#but i love the audacity of the opinion that stories should be less complicated and interesting

[washed-up-wurmcoil]

I love people talking about Laudna and Bells Hells like, "um they're just enabling the addict." Should they check her into rehab? Should they take some time off from trying to prevent the immediately incoming apocalypse to find her a good 12 step program?

[caspercryptid]

Your stories are always so delightful! For a request.. How about a random champion whom, to make a name for themselves, decides they're going to take down the Machine Herald? And Jayce, being his usual rational man, almost goes feral because Hmmm excuse you!? He called dibs. And yeah, yeah Viktor is unlikely to need his help at all but The AUDACITY of this bitch. There are rules, ok, go find your own past friend-lover turned archnemesis, turned Its-complicated-stop-asking fight booty call.

Okay I had way too much fun with this. Opinions of character on what constitutes appropriate language to talk about women are decidedly not shared by author. TW: Misogynistic language, Ezreal. ___

In hindsight, Ezreal had probably had better ideas. Sticking his hand directly into a pot of snakes. Eating raw scorpion. Trying to jump a spike-pit in heels to impress a girl. Actually, all of those were probably to impress girls, so at least he had an excuse for them. Trying to impress bitches was always smart. This? This has not been smart.

Well, he’d been trying to impress Jayce, so maybe he had in fact been trying to impress bitches. Because Jayce is bitches. Honestly, why shouldn’t he be grateful for someone else trying to punch out Machine Herald. Why did he get dibs? And why did he need to be so aggressive about his goddamn dibs. No matter how long he thinks about it, Ezreal can’t figure it out.

Unfortunately, he has a lot of time to think about it, because Jayce has hung him from a flag pole. By his ankles. He’s basically slowly rotating in the wind till someone thinks to look up. His gauntlet is on, but Jayce has also tied his wrists together, so he can’t activate it. Fucker.

Ezreal broods (he is not sulking, he is absolutely not sulking, he is brooding.) It all started this morning. Or, well. Like two hours ago, but that sounded lame. Maybe specificity’s the ticket. He has to perfect this story before he tells it to Lux so that he sounds less pathetic. Or maybe more pathetic. Maybe so pathetic that she’d pat his shoulder or hug him or something.

Okay it started like two hours ago, When Ezreal had decided he was going to go punch Machine Herald. And it definitely wasn’t because Jayce had gotten really sad and pathetic crying drunk at the police social Cait had dragged him to and been subsequently miserably hungover today. Jayce’s inconsolable sobbing about how much he loved and missed Viktor had just reminded Ezreal how much he didn’t like the guy. That’s all. No.... Stupid bullshit sissy feelings. No sir. Nu-uh. Unless Lux was into Bullshit sissy feelings.

Dammit. She might be. Okay, so it had kind of been really sad. Not that Ezreal gives a shit about Jayce specifically, or anything. He just has empathy because he’s cool and sensitive like that. And also he just happens to know Jayce well enough to know that he had to be pretty fucked up to have gone to the social in the first place. He fucking hates those things. So it had been... concerning. Objectively. That Jayce had showed up and gotten wasted and cried. About how he never got to see his robot kid or whatever. And his daughter was supposed to have two dads and she only got one and Viktor had a human son Jayce had only met twice and Jayce is really fucked up about it. And Ezreal only cares because he loves kids so much and would make a fantastic father, someday, if he had a really cool blonde wife. Or whatever.

So it’d just been the last straw when Jayce showed up miserable and muttered something about Viktor. It should have been so easy. Ezreal was gonna be so cool about it. He had told Jayce to hang on a minute and had teleported off. He was gonna drag Viktor to prison in piltover. And then Jayce could.... Talk to him or steal his kid or whatever. They were fighting! Jayce fought Machine Herald all the time! But no, Jayce had to show up midway through the fight, and grab Ezreal himself, and now. The flagpole.

He’d gotten a good view of Jayce and Viktor getting cozy before they left together. What the Fuck, anyway. Well, he hopes they make each other miserable.

Maybe a hot babe will cut him down. Any second now.

