#cosmic unity 3

[freshthoughts2020]

[mw-537]

Nike Cosmic Unity 3 Campaign Photography by Ally Green

[arijackz]

PICK A CARD: What Element Do You Embody?

⍎ "The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed." - Empedocles

Disclaimer: This is a general reading, take what resonates. This is a gender-neutral reading, change any pronouns to apply to you. Also, these elements don't have to correspond with your birth chart.

p1 → p2 ↙︎ p3 → p4

⌾ Pile One ⌾ (4oC rev., 10oS, High Priestess, 6oP)

Your soul’s energetic thumbprint is GODLY. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself, your element is AETHER.

I get the sense that you’ve been sort of incognito for a large chunk of your life. You felt more comfortable being an observer and watching the world unfold before you.

Not out of fear, you’re just naturally curious in a spectating sense rather than interactive. You hear what’s left unsaid, feel people’s suppressed/underlying emotions, and see what others are blind to. The high priestess is all-knowing but keeps the universal truth to herself because she knows not everyone is meant to see what she sees.

You hold a lot of unknown truths, but truths often become burdens. You carry other people’s pain because you know they can’t handle it, often thanklessly. You throw yourself in front of the bus before the other person even realizes there's a threat coming at all. 

The weight you carry on your back would crush the average person. Deny it all you want, but in the cosmic book of life, you’re a modern-day hero in a way.  

It’s like when the older sibling sacrifices themselves to protect their kid siblings from the horrors they’ve had to endure in their family environment. They know they’re the only barrier between the monsters and their loved ones, often sacrificing opportunities and peace of mind to be that protection.

It doesn't have to be this case scenario, but if the situation resonates with you, I see you. The universe sees you. Your valiance and selfless nature deserve songs and praises, never belittle your efforts. 

Okay back to aether, y’all know I love to yap. 

I am heavily getting this silent heroine presence because aether is the antithesis of fire, water, earth, and air. It’s cold because it does not have fire’s warmth, weightless because it is not heavy like earth or water, and immobile because it does not have air’s fluidity. Sounds bad, but it’s fucking AWESOME.

The aether element allows for the other element’s existence. It has no boundaries and fills every corner of life, it is Godly and omnipresent. The word αἰθήρ (aithḗr) in Homeric Greek means "pure, fresh air" or "clear sky".[3] In Greek mythology, it was thought to be the pure essence that the gods breathed, filling the space where they lived, analogous to the air breathed by mortals. 

Aether is essentially empty space that allows for life to be. The movement of our bodies takes place in these empty spaces. I.e. the hollowness of our lungs allows breath, space in the throat causes speech, the heart needs space to contract and pump blood, and so forth. Life could not exist without this empty space.

Since the aether element is subtle yet all-pervading, it is the most spiritual element and is considered a bridge between the earthly realm and the divine. 

Quintessence is also a term that is quite often used for ether as it denotes the “heavenly bodies” present in the universe such as the stars and galaxies.

(A CROW HAS A MESSAGE FOR YOU, GO OUTSIDE)

You have this quiet, subtle, but Godly presence about you just like the aether element. 

Circling back to the silent heroine archetype, to sum up my rambling, aether is out of human perception (like your silent, observant nature) but is the backbone of existence (the power in that very nature).

You’re a bit of an oxymoron. You notice everything, and that forces you to be a bit apathetic because constantly being in fight or flight isn’t good for the body. But on the other hand, you’re extremely empathetic because you understand the world’s suffering more acutely than anyone else. You’re a quiet presence and try not to interfere with other people’s lives but you’re simultaneously the very barrier that stops some people’s lives from crumbling. 

The aether element 🤝 you. TWINNEM

Sidenote: Shoutout to my Shatabhisha natives yet again! Also, if you find this element interesting and want to know more about this dominating energy in your life, I hyperlinked two websites for you that are worth reading. 

And go outside! My window is open and this single crow is SCREAMiNG at me.

Also, you’re smart enough, aim for that challenging degree. 

Okay! MUAH!

Beyond The Breath of Mere Mortals

⌾ Pile Two ⌾ (Ace of Cups, 8oP, Page of Swords)

^^^ You fr

RISE UP MY LIL TSUNAMIS!!!  aka my WATER elements

You’ve definitely been called overly emotional as an insult. Well fuck that person, they wish they had your appeal.

Do you know how crazy you drive people? I imagine you as the person in a movie who the depressed main character meets once at a party, ditches the crowd, goes on an adventure with, and as the sun rises, they look over at you and realize life is worth living. 

Even if you don’t identify as female, you have a strong effeminate allure. Not in a traditional “pink” sense, but in a receptive manner. You stand there and look pretty while the world crawls to you. Adventures seem to rush toward you. 

Your energy colors life; water gives the Earth foliage and growth. Without water, everything in existence is dry, stiff, and lacks the nourishment to evolve.

People feel alive around you, imagine those moss patches that start dry and grey but once they touch water, they get bright green and abundant. 

You color those dry patches in people’s lives. However, many people aren’t used to this intense water dominance. It unbalances them and feels irrational.

Society grooms people to suppress their emotions, so those who embrace their feelings and work to understand them appear juvenile and possibly even threatening. 

The word sensitive or emotional is almost a slur in today's society 😭

But your sensitivity is your power and serves you a great deal of intelligence. Especially with people! This is a very fiery, intense energy. Y’all are my Scorpio/8th house knockouts (check your sidereal chart as well).  

You have a very penetrative presence, you are felt before you are seen, but you will never go unnoticed. You’re a bit obsessive, you want to know everything about everyone.

Favorite color? Childhood horrors? Most shame-ridden secret? Their first celebrity crush? That embarrassing moment in middle school they’d rather die than bring up? The opinion that would get them jumped on twitter.com?

And you’re good at getting these answers out of people. Two minutes with you and people start word-vomiting their entire consciousness onto you. That magnetizes people and in turn, makes them obsessed with you. 

Your energy is very alluring, in the same way, the gentle sway of the ocean lures people in. They are slightly in fear of the emotional hold you have over them. The ocean might soothe or drown them. In the same way, the ocean seduces, your aura has an unpredictable grasp on people. 

I feel like this strong emotional energy took a while to tame, it used to unbalance you. Life had major emotional ups and downs with long days of you feeling like you’re being submerged under water. But just like any skill, you honed it and achieved mental clarity, to wield your emotions to your benefit. 

The water element sends you through hell for you to achieve liberation. Once you fight your biggest demon (yourself and all the torment the mind can conjure), you come out the other side knowing that the worst isn’t strong enough to take you down and nothing will. 

The waves that once drowned you are turning into a weaponized tsunami you command. You have the power to nourish and destroy. 

If you’re not quite there, you’re well on your way. Keep doing what you’re doing, sexy. 

Resist Me If You Can

⌾ Pile Three ⌾ (2oP, 3oC, 8oP)

Welcome my manifesters! We’re talking ‘bout the EARTH element baby!

This is the earthiest earther I know, and Pile 3 get down! Pile 3 dont play!

You work so hard, it’s borderline masochistic 😭

It doesn’t have to be work in a traditional- go to your job and get noticed by the boss- sense, this extends to every corner of life. You’re objective-oriented and do not stray from the mark until the box is checked. 

This can be as simple as having a goal to learn how to whistle by next Sunday. You’ve already marked time out of the week for ten minutes a day to practice, found YouTube instructors, bought chapstick so your lips don’t dry out, and it’s all you can think about until you get that high of accomplishing something.  

Earth is the manifesting element because it's where our thoughts accumulate enough energy to materialize. It's quite a powerful position to be in. One day it's just a dream, and by the next it's reality. 

Well, that's an exaggeration, the earth element is quite slooowwww due to its weight.

It’s the heaviest element because it’s the most long-lasting. Water evaporates, air swiftly changes, and fire burns; only Earth will remain. Anything worthwhile takes time, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

I think you understand this, but you don’t always have the patience for your desires to materialize. If you feel like you aren’t actively making progress on your goal, you tend to juggle multiple projects just to get that rush of achievement we were talking about earlier. 

I’m making an addiction reference because it applies here. This incessant need to reach every goal as soon as you think you should is causing you to over-extend yourself and the stress on the body is throwing you into disharmony. 

Not everyone gets their license at 16. Not everyone moves out of their family’s home at 18. Not everyone has a job straight out of college. Not everyone has their life all figured out…ever. 

Balance is needed. You’re too hyper-focused on deadlines and seeing results, that you’re putting your overall wellbeing on the line. YOU are your most prized possession and need to care for yourself like you’re the shiniest medal on your mantel. 

The “Gullible” card came out, don’t worry, you’re not naive in a trusting way (not that you should be blamed for putting your trust in people anyway). I see it as your goals aren’t rooted in your true self enough and are too influenced by others. 

(Extreme example): You see someone (who has probably been practicing their whole life) play the violin really well at a young age. Now, you’ve made a goal to be as good as them in just a few years; every time you feel like you’re lagging on that deadline, you start berating yourself and feel inferior because you haven’t reached this unrealistic standard you’ve set.

Is this goal a good use of your finite energy? Is this objective authentic to you? Or is this just something that will give you a temporary ego stroke?

I think life is forcing out into a hanged man moment currently. Your perspective needs to switch inward so you can ground all of this powerful energy into something that will actually satisfy you, not just give you a quick high for a moment and then redirect you to your next conquest. 

You want something that will give you pride and fulfillment at your core and the universe wants to give that to you, but you have to know what will make you happy. What gives you inner harmony?

And I don’t mean what you see makes others “happy”. Not a mansion, fame, the newest fashion trends, expensive skin care, etc. I mean the things that bring you joy beyond the physical. 

Think about what made your younger self jump out of bed every morning to experience. What did your soul shine for, before the world shamed it out of you?

You don’t have to know now, but you must be willing to pause and raise the importance of your health and happiness to the same height as your material/skill gains. I know those things make you feel good, but it's temporary, and if you want to achieve lasting happiness you need to achieve harmony with all aspects of your life. Right now, your inner health needs a leg up to balance the scale.

The earth gets stiff and stops evolving without water. Don’t allow yourself to dry up. Give yourself space to go on an inner journey and rest. The universe understands perfection takes time. The planets took billions of years to form, a tree takes decades to reach maturity, and only humans have deluded themselves into thinking results are instantaneous. 

A week of rest is still progress!

P.S The attractive card FLEW out. Your “do or die” energy, though unhealthy at times, is sexy as fuck and you have this magician-type- nothing is impossible for me- allure to you. Green, red, and black make people want to sneak another peak at you. 

"Wait Instead of Push, Root Instead of Reach"

⌾ Pile Four ⌾ (The devil, 10oS, Ace of pentacles, 7oP)

MUY CALIENTE INDEED!!

They don’t call you a hot lil mama for nothin!

You embody the FIRE element. Although, you are quite earthy. This is my most mixed-element pile. Read pile three for sure.

You’re a very proactive person. You have earth’s manifesting qualities and fire’s initiative. You seize opportunities and start goals without hesitation. Very very attractive.

This reading doesn’t have to correlate with your birth chart, but all love to my Sagittarius and Aries folk. Of course, sending a special kiss to the Leos.

You have the same obsessive, hyper-focused tendencies as pile three but I feel like instead of a brief moment of accomplishment, you’re craving glory and the freedom to shine as brightly as you desire. 

In your formative years, you’ve had to dim your light for survival and to escape ridicule. You’ve had to fit into a mold that is much smaller than your true form, stifling your potential. This energy feels very suffocating. Picture a boiling fire covered with a lid. It’s like a false skin has trapped you and cut off your oxygen.

But don’t worry, ever heard of cleansing by fire? The fire element is about purity and rebirth. It burns impurities to get matter back to its rawest, unadulterated form. You will burn that false skin off, to reveal a phoenix underneath, it's all a part of your evolution. 

Fire ignites instantaneously but can burn out just as quickly. You suffer from exhaustion a lot of the time. This is where the earth energy meets the fire. You have a longer refractory period than usual fire personalities because of the heaviness of the earth element. 

You’re like an engine sitting outside in the winter. Give it twenty minutes to warm up and get its groove but once it does, OOHHH BOOYYY, WE’RE ROLLIN’!

You have earth’s slowness and need for perfection, so you take longer to complete tasks and may even be a late bloomer.

I feel like you crave the spotlight, not necessarily fame, but recognition on some scale. You have always subconsciously known that your flame was being smothered and that you had not seen that full extent of you.  Your subconscious brought this to your attention with desires to be seen.

Some of you want to be recognized for your talents, beloved for your beauty, admired for your wit, favored for your charm, hell all of the above!

And you deserve it! You desire these things because your soul is trying to tell you something. You are meant to be seen.

I sense a lot of fear in this pile. Fire energy is very headstrong and likes to race to the finish line (the hare). Earth energy is contemplative and likes to play the long game (the tortoise). The two conflicting energies can create some paralyzing doubt in your psyche. One side thinks the other is irrational.

Do I stay or do I go? Can I even trust myself to make a decision I might regret?

Yes, you can! You have to, there is one thing that fire and earth can agree on, it's their shared annoyance with stagnation. Go for it babe, you miss all the shots you don’t make, all choices lead forward (which is where you need to go).

I’m telling you, anything you want you will get, just don’t be afraid to burn that false skin off. 

Find a median for the two energies. Dream big and have the self-assurance to go for it, but methodically plan out all your adventures so that earthy need for a stable foundation is satisfied. 

A vision board with ideas of ways to achieve these dreams will help pull your thoughts into the physical and be a great step to giving you the confidence to move forward.

Because I promise you, once you get going, there will be no stopping you.

Note: I think “You’re afraid of being seen” videos on YouTube will be great for rewiring your fear-based thinking. Confidence affirmations are a great addition to your day too. Oh, and please read pile three, there are some messages in there for you. 

"Have a Love Affair With The Sun"

If you enjoyed this reading feel free to check out my masterlist and poke around. I feel a lot of these pacs are connected, so go find yourself in other readings!

I don't bite I swear, book a reading with me if you feel inclined <3

[thatnightlamp]

I adore Big E's cosmic ex just being So Done with his bullshit. 10/10 I would love to see him being sassed more, maybe having to begrudgingly explain what the fuck is going on

Big E and his Ex part 3

He appeared before you in a blaze of gold, armored in psychic flame and divine presence. The Warp screamed and parted around Him, reality itself unsure whether to bow or run.

You? You rolled your eyes.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Mister Universe-Build-A-Bear. You finally crawled out of your little flying coffin to talk to me like a real person?”

The Emperor didn't flinch, but you saw the slight twitch of his eyelid. That familiar muscle that used to twitch whenever you mocked his vocabulary.

“You should not be here,” He intoned, voice layered with galaxies.

“And you should’ve thought twice before starting a galaxy-wide imperialist fan club,” you shot back, arms crossed.

He sighed. Loudly. The kind of sigh that echoed through dimensions.

“This is the Great Crusade. I am unifying humanity, bringing order—”

“You’re conscripting child soldiers and setting fire to entire cultures because they use too many vowels in their dialect.”

The Emperor blinked.

“That is… an oversimplification.”

“So is calling this a ‘crusade’ instead of a bloody cosmic pissing contest.”

For a moment, just a moment, the God-Emperor of Mankind looked genuinely unsure of what to say. Not because he lacked words, he had an entire lexicon encoded in his brain, but because none of them were safe from your words.

“You always do this,” He finally said, quieter. “Make light of things that shouldn’t be.”

“You always make things that shouldn’t be. Me making light of them is the least destructive response possible.”

Behind Him, the Warp shimmered like a mirage. Shapes moved. Daemons watched from the edges, wary of both His presence… and yours.

“I didn’t want this,” He said. “I wanted peace. Unity. A future where humanity could survive what’s coming.”

“Then maybe you should’ve stayed,” you replied, not yelling, not cruel, just… tired. “You could’ve chosen a future with me. But you picked the stars. And look how well that’s going.”

He closed his eyes. For a heartbeat, the entire bridge of reality went quiet.

“I did what I had to do,” He murmured.

“And I’m doing what I have to do. Which currently includes flipping you off every time you try to turn mankind into your personal action figures.”

You smiled, wickedly.

“And by the way? Your Primarchs are dramatic as hell. I met the one with the lion hair. You raised that?”

The Emperor groaned, audibly.

[talonabraxas]

“Om Krim Kali”

Maha Kali ॐ Talon Abraxas

Kali is one of the many forms of Shakti. Maha Kaali is the fiercest of all goddesses of Hinduism. The word Kali has its roots in the Sanskrit word “Kaal”, which means time. And nothing escapes from time. Goddess Kali is sometimes referred as the goddess of death. But actually Kali brings the death of the ego. Even in the scriptures, she has killed demons but not anyone else. Kali is also not associated with Yama (the Hindu God of Death). Kali is considered a form of mother too.

Kali Maa: The Alchemist of Consciousness

In the esoteric heart of Tantric wisdom, Kali maa emerges not merely as a deity of destruction, but as the supreme alchemical force that transmutes the base metal of human ignorance into the luminous gold of enlightenment. Her fierce compassion serves as both crucible and catalyst in the most profound spiritual transformation possible.

The Alchemy of Being

As the Rasa Hṛdaya Tantra teaches: "Just as mercury purifies metals, Kali Maa's fire purifies the soul." Her blackness symbolizes the alchemical stage of dissolution, where identity must be broken down before rebirth becomes possible.

When she stands fierce as Dhosha Nasini, the Destroyer of Impurities, her Ugra Tejas (fierce radiance) consumes:

- The veil of ignorance separating self from cosmic unity - The binding chains of desire that trap consciousness - The paralyzing fear of death and impermanence

The Transmutation Process

The Rasarnava and Kalikularnava Tantras reveal the five fold alchemical journey under Kali Maa's guidance:

1) Murcchana: the liquefaction of ego-identity, where the practitioner surrenders to divine will.

2) Jarana: the purification where karmic residue burns away in her consuming gaze. 3) Bhavana: Kundalini awakens and ferments within, seeking liberation.

4) Paka: ordinary cognition ripens into transcendent wisdom.

5) Satva Patti brings perfection, the ultimate union with Siva, consciousness bliss beyond duality.

The Mercury and the Nectar

In this profound spiritual chemistry, mercury (Parada) symbolizes consciousness itself, fluid, quicksilver, elusive. Kali Maa, as Parada Devī, stabilizes this mercury, fixing the wandering mind into the philosopher's stone of enlightenment. Her lolling tongue, dripping with Amṛta, offers the nectar of immortality, the ecstatic reality beyond the cycle of birth and death.

[volvolts]

TOO LATE SUMMARY

Luz and the gang watched the cosmic child destroy Belos with a flick of his finger before they ran to the human world. 

Eventually, they returned to the Boiling Isles and saved their home. The Collector disappeared from their world to find more adventures and to do some self realization of their own. With the emperor gone, the Boiling Isles try to heal from the rot he left behind. Maybe one day, he’ll be nothing but a distant memory.

Five years later, the town of Gravesfield suddenly has a pest problem with some kind of creature. 

Or

Au where Belos just…missed out on the finale. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: this is a belos redemption story so if that is not your cup of tea, you are free to unfollow/block/ignore me. i really dont want to fall into archetypes so i will try my best to avoid them. also there will not be any shipping beyond the canon (lumity, eda/raine) and mostly canon (huntlow, alador/darius). feel free to think whatever during but know everything else is strictly platonic

comic in chronological order / too late au tag

more notes under the read more. ALSO, if its not addressed under the cut it might mean it'll be explained later. but if you want some more clarifications feel free to ask and i can try to add it in this post

quick things first

everyone thinks belos died during the day of unity

most of season 3 with belos didnt happen since he was out during all of the hexsquad's time in the human world and when they save the Boiling Isles

TtT and the climax of WaD dont happen since they're heavily belos oriented but the Hexside plot in FtF does still happen

that means flapjack is alive, hunter's eyes are still magenta, and everything with the titan doesn't happen. however the titan is still slowly laying rest for good and his magic with it. king is still gaining his magic like in the epilogue

most of the epilogue is still the same with everyone recovering and moving on. where they are in the epilogue is roughly the same in this au

visuals regarding belos

[raayllum]

Arc 3 Predictions Electric Boogaloo

Because there's certain stuff that makes a Lot more sense now even as we're left with more questions, so let's talk about it.

Aaravos and the Cosmic Order / Claudia

So Aaravos wanted to take down the elves and dragons. Now the archdragons are all gone circa S7, which means he can hit the ground running upon his return in seven years. This means that the next target can fully be the Cosmic Council outright, and more recontextualization about how creating Eternal Night would make them suffer (though I don't think he'll repeat plans).

I could see him giving instructions / ideas to Claudia through dreams or visions, and she's armed with her amulet in the meantime and will maybe track down a replacement staff since she doesn't have one anymore. (Or she'll want to steal it back from Callum since it was a product of both her 'fathers'.) Other antagonists such as Finnegrin (maybe) and Kim'Dael (more definitely) will likely be interwoven.

That said, I think there'll be plenty of conflict already for our protagonists to deal with even before any of our old foes show up again.

Aanya + the Fire Ruby Project / Ezran & Zym

With the arrows temporarily able to dispose of Aaravos (even if I mandate he let himself get chained down in 7x07 in order to manipulate Ezran) and his imminent return, Ez and Aanya have an incentive to keep going with Project Ruby Fire. However, we also know thanks to interviews that Aanya has an adoptive brother, and from Tales of Xadia that:

The city is more fortified of late, as there are rumours of internal treason. The farmers worry that young Queen Aanya isn’t old enough or wise enough to protect what’s been built over the centuries.

So what I'm thinking is that adoptive brother Grark may pull a Karim and work on the project behind his sister's back or stage a coup. This could also put Ezran at odds with Zym, as Project Ruby Fire was designed specifically to be good at defeating dragons and to be so destructive that the mere threat of them would be enough (but, of course like the Mage Wars, someone's gonna use it). Having deeper, more politically / personally driven conflicts between Ezran and Zym (he had conflict with one brother, and now another) is also possible now that Zym can speak, and I think they'll take full advantage of it.

Ez and Zym together have always represented Hope the most (3x06), as Ezran found the egg, they're the two young princes turned kings, and are spearheading things forward.

So what happens if/when they start to crack? This could also provide a contrast to Janai and Amaya, as their new nieces/nephews through Miyana and Karim could provide a conflict. Even though the kids themselves will be too young and Miyana convinced to walk a different path, that doesn't mean they won't be used or treated as symbols by somebody else to sow more conflict.

Evrkynd and Elarion

The choice to establish a new city to show the growing unity between elves and dragons makes sense, but it made me wonder why do it now and not as an end-of-arc 3 idea. Then I considered that perhaps it's to set up Everkynd as an Elarion parallel: a glistening, shining city, where after it fell the land was divided and more chaos ensued.

Only Evrkynd will emerge and stand the test of time, of course, with the connection between the two halves being maintained and strengthened. But still, a thought I'll probably have something more eloquent for later.

Callum, Corruption, and the Cube (+ Rayla)

Was thinking over 6x06's "the darkness and corruption will overwhelm you" in addition to the choice in S6 to establish that Callum's father died of a chronic illness / the consistent comparison to dark magic as a plague/infection/sickness (2x08, 5x01, 5x03, 5x04, 5x09, etc). The options I'd considered for how the corruption would manifest post usage usually fell into two camps: instantaneous and complete, or gradual and ongoing. I'd thought the second one would be interesting for a mid-season dark magic use, speculating it'd be like the shadowmonsters in taking a few days or longer for something to take.

I certainly didn't think it'd be a process over Years, but given the seven year timeskip...

I'm picturing something like Callum still taking mushroom salves or potions regularly from Muhko (hence that inclusion for Zubeia) to stave off corruption overwhelm, and giving him parallels to Damian. This would also potentially enhance the feeling of "living on borrowed time" he and everyone, but him and Rayla in particular, are bound to feel as they know they have Limited Time before Aaravos comes back.

I'm also curious as to how openly or how much Callum will be studying dark magic, even in comparison to before ("Well, I've read a lot about it"). He has Viren-Claudia's relic staff, and the corrupted sun stone within it, so there could be interesting ideas or experiments there. The fact that Callum has the Staff and the Cube and the white streak does not bode well for him.

An additional assumption is that Callum will go to Elarion offscreen (cause that is a Long skip) but be unable to find what he's unknowingly looking for (the primal magic book?). I also don't think at this point I have to go into much more detail about CHET given that we've been here with the theory for 4 years, and pieces of evidence at the time that felt like a stretch are now being incorporated, such as:

The Cube pointing to Elarion, which was incredibly important to ancient humanity and Aaravos

Elarion poem is associated with nature (flowers of elarion) and dark-light motif

Rayla is Callum's light in the darkness and his destructive path. She was prepared to destroy him (7x09) and will likely save him in the future.

The flowers of Elarion were involved in a story where they were seen as gifts / "fair exchanges of beloved for beloved". Then Rayla, by Aaravos' own word, was described as Callum's "beloved" (7x09).

The entire conversation with Dark!Callum and the cube in the woods in 7x06 but especially "If you love her, you'll be the you that can save her" and "I have always been a part of you."

Basically: it's not over till the cube is plot relevant and all the foreshadowing / lines of dialogue surrounding it have come full circle in some manner. In Arc 3 we trust.

Misc Predictions / Ideas

that didn't belong anywhere else!

Given that we know Aanya has her older brother and Prince Kasef has a younger sibling, I think it'd be interesting if they teamed up to try and stage mutual coups or something.

Since the archdragons are gone, I'm curious what project ruby fire would be used against. Maybe just other dragons? Or invoking stuff from the past mage wars.

More info on the relic staffs and self-eating I think for sure can be expected, as well as what happened to make Kpp'Ar completely change his mind.

I'm expecting S8 to be catch up and set up much the way that S1 and S4 were.

There are river pirates between Duren and Neolandia (Tales of Xadia) so I could see Finnegrin being woven back in there, although I'd love to go back to Scumport and see any changes Elmer has made.

Kim'Dael feels like a 2 season antagonist to me, in order to reintroduce her (maybe Aaravos inverting the Moon Nexus set her free) and then to draw on her history with the Moon Fam (Bloodmoon Huntress graphic novel).

A lot more lore on the Startouch elves / I'm fairly certain Shiruakh was a star devourer dragon

Aaravos making the Cosmic Council mortal, etc etc.

Sol Regem lore and backstory

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Donald Trump swept into Kerrville today for what was ostensibly a visit to console flood-ravaged Texans but quickly became another episode of Donald Trump: The Disaster Tourist Chronicles. As Trump himself put it, he’s “gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes,” but “never seen anything like this.” Which, if you’ve listened to a single Trump presser in your life, you know he says every single time he visits a disaster zone.

