, the lyrics cut through the air like smoke.
"we're going down, and you can see it too..."
she didn't cry.
but her throat closed.
tight.
the chorus hit like a confession.
like something she'd whispered to herself too many times in too many nights.
when it ended, she didn't reply.
just played it again.
and let it bleed into the silence that followed.
the next morning, billie walked into class with her coffee half-full and her voice one octave lower than usual.
dark jeans, flannel, and sunglasses that she didn't take off right away.
she looked—
tired.
not undone.
just frayed at the seams.
liora noticed before the door even clicked shut behind her.
nova noticed liora noticing.
she leaned in with a smirk. "you two fight?"
liora blinked. "no."
nova grinned. "you sure?"
liora didn't answer.
billie set her things down and cleared her throat. "today's theme is reflection. literal. metaphorical. lyrical. all of it."
she clicked to a new slide on the projector.
a black-and-white image: cracked mirror. someone's eyes barely visible through the fracture.
"mirrors," billie said, finally removing her sunglasses, "don't lie."
a beat.
"but they don't always show the whole story, either."
half the room chuckled.
nova did too.
liora didn't.
she stared down at her notebook, the tip of her pen resting on a blank margin.
billie's eyes flicked toward her. just once.
nova watched them both.
said nothing.
but her smile faltered.
liora stared at the number on the door for a full minute before lifting her hand to knock.
apartment 3c.
she knew it was billie's.
she knew it before billie had ever told her — something about the way her voice softened when she talked about the building, the way her scarf always smelled faintly of cedar, the way the light in this window always burned later than the rest.
she knocked.
once.
then again, softer.
there was a pause.
then the sound of the deadbolt sliding back.
billie opened the door barefoot, hair damp, wearing a soft black t-shirt and loose gray joggers.
"hey," she said.
liora swallowed. "hi."
billie stepped back automatically, gesturing her in.
"wasn't sure if you'd ever actually show up here."
"i wasn't either."
liora stepped inside. the apartment was warm — low lighting, faint music playing from an old speaker in the corner. the scent of something herbal lingered in the air.
billie closed the door gently behind her.
"want tea?"
liora shook her head.
billie nodded. "okay."
she didn't ask why she was here.
didn't push.
just walked into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and leaned against the counter.
liora stayed near the door, hands in her coat pockets, unsure of where to stand. how to begin.
finally:
"i can't keep doing the half-truth thing."
billie looked up.
"me neither."
"i'm tired," liora said. "of pretending i don't want something when it's right in front of me."
billie's voice was quieter now. "and what is it you want, exactly?"
liora stepped closer.
not all the way.
but enough that the air changed.
"something real," she said. "even if it's messy."
billie stared at her.
long enough that it almost hurt.
then said, voice low, "me too."
the silence that followed wasn't empty.
it was full.
full of everything they hadn't said.
and everything they were about to.
the storm began just after midnight.
not a dramatic one—no lightning splitting the sky, no downpour flooding the streets—but slow, rumbling thunder like something pacing just beyond the horizon.
inside billie's apartment, the world had narrowed to quiet lamplight and low voices.
they sat on the floor now, cross-legged on a faded rug near the window. the tea billie didn't offer again had gone cold beside them. neither had touched it.
billie exhaled.
rubbed a hand through her hair.
"you know," she said, "i spent a lot of years convincing myself i was okay with loneliness. told myself it made me stronger. cleaner. safer."
liora didn't interrupt.
billie looked at her, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"but it's not strength. it's fear. and fear's a shitty architect."
liora tilted her head slightly. "what does it build?"
"walls," billie said. "too high to see over. too thick to hear through."
liora pulled her knees closer to her chest. "then why'd you let me in?"
"i didn't," billie said. "you knocked the wall down."
liora didn't smile. not really. but something in her eyes softened.
"you're hard to read sometimes," she said.
billie huffed a breath. "you think?"
"like... i never know what's performance and what's real."
billie leaned back on her hands. "it's all real. just not all of it's for you."
liora blinked.
billie caught it. "that sounded harsher than i meant."
"no," liora said quickly. "i get it. boundaries."
"mm." billie looked at the ceiling. "i used to be good at those."
"what happened?"
"you."
the word landed between them like a dropped glass. not loud—but definite. clear.
liora stared at her fingers, voice quiet.
"you scare me."
billie's voice dropped. "why?"
"because i want you to touch me," liora said, barely audible. "and i want to touch you. and i want that to mean something. but i don't want it to undo everything else."
billie moved then.
slowly.
shifted forward on her knees until they were inches apart.
she didn't touch her.
but she didn't have to.
the air between them was electric.
"it won't undo it," billie said. "it'll just... change it."
"that's what i'm afraid of."
"why?"
liora's breath hitched.
"because what if you change your mind?"
billie was quiet for a long moment.
then:
"i don't say things i don't mean. not to you."
outside, thunder rolled again.
low. steady.
liora's hands trembled in her lap.
billie leaned closer. so slowly it felt like gravity.
their foreheads touched.
not a kiss.
but more.
closer.
warmer.
more dangerous.
"i'm not afraid of this," liora whispered. "not anymore."
billie's voice was barely a breath:
"good."
and neither of them moved.
not for a long, long time.
