#apparently a lot of the players also hated being in this

[brain-depositary]

Maybe I can add -- so many warning bells went off in my head in response to that scene that I thought it was going to be some kind of metaphor or stand-in to imply that Reveck was sexually abusing Viktor but I don't really think that's the case. It's more that this sort of child-learns-positive-interaction-is-exploitative character history only really shows up in terms of sexual abuse. The plotline of intellectually gifted kids who turn into loners is exclusively that of some kind of social deficit or arrogance instead and because of that, people go ahead and paint Viktor with the same history, motives, reasoning, etc that you see over and over again without looking at what's there.

Like it's not that Viktor is not arrogant, but the way he goes about trying to achieve his stated goals and his weird relationship with power are frankly disorganized, implying that there's more going on than just arrogance. He claims to want legacy, but he's downright an unknown when the hexgates open despite being a major player in making them work at all, despite even Jayce encouraging him to share in the limelight -- he visibly shrinks away from it. He leads a freaking cult, but it turns out the cult is a hivemind. What safer place for someone who craves attention but fears exploitation? Why is he giving up himself for what he thinks are Sky's dreams when before he's dreaded being an assistant all his life? Why does he keep accepting Reveck's help despite knowing what he does and hating him for it? It's all hot-cold "disorganized" behavior, the sort of thing that happens when the thing someone wants is also perceived as dangerous -- and you can see the root of that planted by Reveck's treatment of Viktor really early.

Anyway. There's a lot more going on with Viktor's character, but a lot of that has already been elaborated on, blah blah blah. That he finds positive attention to be frightening due to apparently his relationship with Reveck explains a significant undercurrent to it. (I also think this undercurrent got a little lost in S2 because S2 was a fucking mess due to rushing and executive meddling reasons but that's neither here nor there)

Okay I've been seeing a lot of people talking about Viktor's characterization as a loner on this website and I don't think most people are getting it quite right. I see posts talking about assumptions of intelligent characters as being unemotional loners and about how he was so isolated because he was disabled and like. People are missing what to me is obvious.

The main reason why Viktor is such a loner is this asshole:

In season 1, before the opening theme, we get shorts of formative experiences in the main character's childhoods. If the main reason for Viktor being a loner was because he was bullied or at least excluded from playing with other kids, that would have been really easy to show. It's not like Arcane shies away from kids being mean to other kids -- look at what happened to Powder! But there's really none of that going on. He's playing away from the other kids but when he makes eye contact with Sky they seem more curious about each other than anything else. He might have been excluded but it's implied that this is not a permanent state.

But, instead of going to play with the other kids, he meets Doctor Corin Reveck and his seeming pet, Rio. Upon their first meeting, Reveck specifically flatters Viktor a lot, telling him that the reason he's alone is because he's smart, and lets him help caring for the cool exotic pet. For a little kid, this seems like a great deal... until it isn't. The pet is being cared for to be tortured, and Viktor realizes that he's only extending the creature's suffering, and he was taken advantage of to create this state of affairs.

Specifically, this creates the link in his mind that positive attention leads to being exploited. Not only does his disability lead to him being excluded, but things about that may lead him to inclusion only lead to bad things for him, too. Not only is he physically vulnerable, but his talents are also a vulnerability. This creates a lose/lose situation socially, so why participate at all?

And because this exploitation is such a normalized idea of what relationships are like for him, he keeps going back to Reveck, and allows himself to continue to be exploited, especially when he's in a vulnerable state -- he's just reverting to what he knows from childhood, that the good parts of him are a resource to be used. That's the obsession with legacy, yet at the same time he can't let himself be known to the public. Positive attention has been poisoned for him. He desperately wants it but doesn't know how to get it in a way that won't harm him. Jayce's love is what resolves this in the end.

[gachagon]

So I just learned what the NBA Bubble is

You mean to tell me a bunch of rich people who like Basketball went ahead and just made the Blue Lock facility IRL so the players could play during covid????

What a weird wacky world we live in

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | college au [18+]

kickoff ch.12 how you get the girl

ᰔ pairing. college au - soccer player! gojo x film major! reader

ᰔ summary. gojo satoru is the most popular guy on your college campus. he's tall, funny, hot, not to mention he's the most talented soccer forward the school has seen in years. but he's also a frat dude, which puts him in a world very different from your own, as he spends most of his nights partying while you spend most of yours working on your annoying film major assignments. but when he reaches out to you for a favor, you realize that helping him out might have something in it for you too.

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem reader, fluff, angst, smut, college au, fraternities, sororities, partying, drinking/alcohol, romance, jealousy, pining, slow burn, opposites to lovers, friends to lovers, she falls first he falls harder, gojo being an idiot, marijuana use, sexism, sexual harassment (verbal only)

ᰔ chapter. 12/x (probably 18)

ᰔ words. 11.3k

a/n. man the color scheme for this chapter is kinda giving BRAT lolol...i mean gojo IS brat. anywho, i don't have much to say at the beginning of this chapter but i do have a LOT to say at the end of it sooo see y'all at the bottom!! hope u enjoy. also BIG THANK YOU to @whereflowerswenttodie who beta read parts of this chapter for me n convinced me not to scrap it lol

nav. masterlist

☾·̩͙꙳ moodboard no.1 :: ♬.*ﾟplaylist

11:03am you: hi! 11:03am you: good luck today 11:03am you: incase i don’t see you

11:05am Gojo Satoru: Why wouldn’t you? Aren’t you gonna be on the field for your newsletter shots?

11:07am you: i mean yes but idk where i’m gonna be stationed so 11:07am you: it might not be on UTokyo’s side of the field

11:08am Gojo Satoru: Okay then I’ll look for you before the game starts

11:10am you: no pls don’t. coach yaga thinks i distract you. i don’t want to get yelled at again. he scares me :(

11:12am Gojo Satoru: Haha you’re silly 11:13am Gojo Satoru: East side entrance at 2 11:13am Gojo Satoru: Be there

11:14am you: or be square?

11:15am Gojo Satoru: Yea whatever shape you wanna be in is fine cutie

It’s a bright sunny day outside, perfectly blue sky with a scattering of fluffy clouds seen outside the window of your shared room in your apartment, and you realize spring is fully here from the way birds chirp past the glass. You’re stuffing your camera case full of chilled Kodak film rolls, your last stash left, and it’s the last piece of equipment you pack before slinging the strap over your shoulder and heading out the door.

Mina had offered to give you a ride to the stadium since your car’s still at the shop, but you’re happy you opted for the bumpy bus ride and although you come close to low-grade concussions from the bang of your head to the window at every other speed bump, the music in your ears while someone else is operating a public transport vehicle helps you think creatively before shooting shots.

It was surprise enough that Mina of all people was going to this game, and when you questioned her about it in the morning, she looked at you like you were absurd to assume anyone from UTokyo wouldn’t be at this game, and sure enough, it’s all anyone on Instagram has been repping on their stories or talking about in the bustling minutes before lectures. Even Utahime was going to this game, and she hates all intercollegiate sports. You knew the game was a big deal, given the way Coach Yaga was yelled at via email by the Dean of UTokyo to make sure the team wins today because a multimillion dollar Nike sponsorship would be greenlit by the prospect (for some reason you were cc’d in an email chain among divisional higher-ups, but you weren’t opposed to snooping in on conversations that were entirely outside of your tax bracket).

It’s because it’s the second to last home game before the season ends, and apparently this has been statistically the best season the UTokyo D1 Men’s Soccer team has played since the new millenia. No pressure to the players on that fact, but failure wasn’t much of an option for them anymore. 

And you can feel the stakes the second you step inside the stadium. Packed would be an understatement, there were people flooding the aisles, overbooked for the sake of the university pocketing an extra buck no doubt, but spectators could care less since they were able to at least get in on the basis of that irresponsibility in the first place, despite the stadium’s capacity having long been reached before the pregame festivities even start. Banners and signs drape over railings with the school’s striking blue and golden colors, every single replay screen is lit up and brightly pixelated at every north, south, east, and west entrance for inclusive viewing. As you pass VIP security and make it into the lower field-level entry, the scattered chants from the crowd amplify in volume and you almost wince a little to yourself from the noise. The stadium felt like a living, breathing entity, pulsing with the collective heartbeat of everyone inside. 

You’ve never been more overstimulated in your life, except instead of finding it frightening, it was electrifying. And for once, you think you can understand what an athlete must feel when playing on their own home turf surrounded by those that are wholeheartedly rooting for them.

Hana is quick to spot you, panic clear across her face as she regards you with a couple pages with your assigned vantage points, a rushed briefing session, and then she’s darting down the sidelines to make sure equipment is set up appropriately where needed. She’s understaffed, given you told Utahime about Kai’s little intervention last week and she made a nasty point to the university (and possibly a handful of legal threats) and they relented in firing him. So now the three of you were down a photographer, and the extra work shows in the instructions she gave you as you skim the sheets. 

A glance at your phone tells you it’s close to 2pm, and your eyes take in the expanse of green on the field. UTokyo’s players practice kicking shots off to the right goal post, while YCU’s players practice shots off to the left. You can’t spot where Gojo is, but you faithfully head down to the East Side entrance like he asked you to. 

When you round the corner, you almost crash right into an Ichiko mascot, but swiftly dodge, and then you stop in your tracks when you see Gojo standing right at the concrete entrance. He’s leaning back against the adjacent wall, arms crossed at his chest, and he’s stretching his neck side to side with a creased brow, an intense look in his eyes, lost in serious thought, scanning the wall across from him like he’s mapping out plays in his head. 

When you approach him and catch the corner of his eyesight, he leans off the wall and flashes you one of his so extremely charmed to see you grins on reflex, and suddenly there’s nothing your senses seem to pick up on except him. Like everything else around you just disappears.

“Hey, you,” he says when he comes up to you, and you walk him like a dog back to a corner that’s tucked further away from noises and sights. You lean your back against the wall now, the coolness of concrete seeping through the fabric of your shirt, and he stands a step in front of you. Your hands toy with the strap of your camera.

“Are you ready to win today?” you ask him, and look off to the right into the flourishing seats that are still being filled to the brim, “clearly there’s no pressure.”

He breathes in deep, and releases it slowly, like there really was tension to relieve. “We’ve got no choice but to win.”

“Is that something Coach Yaga says to you guys often?” you ask him, because the man recited the same thing about five times in that email chain. “Also, apparently you take years off of his life.” Another thing he recited about five times in that email chain.

Gojo only addresses what he wants to address, as per usual. “Yeah, it’s something he says to us often.” 

“So,” you say, “what did you want to talk about?”

He looks at you puzzled, tilting his head to the side. “Nothing. I just wanted to see you.”

It’s hard to assume that he didn’t have something to talk about with the intention of telling you to meet him here, because this is the same place you confessed to him a few weeks ago, and so is also the place he so painfully rejected you. But maybe he doesn’t think about these kinds of things as much as you do. “I see.”

His tongue pokes to his cheek as he studies your anticipating expression, and then he sighs, his shoulders slumping slightly. “What are we doing? I mean, I like you, and you like me too, at least I hope you still do. Why don’t we—…why don’t we just give it a go already? I don’t see how we can move forward if you won’t at least let me take you out on a date.”

Your hands stop fidgeting with your camera strap from his words, and you lick your lips, suddenly unable to keep eye contact with him so your gaze drifts down to his chest in front of you. His uniform is clean, no smudges of dirt or grass, just pure white fabric underneath heat-pressed blue and golden accents, and of course, that signature number 10. You’re sure he’s all you’ll ever think of when you see that number now for the rest of your life. 

You know when you want something so bad you don’t know what to do once you have it? Because it almost seems too good to be true? 

“I just wanted to let stuff between us breathe for a little bit,” you confess, “it’s just, it was a lot to deal with. Being around you when I thought you didn’t want me the way I wanted you. I don’t know if this is odd to say, and maybe I’m overthinking it, but I just feel like somewhere along the way, I kind of…forgot who you were for a little bit.” This kind of vulnerability would have you running away with your tail between your legs with anyone else, but not with him. Not after everything. 

His expression softens, melting away that confrontational energy he had earlier, and he nods slowly. He opens his mouth to speak, but he can’t seem to find words. The presence of them is there, though, you can feel them. But what good are his thoughts if not voiced? 

“I just wanted to spend a little bit of time getting to know you again, I guess.” You squeeze your arm in reassurance of yourself because he wasn’t giving it to you. You let out an awkward laugh. “I don’t really know what I’m saying right now, to be honest.”

You can tell he’s at a crossroads, and you think back to this week and his efforts to get you to open up to him again. You know how he feels right now, because it’s exactly how you felt when he rejected you. Like when someone is so close, yet so far, you can feel that they’re within arms reach but never truly. And they’re slipping away for some reason that you may never know, but all you can do is assume that it’s a fault of your own. You’re not really sure what he can do to make you feel secure about this whole thing anymore, and you can see the slight panic in his eyes when he realizes that too.

“I don’t mind waiting,” he tells you, rushed with a desperation entirely contrary to his words, “what’s a week or two when I want to spend a lot more of those with you anyways.” But he takes a deep breath, like he’s already mentally preparing himself for an agonizing wait in his head.

There’s a sound over the stadium speakers, something technical and sporty and goes entirely over your head in dismissal, but to Gojo it seems to have a different effect, as he’s suddenly attentive and stands up straighter, that focused expression on his face from earlier resurfacing. You realize he needs to get back to the field. 

“Can we continue this conversation after the game?” he asks you hastily, already turning towards the center of the stadium. And he adds an obligatory, “sorry.”

“Yeah, sure,” you quickly agree, suddenly feeling like you’re taking up his time. 

He gives you a small smile, unsure in its presentation but pure in its intention. But he can only take one step towards the field before you reach out and pinch the fabric of his jersey to keep him still. He feels the tug of it and fully faces you once again. 

“Um. Just a sec,” you say, “I have something to give you before your game.”

“Oh?” he looks at you with interest, “I fucking love things.” 

“You have to close your eyes though.”

“…what is the thing…” He squints at you with a what are you up to expression.

“Just close your eyes!” you snap at him.

“Okay, okay, jeez,” he holds his hands up in front of him in surrender, shaking his head to get his hair out of his face and then he closes his eyes. “You’re scary as hell sometimes. Excuse me for being cautious.”

You roll your eyes, useless because he doesn’t see it, and then take a step towards him. You cup his jaw with the palm of your hand, his cheek twitching slightly from the unexpected contact, and then you raise on your tiptoes to press your lips to his cheek. It’s short and sweet with the sound of a peck.

“For good luck,” you whisper, then you quickly lower yourself back onto your heels, take a step back and tuck some strands of hair behind your ear. The ground suddenly interests you.

He opens his eyes, blinking a few times with shock and his hand comes up to brush the tips of his fingers against the spot you kissed him, and then his gaze goes comically dazed when he reaches out to hold you. “Alright, c’mere you,” he says, closing his eyes and puckering his lips as he leans down to kiss you but you laugh and push his face away.

“No no no, only on the cheek for now,” you say with a small laugh.

He does nothing to restrain his frustrated groan. “You can’t do something that cute and then expect me to be chill about it.”

“If you win, then, maybe I’ll let you kiss me for real.”

“Maybe?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

He’s close, towering over you near this bustling east side entrance that he seems to like so much, and his eyes drop to your lips. “Alright. I like those odds.” 

You give him a smile and slip away from him to get back towards the field, and you feel his eyes on you as you walk away.

The pregame events are a blur, with blaring music accompanied by the sounds of the sports announcers clipping across the speakers, finally quieted down in time for the players to line up on the field for the national anthem which was then followed by UTokyo’s alma mater. 

You’re stationed on the same side of the field as Minato, UTokyo’s side, while Hana is covering the sidelines of the opposite end with the opponents goal post. Minato’s filling up a cup of Gatorade for himself at the athlete’s station and then he comes back around to find you.

“Are you ready to take your shots? I see Hana wanted you to shoot on film today,” he says to you as he sloshes around Glacier Freeze in a flimsy plastic cup.

You twist your aperture dial with your thumb. “Yesss, all set. I’ll try to keep up.” 

He nods at you in approval.

The atmosphere feels nerve wracking. Something felt different about this game, the stakes feeling high. Well, of course they’re high, because if they lose today then they’re out of the tournament. But the stakes feel high for other reasons too, an energy you can pick up on but can’t quite discern. 

Your eyes drift across the field where you can see a referee placing a ball at the center of the field. Off to the right, you can see Gojo standing with a few of his other teammates, including Geto, Nanami, and Choso, and they’re all gesticulating to various corners of the field as they discuss what you can only imagine have to do with their plays for today. And you realize— it’s their last college soccer season. Their second-to-last official home match before the championship, and for those of them that haven’t qualified for the national league, it may be their second-to-last match of this caliber for the rest of their lives. One of the final chances that they have to prove something of themselves. The determination was palpable. 

The chief referee’s whistle cuts through the air with three short chirps, and that gathers the attention of all the players on the field. UTokyo wins the coin toss, choosing to kickoff, and YCU’s players choose to attack the left side goal.

Your stomach churns with anticipation, the crowd hushing too as all the players take their places on the field. If you feel nervous, you can only imagine how the athletes feel. There’s a rhythm that you’ve learned over the past couple of months getting to know the sport, where players stretch out their necks and kick out their feet and take subtle deep breaths as they survey the stands. Idle moments before the start of the match where they have no choice but to look forward and only forward, so they take a moment to stay in the present for as long as they can gather. You’ve never been much of a sports spectator, and perhaps you’ve only recently had some personal interest in the team, but you realize you feel pride in your school as you stand behind chalk sideline and see UTokyo’s colors scattered across the field in uniform. And fuck, you wanted them to win. You wanted them to win with fierceness and wrath, and it’s a desire you share with the crowd. 

Gojo spends a minute talking to the referee before the black and white striped man pats him high on the back in the good sport and urges him towards the center of the field. He lifts his foot up onto the ball, rolling it back and forth underneath the spikes of his cleat, and you can see it in his eyes, even from all the way over here, that he seems to have different ideas in mind for this game too. High stakes. Pre-determined, set with will, evident in the clench of his jaw and the concentrated furrow of his brow as he surveys the field with his eyes, and you’re lost in the sight for what feels like forever because you can hardly register the chirp of the ref’s whistle. 

And then the kickoff starts. 

The ball is tapped to Geto to start the play, and the first few minutes were intense as the ball was passed back and forth between UTokyo’s players, placing pressure on YCU’s defense as they inched closer and closer towards the goal. A pass between UTokyo’s #4 was intercepted by YCU and the ball was rushed down towards the left side, the crowd’s horror evident in the uproar as they raise to their feet in fearful anticipation, and with ruthless offense, YCU’s forward takes a clear sink shot towards the goal, and the crowd holds their breath before they watch Choso lunge for it in air, gloved hands firmly grabbing the ball and then pulling it to his chest with a possessiveness you can only expect to see from a skilled goalie, before he crashes down into the ground and the crowd releases relief in the form of rowdy roars.

Ten minutes in, with everyone on their toes, each team tested each other’s defenses. UTokyo were known for stellar offense, especially within the past few years with players like Gojo Satoru and Takuma Ino joining the league as powerful forwards, but UTokyo’s overall offense was still statistically second to none other than YCU. And the pressure YCU was putting on UTokyo’s defense was wearisome to say the least. You glance to see Nanami, who is UTokyo’s best defensive player, huffing and puffing as he stands between two light-footed YCU players in an attempt to guard, and fails an attempt to steal the ball before it gets to the feet of YCU’s striker #6, passed in a split second off to his teammate, with a fake so seamless that it has Choso just a couple inches away from touching the ball before it’s sent flying into the net. 

The noises from the crowd are still loud, but dampened in spirit. 

With the referees hand signal up in the air, the current score is confirmed. 0-1, YCU. 

Coach Yaga calls for a sub, in which he switches Nanami out for who you believe is a 2nd-year defensive player name Yuta you’ve seen around practice with a promising statistical record for interceptions, and you watch as Nanami takes the bench before he swipes the sweat off his face in exhaustion. God. Just fifteen minutes into the match, and YCU already has UTokyo’s defense winded from play. 