In a room stuffed with Texas officials, grieving families, Dr. Phil (yes, really), and the usual wall of TV cameras, Trump launched into his greatest hits. “Nobody has any idea how and why a thing like this could happen,” he said, as if flash flooding during record rain in a state with insufficient infrastructure was some unsolvable cosmic riddle.

He praised the Coast Guard, noting they rescued “an incredible 169 children at Camp Mystic,” before pivoting to his own hero’s journey: “I had to be here as president, first lady wanted to be here.” Because, you see, it’s about him showing up, not about the children swept away by a monstrous river at 3 AM. Melania, clutching a bracelet given to her by camp survivors, shared that they were there to “honor them and also to give the support, help, and I will be back. I promise.” You could almost hear the Trump campaign ad music swelling in the background.

Trump took a moment to rattle off every Republican in Texas and Washington he could remember, praising each for their “unbelievable” work, because if there’s one thing Trump loves during a national tragedy, it’s making sure people know which GOP loyalists showed up to clap for him. “Governor Abbott, he’s an amazing guy,” Trump said, while Abbott beamed like a teenager getting noticed by a celebrity at the mall.

Of course, when a CBS reporter dared ask about the reportedly delayed flood warnings, Trump’s patience for the suffering of Texans vanished like FEMA stockpiles under Jared Kushner’s watch: “Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.” The children may be dead, but Trump’s inability to take the mildest accountability remains eternal.

What Trump didn’t mention, because of course he didn’t, is that it took 72 hours before Kristi Noem signed off on disaster assistance for Texas because she has a rule requiring her personal signature for any federal expenditure over $100,000. Three days of delay while children were missing, parents were digging through debris with their bare hands, and entire communities were underwater. And where was Kristi Noem during this humanitarian crisis she was actively prolonging? Posting Instagram pictures of herself on horseback, grinning under the Texas sun, the aesthetic of personal branding apparently more urgent than signing the paper that would unlock rescue and recovery funds.

It is hard to imagine a cleaner demonstration of the sociopathy that has become the default operating system for MAGA leadership: photo ops on horseback while families wait for rescue, reality-show presidency in front of flood wreckage, and rage at reporters for daring to ask why children had to die before the paperwork got filed.

The event took a surreal turn as Dr. Phil, who apparently wandered in from the local Texas Starbucks, delivered a TED Talk on grief, declaring that “you never get over it, you get through it.” Dr. Phil then described a rescuer yelling “throw me your baby” as the floodwaters rose, while Trump nodded gravely as if this was a scene from one of his many reality shows.

Ted Cruz, ever eager to appear useful, shared a tragic account of visiting Camp Mystic and seeing “17 small white crosses in the ground,” each for a little girl who drowned, and added that the camp director “gave his life trying to save his girls.” In typical Ted Cruz fashion, he then pivoted back to the comforting embrace of Christian hymns and Republican unity, because no Texas tragedy is complete without a performative appeal to God and bootstraps.

Meanwhile, Trump bragged about getting emergency funds to Texas “within about 2 minutes,” claiming “no other president would do that.” Not to be outdone by the suffering of children, Trump managed to insert a bizarre aside about how his administration “got the cost of eggs right down,” which presumably will be a huge comfort to parents who just lost their kids in a flash flood.

At one point, Chip Roy leapt in to thank Trump for dropping everything to help, telling the media that “pointing fingers is for losers.” Because, you see, wanting to know why an alert system failed as children were swept from their beds is just “loser behavior” in Texas Strong™ world.

Ted Cruz closed by telling the story of a 14-year-old boy at another camp who helped save younger children from the rising water, calling it trauma but also “something to be proud of.” The event crescendoed with Trump declaring the spirit of Texas was “unity and competence,” a phrase so jarringly detached from the Trump brand that it practically echoed in the room.

In the end, Trump told the room: “We’re gonna make it back, we’re gonna make it back and we’re gonna make it good again,” not missing the opportunity to align the loss of children and homes with a vague campaign slogan about winning.

The entire event functioned as a grimly familiar blend of infomercial vibes, grief tourism, partisan attaboys, and disjointed bragging, with the dead and missing children held up as tragic proof of leadership, rather than as evidence of the profound failures of policy and preparedness that made this disaster so devastating. But hey, at least the president showed up for the photo op, promised to rebuild a store, and reminded Texas that eggs are cheaper now. So, mission accomplished, right?

follow me at marygeddry.substack.com and @magixarc.bsky.social

#KristiNoem #TedCruz #DrPhil #DisasterRelief #sociopath

[sungbeam]

nonidol!kim younghoon x f!reader

neither you nor younghoon were party people, but you did find love in the convenience store down the block.

▷ genre, warnings. friends 2 lovers, mutual pining, college au, swearing, fluff, humor, comfort, reader has crowd anxiety, reader has a lot of siblings lol, mentions of math/physics/chemistry/etc sorry it was necessary for the character, kissing, puns and pick-up lines, mentions of academic stress, lots of carbs haha, drinking, guys younghoon was my first bias and im remembering why

▷ total wc. 29.3k (TUMBLR MADE ME CUT OUT SO MUCH I FKN HATE THIS HELLSITE)

this is the seventh installment of the love in unity series! this should be fine as a standalone, but there are multiple references to party people & i highly encourage u to read it!; all other yns will be referred to as _!yn. (ayc occurs DURING party people)

a/n: in an alternate world, i would still be obsessed w kim younghoon, isn't that crazy. anyways, enjoy + reblog!

EPISODE ONE (PILOT): OF ALL THE COSMIC COINCIDENCES

KIM Jungwoo's message materialized on your lock screen in a bombardment of photons: Hey, you sure you don't wanna come with us tonight? Feel free to still join :')

You slung the strap of your bag over your head and shoulders before shooting him a reply. No thanks Woo :') Appreciate it though! Have fun tonight <3.

Some of the people in the social circle you orbited were heading to the bay tonight for a bonfire rager to celebrate (read: mourning) the beginning of the new university term. Though you hadn’t seen many of the people attending tonight in a couple months, you were never much for big crowds. Plus, the start of the school year brought a whole dumpster fire of things to worry about, so taking a quiet evening with yourself would be well worth it to keep your head on straight.

With the message sent, you hauled your apartment door open and headed out into the late evening. There was a convenient store at the end of the street a couple blocks over that you had been frequenting since freshman year, and you could taste the sweet brioche buns as the store’s fluorescent lights entered your view. It was a small corner store that reminded you much of a traditional 7/11, except there was a corner inside the store where patrons could eat and chill, and the food, arguably, tasted better than alright.

(The seating area inside this place had definitely seen many of your midterm and finals grind nights. And tears. There were lots of tear stains on those tables.)

Your roommate and good friend Miyawaki Sakura often accompanied you here whenever you came to do some studying, shopping, or recreational snacking. Tonight, she was holed up in her room video chatting with some of her cousins in Japan, but most other nights she would be online playing some kind of first person shooter game.

The walk to the nearby convenience store was a short, yet familiar one. You played a song at a faded volume in your earbuds, your hands tucked into the safety of your pockets. It was a warm night out, as late summer clung onto the coattails of early autumn, leaving a strange mixture of green, red, and yellow in the trees. The streets weren’t barren—plenty of people were out and about on a Saturday night—and still, you tilted your head up to the sky to appreciate the beauty of the obsidian sky.

When you reached the end of the block, you entered into the comfortable embrace of the convenience store. It was quiet, as expected, with only the muffled sound of jazz acoustics from the overhead speakers as white noise. The latter combined with the noise from your own device made it all the easier for you to be unaware of the other people here with you.

Your mouth was already watering from the mental image of brioche, and you made a sharp swerve into the familiar bread aisle when you realized—oh, you weren’t alone.

Standing exactly where you knew the brioche buns were stationed was a tall, lanky man with a pair of earbuds hanging from his own ears, one hand examining one of the bread packages while the other was tucked away in his pocket. His dark colored bangs were shaggy and hung in his eyes, but you could’ve recognized that side profile from a mile away. You’d spent nearly half a quarter staring at it, after all—the other half was looking at his front profile and forehead, but those were just as identifiable.

For a moment you stood at the mouth of the aisle weighing your options. Did you say hello, or did you walk away and pretend you didn’t see him?

He decided for you.

Kim Younghoon glanced up from the bread after feeling your eyes on him for a considerable beat of time. He blinked once before you saw the sharp surprise in his expression melt away into soft fondness. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he chuckled, tugging his earbuds out with a charming smile. “Long time no see, Yn.”

You mirrored his actions and slipped the wires into your pocket. “Long time no see,” you agreed, returning his pleasant expression.

You met Younghoon just last year when he stumbled into the math tutoring center with his head held high and a notebook full of question marks. While your friends on shift at that time (Chanhee coaching someone through their linear algebra worksheet; Jungwoo yanking his hair follicles out with a group of freshmen over trigonometry) were busy, it was you who ultimately became Younghoon’s go-to calculus tutor. For the quarter that he took calculus, you helped the drama major through it.

Of course, finding a drama major in a calculus class was a rare occasion, but you both blamed the university’s awful general education requirement. Either way, you’d both found a friend and good company in one another. It didn’t help that he was terribly charismatic, and often filled the spaces in between long text messages about how to calculate the cross-section area of a vase with “good morning”s, “good luck on your midterm!”s, and corny STEM-themed one-liners.

Younghoon was the kind of guy people took home to meet their parents. Not… not that you ever thought about him like that. It was just what you overheard from this group of girls in the tutoring center once—

“I guess we both had the same idea tonight then,” he chuckled as you came to stand beside him to scour the shelf for your victim tonight.

You hummed. “I guess so,” you said. “I usually don’t see you in this area of the district though.” Because you definitely would have seen him. You lived around here, after all.

“Oh,” he grabbed the back of his neck sheepishly, “it’s a funny story actually. I dropped my friends off at a party and I went to the store near them and they had no good selection of bread.” He made a helpless gesture. “So I couldn’t just accept defeat, and now I’ve ended up here.”

You plucked a package of soft brioche from the shelf, then passed him an amused look. There was something unfair about how the harsh LED lights fell so lightly over his facial features. “I guess some form of cosmic coincidence brought us bread-lovers here.”

Younghoon knocked his bread package against yours like he was cheering a glass of champagne. “And might I say what excellent taste you have.”

That drew a laugh from you. “Ditto.”

He pursed his lips then, considering you. “So what social event are you dodging tonight, Miss Mastermind?” Younghoon’s eyebrows arched upwards at you, and you suddenly took on the sheepishness he had before. Though, you definitely noted that familiar nickname that followed his question. You wondered if that was still the name your contact was saved under in his phone. (If he even still had your contact information saved.)

You raised the palm of your hand up to hide half of your face from comical shame. “Now why would you just assume that I’m here because I’m avoiding a social call?”

“Yah,” he chided jokingly, “because I know you.” His eyes turned up to the ceiling for a moment before he added, “And you’re friends with Kim Jungwoo.”

“Okay, that’s fair.”

He laughed. “Gotcha.”

“And you say I'm the mastermind?” You quipped back at him, all light-hearted. When he first dubbed you with the nickname, you hadn't known what to do about it. He claimed it was because you somehow made learning calculus fun for him—some “sorcery,” as he accused back then.

“You are!” He exclaimed with excited, wide eyes. “You've hexed me with a love for math puns and acute angles,” he groaned melodramatically, clutching his chest like his heart was about to burst for added effect.

You clicked your tongue, unable to hide your amusement. “Acute angles is a new one.”

“'Cause they remind me of a-cute-ies like you,” he said with his hand shaped into a finger gun, tongue between his teeth.

Your hand went over your face again. “I forgot that you did that.”

“You missed it!”

The smile on your face couldn't even be fully covered with your hand. Maybe you did miss it—or maybe it was just him. When the quarter had wrapped up last year and Younghoon was no longer taking calculus, neither of you had any “excuse” to be around each other anymore. Though you still had his number, you always chickened out of texting him to see how he was doing or if he wanted to hang out.

In your mind, Younghoon was always too cool for you. You didn't feel like you fit into his world.

Younghoon took your hand and drew it away from your face, a slow smile filling his lips. “There she is. You missed me.”

“If you stop asking, I will pay for your bread.”

“As if I'm going to let you do that,” he shook his head. “I'll take that as a yes.”

You both began making your way over to the counter to purchase your individual pastries. You always knew Younghoon liked bread, and you shouldn't be so surprised that he drove halfway down the district just to find a specific brioche bun. It was funny and strange how the universe worked. At times you wondered if the probability of fate could be calculated—

“So it's just you tonight?” You asked him as the two of you lingered just outside the convenience store with your freshly purchased breads in hand. You had both immediately torn into your brioche as soon as you cleared the threshold, and the fluffy pastry filled your mouth and stomach with utter joy. It was buttery and sweet and soft… perfection.

Younghoon shoved the piece in his mouth into his cheek. “For the most part, yeah,” he replied, his shoulder lifting in a half shrug. “You?”

“Yeah, Kkura's at home, but she's on call with someone. Jungwoo did invite me out to that big bonfire at the bay tonight, but…” You shook your head.

His head tilted slightly. “Oh yeah I heard about that.” For a second, he didn't say anything, and then he murmured, “Crowd anxiety.”

You hummed, eyes shooting over to his. “Hm?”

“Crowd anxiety, right?” He asked with more confidence. “I—you can correct me if I'm wrong—but I just remember you mentioning something about crowd anxiety last year.”

Your chewing slowed for a moment, and a small smile curled onto your lips. “No, you got it right.” He remembered. Of course, he remembered. A warm feeling made itself comfortable in your chest.

Younghoon seemed to brighten. “Good, I'm glad I remembered correctly,” he said while leaning his shoulder against the wall of the convenience store. “I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you ever happen to watch that performance of 12 Angry Jurors I recommended?”

Uh oh. You could physically feel your neurons spark at the familiar title. It was the equivalent to a bell—no, alarm—rattling around inside your noggin.

Younghoon threw his head back in a laugh at how your face rearranged into an expression of pure mortification. "You look like I just caught you with a hand in the canary cage—oh my god, you should see your face!"

You were helpless at this point, and no words were coming to your tongue to rescue you. Screw all the differential calculus—where was language ability when you needed it? “I can explain myself,” was all you came up with.

He crossed his arms over his chest, fixing you with a pointed look, albeit still amused. "I'd love to hear this."

“You know that some things just slip my mind—”

“Yes, and that's why I watched you put it into your calendar.”

“And you know that the school has a bad habit of scheduling big events on the same night—”

He cocked a brow at you, leaning forward slightly. “I don't like where this is going, you workaholic.”

You gestured at him with the piece of bread in between your fingers, and he had to cover his mouth to keep from snorting. “I am not a workaholic,” you said firmly.

“Sure you aren't,” he replied back in a tone that indicated he thought the exact opposite.

“Anyways, they put the research symposium on the same night as the last showing—”

“Ah-ha!” He cried with a triumphant finger pointed at the sky. You were convinced that any second now, he was going to start twiddling an immaculately curled mustache. “So you did procrastinate!”

You pressed your lips together as you crumpled your empty packaging, then raised a finger up to scratch your head sheepishly. “Maybe I did.”

Younghoon drew out an exhale. “Aye, I knew it. You know, I think you're just about married to your work, Yn-ah.” His mouth quirked to the side and he scratched the underside of his jaw. “But I guess that's not a bad thing.”

You gave a small wince. “You're not mad I missed the play?”

“Mad? No, of course not. It wasn't my play,” he joked. “I know you have priorities, and me being mad would just be silly.”

“But you are disappointed,” you countered pointedly.

“Disappointed for you,” he countered. “That was a pretty good performance of 12 Angry Jurors. Though… there is one part that I would have chosen to represent differently, but…” He shrugged, letting the thought float out into the ether.

“What is it?” You prompted.

His lip curled upward and he let out a little chuckle. “I'm not telling you; it'll spoil the ending!”

You were unconvinced. “I'm never gonna see the play, Hoon.”

“Not with that attitude,” he shot back.

You couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out of you from his sass that came out of left field for you. The sound of your joy made his smile widen and his eyes narrow into pretty, upturned crescent moons. The warmth all around you wasn't just from the evening's temperature. You'd forgotten just how easy it was to talk to Younghoon, and you decided that yes, you definitely missed him. But with all good things, it was written with a curtain call.

Younghoon seemed reluctant to push off of the wall and away from you. “Well, I shouldn't keep you any longer,” he said. There was a down turned angle to the corners of his smile now. “I do need to go re-find parking for when I have to go hunt my drunk friends down.”

Your laugh was small. “Good luck with that. And… don't worry about keeping me anywhere too long.”

“Thanks, and I'll keep that in mind.” His tongue stuck out between his teeth for a second, his head ducking down to shake his hair out of his eyes. “Hey, you still have my phone number, right?”

“I do.”

Whether harsh or dim lighting, it highlighted his features beautifully regardless. His eyes twinkled. “Now I know you won't ignore me if I send you another calc pun.”

“I'll look forward to it,” you promised.

The two of you were beginning to step toward your opposite directions, but failed to make your legs move any further. “Get home safe, Yn,” he murmured in goodbye. The possibility of him never reaching out crossed your mind. It wasn't like you didn't have faith that he would; rather, it was your own thoughts creeping into your head that you two came from different worlds. Despite the friendliness between you, that was the whole reason you shied away from ever reaching out. It was nothing personal against him.

EPISODE TWO: PASS GO & COLLECT TWO HUNDRED

GRAVITY reminded you of its existence when a bundle of fabric hit you square in the head. (Then again, you were always reminded of gravity’s existence when you thought about it…) “Yah—hey!” You clawed the article of fabric off your head and whirled around in your desk chair with a scowl. “Kkura!”

Sakura blinked innocently from where she stood at your closet, hand on her hip. “Put it on.”

You made a face as you straightened out the garment in your hands, the frown deepening when you realized which top it was. Or rather, which dress it was. “I haven’t seen this since I unpacked my clothes from boxes two years ago,” you whistled lowly. It was a black satin piece, something you brought along with you from home in case you ever decided to go to an event that called for a cocktail dress. Most of the formal events you attended though usually allowed you to get away with dress pants and a blouse. This poor piece of fabric had been relegated to the back of your closet since.

Your friend resumed sorting through your clothes for any alternatives or more of that kind. “I didn’t even know you owned something like that. I thought all your bottoms clung to your ankles unless they were shorts.”

“I have variety,” you sniffed and draped the dress over the back of your chair. “And what's wrong with bottoms going to my ankles? I like when they get to be warm.”

“That's what socks and shoes are for.”

“Says the girl who wears jeans that pretty much cover her shoes.”

Sakura shot you a look that reminded you of when your mother was exasperated, but she didn't want to admit that you were right. “Okay, so maybe we both have problems. But that's besides the point!” She walked away from your closet to sit herself on the edge of your bed, her hand dragging the arm of your desk chair to roll you over away from your desk. “We're going to a party tonight!”

She beamed, waving her hands around. When you only gave her a blank stare, she cleared her throat. “Ahem, I said, we're going to a party tonight! Woo!”

You pursed your lips. “Not very woo, to be honest.”

“You're not very woo,” she quipped in a deadpan.

“No, no, no!” You cut in, waving your finger back and forth. “Don't pretend like you wouldn't rather stay home than party either. And besides, you know that I don't do crowds.” You gazed off into space as if recalling the Great War with glazed-over eyes, already smelling the sweat and booze, and feeling the suffocating pressure in your chest as people squished up against you, and as you lost sight of your friend or anyone you knew for that matter, in the sea of—

“I know,” Sakura pushed out an exhale, and your eyes shuddered as you came out of that headspace. “But I think it'll be good for us. I mean, you need to get your eyes away from that grant application for one second, and I—”

“Need to stop playing League?” You suggested cheekily.

Your friend's scowl coaxed a high pitched wheezing sound out of you. She pursed her lips. “I was going to offer to hold your hand while we were in the house, but I guess not—”

“Okay, now let's not get ahead of ourselves!” You countered. The glint in Sakura's eyes when you interrupted her told you all you needed to know. Damn her cleverness; she'd got you once again.

Maybe she was the real mastermind.

Two hours later—the both of you dolled up and willpower strong (ish)—you clung to Sakura's hand as you and she slipped into the lively host house for tonight's festivities. Sweat already dampened the lines in your palm, and you moved your grip on your friend to hold onto her arm instead. You hadn't been to a house party or a frat party in a while, the last one being a birthday party for one of your friends from differential calculus turning twenty-one.

This instance was different. For one, there were far too many people packed together per square inch. And second, who thought turning down the lights was a good idea? You were already half blind as it was…

“I think we should get a drink!” Sakura shouted as she sent you an encouraging smile.

Your eyes widened as you narrowly missed getting someone's shoulder shoved into your face. “Yes, a drink sounds great!”

It was a war zone as the two of you maneuvered yourselves through the crowded living room space. The only reason people seemed to converge in that room in particular was because it had been turned into a makeshift dance floor. There were also people seated on the stairs, leaning over the upstairs landing, and meandering around in the halls.

You could feel your head begin to fog up as you unconsciously shifted closer to Sakura's side. Your friend curled her arm around your shoulders, deftly guiding you through the fray to the light at the end of the tunnel—the kitchen. There was a distinct lightening of your chest as you stepped foot into the less crowded space. The kitchen was still only dimly lit with the most minimal of light switches flipped on, but it was still enough where you could at least see your hand in front of your face and the light layer of sweat on Sakura’s brow. You made a swift scan of the area and spotted three people over by the kitchen counter, one of whom was slumped over the countertop, dozing off.

Oh, to be him right now.

“Oh, hello,” greeted one of the trio. He was stationed behind the counter like a bartender, his purple bangs brushed out of his face. The girl with him lifted her hand in a friendly wave.

“Hi, we’re not—uh, interrupting or anything?” Sakura said as your hold on her arm loosened considerably now that you were in an area that was much less crowded.

The two of them shook their heads with too much enthusiasm. “No, no! Definitely not.”

You and Sakura exchanged glances of incredulity, but didn’t push the topic any further. With pleasantries aside, the two of you excused yourselves to peruse the display of alcoholic beverages on the island space. You knew Sakura could hold her alcohol a decent amount, and so could you, so you both looked around for bottles of flavored soju to hold you over for the evening.

You dug around in one of the coolers and withdrew twin bottles of strawberry-flavored ones. “Kkura!”

Her blue-colored head perked up and she brightened as you waved your treasures around in the air. “Ooh, yay! You know, I think we should restock our stash of melon soju at home,” she mused and came over to where you were.

With your drinks secured, you each took the first sip like a shot, then linked arms to face the crowd again.

Drinking either made your anxiety rocket or relax—it depended on the beverage and the kind of day you’d had, but as you nursed your bottle for moments longer, the heaviness in your chest began to gradually recede.

The crowd anxiety you harbored was a byproduct of being the middle child of five siblings. You loved your family to bits, but sometimes home life was overwhelming. It wasn't that you got nervous around people, but more so in large bodies of people. The first year or so of your university life spent in large undergraduate lectures were absolute hell; there was an appeal to the upper division classes besides specialized interests.

But your friends were all aware and took good care of you, which you were more than grateful for.

“Is it just me—” Sakura said to you loudly with blue and purple lights painting her features, “—or does this soju taste really good tonight?”

You smacked your lips together as you savored the sweet taste. “You're definitely right,” you said. “We might have to go back for more.”

“If we can remember how to get there,” she giggled.

“Wait, what's in here?” You steered the two of you into a doorway to your left.

From the looks of the massive table stretching from one end to the next, you had stumbled upon the dining room. The room was large enough for there to be a few different groups of people occupying sections, but the largest one took reign over the farthest end. Your eyes widened in delight when you recognized two people in particular. “Oh wow.”

“Yn?” Chanhee exclaimed in disbelief. He was partly hunched over what looked like a board game as his deft fingers counted out paper money. “You're here?”

Everyone—well, almost everyone—turned their heads to see who Chanhee was talking about. Nonetheless, there were still quite the amount of eyes looking at you and you felt your palms begin to get sweaty around your bottle neck.

Younghoon gasped. “YN!” He grinned, lumbering over with his jelly-like limbs, tripping over people's legs and chairs. You could see the alcohol in his expression before you smelled it, but you couldn't just not hug him when he wrapped his arms around you in greeting. You hadn't seen him since last week at the convenience store but even then, the surprise had yet to escape you. What a cosmic coincidence.

“Hey, Hoon,” you chuckled in amusement, patting his back affectionately. You didn't know he would be so affectionate when drunk, but then again, this was the first time you were experiencing him like this.

“Big guy's a little drunk,” Sakura observed, then lifted her bottle to her lips. “Are you guys playing Monopoly?”

One of the guys, who looked the most of sound mind and state, nodded. “Yeah. D'you guys wanna play?”

Younghoon placed his hands on your shoulders with a goofy grin slipping onto his face as he pulled away. “You should play with us! Guys—” he announced to his friends, “—this is my bestest friend, Yn!”

“And her friend, Sakura,” you cut in, gesturing to Sakura with jazz hands.

“And we would love to play,” Sakura added.

You passed her a glance. There was mischief dancing in her eyes. You supposed at least you knew what you were getting into before jumping into any game with the Miyawaki Sakura. These poor chumps never stood a chance.

“Okay, but Chanhee's the iron,” remarked one of the other boys while you, Sakura, and Younghoon made your way over to where they all were gathered.

You snorted at Chanhee's less than pleased expression. “Why does he insist that you be the flat iron?” You nudged your friend. You met Chanhee and Jungwoo in a shared freshman differential calculus class where the three of you weathered the war together.

Chanhee sighed, his tongue poking his cheek. “Because apparently I have no ass.”

“BECAUSE YOU DON'T!”

“NEITHER DO YOU!”

With none of that settled, a good majority of the people present gathered around the Monopoly board on the table to play. You, Sakura, and Chanhee all clambered onto the dining table to sit while the others rounded the end of the table. It also gave you a little room to breathe while playing with such a large group.

“Ladies first,” declared one of the boys, who's name you learned was Sunwoo, his eyes at half mast and cheeks flushed like red grapefruit.

“If you insist,” Sakura sang and did a little dance as she swiped the dice up to roll.

You placed a hand over your eyes jokingly. “Look away!”

Haknyeon blinked with his eyes wide. “Why?”

“Because she's about to win faster than you can say pass go and collect two hundred.”

In retrospect, you saw this coming. Even if the universe could construct more possible futures than you had atoms on the tip of your pinky finger, you definitely could have seen this coming.

The aftermath immediately following Sakura's utter domination of the Monopoly board left all of her opponents in a sputtering mess. Your friend dusted her fingers off as if there were crumbs on them, a very satisfied Cheshire's cat grin crawling onto her lips. “You can fight it or just accept it,” she shrugged, taking the last swing of her soju.

