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[gradehood]

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[writingsharks12]

An Ultimate Guide To Custom Research Paper Writing Services

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[customessays]

Custom Research Paper Writing Service

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[criticallyacclaimedstranger]

You Need Only Ask [professor!Marcus Pike x librarian!reader]

Read on Ao3

Pairing: History of Art professor Marcus Pike x art library reader/you (cishet female)

Tags/Warnings: Kind of pining idiots but only one is pining, everyone is being professional but it's clear that Marcus is a pining idiot, implied coworkers to lovers.

Summary: Professor Marcus Pike is one of those cliché absent-minded professors - or so you think, but maybe there's another reason why this brilliant academic is acting a dumb fool around you?

Words: 3,534

A/N: This was inspired by an ask sent to me by @just-here-for-the-moment for a fic ask game thingy. Here's the original ask and my reply. I didn't write it exactly like that (main difference is my fic is set in modern times), but I hope y'all still like it!

”Good morning.”

Your customer service smile in place, you look over your shoulder.

”Morning, Professor. Just give me a second and I will be right with you.”

He hums, and you turn back to the bookcase where you were just about to finish re-shelving returns. Once done, you join Marcus Pike, Professor of Art History, at the desk. He’s tapping his fingers, almost impercievably, against the surface of the old solid wood desk, and you stifle a sigh. He didn’t have to wait that long.

”What can I do for you?” you ask politely. Professor Pike is never rude, but he is the typical professor type: absent-minded, a little awkward, his research always the number one priority.

“I looked for this book in the online catalog, but as I suspected, you don’t have it. It’s probably sold out, too.” He gives you a piece of paper before both his hands disappear into his pockets.

“Another inter-library loan, then?” you state, looking at the title. It’s in French, and you know immediately that your library doesn’t have it. Professor Pike is not the most computer-skilled person, so you usually double-check every book he asks for in the database, but this one you know you don’t have.

“Might have to go international for this one,” you tell him. “Canada och Europe. That’s coming out of your department’s budget, you know that.”

“I’ll make room,” he shrugs, looking towards the door, like he can’t wait to get back to the comfort of his own office. “And could you please give me more time with the last one you got for me? I need it for a bit longer.”

“I’ll contact the lending library,” you nod. “I’ll let you know.”

“Great. Thank you.”

The “Sure thing” has barely left your mouth before Pike is out the door, the sound of his steps against the stone floor quickly disappearing down the hall. You shake your head before sitting down to look up the book for him.

As you work, you once again wonder how people like Marcus Pike get jobs at all. Someone as introverted as that would never have a real shot at getting a library job, which requires people skills, patience, and the ability to stand in front of people. But when it comes to academia, it seems like all you need is credentials and a good research profile, and you’re hired. Unlike you, who had to fight tooth and nail for this position. You have Master’s degrees in art and library science, educational and language studies, job experience, and it was still almost impossible to get this job. People who have these jobs never seem to retire but just sit there, year after year, until they eventually sprout roots that fasten them to their chairs.

But you’re here now, since five years, and while Pike’s predecessor never showed his face in the library but sometimes sent you cryptical emails requests that took you half a day to decipher, it’s nice to see that the much younger professor actually frequents the university’s special arts library.

Finally locating Pike’s book in a university library in France, you quickly find the instructions for ILL’s, and send a loan request. After that, you apply for more time for Pike’s previous book, and by afternoon, you have confirmation for both books: one will be mailed out later during the day in Europe, the other has been renewed. You let Pike know through an email, before performing closing duties in the library. Your computer pings just as you’re about to turn it off, and you see that it’s a reply from Pike. Clicking it up, you see the very unlikely response:

>>Amazing, what a service. Just bill the department, I’ve got it covered. Thank you so much 😊 <<

Shaking your head in disbelief at the informal tone, you turn off the computer, clock out, and go home.

Professor Pike is back two days later, now asking for a book that’s available. When you tell him so, he clears his throat, gaze flickering away from you.

“Could you maybe show me where it is?”

“Sure.” You’re curt, because this isn’t the first time. It’s an easy enough book to find, and every item in the library is labeled, and the database even has an interactive feature where you can click on the item’s call number to open up a layout of the stacks, showing the correct shelf in red. It has freed you up a lot now that most patrons can easily find their literature themselves, but some people just want you to do everything for them.

“You know, Professor, you could maybe my start of term library tour useful,” you dare to tease him as you walk before him to the right case. “Most freshmen find it very helpful, and they can usually manage their own information retrieval after.”