You bring your camera up to your face, forgetting for a moment that there was still a job to do here, and you position the direction of the lens towards the center of the field, where Gojo takes his place at the ball once more. Yuta briefly passes by him, signaling some play to him by holding up a number three, likely something Coach Yaga asked him to pass on to Gojo, and you see him briefly nod, his mouth slightly agape as he breathes slowly and pulls his jersey up to wipe at the sweat at his forehead. 

The referee chirps the whistle, Gojo taps the ball to Yuta, and the play starts. 

YCU immediately puts pressure on UTokyo’s offensive play once more, with eager movements to steal the ball, but it’s passed between UTokyo’s players with ease, more practiced and more sure. The kind of play that you and the rest of the school was used to seeing from them. However, Geto loses the ball on a left-back pass, but right when YCU makes attempts to cover field in a long-shot kick towards the left, Yuta intercepts the ball and swiftly passes it to Gojo.

The crowd immediately rises to their feet in anticipation, watching as Gojo shuffles the ball down the field, dangerously close to off-field boundaries, a signature tactic he uses because he knows there’s not a single player in the league that can match him in precision and control to keep the ball in-field on a steal, and he swiftly passes it towards Geto with a side-swept kick, beelining down towards the goal post, in perfect time for Geto pass-back to meet his feet and when Gojo was this close to a net, there was no stopping him. 

He draws his right foot back, and explosively kicks the ball forward, chipping the grass under it in the motion, and it’s sent flying towards the goal, and then threaded past the goalie right to the back of the net. The cheers that erupt across the stadium rumble the ground beneath you. 

1-1, even match.

UTokyo spends no time celebrating, other than a few pats to Gojo’s back as he nods in acknowledgement, no emotion on his face other than pure concentration and greed. The greed to win, like a righteous sin. He stretches his neck out, panting slightly as he takes his place towards the right side of the field and the referee chirps his whistle to signal YCU to start the kickoff.

They quickly make attempts in moving the ball towards their scoring-end of the field, but face push-back from UTokyo’s defense, unable to make it much further past the midfield line, and you bring your camera up to take a snap of Gojo, who you see is still standing off to the right side of the field. But when you position it and peer through the viewfinder, that space he once stood at was empty. You pull your camera down, and blink at the sight, and then the crowd is picking up in volume once more.

Gojo sprints down the flank, cutting past every defender, and moves towards YCU’s attacking goal, which was a shocking place to be for a center forward, but you could feel his desire and determination to steal this back-and-forth ball, and succeeds when YCU makes an open pass, thinking they were in the clear, only to have Gojo sneak in at the last moment and get the ball at his feet. 

The play moves by in a flash, a blur that you or anyone else in the stadium could hardly keep up with it, movements so fast you were shocked a human being was capable of even running that far in such a short amount of time, and in an almost embarrassingly easy play, Gojo makes a fool out of YCU’s defenders as he slips the ball through the legs of his last obstacle before he struck it with sharp precision, sending it soaring to the corner of the goal, past the outstretched arms of the goalie, and into the net. 

2-1, UTokyo.

It was electrifying, the feeling that strikes through the stadium, one that reaches you in your own blood. You’re shocked, standing here, after witnessing Gojo score two goals within the matter of minutes, against one of the top three teams in the league. It’s a shock that reaches everyone, including Coach Yaga who’s standing about ten feet down the line from you, his arms crossed, and you see his eyes for the first time as he takes his sunglasses off to get a better look at what he’s seeing.

You trail his sight, dragging your gaze across the field until it lands at Gojo, who is barely acknowledging the encouraging pats and shakes and goodhearted shoves that his teammates were giving him, because he was focused. It might sound crazy to say, but you swear his eyes looked like a fiercer shade of blue, like they were lit up, and you’re insanely glad you’re not one of YCU’s defensive players at the moment because you feel fearful of him even just standing on the sidelines. 

Your gaze trails back to Coach Yaga, who slowly puts his sunglasses back on but his brows are narrowed tightly as he crosses his arms over his chest tightly.

The “athletic zone”... You’ve heard of it before. A state of pure focus, of peak performance, where an athlete experiences optimal concentration and a sense of effortless control over their actions. In which they perform at their highest level, where time slows down, any and all distractions fade away, and they’re completely immersed in their sport at hand. At the task at hand.

Coach Yaga seems to pick up on the fact that Gojo was on the edge of tapping into that state. 

YCU makes a substitution, and you watch in anticipation as they begin the kickoff. 

There’s fire in their veins with desperation to even out the score once more, rushing the ball down the off-field line, one of their center forwards mimicking Gojo’s signature attack pattern, and Yuta struggles to keep up with the expert dribbling of a fourth-year player with more experience on him, so much so to where he completely leaves the ball unguarded and there’s an open shot, but Geto places pressure at the last moment, in a fierce battle for the ball, before YCU’s center forward loses the ball over the goal line. 

Choso picks the ball up, tapping on it harshly a few times as he surveys his eyes down the field, and all offensive players begin to shuffle towards their attacking goal in anticipation for the goal kick. He signals his hand down and then holds up two fingers in the air before placing the ball down on the six-yard box. He tightens the strap of one of his gloves, eyes squinting, and you follow his gaze down to a part of the field where you note UTokyo’s best aerial players are located and being guarded by YCU’s defense. And with complete trust in his team, that’s exactly where he kicks the ball. 

Geto makes first contact with the ball, his chest colliding with two other YCU players as his head comes out on top and he headbutts the ball closer towards the inner field, and Gojo immediately gains access to it with a bounce of his knee. The crowd holds their breath, fear that they’ll lose the ball to a steal in the split second it spends floating in the air, but Gojo urges it forward with a bounce off of his chest and then rushes it straight down towards the goal post. 

You wonder what sight he sees right now. Where you’re dead center, at no angle, lunging towards the sight of an open goal with a sole goalie standing in the center, anticipating to block your shot, and three defenders on your tail. There’s no room for error, no time to think, only instincts that you cultivate in the last leading milliseconds. They say that, in sports, athletes channel one hundred hours of practice in just a brief second on the field. A split second success that was years in the making. You can’t even imagine possessing that level of perfection in your body, or possessing that level of confidence that you can follow through with it in a moment as dire as this.

It was unreal, the way Gojo fades away from all the defenders, and faces no fear when confronted with the sight of the goalie in front of him while drawing his foot back to kick the ball. You lift your camera up at the last second, no time to think about aperture or ISO, just like he had no time to second-doubt a single twitch in his muscles, and his foot makes contact with the ball so harshly that you can hear the explosive sound even among the delirious cheers from the crowd, before he hook, line, and sinks it straight past the goalie’s head, rushing by like a scarcely deflected bullet, and into the net behind him. 

3-1, UTokyo.

The whole stadium is momentarily speechless, all players and referees and recruiters and reporters and coaches and employees alike, before the most deafening cheers you’ve ever heard in your life scatter across the stands.

There’s a moment of brief reprieve, where the players can catch their breath while YCU makes yet another substitution, as if they’re just trial-and-erroring it at this point, and the cheers in the stadiums remain idle as you can’t tear your gaze away from Gojo.

It’s one of those moments where you realize that someone who you thought was so familiar to you was actually someone you hardly knew at all. You knew he was a talented soccer player, everyone on campus knows it, potentially one of the best to ever grace the league, and the amount of times you passively watched his plays on a lecture hall projector screen as your professor enthusiastically broke them down during class, even before you met him, was good enough for you to realize that he was insane, a one-in-a-million, a talent you cannot replicate, one you have by divinity. One you were born with. 

And yet, somehow, getting to know him these past couple of months, he just felt so human. For someone so seemingly beyond you, he felt so…close? In those moments where it was just the two of you, it was hard to imagine that he was capable of such greatness, and that so many people were rooting for him with wholehearted tears in their eyes and cheers from their hearts, because most of the time, when he was with you, he was just a dorky idiot. You find that your heart is beating fast in your chest, that feeling of being unsure of what to do with what you’ve been wanting resurfacing powerfully. 

“This is insane,” you hear Minato say from beside you and you jump a little from your thoughts being interrupted.

You twiddle with your camera straps. “I know…almost done with the first half and we’re up 3-1…I thought YCU are number one in offense for the league?”

“Oh, yeah, I mean, yes, that is insane too. But what’s even more insane is that three of the goals so far have been scored by one player.” He tips his chin towards the right sight of the field and you trail his line of sight. “By Gojo Satoru.”

Your brow furrows as you watch Gojo, his hands on his hips and his mouth slightly open as he indulges in a few shallow breaths to gain energy while YCU prepares for kickoff. Three goals, by just one player. Your eyes widen when you realize that is insane, especially for a D1 semi-final qualifying match.

“You know what the divisional record is for most goals scored by a single player during a championship match, y/n?” Minato asks you as he lifts his camera up to take a picture of the area Gojo was standing in. 

You shake your head and wait for his response.

He drops his camera down and glances at the photo on his screen. “Four. During Keio Uni vs. Osaka Uni, near the beginning of the tournament back in 1997 by Osaka’s center forward number 24, Yuji Nakazawa. Meaning no one’s managed to beat that record since the new millenia, for a couple decades. Although a few players came close.”

You blink at him, and Minato is jerking his chin over in the direction of Gojo again.

“I think he’s trying to beat the record.”

You can only widen your eyes at Minato in realization, and then the chirp of the referee’s whistle draws everyone’s attention back to the field. 

The sports announcers go wild on the speakers, the crowd raving all the same, standing to their feet like the team just won the championship match.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!! We are watching HISTORY in the making!! Gojo Satoru, UTokyo’s very own 3-year consecutive MVP, has scored his 34th goal of the season, highest of any player in this year’s season so far, and is now on the road to beat the league’s long-standing record for most goals scored by a single player in a championship match since 1997!!” And the crowd roars even louder as you stare out at the field in awe.

YCU starts the kickoff following the prompt short chirp of the referee’s whistle, and with two minutes remaining on the clock for the first half, make desperate attempts to book it down the field towards their attacking goal, one of their midfielders making a clumsy attempt to strike the ball to the net in the final minutes of the half, and Choso easily catches it in his arms, right before the buzzer of the timer sounds, and the match moves into halftime. 

All of UTokyo’s players immediately flock towards Gojo in sportful glee, finally having a chance to surround him and harass him with harsh pats on his back and ruffles of his hair for his play in the first half. Choso even puts him in a headlock because they all don’t know what else to do with their excitement and adrenaline rushing through their bodies. Their win for today was basically confirmed with the way he was playing. 

You catch a glimpse of him through the crowd of people, and he has a boyish grin on his face, reveling in the embarrassing amount of attention from his teammates, that focused look from before dissolving into his normal self again. But you can see through him, as well enough as you’ve learned to at least, and you can tell he’s not satisfied. He’s thinking it’s not enough. There’s still more to be done, and it’s not time to celebrate yet. 

His eyes scan down the sideline until they find you. 

Your heart jumps a second in your chest. He stands up straighter, despite his teammates still clinging to him, and there’s a twinkle in his eyes when your eyes meet. 

Cheerleaders take their place out onto the field, performing their numbers with loud music blaring, and the recruiters seated at their white tables get up to roam across the sidelines in discussion with referees and with Coach Yaga and with whatever players they can sink their greedy teeth into, as well as sneak at refreshments while they’re at it. You can see off to the right that Hana has reunited with Minato and she’s showing him some of the shots she took over at the opponent's side. 

UTokyo’s players start to make their way to the benches to grab for towels and drinks of water and to sprawl across in rest, and you hear loud familiar laughter approaching as you watch the players sprawl across the benches, so you avert your eyes towards the source of the sound. 

You see Gojo approaching the benches, two of his teammates slung with their arms around him in some type of adrenaline-drunken glee as they talk dramatically and theatrically which Gojo entertains with his own drunk-off-of-adrenaline glee. And you raise an eyebrow at his demeanor when he makes eye contact with you.

“There’s my freaky little photographer,” he says, and he’s standing up straight and—wait, is he puffing his chest out as he makes his way towards you? Oh for fucks sake.

Gojo has always been confident around you, for as long as you can remember, but in the fair few moments he’s been cocky, he’s been a menace. And you can only assume the testosterone-induced high of being on the verge of breaking a league record in front of the entire school then subsequently getting homiesexually praised by his teammates for the better part of the past five minutes, not to mention with the crowd and the reporters feeding his ego with a spoon across the speakers, he’s been transformed into the final boss of cocky.

His teammates surround you too, their hands on their hips as they assess you and Gojo when he meanders right up to you, arms held out to hug you, a sleazy sight you’ve seen probably six times this week, and you feel a rush of warmth in your cheeks as you place a hand on his chest to keep him away.

“You’re sweaty and gross, please stay away from me,” you reprimand him, “this is an expensive lens that is not humidity-proof.” 

“Hey, you’re the girl that Kentaro socked in the face with a ball the other day at practice, right?” one of his teammates asks, leaning in towards you to take a closer look at your face.

“Oh yeahhh, ‘cause Satoru wasn’t paying attention,” another one of his teammates chimes in teasingly, hardly heard over the loud remix playing in the background as the cheerleaders continue to perform on the field. 

You shrink a little from where you stand. Gojo’s got an irritated look on his face and he’s shrugging his teammate’s elbow off of his shoulder.

“I really hope you’re getting my good angles,” his teammate to the left comments before winking at you, and you purse your lips together. 

The one on the right leans in too, looking at your cheek with an assessing look in his eye. “At least it didn’t leave a scar on your cute face—”

Gojo shoves the both of them back and away from you by elbowing them in the chest, and they make deep eugh noises before stepping away and rubbing at their sternums with pouts on their faces.

“Get the fuck away from her,” he grumbles, “she’s mine.”

Your cheeks flush slightly with warmth at the attention, and you watch as his teammates scurry away to adhere to some social hierarchy Gojo seems to possess over them.

You raise an eyebrow at him. “Yours?”

“Yes. Eventually. Whatever, did you see me out there?” he turns his torso towards the field and points behind himself with his thumb, “when I—”

“Oh god, you know what’s soooooooooo super sexy to me?” you interrupt him. “When guys are humble.”

“Oh c’monnn,” he curls his arm around your waist and pulls you to him, to where you stumble a little on grass and he holds you when you fall into him with more clumsiness than grace. “Tell me you aren’t at least impressed by me.”

You pout, because you are, and you’d really like to give him some reassurance and validation, but for some reason his cocky attitude is setting you off. “Satoru,” you sigh, wiggling a little in his hug, but he holds you tighter, “I’m working right now. Cut it out.”

He lets go of you at that, sober enough from the adrenaline to realize you’re being serious, but he steps into your space so only you can hear him. “What? Are you embarrassed?”

“Of what?” Your face twists with confusion.

“Of me. Are you embarrassed of me?” he asks.

“No. Why would I be embarrassed of you?” you ask with sharpness.

“I don’t know, just, sometimes I feel like you’re always annoyed by me,” he says with a sigh. “It’s like, you’re really sweet sometimes, and then kinda rude out of nowhere, and it’s sort of messing with my head.”

You pout. “You were messing with my head for weeks.”

“And I’m sorry about that,” he quickly interjects, like he already knew you were brewing up that counterargument, “but you don’t have to act like you’re all disinterested and indifferent just to get back at me for it.” He places his hands on his hips and wipes his temple on the round part of his shoulder when he feels a drop of sweat trickle down from his hairline. “You don’t have to act embarrassed around me either.”

“I’m not embarrassed,” you deny, and your cheeks feel hot, and for some reason you feel angry. “In fact, I’m the one that should be asking you that question. Because I still very clearly remember that time you said I was just someone you know in front of your friends.”

He groans and tilts his head back with frustration. “Can you just let that go? Things have changed between us since then. Move on.” 

“You kissed me and then pretended I was just a stranger to you in front of your friends,” you grit as you cross your arms. “That’s the level of sincerity that I know from you, Satoru.”

“Oh, okay, so there’s nothing else I’ve done that shows you that I’m serious about you?” he asks rhetorically with incredulity, throwing his hands up in the air in disbelief.

No. That’s not true, not true at all. But he’s pissed you off now and so all logic was to the wind. “Doesn’t matter. If you’re not embarassed of me, and if you’re really serious about me this time, then fucking prove it.” You’re speaking out of spite, and you fear you’ve just set him off too.

“Fine,” he says, and he grabs the microphone straight out from a passing reporter’s hand, replacing it with a gatorade bottle. The reporter stares at the bottle he’s now holding with confusion. “I will.”

“W-Wait—” you squeak out, feeling the hair at the back of your neck bristle in anticipation and a shiver gets sent down your spine. The cheerleaders are making their way off the field at the end of their routine, and you can hear the thumps across the loud boisterous speakers when Gojo whacks his palm to the microphone to make sure the thing was on before he jogs to the center of the field.

The crowd is already cheering, ecstatic to see the afternoon's star player and pride & joy of their school, and Gojo takes a moment to soak in all the glory in comical appreciation with bowing towards all 360 degree angles of the stadium.

“Uhhh,” you hear Choso from beside you, who’s strapping his thick goalie gloves tightly to his wrists, “Why the fuck does Satoru have a microphone while standing in the middle of the field.”

“It can’t be for any publicly decent reason,” Geto muses.

All you can do is watch.

“Hi, uh,” Gojo starts, static blaring slightly across the speakers and the crowd winces with him, “sorry. I’m Satoru, Gojo Satoru, you might know me from—uh, the game you’ve been watching?”

Cheers all around, because as if a single person wouldn’t know who he is. The stands were rowdy and most definitely drunk off of sidestep beers the stadium has been serving all afternoon long. 

Gojo is about to continue speaking, when he catches sight of the table of recruiters in the corner of his eye and he turns to face them out of respect. “Oh, yeah, uh, number 10,” he tugs his jersey up at the shoulder to stretch out the fabric, the 1 and the 0 flattened in view, “division player ID 233-997. Coach Yaga keeps my business cards in his purse if you want one.”

“SAAAAATTOOORRUUUU!!!!!” you hear Coach Yaga yell from somewhere in the distance.

“Anywho,” Gojo continues, and the music dims slightly, so he glances at the stop clock on the screen, which shows him he’s got roughly five minutes left to pull off whatever idiocracy he had in mind before the second half of the game starts. “Just here to say that there’s this girl I really like.”

The crowd gets louder, almost deafening, and sonically mostly feminine in (delusional) hope he’s gonna name call one of them.

Gojo’s voice is crisp and clear through the speakers as he clarifies. “She’s standing over there,” he says as he nonchalantly points to your exact latitude and longitudinal direction, “with the big camera slung around her neck that looks like it could pull her down to the center of the earth. Yeah. She’s super cute and I really like talking to her.”

“Uh-oh,” Geto murmurs from beside you, and you glance at him to try to get a read on the situation but you can’t.

Gojo starts to pace across the center of the field now, like he’s working the crowd. “But get this—she thinks I’m not fuckin’ serious about her!!!”

The crowd groans with him in unison. Yep, most certainly drunk. Or high off of glee. Either way, he’s playing them like a violin.

“Huh?” Gojo’s voice sounds distant now, away from the mic, and you can see on the large pixelated screen that he’s being interrupted by someone that looks like one of the videographers, “oh, what’s that? This is being broadcasted? Uh-huh. Oh. I’m not allowed to cuss? Oh fuck, okay. Er— shit, okay. Wait—shoot, okay.”

Choso’s smirk is heard from beside you, and you catch Geto and Nanami shaking their heads in your periphery.

“LIKE I SAID,” Gojo continues into the mic, “the girl I like thinks I’m just messing around, so. Uh. To show her that I’m serious about her, I’m gonna…” He looks up at the sky to ponder, and you can hear people shouting all sorts of suggestions of nonsense from the crowd. And instead of saying proclaim my undying affection for her through a romantic soliloquy straight from my heart in the presence of the entire school, he says—“I’m gonna strip. Yes. Down to my tighty whities, Imma strip.”