⸻
the hallway smelled like lavender disinfectant and old books.
liora walked slow, boots soft against the waxed floor, earbuds in but no music playing. just the illusion of distance. a buffer.
her stomach tightened the closer she got to room 204.
she didn't know what she was expecting. maybe to be alone again. maybe for it to feel like it used to—ten minutes before class, an empty room, a quiet kind of almost.
but just as she reached the door, nova appeared beside her, all leather jacket and lip gloss.
"damn," nova said, catching step. "you really do like being early."
liora tugged one earbud out. "habit."
nova bumped her shoulder gently. "or maybe it's hope."
liora didn't respond.
nova grinned. "you still into mystery professor, or am i winning points yet?"
liora rolled her eyes, but it was weak.
"i'm not keeping score."
"mmm. dangerous answer."
they reached the classroom.
empty, except for the hum of the projector warming up and the faint scent of whatever candle billie sometimes burned in her office. something herbal and grounding.
nova slid into the seat beside liora's usual one without asking.
liora sat down, stiff.
"she's not here yet?" nova asked.
"no."
"shame. i wanted to see her face when i made you laugh."
liora looked over. "you didn't make me laugh."
"not yet."
the door opened ten minutes later.
billie stepped in, her bag slung low over one shoulder, sunglasses pushed up into her hair. she looked... tired.
but not the usual tired.
this was sharper.
intentional.
like she hadn't slept, but not because she couldn't.
because she didn't want to.
liora sat up straighter.
nova leaned in, stage-whispered, "showtime."
billie set her things down without looking at either of them.
not even a glance.
just clicked the projector on and pulled up the slide deck like it was any other day.
"morning," she said, voice even. "let's get to it."
liora's heart pounded in her throat.
not because she'd expected something.
but because she hadn't expected the nothing.
and somehow, that felt worse.
the projector screen flickered with the name of the next student: marcus e. – "grief loop"
he stood awkwardly at the front, paper in one hand, phone in the other.
"uh, this is kind of a spoken word thing," he said, voice low. "i didn't really mean for anyone to hear it, but... whatever. here goes."
liora watched him closely. not because she knew him well—just because she understood that feeling. the shake in his fingers. the tightness in his jaw.
he read:
"grief doesn't leave. it just gets quieter. like a bad roommate who stops slamming doors but still leaves the lights on when you're trying to sleep. i stopped calling her death. started calling her memory. still she shows up uninvited."
the room was quiet.
billie didn't move.
marcus finished and stepped back, face unreadable.
billie spoke slowly.
"that," she said, "was brave."
marcus nodded, looking at the floor.
"and good," she added. "not because it was polished. but because it didn't try to protect us. that kind of writing? it hits because it bleeds."
marcus cracked a tiny smile.
billie smiled back, barely.
liora felt it before she looked.
nova leaning in, her voice a soft knife against her ear.
"she ever look at you like that?"
liora didn't flinch.
didn't turn.
just stared straight ahead.
nova smiled wider.
billie glanced toward them.
brief.
blank.
too fast.
and then she was on to the next name.
liora's hands were fists beneath her desk.
class ended in its usual quiet chaos—papers rustling, chairs scraping, backpacks unzipping.
nova stood first.
"later, rai," she said, smiling with too many teeth. "don't miss me too hard."
liora didn't answer.
billie didn't look up.
when the last student left, liora stayed seated. still. waiting.
billie moved fast—shutting down the projector, shoving papers into her bag, every motion clipped.
liora stood, slow.
"billie."
billie didn't turn. "i have somewhere to be."
"so go."
billie stopped.
exhaled.
then finally faced her.
her eyes were tired. guarded. sharp.
"why are you still here?"
"why are you pretending i don't exist?"
"i'm not."
"you haven't looked at me all week."
billie's jaw worked. "i'm trying to do the right thing."
"by ignoring me?"
"by not making it worse."
liora took a step closer. "worse for who?"
billie didn't answer.
just stared at her. unreadable.
liora's voice dropped. "say it."
billie blinked. "say what?"
"whatever it is you keep choking on."
another pause.
then, barely above a whisper:
"i saw the way she touched your arm."
liora's chest tightened.
"nova?"
billie didn't say her name.
liora's voice was sharper now. "and?"
billie looked away.
liora waited.
but the silence said enough.
so she turned to leave.
"you don't get to be jealous," she said without looking back. "not if you won't show up."
billie didn't stop her.
didn't say a word.
but the silence she left behind felt louder than any scream.
1:12 a.m.
liora sat curled on her bed, legs tangled in a blanket, her journal propped open on one knee. the dorm room was dark except for the soft glow from her desk lamp and the blue blink of her charging speaker.
she hadn't put on lyrics.
just instrumental — piano, soft rain layered under.
her roommate was out. somewhere.
liora hadn't asked.
she picked up her pen and wrote without thinking:
if i touched her first, would she stay?
she paused.
stared at the question like it had betrayed her.
then added underneath:
or would she flinch and lie about it later?
she didn't cross anything out.
didn't tear the page.
just let the ink sit there.
bleeding.
her hand hovered, pen still uncapped.
but she didn't write more.
the words had stopped coming.
so she closed the journal gently, as if anything louder might break her.
set it beside her.
and leaned back against the wall.
the song shifted — now strings. long, sustained. mournful.
liora let it play.
let the ache settle into her ribs like a second heartbeat.
she wasn't angry anymore.
just tired.
of the reaching.
of the almosts.
and the silence that came after every one.
the stairwell smelled like dust and lemon cleaner.
liora sat two steps from the landing, her back against the cool metal railing, a page from her notebook dangling from her fingers. she hadn't meant to come here. her feet had brought her on autopilot.
she just needed space.
somewhere narrow. controlled. quiet.
a place where things couldn't spiral out too far.
the door opened above her.
footsteps, soft.
then—
"liora?"
she looked up.
billie.
not in lecture mode. no bag, no laptop, just a sweatshirt and soft jeans and a knot of tension in her jaw.
liora's breath caught.