Any Second Now.

[bettsfic]

hi betts! I don't mean to drag you back into a ship or headspace you don't wanna be in, but could you talk a little about what makes the romance as redemption/"bad guy turns good out of love" trope appealing? I'm trying to explain it to a friend but I can't seem to articulate it all very well—she's convinced that redemptive romances are harbingers of misogynistic doom and can only ever be written poorly.

yikes @ your friend. sounds like she’s been drinking the fanpol koolaid.

i think any time someone makes sweeping judgments of a general narrative concept rather than the specific execution of that concept, they’re just flat-out wrong. personally i tend to hate depictions of betrayal, not because they’re morally wrong but because it often disengages me from a story. but in the old guard, for example, booker’s betrayal is done out of a misguided sense of loyalty, and it provides a lovely complication of not only the story but the entire premise of the universe. 

a less kool-aid way of presenting your friend’s opinion is, “i find most redemption arcs unearned therefore mitigating the catharsis i would have received from the resolution.” or maybe even, “forgiveness is not a narrative conceit i prioritize and so i find redemption unfulfilling.” or perhaps, “revenge, bitch.”

i remember the very first redemption i ever wrote was back when commenting on ao3 was still the default interaction of fic, and morality policing was still in a pleasant lull. i was trying to redeem john winchester, who was widely reviled in fandom, and i remember being so viscerally upset about that, because at the time i was still taking other people’s innocuous opinions as a personal slight against me. to me, i translated “john winchester is an abuser who can’t be redeemed and dean should never forgive him” into “your father was abusive and he died before you could forgive him, therefore you will have to live with your rage and resentment toward him for the rest of your life.” 

thankfully, therapy and an influx of bad internet opinions knocked that mentality out of my brain.

in those early days, john winchester’s redemption was a way for me to process my father’s death, which was still very new. i was fascinated by the comments i received on my fic -- they were firmly divided between people saying they appreciated the depiction of forgiveness between dean and john, and harsh judgments of john from people who didn’t believe he ever deserved forgiveness. i felt very confused by the latter opinion, and realized there are just a lot of people in this world who have profoundly firm boundaries, who struggle with compassion, or have fearful-avoidant attachment styles in their relationships.  

it really comes down to a preference between people who are more fulfilled by stories in which a character does something bad and therefore they deserve to be punished; or a character who does something bad and they deserve to earn forgiveness. both preferences are fine, as all preferences are, but believing that the former is more morally pure than the latter is a freezing cold take, and people who find themselves engaging in that train of thought need to take a long hard look at themselves.

but you asked specifically about romance. i’ve had the experience where partners have wronged me so badly that i stopped loving them. but i’ve also had some partners who have wronged me and i kept loving them. the dude who broke up with me and proceeded to fuck every single one of my friends (one of them right in front of me!!) presumably to mess with my head, and then had the audacity to ask for me back? i told him i was never going to speak to him again and blocked him in every way i could. there’s literally nothing that guy can do, even now, ten years later, to redeem himself to me. the guy who groomed and manipulated me at 14 (he was 18), but years later realized the horrible things he had done and devoted his life to being the best and most loyal friend i could possibly have? it took a long time, but i forgave him. he had changed. he grew. he learned how to learn. he never asked me for anything more than friendship, and he loves me for who i am. 

without that experience, that someone could love me enough to step up and take accountability for his actions, apologize earnestly, and earn my trust again, i wouldn’t believe in redemption, and i probably would have less interest in writing and reading it. but i know what it looks like in reality now, and i’m drawn to writing stories that depict the process of growth and forgiveness, from both the betrayer and the forgiver. not only do i find those narratives personally satisfying, but i want to show other people what redemption really looks like, so they can navigate the extremely fraught and confusing question, “should i let this person into my life again?” 

sadly, i think that’s why so many people can’t conceive of a realistic redemption -- no one who has hurt them has ever stepped up, and perhaps they haven’t forgiven themselves or even acknowledged the ways they’ve hurt others. 

maybe that’s what you should ask your friend. what would it take for her to forgive someone who had hurt her? and when she answers, if she can answer, ask, “don’t you think that’s a story worth telling?”