H–

Huh?!?!?

You don’t even have time to be horrified or scared, you’re just bewildered beyond belief that that’s what he came up with.

What the fuck kind of reassurance did you ask for. And what the fuck kind of reassurance were you about to get?

The crowd goes wild, it’s no surprise to say everyone and their mothers wants to see him naked, even the straight dudes would dig it for the gym inspo. And he points straight to you, sleazy look on his face and you’re going to ignore the fact that he just winked at you too as he crosses his arms to hold the hem of his jersey and pulls it up over his head in the most raunchy and slutty way a man can take his shirt off.

The music manager is quick with the bit, and is most definitely a fellow Gen Z college student, because Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack (ft. Timbaland) starts playing across the speakers and the crowd goes ballistic.

“Ayo why’s Satoru Magic Mike’ing the field right now?” one of his other teammates calls out through a mouthful of protein bar, “What the fuck did I miss?”

The cameraman does God’s work in a hella zoom-in of Gojo’s sweat glistened abs, then pans up the naked expanse of the perfect taut skin across his chest, and you can’t help but stare even among all your horror. It’s like when a male bird embarrasses the fuck outta himself to attract a female bird sitting on a perch, except instead of within the context of a NatGeo documentary, this was your real life. Everyone wants him, but he’s making a fool out of himself for you. 

He pretends to stretch his arms up into the air, a cover-up to flex his biceps, and then he kicks his cleats off, and the socks come off too. Entirely unnecessary, as showing one's ankles is simply too slutty, but alas he’s a whore. And when his thumbs dip into the waistband of his shorts, and there’s anticipating screeching from the crowd, he finally gets chased by security. 

Except he’s an intercollegiate D1 athlete, why the fuck wouldn’t he be able to outrun a bunch of dudes in black?

The camerawork on him is phenomenal as he runs across the sidelines of the field, eliciting a wave down the bleachers. So good in fact that you’re pretty sure the camera man could shoot for the Olympic track and field, with the way the stadium’s got a clear sight of Gojo mouthing the lyrics Them other fuckers don’t know how to act from the song still blaring with satirical rage on his face as he makes a fool of the men chasing him around the perimeter of the field.

And then he does it, drops his shorts, discards them with a kick, and he’s down to his tighty whities as promised. Cameraman has got to be displaying some previously undiscovered level of talent as he zeroes in on a shot of said tighty whities, with Gojo’s—forgive me, I need to be crass—huge bulge prominent in Big Dick Energy fashion except his tighty whities have little red hearts in rows across the fabric so do with that duality what you will.

He’s outrun security with a steady grin on his face as he eats up the drunken crowd’s cheers and riots and roars and you feel like you’re the only sane person in this stadium, or maybe you’re just not used to the fanatics of a college sports crowd. You peep the men in black trailed all the way on the left side of the field where they abandoned their pursuit of Gojo.

He taps imaginary pockets at his thighs, very muscular thighs you take indulgence in noticing, as if he expected to find something there, and he looks around when he doesn’t. He shrugs and grabs the microphone of the next passing sports commentator he spots, and then he makes his way back to you.

His breathing is a little shallow, and he inhales deep to catch his breath. “Baby.” The crowd SCREAMS at the way he purrs the word into the mic. “Will you do me the honor,” he’s huffing and puffing, heard across blaring speakers, “of being my lawfully wedded girlfriend?” And then he holds the mic to your lips.

“W-Wha—” you stutter, and there’s chanting across the crowd with words that barely make sense until you finally realize they’ve started to yell say yes! say yes! say yes! “Oh my gosh, okay, yes, fine, now please, for the love of god, put some freaking clothes on!”

The crowd goes wild with cheerful glees, and Gojo shoots fists up in the air in celebration as he runs all the way towards the center of the field with high knees, and you’re gawking at the sight, before he falls backward onto the grass and makes delirious snow angels on the ground. You see Coach Yaga’s vein popping in his neck from pure agitation as he storms off towards the center of the field to knock some sense into Gojo, but you know that Coach Yaga can’t kick him out, because they still have a game to win. The perks of being the most valued player in the league is getting to act like an absolutely insane idiot because you know they still need you in the end to bring it home.

You glance to the right, seeing his teammates nodding slowly then getting back to wrapping athletic tape around ankles and stretching out shoulders, with immediate acceptance of his actions like it wasn’t even out of character for him to do. And you realize again that you don’t know Gojo as well as you think you do.

And then the halftime timer is up.

You see Gojo approach the benches in a quick jog, squeezing some water into his mouth with his green gatorade squirt bottle, and when your eyes flit up to the screens on all four entrances, you see that the cameramen are still all focused on him accompanied by the continued buzz of conversation among the crowd following his public spectacle. But he seems to already be past any semblance of embarrassment as he takes the attention with ease, before he glances up to make eye contact with you and then lightly jogs right up to you.

“Did that prove to you that I’m not embarrassed of you?” he asks you, cocking a brow with a smug look on his face as he gets all up in your personal space. 

“I don’t know, but I’m certainly thoroughly and expeditiously embarrassed of you now,” you say, cheeks feeling flush when he leans forward so he can make eye contact with you at eye level. “I’ll have to move to a different country.”

His grin is relaxed. “Yeah well you asked for it.”

“Maybe. But I underestimated what a lunatic you are.”

“You’re my girlfriend now, you’ve gotta get used to it.”

Your heart skips a beat in your chest. “Satoru–”

“Tomorrow,” he cuts you off, “Hinode pier. I’ll pick you up at six. It’s a date, so wear something cute. And preferably easy to take off.” And then he’s attentive to the chirp of the referee’s whistle in the air before jogging backwards towards the feel and eventually turns on his heel towards the field while you’re left with warm cheeks and a heart that felt like it was moving at a mile a minute.

The timer for the second half refreshes on the screen while you loosely hold your camera in your shaking hands. It occurs to you that you haven’t taken a single photo of him before the start of the kickoff, and so you bring the piece of consolidated metal up to your eyes, peering through the viewfinder and focusing it on the center of the field. And there he was. Your muse.

Gojo lets out a breath, which you can see even from here that it’s shaky and staggered with resistance, and he lifts his jersey up to swipe at the sweat trickling down his face as he eyes the ball underneath YCU’s player’s foot just prior to the start of the second half. There it was—that look again of pure focus. 

3-1, forty-five minutes on the clock. And the referee chirps the whistle to start the second half.

It’s immediately evident that YCU has returned to the field following halftime with renewed energy, pressing high down the flank relentlessly past UTokyo’s defense, so fast it was hard for anybody to even keep a steady eye on the ball with the fluidity of their passes. The persistence pays off in the fake double-pass that slips past Geto’s feet, a moment of hesitation in the broken flow of UTokyo’s defense, and one of YCU’s strikers has the perfect line of shot towards the goal before digging his foot under the ball and sending it flying towards the corner of the goal post, scoring themselves a goal within just the first five minutes of play.

3-2.

The pressure mounts at the next kickoff, and with about seven minutes of solid play, with back-and-forth passes, multiple attempts at both goal posts to no avail on either side, it was clear that exhaustion was bustling in the veins of all the players.

One of YCU’s offensive players seems to capitalize on this, jumping on a defensive lapse of a pass Nanami attempted to make towards Yuta, and the ball is swiftly stolen then raced back towards the goal post. Choso prepared himself at the line, light on his feet paired with a solid stance, but in a millisecond of a moment, YCU’s offense unexpectedly passes the ball to a player racing up the midfield, and the player chips the ball neatly into the exposed corner of the goal despite Choso’s attempt to lunge for it in mid air.

Equalized, 3-3 game, momentary shock across the players’ faces, and the crowd bustles with something that sounds less like glee and more life fear. YCU was prepared to live up to and hold onto their title as the league’s number one offense, and as Minato explained to you during your time working in this job, an offensive team isn’t good at scoring goals, but rather exceptional at breaking down the other team’s defense.

Your eyes zero in on Geto, who stands in the center of the field for kickoff, and he’s huffing and puffing. He's the lead of defense for the team, and you can only imagine the level of pressure he feels right now. He glances around to his players, over to Nanami who seemed to share the same level of exhaustion, and then he glances towards Gojo who stood in front of him off to the right. Except you notice that Gojo looks relaxed, albeit still exhausted, but there’s a composed expression on his face even in the moment of heightened stakes. With locked eyes, Geto nods at Gojo and raises two fingers up into the air to signal a play, of which Gojo seems to respond to by closing more distance between him and the goal post prior to the kickoff, positioning himself almost directly in front of it, to which YCU’s defense immediately begin to guard him in a tight radius. 

The kickoff begins, with Geto making a few passbacks with Nanami as they close distance towards the field before passing it off to UTokyo’s string of offense and then receding back to their defending goal. UTokyo continues to close distance, raising stakes for YCU as their defense begins to falter under pressure, and the ball gets passed to Gojo, who only keeps it in possession for less than three seconds before he passes it back to Yuuji, a risky decision to make in the second half of a semifinal match, but the first-year swiftly unleashes a powerful shot that rockets past YCU’s goalkeeper, up towards the corner, except–

It bounces off the metal of the goal post, shot off with projectile speed back towards the center of the field, but with razor-sharp reflexes, Gojo headbutts the ball in air, twists his torso and strikes the ball with his foot past a dumbfounded goalie who can’t even move an inch to guard the ball that he already knew was going to sink right into the goal, and that’s exactly what it does. 

The stadium erupts with the momentum.

4-3, UTokyo. 

It was a sweet moment, one you manage to capture on camera of Gojo running up to Yuuji and ruffling his hair in reassurance, despite the missed goal. Your heart feels warm in your chest, feeling your own sense of melancholy that this was one of the last times they’ll ever get to play together on a team. 

Your eyes widen when you glance at the scoreboard, realizing that he’s tied. Gojo is tied for the most goals scored during a championship match. There were less than three minutes left on the clock. UTokyo either preserves their lead, or they risk moving into overtime, which, judging by the exhaustion on the UTokyo players’ faces in the wake of YCU’s relentless offense this entire game, moving into overtime would be a hefty, hefty risk. 

YCU’s center forward takes his place in the center of the field, fire evident in his eyes as he glances across the field. YCU are light on their feet, channeling everything in their bodies into these last moments of the game as they prepare to start the kickoff. You glance across UTokyo’s players, and although they look spent, there was a resolute look to all of them. It wasn’t the time to give up or feel at ease even near the end of this grueling battle. Now was the time to play. 

The referee chirped his whistle, and the kickoff began.

YCU immediately presses hard, as all their other plays have been all game, in their desperation to score. You can already see UTokyo’s midfielders move sluggishly in comparison to YCU’s offense, a drag to their feet as YCU pushes past the first layer of defense towards their attacking goal. Geto takes an aggressive approach, making moves to steal the ball while Nanami and Yuta guarded both flanks, and there was a relentless pass-off happening that ate up more than a minute of the remaining time.

Nanami succeeds in stealing the ball, but immediately loses it under his feet by a YCU midfielder, who makes a broad pass down the sidelines to YCU’s star forward who then powerfully kicks the ball towards the unguarded area of their goal, a dangerous shot that was clear towards the crossbar and Choso makes a leap for it, high into the air, his glove brushing against the ball, the entire crowd holding their breath in anticipation–

And the ball lands in the net. 

4-4, tied game. With one minute and seventeen seconds left on the clock. 

There was no time wasted in getting back to center field. No time spent dwelling in the horrific roars of the crowd as they watch with anxiety and fear. No time spent to process or consider or signal any plays. Not even a single second used to catch breath. When there is this much at stake, an athlete thrives on momentum. 

To your surprise, Gojo isn’t the one that takes place at the center of the field to start the kickoff. Yuta stands there instead, and you notice his eyes are erratic as he surveys all corners of the field. 

The referee chirps his whistle. 

Yuta immediately passes it off to the side to UTokyo’s midfielder, who curls it towards their attacking goal with a swift pass to Ino, who closes distance towards the goal, but one of YCU’s defender slips in, undoing any progress they had made in their offense by stealing the ball and sending it back towards mid-field. Forty-three seconds. The crowd’s roars heightened as YCU continued to push forward, thirty yards now from scoring, and UTokyo’s defense was desperate to stop them but their momentum was cracking in the wake of their exhaustion. 

It was a moment you don’t think you could ever fully or truly recall, one that you wish you had focused all your energy and attention to so that you could commit it to memory for the rest of your life. The image of Gojo pushing all the way to ten yards before their defending goal, a place where no center forward should really be at in a game like this, but it was exactly what their defense needed. It was exactly what the team needed. It was exactly what the school needed. For the ball to be in his possession.

With twenty-two seconds left on the clock, he steals the ball from right under YCU’s offensive feet, and then charges towards the opposite side of the field. The crowd rises to their feet, thunderous roaring that overtook any and all senses, as Gojo weaves through forwards, center forwards, midfielders, and defenders, covering the entire span of the field in lightning time. Fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards, twenty hards, ten yards–

In a moment you couldn’t believe, he digs his foot underneath the ball, and sends it flying out towards the goal. There was not even a margin of an inch in which it slipped past the goalie’s hands, past his head, and swiftly flew right into the net.

With three-two-one seconds, the match was over. 

5-4, UTokyo’s win.

The final whistle blew, and for a moment, there was silence. As if the world paused to catch its breath. Then, all at once, the crowd erupted with glee that shook the entire stadium at its core. Flags waving, scarves held high, toasts of beer held up to the sky, it was deafening, and it almost makes you want to cry. Thousands of voices shouting in unison, celebrating the hard-fought victory of their school’s team. A type of pride that was fostered, and well-deserved, and long-lived.

You quickly glance towards the field again, and see Gojo standing right at the same spot where he had kicked the last and final goal, staring towards the net. You can’t see the expression on his face, but it surprises you how still he is. Like a statue, staring at the goal with the ball tucked into its corner. The very epitome of what it means to succeed in this sport was right in front of him, and it seemed like he wanted to soak the visual in for as long as he could.

His trance is abruptly interrupted when his teammates swarm in, rushing over like a wave of pure adrenaline. They slap him on the back, ruffle his hair, shout his name, the sounds of gleeful disbelief mixed with exhausted sighs of relief swarming into the air. And Gojo finally melts away from the tension of the match and into the celebration as he weakly returns the embraces of his teammates while he catches his breath. 

“IT’S OFFICIAL!! IT’S OFFICIAL!! UTOKYO’S VERY OWN GOJO SATORU HAS OBLITERATED OSAKA UNIVERSITY’S RECORD FOR MOST GOALS SCORED BY A SINGLE PLAYER IN A CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH!!” 

The speakers are blaring the voices of the sports announcers, along with ambient music to match the intensity of the match that everyone had just witnessed. 

You should probably be doing your job. You know, take a picture of the huddle of players on the field as they bask in the glory of a close victory, but instead your feet start moving on their own. Like a magnet drawn to him, you make your way towards Gojo, only a slight hesitation in your step as you stop about ten feet away, suddenly unsure. But when he makes eye contact with you, all that fear melts away.

He hastily pats the backs of some of his teammates, acknowledging their praise at the center of the huddle before tightly squeezing past them to make his way over to you. Your heart is beating fast in your chest, feeling an almost overwhelming sense of pride in your school’s team, but more importantly, in him. What was the acceptable thing to do? Run to him, into his arms, and hug him while he twirls you around? Tackle him to the grassy ground? Kiss him like your life depended on it? You have no clue what the acceptable or sane or normal thing to do is. But he’s made his decision for you when he walks right up to you, his hands holding your waist as he pulls you towards him. He smells earthy, of grass and salt and sweat and of all the hard work he poured into today, the wear and tear of the game evident in the wear and tear of his jersey. He only manages to huff out an exhale at the sight of you, like some relief washing over him just by looking into your eyes. Forget the fact that the crowd was all watching and that all of the screens you could see past his head were focused on the two of you, because all you could hear or see or think was him.

“I believe you owe me a kiss,” he says, huffing as he catches his breath but that doesn’t stop the smile that makes its way onto his face.

You nod your head, giving him your own version of a sweet smile as your arms slide up past his shoulders, crossing behind his neck, and he leans down to kiss you.

You hear a swell from the crowd, some teasing comments off in the distance from some of his teammates, you’re pretty sure you hear Coach Yaga yelling at him to get back to the benches, but it all melts away with the feeling of him smiling against your lips as he kisses you at the center of this stadium.

It was a moment so pure, so sweet, so picture perfect, and for once, you’re not the one behind the camera taking the photo. You’re the one that’s in it.

.

.

.

.

.

[end of kickoff ch12]

a/n. aaa thanks a lot for reading!! pls the fucking public stripping scene was so stupid i apologize on behalf of kickoff gojo for his behavior 😂😂 i’ll put him in his cage dw this chapter had some of what i consider to be the most challenging aspects of writing for me (internal conflict, grand public gesture, sports jargon) and so writing it felt like an uphill battle the ENTIRE time i wrote it and edited it. i considered scrapping it sooo many times cuz i just wasn't happy w it...but whatever i can't expect to be 100% happy w every chapter i put out there haha. i think kickoff has become a lil sacred for me since i've been working on it for a while now but likeee...sometimes u just gotta say fuck it we ball (tbh kickoff gojo probably says that to himself before a match) anywho, i am veryy thoroughly excited for what i've got planned for the chapters to follow, especially moving into the last angsty arc before the end of the series!! so i look forward to picking up momentum w this series again :0 honestly chapters 10 through 12 were the most difficult things i've written so far for a lot of reasons, but i have a feeling things will go more smoothly for me creatively going forward since what i've got planned falls well within my writing comfort range oh also there seems to be a little confusion about the number of chapters left, as i know i had originally said 12, but i anticipate that there will be about 18 chapters of kickoff total!! so still around six chapters left before the end :)) much lovee thanks for reading!!

OH WAIT ONE LAST NOTE I'M SORRY i didn’t really have a way of organically incorporating this into the story n i’m not sure if i’ll get a chance to in the upcoming chapters, so i just wanted to share this part of ch7 (gojo’s pov chapter) that is relevant to this chapter:

During the thrilling semifinal match between Keio Uni, Gojo’s father’s team, and Yokohama Uni during the end of his senior year, spectators witnessed a game that most college soccer enthusiasts would deem was a once-in-a-lifetime watch. Both teams engaged in relentless offense, and Gojo’s father was on his way to shatter the record of the most goals scored in a single championship match within the history of the league, but when he received a call from his wife during a timeout with the most life-altering news he could have ever heard, he abandoned everything on the field that day to go home and be with her. Grainy footage from the televised broadcast still exists online today—the moment he sprinted across the field, confused players glancing in his direction, amidst the uproar of the crowd. She called to let him know she was pregnant. 

the record that gojo broke in this chapter is the same record that his father almost broke before he got the call that he was going to be a dad :0 

➸ you're all caught up!

additional notes. please do not pressure me for updates or ask when i will next update (read rules); taglist is currently closed (consider subscribing to the story on my ao3 for email updates if you'd like! :0)

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[taglist is closed]

[kryaaas]

There was a post about how Harry is a perpetrator of violence due to him being as cop. I agree with a lot points and the fandom should definitely be aware of that

But there there was also a line of “Harry didnt give a shit about the violence he inflicted as a cop, he had a breakdown because of his dissolution of his relationship, its up to player whether or not Harry feels bad about it"

and I just....what. did we fucking forget about "I dont want to be this kind of animal anymore" ??? Him trying to fire himself?? Flushing the cop life in the toilet?? The fact that him holding a woman hostage and crippling a civilian is, in Harry's own mind, are one of the worst thing he has ever done? Player didn't choose this!!

The whole point of Harry's anguish is he literally can not quit his horribe job!! And the reason why he is so obsessed with his ex for 6 years is *because* Dora (who inspired him to be a cop in first place) had a mobility to leave him for a better life, while Harry had to stay in this "hell", and become a "monster" because of his job

It makes me really sad because YES we should acknowledge how Harry fucking sucks YES we should criticize his misogyny and racism and how he traumatized civilians. But.