Eric stared up at her from where he knelt in front of the table, gripping the edge with his palms. He was all wide-eyed and full of wonder. “Teach me your ways.”

“If you get me another soju,” she offered, gesturing with her empty bottle. She probably didn’t expect him to take her up on the offer, because her eyes widened a comical amount when the kid rocketed up to his feet and darted out of the room, faster than she could blink.

“Is he usually like that, so hyper?” You jested to Chanhee as you and he began reorganizing the paper money.

Your pink-haired friend laughed. “Kind of. Youngjae's cute.”

“And what am I, Channieeee?” Came an inebriated Changmin. He teetered over to where you and Chanhee were, then unceremoniously draped himself over the latter's back.

“Ahhhhhh,” Chanhee groaned, “Ji Changmin!”

“Answer my question!” His friend slurred. “I think Yn thinks I'm cute. D'you think I'm cute?” He asked, gazing up with you in a deep pout and puppy dog eyes.

“Don't answer that question, Yn. It's like making a deal with the Devil.”

Changmin scoffed, straightening to a surprisingly perfect posture. He slapped a hand to his chest in offense. “How could you! Chanhee-ssi! We're supposed to be friends!”

You chuckled, leaning out of that dumpster fire of a conversation, and finding yourself in the company of one very loopy bread enthusiast. Younghoon had slipped back from watching the game about three quarters of the way through and slumped into a chair with a can of beer and his phone. At some point, you had given up on Monopoly, too, and considered joining him. Now, you really did move over to join him.

His head perked up when you leaned over and poked his shoulder, a smile coming to his face. “Hi.”

“Hi,” you smiled back. “Tired?”

He gave a slow, drawn-out nod. “Mhm,” he hummed. He lifted the can of beer to his lips and finished it off, then dropped his phone into his lap so he could rest his face between his hands. “I'm kind of hungry.”

You laughed. “I bet. How much did you drink, Hoon?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged.

“Long week?”

“Veeeery long week,” he nodded. “Like…” He spread his arms to his full wingspan, “this much.”

A giggle bubbled out of your mouth at how adorable he was when he was drunk.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. “Oh my gosh, Yn! I never sent you the joke I found,” he frowned. “I found it and thought about sending it to you, but then…”

“You forgot?” You offered.

“I just didn't wanna bother you, to be honest.”

Oh. Something in you softened a great deal at the confession. You were always so sure that you would have been the bother, because it was difficult to imagine that someone who seemed so sure of himself like Younghoon might also feel the same. You mimicked his position with your hands holding up your face. “You're never a bother, Younghoon.”

“Even when I ask dumb questions about factoring?”

“There is no such thing as a dumb question.”

He pursed his lips into a line, unconvinced. “You're too nice. No wonder I liked doing math homework.”

You laughed again at the unexpected compliment, and Younghoon smiled to himself. “I'm glad you enjoyed doing your calc homework.”

He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then snapped it shut with wide, doe-like eyes. “I was going to say a joke, but I realized that I probably shouldn't say that one in particular.”

“Wow, you have a filter when you're drunk?” You teased.

“Hey!” He pretended to sulk. “I'm not that drunk!”

A beat passed, and then he said, “I am still hungry though.” Yeah, definitely drunk.

Within fifteen minutes, you convinced Sakura to accompany you and Younghoon to the convenience store a couple blocks from your apartment. The three of you together managed to snag Chanhee to drive you all, as well as Changmin as an accessory since he and Chanhee lived together. Younghoon had once again insisted on this place in particular because he thoroughly enjoyed the brioche bun from the other day and had been missing it since. You and he settled down at the seating area in the corner of the store with your freshly-purchased bread, while the others traipsed around in search of other sustenance.

Younghoon's cheeks were full of brioche as he muttered a muffled, “You know why I like—calculus jokes?” He swallowed his bite, his eyebrows braiding together as he stared at his now empty package.

You quietly plucked the empty bag out of his hands and replaced it with yours.

He melted at the action. “I do.”

You bursted into a fit of giggles and Younghoon followed straight after you. Your face filled with fire and his bloomed like a blood red rose. The alcohol was slowly settling in. You were a lot more refreshed now that you were outside of the crowd setting, and your chest felt much lighter. “You do?”

“I do,” he reaffirmed, tearing the last bit of bread apart for you both to share instead. “You know why I like—” he hiccupped with the bread half in his mouth. His face morphed into one of confusion, then utter disdain.

You stifled a laugh with your bite of carbs. “Why do you like calculus jokes, Younghoon?” You asked to help him out.

He swallowed his bite. “Because—trig jokes are too graphic and algebra ones are too for—” He hiccupped again, his eyes shooting up toward the ceiling in exasperation.

“Formulaic?” You offered.

Younghoon frowned. “You know this one?”

“I enjoy guessing.”

“Hm,” he grunted, unconvinced. “There is one outlier though.” When he hiccupped for the third time, you patiently waited for him to fill in the blank. “Statistics.”

A small smile wormed its way onto your face. “I have to say, that was very subtle but very good.”

Younghoon beamed with pride. “I knew you would get i—” Another hiccup. He deadpanned. “I hate this.”

You stood up with a chuckle. “Let me get you some water.”

“Thanks,” he pouted. You felt his eyes on you the whole time you went over to the free water cooler over at the counter, and even as you brought him back the little paper cup of liquid.

As he drained the cup, you lingered next to where he sat rather than sitting back down. “Better?” You asked, then held your hand out to take the cup back if he wanted more.

He shook his head though, and he raised it up to his eyes while squinting one of them to aim it at the trash can behind your seat. “How do I get this exactly inside the trash?”

You blinked, eyeballing the distance between his seat and the trash can. The paper cup wasn't going to have a lot of weight while it was empty, but if he threw it with the opening facing him instead…

Younghoon made a noise that sounded a lot like a child's giggle. “Hehe, you're actually doing the math in your head.”

“You don't know that,” you muttered.

“Of course I know that.” He shucked the paper cup and it landed in the trash can with a clean swish sound. He threw his hands in the air. “Woo! Crowd goes wild.”

You laughed and slid back into your seat. “See, you didn't need math to get the cup into the trash can. Nice throw, Hoon.”

He grinned at you. “Thanks. You know how I knew you were doing the math in your head?”

“How?” You humored him amiably.

“Because you get this cute little wrinkle between your eyes, riiiight there—” He leaned forward and booped the place between your eyes, making you go cross-eyed for a split second. “—when you're processing info.”

“Processing info makes me sound like a computer,” you joked.

“Too bad you're not a keyboard,” he said with a sigh, “you'd be just my type.”

An unnaturally loud guffaw came out of your mouth and you slapped your hand over it. There was far too much mirth between the two of you right now. “You're telling me you're good at this drunk, too?” You shook your head, the laugh lingering on your tongue, “Y'know what? I shouldn't be surprised.”

If Younghoon could come up with pick-up lines to remember how to do calculus sober, then you should not have underestimated him drunk.

“Changmin, can you put the plunger down before we get kicked out?” Your head turned toward the sound of Chanhee's pure exhaustion as the three others rounded the corner. You imagined Chanhee dealt with drunk Changmin more than a few times to sound so exasperated. You didn't even want to know what Changmin was doing with the plunger.

Sakura, Chanhee, and Changmin bumbled over to where you and Younghoon sat, the supposed plunger nowhere to be seen. Chanhee brushed a lock of pink out of his eyes with a deep sigh. “Alright; shall we?”

EPISODE THREE: DO AS THE PHYSICISTS DO

THE hungrier Younghoon woke up, the more he likely had to drink the night prior. His stomach growled something horrific and he groaned, rolling his body over to squish his face into his pillow. There were no trains of thought running through his mind at the moment; there was only blissful quiet. And hunger. Goddamn it, he was hungry.

With a huff, he dragged himself upright as if he were rising from the dead. He gave his head a rough shake, eyes bleary as he blinked once… then twice… Oh, yuck. Sticky eyelashes.

There was something white on his desk that caught his eye. There was a yellow sticky note marked with Chanhee's chicken scratch beside it: Yn sent you home with this bottle of painkillers. In case you don't remember, lol.

Dear god, it was coming back to him now.

Younghoon lowered himself down onto the edge of his bed and dragged a hand down his face. Had he been weird? Did you think he was weird now?

His phone was buried somewhere beneath his mess of sheets, and he pulled up your contact that he still had saved from last year. The last message sent was from a brief conversation you both had after his calculus final about what you were both doing when you went home for the winter break. He could feel the warmth creeping up to his cheeks from his neck as he typed out the first message to you since: heyy… about last night…

It was a bit of a surprise when he saw your reply come in nearly straight away.

miss mastermind: LOL good morning, did u sleep okay? younghoon's phone: decently ig 😅 thanks for the painkillers btw i will def take a couple of those miss mastermind: yeah no worries younghoon's phone: how bad was i last night, yn 😭 u can tell me miss mastermind: 😭 u weren't that bad… okay maybe u started singing the calculus parody of bohemian rhapsody on the way to my apartment…

Younghoon snickered into his palm as he stared at the messages on the screen. That memory was definitely rolling back into his head now. It was that, along with the Monopoly game, then the convenience store, and finally, the walk to yours and Sakura's apartment before Chanhee dropped him off here.

miss mastermind: i can't say im too surprised u remembered it tho 😭 sometimes i forget that ur trained to remember things younghoon's phone: that's a funny way to describe being an actor LMAO younghoon's phone: but also i'd be lying if i didn't admit that im so embarrassed abt last night miss mastermind: nooo don't be!! it's all good, i thought u were a very cute drunk

He smiled against his hand. He typed: Well now I just have to make it up to you.

miss mastermind: u absolutely do not younghoon's phone: actually i do younghoon's phone: if i recall correctly, u gave me the rest of ur BREAD. that's like…|

He paused, having nearly written “marriage proposal.” Quickly backspacing, he replaced it with ��donating an organ.” Maybe he was a little delusional, but he could've sworn he heard your laugh echoing in his head after he sent it and saw the indicator appear that you were typing. He reached over to grab the bottle of painkillers as he monitored your texts coming in.

miss mastermind: DONATING AN ORGAN… miss mastermind: yk, i knew u liked bread, but not THIS much younghoon's phone: but ofc :0 she's my first love miss mastermind: understood o7 now ik how to sway ur judgment ☝️ younghoon's phone: le gasp younghoon's phone: truly evil mastermind things only miss mastermind: the le gasp is taking me out 😭 younghoon's phone: how abt /i/ take u out instead 😗

As soon as he sent it, he grimaced. Oh no, this was going to be taken out of context. You were going to go through the whole “sorry, I'm not really interested in you” talk, and he would have to sit through it pretending like it didn't hurt—he didn't mean for it to sound like that. You were just friends after all.

younghoon's phone: I MEAN LIKE younghoon's phone: for watching over me and humoring me last night yk! it doesn't have to be something fancy either, just something that we can do as friends! and to say thanks

His grimace deepened. Those clarification texts did nothing to help his case. It also did not calm his nerves when you failed to respond immediately like you had been for the past few minutes. “Well, you've done it now,” he muttered to himself as he frowned down at the screen.

For a couple minutes, there was nothing from your end and he forced himself to drag his ass off the bed in search of sustenance. Hyunjae's door was closed, so the rest of the apartment was quiet as he bounded out of his room toward the kitchen. Periodically (read: every couple seconds), Younghoon would glance at his phone screen waiting for your reply. “What are you scared of?” He said to himself as he opened the fridge and scratched his jaw. “You literally came up with pick-up lines for calculus terms with her.”

There were leftovers from a couple nights ago, and Younghoon grabbed those to heat up. He closed the refrigerator with his hip, eyes darting to his phone, only to see his screen light up. He dropped the leftover container on the counter and scooped the device up.

miss mastermind: i really don't think it's necessary to pay it back or anything, but we can def hang out! miss mastermind: also sorry my sister stole my phone TT but i got it back haha It was sad how fast relief flushed through him at that moment. younghoon's phone: oh no dw abt it lol ur with family rn? miss mastermind: i am! my aunt's in town and so i was summoned home for brunch 🤧 younghoon's phone: …is there :’)) uhm french toast :’)) miss mastermind: *sent a photo* younghoon's phone: that was cruel. miss mastermind: HAHAHA SORRY 😭

Younghoon stuck his leftovers into the microwave to heat up, but was suddenly craving French toast. He knew for certain he didn't have everything to make it right this second though. Maybe he would wake Hyunjae up to go impromptu grocery shopping.

younghoon's phone: i don't wanna keep u away from ur family any longer, but lmk if u have any preferences for what we should do together miss mastermind: no prefs in particular and dw, talking to u helps distract me from the amount of chaos happening in this house :’) miss mastermind: i do have to go now tho unfortunately :l my sister looks like she's abt to snatch my phone again 😭 younghoon's phone: LOL 😭 okay i'll talk to u soon then younghoon's phone: enjoy ur toast :/ miss mastermind: HAHA i'll save u a slice hoon 😋

The microwave beeped its conclusion, and Younghoon pulled the piping hot bowl of leftover food out. As he took a stab at it with his fork, he came to the swift conclusion that he was not going to be full on this. As he shoveled the food into his mouth, he started toward Hyunjae's room to give his friend a very rude awakening. “HYUNJAE! WE NEED FRENCH TOAST!”

There was no better place than the convenience store at the ripe timestamp of ten o'clock to meet with a friend. You'd gotten back from your house at around four o'clock in the afternoon, so you weren't too tired, though the cleanup and all the social interaction was threatening to take you out. Any school work or grant application work would have to wait until tomorrow.

Nonetheless, you felt a giddy sort of excitement bubble up in you as you hustled yourself down the street to the convenience store to meet Younghoon. In your hands, you clutched a small, sandwich-sized Tupperware container with a slice of holy French toast within. It was your older brother's favorite thing to make when he had to contribute to a brunch (or, let's face it, any meal) spread.

Younghoon had never been tardy to your tutoring sessions last year, so you weren't surprised when you saw him seated at your usual table in the corner. He glanced up from his phone as you walked in, waving. There was a blue colored beanie over his head and a brown corduroy jacket draped over his shoulders.

He noted the container in your hands and his eyes widened like saucers. “You did not.”

“I told you I would save you a piece,” you said sheepishly as you set the container down in front of him and took a seat.

“You—” His bottom lip jutted out. “I can't accept this.”

“You have to. It has your name on it,” you insisted, pointing out the little “Younghoon” scrawled on the side in Sharpie with a smiley face. It was customary in your household to write names on containers if they weren't already color coded or marked with a label. Label makers cost more than Sharpies did, and most of the time, your family didn't mind scrubbing the ink off if needed.

Younghoon's smile was sweet like the pastry sitting in the Tupperware. “I literally made French toast as soon as we stopped texting.”

You laughed. “No way.”

“Yes way! I dragged Hyunjae's ass out of bed,” he told you with great energy, eyes alight as he recalled his late morning antics to you. “I really didn't expect that you would bring me a slice, Yn, you sweetheart.”

“We had lots of leftovers and I just knew the most enthusiastic bread fanatic I knew had to try some of my big brother's toast,” you told him, pleased with his reaction.

He seemed at a loss for words; he just kept looking at you like you hung the stars in the sky, and you wondered how you could replicate this reaction over and over again. “Thank you,” was what he settled on. “I—” He gestured to the container, to you, to the container, “It means a lot.”

“You're welcome,” you said simply.

Younghoon heaved a great sigh and stood up. “Now I have to buy you some snacks—no. Yn, sit your ass down.”

Your eyes widened a comical amount and you plopped yourself back onto the chair.

His lips wiggled as he held back a smile. “Don't move.”

“You don't have to do this, Hoon,” you shook your head as he began making his way over to the aisles.

“What's that rule in chemistry? Energy can neither be created nor destroyed?” He queried from within the drinks aisle.

“The first law of thermodynamics,” you supplied. “It's not just chemistry though. It's relevant in all the sciences.” You weren't sure where he was going with this.

“Yeah, well—” He paused. You couldn't see him from where you were, but even the rustling noises stopped. “Shit, that's not the right rule.”

You bit back a laugh. Oh, he was too adorable.

“What's the one where equal and opposite and…?”

Your brain tripped. “Uh, the—the 'for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction’ one?”

More crinkling. “Aha! That's the one. Yeah, so for your actions, I must do as the physicists do, and react accordingly.”

Younghoon returned to you with an entire treasure trove of goodies that you swore amounted to more than what was due. (That number to you was technically zero, but for Younghoon's insistence, it was slightly over zero… maybe one one-thousandth.) It was a smorgasbord of peach drinks with lychee jelly, potato chips, daifuku mochi, and of course, bread buns. It was a feast in its own right. You both dove straight into the snacks before you. When life gave one lemons, one was to make lemonade.

Younghoon popped a chip into his mouth. “Do you come here often? Is this your hangout spot?” He suddenly asked, then dipped his hand into the bag and waved a chip around in the air, a quizzical kink in his brow. “I mean, you do live close by and you seem to be very familiar with the place.”

You screwed the cap of your bottle of juice back on and wiggled your fingers as you surveyed what snack to eat next. “I do hang out here often—you’re right,” you replied. The daifuku looked very appetizing right about now. “I've been coming by since school started to knock out my grant app.”

He perked up curiously. “Grant app?”

“It's for the Space Grant.” In partnership with the national space organization, your university offered something called the Space Grant, which would grant three applicants with a monetary award that could be used toward their education in aerospace. You'd had your eye on it even before you began attending this school, and you were determined to be one of the three who won it this year.

After you briefed him on the cause of much of your recent stress, Younghoon gave an indulging nod. “Mmmmh, I see. You're still aerospace engineering then, right?”

“Yep,” you chirped. “me and propulsion theory to the end. I guess I'm an airplane kid.” At the latter, you made a face. You were the space version of an airplane kid… the alternate of train kids and car kids…

“Don't think about it too much,” he said with corners of his smile peeking out on either side of where he pressed his fist against his lips.

You tried not to. “How about you? What have you been up to?”

He breathed out an exhale. “Hm? Oh, like, with drama?”

“Sure, anything and everything about you.” You leaned your cheek against your fist and peered over at him. “We've been talking about me too much.”

“Nonsense,” he tsked. “You already know I recite lines, dabble in the hilariously good pun on occasion, and am incredibly obsessed with carbohydrates.”

“What more could I possibly wanna know?” You played along.

“Exactly.” He chuckled then, tongue darting out for a second to wet his lips. “Jokes aside, nothing too much. Hyunjae's best friend, HJ!Yn—she’s a director and writer, and she's putting on her own play in the spring that I'll be auditioning for.”

Your eyebrows arched in interest. “Oh? What's it about?”

“No clue.”

You nodded. “Ah, well, good luck—or, break a leg. People say that, right? It's not just in movies?”

“People do say that, yes,” he affirmed. “And thank you. I'm gonna start a part-time teaching job at a school nearby for their theater program, which I think will be fun.”

“That does sound fun,” you agreed. Because you had two younger siblings yourself, you knew that taking care of young ones was a lot, but if anyone could do it, you knew Younghoon could. You imagined he would do quite well with them. “Let me know when they have a performance!”

His eyes twinkled in the fluorescent lights; you were beginning to grow more accustomed to the way the harsh brightness painted his features softer. “You have to promise to come though. This is more important than 12 Angry Jurors.”

You placed a hand against your heart in playful solemnity. “I, Yn Ln, do solemnly swear that I will try my very best to make it to see their performance.”

He cleared his throat, his expression falling into an expertly grave facade. “I accept your promise,” he said and extended his hand out to you across the table, “shake my hand, and may the deal never be broken.”

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from breaking out of character as you shook his hand. When you'd both withdrawn your hands, you watched him, fascinated, as he exited out of character. It was like a switch had been flicked off behind his eyes. Crazy.

Satisfied, Younghoon laced his fingers beneath his chin with a giddy, little smile on his face. “I'll save you an aisle seat.”

“I appreciate that,” you said. You really did—and he really remembered.

“And I'll make silly faces at you from the curtain wings.”

You laughed, telling him you couldn't wait.

EPISODE FOUR: TRAINS GO BOOM?

THERE were too many fires to put out at once. You were becoming the humanoid version of that dog in a burning house meme, and you didn't like it. It was not fine.

“Girl, I wish you'd told me, like, three weeks ago—”

You tasted the rejection a mile out.

“—I already committed to this robotics thing that night,” Jungwoo cried in anguish as he threw his head back. “I could've gone to the Space Gala! Instead, I'm watching people play with robots.”

You passed him a sympathetic look. “Robots are cool.”

“But I don't even get to do anything! I can only spectate!” You both stopped in the middle of your walk as he made unintelligible noises and gesticulations. Jungwoo grabbed your shoulders and shook them. “YN! WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? I have to pay to watch people have fun.”

Your head was wobbling back and forth like a bobble head. Thank god for spines. “Woo—I’m gonna be honest—”

He stopped shaking you.

“I have no idea,” you said to him. “But we are in the same boat.”

The two of you were currently situated on the engineering side of campus. Most of the buildings around you were geared toward the great spectrum of engineering students—from electrical and computer, to aerospace and nautical. You just got out of a numericals simulation course and caught up with Jungwoo coming out of the engineering library to present to him your newest dilemma.

Jungwoo's posture sank. “I only have regrets after pursuing MechE.”

You pursed your lips, lamely patting him on the shoulder. “I told you aero is cooler.”

“I won't dignify that with an answer,” he sulked. Jungwoo picked himself up, however, as he always did. He carded a hand through his floppy brown bangs, eyes flickering down to his phone screen before his eyeballs nearly fell out of his socket. “Oh shit—I’m gonna be late to advanced mathematics. Chanhee is gonna murder me.”

He bumped your shoulder with the back of his hand. “Good luck on finding a plus one, Yn-ie!”

“Good luck getting there before Chanhee,” you hollered back.

Jungwoo threw you an expression that needed no subtitles, but fitting ones would read, That was so unnecessary!

As your friend sprinted in one direction, you began walking in the opposite direction. You had a little more than a couple hours before your next lecture, so you could probably either walk around and enjoy the day's nice weather or find a place to work. All bets were off when you felt your phone buzz from your pocket, and you saw the message on the screen. It was a text from your older sister: hey mom's asking if u have something to wear to the wedding lol.

The “LOL” at the end really downplayed how much stress this was going to give you. The entire event of The Wedding had slipped from your mind over the past week—actually, you were pretty sure you forgot the moment you got back into your car to drive home from brunch last weekend.

If you thought you had a large immediate family, your extended one would silence all thoughts instantly. One of your cousins-in-law was getting married in December, which meant you needed to find an outfit and mentally prepare yourself for the amount of people there were going to be in one room.

The Wedding made you anxious.

You shot your sister a frazzled text back. It was something along the lines of: maybe… lemme check the back of my closet… or pray I have funds in my bank account.

You somehow made your way to one of the green spaces on campus. It wasn't the main lawn that people picnicked or hung out on, but it was still just as beautiful as the main one. It also sat right by the café located down here in the engineering corner; you and your friends liked to loiter around here when the weather was nice.

It was exactly why you thought you were hallucinating when you saw Younghoon walking toward you.

“Younghoon?” You voice incredulously. “What're you doing here?”

He beamed at you, reaching a hand up to cup the back of his neck. “Oh, you know, just taking a walk and enjoying this nice, autumn weather…”

“Down in the engineering buildings?”

He sniffed, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I wasn't purposely trying to look for you or anything,” he said and rocked back and forth on his heels.

You didn't need to know rocket science to read him. “Okay,” you drawled. “Say I believe you.”

“Divine coincidence,” he shrugged helplessly, jovially, even. His eyes were upturned in cute crescent moons. “Oh! And would you look at that—” He swung his backpack around to the front of his body and withdrew your plastic container from its depths, empty and clean, with even his sharpied name scrubbed off. “I just happened to have this on me.”

You sputtered out a laugh and accepted the container from him. “How funny that this pattern of events keeps happening.”

“Pfft, I know, right?” He brushed a hand through his hair. “So, uh, what're you up to?”

“What am I up to?” You parroted. “Not sure, to be honest. I've got a couple hours to kill. What about you?”

Younghoon gestured to the walkway that bordered the perimeter of the engineering lawn. You fell into step beside one another. “Nothing much, too. I kind of just needed a little walk outside to clear my head.”

You sighed, nodding. “I get that.”

“That sounded… very heavy,” he said, passing you a glance. “Something on your mind, Mastermind?”

“Oh, well,” you trailed off, uncertain of where to begin or how to begin. It seemed like Younghoon had something on his mind, too, and you didn't want to give him something else to hold onto. But when you looked over at him, there was a concentrated, concerned furrow in his brow; he was nowhere else but present with you.

You clasped the back of your neck and felt the knot in your muscles. “There's this thing.”

“Mhm.”

“Colloquially, it's referred to as the Space Gala, but it's kind of just an evening prepared by the Space Grant Consortium with a bunch of booths and a Q&A panel—things like that.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Wow, a whole consortium?”

“Yup.” You'd been a member of the student club associated with the consortium since freshman year, not just to keep up to date with information about the space grant, but because you enjoyed attending the events and learning about new innovations related to your desired field. “And it's a little formal where everyone dresses nicely to a degree, and each member can bring a plus one. Usually, Sakura comes with me, but something just came up for her that she can't avoid so—” You made a helpless gesture with your hands.

It was no fault of her own that she couldn't avoid the personal matter that came for her. You just needed to find someone to go with you now, but finding someone on such short notice was proving to be less than swift.

“Ah,” Younghoon said in understanding. “You'd like to attend with someone you're comfortable with because it's a large gathering of people, and—when is it?”

“Next Friday,” you grimaced.

He blinked. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah.”

Younghoon pressed his lips together. “Hey, I mean, if you're looking for someone to go with—I dunno if you're comfortable with me compared to your closer friends—and I don't want to seem as if I'm inviting myself, but—”

“Younghoon,” you cut in with the knots in your neck and shoulders suddenly dissipating. You pressed your hands together, touching them to your lips. “Would you like to go to the Space Gala with me?”

The most beautiful smile blossomed onto his face then, and you swore to go it was warmer than the sun's beams. For a second, his cheekbones darkened with something bashful, but it was hidden in the blink of an eye, and you were met again with the charming Younghoon you knew well. “Why, there's nothing I would love to do more.”

“You are a lifesaver.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it,” he laughed. “I'm happy to go with you, Yn. I mean, what does Sakura usually do to help you when you're in crowded places?”

Hold my hand. That thought was immediately cast aside. That was probably far too much. You coughed, “Uhm, just—you know—stick around me. I get kind of overwhelmed when there are a lot of people around.”