[crystalelemental]

With Book 4 in FEH out of the way, I guess it’s time to talk about the stories so far.  Book 2 is still the best, in my opinion.

I don’t think I’ve really talked about this, so let me explain.  Book 1 sucks.  It’s nothing, it doesn’t even try.  The only hint of events occurring is that Veronica’s possessed by some evil dragon god of Embla, but that never got resolved in any way, and has really never been brought up again.  We’re so far outside of that plotline that Veronica’s basically a dedicated ally now.  Nothing about that book had a plan.

Book 2 had a plan, and a structure, and it worked.  It wasn’t flashy or interesting, and I can respect anyone whose stance is that Book 3 or 4 had a more interesting concept.  I personally liked the cast overall for Book 2, even though some got limited screen time and Surtr’s about as boring a villain as you can have.  But Book 2 wins because Books 3 and 4 flopped.

Book 3 flopped because they backed out.  The idea of the realm of the dead is cool, and facing off against the god of death is cool.  But the god of death is about as stock standard evil as you can get, with no actual plan beyond “swell the ranks of the dead.”  Why massacre these worlds?  Why does she need to kill Eir a million times to create more of the dead, shouldn’t you have plenty?  Like it doesn’t add up.  And Eir starting out as the concept of Merciful Death was amazing, that was the best setup possible.  And then it turns out no, she’s not even associated with death, she’s with the life dragon in opposition, none of that was real.  Oh okay. Way to undermine your entire theme for nothing I guess.  Also I hate to be like this, but I actually dislike the Veronica and Alfonse as Thrasir and Lif thing.  I thought it was substantially more interesting when they were presented as the ancient rulers of their kingdoms.  But then no, it’s just Veronica and Alfonse, and while Thrasir continues to get nothing except being omnicidal for funsies, Lif gets all the heavy drama and dialogue and focus, because god forbid this story stop riding Alfonse’s dick for five seconds.  Book 3 had interesting concepts that just didn’t pan out, and the characters all wound up being less interesting than they initially started out.  Also, let’s be real.  For a fucking DEATH GOD, they sure had no problem working around her ability to inflict absolute death in the most standard way possible.  Which kind of immediately nerfed Hel’s threat level for me, not gonna lie.

Book 4 started out interesting, immediately tanked harder than I’ve seen anything in this game tank, had a redemption arc, and then decided it had enough of success and ended in a pathetic squelching fart noise.  Fairies and dreams?  Awesome.  Aesthetic approved.  But it takes them like two chapters to introduce Plumeria as the fucking wet dreams fairy, and immediately all sense of this being serious is dead.  They even had the audacity to outright explain that no no, she may be the lewd fairy, but she doesn’t actually like that job!

Listen guys.  I get it.  You know the sexy outfits and character designs sell, but you also know that people are insane, and they somehow expect the slutty fairy to present this concept of being exclusively available to them so you can sell that fap bait.  I really get it.  But oh my god you could not have handled this any worse, because now that just feels like rape fetish.  “No no, her job is to be a prostitute, but she’s not a slut because she hates it!” is not the save you think it is, friend.  You’d have been better off either giving her a sadistic streak with this and enjoying toying with people who can never truly have her, or just making her slutty.  That would’ve been so much less uncomfortable.

So until the halfway point, we’re kinda just dealing with the fact this incredibly uncomfortable character just exists around here.  And then Freyja drops.  And initially it’s like oh, I just appreciate there’s an evil fairy whose costume design isn’t a fucking disaster, she actually looks good.  And then they have her motivation being assuming complete control over dreams by taking her brother’s power, and ensuring that the dream world can’t die like it almost had.  And they introduce this really cool concept of her taking in abandoned children and giving them a new life as the fairies, and...well...