People apparently really can not do that without completely missing the whole point of the character and ignore the source the material, just like the people who woobify him.

I really hate to be one to defend a cop character but replacing one's extreme (Harry is poor little innocent meow meow) with another (harry is an horrible l cop who doesnt feel bad about what he is done at all unless the player tells him to) is not actually helpful

[rahabs]

#as always fuck patrick weekes what an insufferable dickhead (via @lambofsin)

You’re so correct. My revulsion and utter disdain for that man runs deep.

Well, on the upside, Veilguard’s absolutely horrid writing and utter lack of meaningful roleplay mechanics made me appreciate Inquisition’s already watered-down writing and roleplay mechanics.

[zan0tix]

Any general thoughts on/relating to the Brobot?

Have my half awake scrawlings...

I really love the brobot!!!! People really misconstrue it and also leave it out in a lot of dirkjake talk? Its a big player in not only how dirk expresses his affection/desire towards jake but also in their multi year spanning unspoken game of gay chicken 😭😭(all of dirks splinters are but Not about them rn)

It was sent yknow under the pretense that jake loves wrestling and wished so bad to have somebody he could wrestle with. But at the same time it protects jake from the horrors of hellmurder island (seen before they strife), pushing jake into the Damsel in distress role he wasnt expecting to play even before all the shit in the game, with Dirk being his hero.

Jake says he keeps it on a high difficulty because apparently in the Novice mode he says their interactions become "too tender" and doesnt want to elaborate, Friendly reminder! His convo with jane on the SAME DAY dirk pulled off that big romantic overture and the kiss happens and him and dirk begin "dating".. is the same day he asked jane if it didnt make him weird for wanting to date dirk. And he also says hed joke around with dirk about how theyd soo make a great couple if dirk were a girl haha.

I imagine the brobot and well. Getting physical like that with a robot that supposedly looks like dirk probably gave jake his internal gay awakening at 13 but he just never wanted to actually confront it and instead just wanted to brush past everything 😭😭 (See: every single time sexuality or romance comes up in relation to jake he is literally always thinking about dirk somehow and he never directly talks about his attraction to men or how that reflects/contradicts on his self image of the Movie Star Hero guy)

and jake doesnt actually hate the thing either, he tells jane he thinks it genuinely did improve his fighting capabilities (Which we see it did in collide! he beat basically the whole felt with guns and fisticuffs alone, no hope powers.) Which serves as a pretty evident parallel to dave who also is good at fighting, even if he doesnt want to be. (see dirk + dave convo)

This one comes from hussies authors notes in the aradiabot and equius scene (which equius imagery being invoked with dirk. something i could totally rant about another time haha) but yeah. Jake was being selfish asshat in that log forcing jane into a corner and wringing what he wanted to hear out of her, and also not giving a shit about the brobot (Which served as his protector and only other semblance of human connection since he was 13 and was a BIRTHDAY GIFT FROM DIRK) KILLING ITSELF? But hes so preoccupied talking about dirk. THE REAL DIRK. And immediately after jake loses the dirk splinter that protected him, HE (AND DIRK) CREATE A NEW ONE FOR HIMSELF USING THEIR COMBINED POWERS/?

Hussie is lying.. somebody Does care about dirks feelings. a whole lot to the point they activate their powers unwittingly Because of it. and its jake. but jake just cant admit that himself. (He cannot admit his real feelings until given permission to, dirk would have to concede the game of gay chicken first using his words and not just actions)

ANYWAY. hussie is so right its so easy to get sidetracked times one million talking about this comic. BUT AHH!! BROBOT. his existence.. tragic.. Jakes really smart in knowing that all of dirks splinters enlighten aspects of himself he doesnt oft share, and the brobot served as another dirk action on the pile of dirk actions he engineers to signify his deep immense care for jake, where he lets these grand gestures and implications sit out in the open without ever actually saying what they mean and where his feelings lay.

EVEN IF ITS SUPER OBVIOUS. The d man cant use his big boy words to actually describe his feelings despite how much a yaps! so jake doesnt know if hes even allowed to say anything about his own. Fellas: Is it gay if you labour for supposedly an extended period of time to create a custom robot in your own image to ship in pieces to your best bro guy crush who is HUNDREDS OF YEARS IN THE PAST because you cant be there yourself?

I think this hal message says enough about how bad dirk wished he could visit jake 💀💀

[astroismypassion]

Astrology observations from real life 🪷🪷🪷

Credit goes to astrology blog @astroismypassion

A few in my mailbox asked me to post about astrology playing out in real life. I still have to preface that the view is mostly based from the viewpoint of my own individual Natal chart. So it’s coming from a perspective of Taurus Sun, Aries Moon, Scorpio Rising.

🪷 For me 8th house Synastry with Cancer or Taurus, Libra over the 8th house is not the usual “love or hate connection” at all. So this is one thing I definitely didn’t relate. I think love hate dynamic could be perhaps more prominent if you have a malefic, Capricorn, Aquarius etc. over the 8th house. So I have Cancer over the 8th house. And best I could describe 8th house Synastry with Cancer placements is “failed attempts”. I really like them, but nothing ever gets of the ground with them. I had already someone’s Cancer Sun and Mercury in my 8th house and another person’s Cancer Sun, Venus, Mercury and Mars in my Cancer 8th house. Each Cancer was completely different, but there was usually a pattern I noticed, that after 3 years of knowing them, there is usually a breaking point and it’s always after 3 years. They either rejected me, friendzoned me or weren’t looking to enter a committed partnership. So technically, on paper is nothing particularly wrong in the 8th house Synastry, just stagnant and not much happening and the connection just never got of the ground to begin with. So that’s why I don’t really understand the 8th house love or hate thing. I would say we are pretty neutral toward one another and don’t hate each other, but aren’t in love either.

🪷 Aquarius Moon can end up being quite narrow-minded in a way that they have hard time fully accepting the other’s perspective, but only their own. That’s why sometimes having a conversation with them, doesn’t feel like a dialogue, but more so like they are in a monologue with themselves. Some can end up being quite preachy, because of that.

🪷 In my experience Taurus Moons, natives with Taurus IC are some of the most secure individuals. Because they have the needed self-love and most that I have met don’t even feel the need to start a partnership, just because they are just so comfortable on their own.

🪷 Pisces Moon can either be incredibly intuitive, compassionate or really mean “in the name of the truth”. But I feel like you have to know them for years, before it really becomes apparent how blunt, truthful and sometimes mean they actually are. They can kind of be unhealthy towards themselves by not believing they are capable. But also have the ability to negatively influence others with their negative mood as well. They are really observant and good listeners, therefore often times they choose words that know will sting you.

🪷 I noticed that stereotypically labelled as “players” when grown up, Aries Moon men, even Moon aspect Mars natives, appear that way only in adulthood. But what I found, that in childhood/teenage years they were often ignored by women or didn’t receive much romantic attention at all. They were rarely picked or chosen. So later they seem to quite enjoy the attention. I’d say maybe it’s the same for Aries Moon women? I don’t know, but Selena Gomez (Aries Moon) did talk about how boys were never interested in her when she way much younger, that she didn’t receive much romantic attention.

🪷 Libra Chiron people have strange behaviour. They still pursue people who rejected them and fall even deeper in love. Like what?? You guys deserve reciprocal love and not this one-sided thing.

🪷 Scorpio Rising, Pluto in the 1st house native is really one of the realest people you meet out there. They become so open and honest about life with time and in adulthood. They are not pretentious at all and I noticed they even don’t mind if they embarrass themselves a bit, as long as they are being authentic and living their own truth and purpose. A lot of them also went through a major breakthrough in life (dropped out of education, lost an important job etc.) and that launched them in a totally new life direction, career path, where they end up being successful then. They are very artistic, even though they appear logical, excellent problem solvers too.

🪷 Natives with Moon at a Leo degree (5, 17, 29) low key are Cancer Suns. I noticed you have troubled love life, because you get taken advantage of your kindness and you are genuinely so nice. I wouldn’t say this rings true too for Leo Moons or Moon in the 5th house natives (you more so attract rather selfish people).

🪷 Libra Moons probably rarely saw the conflict resolution between parents, so many of them are so conflict avoidant (are even scared to have tension) in a partnership, because deep down they didn’t really learn conflict resolution and don’t know how to solve it.

🪷 Cancer Moon men desire a wife, a housemaker, a best friend, a lover, a wifey in one person. They often secretly wish for a very traditional marriage. But to be fair, they probably had parents that were married for years or married couple goals, so they had role models and want the same for themselves.

🪷 A lot of Scorpio Risings or Pluto in the 1st house native have this idealisation with wealth going on. A lot of them dream of extreme wealth and are very money, financial stability oriented.

🪷 You really get along with someone who has their Rising sign in the same sign of your 11th house. For example: you have Scorpio over the 11th house, you could have a good chance to get along with Scorpio Risings.

🪷 Libra Chiron don’t find themselves attractive. But y’all are models for real. So so many people find you very conventionally attractive.

🪷 Aquarius Eros people can have a tendency to be so random. And you guys love love surprising others. Just not the other way. 😂 You dislike surprises. But I don’t find the stereotypes of being into “group sex, threesomes, kinky af” true at all. Most of them are oddballs with specific humour and often postpone intimacy, because they prefer touching people with their words. They really like hangouts and long talks over physical intimacy or touching. A lot of them also don’t understand why people rush intimacy so much. They like to take their time. However, they are into connection with people that has proved time. The longer they have known you, the more they are likely to consider you an intimate option. They really like people that stick with them or have been in their life for years.

🪷 Pisces Descendants doesn’t come across to me as delusional. Instead quite controlling towards the actions of their partner. They are idealistic about love and want their partner to act accordingly with their wishes. So they get “their way” by presenting themselves as a hopeless romantic.

🪷 Cancer Moon, Moon in the 4th house both men and women often feel like they can’t protect or defend themselves in the world. So they are often attracted to “protector” type of partner. However, the potential downfall of not learning how to protect themselves is falling into a parent child dynamic with their partner (with Cancer Moon, Moon in the 4th house native acting as a child).

Credit goes to astrology blog @astroismypassion

[cherrynflowergarden]

Hiiii! I just read your new João fic, and I swear it was beautiful. Could we maybe get more João x f1? Like maybe more Carlos being a total madrista and they are unbothered or maybe the grid dads (Kevin, nico, Fernando, Lewis ya know?) Sorry if it's a lot<3

Have a nice day/night!

hiii my loveee thank you sm<33 this is like a spinoff to this you don't need to necessarily read it to understand this tho!!

liked by lilymhe, redbullracing, olliebearman and 1,729,986 others

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[hiraethwa]

𓈒 𓏸 — ghost of you

dancing through our house with the ghost of you

pairing: kuroo x reader a/n: pls yell at me thank you <3 i was on my period when the idea was concocted, blame my period :) word count: 6.7k bonus: listen to playlist while reading

“all we have to do is lower the net.” nekomata sensei’s comment became words that shaped kuroo tetsuro’s past, present and future. words that ignited his love for volleyball and fueled his purpose.

kuroo tetsuro, whose entire life mission is to lower the net, his passion for volleyball being the driving force to make the sport accessible for all. kuroo tetsuro, who joined the japan volleyball association straight out of university, because he is certain of his purpose. 

kuroo tetsuro, whose singular life mission is to lower the net—that is, until he met you, the official setter for japan’s national women’s volleyball team at the young age of 21. 

at 24, kuroo had been in the jva sports promotional division for a few years now, having seen all sorts of players whether it be setters or spikers, liberos or middle blockers. but you, with your flawless setting form, the cunningness in your eyes and the cogs spinning behind them, and your utmost dedication to your spikers, you caught him by surprise. 

his immediate thought was that your impeccable technique reminded him of kageyama. certainly, to say that would be an insult to who you are as a setter. after all, you are you and he is him. no two setters are the same. 

kuroo might as well have fallen to his knees the moment he saw your seamless cross court set. 

by the grace of some deity, kuroo tetsuro did not. he somehow managed to introduce himself to you without embarrassing himself when your team took a break, using his position with the jva as an excuse. apparently, it was something he did with all the new players for the national team—a complete lie that he came up with on the fly. 

“kuroo tetsuro, kuroo-san.” he thinks he was a goner the moment he heard his name rolling off your tongue, the timbre of your voice dulcet yet firm, as he handed you his business card. he almost asked you to call him tetsuro, but he caught himself in time, cursing kenma for infecting him with his casual mannerisms.

since that day, kuroo started to find excuses to stop by the women’s volleyball practice more often, for case studies, he said. he learned that you started playing volleyball at 8, and that you wanted to be a setter because you hated digs, and you loved doing sets and coming up with strategies to mess with the opposing team’s minds. 

thanks to the internet, he also learned that you are one of the most prominent, rising setters in the global volleyball scene, one of a handful of setters who has an unreadable setting form.

“i’m still not good at serving though,” you said to him one day, frowning. he opened his mouth to disagree, but one of the other players waved at you to get back to practice. you commented offhandedly, “anyway, yuki-senpai told me you are showing up a lot lately since i joined.”

you didn’t give him a chance to explain himself, however, dropping your towel on the bench and running back to the court. kuroo promised himself that he would ask you out the next time he sees you. 

at least, that was what he told himself for the last three times he stopped by practice in the past two weeks. 

“you know, i was under the impression that the jva office is in this building, but i recently found out that it’s actually two train stations away.” you took a swig of your pocari sweat, composing yourself for your next question. “is there a reason you seem to always be here, kuroo-san?”

that was the day kuroo folded, finally asking you out on a proper date. he somehow managed to get a reservation for two at 8pm at the up-and-coming omakase place in ginza by calling in a few favors. 

you knocked the breath out of him when you exited the subway gates in a flowy summer dress. he almost forgot his own name as you walked up to him, a shy smile on your lips after locating him in the rush hour crowd. 

to this day, he wonders how you did it—finding him, another suited office worker in the packed subway station.

to his disappointment, he found himself outside the restaurant after an uneventful dinner. the fine dining atmosphere provided little to no opening for any meaningful conversation, save for a few hushed whispers exchanged between the two of you. 

looking at you, he wondered if you would give him a second chance. you, with stars in your eyes and a light blush across your cheeks, courtesy of the sake you drank. 

probably not. kuroo tetsuro was too much of a coward to ask, for he prepared to bid you good night just as you opened your mouth to say something.

“i know a yakitori place not far from here, wanna go?” kuroo blinked, lifting his head to meet your eyes, surprise shining through his own.

a grin threatened to split his face. “with you? anywhere.” 

you ended up bonding over meat skewers and beers in the cramped hole-in-the-wall yakitori bar frequented by salarymen after long days of work better than you did at the fancy omakase restaurant.

that night kuroo tetsuro learned that despite your star-studded status, you never learned to enjoy the luxury that came with it, preferring to keep to the familiar comforts of your university days.

“i know a really good onigiri place,” kuroo remarked at the end of the night, having ridden the train back to your place with you to ensure you get home safe and sound. 

“oh? maybe i know where it is,” curiosity lined your eyes as you prattled off the top onigiri restaurants you have found in tokyo. “so, where is it, kuroo-san?”

“osaka,” kuroo grinned at you. he was taking a rather large gamble, asking you on a second date to a different city, but he had a feeling you would say yes. 

you blinked, a smile growing at your lips, and without missing another beat, “i hear it’s only two hours away by shinkansen.”

just like that, kuroo met his match in you. he never stood a chance against you; one date quickly turned into two, into three, and many, many more. 

it was a whirlwind romance across the eastern country full of stolen time shared with each other. a weekend in okinawa, only the two of you with the clear skies and the vast ocean. strolling through the streets of osaka, young and in love. meeting you in another city during your away games, proudly cheering your team on. 

visiting the daigo-ji temple late fall in kyoto, making saisen, the customary money offering, with five-yen coins before bowing with pressed palms and offering your prayers. kuroo had stolen a glance at you in that short moment, finding himself hoping that the gods were listening to his prayers. 

then a week later, when kuroo got on one knee just a few weeks shy of your one year anniversary, ring in hand, asking you to be his wife, you had said yes without hesitation. that day, he promised himself that you would not end up like his parents.

you got married in the middle of volleyball season, spurred on by the desire to have your wedding anniversary on the same date as your dating anniversary. it was an intimate event, only close family and friends were invited to the celebration of your love. you had both agreed that it was best to keep it quiet from the press to avoid any unwanted public attention—and pressure.

and so you exchanged your vows under an arch draped with dusk pink flowers of every type surrounded by the people who knew you best; to cherish and to hold the other always, and to remember love. tears of happiness were shed at the altar, a river merely from the two of you. 

even with two left feet, you danced the night away with the love of your life, before the guests sent you off on your short honeymoon getaway to an onsen resort at fuji-san. only two people who were madly in love, basking in each other’s undivided attention before duty calls you back to tokyo. 

and so kuroo tetsuro finds another purpose in life—you. 

now, kuroo admits that it has been a while since he got time to have you to himself. both your work have been swallowing up your time since you got back from fuji-san almost a year ago, but you still managed to make time for each other, even if you are not going on dates. 

he thinks he is a lucky man to have the honor of calling you his wife.

almost a whole year already, huh. kuroo makes a mental note to make a reservation at the restaurant where he proposed to you. 

“kuroo-san, yoshida-san wants to see you.” ah, yes, work calls. the previous thought slips his mind by the time he leaves his boss’s office. 

soon enough, the week rolls by. 

kuroo knows that he fucked up when he finds 11 missed calls from you after he sent his client off. three hours ago, nine of them within the span of the first thirty minutes, and two final attempts two hours ago. his heart drops as his eyes land on the four digit date on his homescreen. he missed your anniversary dinner.

fuck. you don’t pick up on the first two calls. his heart thunders in his chest. he thinks he hears ringing in his ears that is not the dial tone, but finally, thankfully, you pick up on the third. 

“sweetheart, i am so sorry—” he blurts, strings of apologies that fall naturally from his mouth as he begs for your forgiveness. “i’m on my way home, we can still go out to the yakitori place you love—”

“i’m not home.” silence stretches between the two of you as kuroo fumbles for his words. careful, he needs to be careful of his choice of words right now. 

“where are you? c-can i come find you?” he stumbles over his words, his heart still pounding too fast. all he can think about is how much he fucked up.

kuroo holds his breath, praying to the gods to look kindly upon him as he waits for your answer. in all honesty, you have every right to tell him off right now, but he desperately hopes otherwise. “i’m at the training center.”

of course. why didn’t he think of it? whenever you are frustrated, you train and let yourself loose on the court. “wait for me, i’ll be there in 20.”

you are waiting in the lobby of the facility when he gets there, panting after running the four blocks over from the subway station. “y/n, sweetheart,” he almost knocks you over with the sheer intensity of his embrace, squeezing the air of your lungs. 

“tetsuro, you’re late,” a frown mars your beautiful features once he releases you, and he finds himself smoothing over the knot between your eyebrows. 

“i know, i am sorry, love.” he pulls you close, your chin resting on his shoulder. “will you let me make it up to you?”

there is a second of hesitation before you answer, “okay.” but kuroo misses the look of conflict that flashes across your face, distracted with dissuading his own fears that your marriage is safe, intact.

he vows to never let you go through that again. though it never comes to that.

it’s kageyama tobio that makes you realize something is wrong with your marriage. 

kageyama tobio, the pinnacle of setters in men’s volleyball as introduced by your then boyfriend, whose contact was lighting up your phone, startled you as you attempted to make dinner. 

shit, shit, shit. you forgot to tell him that you won’t be able to make your monthly practice meetup today, having sprained your ankle at the practice match against france a few days ago. well… sprained would be understating the bluish-purple color blossoming on your left foot. 

you fumbled for your phone, picking up the call. “kageyama-san?” the slim device is balanced between your ear and shoulder as you try to flip the omelette. damn it, it’s burnt. “ah, sorry. i forgot to tell you that i won’t be able to make it to practice today.”