"sorry," billie said quickly. "i didn't think—i wasn't expecting you."
"you can stay."
billie hesitated. "are you sure?"
"you're already here."
billie smiled. barely.
she sat down two steps above liora, far enough not to touch, close enough to feel the heat of her.
for a minute, neither of them said anything.
then billie spoke, voice low.
"you were right."
liora didn't look up. "about what?"
"i don't get to be jealous."
liora didn't respond.
billie exhaled. "but i am."
a long pause.
then liora lifted her eyes.
"why?"
billie stared ahead. "because you make me want things i don't trust myself to keep."
liora's throat tightened.
billie shook her head, laughing once — bitter and quiet. "you deserve something whole. not someone who has to keep stepping back to stay intact."
liora turned slightly, held out the paper she'd been clutching.
"read it," she said.
billie hesitated. then reached.
they both touched the same edge at the same time.
fingers brushing.
not a jolt.
just... heat.
still.
neither pulled away.
liora didn't blink.
billie's breath hitched.
and in that silence, the walls of the stairwell felt smaller than ever.
the paper slipped from between them.
fluttered to the step below.
neither looked down.
billie's eyes were dark, pinned to liora's. there was something raw in them — not pain, not quite, but something adjacent. like caution dressed up as restraint.
liora didn't breathe.
she leaned forward slowly.
just an inch.
then another.
their knees almost touched.
billie's hand twitched, fingers curling into her thigh.
liora's voice was barely sound.
"you keep saying you want me to stop."
billie swallowed. "i do."
"but you never move."
billie didn't speak.
so liora leaned in further.
close enough to count the gold flecks in her eyes.
close enough to feel the shift in billie's breath.
her lips parted. just slightly.
then—
"don't," billie whispered.
but her voice cracked on the word.
and she still didn't pull back.
liora froze.
they hovered there — breath to breath, lip to lip, a breath shy of ruin.
"i wasn't going to," liora said, though her voice betrayed her.
it was a lie.
a soft one.
a dangerous one.
billie blinked, and for one split second, it looked like she might lean in too.
but then—
footsteps.
distant.
someone above them, rounding the corner.
the spell broke.
billie flinched like she'd been caught doing something unspeakable.
she stood fast, brushed her hands on her jeans, not looking at her.
"i should go."
liora stood too, slower.
but didn't stop her.
she just watched as billie pushed the door open and disappeared down the hall, her shoulders tight, her silence louder than anything else she could've said.
the stairwell echoed behind her.
empty.
unfinished.
friday afternoon.
the practice room smelled like old wood and adrenaline.
two classmates were rehearsing — arden and jules, both theater majors, both fearless — performing a spoken duet over a live cello track. it wasn't perfect. some lines stumbled. the rhythm slipped once or twice.
but the emotion was blistering.
arden's voice trembled in all the right places. jules never looked away from her, not once. they circled each other like satellites. not touching. not even close.
but the gravity was unmistakable.
liora watched from the far corner.
silent.
thoughtful.
when it ended, arden laughed breathlessly and collapsed into a chair.
"okay," she said. "so it's cheesy."
"no," jules said, wiping sweat from his temple. "it's real."
liora smiled faintly. "it was good."
"yeah?" arden looked at her. "be honest."
"i am," liora said. "it didn't feel like acting."
jules grinned. "good. that's what we're going for."
they packed up soon after.
left the room buzzing with ghost notes and invisible heat.
liora stayed behind.
stood in the middle of the space, letting the silence settle.
then slowly turned off the light, stepped into the hallway, and walked toward the back exit.
outside, the sky had cracked open.
not a storm.
just soft, steady rain — no wind, no drama. just enough to soak your shoulders and make your clothes cling.
liora didn't hesitate.
she stepped into it.
let it touch her skin, drip from her hair, run in quiet rivulets down the curve of her neck.
she didn't hide.
didn't rush.
just stood there.
alive in it.
alive in all of it.
and when she finally moved, it wasn't away from the feeling.
it was through it.
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tags; @bxllxebxtch @st0nerlesb0 @dousleepanymore @mxmsuki @billiescation @angellvk @bilswifee
#billie eilish#wlw#billie#bil#billieeilish#billie x reader#billie fanfiction#billie ellish lyrics#hit me hard and soft tour#hmhas billie eilish#hit me hard and soft#hmhas#eilish#billie eilish fan fic#billie eilish x reader#billie eyelash#billie elish icons#billie elish moodboard#billie eilish x female reader#billie eilish x you#ruebossanova
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⋆°•☁︎°⋆. Closer than ever .⋆°☁︎.𖥔 ݁☾
~ new year ~ hyung line
~ synopsis: It’s New Year’s Eve, frustrated because all your friends ditched you claiming that they are "busy". You have no choice but to stay at home, sulking. But when your brother’s best friend surprisingly offers to take you for fun, unexpected (?) feelings and emotions arise.
~ pairing: brothersbestfriend!enhypen x fem!reader
~ genre: acquaintances to ???, slow burn, fluff ^^, one shot
~ word count: 2173 W (combined)
~ warnings: None!!