Plumeria.  Again.  Okay, so it wasn’t quite enough that we had a fairy who’s apparently forced into being the wet dreams fairy despite hating it, now she’s also a child who was abandoned by her mother and is desperately seeking to be loved.  This is...this is next level of discomfort.  Plumeria’s character bothers me.  Like sure, fine, I get that this isn’t a badly developed character or anything, but it’s never really addressed how absolutely fucked up this is, and it’s especially disquieting considering this is IS’ sexy character for the book.  This is their sex appeal pandering character, and this is the direction they wanted to go.  Just...ew.  Come on, guys.  Have at least a bit of class, will you?

But the rest of the book at least continues to amp things up.  Are Peony and Sharena actually swapped around?  Freyr is dead, and Freyja is now literally unstoppable within the dream.  Oh shit, Alfonse is fucking dead.  There’s all this cool stuff happening, and then the final chapter happens.

Are Peony and Sharena actually swapped around?  Who cares!  Game’s not gonna tell you, because “it doesn’t matter.”  Well good, glad that was a huge mystery that didn’t need solving so nobody bothered.  Why even bring it up?  The message of “It doesn’t matter” only works if there’s a crisis of identity and you’re getting the support of your long-time friends.  Instead it’s just a mystery thrown in for nothing with no value, and the “it doesn’t matter, you’re my friend” comes from someone Sharena has no actual memories of and has only been around for like...a couple of hours or however long these events take place.  It’s a completely meanningless subplot that goes nowhere and does nothing.

Freyja went from the villain tormenting the protagonists to suddenly having empathy toward everyone at the drop of a hat.  They set up the frustration of not understanding why we’d fight so hard to return to reality when dreams are more comforting, but that doesn’t really establish much about Freyja herself.  We get exactly one moment, where she calls for Triandra and Plumeria only to realize they’ve died, and feels sad about it.  So when she gives up and everyone returns to reality, everyone’s back.  Triandra and Plumeria are fine.  Peony and presumably Mirabilis are fine.  Alfonse isn’t actually dead so what was the point of bringing it up?  Oh, but Freyja’s dead.  How?  Don’t...don’t worry about it.  She just is, okay?  Also if both masters of dream are dead, and the dream world was already dying before...how are the fairies still there?  Wasn’t the point that all the old ones were dying because people from the real world (don’t even get me started on that bullshit) gave up on dreaming, and thus they needed to make humans into fairies to keep the dream world going?  How are you all here as fairies?  Explain??  Game?!?

And then they just...loop back to the start.  Like nothing happened.  Because nothing did happen.  For all the interesting setup, all the interesting concept behind the new characters, and especially behind Freyja as an antagonist...it goes nowhere.  The ultimate defining feature of this book was “Pointlessness.”  Nothing mattered.  No one did or accomplished anything.  Except I guess killing the god of another realm, good job guys.  I just...I don’t get it.  What was the point of any of this?  Maybe Book 5 is going to focus on Triandra and Plumeria wanting to join up and have you help get Freyja back, so there’s continuity, I don’t fucking know.

I honestly don’t know where I’d rank Book 4.  I want to put it above Book 3 based on concepts and the fact that Freyja was actually interesting, just rushed to her development in the last book so it felt forced.  But on the flip side, Book 4 was incredibly pointless.  At least stuff happened in Book 3.  Sure it undermined its entire theme and purpose, but stuff happened!  You can’t say stuff didn’t happen!  But I can definitely say that Book 2 is the only one I think turned out well.  Because it was self-contained and made sense.  Yes it was simple, but using simple tools to tell an effective story will always be better than trying to reach for complexity and falling flat on your ass.  And yes, IS, I’m telling you maybe you should stop trying.  Between two consecutive failed books and some of the Forging Bonds events of the last year just...completely doing nothing or even hurting the characters presented...maybe just...don’t try to be complicated.  Because you’re not doing a good job.

[gascon-en-exil]

I'm genuinely curious about your "Black Eagles most to least favourite" list.

Here you are.