“I think maybe a little touch-up course would do me good,” he replies, voice a little tight. “But I like personal service.”

You find the book, pull it out, and hand it to him.

“That’s what I’m here for,” you tell him easily. “Anything else I can do for you?”

He swallows visibly.

“No, thank you.”

He uses the self check-out this time, and leaves quickly without saying goodbye. You shake your head, and catch the eye of Mandy, a Master’s student who works on her thesis in the library almost every day.

“Strange fellow, that one, isn’t he?”

She gives you a peculiar look. “I guess so.”

One thing that you appreciate a lot about your job is the building itself. The campus was built in Collegiate Gothic style in the middle of the 19th century, and compared to the nearby city library with its white surfaces, glass walls, and modern design furniture, the much quieter arts library still seems more alive. The library houses more books than one would think when first seeing it, and it has the charming nooks and crannies that are so common for old houses.

You’re standing in one of those nooks one day; an alcove that houses folios, a cart of tall books parked next to the step stool that you’re standing on. You hear someone enter the library, shout out a “Hello!” as you usually do to let patrons know that you’re in the stacks, and receive a low answer. Mindful not to hurt your wrists, you pick up another folio from the cart, and put it back in its place.

The sound of footsteps stops at the desk, and you pick up the next book.

“Be right with you!”

The patron moves again, slowly walking towards the corner where you are, as if looking for you. You turn your head just as you see Professor Pike come around the corner of a bookcase.

“Oh,” he clears his throat. “There you are.”

“Here I am,” you nod, picking up the next book. “Almost done.”

“I got your email about the book from France. They sent it rather fast.”

“I was surprised, too,” you admit. There’s one book left, and you really should get down from the stool, move it, and get up again, but you’re lazy. You reach, getting up on your toes, just barely getting the book into place when you feel the stool slip from under you. You gasp, a thousand thoughts rushing through your head during the split second you’re in free fall, and then you land softly, not on the floor, but against a corduroy chest, strong arms holding you.

“Shit, that was close!”

You’re tongue-tied, wide-eyed with shock, heart in your throat and going a mile a minute to make up for the missed beats.

“Are you okay?”

You slowly start to realize that you’re in the arms of Marcus Pike, who caught you when you fell from the stool. And he’s still holding you.

“Yeah, I, yeah, fine, I’m good.” You babble, moving uncomfortably to let him know to let you down, which he does with the utmost care. Your legs are wobbly, and Pike keeps a hand on your waist to make sure you won’t fall.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” you now giggle, embarrassed but simultaneously exhilarated by the rush of adrenaline. “That wasn’t stupid at all, was it? I’ve been thinking about having that stool replaced, but I never got around to it, haha. I guess it takes an accident for me to get my thumb out of my a-, I mean, to get it done.”

Your cheeks are heating up, your hands are shaking as you grab the handles of the cart, kicking the accursed stool to the side.

“That was really scary, though,” Pike tells you in a low voice. “You could’ve really injured yourself.”

“Yeah, thanks, I mean, thanks for catching me.” You bite your lower lip and force yourself to look at him. “I’m so embarrassed. I should’ve been more careful.”

“Just glad I was here,” he shrugs, slowly following you as you march to the desk. “Although one could argue that had I not been here, you wouldn’t have tried to restack that heavy book without moving your stool. Sorry if I stressed you.”

“You didn’t,” you tell him lightly. “I sometimes cut corners like that. It’s fine, no harm done.”

You park the cart in its spot behind the desk, and turn to the shelf of reserved books.

“Here’s your inter-library loan. Due date four weeks from now, if you need it for longer, you know the drill.”

“I do,” he replies quietly and accepts the book from you. Holding it in one hand, he carefully opens it with the other, and thoughtfully browses through it. You sit down, flustered and still a little shaky, hoping that he’ll leave so that you can nurse your wounded pride, and maybe have a drink of water.

“It’s about these eighteenth-century art frauds in Europe – “

“I know. I read the title,” you cut him off, more curt than you meant to. Pike closes the book and nervously fingers the paper slip in it.

“You read French?”

“I even speak it.”

A smile breaks out on his face. “Of course you do.”

You stare at him, frowning as you try to understand what his deal is, and why he’s suddenly smiling like that. It’s never happened before.

And you’ve never noticed what a charming smile he has. It reveals a dimple in his right cheek that makes him look younger than he is – not that he’s old in any way, he must be around your age, somewhere between forty and fifty. The smile makes you even more shaky, and you can’t stop staring at him. He eventually notices, the smile dies down, and he lowers his eyes.