~ notes: im a bit (very) late but I loveee the new years tropee. All of them are brothers bff trope except for heeseung's. not proofread. ENJOYYYYY <333
Full Masterlist I maknae line
~ Lee Heeseung I You never thought you’d be standing outside the old bus station on New Year’s Eve.
Your phone buzzed a few hours ago with a message you weren’t sure you wanted to see
Heeseung (DNI): “Meet me where it all began. Midnight. pleaseee.”
It was cryptic, but you understood immediately.
The place where you first met, before all the misunderstandings and silence that stretched between you like the ocean.
You wanted to say no, you wanted to tell him to go away and not to text you, to stay safe from the hurt he caused you.
But something pulled you here anyway.
The station was empty except for the echo of distant fireworks and your footsteps crunching on the frosty ground.
The faint glow of street lamps cast long shadows, making the world seem suspended between yesterday and tomorrow.
And then he was there.
Heeseung. His eyes held the weight of what you hoped were unspoken apologies and regrets.
“Y/N,” he said gently, voice almost lost in the cold wind.
You swallowed hard. “What do you want, Heeseung?”
He winced, as if he could feel the ache in your chest. "I… I was afraid you’d leave without hearing me out. Please just wait I have a lot I need to say.”
Your throat tightened. “We left so much unsaid.”
“I know.” He stepped closer, hands shivering from the cold. “And I was scared that silence would become permanent. But I care...”
You looked away, biting your lip, trying to push back the tears forming in your eyes, memories flooding back.
The arguments, the distance, the nights you cried your eyes out wondering if he even cared about you anymore .
“I really do,” he said quietly, reaching out. “More than I ever let show.”
You met his gaze, the vulnerability shining through. “Why now?”
“Because,” he whispered, “every moment without you felt like losing a part of myself. I don’t want to start the new year with regrets.”
For a long moment, the world was nothing but the two of you, breath mingling in the cold, hearts pounding in fragile synchrony.
“I missed you,” you confessed, voice trembling.
Heeseung’s hand finally found yours, warm despite the chill. “I missed you too. Words can't explain how much I have.”
The clock began to chime midnight, and a distant symphony of bells and fireworks.
He leaned in slowly, searching your eyes for permission. When your lips met, it was bittersweet—a promise to heal, to try again, and a tender acknowledgment of everything lost and everything still worth fighting for.
When you pulled apart, the city was alive with light and sound, but all you felt was the steady beat of a heart that had come home.
“Happy New Year, Y/N,” he said, voice low and full of hope.
You smiled through the tears. “Happy New Year, Heeseung.”
~ Park Jongseong I You don’t even get a chance to open the door.
It flies open the second your hand touches the knob when you go to answer the door sleepily.
Jay stands there, deadpan, holding out your scarf like it personally offended him. “Are you seriously going out dressed like that?”
You blink. “Nice to see you too.”
He pushes past you without waiting for an invitation. “Where are your gloves? Do you want to get sick or something?”
“Why are you yelling at me like I’m your responsibility or girlfriend?”
“You’re my best friend’s little sister. It’s the same thing.” he says like it's very obvious.
You stare at him. He’s already storming into the living room like he owns the house.
“My brother isnt here, also, How did you even get in?”
“Your brother gave me the key. Said you were being stubborn.”
“I’m not going anywhere tonight—”
“Exactly,” Jay snaps, turning to face you. “You’re not going anywhere. By yourself. You’re staying here sulking while everyone else is out celebrating. So put on your coat. You’re coming with me.”
You cross your arms. “Is that a request or a kidnapping?”
He glares. “Both.”
You end up in his car, glance out the window, against your will.
Jay drives with precision, tense but careful, like he's carrying something fragile and refuses to acknowledge it.
“You didn’t have to do this,” you mutter.
He doesn’t look at you. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“So you’re playing hero now?”
“No,” he says, sharp. “I’m doing what your brother should’ve done. Instead of letting you rot at home”
You glare at him. There’s color in his cheeks—definitely from the cold and not from what he just said.
Right.
You stay quiet for a beat.
“…Thanks.”
He doesn’t respond.
But his grip on the steering wheel loosens.
He takes you to a viewpoint just outside the city.
It’s quiet, snow dusted, and completely isolated. The sky stretches wide above, stars just beginning to peek through.
“Are you happy now?” he asks as you both step out.
You look around, breath visible in the air. “…Yeah.”
You walk for a bit. Neither of you says much. The silence should be awkward but it’s not. Not with jay.
Finally, you glance sideways. “Why did you really come get me, Jay?”
He stiffens.
“I told you. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“Liar. You are lying.”
He whips around. “Excuse me?”
“You act like you don’t care. Like you’re just doing a favor. But you showed up with my favorite colored scarf and hot cocoa with cinnamon, which you hate. So either you’re the world’s most overprepared friend… or there’s something else.”
He’s silent.
Then, under his breath, “You’re insufferable.”
You smirk. “And you’re very see through.”
Jay groans and rakes a hand through his hair. “You really want me to say it?”
Your smile softens. “Only if it’s true.”
He exhales sharply. “Fine.”
A beat.
Then he looks at you, finally, eyes burning despite the cold.
“I like you. For a while. And it’s driving me crazy.”
Your heart stutters.
"Then why act like I’m a burden or just something you need to take care of?”
“Because I didn’t know how else to handle it,” he mutters. “Because you smile at me and I forget how to breathe. Because if I let myself be soft, I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.”