#1: Hubert

Could there be any other? I remember back when there was a promo introducing the house retainers (well, Lorenz for the Deer) and everyone was saying that Hubert looked so obviously evil that there had to be some deeper explanation, that someone who took design cues from a two-dimensional villain like Fates’s Iago couldn’t possibly be Edelgard’s retainer. Then the game came out, and we all realized that Hubert was exactly as advertised and then some: a cold and calculating murderer and war criminal with his fingerprints all over almost every terrible thing that happens over the course of the story, as comfortable with chloroform and a razor as dark magic and down to perform unspeakable experiments on innocent civilians to turn them into war machines and then backstab his co-conspirators because he will suffer no rivals for his title of the Most Evil Man in Fòdlan. And yep, he looks like Dracula and Severus Snape had a one-night stand and their mpreg love child went to an anime convention...but when Ferdinand looks at Hubert he sees Mr. Darcy and the Phantom of the Opera and Edward Cullen/Christian Grey, and soon enough that snake in Hubert’s breeches will be singing quite the aria indeed. You do you, Ferdinand.

Ok, I’ve already rambled at length on Hubert’s bisexuality and the interesting things it reveals about both him and his two primary love interests, but I do also have to admire the sheer audacity both of Hubert as an incel/Nice Guy-flavored romantic false lead for Edelgard who never had a serious chance because of the self-insert fantasy and of the decision to follow that up with a trope-laden queer romance that perfectly counterbalances Hubert’s attraction to Edelgard and puts Ferdinand firmly in the place he was destined to occupy by choosing to side with the Empire. It’s nearly as outrageous as just how casually evil Hubert gets to be, as well as the immense potential for dark humor that lies with that. You have to bend over backwards to say that Hubert isn’t unapologetically, irredeemably evil, and if you try there will be significantly more fans just waiting to tell you that you’re wrong - myself included. He’s the Manfroy to Edelgard’s Arvis but so much than that, and I look forward to the point in the CF postgame where he effectively takes over the Empire in true evil chancellor fashion and unleashes the full extent of his horrors upon Fòdlan. He somehow got even better in the DLC too despite being absent from CS and getting no new supports, because the Abyssians in CF just can’t stop talking about his nefarious antics down there. I just can’t get enough of how good this guy is at being bad, and I love that FE gave us exactly what was advertised here.

#2: Ferdinand

Now here’s a case of the opposite, where what’s on the packaging didn’t prepare me for what was to come. If I remarked on Ferdinand at all during pre-release it was only to think that he might be part of a Christmas knight duo with Sylvain since the game looked like it wouldn’t have one of those. Early on there wasn’t much else to be said about Ferdinand; he was like Claude in that his popularity ran off a meme (except just the one rather than several), and in appearance and personality he was basically Lorenz with less ridiculous hair. But then came his supports, and his post-timeskip look, and suddenly Ferdinand blossomed into the subtext-laden fem with very bizarre taste in men - see above - that he could have only dreamed of being if he’d stuck to such well-trod ground as the Christmas knight archetype. We learn of his love for opera, his complicated relationship with his father, his worship of the hot mess diva Manuela and how he learned swordplay specifically to imitate her roles on the stage, and - yes - how some backhanded compliments and expensive gifts of tea turn him into a blushing Regency heroine. It all casts his unusually rote romances with women in a performative light (as opposed to Lorenz who is similarly performative but seems genuinely interested in the marriage market), to say nothing of his one-sided rivalry with Edelgard that brushes against jealousy over Hubert’s devotion to her more often than against romantic attraction to her, and that toys around with gendered behavior in a manner complementary to Edelgard’s own bucking of the gender status quo.