“it’s fine, kuroo-san. i was at your match on sunday. are you doing alright?” right, the match that tetsuro missed again because of something that came at work with his client. work that took precedence over his promise to you to attend the match.  

“oh, that? i’m fine,” you absentmindedly reached for a plate a little too far to the left, causing you to put your weight on your left foot as you catch your balance. you muffled the cry rising from your throat, hoping it didn’t carry over the call. 

“that didn’t sound like you are fine.” your hands are placed on the counter, holding yourself up as you steadied yourself on your right foot. your rapid heartbeat boomed in your ears, uneven breaths leaving your mouth in small pants as you realize you could have fallen and cracked your head open on the corner of the countertop. “send me your address, i’ll be over soon.”

fuck. you felt pathetic, unable to do mundane tasks that take little to no effort with two functional ankles. but this, this you could do. hunger forgotten, you slid down next to the stove, knees to your chest, and typed in your home address to the other setter.

the buzz of your doorbell startled you from doom scrolling social media a good 45 minutes later. 

you scooted over the door on your knees, unlocking the front door for kageyama, mortifyingly realizing a second too late that you should have gotten to your foot to greet your guest.

“sorry, i just need to get up—” he wordlessly lent you a hand for support as you rose up on your good foot, helping you hobble over to the living room. “thanks.”

kageyama tobio frowned at you, displeasure etched into the lines of his forehead, eyes concentrated on your discolored ankle. “it looks worse than it feels.”

he did not trust your words, for he was squatting down in front of the couch to take a look at your injury. “then this shouldn’t hurt, right?” his finger reached out to poke your ankle. 

“don’t—” you winced, eyes closed in anticipation of the pain that would follow. but there isn’t any, your eyes flying open to find kageyama staring back at you in disappointment. 

“kuroo-san, you need to get this looked at. it looks serious.” reluctantly, you agreed with him, expressing your consent for him to call the team physician in to assess your condition.

watching kageyama step outside your home to make the call, you felt something akin to lightning cleaving your chest open, heart exposed and breaking as you realized how much you yearned for tetsuro to be the one here right now, fussing over you. 

tetsuro had been surprised to find you still at home at 9am on a monday morning. 

“i twisted my ankle.” you had stated, looking up from your book momentarily when you heard him shuffling out of the bedroom dressed for work. you appreciated the view, unable to recall the last time you saw him in a suit since your schedules rarely overlapped with yours starting early in the day, and his ending late at night. 

“make sure to ice it, sweetheart.” he had commented distractedly, attention on his work tablet, kissing you on your forehead on his way out. it’s not that tetsuro doesn’t love you, he has just grown forgetful over time, complacent in your marriage. 

it’s too bad that complacency kills, sniffing out the weaknesses in the foundation of your love, snaking its way into crevices in the bedrock of your marriage. and just like water, it erodes the strongest rock with persistence and time. 

there were only two things you loved more than life itself. one being kuroo tetsuro, the other being volleyball. and if your marriage is falling apart… what if your stubbornness made your injury worse than it was? if you didn’t have volleyball, the one thing you could always fall back on, then what would you even live for?

suddenly the room felt too small, closing in around you. your breathing turned heavy, the air in your lungs no longer enough to supply life-bearing oxygen to your bloodstream.

“you’re going to be fine.” kageyama’s voice broke you away from your internal panic. lost in your thoughts, you didn’t even hear the front door close. he leaned against the wall in the hallway, jerking his chin at you. “what if this injury cost me the spot on the olympic roster? what if i can’t play in the olympics? what if my smallest misstep cost me everything? what if i can’t play volleyball ever again?”

“what are you—” he waved his hand, cutting you off mid sentence. 

“that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” kageyama shook his head at you. “but kuroo-san, you’re the best setter we have, and you’re strong. you’ll make it back.” his matter-of-fact statement left no room for argument. 

still, your smile did not reach your eyes. tired, you were so tired. “thanks, kageyama-san.”

“eat. the food is getting cold.” you nodded, digging into the takeout kageyama brought with him—shiozake with rice, once again wishing that tetsuro was here instead of kageyama. you swallow your food forcefully, as if the thought of tetsuro being here and telling you that the salted salmon would be beneficial for your body repairing itself didn’t cause you to crumble. 

the other setter pretended he didn’t see the tears gliding down your cheeks into your food, quietly keeping you company until the physician showed up. 

the team physician diagnosed you with a grade 2 ankle sprain and prescribed you plenty of rest and burden off your ankle—basically the equivalent of a bed rest as a professional athlete. she also made sure to scold you for not taking it easy after your injury and not alerting her sooner before leaving. 

“is kuroo-san going to be back soon?” kageyama asked, glancing at the clock that was ticking close to 9pm. the winter (almost spring) sun had disappeared down the horizon a long time ago, and you realized he meant your husband. 

“do i look like an invalid, kageyama-san? i’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” 

“duly noted, kuroo-san.” he smiled wryly at you. kageyama slipped his shoes on, opening his mouth to say something before deciding otherwise. the front door clicked shut behind him, leaving you with his parting words of “see you next month”.

next month. he said next month. the physician had anticipated your sprain to heal in four to six weeks, with the partial tearing of your ankle ligament. four weeks. you can give yourself that. you can work with that. just 28 days before you get back on the court where you lived and breathed. just one foot forward at a time.

but those thoughts flew out of your mind as tetsuro came home early. 10:09pm. that was early for your husband who sometimes came home in the middle of the night smelling like cigarettes and beer—or not at all, when he pulled all-nighters in his office.

tetsuro, whose tie is loosened and slightly crooked, examined your foot, a frown on his handsome face. tetsuro, who is cleaning up the mess of dishes in the sink, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, as he asked about your day. 

tetsuro, who made you forget all your worries and troubles about your marriage, as he doted on you, making sure you had enough water in the glass on your nightstand and propping your ankle on a pillow. 

tetsuro, who made an effort to be there for you in the following weeks, making breakfast before he goes to work, leaving lunch for you in the fridge and taking his work home by 6pm so he could make you dinner. tetsuro, who took some days to work from home in the beginning, taking care of you and holding you tightly in his arms when you revealed your fears about the upcoming olympics, wiping the tears that stained your face away as if they were never there. 

you remembered why you fell in love with kuroo tetsuro. 

you return to the court after five weeks at home, restlessness in your bones from the long period of inactivity. you know tetsuro felt it too, eager to dive back into his work after holding himself back the first few weeks to take care of you. that made the two of you.  

after two weeks, you both agreed that you have recovered enough for him to return to the office full-time. by the fifth week, he has gone back to his former habit of staying at work into the late nights and early mornings.

you convinced yourself that your husband needed to catch up on the work that was on the backburner when he had to take care of you. reassured yourself that the lack of intimacy was due to your recovery and work taking its toll on your husband. 

your marriage wasn’t falling apart before your eyes. right?

you first brought your worry up to him after a month rolled by, feeling relieved when he started coming home by dinner again, only to find him slipping back into his routine. so you do it again. and again. 

and again.

but as more weeks fly by, the olympics on the horizon, his behavior unchanged despite your attempts at saving your marriage, you start to wonder if he remembered why he fell in love with you. 

you can’t say that tetsuro never makes an effort. he does, although work seems to always be on the forefront of his mind, taking up whatever space is in his head.

“can i call you back, sweetheart? suzuki-san wants to speak to me about my proposal.” you presume suzuki-san is his boss, even though the name sounds unfamiliar to you. 

“sure, but it’s just— honey, we barely see each other anymore.” it’s a slap to the face when you realize you’re speaking to the dial tone. 

it feels as though each time you take a step forward to repair your relationship, you take two steps back. kuroo’s work always comes up on top. the better he gets at his job, the more in demand he becomes, the more projects with high visibility gets assigned to him, the more his passion for volleyball takes him away from you. 

you are at the crossroads within yourself, each turn at odds with your beliefs, your wishes, your love for kuroo tetsuro. you never faulted him for being so devoted to his job. after all, are you not the same? how can you fault him for something you love about him? 

assigning blame is not equivalent to feeling resentment, however. you hated the feeling of resentment towards kuroo with each missed date, with each broken promise, with each night of waking up to a cold bed. you were afraid of what awaits you at the end of the road. 

you love kuroo tetsuro. that is a fact. you love yourself. that is also a fact.

so how can you ever make him choose between you and volleyball? you will not force that ultimatum upon him, not even knowing your own answer to it. but you love kuroo tetsuro, the same way you love volleyball. the same way he loves volleyball. 

you decide you would rather be the villain in his story before you make him choose. 

you love kuroo tetsuro. that is why you made your decision to leave with love in your heart before love turns to poison. after all, love and hate go hand in hand, and you are already walking the fine line between them. 

you make an appointment with his secretary, smiling wistfully at her as you walk into his office. kuroo has climbed the ladder to a height you can no longer reach. 

the cubicle that you used to drop by is now occupied by an unfamiliar face, where photos of the two of you once covered one entire wall. in contrast, his neat office is effectively devoid of all traces of your relationship, save for the ring on his finger. 

“sweetheart?” he perks up at the sight of you before a frown appears on his handsome face. his bedhead still a constant feature of his. at least some things never change. “it’s great to see you, but i have a 2pm coming in soon.”

his comment should not hurt as much as it does. but of course it does, you still love kuroo desperately, you’re just not sure if that is enough anymore. 

“kuroo, i’m your 2pm.”

“oh,” confusion flashes across his features for a quick second before it disappears. “well, what can i do for you, sweetheart?”

for all the different ways you have thought of this conversation going, all the different ways of easing into the topic, you can’t seem to find the words to break his heart. 

right person, wrong time. you would be lying if you said you never thought of it. of what could have been if you met him later on in his career, when he has done all he wanted to do, when he has achieved what he set out for. would he have time for you then?

would it be the kuroo tetsuro you fell in love with?

that was the most difficult question you grappled with the past few weeks as you waited for your lawyer to draft the papers. would your relationship work out if you had met each other in your prime, perhaps a few years from now, when you have both reached the height of your careers? when the strenuous uphill battles of establishing yourselves in your fields are over?

perhaps. perhaps you could have settled down, the days of grinding far behind you. perhaps you could have had the happily ever after you both deserved.

answers that will forever evade you because in this timeline, in this universe, you met too early, too young. right person, wrong time.

you wordlessly hand him the brown packet of divorce papers. there are simply no words that would make this any easier.

“what are these—” he slumps in his chair, defeat written in his being. “divorce? sweetheart, isn’t this going too far? we can talk things out when i come home. i don’t have time right now.”

“kuroo, you haven’t had time in a long while. that is why i am filing for divorce.”

“we talked about this. i am busy now, but i will have time for us later. all the work i am doing is for our future. please, y/n.”

“but i don’t need your time later. i need it now, kuroo.” you grip the edge of his table tightly, knuckles turning white with force. and yet, tears still slip from your eyes. “sign the papers, tetsuro. just let me go.”

if you’re the one ending the marriage, why does it feel like your heart is ripped out of your chest?

kuroo has seen you cry a total of three times in your entire relationship. once when you got married. second when your maternal grandfather passed away. third when you hurt your ankle, unsure if you would be able to compete in the olympics. tears that shocked him to the core, because he knows you mean it. 

minutes pass by without another word exchanged between you. stolen minutes that used to be full of laughter and hushed conversations. 

you see it now, you think. the time that used to be carved out of your days for each other, whether it was a quick call or lunch, sharing downtime before bed watching some tv or simply cuddling and merely enjoying each other’s presence. you both used to do that, used to each other’s packed schedules. somewhere along the line, kuroo stopped. 

you did too, not pushing him harder to give you more time sooner. you tried to play the role of an understanding wife and support his dreams until it was too late. to what end?

in the end, you both failed each other. 

it was that realization that made you understand — you and kuroo tetsuro were doomed from the start. doomed by your love. doomed by the very thing that brought you together. two souls in the universe shooting in opposite trajectories, fated to cross paths for a brief moment in time before barreling onwards to your next destination, destined for loneliness.

but kuroo refused to give up without a fight. though you wondered if it was because he loved you or because he felt like he had to. 

you went on dates every week and kuroo came home for dinner every night. he kissed you on your forehead every night before you turned on your side, two strangers sharing the same bed. 

the two of you tiptoeing over the broken pieces of your marriage, choosing to turn a blind eye to the way your hands don’t seem to fit quite right. the chopsticks you made in a workshop to commemorate your anniversary warped in the dishwasher from disregard. the shape of your bodies no longer fitting together like two puzzle pieces, as if you have outgrown each other.

the cup of matcha on your side of the table has long since gone cold. you didn’t have the heart to remind your husband that you don’t like the grassy drink anymore, hadn’t in a while. 

you see a husband who is desperately trying to save his marriage, but you also notice the lines in the corners of his eyes, the smiles that don't seem to reach his eyes no more. the cracks in his composure when he loses his temper. 

his efforts felt forced, duty-bound. so were yours. it wasn’t until that understanding that you finally put a name to the reason you are still trying after months—you were both scared of losing the familiarity, the ghost of your past selves still fighting to hold onto what once was. 

for three whole weeks during the olympics, you mull over the packet of papers that still sits untouched beneath your winter clothes in your bottom drawer of your shared apartment. by the time you fly home to japan, your mind is made.

this time though, you think kuroo saw it coming. 

“can’t you see that i am trying my best here?” the shadows underneath his eyes remind you of a past that you cannot return to. 

“sometimes our best is still too late.” kuroo y/n no longer sounds quite right coming off your tongue. 

the evidence of your crumbling marriage lies bare in your absence. you could tell from the piles of project folders on your kitchen island that kuroo had been working himself to the bones while you were away, glad for the reprieve from splitting his focus between you and work. 

“but i love you.”

“does the moon die every morning for the sun because that is all it knows or because it loves the sun?”

kuroo slumps next to you, face buried in his hands. 

“don’t leave me, y/n.” his voice was broken and small. 

“it’s okay, tetsuro. it’s okay to let me go. we had a good run. just because we couldn’t last didn’t mean we failed.” you let kuroo find comfort in your arms one last time, running your fingers through his black hair and rubbing his back tenderly. “it’s okay.”

and so he lets you go, his name scrawled on each dotted line on the damned papers. 

by the end, you still loved kuroo tetsuro. you were just no longer in love with him. though strangely, it didn't hurt any less when you let the heavy door shut behind you, the key to what was once your home left on top of the shoe cabinet, your life packed in just two suitcases as you leave japan for good. 

two years have passed since you filed the papers and changed your name back to oumae y/n, but you look just as beautiful as the day he laid his eyes on you, standing in front of him after the all stars game, the match he put together with his bare hands for japan’s monster generation. you are beautiful, and you are here. in person. right in front of him. 

he wonders if he had died and gone to heaven because whatever gods are out there have listened to his prayers, and answered again. 

kuroo thinks he should probably get on the ground, grovel on his knees and beg for you to take him back. he knows you wouldn’t though, you were always disciplined like that. but you never looked back, another thing he loved dearly about you.

you still looked at him like you see through him to the core of who he was, seemingly able to get a perfect read on people you meet. 

“what?” you had woken up to kuroo admiring you in your sleep, the sun streaming in through the blinds hitting your face at just the right angle that kuroo thinks you might be an angel from heaven.

“nothing, just admiring how much of a gremlin you look like when sleeping.” your jaw had dropped open at kuroo’s audacity, causing him to cackle loudly as you smacked him with a pillow. 

“careful now, don’t knock over the coffee,” kuroo stuck his tongue out at you childishly. you tucked your hair behind your ear, carefully lifting the coffee mug to your lips, white sheet gathered under your arms to cover your naked body. 

though there is more depth behind your eyes now, more restraint written in your body language. and the coffee mug now sits untouched on the nightstand on your side of the bed, as if you’re still there in that apartment, laughing, dancing, waking up next to him if he closed his eyes and dreamed hard enough.

he racks his brain of the possible lines he could open the conversation with, ending up with a lame “did you enjoy the match, y/n?” y/n, not sweetheart, because he has long since lost the privilege to use that name when it came to you.

despite himself, and his knowing of you, he can’t help the small hope that flares to life within him at the sight of you. he knows that you have moved abroad to italy, joining aeroitalia smi roma since you went your separate ways. he still wakes up each morning, scouring news websites for anything about you, a habit he formed after he stopped waking up to a warmness on your side of the bed.

“kuroo,” you give him a polite smile, reminding him of the distance that now stretches miles between the two of you. kuroo, you called him kuroo. right, it has been a while since kuroo belonged to both of you. “it was an amazing match. all thanks to you, i am sure?”

it’s only natural that he can’t help the wide grin on his face, proud of his sweat and tears, his project that he spent years planning for to be perfect, working to establish faith and credibility before finally pitching it to the higher ups. time that he dedicated to work instead of his wife. 

the stark reminder wipes the grin off his face, making him grow serious once more.

“tell me, how have you been? how’s italy treating you?”

“i’m doing well. italy is beautiful, you should visit someday.” he takes a step closer to you, but you make no move to distance yourself. 

so he takes another step, hand outreached towards you. he missed you so much. he wonders if you did too. “i’m so sorry, y/n, i—”

but a voice behind him cuts him off, “kuroo-san, y/n.”

he wishes that he is mistaken in hearing the gentleness in the olympian setter’s voice when he said your name. just as he realizes whose number is on the jersey you are wearing. 

kageyama tobio stands next to you, too close to just be friends. “everything good here?” kuroo wishes that he is mistaken in seeing the softness in kageyama’s eyes sweeping over you from head to toe to make sure you are alright.

“of course. go ahead, i will catch up to you.” the dark-haired setter cocks his head at you, a silent conversation passes between the two of you before he decides that he is satisfied with whatever it is you conveyed to him wordlessly and leaves the two of you alone. 

kuroo stumbles over his thoughts, shock seeping into his system. you had moved on. with kageyama. 

betrayal sears hot across his chest as he recalls kageyama calling him when you had injured your ankle, worry carrying over the line. he didn’t think much of it then, rushing home as soon as he could to take care of you. 

even so, it was kageyama, practically a work colleague who noticed that your injury was much more serious than you let on. it was kageyama, who made sure a doctor saw to your injury, not kuroo, your husband. your ex-husband. 

did whatever you had with kageyama start then?

kuroo shoves that awful thought down, deep within himself where it would never see the light of day. you would never do that to him. he forces the words out of his mouth, anything to keep his mind from ever going back to that. “kageyama, huh?”

“he is the better half of me.” the sincerity in your voice makes him envious of the setter. the word unfair crosses his thoughts, but he also banishes that. kuroo had a chance with you first. he built a whole life with you before he threw it all away. 

he must not have shut out that repulsive thought as well as he thought because you sniff out the doubt in him as you always did. “ask me, kuroo.”

“when did you two…?” he does not dare to ask it outright, finding it offensive even on your behalf.

but somehow you know the question he is asking. “it happened in italy after i moved there.” the unspoken words relieving the heaviness on his chest. i didn’t cheat on you. 

“are you happy?” he could not help but ask. you hadn’t seemed happy in the last few months of your marriage, you hadn’t been in a long time because of his negligence as your husband.

“yes, i am.” your reply is quick and firm.

“good.” because gods know that he was not a good husband to you. because you deserved the very best anyone had to offer. and if it was kageyama who could do that, not him, kuroo could live with that. what choice does he have but to live with the fact that he let you slip through his fingers by his own fault?

yet he could not help the words that tumble out of his lips. “do you think it could have been different if i—” 

“don’t go down that path, kuroo, whatever answer you find at the end of it will not be kind to you. but to answer your question, i don’t think we were meant to be.” 

right. the past should stay where it belongs. only, kuroo wishes that you weren’t the only one who fell out of love. why didn’t he remember sooner before it was too late?

silence falls between the two of you, but you must have decided that you are satisfied with whatever it is you see in him, bidding him goodbye one last time. 