You step forward. Wrap the red scarf around his neck.
And you lean in.
“Then never stop.”
You kiss him.
He’s frozen for a second.
Then he kisses you back like he’s been holding it in for months.
~ Sim Jaeyun I Jake Sim is the last person you expected to see at your door on New Year’s Eve.
Yet here he is.
Grinning like he is about to do something dangerous, holding up an oversized gift bag that reads "EMERGENCY KIT" in glitter glue.
You blink at him.
"Please tell me there's food in there." you say lazily.
"Not unless you count bubblegum and glow sticks as food," he says cheerfully.
You step aside, letting him in. "Sunghoon ditched me. Isnt he such a dingle?"
Jake tosses the bag onto your couch like it's his home. "Correction. Our friend ditched both of us. Tragic, honestly."
You raise an eyebrow. "So you decided it was best to sulk together?"
"Sulking is for loser. It implies regret. I call this a strategic upgrade."
You roll your eyes. "Wow. I forgot how charming you can get."
"Impossible," he says, already poking around your kitchen. "I’m unforgettable."
Fifteen minutes later, you’re wearing a glow stick crown. Jake is dancing to the playlist he made when he was heartbroken, and you’re laughing so hard you nearly drop your drink.
He’s ridiculous. And way too good at making you forget you were supposed to be miserable tonight.
"Alright," he says, collapsing onto the couch beside you, cheeks pink from exertion, "confession time."
You glance over. "This feels like a trick."
"You love hanging out with me."
You snort. "That's not a confession, that's you being extra delusional."
He leans in closer, smug. "You definitely like me."
Your heart does a flip that feels wrong.
"Huh?"
"You do," he says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "You get all flustered when I wink at you."
You sputter. "I do not."
He grins wider. "You just did. Ah, just admit that I'm the best."
You throw a pillow at him.
Later, the room is darker, the mood quieter.
You both sit by the window, legs tangled, looking out at the city lights. Fireworks haven’t started yet, but they will soon.
Jake is toying with a glow stick, his smile softer now.
"Can I tell you something?"
You nod.
"I’ve been waiting all week for an excuse to hang out with you."
You notice that he isn't teasing anymore.
"I thought you were going to the festival," you murmur.
"I was. Then I heard you weren’t going, and suddenly it didn’t sound that fun anymore."
He looks at you, "I like you. I think I have for a while. I know its sudden but yeah."
The clock blinks 11:59.
You whisper, "Then what are you waiting for?"
Jake blinks.
Then he laughs under his breath. "God, you're so cool."
He leans in, and you meet him halfway.
The kiss is warm, and shy, and just perfect.
Fireworks start to bubble outside.
Jake rests his forehead against yours.
"Happy New Year, Y/N."
You smile.
" I told you it was a strategic upgrade."
~ Park Sunghoon I It’s past 10 PM.
You’re wrapped in your thickest blanket on the couch with an untouched bowl of popcorn beside you and some old movie playing at low volume. You’d already accepted that tonight was going to be lonely.
Your brother had warned you this week: the group’s plans were set, tickets bought, no extra space.
You’d said you were fine.
And you were.
Until your phone buzzed
Sunghoon: come outside.
You stare at the screen.
Then at the door.
Then at yourself.
You’re in pajama pants with snowflake socks and haven’t brushed your hair since noon. But something tight in your chest makes you move anyway.
When you open the front door, he’s there.
Sunghoon. Black puffer jacket. Scarf pulled high over his chin. Hands in his pockets. The cold makes his cheeks glow faint pink, but he doesn’t look cold.
He looks calm and like a prince, someone straight out of a fairytale. Like he knew you’d come out.
“Hi,” he says.
“Did you get lost on your way to a better party?” you say.
He raises an eyebrow. “You always this charming when you’re sulking?”
You stare.
He stares back.
Then—he smirks. A little. Barely.
You sigh and step onto the porch, pulling your coat tighter. “What are you doing here?”
“Your brother said you weren’t going anywhere.”
You glance at him. “So you came to confirm the tragedy with your own eyes?”
“I came because I didn’t want you to spend the last night of the year alone.”
Your breath catches. He says it so casually. Like it doesn’t set off fireworks in your stomach.
“You could’ve just sent a meme like a normal person.”
“Would you have smiled at it?”
You don’t answer.
He offers his hand.
“I know a place,” he says. “It’s quiet. Just trust me.”
He takes you skating.
To a rink you didn’t even know stayed open this late. The lights are soft. There’s no music. Just the sound of blades on ice and the wind biting at your nose.
You nearly fall three times getting in. Sunghoon catches you every time.
“Are you trying to die?” he asks after the third near-splat.
“I’m adding drama to the evening.”
“You’re gonna add a concussion.”
But he doesn’t let go of your hand.
Not once.
Later, you sit on a bench at the edge of the rink. Your fingers are stiff with cold. Your cheeks hurt from smiling.
Sunghoon sits beside you, eyes on the moon.
You sneak a glance.
He’s always been hard to read. Cool. Reserved. The kind of boy who rarely speaks unless he means something. That’s what makes this whole thing so confusing.
“Why me?” you ask.
He turns.
“You could’ve spent tonight with anyone. Why me?”
A long pause.
Then, without looking away, he says, “Because when I realized I didn’t want this year to end without seeing you… I couldn’t think of anything else.”
Your chest stings.
You turn your face away, trying to breathe.