And while not to the same extent as Felix, I do appreciate that Ferdinand has two distinct arcs depending on the route - and unlike some who feel that one or the other detracts from his character as a whole I personally find that they complement each other well. In SS and if recruited to AM and VW he makes the hard choice to oppose his homeland, spending the timeskip waging a solitary battle against the Empire with his private militia and then joining back up with Byleth’s army at Garreg Mach because he knows Edelgard is in the wrong even as it pains him to depose the Adrestian emperor and leave his own status uncertain...not to mention fight Hubert, which merits a curious boss conversation as well as some extra lines in SS (plus the infamous Huge Hole™ remark that I will never stop referencing because it is hilarious) that, while not elevating Ferdibert anywhere near the level of Dimidue in terms of cross-route canon endorsement, nonetheless are suggestive of something deeper between them that exists even if they find themselves on opposite sides of a war. In CF by contrast Ferdinand gives into his craving for the title and holdings that Edelgard has just stripped from his father and embraces nationalism and his long-held ideal of what the office of the prime minister should to do as a means of justifying the Empire’s conquests. Of course in the process he also succumbs to Hubert’s, er, charms(?) and becomes the charismatic bureaucrat who is presumably saddled with the task of putting a positive spin on the Empire’s dystopian atrocities while Edelgard and Hubert do all the actual work...and Hubert does all the actual actual work, which includes a lot of murder and kidnapping and all manner of other things that he doesn’t share with his pretty lover and about which Ferdinand quickly learns not to ask. Two Jewels of the Empire, indeed.

#3-4: Edelgard and Dorothea

I go back and forth on these so I’m not going to bother putting them in a definitive order, particularly because I like them for very different reasons that are difficult to compare. For Edelgard, it would be most accurate to say that I enjoy her potential much more than her execution; she gets some meaty material to work with as a lord and as the driving antagonist of the whole game outside of CF, and while I still prefer Micaiah for female lords there’s something darkly satisfying about her need for control and domination and her utter refusal to compromise or remain stagnant...except where Byleth is concerned, and Edeleth drags her down so badly that it would be painful if I cared more about that type of strong female character. Had the game axed the self-insert obsession (even if that meant axing her bisexuality along with it) and focused on her experiences during the Insurrection as the source of her worldview and motivations I’d be inclined to like the final product far more, because that’s a hell of a lot more in line with what she actually does and conveniently also maps to the life of a real world ruler with whom I’m relatively familiar and whom history regards in appropriately ambivalent terms.

Dorothea on the other hand is someone I can relate to on a more personal level, mostly as a sex worker. She’s similar to Primrose from Octopath Traveler, both of them prostitutes and playing coy with the implications of the RPG dancer class archetype, although Primrose hits a few more of my buttons for being former nobility and being motivated by revenge. Then again, I fully understand Dorothea’s anxieties about growing old without a man to take care of her, even if she loses me (and Yuri picks up from where she leaves off) when she dips into lesbianism as an alternative option. She’s got her ups and downs for me - I love that she brings up incest kink with Caspar as opposed to this series’s usual outright incest, while I love less her strange Ferdinand supports that are suspended oddly between friendship and romance and...something else undefinable - and I don’t have much to say on her life as an opera diva except that it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that she’s been turning tricks on the side and even got a sugar daddy to pay her way into the academy. Theatre and sex work have always gone hand-in-hand like that.

#5-7: Linhardt, Caspar, and Petra

This is why I couldn’t make up a list like this for the Lions or Deer, because most of their students would be in big clumps like this. I have no strong opinions on any of these characters; they each have their moments, but not enough to elevate them to where I actively like them or drop them down into real dislike. I suppose you could say I’m disappointed by how Caspar and Linhardt are visual allusions to Ike/Soren who do absolutely nothing else with that similarity except eloping in their paired ending...which is preceded by virtually nothing in the way of real chemistry. If I enjoy them for anything in particular it’s Linhardt’s wit and Caspar’s occasional bouts of emotional vulnerability, like his mini-arc in AM where he has to deal with his feelings surrounding Randolph’s death and then later gets an apology from Dimitri for it.

Petra is awkward all around as the game dances around her delicate political situation, and I also happen to agree with the VA who (if I recall) thought the character should have some sort of accent but wasn’t allowed to do one. (If anyone is wondering, based on her last name and Brigid being an island nation I headcanon it as a Celtic-derived culture, but as with my personal reading of Dedue and Duscur I know that doesn’t play well to the fandom at large).  All in all Petra feels like a more self-aware rendition of the exotic swordswoman archetype begun by Ayra in Jugdral, but there’s clearly still some work to be done on that front.