“take care, kuroo tetsuro.” it hits him your final words to him were the same as your first ones, his name slipping out in a dulcet whisper. only this time it carries a finality it didn’t used to.

kuroo tetsuro, whose entire life mission is to lower the net. he has achieved it—but at what cost?

tags: @tulip-room @bookskeepers a/n pt 2: notice how tetsuro slowly becomes kuroo and i oop—

complaint box askbox open

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[jo6hny]

Neighbor - Hazel Callahan

Pairing: College! Hazel Callahan x College! Reader 

Contains: fluff, kissing, slight angst, everyone knows you like each other besides the both of you, drunk hazel,  reader being an idiot, hazel being an idiot, sylvie and isabel mentioned.

Word Count: 2.7k

Summary: A very drunk Hazel Callahan stumbles upon your dorm room thinking it was hers. What happens when your crush and next door dorm neighbor wriggles her way onto your bed? 

A/N: This was written for the anon that requested it! I hope you like it <33 also, sorry if the description of college is inaccurate, i’m not american !! Requests are open! 

Knock Knock. 

The sound of the knock interrupts your reading. Curious, you get out of bed to see who it is. The comfort of your bed and the book in hand long forgotten as you made your way to your door. You rarely get visitors and your roommate, Sylvie, barely ever knocks. She’d usually just barge right in regardless of what you were doing. 

“Hi neighbor.” The brunette greets you on the other side of the door with a smile and a small tupperware dish on her hands. It was Hazel, the girl who occupied the dorm room right across yours. She looked good today. Scratch that, she looked good everyday. There was just something about Hazel Callahan that was charming and adorable.

“Oh, hi Haze.” You smile, greeting her back. “What you got there?” 

Hazel extended the dish towards you and said, “This is for you! There were some leftover brownies from the bake sale yesterday and I thought I’d give you some. I would hate for my beloved neighbor to starve.” 

Your smile grew wider at your neighbor’s gesture. If you weren’t so blinded by hunger, you would have thought that she’d given these to you because she liked you. Not that she did, though. Hazel seemed to be friendly with everyone. And, well, she always seemed to deflect your advances. 

“Aw Hazel,” You cooed, taking the dish from her. It felt hefty, the dish didn’t just contain a few pieces of brownies, it had a lot. Your heart swelled at the gesture.“Thank you so much! I’ll give you something back, I swear.” 

Hazel shook her head at this. 

“You don’t have to. You always do nice things for me, anyway.” She gave you a dimpled smile. Well, that is true. But it was a two way thing between you and her. Always watching out for each other, especially whenever there were inspections. 

You couldn’t exactly pinpoint how you two became close, or well, acquainted. But you knew it was because of Sylvie. She and Hazel were best friends, have been since highschool. Sylvie always told you about their “fight club” back then and how it was a women empowerment thing that saved their school from…football players? The details weren’t exactly clear, especially with how fast your roommate talked. Anyway, you meet Hazel through Sylvie. They’d always hang out at your dorm or Hazel’s dorm, whichever was available. You didn’t mind when they were at yours, they usually just geeked out about weapons and bands and all that shit. Plus, Hazel was easy on the eyes. You could look at her all day if you were being honest. Her hair was dark and soft and always so fragrant. You imagined what it was like to run your hair through her locks, how it’d feel between your fingers. And her eyes were to die for. They were like opals in the sense that they shifted colors ever so often. Most of the time they were blue, but there were times when they’d look silver or green. All of these traits (and more) were what made her so enchanting. 

“Well, no worries, Haze. We look out for each other.” You reply, putting a hand on her forearm. It wasn’t obvious, but Hazel’s breath picked up when you touched her. Because unbeknownst to you, she actually did return your feelings. The tension between the two of you was apparent to everyone except the two of you. Sylvie knows it, Hazel’s roommate Isabel did too. Basically everyone on campus did. 

“So…” You trailed off. Hazel was too distracted by your touch, her mind was elsewhere. “Um, are you going to that frat party later?” 

The blue eyed girl snaps out of her trance at your question and nods. 

“Oh, yeah! I’m going with Isabel and Sylvie. Are you?” 

“I can’t.” You sigh, slightly disappointed. This was supposed to be an opportunity for you to spend time with Hazel (and Sylvie and Isabel, of course). 

“Oh.” Hazel said dejectedly. You picked up on your neighbor’s tone at your reply.

“Sorry, Haze.” You apologize, squeezing her forearm. This caused the brunette to short circuit again. “I have to finish reading this book for my lit class.” 

“That’s-That’s okay.” She replied, feeling uncool at the way she stuttered. 

“Maybe we can hang out another time?” You said, hinting at a date with her. 

Hazel nods at your suggestion. “Yeah! We can bring Sylvie and Isabel too.” 

A frown forms on your face at her suggestion which you quickly wipe off and replace with a smile. 

“Yep. Sure.” You said, not feeling too enthusiastic. Was there something wrong with you? Did she not like you? You didn’t get why Hazel kept rejecting you. 

“I’ll see you, then.” She replies, walking back to her dorm room across from yours.

Back at the comfort of her room, Hazel slaps the palm of her hand on her forehead. It only just registered to her that you wanted to hang out with her without Sylvie and Isabel. 

“Stupid.” She muttered, letting herself dramatically fall onto her bed. The brunette groans at her inability to take cues. It’s not that she didn’t want to be with you, it’s just that she had a hard time taking in what you say sometimes. It was hard for her to discern things especially when you were in front of her. Hazel sometimes wished that she were normal. Normal enough to notice the little things. If she were, you  two would have gone out by now. The brunette groans again at the thought and buries her head in her pillow.

────────────────────────────────────────────

Finally onto the last chapter of your book, you decide to rest a bit before moving forward. Closing your eyes, you ease into your mattress a bit and let your head fall onto your soft pillow. A few more minutes you would fall asleep, the book forgotten. Sylvie seemed to have found herself back into your shared room as you heard the door being pried open. Weird though, she didn’t seem to make any noise as she entered. Usually she’d announce her entrance and make herself known. Oh well, maybe she had too much to drink. Back to resting. 

“Mmph.” A voice that wasn’t your roommate’s grunted across the room from you, the voice wasn’t Sylvie’s. This alarmed you and your head was filled with thoughts of danger. Your mind recalled all of the instructional videos you watched on self defense and you were counting on your brain to remember all the necessary steps when it came to it. 

Taking a careful peek, you notice that the stranger had made themselves comfortable in Sylvie’s bed. They were facing the wall so all you could see was the back of their head. The person had dark brown hair which flowed down to the base of their neck and they had a boyish cut. 

“Oh my head hurts so bad.” The stranger groaned. Recognizing her voice, you realize that Hazel was the intruder. She turns and wriggles around the bed which also helps you confirm her identity. 

“Hazel!” You exclaim, trying to get her attention. She must’ve thought that she was in her dorm room. The brunette didn’t seem to register your voice and continued wriggling around the bed. 

Slowly, you approach her and look at the situation fully. Alcohol reeked through her clothes and there she was in all her drunken glory sprawled all over Sylvie’s bed. Hazel Callahan, your biggest crush, was in your dorm room. The two of you were as close as neighbors could get but you’ve never been alone with each other.  You weren’t sure what to do. Should you wake her up? She seemed out of it, though. You’d assumed that Hazel was the type of person you’d need to drag around back to her own room because of how hard it would be to wake her. Plus, she may not look like it, but Hazel had some serious weight on her. The memory of seeing Hazel in a tank top with her toned arms flashed in your mind and you had to physically shake the thought off before you could get any more flustered.  Deciding against taking Hazel back, you took it upon yourself to gather a bottle of water and some meds (which you keep just in case) to her. 

“Hazel,” You nudge her softly. This caused her to stir a little. “What are you doing here, bub? You got the wrong room.” 

“What?” She replied, opening one eye and scanning the room. “Oh you’re right. This isn’t my bed.” 

Hazel starts to stand and get off the bed much to your disappointment and relief. What she does next surprises you, though. The brunette then decides to plop herself down on your bed and make herself comfortable. 

“This is better.” She mumbles, pulling the comforter up to her chin. 

“Oh, that’s not…” You say unironically. Racking your brain on the best possible move, you ultimately decide to just let the blue eyed girl be. There was no harm in letting her sleep for the night in your bed, right? 

Wrong. Hazel kept pulling you into bed with her until you lost your footing and gently crashed on top of her. Your neighbor quickly used this to her advantage and wrapped her arms around you, securing you in her hold. 

“Hazel, buddy, wake up.” You whisper, trying to get yourself out of her tight (but comfortable) grip. If you had it your way, you would reciprocate the cuddle but she was drunk and she wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning. 

With your free hand, you continuously poke the brunette until she got irritated and opened one of her eyes to look at you. At this, she smiled and uttered your name. 

“Hi, pretty. What’re you doing in my room?” She muttered, patting your hair. 

“It’s not your room, Haze.” You whisper, trying to hide the blush that was forming on your cheeks. Your body felt warm. 

“‘M pretty sure it is.” She mumbled, closing her eye again. Hazel seemed comfortable like this. Like she’d imagine doing this before. It had you thinking about whether or not she thought about you too. 

Ridding your head of the thoughts, you decide to give in. There was no waking your neighbor up and you were pretty tired too. Sighing, you relax your body and try to sleep all the while racking your brain on what to tell Hazel tomorrow. 

You’re awoken by a groan from your intruder neighbor last night. Hazel must be awake. Taking a look, you realized that you were now facing your wall and Hazel’s arm was wrapped around you as she nuzzled her nose into your neck from behind. The thought of your position made the blood on your cheeks warm up. 

“What?” You hear her mumble. Hazel rids her nose off your neck and sees that you were on the receiving end of her hug. You could feel her physically freeze at the sight. Deciding to break the ice, you faced Hazel and gave her a smile. 

“Hi.” You whisper, scared that if your voice was louder you’d freak her out more. 

“H-hello.” She whispered back, unsure of what her eyeballs were seeing. At that, your neighbor rubs at her eyelids to make sure you weren’t an illusion. 

“You okay?” You ask as you sit up. You reach over your dresser and hand her the water bottle and meds from last night. “Here, drink this. It’ll get rid of the headache.” 

Reluctantly, she sits up and takes it from you. Hazel looked lost, like she couldn’t believe what was happening in front of her eyes. Still, she took the meds and ingested it. Her head was killing her and she wasn’t going to reject being saved by an angel. 

“Is this real?” She asks as she finally speaks her thoughts out loud. 

This earns a giggle from you and Hazel’s heart picks up at the sight and the sound of your laughter. God, you were so pretty. Especially with you on her bed, well, it was your bed but that’s besides the point. 

“I’m pretty sure it is, Haze.” You reply, fidgeting with the blanket on your bed.

“Did we?” She trails off, her eyes wide. Hazel clasps her hand over her mouth in an attempt to cover up her gasp. 

“Oh, no! No, Haze. Nothing bad happened, don’t worry.” You reply, putting a reassuring hand on her lap. “You just got lost is all. Got the wrong dorm and you thought my bed was yours. You were pretty drunk.” 

“Oh, alright.” She replied, seemingly disappointed. Hazel wasn’t very good at masking her emotions and you could tell that she felt bad about something. 

“If it matters to you, I wasn’t mad or anything. You can stumble here drunkenly all you want.” You reassure her. The last thing you wanted was to scare your crush off because she found herself on your bed after a seemingly wild night. 

“And I didn’t say anything weird?” She asked warily. Hazel didn’t trust herself whenever she was intoxicated. She didn’t have a filter whenever she drank and she was scared out of her mind that she yapped on to you about her feelings. 

You shake your head at her question. “No, you’re all good. Though you did call me pretty.” 

Hazel’s cheeks turned a slight shade of pink. 

“It’s true.” She said. Ah, maybe she was still a bit drunk. Hazel mentally facepalmed at how she just openly admitted her admiration of you. This wasn’t how she imagined it going. In her head, Hazel confesses to you after a big life changing moment. Not this, not after drunkenly stumbling into your room.  

“I think you’re pretty too, Haze.” You whisper, leaning in closer. This is it. You were going to kiss and confess your feelings. Happily ever after. The thought made your heart race.

Hazel jumps at your action; her eyes were wide with surprise. Did you read it wrong? Oh god, you just made her uncomfortable. 

“I’m sorry.” You blurt out, hands wailing all over the place. “I didn’t mean to, I thought we were flirting. I’m so sorry, Hazel.” 

Hazel does a double take at what you said. The wires in her brain were all flaring up and her eyebrows furrowed. 

“You were flirting with me?” Hazel asks, confusion taking over her senses. She never thought that you’d be into her. Well, maybe you were. She wasn’t good at seeing signs. Sometimes it felt like you were flirting but her brain tries to push it off. She didn’t really see why you would want to be with her, to be honest. Some of the trauma from highschool carried on til this day and it’s something she has trouble with. 

“I have been for the past six months, thanks for noticing.” You mutter, breaking eye contact with the brunette. All your confidence disappeared. You felt dumb for ever thinking that Hazel would feel the same about you. She didn’t even know you were flirting. 

“I’m sorry.” She says as she hesitantly takes your hand. “I didn’t know. Well, a part of me did. It’s just that I’m bad at this.”

“No, Haze. I’m sorry too. I should have been direct with you, to be honest.” You interlock your fingers together and squeeze her hand. 

“For what it’s worth, I do like you.” She replies. Your breath hitches and your mouth is agape ever so slightly. Hazel Callahan just confessed to you. 

“Oh my god.” You exclaim, freaking out. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” 

“It’s okay, you don’t have to return the feelings. I just wanted to let you know.” Sweet Hazel, again, wasn't reading between the lines. But you didn’t let this bother you. 

Taking her face in your hands, you decide to plant a kiss on her soft lips. Your neighbor was surprised at this but eventually melted into the kiss. It was everything you dreamt of. Hazel’s lips were soft and gentle. She kissed you with such yearning, like she’d dreamt about this moment too. 

“Dummy.” You say, exasperated. “I like you too.” 

Hazel smiles and the dimples on her cheek peeks out. Suddenly everything was quiet in her mind and the only thing she could think of was you. The brunette took your hand and kissed it, a declaration of her love and her loyalty. She couldn’t believe it. This moment was bigger to her than anything ever before. You were the quiet in her mind and the roar of her heart. 

[jeanmoreautemple]

Thea Muldani: a rant

I feel weird about Thea but I can’t really put into words exactly why? So I’m writing down some things I’ve thought.

I honestly didn’t think much about her before TSC, like she was okay (I wish she’d been introduced earlier tho or that she hadn’t graduated already so she was a recurrent Raven player or something).

After reading the extra content I wasn’t bothered about the age gap between her and Kevin but yes a little bit about the fact that Kevin was fourteen when they first met + the -you fuck like a virgin, maybe some practice will make you better at it- comment that Nora included. It was uuhh weird but the rest of the Kevthea story was okay, and Thea is 100% not a groomer. Plus, Nora technically deleted the extra content so in theory nothing there is canon yet.

Now in TSC we get her sole appearance in TKM from Jean’s POV, who has known her since he was fourteen (like Kevin- this is important to keep in mind). The scene starts out cute! We find out she took him under her wing and even had nicknames for him like Paris and her little duckling🥰. So the fourteen year boy that just arrived from france with broken English looked up to her, Thea was ~21 at this point.

We know Jean is going through HELL during this time:

And we also know the Moriyamas were always particularly cruel with Jean, getting more physical him than with Kevin. Even though It’s said that Riko would torture Jean and Kevin (broken hand incident) in private, hence the other Ravens not knowing the whole picture, how can a fourteen year old kid hide such pain? But apparently , as we later find out, Thea was too deep into the Evermore raven cult mindset that she didn’t find anything strange about the coach and Rikk’s behavior towards Jean.

At 15 Jean is given a number and place in the perfect court, but only at 16 joins the lineup. He gets a lot of hate, especially from the other defensemen, whom Thea works with:

Although the Ravens are know for being extremely violent training, at least in the court Thea must have noticed that the defense line were especially brutal to Jean. Or SOMETHING.

But here comes the worst part: during this same year Riko forces Jean to sleep with 5 defensemen. By the time Jean is a junior most of these have graduated which means they were 20 or older. So Thea had been playing with each of these guys for at least 2 years (except for Grayson), she knew them.

They went on to joke and talk about the whole ordeal as Jean paying for his perfect court number. Thea also being in the defense line could have heard all of this first hand, we don’t know. But It’s so widely talked about that it reaches Tetsuji and we do know Thea witnessed Jean’s punishment:

Coincidentally Thea starts a sexual and emotional relationship with Kevin this year (it’s her last too).

So here’s the part that made me dislike Thea very much. In TKM she goes to Kevin demanding answers, Kevin then brings her to Jean, who is looking like this:

It’s been three years since she graduated but she’s still wearing her Raven number in a necklace, and when she sees Jean’s state in TSC she comments how if Kevin hadn’t said anything she’d think it normal:

By now it’s clear she at 26 is still 100% brainwashed, but this next line of hers cemented it:

YOUR OLD TRICKS ?!

So let’s break that down:

1. The immigrant kid (16!) she watched over for two years from age 14 to 16 suddenly starts having sex with members of HER (23!) defense line who are all around her age and openly hate him for 5 consecutive nights and she doesn’t suspect anything?

2. Said defensemen then brag and shame Jean afterwards calling him a whore, which leads to Jean getting beaten half to dead by their coach and still nothing?

3. Years later she recalls the incident as Jean being up to his little tricks and being rightfully beaten to a pulp?!!!!

I can’t. I know she’s also a cult victim but no. It was super common for Ravens to have hate sex with each other but her being close to Kevin (and somewhat Jean) during the time Jean’s (a 16 year old!) assaults were happening and still remaining this clueless… I’m sure she must be lovable for both Kevin and Jean to respect and care for her so much but her one scene convinced me she’s way too deep into the Raven spirit and her presence around Kevin and Jean would be just so harmful.

But I have to give credit when it’s due, apparently after some hours with Kevin and 7 years later she believes her King broke Kevin’s hand:

In conclusion:

Thea is absolutely no groomer but if one takes a look at her attitude towards Jean’s sexual history when he was 16 and how her relationship with Kevin was happening simultaneously, her you fuck like a virgin, maybe some practice will make you better at it and tell me you weren’t up to your old tricks comment combo, it all makes me dislike her. Cause you’d think someone who at 22-23 was dating a boy who had just turned legal would be careful or mature enough to choose her wording better when talking about the sexual activity between a boy close in age to her own boyfriend with people around HER age, but nope. The fact that Kevin married her, has a child and lives happily ever after with her seems unbelievable to me.

PS: Her and Kevin’s (we don’t know if he believes Riko) apparent ignorance or lack of suspicion of Jean’s freshman year assault was the most hurtful part of TSC tbh (not counting Elodie). Imagine having the closest people to you misunderstand/ believe lies about such a traumatic event. I guess this is why Nora didn’t include a Andrew POV, I would have died or wanted to kill Nicky and Aaron for not looking deeper into Andrew’s attitude.

[saeist]

to my first ── s. itoshi

synopsis: words i'll never get to say. from me, to you, my first genre: childhood lovers(?), mutual pinning, angst? word count: 3.9k warnings: the interactions with sae is basically just memories of the reader? hopefully i can pull off whatever writing style this is. pls bare w/ me!! notes: this is a little personal for me to write. i just felt like i needed to write this out of my system (T—T) i keep having reoccurring dreams about this specific person and i'm going crazy reminiscing what we could've been (i was literally 11 years old) listening to: about you – the 1975 & you were beautiful – day6

as much as you hate to admit it, you do believe in the saying "first love never dies"

first love, 

first love is something you’d describe your relationship with sae itoshi. 

you don’t really remember how it all started. everything seemed hazy to you now. like a long, lost forgotten memory you buried deep inside your mind. you swore you’d never relive those memories, as it felt like reopening an old wound

it's been almost a decade since you both left with unspoken words and feelings but you're sure that you've moved on. you're sure you are. you have moved on long ago when you realized you'll never see him again

it was silly really. it only took you a photo to remember everything about what you had with sae. maybe agreeing to catch up with old distant family friends was a bad decision on your part. apparently catching up with distant family friends also meant looking through old photo albums, reminiscing the good memories

looking back through the years, there were just moments in your life where you thought to yourself that maybe, just maybe everything wouldn’t be as shitty as it was now if you two were still together. times where you wished and prayed that everything was just a dream and as soon as you wake up, you know he’s still there.

with you.

it was in elementary school where you first met sae

among the other kids in your class, you and sae just strangely clicked. except for the times sae just felt the need to comment and insult the way you do things but despite that, there was a strange but comforting feel between the two of you

you've just recently moved to the neighborhood and coincidentally right next to the itoshi's. that meant that you lot would walk home together after school which prompted you and sae to get to know each other a little day by day

surprise was an understatement when sae first asked his mom if you could come over after school. mrs. itoshi was more than delighted that sae actually made friends in school but what she didn't expect was it was you who came over, the new girl next door

sae had felt something different about you and you knew that. he treated you differently than the others. he was more gentle and more light with his words with you. if it was anybody else, he would’ve already lashed out on them calling them prickly names to get under their skin

ironically enough, you two first bonded over minecraft.