“Overstimulation?” He offered sympathetically.

“I suppose that's the word I'm looking for.”

Younghoon nodded. “Okay. Hey, that's okay. You just tell me what I need to do to make you feel safe and I'll do it.”

Your heart pounded in your chest and you couldn't figure out the right words to express your gratitude. It was hard not to downplay your own misgivings; it took time to practice being patient with yourself. “Thanks, Hoon. I don't really… know what to say, but I really do appreciate it.”

“You don't have to say anything,” he said easily. “And I think, personally, I'm a great plus one.”

If only all of your troubles in life could be fixed so simply by Kim Younghoon being your plus one.

Your stroll together took you down toward the environmental science building. It was a path through a heavily forested area, though a little strange even being located somewhere south of the main campus. The paved sidewalk faded into a worn dirt path, and sunlight filtered in through the layers of leaves crisscrossing overhead.

“I've spilled my guts,” you piped up, “now what's on your mind?” You added swiftly, “If you're comfortable with sharing.”

Younghoon blew out an exhale from his mouth. “You know that job I mentioned? The one where I'm working with a youth theater program nearby?”

You nodded. “Yeah, how's that going, by the way?”

“I'm not sure,” he admitted with his mouth shifted to the side. “I had my first day with them on Wednesday, and I'm seeing them again today. I think I'm just nervous that they'll get bored of me.”

Ah, you could understand that. Surely your years helping out with your younger siblings could lend some use. It was rare to see Younghoon in this state of unease, and it was even more rare to think of someone who wouldn't like him. Seeing him troubled even a little made your stomach churn, and you wanted to help find a solution. “How old are they?”

“They’re all older primary school kids,” he said. “Young enough to not be scary middle schoolers and old enough to have some kind of attention span.”

You smiled to yourself. “Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about.”

“I knew you would.” He brightened. “You have younger siblings, don't you? Any chance one of them wants to become an actor?”

“Oh, hm,” you murmured, “Sadie's got her eyes set on ballet right now and I think Quincey's really only fascinated about his trains. They can be swayed though, I'm sure.”

“How do I keep a kid's interest though?”

You wish you had a formula for that. You worried your bottom lip between your teeth. “To be so honest with you, kids just like learning about dangerous shit.”

Younghoon wheezed. “What?”

You grabbed his shoulder as you both stopped in the walkway so he would face you. “Listen—no, I'm being serious, Younghoon!” You were trying to get a hold of this man as if you weren't gradually losing it, too. “Do you know how many times my little brother has made his trains go boom?”

“Yn.”

“He has problems, I know; he's like, four and a half or something.”

Younghoon's eyes were filled with mirth as he pressed his knuckles against his mouth. “Yn, do you know how insane that sounds?”

Your eyes shuddered in a blink. “Huh?”

He grappled onto your shoulders with another wheeze, eyes moist with laughter and a twinge of something else you couldn't process. “Yn, are you free next Friday at three?”

“Yeah?”

“Come with me to see the kids?”

“Okay.”

His tongue ran over his teeth as he grinned. Younghoon's head dipped in a nod, and he dropped his hands to the side. You didn't know what the hell just happened, but you had a feeling a solution was very much found.

EPISODE FIVE: TO INFINITY & BEYOND

“PLEASE tell me you're leaving the medieval torture devices out of the discussion.”

You passed him a look from the passenger's side of Younghoon's Prius. (It was objectively hilarious to watch this man fold his long limbs up to get in and out of this car; you didn’t know how the laws of nature even allowed a human with his height to own and drive one of these things.) “You say that like you were sure I wasn't.”

It was currently the Friday following, and the day you and Younghoon would both be each other's plus ones. Presently, you were in his car as he drove you both over to the elementary school where he was part-timing. Once this class was over, you would split off to prepare for tonight's Space Gala before meeting again at the venue on campus.

He turned his signal on as he pulled into the parking lot. “I'm just making sure.” He glanced over at you. “Are you excited?”

“To have about two dozen pairs of eyes on me?” You had faced crowds before and they weren't your forte, but you supposed if they were all bite-sized people this time, it wouldn't be so bad. Plus, Younghoon said they would be sitting down and working in groups most of the time anyways. The appeal of this crowd was that you didn't have to worry about getting swept up.

“They're all nice kids,” he said as if consoling you. “It'll be fun!”

“But I can talk about the trebuchet, right?” You asked after he parked and you were clambering out of the car. That one time you went down a fascinating rabbithole of medieval machinery was about to come in handy.

Younghoon paused with his hand on the top of his door. “That wasn't the one with the horse-pulling, was it?”

“Oh, definitely not.”

He locked the door and the two of you began walking side by side to cross the parking lot. There was a plastic clipboard in his hand made of a material in a shade of translucent neon green, something you expected a PE teacher would carry around, except this clipboard was armed with scripts and instructor notes. The little drama program at this school was currently only an after-school occurrence, but if this all went well, they might be granted permission from the school to start integrating it into everyday classes. It was exciting—you could remember your first years of exposure to things like liquid nitrogen ice cream, egg drop competitions, and the National Geographic issue called Astronauts. Perhaps in another life you would've been an astronaut, rather than the engineer who designed the vessel that would take them into space.

Needless to say, these were some of their most impressionable years, and Younghoon was going to be a big part of these kids’. It made you warm and fuzzy inside.

Sometime between today and last week, Younghoon brought you up to speed on what the kids were currently working on. The head instructor picked out something from an adapted version of How to Train Your Dragon, which in all honesty, was cool as fuck. Immediately, thoughts about how to build a harness apparatus for an actual dragon model came to your mind, but you would need to take a look at the dimensions of the stage and preferably leave flamethrowers out of the end result. That was if you were allowed to or even had the time to.

It would be fun though. Of course it was going to be fun.

Younghoon was the first one to enter the auditorium room. It was a multipurpose building with a large, open concept space lined in carpet with a stage at the furthest end and the doors to the library across the way. With the impending introduction, you stuck behind your friend as he poked his head in. Instant squeals of delight erupted at the sight of him. (He was kidding when he said he was worried about the kids ever getting bored of him, right?) “Younghoon!”

Younghoon’s smile was so big that you could see it even when his face was half turned. “Hi everyone—I brought a friend today. Let’s give her a nice, warm welcome, hm?” Younghoon stepped completely into the room now, his hand coming over to gently sweep you in with him by your shoulder. “This is Yn.”

You raised your hand in a small, awkward wave, a greeting somehow managing to come out of your mouth. There were so many little ones present and they were all sitting in a misshapen blob in the middle of the carpet, their backpacks lined up against one of the side walls. Interacting with children who weren’t your siblings or relatives was a lot different.

“Oh my gosh,” you heard one of them gasp. “Is she his partner?”

“No, she is not my partner—she’s a friend,” Younghoon replied pointedly. “Boys and girls can be friends, Roni.”

There was a boy with a gray colored Lightning McQueen jacket on who said, “That’s exactly what my brother said before he asked his best friend to be boyfriend-girlfriend.”

Well. You angled your head toward your counterpart and murmured to him, “How old did you say these kids were?”

“Now you know why I needed your help,” he joked. “Their brains run too fast.”

“And you think the two of ours can measure up?”

Another small one—she had her dark hair in twin pigtails, knotted off with bows—raised her hand. “Are you an actor like Younghoon?”

“Me?” You pointed at yourself as if there was someone else she could’ve been asking. “Oh, no, I don’t have the skillset to be an actor,” you mused. “I basically make airplanes and rockets.” Basically.

A flurry of excitement kicked up like a snowstorm, and you could feel your skin warm at the sudden increase in energy. Perhaps you should have led with that..? But even so, it was abrupt, and you didn’t quite know what to do with yourself—

Younghoon cleared his throat, “Hey guys, let’s keep our noise level down, please.”

In response to his request, the kids miraculously managed to quiet themselves down to a buzzing chatter. It hit you at that moment; Younghoon wasn’t just good with kids—he was incredible. Why did he ever think he needed your help when you could barely stutter out a sentence about what you did instead of acting?

“I told Yn about the show we’re putting on,” he said with everyone’s attention now settled on him, including yours, “and she was very excited about seeing it.”

“Is she gonna make us fly?” Someone asked with their eyes wide and big, and you swore you could fit the whole Milky Way within the awe that was in their irises. Kids, man.

“Only if you guys do good today,” Younghoon said. “Why don’t we break off into groups and show Miss Yn what we’ve been practicing, hm?”

You managed to pick out the Star Trek theme over the volume of your hair dryer, and swore loudly as you cut the device off and scurried into your room to find your phone. “Hello?” You answered as you brought your phone back with you into the bathroom.

“Hey,” answered Younghoon, “I was thinking of just picking you up to go to the thing tonight instead of just meeting there.”

It was approximately two hours since you and Younghoon departed from the elementary school. You were back at your apartment now, attempting to get your bearings and clean yourself up for the evening's festivities.

You could feel the gears turning in your head as you weighed your options. “I mean—only if it’s convenient.”

“Okay, I’ll be by at say… 7?”

“Sounds good,” you replied as you finished up styling your hair. Though nicknamed the Space Gala, it wasn’t meant to be incredibly formal like dinner jackets and evening gowns—nice shirts, ironed pants and skirts, and non-sneakers or non-sandals would do fine. “Thanks, Hoon.”

“Mhm!” He chirped to the accompaniment of rustling in the background.

“Also—” You grabbed your phone and flicked the bathroom light off. As you were making your way back into your bedroom, you saw Sakura peer out through her open doorway with curious eyes like that of a cat. She wagged her eyebrows at you knowingly and you shooed at her playfully. “Kim Younghoon, you are such a liar!”

His laugh was sincere and bright. “Technically, I never lied.”

“You are great with kids.”

“Being good with kids is a subjective quality, my friend,” he replied, and you could hear the smile in his voice. “Besides, you did great with them, too. They loved you.”

You pursed your lips in a sad, silly attempt to stay petty, but you couldn’t deny that you had a nice time with him and his students this afternoon. Once the initial jitters subsided, you loosened up a considerable amount. Adults oftentimes underestimated how perceptive kids were, but you had a feeling that they caught onto what made you feel overwhelmed pretty quickly. At least, most of the groups you were working with did.

But… you had fun. That was all that mattered in the end. You would enjoy going back to see them again. You kicked your door closed with your foot. “I had a good time,” you replied at last. “Thanks for letting me tag along.”

“Yeah, of course. It was really fun having you there with me—us.”

You both paused on either end of the phone as the conversation reached a natural lull point. As you fitted on the freshly-steamed blouse you planned to wear tonight, you caught the time at the top of your phone screen. “Uh… so I’ll see you in about twenty minutes then?”

Shuffling from his end, and then, “Yep—twenty minutes! See you in a bit, Yn-ah.”

“Bye, Hoon!”

Twenty minutes flew by faster than 299,000,000 meters per second—at least, to you. One moment, you were ducking into the passenger side seat of Younghoon’s Prius, and the next, the two of you were being admitted in through the doors of the annual Space Gala. The usual “venue” that the consortium booked for this event was one of the campus’s main buildings that housed three large lecture rooms on the first floor, as well as two lecture halls on the second floor across from another large event space.

The lobby was filled with a crush of people, with some faces you recognized and others that you didn't. There were tables draped over with black cloth that hosted educational mini games where one could win free button pins and stickers, booths with companies associated with the consortium present to pitch potential internships, and everything in between. Younghoon stuck to your side like glue. You felt the warmth of his hand either between your shoulder blades or on one of your shoulders as the two of you maneuvered your way through the crowd.

It wasn’t until you hit the farther end of the lobby where there was a clearing of people that you felt the pressure in your sternum alleviate. You imagined your gaze appeared a little empty, glassy even, but it was all just an overwhelming wave of sensations on all ends.

“How’re you feeling?” You heard Younghoon’s voice close to your ear so you could hear him but anyone else around you couldn’t.

You focused on that—his voice. “I’m fine,” you assured him with a small smile. “I’m excited to be here and it’s just a lot.”

Younghoon smiled back at you and you felt his palm warm little circles on your back. “Take your time. The guy at the front says it’ll be another half hour until we can expect the panel to start.”

“Kkura and I—we, uh, usually go in a little earlier than everyone else.” Depending on the year, you and Sakura either occupied seats in the front couple of rows or one of the balcony seats. The former was to distract you from the idea of several hundred other people being in the room behind you, whereas the latter was so you had a large space between you and the crowd. Both were methods that you and your friend deduced were the best at soothing any feelings of overwhelm.

He nodded. “Okay, yeah, we can still do that. Are there any tables you wanna visit before we go in?”

“Actually,” you said, and your heart leapt at the memory of one booth you visited every year, “I have to show you this one thing—it’s so neat. It might be on the other side of the lobby, but we can cut upstairs and get to it that way.” Where there was a will, there was most definitely a way.

Younghoon’s expression mirrored the excitement in yours. “Lead on, Yn-ah,” he chuckled and let you grab his hand to show him why you loved what you did.

This year was dubbed a balcony year.

From yours and Younghoon’s perch up in the balcony rows, you could peer down at the hundreds of heads below, as well as the presentations given onstage. You were always blown away by the new information and possibilities brought up during the year’s presentations, as well as during the question and answer section where audience members could either line up to ask the panelists their queries directly or send them anonymously to an online platform.

Your preferred method was most definitely the latter because public speaking was not your forte, even though it meant you would have less probability for your questions to be answered. One year, Kkura had practically escorted you up to a panelist when everyone was leaving because you had a burning question.

But this year was different. All of your awe was coupled with the amount of marvel expressed by your partner for the evening. If you were fascinated by what was being discussed below, then Younghoon just entered a whole new galaxy.

You found yourself glancing over at him the whole night to watch his reaction. Periodically, your eyes would meet, and you might have been embarrassed to be caught looking at him, but it was completely dashed away by the pure reverence that was stark on his face.

At some point, the evening did have to come to an end, and you and Younghoon lingered up in the balcony to let everyone else below you trickle out first.

“That,” Younghoon whistled low, “was incredible. I’m so—” He made unintelligible hand gestures before coming up with a word, “—bedazzled. I’m positively bedazzled.”

You grinned. “I’m very pleased to hear that you’re bedazzled.”

“I mean, why don’t we hear about this on the news?” He queried, eyebrows knitted together in disbelief. He reached up to adjust the wiggly star headband on top of his head that he won from a spin-the-wheel stall earlier. “If they talked about finding organic chemicals on faraway planets on the evening news, viewership from my devices would skyrocket for them.”

“Don’t we all wish they talked about space on the news,” you sighed as you leaned your cheek against your fist. “But also, as Dr. Cho mentioned, we can’t get too excited yet. Organic chemicals for us might not mean organic chemicals for an alien species.”

Younghoon nodded slowly. “Right,” he drawled. “That’s so interesting to think about… that we’re possibly not alone and that they could either be very similar to us or very different, or maybe even somewhere in between.”

“Isn’t it crazy?” You couldn’t count the amount of times you got lost in a rabbithole of research when you were supposed to be working on assignments instead. Your eyes darted down to the lower levels to check the population density, and garnered that you could still wait at least a couple minutes more. “Hey, you know, if you're interested in this stuff, then you should come to some of the planetarium’s presentation nights sometime.”

Your counterpart’s eyes widened like the lens of a telescope. “We have a planetarium?”

You giggled. “Yeah, silly. What did you think the astronomy tower was for?”

“We have an astronomy tower?”

You smiled wide against your knuckles as you nodded. “Maybe you should wander down by the engineering buildings more often.”

Younghoon made an incredulous face. “Maybe I should.” He considered something for a moment and you watched the smile blossom onto his face again. “Though, I have a feeling that if I looked into a telescope, I'd only see you—’cause you're a star.”

“That was awful,” you snorted into your hand, shaking your head.

“Not my best work,” he admitted. He could admit defeat when he was met by it, but he wouldn't let it hinder his efforts. “You know, I think Galileo was wrong.”

“How so?” You asked as you motioned for the two of you to start gathering your things.

“You're the center of my universe.”

You were pretty sure the lower levels could hear your laugh echo against the walls. “Oh my god.”

“Or maybe that just makes you the sun,” he said to you in a singsong tone while trailing after you.

“I’m walking home, Younghoon.”

“You can try, sunshine.”

EPISODE SIX: THE ONE WHERE IT GETS WORSE

MURPHY'S Law stated that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” with an adage of “at the worst possible time.” You needed to have words with this Murphy.

You were now in the thralls of midterm season. It was common knowledge and experience among STEM students that once midterm season began, it didn't stop until finals hit. You hadn't even realized how fast midterms had arrived until it was pouncing on you like a predator in the brush. You were currently being torn apart by the jaws of a hungry lion called Life.

“I haven't finished the grant app, Kkura.” You stared at the white wall behind your desk with a blank glaze over your eyeballs. There were sticky notes and pieces of paper tacked there with reminders and diagrams like they were makeshift whiteboards, but you weren't looking at them.

“My aerothermo exam is in two days,” you continued on in a droning voice, “and the internship interview is the day after.”

You spun around in your chair to face where Sakura was perched crisscrossed on your bed with a sympathetic frown. The internship addition was a new one. You had sent in your application a couple months ago, and results of applicants who had passed to the interview phase were only recently released. While you were relieved beyond measure that you made it, the interview couldn't have come at a worse time.

“Well,” she began, “we already decided that I'm going to help you prepare for the interview, Yn. The grant app isn't due for another month. All you need to worry about right now is the aerothermo exam, right?”

When she put it that way… “You're right,” you sighed and lifted your hands up to dig the heels of your palm into your eyes. Sometimes it just took an outside perspective to knock a little logic into you.

The Star Trek theme song blared from your phone, and you both startled at the abruptness. You fumbled for the device, then quickly picked up the phone call when you saw that it was from your mom. “Hi, mom. Everything okay?”

“Your brother can't make it to the wedding.”

You made a face. “I'm guessing you don't mean Quincey…”

You could imagine the exasperation on your mom's face from the other side of the phone. “Yn, I call you because you're the logical one in the family.”

If only she knew what pain you were putting yourself through because of your current lack of sense. You leaned back in your chair, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “Why can't Justin make it?” Justin was your eldest brother who had the divine French toast recipe.

“He's flying to Paris for his culinary school interview. You know I always tell that boy to double check his schedules—he never listens,” your mom exhaled sharply. You could hear the loud clatter of the dryer in the background; she must be doing laundry.

“Sounds like Justin,” you murmured. “So what's the problem? Can't we just go sans Justin?”

“We already RSVP'd with the seven of us, and your cousin already paid for the reception meal in full. We can't have an empty, wasted seat, Yn-ah.”

You frowned. You supposed that would be a problem then. “Why don't we just find someone to bring along as a plus-one?”

“That's what I was thinking,” she replied. “I was going to invite Rian, you know, the boy from next door.”

Somehow, your mood managed to sour further. You and Sakura made eye contact, and she tilted her head to the side in question. You gave her an emphatic thumb's down before replying to your mom, “Wait—can we—mom, can we not invite Rian?” You dragged your free hand down the side of your face, and you saw Sakura grimace when you said that guy's name.

“Why not?”

“Be… because,” you stammered, pushing out a sigh when you weren't sure how to describe your incredible disdain for your childhood next-door neighbor. He was your age, and fortunately, you were never matchmade with him. Unfortunately, he was a jerk with inferiority issues and delighted in competing with you in everything. “He wouldn't want to come with,” you said lamely. His presence would do the exact opposite of soothing your anxiety.

Sakura gestured with her hands. Tell her he's full of shit!

Oh, you wished.

“Yn.” Your mother could smell lies, even through the phone. “I wouldn't know who else to invite.”

“Daphne's partner!” You exclaimed desperately. Daphne was your older sister who attended another college on the other side of the city getting her master's degree. “Can't we invite Sam?”

“Sam's in Vietnam in December.”

“Goddamn it.”

“Yn.”

“Sorry.” Dear fuck, you were slipping. You needed a solution—anything at all. Something to put out one fire, even temporarily. “What if I came up with a plus one?” You regretted it immediately.

“Oh, like Sakura? I wouldn't mind if you brought her.”

Anyone but Rian, anyone but Rian. “Yeah,” you drawled. “That's who I had in mind.” You lifted your head to meet your friend's eyes again, and she knitted her brows in confusion. You mouthed that you would tell her in a moment.

When you and your mom hung up, you deflated in your chair, dropping your phone onto your chest. “I'm fucked.”

“Hit me with it.”

“I told her I would bring you to the wedding with us.”

Sakura sat there for a moment to process the information. “Yn, honey, I'm going to be in Japan in December.”

“I know,” you cried.

“Who are you bringing then?”

“I don't know.”

Murphy of Murphy's Law had better sleep with one eye open.

It was likely in your worst interest to be at the convenience store at midnight rather than in your bed asleep, attempting to let your brain process the concepts from your aerothermodynamics course. Against your better judgment, though, you were here, slumped over your usual table and seat as you watched YouTube and sipped on a box of chocolate milk.

In the distance, the door opened and closed, but the sound was muffled through your earbuds. Out of your peripherals, someone materialized next to you. You peered up at the tall man beside you now, blocking out the fluorescent LEDs from burning your eyes. “Hey,” you said quietly.

Younghoon took in your state with sad eyes. “I got your text.”

“I didn't think you'd be awake.” Didn't he have a rehearsal tomorrow morning? Or rather, later this morning.

“Well, I'm glad I was awake, for starters.” He frowned and then leaned over you to gently wrap you up in his arms. “Rough night?”

Your face was buried in the fabric of his hoodie. This was nice. “Rough everything.”

“Ah, one of those,” he sympathized. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really. Thank you for coming though.” You leaned back and patted the empty seat next to you. “Wanna watch squirrels with me?”

You watched his expression falter and fill with surprised amusement with a pinch of confusion. “Did you—you just said squirrels, right?”

“Yeah, they're competing in a backyard Olympics for this trophy of walnuts.”

He sat down with you to watch the squirrels. In your free time, you liked watching engineering or science-type videos on the internet. Most of them were as educational as they were entertaining, like the backyard squirrel series, where this man used his mechanical engineering degree to build advanced obstacles to test and observe the vast capabilities of the squirrel.

You shared your earbud with Younghoon so he could listen, and you were now connected by a wire. He mimicked your position, too, with his chin nestled onto his folded arms over the tabletop.

You weren't sure what possessed him to drive all the way over here at such an ungodly hour of night, but you were grateful for his company, nonetheless. Even if it felt like the sky was falling, you could let this moment in time exist outside the conventional timeline. It could be its own singular moment, just you and Younghoon.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you wondered how it all came back to this. You'd never thought you were meant to see him again after tutoring him, let alone having spent so much time with him again these past few weeks. If you didn't belong in his world, and vice versa, then what was this?

You swore the monotonous buzzing from the lights above was making your eyelids slowly fall with the weight of lead.

Younghoon's eyes fluttered over to you just as you were about to doze off. He sat up and turned the video off. “Hey,” he whispered, gently shaking your arm.

You hummed, the bags under your eyes becoming worse by the second. “Huh?”

He chuckled under his breath as you put your head back down. “We can watch this another day,” he promised, patting your head. “We should get you home though so you can sleep.”

“Oh my gosh,” you groaned and picked yourself up, “you have rehearsal tomorrow morning—what time is it?”

“Hey, don't worry about it, love.” He was wrapping your earbud wire around his fingers into a neat, little bundle. “I'll be fine. Let's go home, though, yeah?”

You pressed your palms to your eyes in a desperate attempt to rehydrate them. “Okay, yeah. Sorry, Hoon.”

“Don't say sorry,” he cooed, pressing your earbuds into the palm of your hand and tucking your phone into your pocket. “I felt a lot better meeting you here. Do you feel a little better?”

You gave a small nod. Your brain was too muddled, too exhausted, to really comprehend what was being expressed as plain as the sun at high noon on his face.

“Then that's all that matters.” There was a pause. Your vision was blurry for the second that his eyes wandered somewhere else. You didn't know if you just didn't see it or if you just chose to not acknowledge it.

Then the moment passed, as all things did in the flow of nature, and he walked you home.

EPISODE SEVEN: PARTY PEOPLE (BBANGNYU'S VERSION)

“CHANHEE?”

Choi Chanhee swirled the straw of his melted iced americano around in its cup. “Yup.”

“Who would you invite to a wedding?” You posed, twirling around the mechanical pencil in your hand between your fingers. You didn't even know why you still had the writing utensil out—everyone had pretty much gone home for the evening.

He released a sigh indicative of a very tired data science major, who doubled-majored in math. “The person I'm marrying? I dunno.”

You and Chanhee were stuck with the late shift at the math tutoring center on a Monday night. The crowd usually cleared out by nine o'clock, but the two of you weren't technically allowed to leave until nine-thirty. Most nights when you were stuck with this shift, you and he didn't mind the quiet in order to finish assignments of your own.

Jungwoo would have been here to suffer with you, too, but he had an excuse tonight. Something about an emergency at the NCT fraternity house.

You blew a puff of air through your mouth. “Not your wedding; just a wedding. One that you're invited to.”

“You're not inviting me, are you?”

“You don't wanna be my plus one for a wedding?” You grinned.

“Depends…” He hummed pleasantly, “what're they serving?” That was a valid question that you lacked an answer to.

In front of you on your laptop screen sat your incomplete space grant application. After the hell that was last week, you somehow survived it by the seat of your pants. Now, you needed to focus on your two other exams for this week, the wedding debacle, this grant app, and praying that the interview had gone as well as you thought it had.

So many things to think about, so little brain cells.

You glanced over at the corner of your laptop screen to see how much time you had left to try and be productive. From the corner of your eye, you saw the swift movements of Chanhee's thumbs flying over his phone keyboard.

You turned to your application to read over your responses for the ten thousandth time. “Who've you been texting all night, Chanhee?”

“Huh? Oh, my best friend.”

You hummed. “The one that goes to the uni across the country, right?”

His response was cut off by the sound of the tutoring center doors opening. Both of you looked up in tandem, mentally bracing yourselves for—

“Younghoon?”

There was a weird fluttery feeling in your chest as he beamed at the both of you and bounded over from the front doors. “Hey guys! I was just walking past and thought I would swing by.”

Chanhee's eyebrows flew all the way up to his pink hairline. “Yes, because it makes complete sense why you would be meandering around south campus at nine o'clock at night,” he quipped.

Younghoon seemed, to his credit, unbothered by Chanhee pointing out the obvious. He stole one of the chairs from another table and sat down across from you and Chanhee. “You guys don't play any music when everyone's gone?”

“Sometimes we do,” you replied, glancing up from your computer screen before replacing your word choice somewhere.