“Sunghoon,” you murmur. “If you keep saying things like that…”
“I won’t be able to take them back,” he finishes for you.
You look at him.
He looks at you.
And he whispers, “I don’t want to.”
The air crackles.
You move first this time. Your hand finds his under the blanket you share. His fingers curl around yours.
Neither of you speaks.
But when the fireworks begin somewhere in the distance, and the sky turns gold and pink above the rink, Sunghoon leans over.
And your forehead rests against his.
A breath between you.
#eumppapas mom#kpop fanfic#Enhypen#enhypen fluff#enhypen fanfic#enhypen imagines#enhypen x reader#enhypen scenarios#enhypen heeseung#enhypen jay#enhypen jake#enhypen sunghoon#enhypen sunoo#enhypen jungwon#enhypen niki#heeseung x reader#heeseung fluff#jay x reader#jay fluff#jake x reader#jake fluff#sunghoon x reader#sunghoon fluff#sunoo x reader#sunoo fluff#jungwon x reader#jungwon fluff#niki x reader#niki fluff#heeseung lee
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1. Fire
Summary: Joel, a fairy hunter, finds and captures a fire fairy.
Word Count: 1599
Warnings: Referring to someone as an it (in a dehumanizing way), kidnapping, selling people, and general angst
AO3 Link
It's time! It's time for the start of GtJuly! I'm a bit excited for this one and I will most definitely continue it at some point, though probably after gtjuly is over. I was going to try and push myself to get the rest done but I ended up with a good stopping point and I figured I could always come back to it later. So think of this as just the first chapter for this particular fic.
Also, I'm gonna be a bit more chill with this years gtjuly, just because of how late a start I got on the prompts. I'm still gonna get as many as I can done, but I may skip a day or two at some point in order to spend more time on the fics I really want to write. Also, a lot of these will be a bit shorter and that is also due to the time crunch. All that being said, I am still very excited to get back into writing again with these prompts!
And without further ado, please enjoy day one of gtjuly!
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Joel ducked behind a bush as a bright red light zipped its way around the small clearing in front of him. Though it was hard to tell, based on the fact it kept flying back and forth between tree branches, Joel could only assume the tiny fairy was gathering some food. Or maybe some leaves. Again, he couldn’t be sure but then again, that part didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was that Joel had found one and he hadn’t been spotted yet.
Joel carefully, quietly, reached into the bag hanging at his hip, pulling out a small glass lamp but one that had nothing inside. It shimmered slightly with a purple hue, enchanted to not let anything inside of it out. He set that off to the side and then reached behind him, grabbing at the net. It also shimmered with a purple hue, enchanted with a similar spell to the small glass lamp.
The net he used for all the fairies he captured, but the small glass lamp was special. He knew, just by seeing the color, that this fairy was a fire elemental. And what better place to keep it in than a lamp? The idea itself made Joel chuckle.
He looked back at the fairy and his eyes narrowed as he realized the fairy was hovering in one place. From what little he could see, the fairy seemed to be going over its spoils, organizing them into a bag at its side. Joel’s hands tightened around the handle of the net and he slowly crept out of the bushes.
The fairy’s back was turned and it didn’t see it coming as Joel lunged, swiping the net and easily capturing the small fairy within it. The fairy cried out and tried to fly out but the net only grew tighter around it, preventing any sort of escape. Joel was still in awe at just how well those enchantments on his gear worked.
Joel grinned as he lifted the net up to his face, looking at the fairy still helplessly struggling to get out. A small part of Joel did feel bad for the tiny creature, but it was just business. Fairies made him a killing and Joel was good at what he did. Besides, all he did was capture and sell. Whatever those people did with the fairies was no longer his problem.
“I’d save my strength if I were you. There’s no getting out of there.” Joel said, a bit of teasing in his tone. The fairy froze and turned to finally look at him. There was a small flash of fear on the little things face before it turned to a glare.
“Says you!” The fairy shot back and Joel watched as the little thing lifted its clawed hand toward the fabric of the net. His hand caught fire, something Joel had been expecting, and he slashed at the net’s ropes. Of course, nothing happened, and the fairy froze, staring blankly at what should have been a steaming pile of ash.
Joel let out a little laugh and the fairy’s head snapped back in his direction, his eyes wide. “I told you. This thing here is enchanted, no amount of that little fire magic of yours is going to save you.” Joel watched as the little fairy deflated and he took this chance to look over the fairy’s appearance close up. He had blond hair that crackled with flames and long pointed ears. The pointed ears were normal for all fairies, but the fire hair was definitely interesting. He hadn’t seen a lot of fire fairies with that. It was hard to tell if it was a genetic thing or a choice on the fairy’s part though.
The fairy also seemed to be wearing a mostly red outfit with grey accents. And of course, as he had seen before, there were claws at the end of each of its fingers. Giving this fairy a bit more of a feral look than some of the others he had captured.
“L-Let me go!” The sudden small voice pulled Joel out of his observations and his eyes focused more on the fairy’s face. The fairy may be glaring at him but that little stutter showed Joel just how scared it was.
“Sorry, no can do.” Joel said, turning around to head back to the bush where he had left all of his supplies. “Fire fairies go for a lot of money around this time of year.” The winter season had only barely just started but already there have been several nights when it went below freezing. Joel chanced a glance up at the clouds, which were moving in fast thanks to the cold wind. There would be a snowstorm in the coming days but if Joel could get back to town by tomorrow, he should be just fine.