“honey, i’m home” sae called out in a bland sing song voice, his player entering the house that you specifically made for the two of you

“what was that about” you giggled, whacking his player with your own

“nothing” sae says quickly placing his minecraft bed next to yours. “c’mon let’s sleep”

maybe you two were just naive as kids, not knowing what the warm feeling in your chests really means

it was the summer of sixth grade when you started to see sae in a completely different light

at this point, you and sae were known as childhood friends and nothing more. over the summers, you hung out with sae less frequently

it was no big deal, though. it was just kids going through personal growth. even if you and sae didn’t hang out like you used to back in elementary school, the family hangouts continued. over the years of you and sae being inseparable, both families had also bonded and formed a close friendship, becoming what one would call family friends.

there was a math training camp that your school holds every year and your dumbass decided to join for the baseless reason that your friends were also joining that same year

in your defense, you only joined because you didn't want to be left out on what they did over the weekends at school. so much that you eventually signed up even if you couldn't be bothered to answer math questionnaires that you don't even understand

however, towards the end of the training camp, you found a completely different reason on why you decided to stay

turns out sae had also signed up (probably because his parents and teachers encouraged him to join after seeing him excel in academics especially in math) for the math training camp

you will never forget the look on sae's face he saw you enter the classroom. he didn't think you were the type to join these type of things. when you catch his stare, you gave him a small wave and sat right next to him — to which he pays no mind, he was busy paying attention to the proctor up front anyway

—

the long day filled with reading different levels of math has come to an end when the proctor leaves the classroom

you let out a sigh of relief, leaning back on the armchair, brain completely fried from exhaustion. what the fuck did those symbols even mean? could you six graders really answer all those questions?

sae snickered beside you, glancing at your exhausted face

"tired already?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. the way he said his words almost felt like he was mocking you but you know he means well

"haha. very funny mr. genius" you laughed obnoxiously, waving him off as you look up at the ceiling

"just saying" sae puts his hands up in mock surrender. you can already see the smirk on his face but for now, you don't fight back. not now. you were too tired to come up with a snarky response

amidst to your small talk, your classmates had began flinging each other's shoes. tomfoolery, as you'd like to call it. how they still have the energy to make fools of themselves like they didn't just go through psychological warfare learning about a whole new world of mathematics hours before is beyond you

you sat up straight, attention now at your friends, “look at them.. what idiots” you commented, stifling a laugh as you watch friends and classmates run around the classroom just minutes after the proctor had left

sae bit back a laugh and nods in agreement. “yep”

you both shared a look before bursting into laughter.

you like to think that was the start of everything. the start of fire you two unknowingly ignited.

you don’t regret attending that damned math training camp your school held that one year. you don’t regret wasting your precious afternoon trying to answer those damn questionnaires that you don’t even understand. you don’t regret sitting next to him that day, 

you don’t.

—

the night after the first day of your school's annual math training camp was never the same ever again

that was the night you and sae began talking online for the first time. after hours, as you'd like to call it. the initial message popped up on your screen, and soon, a stream of text flowed seamlessly between you two

it all started with just a simple 'hello, what are you doing right now?' to discussing basic interests, to different niches you two are into, and before you know it the birds were chirping and the sun was already been up. the quiet of the night had been filled with the soft tapping of your keyboard and controlled laughter, creating a private bubble where your friendship deepened and kept in the digital realm for years to come.

this went on for a good month before you realized that he had became a daily routine to you

despite all of that, it was still pretty hard to believe that you got close with sae again in just a short amount of time. you two were drastically different. you didn’t particularly stood out as you just liked to keep things to yourself and close friends. sae on the other hand, he excelled both in academics and sports. even going as far as taking piano classes during the weekend just because

you like to think that maybe it's just fate, a twist of life’s unpredictability, or maybe it's something deeper that neither of you could yet understand?

who knows?

it was in your homeroom classroom where you felt butterflies for the first time

you two were now freshmen in high school. fresh off middle school, fresh off that summer where you and sae had the whole world in your hands

the transition to high school brought with it a mix of anxiety and anticipation, the new environment buzzing with energy and the promise of new experiences

you and sae were deskmates at the start of the semester. you can't tell if this was on purpose by the teachers or fate was just doing it's thing

up until now, your unlabeled relationship with sae was going steady. just the usual chitchats and banter after school in the comfort of your two homes

you were just sitting beside him, listening to the teacher up ahead when you suddenly feel a hand snake their way on top of yours. the hand quickly intertwined its fingers with yours, and you’ve never felt that weird feeling in the pit of your stomach before

what was that?

you turned your head to look at the only person who could do such a thing

it was sae

it was sae, who was looking directly at the teacher in front of him like he was the only one present in this room. completely disregarding your curious stare beside him.

all of a sudden it felt like everything has gone into slow motion. the classroom around you seemed to blur, the chatter and movements of other students fading into the background as the touch of his hand anchored you in the moment

before you could've reacted further, the bell rang

sae untangled his hand from yours and walked away to move on to the next subject as if nothing had happened, leaving you to process the lingering warmth on your skin amidst the bustling noise of students packing up and the chatter filling the classroom. the abrupt return to normalcy felt jarring almost, the ordinary sounds and movements of your classmates contrasting sharply with the intimate moment you had just shared.

you can only stare at his back in complete shock on what just happened

what the fuck just happened?

little did you know, that was just the beginning of everything

—

you were starting to think you were going crazy. you're convincing yourself it was just some sick twisted dream. it has to be, it had to be. there was just no fucking way that just happened

asking sae directly was a bit too much, and you knew that. you knew that he wouldn't give you a direct answer– hell, you're lucky if you'd even be given an answer about that

so instead, you decided to test the waters again. if you could somehow lure him into doing it again then, you'd have your answer

your class was at the library for some reading exercises when you decided to put your plan into action. It was simple, really. you placed your hand at your side under the table, hoping sae would take the bait.

he did.

sae tightened the grip on your hand when he intertwined them for the second time today. it was like he was trying to tell you a message through that little action

this time, you dared to look at him. you lightly tugged on his arm, hoping it would catch his attention

to think your little plan had actually worked the second time, you knew something was up between the two of you.

sae decided to play coy, much to your disappointment. he began writing down in his notebook using his left hand while his dominant hand was busy holding yours under the table, yet he still showed no other signs of acknowledgment what-so-ever

it almost felt like he was tormenting you

sae feels a small smile tug on his lips when he catches you looking away while pouting.

how cute, he thought to himself

you didn't know how to bring it up to him later on when you two get home but you don't miss the way the tips of his ears have a slight tint of a red hue when he held your hand under the table

whatever this set up you two had, it went on for awhile without anyone noticing. sae would randomly hold hands with you under the table and shake you off once the bell rings as you move on to the next next class

sometimes you think he’s doing it on purpose to mess with you but at the same time, you don’t. 

it was during science class when sae blushed for the first time

it's times like this that you were glad your teacher made you sit at the back row

instead of listening to your teacher's discussion, you had your own discussion with sae, who was seated right next to you about movies you've both watched growing up

“that’s not how it goes though” you hushed, trying to not raise your voice as the science teacher was in front of you, teaching a lesson

“you’re wrong then” sae argues back, jotting down notes on a piece of paper. 

you clicked your tongue in annoyance, “did you even watch the movie?” you asked, raising your voice a bit. sae suddenly looks up from his paper and looked at you, annoyed

“i should be the one asking you that” he argues, diverting his attention back to his messy notes. you wonder how he could still be at the top of the class when his notes are all over the place

before you could argue further, it seemed like the entire class including the teacher was listening to your little argument

“would you mind sharing your heated discussion back there to the class?” your teacher chimes in, halting your heated argument at the back.

you and sae both freeze in your seats. you slowly turned your head to see the rest of the class staring at the two of you with knowing smiles and smirks.

sae opened his mouth in an attempt to defend himself but the furious blush creeping up from his neck to his face says otherwise. 

“kids these days..” your teacher teased, obviously up to date with the rumors circulating around you and sae. the class giggled as sae shifted awkwardly in his seat with an obvious blush on his cheeks.

your ‘relationship’ with the red head has been slowly progressing into something more. that of which didn't go unnoticed by your fellow classmates and teachers

whatever your status was with sae has already spread among the class. the innocent teasing of your fellow classmates, commenting how cute you two were as a couple spread like wildfire. 

you're not too sure if what propelled your relationship with sae was caused by the innocent teasing by your classmates

it was in his room when you asked sae what you two were

you were almost akin to the itoshi household that it didn't bother them that you'd stay over for multiple periods of time. you were like the daughter they never had and they've always welcomed you with open arms.

you held hands with him again that night. you were lying down on his bed with him, a few inches of space in between. “distance” is what he says as he intertwined his hands with yours – again.

“this is weird.. what are we?” you asked.

sae shrugged, holding your intertwined hands up high, almost like he’s inspecting it.

“i don’t know”

you don't miss the small smile on his face when you waved goodbye to him when your mom picks you up after work

there were times where you just wanted to ask him, “why me?” but you knew he would just throw a backhanded compliment saying that you were more tolerable than the others he knew. 

instead, you didn’t think too much of it. you’ve already brought up the question to him in your daily conversations. to which he usually just dismisses it as nothing

after all, he himself wasn’t sure if you two were even a thing.

[10:45 PM] you: sae, seriously.. what are we?

[10:46 PM] sae itoshi: i don't know

it was in the hallway when sae accidentally lashed out on you

sae was addictive

sae had became a drug that you couldn't stop taking. ever since that night, you couldn't end your day without at least talking to him. sae had become apart of your everyday routine. you had grown accustomed to his daily commentary about anyone and anything

it turns out not only his teachers can make sae flustered, but also his own set of friends

they were teasing sae again when you walked right past them. there was an unspoken rule between the two of you where you two act like you weren’t that close outside the classrooms, something you never really understood the concept of

you rolled your eyes per usual and ignored the obvious innuendos thrown about the two of you. 

“why do you look constipated?” you laughed as you two finally got some alone time at the back of the classroom, just a few minutes before the classroom gets filled with students after lunch “it’s my friends, they’re being stupid as usual” he scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“why? did they say anything about us?” you joked, swinging your feet off the table

sae visibly stiffened at the question, “yeah but it’s nothing to be concerned about” he huffed after giving it much thought

“i want to know what they said” you whined, pouting in front of him. somehow it occurred to you that he actually gives in when you throw the puppy eyes at him.

sae flicked your forehead, “no.” he says flatly. you grab onto his hand, swaying it slightly. “sae c’mon just tell me i swear i won’t be offended” you pestered him, poking his chest til he gives in. 

“they said disgusting things about us okay?! happy now?!” sae snapped. “i won’t get into detail but i really wanted to wipe the smirk off their faces” he seethed

“oh..” you squeaked, feeling small

sae picks up on your sudden discomfort and pulled your head against his chest. “i'm sorry. i didn't mean to yell" he murmurs, "don’t worry though. they won’t bother us anymore. i already told them off earlier”

it was during rin's 14th birthday when sae realized he liked you

you were at his house again. it was his brother’s birthday and your family came over late due to the fact that your younger brother also had his kindergarten graduation on the same day.

“you’re well dressed today, y/n-san” his brother, rin comments as you enter their house.

“that’s because i came after brother’s graduation” you retort, tapping rin's cheek, not forgetting to greet him his birthday wishes

“yeah right” his brother scoffs, pushing your hand away. he was exactly like sae at the end of the day “use protection or whatever..” rin says when you knock at sae's room before you enter

you were about to tell rin off for saying such things about you and his older brother when sae yanks the door open

“what the hell was that dumbass talking about— woah” sae's eyes peered over to the dress you were wearing. " you look pretty" he mumbles, grabbing your hand and dragging you inside his room

it was almost midnight when you realized that you talked the night away with sae in his bed, under his covers

"oh shit, it's almost midnight" you pulled out your phone to check the time that reads 11:11 PM

sae took a moment to listen for his parents laughter outside his door. he pats your head and intertwined your fingers under the covers

"it's fine. they're still having fun outside so let's continue what we were talking about" sae says, going back to the topic that you lost track of

you pulled your intertwined hands as you take a good look at it

"sae, i think i like you" your little naive self admitted

sae smiled but you didn't see it

"i like you too"

before you could’ve said anything, the door to sae's room bursts open to reveal rin and your little brother.

in that moment, you and sae sat up and tried to fix yourselves. not like you two did anything inappropriate but the mere thought of it just sent shivers down your spine. not when rin and your little brother were at the age where they would tattle to their respective parents

"i think we're going home" you murmured to sae, patting his leg before standing up and walking over to your brother and rin

"i'll chat you when i get home, sae" you waved goodbye, closing his door on your way out

you missed the big smile on sae's lips when he realizes that he liked you back

it was the following summer when you unexpectedly had to move away

it all happened too fast

some complication had happened between the jobs between your parents that resulted to having no choice but moving far away to the countryside

from what you've heard, your parents and sae's parents had a falling out amidst everything. your dad was convinced mr. itoshi had something to do with his job then word got out then one thing led to another and now you're here, being told off by your mother that you had to cut all contact with sae

"just for a couple of months til we get back on our feet. we don't want them to know where we are" your mother tried to convince you. she tried so hard. she inevitably had to take your phone and deactivate whatever social media you had on there to keep your locations a secret

this was stupid, you thought to yourself. this was between the adults but you still lived under their roof so you had to do what they said

you never saw sae ever again after that

they say fate can be the most cruelest thing

it's been almost nine years since the incident that you had to leave the life you spent years yearning what you could've lived

nine years of radio silence from both ends of a string you call fate

your family had reconnected with a mutual friend that didn't take sides when your family and the itoshi's had a falling out

you met up with the mutual friend and had a good long conversation about how life has been treating you since then

one could say you never got the closure you wanted after that day. even if nine years had passed, the little girl in you who sae had on the palm of his hands, still firmly believes that if you two were destined to cross paths again after all these years, it would all still be the same

your mutual friend had graciously showed you a recent picture of sae itoshi over the years and all you could say was

wow.

it's too late now, you think to yourself. nine years too late. you already had your life figured out. you were finally happy and in a committed relationship for a couple of years now but yet, the feelings you didn't know you still had in you, all crashed around you with just a single picture of the first boy you think you've ever loved

── they say first love never dies

maybe in another life time, in another universe, maybe you two will cross paths again. this time, in the end it will end with you.

[felixbobeelix]

In Defense of The Emperor (or, Ansur Is Not A Victim)

GIF credit: @mittthrawnuruodo

The Emperor is, in my opinion, one of the most underappreciated and misunderstood characters in Baldur's Gate 3, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about reasons why that may be. I honestly think it's tragic because The Emperor is such a compellingly-written character, and I think a lot of that gets lost under the landslide of abject hatred people feel for it.

I have a lot of thoughts about this, so buckle up buttercups! Lots (and lots, and LOTS) more under the cut!

I was playing BG3 again the other day, as one does, and was working my way through Emp's reveal, its initial withholding of the details about its escape and the nature of its relationship with Stelmane, and all the Ansur stuff, and I got fired up about this again. I don't think I'll ever stop getting fired up about The Emperor, to be honest pffffff.

There are a few really common reasons I see for why people hate The Emperor. One is its manipulative behavior, lies by omission, and the fact that if you pressure it enough, its attitude toward Tav will change. Another is the fact that if you choose to free Orpheus it will willingly return to the Netherbrain. Then there's its enthrallment of Stelmane and the implication that it led to her illness and death. And, of course, there's the idea that The Emperor betrayed its longtime friend and implied former lover, Ansur.

I also think there's a secret fifth option that maybe happens unconsciously. The vast majority of people spent a lot of time crafting their Dream Guardians into gorgeous feasts for the eyes, which is something the devs intentionally encouraged players to do. So when the game hit them with the twist and their beautiful Dream Guardian was replaced by an (ostensibly) unappealing Illithid, their sense of betrayal was amplified; they were predisposed to greater anger and hatred for The Emperor than they may have felt if it had retained the pleasant visage of their Dream Guardian.

Emp's Manipulation:

I find the argument about Emp's lying and manipulative behavior a little strange, when, for example, so many people are willing to overlook Astarion's abject manipulation of their Tavs. Personally, I think the reasons here are twofold. One, Astarion enjoys the privilege of being conventionally attractive and Emp does not, plain and simple. Two, sticking it out through Astarion's lying and manipulation will eventually lead to satisfying gain: an endgame relationship with him. There's no such satisfying outcome with Emp, so players are less inclined to put up with behaviors they endure for Astarion's sake. It's actually arguably easier to get Emp to admit to its manipulation of Tav than it is to get Astarion to do the same thing, and yet Astarion is more readily forgiven.

There may also be some degree of people being skeeved out by Emp's mind reading and its apparent ability to enthrall. But even this is a little odd, since Tav and their companions are all telepathically joined and that doesn't scare the player. The Emperor also never actually makes an attempt to enthrall Tav even when they're being combative and resistant. My only conclusion is that player distaste in this context is a product of the negative narratives about Illithids throughout the game. Which, for the record, are narratives I think we're meant to challenge as players.

(As an interesting side note, those narratives seem to be easily overriden when an Illithid is seen as helpful, as in the case of Omeluum. Despite clear evidence that it has not entirely denounced Illithid culture, and despite its membership in a morally questionable organization, players have a largely positive opinion of Omeluum simply because it tries to help them. They seem to forget that it was experimenting on Tav, and its miscalculation could have seriously compromised them.)

I think it's also worth pointing out that an Illthid in hiding is going to find particular challenge in simply surviving and remaining undetected, and even moreso in avoiding being attacked and killed, especially if it does not have the benefit of allies. Even Omeluum (who has the benefit of allies in the Society of Brilliance) has to disguise itself when it moves about the city. If you visit Omeluum and Blurg in Baldur's Gate you can listen in to their conversation, and Omeluum admits it sometimes takes the form of Blurg when it goes around.

I staunchly maintain, for one thing, that Emp is a true neutral character. It will resort to nearly any means necessary to assure its survival and freedom - though, again, it does stop short of robbing Tav of their autonomy, which I think is significant. And really, all things considered, Emp's methods are some of the least insidious when compared with the behaviors of other notable characters in the game. Even its insistence that Orpheus must be kept imprisoned is driven more by fear and a lack of real alternatives than any kind of malice. And alignments aside, when you consider the attitudes people have about Illithids, it's suddenly not surprising that Emp resorts to things like lying to protect itself and convince others to ally with it.

This concept was something I had to explore in depth when I worked with a DM friend who helped me construct a playable Illithid character, and I was challenged to run with a party of adventurers without them discovering my true race. It is NOT EASY. Almost immediately, despite my best intentions, I realized I would likely need to resort to some questionable methods to maintain my character's secrecy. The Emperor is the same. I'll touch on this more when I get into Emp's dynamic with Stelmane.