Chanhee nodded his agreement as he set his phone down on the table and laced his fingers under his chin. “Oh, Younghoon-ah, I've been meaning to discuss something with you.”

Younghoon perked up. “What's up?”

“What're we gonna do about your friend and my friend?”

You figured out pretty quickly that you had no idea what they were talking about. Even after having played Monopoly with some of them a few weeks ago, it still hadn't hit you as to the full-scale of these two guys’ shared social circles. Sure, you orbited some friend groups of a decent size, but it felt like they all hung out with each other at least once a week.

“Ah,” Younghoon drawled with a knowing sparkle in his eyes, “Jacob and JC!Yn, right? I don't know; I find it kind of amusing.”

Chanhee frowned. A furrow had formed between his brows. “If amusing means to the extent where I'd like to rip my hair out, that is. Did you know that Jacob sent me to go intervene when Jaehyun was talking to JC!Yn at the hot tub?”

“Wait, really?”

“Mhm.” Chanhee made a vague flourish with his wrist in the air. “And did you see how they were at the movie night on Saturday?”

Younghoon pressed his lips together. “I did see that. He kept looking over when Juyeon was braiding her hair,” he chuckled.

“I am at odds, Younghoon-ah!” Chanhee groaned into his palms. “I just need them to kiss already and get it over with.”

“So you wanna meddle?”

“I'm not saying we should meddle, but…” He drawled with cheeky, puckered lips and his palms open upward. His gaze went to you on his right side, and he knocked the back of his knuckles against your arm. “Oy, Yn-ah. What do you think?”

You hummed and drew your eyes up from your laptop screen, meeting Younghoon's gaze first. Glancing over to the friend who addressed you, you said, “What are we talking about?”

“Girl, you need to get off that grant app.”

“This grant app needs to get off me,” you shot back. “I need it to be perfect, Chanhee.”

“Nothing is perfect, Yn,” he told you. “You know what you should do? You should ask JC!Yn to look over it. That might ease your mind.”

“I'll think about it,” you said at last in order to appease him. The smart thing would've been to heed his advice and ask his friend to proofread it. Perhaps you would later this week.

“Good. Anyways, I was asking you what you thought about how to matchmake our two friends,” resumed Chanhee. He tucked his limbs inward as he spun around in his chair.

“You’re going to have to give me more context than that.” Besides that, were you really the best option to ask for advice? You weren't in a relationship, and now that you thought about it, neither were the two of them.

You saw Chanhee and Younghoon exchange glances and there seemed to be a silent conversation taking place between the two of them. At last, Younghoon gave his counterpart a flourishing gesture with his hand as if saying 'all yours.’ Chanhee cleared his throat. “So Younghoon's friend Kevin, who is Jacob's best friend, introduced JC!Yn to Jacob.”

“And we're pretty sure they like each other,” Younghoon added on. “There was this pool party a couple weekends ago, and they came to the party together. This past weekend, they looked pretty cozy at the movie night that Jacob and Kevin hosted at their apartment, too.”

You had only ever met JC!Yn once in passing, and it was because Chanhee forgot his calculator at the library right before an exam, and she had been the champion to deliver it to him in the examination hall lobby. She was a real one, that was for sure.

You pursed your lips and rested your chin on your fist. “Aren't all of you guys single?” Was what you led with.

Chanhee deadpanned. “That's not the point…”

“I do have to point that out though because you ask me like I would know what to do,” you laughed, vaguely gesturing back to yourself. “I'm just as single as the rest of you.”

The two boys’ eyes whipped back to one another for a millisecond, before looking away.

You nearly leapt to your feet, exclaiming, “I saw that! What was that?”

“Nothing,” they answered at once. They did realize it made them look all the more conspicuous, right?

“We just realized that not all of us are single,” Younghoon raced to smooth over his and Chanhee's fib. “My friend Sangyeon—”

Chanhee snorted, “Hyunjae told me he doesn't believe him.”

“And you believe Hyunjae?”

“Touché.”

You unconsciously began spinning your pencil around your fingers again. “Wait, so Sangyeon is cuffed?”

Younghoon turned to you to explain. Apparently, his original group of friends that didn't include Chanhee's extension, kept a running joke that Sangyeon was either making up his girlfriend or was keeping her stashed on a secret island in the Bahamas. None of them had seen any evidence that she truly existed, but Younghoon wasn't convinced that Sangyeon was the type of person to go through all of this strife just to prove a point.

After all of that, you were more confused than before. “But why wouldn't he just show you a picture of her and prove that he met this girl?”

“That's what I'm saying,” Chanhee interjected, flinging his arms up in the air. “It would be so easy to just silence us with a little picture!”

Younghoon, clearly amused by the discourse taking place, leaned back in his chair with a shrug. “Beats me. I personally think it's because she works for a secret government agency, which is why she can't exist online.”

Chanhee's expression flattened. “Uh-huh.”

“But Juyeon says that it's probably because if he only shows a picture, we might accuse him of Photoshop,” Younghoon continued. “Which, in retrospect, says a lot about his faith in us.”

You made a face, your eyebrows arching high. “Oh, for sure.”

Debating on conspiracy theories about mystery girlfriends made the last thirty minutes of yours and Chanhee's shift fly by fast. Suffice to say, you hadn’t worked on your application nearly as much as you wanted to, but you were entertained for thirty minutes, which was just as well. Didn’t doctors say that it was good to laugh at least three times a day…? Good thing you weren’t going into medicine.

The three of you started packing everything up at exactly nine-thirty. There was no reason to stay any longer when there was literally no one else here anyway.

As you shoved your laptop into your backpack, Younghoon knocked on the table in front of you. “Wanna grab dinner after this?”

You opened your mouth to reply when Chanhee beat you to it. He hadn’t seen Younghoon grab your attention, and didn’t know who he was addressing. “Oh, that’s nice of you to as—”

“I meant Yn.”

You closed your eyes and sank your teeth into your bottom lip to have some dignity left (read: not start wheezing). Chanhee’s eyes had gone wide, eyebrows rocketing back up to his hairline. He scoffed, “Wow.”

Younghoon grinned cheekily. “Sorry, Chanhee. We have a routine.”

With Chanhee now thoroughly offended, your little trio filed out of the tutoring center. You locked the doors up behind you once you flicked off all the lights in the room. The walk down in south campus was arguably nicer than north campus, even if you were a little biased because this was where you considered your “turf” to be. South campus was much better illuminated than north campus with pretty, little lamp posts and five different styles of architecture from building to building. You were sure it was an eyesore to any of the architecture majors here, but they were interesting to look at when you were suffering in the engineering library. (And at least they had windows.)

You took up the position in between Younghoon and Chanhee, the latter of whom seemed to let his pettiness about the rejected dinner date go.

“Guys,” Younghoon suddenly said. The corner of his lips were turned upward in a degree you could only define as mischievous. “What is the most terrifying word in physics?”

You scrunched your brows together. There was no way you should get this wrong, but then again, physics wasn't exactly a subject where anyone got everything right—

“Oops.”

You snorted, and beside you, Chanhee's lip wobbled as he desperately held in a reaction. You couldn't believe you didn't see this coming and tried to think about it logically.

Younghoon shoved his hands in his pockets and swiped his tongue over his lower lip through a smile. “Aw, come on! I cracked up when I heard that one in a TikTok for the first time.”

“I've just heard some of your better ones,” you confessed. “Chanhee, did I tell you that Younghoon used to wax poetic to study for calc?”

Chanhee's mouth curled up into an amused little smile. “You did! I think it's cute.”

“You know, I think it's cute, too.”

In the dim lighting from the nearby lamp posts, Younghoon's cheekbones flushed something rosy. “You flatter me.”

As the three of you climbed up the stairs that would bring you to main campus, Chanhee piped up, “What if we just slipped Jacob and JC!Yn notes from the other person?”

You shook your head. “Not this again.”

“I'm serious!” He said in earnest. “It would just be innocent, little pick-up lines or something. Nothing like a whole ass confession.”

“We're reading Much Ado About Nothing in my Shakespeare lecture right now,” said Younghoon, “and the cast does something similar to one of the couples they're trying to get together. Sounds kind of fun, to be honest.”

“Not you, too!”

Younghoon slung an arm around your shoulders and flourished his free arm out toward the heavens. There was a pleasant feeling attached to the weight of his arm around you. “C’mon, use that mastermind brain of yours and imagine! Jacob's would just say something like—I dunno—if I whispered in thine ear that thou hast a body of beauty, wouldst thou hold it against me?”

“Wow,” you marveled, ignoring the amount of fluttering happening in your stomach, “that was pretty good.”

He flashed you a boyish smile. “Thank you.”

“But you're not doing it.”

The boys on either side of you released twin groans of anguish into the night, as if their mother had just denied them access to their Xbox for the evening. You rolled your eyes lightly. “I feel like relationships are like spontaneous processes—they’ll get to the right configuration eventually, organically. In other words, we should leave them be and let them figure it out for themselves.” You walked in front and turned around to face them so you could pin them both down with a firm look.

Younghoon raised his arms up in playful surrender. “Promise we won't meddle.”

“I hate when you use entropy statistics against me.” Chanhee gave a reluctant nod, sighing once again, “But I agree. We won’t meddle.”

EPISODE EIGHT: DON'T ASK ME THE COLOR OF ANYTHING

IT was the Star Trek theme song that blasted you out of your study bubble. In retrospect, the theme song was quite a subdued piece compared to something like the Star Wars theme, but for some reason you thought it was a good idea to turn the volume all the way up for your ringer whenever you were home. (God forbid you accidentally left it on when you were in class…) From your desk, you scooted over to grab your phone from where it was on your bed. Younghoon's caller ID beamed its cute smile up at you—the picture you'd set was of him and his dog from home, Bori. You had yet to meet Bori, but when you asked him for a picture for his contact photo, he sent this one.

You accepted the call. “Hello?”

“I just realized I pressed Call instead of Facetime. Please accept the Facetime thingy.”

Why did he sound so cute? You lifted the phone away from your ear and saw the request on the screen. While pressing the green accept button, you said to him, “What if I said no?”

“Then it must be Opposite Day,” he sang from the other side of the screen, his face manifesting before you. He was holding his phone up above him so you could see he was lying down in bed, his dark hair strewn over the pillow beneath his head. His initial smile widened to reach his eyes when your side of the screen loaded and he could see you. “There she is.”

“Hi Hoon,” you greeted with a small chuckle. You looked around your cluttered workspace for a place to prop your phone up against.

“What're you up to?” He asked while he adjusted himself to sit up against his headboard.

“I—” you made a sound of accomplishment as your phone stayed upright in the space between your desk lamp and a pebble paperweight painted like a rocket that your little sister made you, “—am brushing up on fluid mechanics.”

“Aah… fluid mechanics.” You could hear the slight intonation in his words.

“Don't say the joke.”

“I wasn't gonna say the joke!” He giggled. When he calmed, he pressed his mouth in a smile and made his cheeks look as squishy as a loaf of bread. “Is this a bad time though?”

You shook your head, slipping your pencil behind your ear so you could lace your fingers beneath your chin. “No, it’s not a bad time. This isn’t super important; I just didn’t want old material to jumpscare me when I go into our quiz this week.”

Younghoon nodded in understanding. “I see, I see. That means it’s good that I interrupted your workaholic tendencies.”

You glanced away with your hand half covering your face, and it coaxed a laugh from him that seemed to warm the room. You sputtered, “In my defense—” you paused, your lips parted; it hit you then that you had no defense.

His eyes were the shapes of upturned crescent moons, like shallow bowls filled with mirth. “It’s cute when you try to deny it.”

“It’s not denial—I didn’t deny it,” you pointed out.

“Uh-huh,” he snorted, completely unconvinced, “whatever you say, Miss Mastermind. I should call you Miss Workaholic instead.”

“Aish,” you chided weakly. You glanced down at the old notes that were splayed out before you on your desk. All of the concepts were relatively familiar to you; it was just to refresh yourself. To be frank, though, it wasn’t like you’d spent all evening reviewing old material. Every thirty minutes or so, you could spend another half hour on your phone, getting lost in the entertainment there. You weren’t that much of a workaholic.

You realized that there had been a pregnant moment of silence just then, and when you looked back over at the phone screen, found him watching you with a certain look in his eyes that you couldn’t quite place. You cleared your throat, reaching up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind your ear and to take the pencil there down. “So, uhm, any reason in particular for calling?”

His eyelashes fluttered as he blinked, as if snapping out of a daze. “Hm? Oh, not really. I just wanted to see what you were up to.” He cocked his head to the side in thought. “Random question, but are you doing anything for Halloween?”

Ah, you nearly forgot that was coming up. With all of the chaos happening in your life at the moment, Halloween was the last thing on your mind.

“Not at the moment,” you told him. You mused, “I don’t think I’ve done anything proper for Halloween since I moved out of my childhood house.” Going Trick-or-Treating as an adolescent was definitely a core memory for you, and was still a prevalent tradition in your household because of the little ones, Sadie and Quincey. As you got older, however, you usually opted to stay at home and answer the door to hand out candy. You still dressed up for the fun of it, and decorating the house was always half the joy of the holiday. You always considered trying to build some kind of candy contraption or maybe setting up a haunted maze in the front lawn, but alas, maybe in the future. “What about you?”

“Well, there’s that party that Changmin and Chanhee are hosting at their place.”

That rang a bell. “Ohh, shit. I totally forgot about that.” Chanhee had mentioned something about that the other night at the tutoring center, but you didn’t make any promises about attending—he knew your crowd preferences, so he didn’t push it. You were sure his and his friend’s parties were a blast though.

Younghoon shifted his lounging position, so now he was laying on his stomach with his legs kicking up from behind him. “Would you wanna come with? I remember that you went to that party with Sakura in September, but I wasn’t sure if you were going to come to this one.”

You tapped the end of your pencil against the pages of your notebook. “I’m not really sure,” you confessed. “I think I originally didn’t plan on going.”

“Ah.”

Guilt swirled around in the pit of your stomach at the disappointment in his voice. “I’m sorry; I probably sound like such a party pooper.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” he rushed to assure you. “I get that it might not be something you’re into, and that’s completely fine, you know? I think it would be fun to go with you, but not if you wouldn’t have fun there.”

You inhaled deeply. “I mean… it’s not that I don’t think I would have fun once I—y’know, drank something—but yeah, I think a night of just horror movies or something will do me better.”

He nodded and carded a hand through his hair. “Of course; I understand. And your schedule’s been pretty packed lately, so it’ll be like a little break for you,” he offered.

“Yeah, thanks, Hoon.” You shot him a small smile. It was really cool that he was being so understanding, but you shouldn’t have anticipated anything less from Kim Younghoon. He’d always been this cool.

You learned to read the room, and the energy definitely was lower than before. “Do you know what you’re gonna go dressed as?” You asked in hopes of bringing that energy back up.

He perked up a bit at the question. “I—actually, I have no idea,” he chuckled. “I was thinking a vampire, but I feel like that should just be saved as my backup. That idea’s a little tired.”

Younghoon as a vampire—? Wake up, Yn. You laughed to yourself as a thought popped into your head. “It would be so funny if you showed up as Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

He snorted. “That's not a bad idea. I'm not a science guy, but I am an actor.”

“Hey, there you go,” you said. You pursed your lips. “Hm… I feel like your face is too pretty to fuck up—”

“Thanks?” He guffawed, hand propping his head up. “I'm scared to ask you what that even means.” You didn’t want to tell him exactly what you had in mind, but it seemed that he beat you to a punchline. “To be honest, I'd so let you fuck up my face.”

Your eyes widened. “What?”

“Hyunjae? Hyunjae, is that you?” Younghoon called out behind him toward his closed bedroom door. His ears were rosy as blood, and he was biting his lip through a grin. “I've gotta go, Yn-ie. Byeee!”

“Younghoon, hey! Don't hang—”

He hung up. You took a moment to collect yourself after what he said, as if you could even begin to unpack its meaning.

You could hear the partygoers even from the relative serenity of the back corner of the convenience store. It was Halloween night, and when the sun sank down into the horizon to signal the coming of night, so too did it mark the beginning of the Hallow's Eve festivities.

You had just dropped Sakura off at one of her friends’ house for a party, and she would text you later when she was done. The plan tonight was originally to chill at home and watch scary movies, but you instead found yourself at your second home with your laptop playing The Nightmare Before Christmas. On your head sat a deep purple colored witch's hat on a headband, with glittery black tulle creating a skirt at its base. Even if you didn't dress up completely, you would still pop on a bit of holiday spirit.

With you was a 6-pack of Halloween themed mini cupcakes and a carton of strawberry milk. They would function as your popcorn for the movie and your candy for the night.

From beside you on the table, your phone buzzed. You could see the words diffuse rapidly onto your screen, your eyes snagging on the parts where your older sister was asking about Sakura coming to the wedding even though she was supposed to be in Japan. Your eyes widened as you scrambled to text back. Fuck, the wedding. You texted back a very fast, ‘uhm abt that.’

daphne: ykw don't tell me anything ignorance is bliss daphne: okay what i came here to do originally… daphne: *sent images* your phone: awwwh how cute!! wait wtf since when was quincey into power rangers 😭😭 daphne: dear god don't get me started

You laughed and sent her a final text back commenting about the pictures she sent of her, Sam, Sadie, and Quincey all dressed up to go Trick-or-Treating tonight. As usual, your family extended an invitation to you, but you declined for this year.

“Damn, I should've dressed up like the power rangers.”

You nearly jumped out of your skin at the sudden voice right by your ear, and you ripped your earbud out, whipping around to see who it was. There was Younghoon, laughing at your expense with a very amused smile flitting over his face from your reaction.

About five different emotions passed over you at once, preventing you from coming up with an adequate response to his sudden appearance. Your mouth, frankly, had gone dry. His hair was colored and highlighted with strands of platinum silver, artfully arranged around a pair of black sunglasses atop his head. He was clad in all black—the leather jacket seated on his shoulders embellished with white detailing, and his skin glimmering with silver chains. He had on a pair of motorcycle gloves that he was now shucking off, and you realized his lips were a shade darker than they usually were—wait… were they moving?

“—Yn. Yn-iee—”

You blinked long and hard. “Yeah. I'm here.”

The corner of his lips curled upward. “I just said I was sorry for sneaking up on you.”

“Oh.” Wait, he smelled so good right now… Not that he didn't smell good every other day, but…

“Oh,” he parroted with a cock of his eyebrow. “So, what do you think?” He asked the question you didn't even realize you would fear him to ask, and gestured down to the outfit. Younghoon sighed and it sounded half like a laugh. “I feel ridiculous actually. Hyunjae was like—you should do the biker thing with me. And I was like, what do you mean 'biker thing?’ Apparently this is the biker thing.”

You were slapping yourself across the face internally to say something. “You went from Prius driver to motorcycle rider.”

Younghoon nearly keeled over and had to turn to the side to laugh. “I still am a Prius driver,” he said sheepishly.

Your eyes flickered up and down his form again, unable to string together words once more. “Uhm, your hair is silver.”

“Excellent observation.” He reached over and poked the little witch hat on top of your head. “This is cute, by the way.”

“Thanks,” you said with a smile, reaching up to touch either side of the headband. “I'm just here waiting for Kkura.”

“Oh, are you guys watching something together?”

You shook your head and turned back to your computer screen to wake it up. “No, I volunteered to be her chauffeur tonight. She's at a party right now, but I figured since I had time to kill, I could chill here.”

“It feels like a crime for you to be here all alone,” he said with one of his hands braced against the back of your chair and the other on the table next to your laptop. He was leaning over you now to peer at your screen because the brightness of the store lights made it difficult to see from where he stood, but it made him all the more apparent to your senses.

Goddamn, he was everywhere. “Well, I should be asking you as to why you're here,” you said with a cough. “Don't you have a party to go to, Biker Boy?”

He chuckled at the nickname and stood back up. “I do, but Chanhee and Changmin forgot to get triple A batteries for their battery-operated creepy candy bowl,” he said. “But I'm glad I was sent out to run an errand now.”

You shifted your mouth to the side in a sorry attempt to hide your contentment with that answer. “I'm glad, too. You—the costume looks good, by the way.”

Younghoon sat down in his usual seat across from you. “Thank you,” he replied, pleased. “I almost went out as a loaf of bread. Did you know Party City has these bread loaf costumes that you can wear around your head?”

“I'm not surprised at all,” you said, shaking your head in amusement.

You found yourself unhappy with the idea of Younghoon leaving after this. Once your conversation was over, you would go back to your movie and he would go back to his party. Before, you didn't mind the idea of having an evening to yourself, but with him right here in front of you, it was difficult to go back.

Him being here with you felt right. You couldn't explain why you felt that way. He looked like he was about to say something, and you rushed to beat him to it. “Want a cupcake?” You blurted. Before you could go back on your words, you gently pried a miniature cupcake out from its containment and offered it to him.

Younghoon lit up, delicately transferring the treat to his own hands. “I wasn't going to ask, but don't mind if I do. Thanks, Yn.”

You hummed happily as he peeled off the cupcake wrapper and took a generous bite. He did a little happy dance in his seat, and you smiled half into your fist as you leaned part of your cheek onto it.

“That's actually so good,” he said with wide, confused eyes as he reached toward the furthest end of the table for a napkin in the aluminum canister. “Why haven't I tried those before? I think I'm gonna have to take some back.”

“I don't have them often, but they are quite the guilty pleasure,” you agreed. “I would totally sponsor a couple packs for you to take to the party.”

Younghoon made a nodding motion with his head as he dabbed the napkin over his lips. He pulled the napkin away to inspect it, frowning. “Shit, I need to reapply,” he murmured and fished around in his jacket pocket for a tube of the shade that he had wiped off his lips.

Some force from the universe compelled you to do something fucking stupid. “I can help.” No, you can't! Why would you say that, why would you say—

Surprise flickered across his face. “Oh? Sure, I'd appreciate it,” he said, and held the lip gloss out to you. It was a muted brown-ish pink color that would leave a stain of itself upon the wearer's lips, but also had an initial glossy appearance.

With no room for backpedaling, you stood up and took the lip product from him. You stood before him now, between his legs with his hands resting on his knees.

He peered up at you through his dark lashes, lips parted gently.

You wiped the excess product off the doe foot applicator against the rim of the packaging, and then smeared the product over his bottom lip. You took your finger to smudge the color around, making quick work with a second layer for shine. When you were done, you hadn't even realized you'd been holding your breath the whole time. You passed the lip product back to him quietly. “All done,” you whispered.

He didn't even look at your handiwork—he didn't need to. He smiled; you thought you saw him steal a glance at some place other than your eyes. “Thanks, love.”

You were right before when you thought you would dread him leaving. He did go, at some point, after retrieving what he had come here for along with at least three half-dozen containers of cupcakes. He sent you a wave from the door, and then he was gone into the night.

You sat there without doing much or thinking anything for a moment or two, your fingertips stained with the color of his lips.

Regret wormed a hole through your stomach, and it felt like it was gaping wide open. Maybe you should've gone to the party, or maybe you should have asked him to stay. Maybe you should have said something different, and maybe… maybe you should have…

Kissed him?

Your eyes stared unblinkingly at the seat across the table from you, and you arrived at a truth you could no longer ignore.

your phone: how do u know u like a guy

kkuramon &lt;3 : IM LEAVING THIS PARTY RIGHT NOW.

EPISODE NINE: ARE YOU A CHICKEN, YN? I DIDN'T THINK SO!

“I'M not going to tell him.”

“Yn,” Sakura said gravely with a deep inhale, “for the last time, are you a chicken?”

You blinked. “I'm sorry, wha—”

“Bawk bawk. Are you a chicken?”

You narrowed your eyes slightly at her. It was a crazy image, this view of your best friend, as she stood in front of you with her futuristic spacecore outfit from the Halloween party she left early, squawking like a chicken. “I think you are drunk.”

Sakura deadpanned. “I'm not drunk.”

“And I'm in denial.”

“Oh, good. So you admit it.”

After rapid discourse in your texts, you went to pick Sakura up from her party, then brought her straight home so you could both deconstruct what exactly you concluded while at the convenience store. You recalled everything that happened while Younghoon was there with you, reliving that exact moment it hit you square in the face like an oncoming train.

And now you were here, being asked if you were a chicken and being accused of denial.

You huffed. “I can't just tell him that I like him! It's not—it’s not that big of a deal. It's not like I'm in love with him or anything!” You… you weren't in love, were you…?

Sakura braced both hands on her hips. “You say it's not a big deal, but here we are,” she said with a vague gesture to your bedroom. “Honey,” she continued, but softer, “whether you're in love with him or you just like him more than a friend, it's something. It's different. Are you sure you never felt anything for him before? Not even unconsciously?”

“I mean—” you started, “—I might have. I probably have,” you corrected, cradling your chin in your palm. “I thought he was really cool when I met him last year, but I think that was just one of those silly crushes, y'know? Like the ones you get on people you pass by and know you probably won't meet again?”

She hummed and lowered herself onto the edge of your bed. “Yeah, I get that.”

You scooted your desk chair over to where she was and flopped face first over your bed with a groan. You felt her hand gently smooth down the back of your head. “I dunno, Kkura. Maybe I've always felt something different about him.”

“That could be it,” she said. “And you just didn't realize until it was in your face. Sometimes it sneaks up on you.”

If that wasn't the understatement of the century.

“Why are you so scared of telling him, Yn-ie? From everything I've seen and heard from you, it feels like he probably feels the same way.”

“I'm biased.”

Sakura exhaled. “Logic your way out of this one.”

“Okay, if I logic my way out of this one, I could still get rejected.”

You could feel her eyes roll, even with your face smooshed into the sheets. “I know the prospect of all this is scary, but it's meant to be. That means you care, Yn. That means you care about your friendship with Younghoon, and that's inherently a good thing.”

When you didn't say anything else in response, she added, “You know your feelings will intensify if you leave them unaddressed. Murphy's Law.”

You hated when she was right.

You didn't see Younghoon for at least another week. Once Halloween had gone and passed, November hit everyone in one big fell swoop. Midterms the Sequel was abound, and it did not choose mercy. But amongst the abundance of fires cropping up, you managed to spray some water on a couple to keep the flames tame. (Do not do this to real fires; it won't help.)

It was the middle of the week when you and Younghoon agreed to meet back at the convenience store to hang out. Over the past few days, you kept your interactions with him over text and call as normal as possible, even though you felt like your newly realized feelings were glaringly obvious. If Younghoon thought you were being awkward though, he didn't say.

You and Sakura were in the kitchen right before you were about to take off to head to the convenience store. She was busy making a late lunch (read: dinner); you were busy worrying about everything.

“I've got an idea,” she said, raising the spatula in her hand into the air. “You should bring Younghoon to the wedding.”