“Well, thanks,” he mumbles, turning around and walking away briskly, leaving you to stare after him, wondering what the hell happened.

Mandy comes in from her lunch break, waves a hello, then stops when she sees you.

“Is everything okay?”

You nod dismissively. “I’m fine, Mandy. I just… almost fell from a stool. But no harm done.”

She expresses her sympathies before going to the study area. You take a deep breath, and disappear into the back room for a glass of water.

There’s tittling in the stacks, but you don’t pay it any mind: it’s part of library life, especially on a campus filled with hormonal young adults. It’s not until your hear Professor Pike’s name mentioned that you stop writing on your keyboard, and strain to hear better.

“He’s the best lecturer here.”

“And he’s so fucking hot, don’t you think?”

“Cara! He’s a million years old!”

“No, he’s not, he’s like the youngest of the faculty, except for Langley, but she’s a woman.”

“Well, I’m bi, and she’s fine too.”

Shameless giggling ensues, and you have to stifle one as well.

“Wouldn’t mind doing some extra credit for Professor Pike…”

“That’s so tacky, Mindy.”

“Come on, like you haven’t thought about it.”

The girls appear from the stacks, carrying literature over to the self service check-out.

“I just think that his lectures are amazing. He can explain literally anything so that I get it. And he knows so much.”

You stare at your screen, but you’re listening to the students.

“He should lecture more, why doesn’t he have any classes?”

“Dug, because he’s a professor, he has other things to do.”

“I’d give him something to do…”

More giggling.

“I’m serious! I ended upw atching that Youtube lecture twice just because he’s so good!”

The girls borrow their books while talking, then nod good-bye to you as they leave. You nod back, then hit up Youtube, and type in Professor Marcus Pike.

You find a video of him giving a lecture on the history of art, and open it. And your jaw drops.

The man in the video is confident without being cocky, talkative, engaging, contact-seeking. He speaks clearly, even drops a couple of jokes, and he walks around the podium in the auditorium. If it wasn’t for that corduroy jacket with the leather patches at the shoulders, the one that you had enveloped around yourself last week, you wouldn’t have recognized the man.

You close the video and chew your lower lip. You always thought Pike was this nutty professor who didn’t know how to behave around people and preferred books to socializing. But the man in the video is nothing like that. So what is his problem when talking to you?

Navigating to Facebook, you search his name, finding him easily enough. He doesn’t seem to be very active, but his professional profile is listed.

His status is set to “single”, which surprises you, but you think no further of it. You click on to photos, finding only a few, most of them outdated.

“Good afternoon.”

You look up, startled at the familiar voice. Seeing Marcus Pike’s face, you close the browser window quickly.

“Sorry,” he quickly apologizes. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No worries, I was just… working.”

He clears his throat. “I’d like to return this.”

You accept the book from him, recognizing it as one of his previous ILL’s.

“Thank you.”

A couple of students come in, saying hello to both of you before disappearing into the stacks, phones in hand, library catalog probably open in their mobile browsers. Marcus looks after them, moving his weight from one foot to the other. You put the book to the side.

“Anything else I can do for you, Professor?”

He almost jumps at the sound of your voice.

“Um, no, thank you, I have to get back to work, grad student coming to see me, um, thanks, I’ll let your know if I need anything.”

He leaves the library, and you’re almost laughing. What the hell was that?

As soon as the students have found and borrowed their books, and you’re alone in the library with Mandy, she gets up and comes over to the desk. You smile your mild customer service smile at her, but she returns it with a wry grin.

“You know that he likes you right?”

You blink, not understanding. “Excuse me?”

“Professor Pike. He likes you.”

You shake your head to show her that you have no idea what she’s talking about, and she laughs.

“Oh, come on! The way he stutters and stumbles when he’s here. And he talks about you all the time, every chance he gets.”

“He what?” Your voice goes up, and you clamp your mouth shut. Mandy nods.

“He always tells us to use the library, and ask you for help. The librarian there is really competent, we’re lucky to have such a professional at our service, that sort of thing.”

“Why do you think that means he likes me?” you ask, cheeks heating up. This is stupid, this girl is half your age, and you’re talking like both of you are in middle school.

“Because he’s super confident in class, in meetings, whenever he talks to anyone, except you.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Hello!” Mandy rolls her eyes. “Earth to librarian lady! He’s like a flustered cinnamon bun whenever he’s around you – “

“Cinnamon bun?” you interrupt her, incredulously.

“Cutie patootie in old folk speech,” Mandy smirks at you, and you scoff.

“I know what a cinnamon bun is.”