#8: Bernadetta

Ugh. With apologies to @capriciouscorvid for explaining how even unintentional disability representation can be taken as a positive, I just don’t see how Bernadetta’s character could possibly be considered a good thing when she’s so grating in almost all of her supports and most of her story and exploration presence outside of CF. All the screaming and high-pitched pronouncements of impending death get very old very quickly, and the part where she’s meant to be romantically appealing in her neediness and isolation is as lost on me as it would have been had it stemmed instead from a massive rack. Her supposedly sympathetic backstory doesn’t help much either, as it leaves me mostly with the thought that her father is an idiot because his methods obviously did not make her suitable to be a good wife. I also don’t care for how she’s one of several characters used to soften Jeritza (and that the way she does so is I think rather insulting to people with social anxiety, to liken it to a compulsion to commit murder), or even worse that people point to her Hubert support to try and say that he’s not such a bad guy and they’d be total besties just like Ferdinand and Dorothea (another pairing that doesn’t exactly scream BFFs). I mean, really....

[bluehhj]

listen to me — chapter 11

LISTEN TO ME  — 0011

listen to me masterlist;

WORDS: 1.5K

There's always a professor that no one likes or at least doesn't sympathize with. This is an indisputable fact that applies in almost 100% of situations, and in Jinah's class it was no different. Even though he was good to explain the subject, Dr. Kim didn't like many people with his features always contorted in a latent irony and the bad mood of each day.

However, that morning the middle-aged man looked a bit more malleable, since the first thing he did when he entered the room was to rest the laptop on the table and give his full attention to it, and most of the time he passed a huge list of exercises or forcing college students to read five-hundred-page books in less than a week.

Jade, already with her nerves in the right place, stretched and decided not to do anything to spend her rare free time. Both her mind and body were tired, for to reconcile study and long hours of work wasn't easy for those who only wanted a few minutes of quiet once in a while. One could say the same thing about Jinah, who at that point already managed not to lay her head on the table, to sleep and dream about her longed-for Sunday, the only day of the week when she could shut herself off without any consequences, but there was something that worried her and wouldn't let her relax.

After a discreet glance at Chaerin, who was sitting at the back of the room, she turned in her chair and looked at her american friend.

"What did you say to Jisung?" she asked quietly. Jade had arrived in class a couple of minutes late, so Jinah believed that her conversation with Han had worked out not so positively, since neither was calm at the time.

"What he needed to hear," she shrugged. "I spoke to Jackson as well. I even think my name is now written on his Death Note."

What he needed to hear, Jinah didn't like the intonation of that part.

"But you weren't too rude to Jisung, right?"

Jade pressed her brown irises into those of the other girl.

"Are you liking him, by any chance?"

"What?" the brunette's tone rose slightly, as her eyes widened. "Of course not!"

"All your concern for him isn't for nothing, I know you."

"Don't say bullshit. The boy just left an engagement in the worst possible way, do you really think I'd approach him just for that purpose?

"I should've guessed you wouldn't admit it."

"I have nothing to admit, Jieun," Jinah said earnestly. "I don't like Jisung that way, that's something of this unoccupied head of yours."

It wasn't as if Jade fully believed. She knew the other girl long enough to know that when she liked someone she made no effort to protect and care for that someone in any situation. And although the relationship she was trying to keep with Jisung hadn't yet come to such a benchmark, she was on the right track. The living proof of this was that Jinah wasn't so tolerant of rude people, but when it came to Han, she always found some argument that camouflaged his flaws and justified his actions. Jade was worried about the direction things might take.

Dr. Kim got to his feet and cleared his throat in front of the room, bringing the attention of the presents back to his person.

"Open the handouts on pages one hundred and twelve to one hundred and seventeen. There are some texts on slightly controversial subjects and I wanted you to organize in pairs to write a synthesis with your opinions cohesively," he dictated and some small complaints were muffled in the back of the room. "It's not complicated, I just need to keep you busy until I've finished organizing some things that the rectory has sent me" he pointed at his computer and the various papers on the table. "Show me the result in the next class. And before I forget, I know very well what comes out when the same pairs come together for this kind of thing, it isn't the first time that we do work like this. Therefore, each row will be grouped with the last, the second with the penultimate and so on. Get mixed up, I want diversified points of view."