You nearly choked on air. “I'm sorry? Say that again.”

With her back turned to you, she gave an emphasized shrug. “If you insist. I was suggesting that you bring Younghoon to the wedding instead of me. It would be killing two birds with one stone.”

“How in the world is that killing two birds with one stone?”

“Well, when you inevitably confess your feelings to him, and he confesses that he reciprocates, you will then have a date for the wedding.” She turned the stove off before twirling around on her slippered-heel, a proud smile on her face. “Ta-da!”

“I just think that if—and big emphasis on if—we do end up together, a wedding would be a lot as an outing.” You imagined how horrific and intimidating that would be, meeting your entire family and extended family after only just deciding to try out dating someone. Even thinking about it sounded overwhelming beyond means, and you couldn't do that to Younghoon.

She angled her head to the side. “But this is Younghoon we're talking about. He literally went to the Space Gala with you on short notice and made you feel safe and comfortable the whole time.”

You sent her a pointed look. “That's not the same thing and you know it.”

She sighed. “Alright. Then what about driving over to meet you at the convenience store at midnight when he had an early rehearsal the next day? He calls you and texts you day and night; he drops by the tutoring center on your shifts to keep you company… I don't know what else you need to convince you.”

You didn't like the spark of hope she was lighting up in your chest. You didn't want to lose a good friend if you were reading him wrong. Was he not charismatic to everyone he met though?

At some point, you got your ass up and down the street. There was a soft tune playing in the background as you wandered through the aisles in search of something to distract you from the anxious racing of your heartbeat. Younghoon had sent you a heads up about an hour ago that he was going to be late because he was coming from an outing, so you had a little more time to mentally prepare. Maybe you would chalk up the courage to tell him. Maybe you really could do it. If you just ripped off the bandaid, whether it be for better or for worse, you could at least say you tried.

You made up your mind then, somewhere in the bread aisle between the wheat and rye.

By the time Younghoon arrived, out of breath and grinning from ear to ear, you managed to hype yourself up to tell him.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said between breaths as he claimed the seat across from you. He paused, sniffing, then grimacing. “And also for the fact that I reek of barbeque.”

“Don't worry about it,” you assured him, teasingly, “the only thing you should be sorry about is not inviting me.”

Younghoon laughed. “You're very right, as always. My friends and I were having an emergency meeting about Jacob and JC!Yn.”

Your eyes widened. “Oh? Any updates?”

He groaned then, burying his face into the palms of his hands. Uh oh. “They almost kissed until Eric interrupted them.”

“No,” you gasped.

“Yes!” He wailed in agony, eyes screwed closed with imaginary tears running down his cheeks. “It was painful to hear but it was also painful watching those two idiots interact at the table. My friends and I, minus JC!Yn and Jacob—we met a little beforehand to talk about what went down when Eric interrupted, and the lovebirds just came in later.” Younghoon huffed a rough sigh from his lips, partnered with a shake of his head. Then he broke into a smile, the corners of the expression soft, as he looked at you from across the table. He rested his cheek against his hand, chin inclining toward you, “So what's going on with you, hm? I feel like we haven't seen each other in ages.”

“We did call on Tuesday,” you pointed out.

He wrinkled his nose with a frown and shrugged. “It's not the same. I missed you.”

Your heart was beating so loud that you could count them out—thump, thump, thump— “I—missed you, too,” you said in earnest. Tell him, Yn. Tell him.

“You know, I think it's funny how we lost touch for so long, but we eventually came back together,” he murmured as he absentmindedly traced out shapes along the table top. “I guess if it's meant to be, then it'll be.”

The way he worded it… you were spinning yourselves in circles in your head trying to define it, to crack it open and solve it like you could a word problem. If the rotator wheel spins at a velocity of—but at this point, you were certain that you could figure out one of those much faster than this. “Yeah,” you agreed quietly.

“Something on your mind, Yn?” He asked you then. His eyes returned to you and you were suddenly stuck. The earth stopped spinning for this single moment in time, all because of the way this man looked at you.

You swallowed. “I…” The words dissipated in your throat. You couldn't do it.

Younghoon waited patiently, though. He considered you and your wide eyes filled with something he didn't know how to label, and maybe a dash of another thing he hoped to find. “Why don't we take a walk?”

With no reason to refuse, you stood up from your seat with him. He smiled at you as he brushed his hand over your back to guide you to the door, then retracted it to tuck his hand into his pocket.

November had so far shown the city a brisk, deep autumn. The trees were already close to completely shedding their leaves for the oncoming winter, and they were often swept away by a cool draft. You zipped up your jacket as the two of you began walking in the direction opposite to your apartment. Whichever way the wind took you both, you supposed.

For the first time in a long time, you and Younghoon were quiet. You were trapped in your own head with the courage you had earlier having mysteriously disappeared. He seemed content enough to let you ponder on it and to speak whenever you were ready.

“My cousin is getting married,” you found yourself saying.

That didn't seem to be the thing he expected to come from your mouth. Surprise flashed across his features and he clambered for a response. “Oh, well, congratulations. When's the wedding?”

“Thanks.” You said, “It’s in December. I… you know I have a big family.”

“Right.” His gaze softened considerably. “I imagine it must be a lot for you then—a family event of that size.”

You realized that you didn't convey exactly what you wanted to get across, and yet, you were reminded again how much he cared. “Yeah,” you murmured. “My brother Justin isn't gonna be able to make it after we already RSVP'd under my immediate family of seven people, and so my mom and I are trying to find someone to fill that space. She wanted to invite this one guy—he was my next-door neighbor for some time. Not my favorite person in the world because he's kind of got it out for me,” you said next.

You were rounding the corner again to loop back down the street toward your apartment. The organ in your chest was flying against your ribcage now; there wasn't much time left to tell him. You could see the metaphorical sand in the glass draining.

“So you're not going to invite this guy then, right?”

You nodded. “And I offered up Sakura just to appease her for the time being, but Sakura's gonna be in Japan in December.”

Younghoon trapped his bottom lip between his teeth. “I see.”

“That's my… that's my dilemma.” No, that isn't your only dilemma, Yn! Tell him! But the apartment was coming up in view, and you would be at the entrance in just a few more minutes.

You and Younghoon slowed your pace as you rounded the block again to cross the street. When you glanced over at him, you swore you could see the conflict warring across his face. If he saw gears turn in your head, you could see a battle scene in his eyes.

“Is this all that's been bothering you?” He asked at last, and you didn't know what to do about the slight intonation in his voice, like he was hoping for something. “I'm not invalidating your stress or anything, I was just—you know, if you had anything else you needed to get off your chest—”

“No, it's just that.” You could practically hear Sakura clucking like a chicken from wherever she was. You quickly added as the apartment door came into view, “It's—it’s not a big deal—finding a plus one, I mean. I'll figure it out.”

Plus one. He'd been your plus one to the Space Gala, but this was different. This was so much more different than that.

But maybe your words sounded like a dismissal or he was thrown off today. He cupped the back of his neck with a small nod. “Okay. If you need anything, let me know.”

“Thanks, Hoon.”

He smiled then, the same soft-cornered one that reached his eyes, and that you'd come to be familiar with. You couldn't imagine seeing that face reject your feelings even if you knew he would probably let you down easily.

EPISODE TEN: YOU SPELL PARALLELISM WITH THREE L'S BECAUSE THERE ARE THREE LOSERS

THE engineering library at nine o'clock at night was a familiar environment for you, Chanhee, and Jungwoo. Dead week—the week before finals—meant that it saw the three of you twice as much, even on the weekend before Dead week began. It didn't mean you got studying done though. Sometimes you were just there.

“You guys are so fake! How could I not be updated on every single microevent in your lives?” Jungwoo cried, gesticulating his hands around far too fast for your brain to comprehend. He was about three shots of espresso and five hours in, if that explained things. You were all aware that your habits were not healthy, but no college kid was. “And you call me your friend?”

The thing that had triggered this reaction from Jungwoo had been Chanhee's fault. Or maybe that was your fault. Either way, the topic somehow had gone from calculating your respective grades with probable curves (calculating failure, at this rate) to you and Younghoon.

You liked to argue there was no you and Younghoon—it was just you-comma-Younghoon. Chanhee had sassed back at you with a swift, “Oh, so she's an English major now?” As if English majors were the only ones who could understand grammar and punctuation.

Jungwoo, having had no context given whatsoever, realized quickly that he was out of the loop. Now, you were here.

“I demand the tea!” He screeched, hitting the palm of his hand against the table. Thank god there was no one else here to listen in or shush you and your friends. If there was one thing about the engineering library, it was how out of the way it was from the main campus.

“I really don't think you should have anything else caffeinated—”

Jungwoo's head whipped toward you and his nostrils were flared. “You must think you're so funny,” he said with narrowed eyes and a saccharine smile. You would have been scared had you not seen this man once blow a massive snot bubble all over his differential calculus homework. (If anyone found out about that, it most definitely didn’t come from your lips…)

Your eyes shuddered, an innocent smile coming to your lips. “I was just saying.”

“Shuuush!” He stopped, thought about it, then retracted. “Actually, don't shush. Tell me what you and Chanhee know, but I don't.”

Chanhee snorted from his side of the table. “That's a long list.”

Jungwoo cut a glare toward Chanhee. “I despise you both,” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Okay, but all jokes aside,” Chanhee said as he tucked his tablet stylus behind his ear. He cocked a high-arched brow your way. “What is going on, Yn? Do update us. Or for Jungwoo’s sake, start from the beginning.”

Your eyes widened like a deer in headlights. You hadn’t expected Chanhee to turn on you, too, but perhaps you should have seen this coming. A generous amount of time had passed since you last failed to confess your feelings to one Kim Younghoon. Between that day and today, you had managed to finally submit your space grant application and passed your second round of midterms by the seat of your pants (hip, hip, hooray). Since that day, you and Younghoon would continue to interact as normal, except for the fact that you were practically walking on eggshells around him.

Just the other day, you both fell asleep while on-call with each other. When you’d woken up the morning afterward, you discovered that, one, it was a good thing you plugged your phone into its charging cord; and two, that Younghoon was just as pretty asleep as he was awake.

To this news, Chanhee merely fluttered his lengthy lashes, unimpressed. “And you’re telling me you don’t think he feels the same way?” He asked.

At some point, Jungwoo had broken out a half-eaten granola bar from his bag to munch on as a replacement for popcorn. “I can’t believe I’ve missed so much,” he said, shoving the bite into his cheek so he could speak. “And Kim Younghoon, Yn? Wooooow, I see you girl. That guy was insane as Charles Bingley in freshman year.”

“You’re so right,” Chanhee chimed in with an indulgent nod, pointing his stylus at Jungwoo. “I don’t know if insane was the right word, but he encapsulated the Bingley gent essence quite nicely.”

“I never saw that one,” you confessed.

Jungwoo’s face scrunched up on one side. “Clearly. At least he knows that you’re not just in it for his celebrity status.”

You leaned back in your chair and dragged your hands down the length of your face with an embarrassed groan. Only your guy friends; Chanhee and Jungwoo, as expected, gave a light laugh at your expense. “I don't like you guys.”

“C’mon Yn-ie,” Chanhee teased and reached over to poke your arm with the butt of his stylus pen. When you peeked one eye out between your fingers, he puckered his lips at you like a penguin. “Love you.”

You reluctantly slid your hands down. “If I'm gonna be clowned for my feelings, I'd rather be in bed!” You declared, taking your phone from the pile at the center of the table to check the time. It was nearly ten o'clock at this rate. Ah, and had anything productive been done? Absolutely none. Perfectly on track for the three of you.

“Nooo, don't go, Yn! You're too sexy,” Jungwoo whined.

“I think you should tell Younghoon your feelings,” said Chanhee. He hiked his feet onto the chair, hugging his knees to his chest. “You need to razz him up.”

You frowned. “I thought it was ‘rizz.’”

“You don't have rizz, though, so I thought razz would be the next best thing,” he said flippantly.

“Burn!” Jungwoo exclaimed with his hand cupped around his mouth, and you were suddenly reminded that he was in a frat.

You leaned your cheek against the palm of your hand with a dramatic sigh. “You're right; I do not have rizz.”

Chanhee's brows scrunched together in concern. “Oh my god, I thought you would fight back—of course, you have rizz, Yn! You snagged Kim Younghoon!”

Before you could tell him you’d given up on fighting back or before Jungwoo could give up on his sanity, Chanhee's phone buzzed from where it was sitting at the center of the table. You expected it to be Chanhee's friend, CH!Yn, since she was the most probable person texting at this hour; instead, Chanhee let out a delighted gasp, slapping his hand to his mouth at whatever notification he found waiting for him.

Both you and Jungwoo leapt to your feet and scrambled to peer over his shoulders. “What? Who is it?”

“It's JC!Yn,” he shrieked. “She's asking about flower shops.”

You and Jungwoo stayed perched over either of Chanhee's shoulders to see what would transpire. It was a brief exchange within the group chat of three people that included JC!Yn, Changmin, and Chanhee. Chanhee somehow knew about a flower shop in the university district that was open until eleven o'clock. After all your years of attending this school, you had no idea it even existed.

But once JC!Yn was off on her way, Chanhee turned his phone off with a prediction that he would not be hearing from her until at least tomorrow morning. “Looks like someone's getting confessed to tonight,” he snickered to himself.

Jungwoo was back in his original seat—a generous wording, since he leaned a good eighty percent of his body over the table with his knees braced on the chair, legs kicking up behind him. “You know what you should do, Yn? You should sweep Younghoon off his feet just like that. I'm sure he adores receiving flowers.”

“Would it not be as special though if he gets flowers after every show?” You asked genuinely, pressing the butt of your pen between your lips. “I'm not against getting him flowers.” Flowers would be a good idea… you'd seen plenty of movies that had romanticized the idea of giving and receiving flowers in your mind, and it would be an obvious gesture. At the very least, you could pull a Younghoon and tell him the flowers reminded you of him because they were gorgeous—or something to that effect. Maybe you really didn't have rizz…

Jungwoo shrugged with one of his shoulders. “I'm sure it would be special coming from you. I dunno. It's just something to think about.”

“So,” Juyeon drawled with his head lolling over the back of the couch to look over at Younghoon, “now that Jacob's situation is solved, what about you?”

Younghoon glanced up from his phone. “What about me?”

There were five of them holed up in Sangyeon's apartment presently, and four of them had invaded the eldest friend's abode to hoard his TV and play Super Smash Brothers. He was the only one with a working TV and decent WiFi to game on that wasn't Jacob and Kevin's apartment. Only, a couple hours in, Juyeon received a text message from Eric with a live update that JC!Yn was going to confess to Jacob.

Eric had ended his update with an ominous: Tell Kevin hyung he shouldn't go home tonight 🤣. That definitely livened up the place.

Kevin sat up from where he had been lying on the floor. “Oh, yo, you're so right. What's going on with you and Yn?”

Younghoon's eyes widened. “Nothing.”

“Don't give us that bullshit,” Hyunjae clicked his tongue in disapproval. “Didn't you say that you liked her?” He teased with a glint in his eyes as he wiggled his fingers Younghoon's way.

The man at the heart of the interrogation rolled his eyes and smacked Hyunjae's hand away. “I will not object to having said that I liked her, if that's what you're getting at.” Frankly, he would own up to having admitted that was how he felt about you. So what, he liked you? He wasn't embarrassed by it. The only problem was living with this knowledge and not telling you.

Sangyeon came over from the kitchen to lean against the back of the couch. He had a drink in hand, tongue poking the inside of his cheek. “Do you have a plan or are you gonna pull a Jacob and be a chicken?”

Kevin arched a high brow. “Only I can call Cobie a chicken, thank you very much.” He turned on Younghoon next with an accusing finger. “And you—I can't even go home right now, so let's get down to business.”

Younghoon blinked. “What business—”

“Order in the court!” Juyeon interjected. He grinned like a bunny. “Sorry, I know I have to wait until I'm a lawyer first, but it's just so fun to say.”

Sangyeon sputtered a laugh against the rim of his drink, blindly patting Juyeon on the head. “It's cool, man. Very appropriate timing.”

“We should play Marvin Gaye,” said Hyunjae. “It'll get us in the mood to tell Younghoon how to properly woo somebody.”

Younghoon swore his face was probably the shade of a ripe tomato. This was in no way how he thought his evening would go. And to be honest, he never ever expected having this conversation with his friends, ever. The last thing he wanted to do was to make his feelings all the more forward in his mind, and he was already having trouble whenever he was around you, and all you did was remind him of all the reasons why he wanted to be with you.

The thing was that he couldn't tell if you reciprocated his feelings. Sure, he could flirt and insert himself into your life all he wanted. But you could just be playing nice!

…actually, you probably were just playing nice. Dear god, he was back at square one.

He simply didn't want to lose your friendship, at the very least. Even if you didn't want to be with him in that way, he would pull up his big boy pants and be a friend to you instead. Then he wouldn't have to live without seeing you smile or listening to you work out problems aloud while he did mundane things in the background—

“And we lost him.”

Younghoon cleared his throat, raising a hand up to scratch his jawline. “You did not lose me,” he protested. The amount of attention on him right now was uncanny. Of course, he could go up onstage and be a character—but reality was different. He couldn't put on a mask or another personality; these people knew him… wasn't that scary? And yet, somehow freeing, at the same time.

Kevin inclined his chin to him with a little smirk. “You did have hearts in your eyes, my dude.”

“Aww, he's in love,” Sangyeon gushed while standing up to go refill his drink.

“I'm not in love!” He said with his index finger pointed at the sky. (He was in love. Of course, he knew he was in love. Because when all he did for the past three months of his life besides school was be around you and think about you and you you you… how could he not? Younghoon could fake any emotion in the world in front of an audience of people, but your eyes alone would devastate him.)

The entire apartment, sans Younghoon, chorused altogether now, “Yes, you are.”

Younghoon balked, rocketing upright. “There is no way all of you agreed on something for the first time and it was this.”

Hyunjae patted his friend's thigh from his position on the floor. “Believe it, Lover Boy. So what're you gonna do about it?”

“I wouldn't even know how to tell her,” Younghoon huffed, leaning back against the couch cushion with his arms crossed over his chest in thought.

That day when you'd told him about the wedding, he had been so hopeful that you were going to say something about feelings. He was so certain that he read you right, but you said nothing else afterward. He would totally go to that wedding with you, though; he just figured you might not want him to go, considering you'd dismissed it so quickly afterward.

Sangyeon came back to the couch and perched himself onto the arm of the sectional next to Juyeon. “It doesn't have to be fancy—you just need to be clear and straightforward.”

“Flowers could soften the blow,” suggested Juyeon.

Kevin chuckled. “For him or for Yn?”

Younghoon clicked his tongue at him with a playful scowl. “Quiet, you. But thanks, guys. I guess I just want to do this right. I don't wanna ruin what we already have.”

Juyeon pursed his lips and reached over to clasp his hand on his friend's shoulder. “You won't, man. I guarantee you that.”

“So if I get my heart broken, I can sue you for false advertisement?” Younghoon asked with his lips stretched in a grin, eyelashes fluttering innocently.

“Pssh,” Juyeon laughed, “try me.”

EPISODE ELEVEN: THE USUAL TIME & PLACE

IT was a frightening sequence of events when you texted Younghoon and he texted you at the same time. The Monday after Chanhee and Jungwoo had hyped you up to confess, you went around different items of furniture in your apartment with your phone in hand, pencil behind your ear, trying to work up the courage again to send the text.

And you did… eventually.

The usual time and place was decided upon, and it had snuck up on you as the day went on. You tied your shoes on and slipped out the door, making sure to pat your pocket down for where you had tucked your secret weapon for the night. As soon as you and Younghoon had confirmed a meeting for today, you ran to your (favorite) grad student, Seulgi, and asked very nicely for her set of keys into the planetarium, promising to treat her to brunch if she did.

The walk over to the convenience store was a jitter-filled one. Your stomach was doing cartwheels alongside the flips your heart performed in your chest. There was still activity on the streets, even at nine o’clock on a Dead week evening. You jumbled through the routine you had in mind over and over, a broken record of hopes and wants. The plan was to take a walk to the planetarium and use said walk to work up the courage to tell him. If anything went wrong, then you could cover it up with a cool presentation of stars overhead.

This isn’t lame, is it? You thought to yourself as you let yourself into the store. You were so in your head, you nearly didn’t notice that Younghoon was standing right in front of you, having just walked out of one of the aisles. You startled, breath hitching in your throat.

He smiled, the expression soft. “Hey,” he said to you and had to clear his throat, a hand brushing through his hair. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

“All good; guess my head was just somewhere else,” you laughed nervously. You gripped the key in your pocket until you were sure your skin would smell like metal by the time you got to the planetarium. The two of you had met and hung out here a bundle of times before this, but this time in particular was different. The energy shifted in a way you couldn’t foretell if it was good or bad. For your sake, you hoped it was the former.

“Wanna talk about it?” He asked and took a step toward you.

You inhaled, nodding. “I do,” you said. “I—actually, uhm, do you want to go to the planetarium with me?” From your pocket, you withdrew the keys Seulgi gave you and wiggled them around by the keyring. “I bribed one of my seniors for the keys.”

Younghoon brightened, a laugh falling out of his mouth, and now he was standing right next to you. “Oh my god, you evil genius… my beloved mastermind, are we about to break some rules?” He teasingly bumped your arm with his, his eyebrows wagging up and down.

“Only if you’ll break them with me,” you beamed and reached for the door to the front door.

“But of course,” he played along with a giddiness shining through his expression. “Anything with you. Though, I’d like to stop somewhere on the way first.”

Without even visiting your table in the back of the shop, you and Younghoon took off into the night together. You couldn’t imagine where Younghoon wanted to stop by on the way, but you thought it was probably to run an errand of sorts. But for the moment, it was at the back of your mind as you tried to keep this as normal as possible. “Different” was so intimidating—you wanted to sink into the comfort that was whatever you and Younghoon had.

It wasn’t difficult to slip into that normalcy, though. He always made it so easy.

“—and they did so well, Yn-ah. You need to come back and see them in person; they’re always asking me where you are,” he told you with an invigorated passion. He gave a feigned sniffle. “Pretty sure they like you more than me.”

You shook your head, laughing, “You’re so dramatic. They love you, Hoon. I mean, I can’t even believe that they would remember me after having met them only once!”

“Well,” he drawled, glancing away for a spell, “that might be my doing.” He confessed sheepishly, “I do talk about you a lot—but hey! You can’t blame me! I like talking about subjects that mean a lot to me.”

Your heart made a full stop in your chest, and you nearly physically halted in the middle of the walkway. The gears in your head could barely process what he had just said without going into a spiral. It was a reminder of what this night was originally about. You sputtered out a reply, “You’re too sweet, you know that?”

“I try,” he jested.

“I do finish all my finals next week by Tuesday,” you told him. “I can totally come by that Wednesday and Friday for a little wing fitting. When’d you say the show was?”

He squinted one of his eyes in thought. “Err… it should be the Friday night after next, but if you do come through with those props, that should still give them enough time to get used to them before the performance.”

You nodded, mentally mapping out your schedule. Once your finals were through, you would have plenty of time to tinker with the props and have some proper fun after such a long quarter. “Sounds like a plan.”

“I appreciate it a lot, Yn,” he said, ducking his head as he nudged you with his elbow, “thank you in advance. I call you a workaholic, but here I am encouraging it.”

You chuckled. “It’s no trouble, Younghoon. Seriously. I like doing crafty things, and it’ll be a nice project. I promise.” To the end of that, you stressed further, “And if you think about it like you’re encouraging my hobbies and passions, then it feels a lot less like work.”

He hummed thoughtfully. “I suppose you’re right.” His head perked up when his eyes caught onto something in the near distance. His fingers unconsciously caught onto your wrist. “Here it is.”

Wherever you expected to find yourself, it was not a flower shop. There was no shop name or title anywhere that you could see, just the sketched posters and advertisements in the windows of chrysanthemums and hydrangeas. Troughs of vivid blooms lined the front windows like testaments to the plants one might expect to find within. Hanging planters dangled from the overhang, vines and foliage spilling over in an elegant mess.

There was one other sign posted in the window of the door that read its opening hours from 8am to 11pm.

Younghoon's cheekbones seemed to flush in the light streaming out from the inside of the shop. “Shall we?” He asked shyly and grabbed the door handle to open it for you.

You stepped inside before him with the door closing behind the two of you softly. You weren't sure where to go first—the room was constructed with two long tables in the center to hold smaller planters, then the perimeter was covered nearly from floor to ceiling with the larger plants, as well as the hanging garden pots like the ones outside hung from the ceilings by the lights.

There was someone to the right side of the room with a large, green watering can in hand. She glanced up when she heard the two of you come in. “Hi! How can I help you two?” She asked, reaching up to take out one of the earbuds she had in.

Younghoon placed one of his hands on your shoulder. “Would you mind if we took a look around?”

“No, not at all. Help yourselves; if you need anything, don't hesitate to holler.”

He smiled, “Sounds good, thank you!”

Did he know what he was here for? You followed him toward the leftmost table, unsure of where to wander yourself since there was so much stimuli. He stopped at one of the pots and you stood beside him. Leaning closer, you whispered, “I don't really know what we're looking at.”

“Me neither,” he admitted with an embarrassed grin, but then he pulled out a planter tag at the front of the pot he was examining. “But these might help.”

“You're probably right,” you mused, patting him on the arm.

“Look, these are carnations.” He scooted over to the next one over. There were an array of different colors of them, ranging from white to the deepest red. He placed a finger against his lips, then pointed at the white ones. “Those mean innocence, and those—” these were directed toward the blush pink ones, “—something along the lines of 'I'll never forget you.’”

You still stood close to him, and you reached over to gently warm the velvety petals between your fingertips. “I hope it's okay to touch them,” you suddenly said, swiftly retracing your fingers and peering over your shoulder at the worker.

“I'm sure it's okay,” he chuckled. He pointed out a buttery yellow set of petals a few pots down. “Aren't these gorgeous?” He breathed in awe.

When you arrived at the petal of choice, you raised the tag to see its name—daffodils. They were beautiful indeed, with pristine petals and tall stems, the color of them a rich yellow as if it had been painted rather than grown.

“What do these mean?” You asked.

“Unrivaled love? I think,” he answered with a slight tilt of his head.

You considered him for a moment with lips parted. “You're incredible, you know that? How do you know all this?”

His smile sweetened into something that made your chest feel warm. “You say that as if you're not the incredible one. But, Google. Don't look at my search history,” he muttered sheepishly.

It made you smile anyway.