Player Influence:

Maybe the most frustrating observation I've made is that The Emperor is one of the only characters players will typecast based on the worst potential dialogue outcomes. Tav's relationship with pretty much all of the characters can be either improved or totally soured by the dialogue options they select. In most cases players are able to make the distinction that their choices are what influence the attitudes of the characters they're interacting with. But in the case of The Emperor, players will refuse to believe that any positive interactions with it are genuine because there are dialogue paths that lead to negative outcomes. I have to wonder why this standard does not apply to companion characters who break up with Tav, treat Tav questionably, or leave the party altogether when the player selects negative dialogue options.

Because of the potential for the Emperor's attitude to sour and for it to turn away from the player, it is written off as an entirely disingenuous character. However, Emp repeatedly demonstrates a capacity for veracity and emotionality, and I believe that when you foster a positive relationship with it the feelings it shares are genuine, just like with any other character. I'm guessing it doesn't help that Emp can be very matter-of-fact and pragmatic even during positive interactions, where the companion characters are often downright poetic in their regard for Tav and willing to make sacrifices for Tav when their approval is high.

I can see how this would give the sense that Emp's feelings are lesser, because it brackets those feelings with discussions about things like whether Tav is embracing tadpole abilities. But 1) Emp stands to lose its freedom again if the conflict with the Elder Brain goes awry and is, I think very understandably, preoccupied with what it believes are the necessary steps to ensure victory, and it seems anxious to affirm that Tav is as dedicated to the best outcome as it is. And 2) if this kind of pragmatism is the barometer by which people are measuring their trust of a character's feelings about them, I'm honestly a little afraid to know how they feel about their interactions with very pragmatic people IRL. 👀

Some people just are less prone to emotional expressiveness, or will ease their discomfort around emotional expression by diverting conversation to more practical matters. That doesn't mean the feelings they express are not genuine. We see over and over that Tav has a way of awakening strong, unexpected feelings in the people they meet throughout the course of the game. There's every possibility that this is what happens with Emp, and that it is taken aback by its feelings and is steering the conversation back to the matter of the conflict with the Brain as a way of avoiding being caught up and losing the plot.

I think that because the game does such a good job of playing up the idea that Illithids are soulless and inherently manipulative and evil, players are overly willing to accept it as fact. However, the game does also give us opportunities to question that narrative, and I think we'd do well to seize those opportunities. Even in raw DnD Illithid lore has shifted toward the idea that Illithids are more than the vicious monsters they started as. I think it's far more compelling and creative to consider that Emp is being genuine when you pursue positive interactions with it.

Relationship with Stelmane:

This begs the question, then, of whether the Emperor is truly upset about Stelmane's death. It certainly seems to be, but when you begin to suspect that it was enthralling her and forcing her to do its bidding you begin to doubt that it really cared about her.

Honestly? I'm not sure whether it did or not. Perhaps what it's truly upset about is the realization that it no longer has the option to return to its previous life as a major player in the Knights of the Shield. Maybe aside from the enthrallment, it actually did respect and even like Stelmane. Perhaps they had a rapport at some point prior to her enthrallment, and it is nostalgic about that. I think its feelings in that moment are real, it's simply unclear as to what those feelings are about.

In any case, I am openly and unabashedly here to disabuse anyone of the notion that Stelmane was a good person. A lot of what we hear about her we hear from Wyll, who (like pretty much every other character) is an unreliable narrator. The truth is unfortunately not as nice as Wyll would like to believe. With as little information about her as we have, this seems a bold claim for me to make, but I make it confidently, and here is why: her membership in the Knights of the Shield precludes her from being a good person.

The Knights of the Shield is an organization dealing in political manipulation, information brokering, and financial gain for its members. At the very least, Belynne Stelmane was concerned with underhanded political maneuvering and the accumulation of wealth, and at worst she was a willing servant of Gargauth, the god of betrayal and political corruption. It's unclear what level of seniority she held in the organization, though Emp's decision to have her as its avatar implies that she held significant influence. Either way, at no point was it possible for her to be involved with the Knights of the Shield and still be a good person.

And, yes, the same can be said of The Emperor. To be clear, I am not claiming that Emp is a "good" aligned character. However, its motivations are inherently different to Stelmane's and the other members of the Knights of the Shield. Rather than being strictly financially or politically motivated, Emp's involvement with the Knights was most likely born as much out of necessity as any desire for power. The Knights were a viable cover, a way for it to remain hidden and still secure a life of relative freedom for itself. To be sure, it could have attempted to ally itself with another organization, such as the Society of Brilliance. However, the Society is comparatively smaller, less powerful, and less profitable. Emp also does not appear to have any interest in the sorts of experimentation and data collection as members of the Society of Brilliance.

Based on Emp's characterization, it is not suited to a life of exploration and travel. It does not have the same innate arcane ability as Omeluum, who is able to exist and still maintain its autonomy in regions where the influence of an Elder Brain is relatively strong. It's more likely that The Emperor's ability to maintain its autonomy is linked to its proximity, or lack thereof, to an Elder Brain. Likely, it chose to secure a life for itself in a single location far enough away from the reach of an Elder Brain that it could escape enthrallment, and allied itself with the Knights of the Shield because they were the most proximally convenient and had the best capacity for security.

At any rate, I think it's entirely reasonable to assume that if Stelmane had not been enthralled, she would have ripped the rug out from under The Emperor the moment she stood to gain from doing so. Emp stood its best chance of success by enthralling her, and while that is certainly a morally questionable thing for it to do, be assured that it was not taking advantage of some wholesome paragon of goodness. Likely as not, if the roles had been reversed, Stelmane would have subjected Emp to a similarly morally questionable form of subjugation until the moment came for her to discard it entirely.

As an aside, the game works pretty hard to give the impression that Stelmane’s enthrallment led to her illness and eventual passing, but it's also entirely possible that she truly did simply have a stroke. Or, perhaps more compellingly, her condition had nothing at all to do with The Emperor and was potentially infernal in origin, given the way that she allegedly stared unwaveringly at Wyll the last time he saw her, which was shortly before he was targeted by Mizora. She was already well into her illness at that point, and didn't seem cognizant of anyone else at the time, but Wyll was of particular interest to her. Maybe it's nothing, or maybe the game intentionally misled players into believing The Emperor was responsible for Stelmane's decline, when it was never Emp's fault in the first place.

The Emperor's "Betrayal" of Ansur:

Here is where my opinion diverges most significantly from the opinions of other players. Put plainly, The Emperor did not betray Ansur. That is an idea that is given by Ansur, and by the following passage, which can be found during the challenges in the Wyrmway:

The note preceding the author's writing gives the distinct impression that the author is - yes - an unreliable narrator. They are not only giving a secondhand account of the events, but they are dramatizing that account.

Then, after defeating Ansur, the player finds the following letter on Ansur's body:

We also have additional story from The Emperor itself about the events that led to Ansur's death.

The reality is that Ansur, motivated by his love for Balduran, saved The Emperor from its enthrallment by the Elder Brain in the hopes of restoring the Balduran he knew and loved. Despite being asked over and over to stop, despite The Emperor's insistence that it was content with its new form, Ansur doggedly searched for a way to return The Emperor to its previous form as Balduran. Rather than accept that Balduran's new form was permanent, rather than accepting him as The Emperor, rather than being happy enough that his loved one was no longer a slave and that the memories of their time together were still intact, Ansur was not satisfied. He could not look past Emp's Illithidness, he could not let go of the narrative that Illithids are monsters. His refusal to adjust his paradigm, his unwillingness to accept The Emperor as a valid friend or ally or lover, was a failing on Ansur's part, and it was incredibly selfish.

Emp's letter to Ansur is incredibly heartfelt, and focuses entirely on Ansur and his happiness. Emp clearly still values Ansur and wants him to be contented. Even as Emp draws its boundaries, it keeps the focus on Ansur's well-being. It is a really good letter, and nothing about it implies that Emp held any ill will toward Ansur. It simply wanted Ansur to give up the pursuit of reclaiming Balduran as he was. But Ansur was unwilling to do that. So unwilling, in fact, that he felt it would be better to kill The Emperor rather than accept its new form.

Therein is the true betrayal: attempting to kill your friend while they're sleeping because you can't make them fit your ideal of them is, put simply, super fucked up.

The idea that it's a betrayal for The Emperor to have killed Ansur in self-defense, but Ansur attempting to murder Emp in its sleep is somehow not a monumental betrayal, is absolutely wild to me. Ansur was the one who betrayed The Emperor, and his rage is as misguided as the hate players have for Emp. I think players are blinded by the heroic narrative around Ansur, and the narrative that Illithids - and, by proxy, The Emperor - can't be trusted undermines the explanation that The Emperor gives. Players want to believe Ansur despite the evidence that his feelings of betrayal are unfounded, because they're naturally more inclined to trust a heroic figure than an Illithid. Again, I think this was a place in the game where players were challenged to question accepted narratives.

Of course, it's entirely possible that Ansur's attempt to kill The Emperor was driven by something entirely separate from the story we're offered in the game. Maybe Ansur took issue with The Emperor's movements with the Knights of the Shield; though that would beg the question of why he would be so determined to eliminate Emp and not any of the other members. Or, maybe Emp killed Ansur unprompted in a bout of pure Illithid malice, which would be a betrayal indeed - though that seems highly unlikely after reading its letter to Ansur. Ultimately, however, without any indication otherwise, we have to take the story we're given at face value. As far as we know, Ansur was motivated to kill The Emperor as part of his cognitive dissonance around its change from Balduran to The Emperor, and that selfish, misguided act constitutes a betrayal of Emp by Ansur, not the other way around.

The Emperor's Return to the Netherbrain:

I saved this for last, because it's actually very simple. When you choose to free Orpheus, The Emperor declares its intention to return to the Brain, and true to its word it does exactly that, and fights against you during the final battle. Why, after fighting so hard to avoid the Brain, would Emp so willingly return to it?

Put simply, because it has no choice. Or, it has no choice in the context of the game as-is. What reason does Emp have to believe that Orpheus, an avid enemy of Illithids, having been subjugated by this Illithid, would be willing to extend his protection to it?

Emp knows that the moment Orpheus is free to give or take his psionic protection, he will refuse to protect it. The jig is up. The game is over. In its pragmatic way, The Emperor concedes defeat. Its anger is palpable, you have forfeit its hard-won freedom. But the cards are on the table, and it knows that without Orpheus' protection it is going to be enthralled whether it wants to be or not. So it goes willingly. At least it can make one more choice before it loses its autonomy.

Final Thoughts:

There is so much more to say about The Emperor and its feelings and motivations. Again, in no way is it a good-aligned character, and even with the best outcomes it's still clear that Emp is at least somewhat driven by a desire for greatness, whatever form that greatness takes. That was true even when it was Balduran. But I do think it's worth remembering that when you foster a positive connection with it and side with it for the endgame, it regards your parting with some sentimentality, and then just...leaves. It's all fairly benign. The player's choices go a long way in influencing how malicious The Emperor is, and I think that's important to remember.

I could go on for hours about this, it is absolutely one of my hills to die on, but I think this is enough for now lol. I just wish The Emperor were respected more as a complex, compelling character. I wish it were at least afforded the same defiant love some of the villains are given. I genuinely hate to see Emp flattened and written off when it's such an amazing character!

[olderthannetfic]

Hi, Ah weird question? So the default of fandoms usually is 'ship and let ship' right? Meaning even if you hate a ship you'll not harass the person, right? Now I'm asking this as someone who always headcanon and ship characters as queer. Here is this situation that I'm in right now: apparently a friend of mine who also agrees with 'SALS', found out another friend of theirs(A) used a mod to romance a queer character in a not queer way, you know what I mean? So then my friend called A queerphobic, they then fought and they are not talking right now. My friend came to me and told me about this, apparently expecting me to be as angry as them(I'm also queer/pan btw) and well I wasn't? Because why should I care what they ship or better say, how A chooses to romance characters. I suggested to my friend to talk to A about it and well, this made them more angry? I mean yeah it's awful when someone denies a character being queer in canon. But as far as I know A is not doing that? Now they are angry with me too although we still talk.....Am I in the wrong here? What should I do?

--

Using mods to make every NPC player-sexual is perfectly fine.

I get that it can be upsetting to see people "taking away" your few queer characters, but they're not actually taking them away. That friend is being unreasonable.

I'm not sure the default actually is SALS these days, but it ought to be.

Your friend may come back around to this once they calm down... or they may continue to be upset and think that being upset is a sign that something is morally wrong and not just a personal reaction.

I would avoid the topic with them for now. If they insist on talking about it, you can compare it to letting people ship ships you find gross. It's fine to keep finding them gross! But you shouldn't dump or attack friends over that.

This is, in general, a very touchy subject for a lot of queer people. Bob & Rose got a massive amount of hate despite reportedly being based on some real experiences. One Exception happens even IRL and even to people who thought they were gay... but it feels like talking about it gives ammo to shitheads who think they're going to be your one exception or that we should send teens to conversion camp.

So I get why people freak out about this, but... well... they need to chill when it comes to some friend smashing the barbie dolls together the wrong way.

[traldemic6]

Reddit post found in the wild:

"AITA for confronting my son's (16M) football coach for literally fattening him up?"

Post below:

"For some background, my son is 16 and has always been pretty athletic. He plays football and swims competitively, and he’s been doing both for years.

This past offseason, his coach told him he needed to gain weight—a lot of weight—like 40 pounds. The idea was to get him up to 200 pounds for this season. Now, my son, being the rule-follower and total team player that he is (plus, he can eat like no one else), didn’t question it and just went for it. The problem is, I had no idea this was happening, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized just how extreme the coach’s advice actually was.

Apparently, the coach gave him a whole list of “rules” to follow to pack on the weight quickly. We're talking calorie goals every day, specific fast food orders to hit those numbers (hello, McDonald's), drinking more soda (which we don't usually keep much of in the house), and even ordering supplements online. Now it makes sense why boxes of Boost started showing up on our doorstep out of nowhere! And to top it all off, the coach told him to cut back on cardio—including swimming, which is something he’s always loved.

I didn’t really put all the pieces together until later, but now, looking back at this summer, it’s so obvious. He wasn't running as much, and his swimming practically stopped, which was strange for him. And the food… it went from the usual healthy stuff to fast food galore. But honestly, I didn’t think much of it at the time. I just thought it was him being a lazy teenager.

Fast forward to now, and I can definitely see the difference. He’s already put on 35 pounds, and it shows. I hate to say this, but his stomach is starting to look like his dad’s. And he’s never had a weight problem before! He’s always been fit and active, so this feels like wrong. And I can’t help but worry this is setting him up for bigger problems later on.

I asked him what was going on, and to his credit, he was pretty upfront about it. He explained the coach’s plan, and he doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here feeling so guilty for not catching on sooner, and also furious at his coach for encouraging this. Both my son and my husband acted like I was overreacting. Apparently, my husband knew about it all along and was quietly supporting it! They both say I don’t “get it” because I’m more into swimming than football.

I requested a meeting with his head coach one-on-one, but husband and son both say I'm majorly overreacting, don't understand how football works these days, and that intervening made me a "Karen." But I’m worried about his health in the long run. AITAH for contacting his coach?

TL;DR: My son’s coach is pushing him to gain a ton of weight, and I’m not sure if I'm the asshole for requesting to meet with his coach about it"

[sophistopheles]

hey!! ty for posting about the article talking about continuation of aa. I don’t know as much about the production of aa5 and 6 but you mentioned a person names Eshiro being responsible for the “no spoilers” rule being replaced. what/who is that? just in general giving u the floor to rant about aa5 and 6 beyond what u were able to say in that post and ur hopes for the future 💙✨ ok bye! :)

hiya!! (post here)

So, the story of why aa5 and aa6 are so different to aa4 basically boils down to a change in the team making it (and Eshiro was part of this).

Most people know Shu Takumi wrote and directed the original trilogy of Phoenix Wright games and then worked on Apollo Justice (although the director was technically Mitsuru Endo, people tend to think of AJ as the last "Takumi" mainline game). After that, he left the Ace Attorney team to complete and release Ghost Trick in 2010, and then he became involved in the development of Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright, which released in 2012.

While he was doing all of this, a "secondary" Ace Attorney team had arisen to keep working on the franchise - they had almost all worked on previous AA games and in 2009 and 2011 they were able to release the two Ace Attorney Investigations games.

The two most well-known members of this "team" are the producer Motohide Eshiro and the director Takeshi Yamazaki, and the fact that AAI2 is so beloved shows that they are by no means unable to make really, really good Ace Attorney games. But, with Takumi still busy with his other projects, and a good few years having passed since AA4, this team was asked to create a fifth Ace Attorney game in his absence.

This was, obviously, a challenge, and Capcom were likely in quite a rush to get a new mainline game out soon. Additionally, initial fan reception of AA4 was really not that good - many people hated the decision to disbar Phoenix in particular - and the game itself had many loose ends.

Eshiro, as the producer, decided that for AA5 it was better for the writers to not be held back by previous games, which manifested in what people think of now as the "no spoilers rule". This is why AA5 does not follow up on AA4, and likewise for AA6. Nowadays this decision is widely regarded as a very bad move, but on some level I empathise with it - AA has always been kind of reluctant to spoil past games, and you were always operating with the presumption that the player might be new to the series and wanted to go back to the previous games. Writing a follow-up that addressed AA4, while being acceptable to newcomers and not spoiling almost all of AA4's biggest twists, without the guy who originally came up with the story, would prove really difficult.

So they wrote Dual Destinies as a new story which followed AA4 but didn't really address it, and indulged in fanservice to try and restore the series status quo. It seems like the scenario changed a lot during development and they were pretty crunched for time, too - the final villain's models are apparently called FINALBOSS in the game files and completely broken if you look at them from any other angle.

After working on AA5, Yamazaki was apparently exhausted and didn't really want to make another Ace Attorney. Unfortunately for him, Shu Takumi was still off on his Sherlock & Souseki Victorian-Meiji Adventure, writing the Great Ace Attorney duology, and he wouldn't get done until 2017 when DGS2 came out.

Eshiro managed to persuade Yamazaki to work on AA6 by bringing him to conventions, and having seen the passion and overjoyed reactions from fans after AA5 came out, Yamazaki agreed to direct the sixth game, with Takuro Fuse (AA5 and 6's main artist) acting as co-director to ease the load. Some of AA6's cases were also created by guest writers; the SOJ artbook mentions a struggle for ideas, which explains the outlandish setting of Khura'in.

To the best of my knowledge (and I'm not sure this account is 100% accurate so anyone please feel free to correct me) this is why AA5 and AA6 are the way they are. Nobody is particularly to blame for how things turned out; there were just a couple of bad decisions along the way which has resulted in the games being looked back on by a lot of people with some contempt. Given the circumstances, I'm actually pretty impressed with how enjoyable Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice are, even if they don't reach the heights of the trilogy.

Yamazaki left Capcom in 2019. Eshiro went on to produce Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2, and I'm pretty sure he's still at Capcom.

What all of this means for the next Ace Attorney title is completely speculation, but the short version of the story is that Shu Takumi has finally come back from getting milk Herlock Sholmes Jail writing other games, and seems to be getting hyped up by capcom as the "Director of the Ace Attorney Series". This makes it very likely he will direct and write the next Ace Attorney game. At present we have no idea what this means - he could follow up on AA4's story as well as he's able, he could write another Phoenix game, he might go rogue and write an Athena game, he might do something completely different. But the next AA game will likely be around the quality of AA1-2-3-4 and DGS, not another AA5/6 situation.

As for the producer, this comes from the November 2020 leaks (which was very real - it's where we first got the TGAA localisation confirmed), but the only thing we heard about their projected AA7 was that it would be produced by a guy called Yasayuki Makino. He also produced The Great Ace Attorney collection, and if you read his dev blogs from that release, he credits AA4 for getting him into the series initially, and generally seems to be a huge Ace Attorney fan himself, pushing hard for TGAA to get a worldwide re-release after its unimpressive initial sales (and look how well that's worked out...!)

That's basically the story. I think AA7 will be great, actually, but at this point I will literally take anything, Capcom please my family is starving