“You’re…you’re going to sell me?!” The fairy exclaimed with a high pitched squeak and once again started up with its struggles. “You can’t do this! I-I’m a person! I have friends, a family!”
Joel frowned a bit but this was not the first time a fairy he had captured tried pleading its own humanity. A part of Joel’s heart went out but at the same time… “Don’t take this personally. It’s just business.” That did little to calm the fairy down but Joel hadn’t been expecting it too.
Joel ignored the angry shouts and curses as he dropped to his knees and opened up the little door of the lamp, getting it ready. He set the net down for a moment and pulled on a glove, also enchanted, and then reached through the top of the net. The net, knowing who it belonged to, opened up enough for Joel to slip his hand inside and grab the fairy around the middle. The fairy let out another squeak and Joel pulled it out as soon as he was sure he had a secure grip on it.
The fairy in his hand burst into flames, trying its hardest to burn Joel’s hand so he would drop it. But the glove worked as intended and Joel didn’t even feel a change in temperature. The fairy seemed to realize this rather quickly and doused its own flames, panting slightly at the large and sudden use of its magic. “What-?”
“Enchanted glove.” Joel answered, flexing his grip slightly, though not enough to hurt it. The fire fairy tensed anyway but Joel didn’t bother with reassurances. Despite his line of work, he never hurt the fairies he captured. They…sold better that way, after all.
“Well, you’ve just thought of everything huh…” The fairy mumbled out, not quite talking directly to Joel anymore.
Joel shrugged but couldn’t help the smirk that appeared on his face. “I’ve been doing this for a while now.” Joel said. It had been a year since he had started this business of hunting fairies and he had already caught and sold a fair amount of them. He was used to all of their little antics at this point.
He lowered his hand and pushed the fairy inside the lamp, closing the door before the fairy had a chance to try and zip out. The fairy fell back against the wall with a groan but quickly recovered and tried pushing back open the door. When nothing happened, the fairy deflated again. “Let me guess, this is also enchanted?”
Joel smiled. “Hey, you’re catching on!” He lifted the lamp by the handle and stood up, hooking it onto his belt for easy transportation. Joel then gathered up the rest of his supplies and started the trek back towards the nearest town.
The fire fairy was silent for a few moments. “Is this a lamp?” It sounded offended, which Joel couldn’t help but chuckle at.
“Well, you are a fire fairy. Figured I’d save some matches and use you when it gets too dark.” Joel said with a laugh and was met with a slight growling sound from the fairy.
It was silent for another few moments, the only sounds being the cold wind and the crunch of the forest floor with every step Joel took.
“...You don’t have to do this.” Joel paused at the small voice of the fire fairy, smaller than any of its other words had been. He let out a small sigh and unhooked the lamp, bringing it up to his face. The little thing cowered and Joel ignored the way his heart broke a little.
“I already told you, it’s nothing personal. I’ve got money I need to make and unfortunately for you, you go for quite a bit.” Joel looked the fairy up and down once more before dropping it back down to hook on his belt once again. “It’s just business.”
“Buinsess that’s going to get me killed!” The fire fairy’s voice was back up to full volume and Joel winced.
“Come on, you're a fire fairy in the middle of winter. The most you’ll be used for is as a heater, they won’t want to kill you.” If Joel kept telling himself that, then maybe he’ll start feeling less bad.
Not that he felt bad at all! Again, this was all business.
“Do you really think-?”
“Look, you’re not talking me out of it. Might as well save that for whoever ends up buying you.” Joel cut the fairy off with a bit more bite in his words than he really meant. But the fairy grew silent and that was all Joel cared about.
Now to focus on finding his way out of these woods.
#g/t#giant/tiny#gtjuly2025#au#fairies#hermitblr#hermitfic#hermitcraft#day 1#fic#tiny tango#despite never saying his name the fairy is tango lol
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Goodnight Bro Trend: The Waynes
The video is posted to the official joint Wayne Instagram and TikTok, courtesy of Steph. Despite all of Bruce’s and their PR department’s efforts, she has the social media passwords.
Captions on the screen spell out ‘GOODNIGHT BRO TREND: THE BEST WAYNE RESPONSES’ in sparkly pink letters over top of a video of Steph grinning and waving at the camera.
The first clip is of Dick Grayson-Wayne grinning at his phone, already calling someone, with Steph behind the camera giggling. She still manages to hold the camera still. Whoever Dick called picks up.
“What’d you want Dickhead?” Dick brightens and the camera shakes a little as its operator frantically tries to quiet her laughter.
“Nothing much, just about to head to bed, wanted to say goodnight, love you.”
Silence. The longer it lasts, the louder the laughter behind the camera.
It lasts a good thirty seconds.
“The fuck- goodnight dude love you too.” The voice responds both confused and indignant, before immediately hanging up. Dick laughs and the video immediately cuts to a different Wayne on a call.
“-anyway short stack, goodnight, sweet dreams, love you.” Jason Todd-Wayne finishes.
“What?” A waspish distorted tone responds.
“Just saying night, love you.” Jason slowly smiles at the camera.
“What is this?” Jason coughs to cover up his laugh. “What is going on? What?”
“You not going to say it back?” Jason teases.
“What?”
“Are you not-“
“I heard you the first time!” The young voice cuts in. “What is going on?”
“I wanted to check in on you, say goodnight, love you.” Jason immediately puts himself on mute to allow some of his and Steph’s giggles to escape. He shushes her, before going off mute. “What, that a crime?”