You turned your head to scan the rows upon rows of diversity in one room. You were never quite the foliage fiend, but you could appreciate nature's beauty as much as nature's laws. Even if you might never be able to grow flowers of your own (because trust that you'd tried), as long as these places still existed, you could still admire and appreciate them.

Your eyes snagged onto a bundle of tulips at the front of the shop and you wandered over to take a look. Younghoon trailed after you to see what you wanted to look at, and stopped with you to admire the tulips. Their buds were near perfect, and they varied in so many colors—all soft purples, reds, yellows, pinks.

“Wow,” you said.

“Wow,” he agreed. He caressed the outside petals of one of the bulbs, then took the individual flower by the stem. He took yet another in his opposite hand and faced you. “What did the tulip say to the other tulip?”

You blinked. “Do indulge me.”

“We should put our tulips together and kiss,” he answered, and he pressed his own lips together in a barely contained smile.

You covered your mouth with one hand, a smile of your own blossoming under your palm. “I don't know about that one…”

“I don't be-leaf you when you say you're not a fan of that one.”

At this point, you could feel your face heat up and you could no longer hide your smile. “You're incorrigible.”

“It made you smile,” he quipped back with a smirk. He placed the tulips in his hands gently back into their pot, then swiveled on the balls of his feet. “They’re beautiful.”

“They are,” you agreed.

“Like you.”

Your eyes snapped up to his, but he already had his back turned to you as he surveyed the shop for the person who was on shift. Yet, you still spied the bit of red creeping up the back of his neck, and found yourself content.

“Hi, excuse me!” He caught the worker's attention. “Could we get just a little bundle of these tulips, please? Thank you so much.”

Your eyes widened and you tugged on the sleeve of his jacket. “Younghoon, what're you—”

He had a satisfied smile on his face. “Getting you flowers.”

“You don't need to get me flowers.”

“I’d like to,” he said simply, and that was the end of the conversation.

Less than ten minutes later, you and Younghoon were back out on the sidewalk with a new addition to the group. You cradled a small bouquet of tulips in the crook of your arm. The girl working there tonight had told you that being open so late caught a lot of last minute gift-givers as she wrapped your flowers in a tan colored butcher paper. She seemed to be an expert at tying ribbon bows that were just as beautiful as the flowers she tended, too.

You were already spinning far from your original intentions. You hadn't accounted for Younghoon making this gesture, and you wondered if he planned something for tonight.

Your counterpart suddenly cleared his throat while the two of you resumed your journey to the planetarium. You were only a few minutes away from the planetarium now. “I know I asked earlier if there was something you wanted to talk about,” he said, “but there is something I wanted to also talk about.”

Your heart fumbled over itself. “Uhm, yeah—yes, what's on your mind?”

From where you were on the street, you could see the broad dome of your target building just across the street. There was a rapid leap in your heart rate as he faced you beneath the street light shining over your heads like some kind of strangely timed, solo spotlight. The crosswalk turned green, but you stayed rooted to your place.

“I've been trying to figure out how to tell you this,” he began. He sucked in a deep breath and swallowed. You could only imagine how long he spent training himself to hold a poker face, but it was the liminal spaces where you could see right through him. “I like you a lot, Yn. It's—it’s an overwhelming amount, what I feel about you.”

You peered over at him wordlessly and hung onto every syllable coming from his mouth.

He wrung his hands out; this perhaps wasn't a script he was prepared for. But who ever came prepared for something like this? “And I think it's pretty obvious what I was hoping for tonight to be like from the flowers and all, and I was hoping that I was being just as obvious with how I felt about you, and… I don't know. I just… I had to tell you.” His lips pressed together so that the small divot in the side of his cheek appeared.

You didn't know how to describe the wave of emotion that washed over you. There was the rapid heart beat thundering in your ears, the tingle of relief in your shoulders, the happiness taking flight in your stomach.

“I have to be honest, I—I feel the exact same way you do.” You ducked your head, tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, “And I didn't know how to tell you either because I was really scared.” Your voice tripped, and you picked yourself back up. He waited for you, as always, patiently letting you say your piece. “I didn't want to lose you as a friend, at the very least, because you've come to mean so much to me over these past few months.”

Younghoon's smile widened and the amber color from the streetlight above haloed around his head for one dizzying second. “I didn't want to lose you either. I'm literally head over heels for you; you're every… you're everything.”

You didn't know how else to express your feelings through words, and you wrapped your arms around his middle, the flowers coming around his back to avoid being crushed. “Not good at words, sorry,” you mumbled into the fabric of his jacket.

You could feel the vibrations of his warm chuckle as he slowly wrapped his arms around you, his lips pressing against the side of your head. Message received.

Not everything went to plan, and it was important to exercise flexibility in such times. You still snuck (broke) into the planetarium with Younghoon, hand-in-hand, but all feelings were already known and laid sprawled on the table.

There was a center platform in the main showcase hall that was carpeted in a layer of fake grass that you and Younghoon gladly lounged upon to watch the universe. The image projected above your heads now of faraway solar systems and galaxies was unfortunately not real—they were produced by a specific software rather than the lens of a telescope. It was breathtaking, nonetheless.

You laid with your back against the fake grass next to Younghoon, your arms pressed against one another. The light projecting onto the dome above filtered down and painted you both in colors of stars and dark matter, all of those swirls of oranges and purples and blues and white.

“There is one thing that's still on my mind.”

He hummed. “What's that?”

“I was wondering—and you can totally say no—but the wedding…” You glanced over at him, and you wondered if he could understand what you were probing at. “I was wondering if you'd be comfortable going as my plus one. It's just the reception, but I understand if it's a lot.”

He smiled at you, big and bright, “I'd love to go as your plus one.”

Relief and joy fluttered in your chest now. It was a miracle your heart didn't grow wings and fly out then. “Thank you, really.”

His fingers inched over yours until they intertwined as a silent acknowledgement. He knew. He always knew somehow.

In the silence, you returned your gaze up to the night sky. It was crazy how vast the universe was and how small you were in relation to it. When put into perspective, your problems here on Earth were so much smaller than the world—and yet, they were still important.

“When I was a kid,” you started to say, and heard a small sound from your right as he looked back over at you, “I wanted to touch the stars.” You turned your head to look back at him.

His lip quirked upward fondly. “Something of yours will touch the stars one day.”

“I hope so,” you mused back. That was the dream.

His eyes dropped down to your mouth now, and everything quieted, as if you were in a vacuum with only the two of you. In this reality, no one and nothing else existed.

You could feel the warmth of his breath on your skin as he leaned toward you and pressed his lips against yours. His body rolled half over yours, one hand cupping your jaw with a tenderness you were certain to become addicted to. It was your chest against his, your nose slotting beside his, your cheek beneath his thumb. His lips were a perfect marriage of pressure and softness at once.

When he pulled away, he didn't go far. “I think I just touched a star,” he murmured.

The breath in your throat hitched. “You're too good with words, Kim Younghoon.”

His eyes crinkled. “We can do something more your speed and study the space between us instead.”

You had to turn away to laugh, the sound of his own joining yours.

“Hey, it's a yes or no question,” he giggled, turning your chin back toward him. He bit his lip through a grin. “Can I kiss you again?”

You would be a fool to refuse him. In an instant, he lowered his lips over yours again, enveloped you in his embrace. And with every moment passed, you sank further and further into him. Maybe the universe was uncharted and alluring, but the universe could wait.

You had all the world right here.

a/n: tumblr fcking hates me and my dialogue, confirmed. anyways, pls remember to reblog + comment if u enjoyed! for now, i'll see u in hot commodity!

permanent taglist: @flwoie @vatterie @seomisaho @hqrana @ja4hyvn @outrologist @rikizm @tinkerbell460 @kaaimins @hyunjaespresent-deobi @otterly-fey @zzoguri @floatingpluto @winterchimez @ethereal-engene @gyulfriend @polarisjisung @jaehunnyy @shakalakaboomboo @loveliestfelix @bless-311 @zhaixiaowen @leaz-kpop-life @amourdsr @pxppxrminty @kqyutie @sseastar-main @kxthleen14 @fluorescentloves @mosviqu @jaerisdiction @super-btstrash-posts @jundundun @http-gyu @mvvnsseul @vernonburger @maessseongs @ericlvr @mars101 @moonyswolf @your-mirae @richasdiary @sunramzi @deobi0412 @kflixnet

[sinnabarmoth]

Chasing Your Shooting Star (1/19)

(A/N: I have been dying to write this fic for forever! And I finally got to a point where I feel comfortable enough in the new semester to start writing long fic again so here we go! Xavier University AU because I need this rn.)

Pairing: Uni Student|Xavier x Uni Student|Reader (fem)

Summary: Reader is starting her senior year at the prestigious Philos University. She's determined to keep her rank at the top of her class but a hiccup in her plans comes in the form of a handsome transfer student named Xavier.

Content warnings: Adult language.

Length: 3600

Chapters: (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19)

Read on AO3

Nothing in life came easy and it certainly did not come for free. You had been taught that nothing worth having came without some struggle. To be accomplished you had to earn it through hard work and a little sacrifice. Another necessity was letting go of distractions. If you did not need it, you could live without it.

Such a life is what led you here, Philos University of Cosmic Excellence. The single best university in all of Philos. Just to be accepted was a high honor and if you managed to survive getting a degree it all but guaranteed a spot anywhere you wanted to pursue a career. It was also the leading university in combat training, producing some of the best military agents in the world. The goal of the university was to create people that were forces of good in the world, as either a warrior or an academic.

It was a bright late summer day and you were starting your senior year at the university. Two more semesters and you’d be a graduate and the rest of your life would begin. It was exciting and daunting. So close to the end yet still so far left to go.

Your place at the university had been assured thanks to your outstanding academics. Ever since you were a child you had placed at the very top of your schools’ leader boards, both in combat and academics. You were a smart girl and you worked hard but you also knew to give credit where credit was due. The person who had pushed you to be the very best that you could be was your mother. She had instilled a great sense of personal pride and drive for success in you from an early age. Without her you don’t know where you’d be.

A testament to just how successful you could be was your maternal line. Your mother had become the dean of the prestigious university you now were set to graduate from. Even your great grandmother had been the founder of the most successful deepspace aircraft assembly company in the world and passed it down to your grandmother. Your mother would have inherited it if not for her becoming the dean instead.

Now there was you.

You strode across the campus, following the crowd of students for the welcoming ceremony. It was mandatory for everyone whether you were a new student or not.

You went to take a seat. You had to sit somewhere closer to the front or else your mother would get upset that she couldn’t see you during her welcome speech. Something about unity or something like that. You didn’t entirely see how it mattered since you were one person in a sea of people and it wasn’t like you had a special seat or anything.

But anyway, you found a seat and sat through the long welcoming speech from your mother and some other staff that laid out expectations, rules, well wishes and the like. About halfway through the speeches though you noticed that the blonde guy in front of you was starting to doze off.

Then a small snore came out of him and you realized that he had fully fallen asleep. You knew your mother wasn’t the most dynamic speaker but a little more respect! Also, if she saw someone this close to the stage falling asleep she was going to be pissed. You glanced at the stage making sure your mother wasn’t looking your way and kicked the back of his chair.

He jolted awake and stretched his head back to look at you. Your breath caught up in your chest for a second as you looked at him. He was rather handsome. He had a cute face at least. His large pale blue eyes widened slightly as he took you in. “Did I fall asleep?” he asked, his voice just as hazy as his demeanor.

You shook off the initial surprise and cocked your head at him. “Is that even a question?”

“Right…sorry.” he continued to stare at you.

Your face started to heat with the attention and you kicked his chair again. “Watch the dean!” you hissed at him.

“Oh right,” he said, as if broken from some spell and turned around. He sat straight and kept his attention forward for the rest of the welcoming ceremony.

You didn’t think more of the interaction and when everyone was dismissed you got up and made for the stage to greet your mother and give your usual praise for a good start of semester speech. “Thank you, my dear.” your mother said, smiling affectionately. “I thought I spotted some altercation between you and one of the other students during the speech though.”

She had seen that? You had been so sure she wasn’t looking. Then again the woman acted like she had eyes in the back of her head when it came to you.

“Oh it was nothing, the guy in front of me had misheard something you said and asked me for clarification.” the lie fell clunkily from your mouth. You weren’t used to lying to your mother and you prayed that your reputation would aid you. You didn’t want to admit the real reason that guy had been talking to you. He didn’t deserve the ire of your mother for something as small as nodding off during an admittedly very boring and repetitive speech.

“He asked the right person then, didn’t he? I don’t think there’s a person alive that knows my speech better than you.” she said and you let the tension in your shoulders ease.

“Yes. Shall we go to the welcome brunch?” you said and looped your arm with your mother’s to go to the awaiting meal in the main mess hall.

The day passed without any more incident and you were able to return to your room. While you prided yourself on having gotten into Philos University on your own academic merits there was one little perk you had gotten as the dean’s daughter. That was you had the privilege of a private dorm and adjoining bath. There was one building on campus that had a small number of this types of dorms and it was a lottery to see who got to have one for that semester. Being the dean’s daughter though your mother had been able to reserve you one for the extent of your academic career. At first you had fought it because you didn’t want special treatment but she had insisted and after the first semester you were glad to have the privacy.

The next day was the official start of classes. You got dressed and went to your first class. You got to the lecture hall and took a seat near the back. For as studious as you were you didn’t focus well in the front. You didn’t like the feeling of everyone behind you being able to look at you. You couldn’t say why but it just unnerved you in some way and so you tended to drift towards the back where seeing you was harder.

You sat down as other students filed in. You knew pretty much everyone by now. By the time you were a senior you had been able to single out who was in your degree program because they showed up in all the same classes. So it was no surprise to you when every single one of them kept at least a one seat buffer from you.

You tried not to think about it. Even if you did know why they avoided you. You weren’t exactly the most social person and over the years your preference for solitude had come across to the other students as being purposefully standoffish. It also didn’t help that your constant status as the top of your class on the ranking boards made people mad. No one had been able to tear you down from the pedestal you had built and it pissed them off that to them the real number one spot was actually still number two.

It was fine though. You didn’t need them. They’d just be a distraction. Besides, you could have as many friends as you wanted after you graduated. It was just important that you focus on your studies now. It was--

“Good morning. Is this seat taken?”

You looked up, startled that someone was addressing you and saw the guy from the welcome ceremony standing next to you point at the desk to your immediate left.

“Oh uh, no. It’s all yours.” you said.

“Thanks.” he sat down.

Why was he sitting back here? There were plenty of seats still available everywhere else. Then again, you didn’t recognize him. This was a core class for your program so if he was in your program you hadn’t seen him before. Could he have been a new student? This was an intense class so it was only recommended to be taken by student in their senior year since they’d have had time to understand the material from the years before. So either he was a transfer student, he was a regular student with a huge makeover that made him unrecognizable, or he was someone who was woefully unprepared for what was about to happen in this class. You knew this teacher, this teacher was your advisor and she pulled zero punches when it came to her classes and if this guy didn’t have any kind of foundation to stand on he was going to drown immediately.

The class began and you couldn’t help stealing glances at him. He didn’t seem to be struggling with the work, took notes diligently, paid attention and didn’t look like he was going to fall asleep again. There was one time you glanced over at him and caught him looking at you. He gave you a small smile and went back to his notes.

After class ended you gathered up your things and turned to see the guy was waiting for you, or at least it looked like he was waiting for you.

“Can I help you?” you asked.

“I just wanted to introduce myself since I forgot to before class started.” he said, holding out a hand. “I’m Xavier.”

You shook his hand and introduced yourself, you weren’t rude after all. “I uh…” you looked around the mostly empty lecture hall and shrugged, “I only have fifteen minutes to get to my next class and it is clear on the other side of campus so I gotta go but, yeah. Nice to meet you. I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

“Nice to meet you too.” he hefted his bag on his shoulder and left.

Okay…you really didn’t know what to make of this guy.

You went to your next class and afterwards you had a short break so you went to the library to get some work done before you had your final class of the day. Now, while your degree was for academics you had still elected into taking the university’s combat training class as well. It was important to be able to defend yourself and if for some reason you ever got drafted into the forces you’d need to be able to fight. It was also something your mother had been insistent on you doing anyway so there was no getting around it. Just another subject that you had to strive to be the best in.

You changed into the combat training uniform in the locker room with the other women and stepped out to start stretching and warming yourself up. Some of the other students helped each other stretch or were warming up together and talking happily with one another. Something burned in your chest but you shoved it down and continued with your normal routine.

“Hey, it’s you again.” That Xavier guy walked up to you in the same combat uniform.

“And it is you.” you said, pausing to address him. “I didn’t realize you were taking combat training as well.”

“Oh well, it is--”

Before he could finish the instructor came out blowing their whistle to gather everyone’s attention. Everyone immediately fell into a single file line as the instructor started outlining the goals and intentions of this training. Your class were all senior level so there would be no handicap modifiers, which meant a much more intense and physically demanding workload than in previous years. You couldn’t help glancing down the line at Xavier again. You were sure you did not know this guy. Anyone in senior level combat training would have to have been in previous classes but you did not recognize him. You know you would have recognized a face that handsome.

Ugh! No! Focus! You shook the distraction from your mind and focused on the teacher again.

“To start today, I want a basic assessment of your skills. To do this we are going to be pairing off in duels. We will do this every week for the entire semester. Pairings will be based off of class rank. Since the scores for this year have yet to be determined we will be going with ranks based off of where you landed last semester. We will be going from lowest to highest. Everyone, when it is not your time to be dueling you will be watching the students that are fighting and assessing their movements and techniques. Is that understood?”

The class echoed back a militaristic yes and the instructor called up the first pair to start dueling. You sat down and prepared yourself to wait for a while. When last semester ended you had been the top of the class so your duel was going to be saved for last.

You sat and watched the other students do their duels, mentally critiquing their form and giving verbal critiques when the instructor asked the class where the loser of the duel went wrong. Your assessments gained no shortage of glares from the losers. Whatever. You were used to it. Besides, if they didn’t want to get critiqued for their poor performance they shouldn’t be in a combat class.

As more and more students were called up you couldn’t help looking over at Xavier again and again. When was he going to get called up? You were getting into the high rankings and he had yet to be called for a duel. Maybe since he was a new student he was just watching for today. But that didn’t make sense.

Finally your name was called and you walked to the center of the room, picking up one of the practice swords as you did. Then the instructor called the name of your opponent. “Xavier Shen.”

Your eyes went wide as Xavier stood up and collected the other practice sword. Xavier? The new kid that you hadn’t seen before? He was the one facing you in training? Something about this felt wrong. Why pair the new kid with you? Was he actually that good of a fighter? He had to be if he was standing up here with you.

Well, no matter how good of a fighter he was you knew where your skills were. Even the second best fighter in your combat training could barely keep up with you so what chance did this transfer student or whatever he was have against you? You readied into a fighting stance, determined to end this quickly.

Xavier didn’t at all seem perturbed by the events about to transpire but there was something in his demeanor that changed as he readied into his own stance. His gaze was sharper and he looked far more sure of himself. It was such a far cry from the guy you caught sleeping during the welcoming ceremony or the gentle smile he had given you during your morning class when you caught him staring at you.

The instructor blew their whistle to start the match and you lunged, letting instinct take over as you sparred with Xavier. You hadn’t expected much of a fight and that was probably your fault for what happened next. Xavier while fighting was a different person entirely. He was quick and strong and precise and if it wasn’t for the fact that you realized what you were suddenly up against he would have put you on your ass in mere seconds. You corrected, focusing more intently and fighting back harder.

On and on you went, dodging hits and trading blows that were just barely parried. You were starting to get frustrated by how difficult this was getting and in that moment of irritation was your downfall. Literally. Xavier had managed to knock the practice sword out of your hands and the sudden loss of it sent you off balance and you fell hard on your ass.

You…you lost.

“Winner, Shen!” the instructor announced and the other students started applauding like mad. They never cheered like this when you won a match.

You were still on the ground stunned that you had lost. What the fuck had happened? When did you leave yourself open to attack? It must have been a fluke. You had been too cavalier in the beginning and it gave him an advantage. Yes. That had to be it.

“Oh, here, let me.” Xavier held out a hand for you. A part of you wanted to be petty and ignore it but you decided that was unsportsmanlike and accepted the hand. He hauled you to your feet with ease. He was also deceptively strong underneath the loose fitting combat uniform.

“That was an…impressive first match.” you said. “I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t that.”

“Oh thanks. You were great too, you are an formidable combatant.” he said.

“Thanks.” you picked up your discarded practice sword. “So, I know I haven’t seen you around before. Are you a transfer student?”

“Yes, I am.” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “I thought it a tad ridiculous to transfer when I was so close to graduating but when you have the chance to go to Philos University you take it.”

“I see. So where did you transfer from? Wait, let me guess.” you pondered for a second about what other university could have produced such an excellent fighter. “Genity Military Academy?”

“No.”

Hmm. “Nesonia University of Wonders?”

“Nope.” he shook his head.

“Huh, where are you from then?” Genity and Nesonia were the two best universities for combatants and if he wasn’t from either of them you had no idea where he could have come from.

“I transferred from Danora University.”

“I’m not familiar with that one.”

“It’s a local university near my hometown in the Danora mountain range. It’s actually on the entire other side of the continent.” Xavier answered, looking a little sheepish.

A local university? The mountain range?

No.

No. That couldn’t be real. There was no way a kid from the fucking middle of nowhere like the mountains, who went to a no-name university had beaten you! There was no fucking way! Oh gods above your mother was going to kill you.

“I see.” you nodded, swallowing down the indignation that crawled like a sickness up your throat. “Well, glad to see you are making your hometown proud.” you forced out.

You heard some of the other student behind you snickering and heat began to fill your face. “I’m going to go get changed now. Excuse me.” you turned to leave.

As you returned to the locker room to rinse off and get changed you heard the other girls talking.

“I don’t know who this new kid is but thank the gods that he is here to knock the little queen bee off her pedestal.” one of them said. “Did you see her face when he knocked her on her ass? Oh, I wish I could have been recording that.”

“Now maybe she’ll stop being so high and mighty.” another said. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Oh please, you saw the way she stormed off after he beat her. She was trying to keep a straight face but you could tell she was pissed. I thought for a second she was going to start throwing a tantrum.” the girls laughed.

You took in a deep breath. It was nothing. Just words. They’re just mad that they aren’t at your level. That’s it. It’s just jealousy.

“Come on guys, she’s not that bad.” another girl spoke up in your defense.

“You’re right. She’s worse.” the girls went back to laughing and gabbing and you stayed hidden back in the showers, not wanting to go out and face them all. They had to know you were in here. They were just saying all this to fuck with you.

“I’m more interested in the guy she was fighting, his name was Xavier, right?” one of the girls said. “He’s pretty cute and he can fight well. It makes me wonder if he has that much stamina for other things.”

“Irene!” the girls balked. “You’re terrible.”

“Terribly single and he’s a transfer student so I doubt he has a girlfriend. Besides, don’t tell me none of you weren’t thinking the same thing.”

They continued to laugh and talk before the finally cleared out of the locker room. You stepped out of your hiding place and got changed.

It was fine. All of this was just a novelty. It was the first day of the semester. You had plenty of time to turn things around. Besides, it was one duel. A fluke. Your mom wasn’t bound to notice this one little hiccup and life could move forward. You’d keep your place as the top of your class and everything would be fine.

You would be fine.

[digitalagepulao]

Prodigal son terror

Li Jing in a fury grabbed his halberd, leapt on his horse and galloped out of the headquarters. He was astonished to see Nezha with his Wind-Fire Wheels and Fire-Tipped Spear. He swore loudly, "You damned beast! You caused us endless suffering before your death, and now that you've been reborn, you're troubling us again!"

"Li Jing! I've returned my flesh and bones to you, and there's no longer any relation between us. Why did you smash my golden idol with your whip and burn down my temple? Today I must take my revenge!"

since I'm on a Nezha streak, might as well do my design for him on the Expedition AU! given that i've chosen to give characters a closer likeness to their region, it's only fitting i do the same with import deities like Guanyin, Subodhi and Nezha.

he's a complicated figure to place in the timeline because he gained popularity as a deity much after, only really arriving in China by the time the Journey would have been set. FSYY was written closer to when JTTW was written down, and he was retroactively inserted on the Zhou Dynasty period.

so deciding what to even do with him is dicey. but then i said fuck it, mythological rules apply here, he was around for the events of FSYY, and it and JTTW are set in the same universe. and for the sake of having some fun, i decided to get funky with his concept.

Nezha had the likeness of his family when he was alive, as described in FSYY, but once he was reborn with a lotus body he gained Indian traits instead. this is to be a nod to his status as an import deity and his origin as Nalakubara, and as the centuries roll by he may present himself to mortals closer to the locals' appearance wise.

as for his looks, i drew inspiration from multiple sources. read more for my rambles <3

his armor is closer to reconstructions of Zhou dynasty-period armor, skipping over extra parts simply because his lotus body is so indestructible, there's no need for a full set;

there are two red Chinese knots with jade beads dangling from the armor ties. they are said to ward off evil spirits, which felt like a good fit for a guy known to banish demons. i picked a six-petal flower pattern, which represents reunion, unity and a bright future;

i included lotus petals and leaves on his outfit as they are common in Beijing Opera outfits for him, and his makeup is a call to it as well;

The pink from the cheeks and eyeshadow seeps into his ear shell, as to convey the way sometimes, you get so angry even your ears blush;

Another thing i referenced from Opera is the two red ribbons on his sidelocks, though I changed them to two bulbs of lotus roots;

Four petals drawn close to his urna as both to make it look like a lotus but also form five petals, which is an auspicious number;

His hair crown is a fancy princely [knot] with a lotus motif and a pearl in the center, as he was the Pearl Spirit before becoming Nezha;

I was going to go with elf-like ears but I thought I could do better, so I went for stretched earlobes instead. you can't see it that well but hopefully the very large golden earrings imply it well enough xvx;

His cheek dimples are common sight on religious images of him and it was a cute touch imo;

Younger Nezha wears a golden robe because of his title as General of the Central Altar in Daoist belief, and the center direction is connected to yellow or gold, and yellow robes are usually meant for emperors and their sons, which is a minor nod to his self-assureness and boldness;

The Cosmic Ring has spiralling grooves on it both to catch blades on it for defense but also as a callback to Opera props;

On his waist is the embroidered ball weapon he was attributed with in earlier myths, he was also meant to have the leopard skin bag Taiyi Zhenren gave him, bjt it was going to be obscured by the text so i omitted it;

A few depictions of him gave him a halo of fire, which was real cool so i added it as well.