Even though her mood was almost zero, Jade turned to see who her pair were and found Chang Seungyeon's smile. She had had the opportunity to talk to her a few times since they worked in the same organization — Jade at the telephone help desk and Seungyeon as an assistant to one of the clinic psychologists who had the first agency as a member, this being one of the good marketing strategies to expand the ways they can help their clients at times when physical attendance isn't possible. Both get along.

Jinah wasn't so lucky.

The exchange of glances between Chaerin and her was hesitant. The first one knew who Jinah was not only by the photo with Jisung, at the mall, but also by Hyunjin, who made a point of showing her to emphasize that Han wasn't at the bottom of the pit as he supposed Chaerin would think — even though actually he did was at the bottom of the pit and the girl hadn't thought that way.

An uneasy silence arose as they sat side by side, opened the handouts, and began to read the themes. Neither of them could assimilate more than one line of the text without the thoughts taking their own life and beginning to follow other paths, the concentration ceased to exist. Chaerin looked at Jinah out of the corner of her eye. This was a work where they had to talk openly to exchange ideas, but under the circumstances it seemed like an almost impossible task, but they couldn't remain silent forever.

Chaerin cleared her throat. She should start by saying something about the work, but her damn curiosity and concern spoke louder.

"I know it's none of my business, but..." she hesitated for a moment. Jinah saw in those few seconds a chance to speak too, as her tongue would scratch inside her mouth.

"He's my friend. Or a half friend. Or maybe a fourth of a friend, Anyway, don't care about the rumors you've heard."

"No, it's okay. It's just..." Chaerin wet her lips, looking down at the tabletop. "Well, that may sound very hypocritical of me, but I never wanted any harm to Jisung, really."

"Then why did you leave him like that?" before she could tell, the question escaped Jinah's lips. "Not that it's any of my business either, but your marriage was marked and out of nowhere you ran away with another guy."

She waited for Chaerin to be irritated by the audacity and not to answer her, but all the other girl did was let out a sad sigh.

"I was a coward," she admitted. "Too coward for not being able to look him in the eye and tell the truth... I like Jisung, but... But it wasn't in my plans to love Seungmin" the last part came out almost whispered. "And I knew I would hurt Jisung if I told him so, so I avoided it for so long. Except that, in the end, I wounded him twice more."

Jinah looked closely at her features and didn't notice anything that would prove a lie — in fact, Chaerin wasn't lying. She could be inconsequential, but she wasn't a complete fool, and even if shame were to stop her actions, she still wanted to have a conversation with Jisung in the future, so that she might get his forgiveness someday.

"But it's as they say: you don't choose who you're going to fall in love with," continued Chaerin, smiling weakly. "I couldn't give Jisung all he deserves, so, I hope, from the heart, that he find someone who can give. Anyway, sorry for the outburst."

"No need to apologize." Jinah mimicked the other girl's gesture, letting the edges of her lips bulge and shaped a slight, even sympathetic smile on her face. "Everybody makes some nonsense every once in a while, and even though you're wrong, I understand your side of the story."

"Do you really?" Chaerin was surprised. She didn't expect to get that kind of reaction from anyone, quite the opposite; in the face of her deeds, not even her own mercy she could have, who would tell of others.

"Of course. Sometimes, love induces us to do stupid things."

"You're right," a soft laugh escaped Chaerin's lips. "Thank you, Jinah. Be it as a friend, a half friend or a fourth of a friend, you're very good. Jisung is lucky."

Choi also laughed, but it was an ironic laugh.

"I wish..." she reminded herself every time she didn't feel enough for Jisung to accept her company. Oh, she wasn't that good. If she was, wouldn't be so rejected. "Let's go back to work? Soon the class is over and we haven't done anything yet."

Chaerin nodded, opening the book again. Jinah did the same, but there was still something hammering in her head.

Jade and her damn hypotheses.