“No.” The voice responds suspiciously. Then, all rushed out, “Iloveyoutoogoodnight.” The call abruptly ends, and Steph and Jason both collapse laughing.
“That was so cute!” Steph gets out between breathes, and the video cuts to another clip.
“I am calling to inform you I wish you a good night’s sleep and sweet dreams.” A very serious sounding Damian Wayne states, shooting disgruntled looks to Steph behind the camera. She nudges him, and he rolls his eyes. “And that I love you. Rest well.”
“If something’s wrong, mention sunsets.” Tim Drake-Wayne responds instantly. Damian scowls at his phone.
“Nothing is wrong, I merely wanted to pass on-“
“No no no,” Tim interrupts, “Damian? What’s going on? Is this something Bruce is trying? Dick? Who put you up to this?”
“Nothing is wrong!” Damian huffs.
“Nice try, but you can’t take any of my stuff, and if this is an imposter, I will find you.” The call goes silent for a minute, Damian glaring at his phone.
Then, really really quietly, “Love you too though Dames.”
The video cuts to another clip, but not before a clear shot of Damian’s slightly soft surprise.
”I’m heading to bed now, so goodnight, love you.” Tim Drake-Wayne rolls his eyes at the camera, presumably at Steph.
“Ok, hang on, I’m getting up now.” A voice yawns. Tim’s nose wrinkles in confusion at his phone. “Where are you?”
“What are you talking about?” Tim asks, brow furrowing slightly.
“Oh wait I should have checked if I’m on speaker.” Another yawn. “Ah well, tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.” There’s shuffling at the other end of the call and the camera pans to a clock behind Tim’s head, it’s about half eleven.
“I- I don’t need you to come and get me?” Tim tries to reassure, sounding lost still himself.
“Sure, now tell me where you are.” The voice changes quality as it moves away and back to the phone.
“At my apartment? I’m fine.”
“Yeah I don’t believe you for a second, I’m coming to find you. Give me something to work with Tim, I’m not dragging myself all over Gotham looking for you.” The other end of the calling is clearly moving around now, and quicker.
“I just wanted to say goodnight and love you?” Tim glances back at Steph, trying to see if she knows what’s going on.
“Tim, my dear brother, you sleep less than I do. Now tell me where you are.” Tim’s face deadpans immediately and he facepalms as Steph bursts out laughing.
The next clip is frozen for a minute as text on the screen informs the viewer Steph had to cut out the ten minute impromptu chat that ended up happening before Duke finally got back on track.
“Alright, well I’m going to go, thanks for talking, goodnight and love you.” Duke Thomas-Wayne smiles at the wall, talking at his phone on a call.
“Thanks Duke, I’m always happy to.” A warm voice responds. “It was nice to hear from you. Goodnight, love you too and look after yourself.” The call ends, and Duke immediately turns to Steph with a grin that’s a shade too genuinely fond to be smug.
And finally, the camera cuts to Bruce Wayne, as text pops up to inform of this boss round, and stitched out of several clips is a message that the celebrity billionaire clearly repeated several times,
“I wanted to say goodnight, and I love you.”
The five responses are all stitched in rapid succession, cutting back and between each one.
“What’s wrong? What did you do?”
“Are… are you ok?”
Crashing sounds immediately and aggressively.
“What are you doing?”
“Are you ill?”
“Are you compromised? Hang on, I’ll see if Ivy’s out-“
“If this is another one of those ‘healthy parenting techniques’ from your books-“
“Did you take emotional laxatives?”
“Are you in trouble?”
“-THE HELL OLD MAN WHAT THE-“
“If something’s wrong I better be the last person you called Bruce, I have a presentation to the Board tomorrow-“
“Is it with family again or did you find some other hornet’s nest to stumble onto?”
“If this is another attempt to get me on your team for game night-“
“Actually, you better not be in trouble, you are NOT leaving me alone with the vultures tomorrow-“
“I’m not covering to Alfred for you-”
“-not my fault you’re shit at monopoly-“
“-WARN A GUY I WAS STITCHING-“
“I will burn your entire collection, I don’t see how on earth they could possibly apply to-“
“-I could lie and say if you were a better charades partner, but we both know I’m never abandoning Dick for that one, so I won’t bother-“
“If someone’s dead again I am going to make sure you join them, this is not how you tell me-”
“Since when do you go to bed this early? If this is some kind of test I will do it when I don’t have a deadline the next day-“
“-THE GUILT TRIP WON’T WORK-“
“-besides, we don’t need any of those quacks’ advice. We are all perfectly normal.”
“But yeah, love you too B, obviously, goodnight.”
“…LOVE YOU TOO I GUESS BYE.”
“I love you too Bruce, but if you aren’t there tomorrow I swear to god-”
“-I just cannot abandon my comrades, you know how it is, sibling loyalty against adults, sorry, love you too Bruce, goodnight.”
“Now I have my tea to return to, so goodnight and I love you too Father.”
The video ends. It also goes viral.
#batfamily#love these dorks#watched josh johnson’s stand up on this trend and this idea jumped into my head and refused to leave#like half of them are suspicious and the other half are deeply concerned#but they’re all vigilantes#there have been too many close calls for any of them to not say love you back#dick grayson#jason todd#tim drake#duke thomas#damian wayne#stephanie brown#not cass erasure just she wasn’t in this video#cass helped edit it all together#she had fun picking the fonts#and keeping in steph’s giggles#dc comics
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