[freshthoughts2020]

[psychics4unet]

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The Fool 🌱💫

King of Cups 🌊👑

The High Priestess represents your deep intuition, your hidden wisdom and connection to the mystical. It speaks to the power of your inner knowing and spiritual gifts. The Fool suggests a sense of new beginnings, adventure, and fearlessness, showing you have the power to step into the unknown with confidence and trust. The King of Cups brings emotional balance and mastery, highlighting your hidden ability to manage emotions wisely and deeply, providing guidance to others.

These three cards together show your hidden power lies in your deep emotional intelligence, intuition, and fearlessness to explore new paths. You have the ability to guide others while following your own inner truth. 🌙💖🌊

Pile 2 🌟🌙✨

Strength 🦁💪

Wheel of Fortune 🔮🌟

Ace of Pentacles 💰🌱

Strength shows your hidden power is your inner courage and resilience, a quiet strength that allows you to overcome challenges. The Wheel of Fortune suggests that destiny plays a significant role in your life, indicating your power lies in embracing changes and seeing opportunities in life’s cycles. The Ace of Pentacles represents new beginnings in material wealth and stability, showing your ability to create and manifest abundance.

Together, these cards show your hidden power is in your resilience, ability to adapt to change, and manifesting stability and success. You have the power to create your own fortune and face challenges head-on with strength! 🌟🦁💰

Pile 3 🌙💫🌟

The Magician ✨🪄

The Lovers 💖🌹

Nine of Cups 🍷🌟

The Magician speaks to your power to manifest and create your desires, using your willpower and skills to make things happen. The Lovers shows that your hidden power is in your relationships and connections, both romantic and platonic. You have the ability to bring harmony and unity. The Nine of Cups represents emotional fulfillment, showing you have the power to create happiness and satisfaction in your life.

These cards together indicate that your hidden power is in your ability to manifest your desires, build harmonious relationships, and create emotional fulfillment in your life. You have the tools to attract everything you need. 🌙💖✨

Love this post? Spread the positive vibes by reblogging with your favorite pile number! Remember to like, comment, and follow me for more tarot insights and spiritual guidance. By sharing this post, you'll invite positive energy from the universe into your life. Let's journey together towards enlightenment and fulfillment! ✨💫💖

Attention! This reading is for entertainment purposes only. This tarot reading does not give a 100% guarantee that all the described situations will occur or being ultimate truth. You build your own life and destiny and only you know yourself best. Remember to reblog, like, comment, and follow for more cosmic guidance and positivity!

Paid readings (7 questions for just $7) are also available for more in-depth insights and personal guidance! 🌟💫

[talonabraxas]

"When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner as the outer, and the upper as the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male shall not be male, and the female shall not be female: . . . then you will enter [the kingdom]." – Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas

The Third LIGHT and Angel of Gemini

3. Gemini.—The Light of Interplay. This is a line of light beams, revealing that which opposes or the basic duality of manifestation, the relationship of spirit and of form. It is the conscious light of that relationship.

Keynote: ‘I’ [the soul] recognize my other self [lower self] and in the waning of that self ‘I’ grow and glow.

“This sign is sometimes called the "constellation of the resolution of duality into a fluid synthesis." Governing as it does all the pairs of opposites in the zodiac, it preserves the magnetic interplay between them, keeping them fluid in their relations, in order eventually to facilitate their transmutation into unity, for the two must finally become the One.” This is the energy that “relates” everything – it creates relationship, overcoming separation.

"Gemini determines the paramount influence within the fourfold influence of the Mutable Cross [for this present cycle]. The main objective of these four energies is to produce that constant flux and periodic change in time and space which will provide a field of adequate experience for the unfoldment of the Christ life and consciousness. This is the case cosmically speaking, and also from the standpoint of a solar system, of a planet and of a human being. The field of development for the lower three kingdoms is dependent upon the status and energy-distributing power of humanity as a whole." (EA 344) Notes of Interest: Humanity plays a pivotal role for the full flowering of the three lower kingdoms — so that the Lord of the World can take His next steps. When all Seven kingdoms are functioning as intended, then the Earth can fulfill Its true purpose (in the distant future) as the Base of the spine Center in the Solar Logos. Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World, shall function as a soul-infused personality for a much larger Being termed the Planetary Logos. Our role for the three lower kingdoms of nature is to influence their higher development through our consciousness as we continue to evolve (keeping in mind that the vegetable kingdom is the most evolved of the three lower kingdoms).

◊ ◊

“Because the Ray of Love-Wisdom, the second ray, pours through Gemini it becomes apparent how true is the [esoteric] teaching that Love underlies the entire universe. God is Love, we are assured, and this statement is both an exoteric and an esoteric truth. This underlying love of Deity reaches our solar system primarily through Gemini, which forms, with the constellation of the Great Bear and the Pleiades, a cosmic triangle. This is the triangle of the cosmic Christ and is the esoteric symbol lying behind the cosmic Cross. There is ever the eternal triangle to be found behind the fourfold phenomenal appearance. Speaking symbolically and in the words of the Old Commentary:

"Upon the golden triangle, the Cosmic Christ appeared; His head in Gemini; one foot upon the field of the Seven Fathers and the other planted in the field of the Seven Mothers (these two constellations are sometimes called the Seven Brothers and the Seven Sisters. A.A.B.). Thus for aeons, the Great One stood, His consciousness in-turned, aware of three but not of four. Intent, with suddenness, He heard a sound go forth.... Arousing to that cry, He stretched Himself, reached forth both arms in understanding Love, and, lo, the Cross was formed.”

"He heard the cry of the Mother (Virgo), of the Seeker (Sagittarius), and of the submerged Fish (Pisces). Then, lo, the Cross of change appeared, though Gemini remained the head. This is the mystery."

“… in the fact of the pain and sorrow which are distinguishing qualities of our planetary life lies hid a secret mystery. Through this relationship [of Gemini and Sagittarius] and through the medium of the potencies pouring into our planet, a situation is set up which I might express in the words of the Old Commentary:

"When the dual forces of the cosmic brothers (Gemini) become the energy of the one who rides towards the light (Sagittarius) then the fourth becomes the fifth. Humanity, the link, becomes the Hierarchy, the bestower of all good. Then all the Sons of God rejoice." (EA, 356)

◊ ◊

"It might be profitable to you to bear in mind at this point what I have often told you, that the great White Lodge on Sirius is the spiritual prototype of the great White Lodge on Earth, of which modern Masonry is the distorted reflection, just as the personality is a distorted reflection of the soul

1. Gemini—forms a point of entrance for cosmic energy from Sirius.

2. Libra—is related to and transmits the potencies of the Pleiades.

3. Aquarius—expresses the universal consciousness of the Great Bear.

◊ ◊

The energies of this sign …”condition the soul within the form and subject it to those influences which will lead to the intensification of the ordinary evolutionary process and the consequent waxing of the soul light and the waning of the light in matter itself. This initiates the struggle which, in a human being, is consciously realized as being between soul and personality. This leads to a final stage in Capricorn [initiation into greater light and life].” (EA, 360)

◊ ◊

“Gemini is pre-eminently the sign of the Messenger [Mercury], and this sign produces many of the messengers of God as they appear down the ages, the revealers of new divine truths and the intermediaries between the fourth and fifth kingdoms” [human and soul kingdoms]. Gemini has mental agility and fluidity of mind … When there is facility of mental approach in any direction and in connection with the many opposites in manifestation, you have the emergence of the divine Messenger in his true character, able to comprehend extremes and to relate them divinely to each other.” (EA, 354) When opposites are brought together and are related to each other soul to soul, we become messengers of Truth. The Buddha and the Christ were two such recent Divine Messengers for Humanity. The Master DK on another turn of the spiral was a messenger bringing the Wisdom teachings of the east to the west, and set the stage for a new and contemporary Discipleship; Alice Bailey, born in Gemini, served as a messenger or communicator for these Teachings (from the Mind of the Master to aspirants and disciples). Returning to the theme of this sign, the Soul is ever the Divine Messenger to the personality, creating a bridge betwixt high and low, ultimately betwixt Spirit and Matter.

◊ ◊

"In the expression of the activity of this sign of duality, it is subjective energy we must consider as it produces objective effects. This sign controls esoterically the heart of our solar system and thus controls the pulsation of life which sustains all that is. Gemini is, therefore, connected with the heart of the Sun, just as Cancer is related to the physical Sun and Aquarius to the central spiritual Sun.

1. Cancer physical Sun 3rd aspect - intelligent activity of the Whole.

2. Gemini heart of the Sun 2nd aspect - love of the Whole.

3. Aquarius central spiritual Sun 1st aspect - the will of the Whole.

In Cancer, you have the intelligent synthetic consciousness of the mass, viewing it from the consciousness of matter itself and the awareness of all forms and atoms; in Gemini, you have an emerging recognition of duality, leading to experience and growth in all separative intelligent forms; in Aquarius, you have the results of the activity of Cancer and Gemini, producing a higher synthesis and a universal group awareness." (EA, 351)

◊ ◊ ◊

THROUGH THE PORTAL OF GEMINI

CONTEMPLATIONS ◊ DIAMOND SOUL PRACTICES

Christ in you is born anew in each and every Sign. The new Mind of Christ in you confers twelve new powers of the Self – of the True Soul. We meet the energy of the Solar Angel and Angel of Gemini as the third of twelve creative Christ or God powers – each a facet in the Glory Body of the One Self.

ATTUNEMENT FOR CONTEMPLATION ◊ Come into conscious alignment with the Soul, the Christ in you. ◊ Send forth a ray of love to connect with the group as a whole and then with “the great potency of the inner groups” (the Ashrams of the Christ) ◊ Light a candle, a living flame of light in your mind, to attune with and invite the Angels (of Gemini and Solar Angel) to further activate the 3rd great Petal or Light. In this Light we work with the following Contemplations and Diamond Soul Practices (as seed thoughts and practices) to continue unfolding the latent power of this Petal (energy).

◊ BEGIN YOUR DAYS in this month of Gemini with this third petal practice, a facet of the New Mind of Christ in you unfolding for fuller subjective expression. Ask – that these days be a living example of the Keynote: how can I be a Messenger of beautiful, harmonious inter-play in any given situation on this day? Beginning our day this way, we step into the sphere of unity ~

‘I stand in the fulfilled blessings of Gemini so that love can flow’.

◊ Attuned with the Angel of the third petal, allow the “light of interplay” to be activated and released in your mind, having the power to re-sol, re-soul, resolve. ◊ In your own life and/or your life of service, do you see an area or situation that is in need of alchemical resolution for the light of interplay to act as a soul solvent. Bringing Gemini Light to what is in opposition or acting as an opposing force, brings the light and life of the sun/son of solarization— of magnetic interplay to that which needs to be solarized or ensouled, thereby bringing a resolving influence, a solarizing and harmonizing power and energy to it. ◊ Bring to mind the area or situation identified. The personality will be thinking, feeling or acting one way (based upon older patterns that have not been solarized) and the Soul will think, feel, say or act a higher Way. Move into the Soul field and bring the situation into the Soul - into the Soul’s Way. Allow the Soul to work through it - to alchemize it with its powers, virtues, thoughts and action. [This diamond and indents that follow was edited 6-10-22]

NOTE: The power behind the work of “Esoteric Advent” is the Heart and Mind of Christ flowing through it. Christ is attuned with the loving Will of the Lord of the World, Who is in touch with the Planetary Logos and in turn with the Solar Logos in the Great Chain of Being. There are greater powers of Love and Higher Will and Purpose flowing through the Hierarchy for implementation by Humanity. If something is not yet resolved, hold it “lightly” and hold it in the Light, and know it will be resolved. The larger the issue, especially if on an international or world scale, know there is a larger plan for the Way of the future. In any and every case, know that a greater force of Good has been brought into play and will work its Way through eventually. Move into Faith - “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen”. The Plan of God — the Will of God will be enacted through all beings.

Once we learn to think with and as the Hierarchy, many of the inner disturbances will quiet down and we will not be thrown back and forth by forces of opposition or that which has not yet been re-souled / resolved.

◊ "When the dual forces of the cosmic brothers (Gemini) become the energy of the One who rides towards the light … then the fourth becomes the fifth. Humanity, the link, becomes the Hierarchy, the bestower of all good. Then all the Sons of God rejoice." Self inquiry: when the dual forces of Gemini are working rightly together – the Soul is in charge of the personality and the soul is gaining ascendency and is waxing. Think of examples in your own life where the Soul and personality came into right relationship after a conflict of opposing forces – where pain and sorrow had been resolved or relieved. What followed, what arose? Recall to mind what happened in you – and the impact it had in your life and in your group and personal relations. ◊ Joined in the light of interplay, we heal these inner separations; we stand in a new altitude in relation to the situation. The light of interplay and the love released extends into all our relations. Recalling "holy instants to mind” brings into the present the power and blessing of Solarizing interplay.

◊ Consider the Angel of this petal saying to you (to us): 'We all live under the same Sun (objectively), and within the Heart of the Son of Divine Love (subjectively). You are a fractal of Christ energy, of Divine Love pouring through all creation, relating all opposites, uniting and overcoming duality, healing all separation’. Contemplate this deeply; allow it to be true.

◊ Uncover at least one line of connection among our many lines of relationship, asking for fuller integration and unification. ◊ When complete, place your hands over your heart - feeling the energy of your heart, knowing all things can be resolved - and are re-Souled when brought into the solar energy of the Cosmic Heart.

◊ "Gemini, as you may now begin to grasp, is related to the etheric body; it is the custodian of conditioning energy and the intermediary, as far as basic essentials are concerned, between soul and body. These are the two allied brothers. In the average person, the etheric vehicle is the transmitter of psychic energy, galvanising and coordinating the dense physical body and permitting, therefore, astral and mental control of the personality. When the man is upon the Path of Discipleship and, therefore, upon the reversed wheel, leading to initiation, the etheric body becomes the transmitter of soul energy and not of personality force; the powerful effect of the second Ray of Love-Wisdom—working through the subjective six rays, according to ray type—begins steadily to dominate the vital body, producing consequently the shift of force and of intensity to the centres above the diaphragm. The power of the personality lessens and wanes whilst that of the soul waxes and grows. There is much to be learned from the study of the dual activity—higher and lower—of the etheric body and its relation to and responsiveness to the constellation, Gemini ... It is ... an esoteric fact to be borne in mind and will be some day of real service to the astrology of the future, for some day astrology will be lifted up to a higher plane. True interpretation will come and true healing in all departments of human living through a proper understanding of the available potencies and energies pouring into the planet at any particular time." (EA, 352/3)

◊ Consider this last sentence in relation to the work we are doing in our deepening monthly and daily alignments with the Zodiacal Signs. Consider how significant this work is for bringing about the merging of the 4th and the 5th Kingdoms.

◊ "Gemini ... is one of the paramount zodiacal signs in that it is the major symbol of duality in the zodiac. It is the constellation Gemini and its inherent second ray influence which control every one of the pairs of opposites in the Great Wheel. Gemini, therefore, forms with each of the pairs of opposites in the Zodiac a third factor, powerfully influencing the other two constellations, and thus forms, with them, certain great zodiacal triangles. These only become of importance when considering the horoscopes of advanced human beings or esoteric groups, but eventually—when casting the horoscope of a disciple or an initiate—the esoteric astrologer will have to consider their potency. For instance, in the case of an initiate whose Sun is in Leo, the triangle of constellation energies determining the interpretation of the horoscope would be Leo-Aquarius-Gemini... (If the birth Sun is in Gemini itself, the conditioning triangle would be Gemini-Sagittarius and Pisces—the latter forming a part of this triangle because it marks both the end and the beginning ... "the Alpha and Omega...)." (EA, 346/7)

◊ Think of your own Sun Sign and its opposite Sign being in relationship; place Gemini in the Apex thus forming a Triangle. Now consider and imagine the 2nd Aspect of Divinity, Love, flowing through Gemini into your Sun and opposite Sign thereby "fusing in consciousness the polar opposites" (as described above and in the following diamond). With Gemini at the apex, attempt to experience this new triple energy configuration as one energy flowing through your etheric system. Sense it until it is present ... be conscious of the potency of the new energy now present.

Note: if you are new to Esoteric Astrology, the opposite signs are as follows

Aries - Libra; Taurus - Scorpio; Gemini - Sagittarius; Cancer - Capricorn; Leo - Aquarius; Virgo - Pisces (or vice versa).

For the Rulers / Transmitters of each Sign (exoteric, esoteric and hierarchical), go to Supplemental Reading tab, or Planetary Rulers and Musical Notes for Rays, Constellations and Planets.

◊ "This sign is sometimes called the "constellation of the resolution of duality into a fluid synthesis." Governing as it does all the pairs of opposites in the zodiac, it preserves the magnetic interplay between them, keeping them fluid in their relations, in order eventually to facilitate their transmutation into unity, for the two must finally become the One. It should be remembered that—from the angle of the final development of the twelve zodiacal potencies—the twelve opposites must become the blended six, and this is brought about by the fusion in consciousness of the polar opposites. Pause and consider this phrasing. The opposites eternally remain from the point of view of human reason, but to the initiate whose intuition is functioning they constitute but six great potencies because he has achieved "the freedom of the two," as it is sometimes called. For instance, the Leo subject who has an initiated consciousness preserves the individuality, developed in Leo, as well as the universality of Aquarius; he can function, if he so chooses, as a fully self-identified individual, yet possesses simultaneously a fully awakened universal awareness; the same thing can be said of balanced activity and consequent fusion in all the signs. This analysis constitutes in itself an interesting and far-reaching field of speculation." (EA, 347/8)

◊ Do this for yourself now with your opposite sign. ◊ You will come to know the "freedom of the two".

◊ Though MDK has not suggested this, you may also want to do the same with your Rising sign and its polar opposite. The Rising Sign affirms the energy with which you will most Identify as a Soul.

◊ "Gemini is, therefore, one of the most important of the twelve signs and its influence lies behind everyone of them—a fact but little realised as yet by astrologers. This will be more fully understood when the triangle of Gemini and two opposing signs is studied. Because the Ray of Love-Wisdom, the second ray, pours through Gemini it becomes apparent how true is the [esoteric] teaching that love underlies the entire universe. God is love, we are assured, and this statement is both an exoteric and an esoteric truth. This underlying love of Deity reaches our solar system primarily through Gemini, which forms, with the constellation of the Great Bear and the Pleiades, a cosmic triangle. This is the triangle of the cosmic Christ and is the esoteric symbol lying behind the cosmic Cross. There is ever the eternal triangle to be found behind the fourfold phenomenal appearance. ..." Reflect again upon the words of the Old Commentary "Upon the golden triangle, the cosmic Christ appeared ..." (EA, 348)

◊ Consider again your Divine Triangle (Polar opposites plus Gemini at the Apex). Invoke the Ray of Love-Wisdom to pour through your Triangle, reaching your soul-mind-brain / etheric system. Feel the purity of this energy coursing through you - all of you. ◊ This time, include a still more potent (higher) Divine Triangle with the energy of the Great Bear and the Pleiades: imaginatively stand with one foot in the GB, the other in the Pleiades, your Head in Sirius / Gemini. ◊ Doing this Super Soul (Cosmic Soul) alignment (several times) during the month of June (in Gemini), invokes and impresses the Universal upon the particular. See how it changes you.

◊ ◊

◊ We shall consider our nation / country in the hierarchical light of Gemini through the medium of the Keynote: ‘I’ [the soul] recognize my other self [personality self] and in the waning of that self ‘I’ grow and glow. See your nation as having both a Soul and Personality nature. Imagine the Soul of your nation waxing and growing and the personality of your nation waning. See the Soul of your nation "growing and glowing" as it gains control of the Personality through its over-lighting Presence and Soul-fusing power. See the peoples of your country, as Souls, invoking the Soul of your nation. See your nations' Soul values and principles playing out, being implemented by your nations' Personality. Sound a sacred Group OM. Throughout this month, invoke Gemini to pour Cosmic LOVE through the opposites for the purpose of "fusing in consciousness the polar opposites."

◊ If you know the astrology of your nation, after first linking with the Spiritual Hierarchy in your Soul Mind, hold the Sun (or Rising Sign) and its polar opposite in Mind using the above method. ◊ Another method is to work with the Soul Ray and Personality Ray of your country (if known). For example, the Soul Ray of America is Ray Two of Love-Wisdom and the Personality Ray is Ray Six of Idealism. Visualize Gemini bringing the two into interplay and then unity. ◊ In any event, whenever we see the personality of your or another country playing itself out more than the Soul, invoke the Soul of the Country (linking with the Spiritual Hierarchy and the Christ) to come into fuller play. Invoke and hold the Soul of your nation to do the right thing in a given circumstance, to express a needed value or principle that would bring the issue into a truer or higher resolution, e.g., "for the greater Good". This requires "creative thought". Little by little, the energy builds.

◊ A similar method can be utilized for any group in which you are vested or are a part. Call forth the Soul of the Group. Imagine the Group Soul in magnetic interplay with its Personality "fusing in consciousness the polar opposites." ◊ We can also imagine the souls of group members fusing their personalities with the Group Soul, stepping into magnetic interplay, and forming one unified Soul expression.

◊ ◊

◊ Impress your mind with the Light of Gemini—The Light of Interplay. Keynote: ‘I’ [the soul] recognize my other self [personality self] and in the waning of that self ‘I’ grow and glow. ◊ Impress and associate the above thoughts with the third petal. Open yourself to intuitive impression. Sound a sacred OM sealing in the new vibration and new awareness.

CLOSING: In gratitude, let us extend a beam of lighted Love to the Solar Angel and Angel of Gemini governing the third Petal of the ‘Heart in the Head’ Lotus ◊ As we consciously express the 3rd petal, allowing it to work in and through us, our groups and the world, we are widening the channel of connection and reception, and strengthening the livingness of the New Mind in Christ. The power(s) of this facet of the Soul-Self will increase and unfold with every true Soul expression and conscious application. ◊ Bless and Be Blessed !

Image: Jesus and Mary Magdalene

[santoschristos]

Om ॐ

1. Origin in Sacred Texts

The Om symbol finds its origin in the ancient Hindu scriptures, particularly in the Vedas and Upanishads. It is considered the primal sound that gave birth to the universe, encapsulating the essence of creation, preservation, and dissolution. The Mandukya Upanishad, in particular, delves into the profound significance of Om, describing it as the ultimate reality (Brahman) that transcends the limitations of time, space, and causation.

2. The Sound of the Universe

Om is often referred to as the “Pranava,” the sound of the universe itself. In Hindu cosmology, it is believed that the entire cosmos originated from the vibration of Om. Chanting or meditating upon Om is thought to attune the individual with the cosmic vibrations, harmonizing the microcosm with the macrocosm.

3. Symbolic Representation

Visually, the Om symbol is represented by the characters “ॐ” in Devanagari script. It comprises three curves, one semicircle, and a dot, symbolizing the waking state (A), the dream state (U), and the state of deep sleep (M), with the dot representing the transcendent state beyond these three. Together, they represent the entirety of human experience and the cycle of creation, preservation, and dissolution.

4. Triadic Nature

Om embodies the triadic nature of the divine, representing the Hindu trinity (Trimurti) of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. A, U, and M are associated with each of these deities, respectively. The silent pause after chanting Om, known as the “Anusvara” or “Dot,” signifies the formless, transcendent reality beyond the manifest world.

5. Meditation and Spiritual Practice

Chanting Om is a central aspect of meditation and spiritual practice in Hinduism. The rhythmic repetition of Om is believed to lead practitioners into a state of deep concentration, connecting them with the divine and facilitating inner transformation. It is a powerful tool for centering the mind and calming the fluctuations of thought.

6. Inner Harmony and Balance

The vibrations of Om are said to resonate with the energy centers or chakras within the human body. Chanting Om is believed to activate and balance these energy centers, promoting physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. It is a tool for achieving inner harmony and a sense of equilibrium.

7. Universal Symbol

Beyond its roots in Hinduism, the Om symbol has transcended cultural and religious boundaries to become a universally recognized icon of spirituality. It is embraced by practitioners of various spiritual traditions and is often used in yoga practices, where it serves as a focal point for meditation and mindfulness.

8. Artistic Depictions

The Om symbol is often incorporated into artistic depictions, from intricate mandalas to sculptures and paintings. Its visual representation is a source of inspiration for artists, symbolizing the unity of all existence and the interconnectedness of the cosmos.

9. Integration into Daily Life

In Hindu households, the Om symbol is commonly integrated into daily life. It is found on doorways, in prayer rooms, and on religious artifacts. Its presence serves as a reminder of the divine essence within and the interconnectedness of all life.

10. Beyond Religion

While deeply rooted in Hinduism, the Om symbol has transcended religious boundaries. Its universal appeal lies in its capacity to convey profound spiritual truths and serve as a vehicle for personal and collective transformation. The essence of Om resonates with the fundamental truths that underlie the diversity of religious and cultural expressions.

Conclusion

The Om symbol in Hinduism is more than a mere graphic representation; it is a cosmic sound, a sacred vibration, and a portal to the infinite. As practitioners chant, meditate, and contemplate its meaning, they enter into a space that transcends the limitations of the material world, connecting with the primal energy that animates the universe.

The Om symbol stands as a timeless reminder of the profound truths embedded in Hindu philosophy and serves as a beacon of spiritual wisdom for those seeking inner harmony, self-realization, and a deeper understanding of the mysteries of existence.

Om Namah Shivaya ॐ

SHIVA ‘The Destroyer’ Palehorse Illustration

[megadan94]

I feel like Deadendia took a lot of the things SVTFOE failed at and did them better.

Particularly the ending where all magic is destroyed and the worlds combine. For one, no one needs magic to survive in this world, so they're not killing anyone, but they're also rewriting the timeline, so society isn't suddenly being uprooted. It's also clearly shown that the current cosmic order is inherently oppressive to demons, the planes system was designed to oppress them, and the existence of magic is linked to that. Also, with the exception of Earth and Mewni, all dimensions were permanently separated in SVTFOE, the ending didn't create unity, it caused even more division, Earth and Mewni were accidents. Deadendia gave us an ending where everyone got to be together.

Secondly, the love triangle between Norma, Badyah, and Zagan was more satisfying. Marco never really got the chance to consider Star's crush before she got with Tom, so it just felt like bad timing, unearned drama. That's not the case with Badyah, she actually turned down Norma, and could've changed her mind at any point in book 2. That made her jealousy in book 3 more interesting to watch, because it's not just bad luck, it's the consequences of a decision she regrets. She also took action on her crush, declaring her feelings once she was sure she did want to be with Norma. Zagan was also more self aware than Tom, she could see the writing on the wall, and amicably broke up with Norma after seeing them kiss.

The ending also specifically confronts the one who created and rules this system, not just some individual prejudiced person. This story even points out how that's counterproductive.