“Whatever. He comes here constantly, doesn’t he? I sit here most days, and no other faculty member visits as much. He’s here practically every day, asking you the simplest questions. He’s into you.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about, Mandy,” you mumble, hands fidgeting in your lap.

“Alright, if you say so,” she smirks. “But I know what I’d do if I were you.”

Later, when she leaves the library, wishing you a good weekend, you open up the browser window again, Pike smiling charmingly at you from his profile picture. You look at it for a long time before logging out, and getting up to reshelf returns.

Friday afternoon in the library makes for slow hours. It’s usually empty – even Mandy has left – and while it gives you the opportunity to prepare for next week, there are Fridays when you’d rather just close up, if you could, and go home early.

A quarter to four, when you’re impatiently tapping your foot for closing time, Marcus Pike shows up again. Mandy’s words echo in your head, making you nervous for the first time, but you manage to suppress that, instead turning on your professional persona.

“Back so soon?” you ask him lightly

“Yeah, I need a book.” He seems to understand himself how stupid that sounded.

“You’ve come to the right place.”

He tells you the title, and you look it up.

“It’s in, call number N5198-5299,” you inform him, then looking up at his hesitant expression. “It’s in the corner over there.”

“Um, could you show me? I’m not good at this.”

“Okay.” You get up and walk around the desk. “But it’s a class that you use a lot, Professor, you should be accustomed to it by now.”

“Marcus.”

“What’s that?”

“Call me Marcus. I don’t much like titles anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

You take him to the right stacks, walking in between the heavy cases. It’s a tight squeeze, this one, and the book is located further in. You pick it out, and turn around, only to find Marcus standing right behind you.

You’ve been in this situation before, many times even. Worst times were when you worked in the city library, and creeps would crowd you between the stacks, not trying anything but coming closer than necessary.

Your heart misses a beat, but you’re not uncomfortable. Instead, you smell something familiar and comforting, something besides old paper, leather covers, and ink. It takes you a moment to realize that it’s Marcus’s cologne, the corduroy, his shampoo: earthy but fresh, a little like the forest after rain, but with an undertone of old leather armchair.

You wet your lips, and hold up the book he asked for.

“Your book.”

“Thank you.” He doesn’t take it, so you lower your hand. He clears his throat, but this time, he doesn’t look away, but straight into your eyes.

“I was wondering…”

“Yeah?” you breathe.

“There’s this classic movie festival this weekend, and I was wondering…”

“If I wanted to go with you?” you finish his sentence for him, as he takes too long for you to wait. He blinks, then smiles that sweet smile again.

“Exactly. Yes. Would you?”

“I’d like that.”

“Really?” The smile seems to broaden even more.

“Sure. Tomorrow?”

“Perfect. I can pick you up, if you want to. At six?”

“Perfect,” you echo, now smiling widely yourself. He exhales, like he’s been holding his breath this entirely time.

“Perfect.”

The desk phone rings, startling both of you. The book falls from your hand, and you look down at it, then up at Marcus.

“I need to get that.”

“Of course,” he nods. You make a little movement with your head.

“I need to get past you, Marcus?”

“Oh, yes, of course, sorry.”

He backs out from between the cases, letting you out as well. His cologne seems to rub off on your arm when you brush past him, hurrying to the desk. You answer the phone and try to focus on the person calling, take a couple of notes, and end the call just as Marcus comes walking to the desk, book in hand. You check it out for him, give him your number, and he smiles again as he thanks you. You follow him to the door so that you can close up after him.

“I’ll call,” he promises as he steps out. You nod, hand on the door handle.

“Looking forward to it.”

He raises the book as a farewell, then starts walking down the corridor. You’re about to close the door when you suddenly step out, calling his name.

“Marcus!”

He turns around immediately, and now that he’s standing with his back straight, instead of hunched over, you notice how tall and broad-shouldered he is.

“Yes?”

“For the record… you’re into me, right?”

He chuckles, his ears turning pink. “Yeah, I’m into you.”

“Just checking,” you grin. “See you tomorrow.”

[marveltrumpshate]

Want to participate in Marvel Trumps Hate, but don't know what to offer? Think outside the box!

Stumped on what to offer because you don't write fic or draw? Marvel Trumps Hate welcomes a huge variety of fanworks and fan labor (see our sign-up post), so there are different ways you can contribute. You'll be amazed by the breadth of skills, talents, knowledge, and types of creative expression found in fandom!

Here's a smorgasbord of offers that we've either had before or seen people discuss as possibilities for MTH 2024 or future years to help inspire you. What you can offer is not restricted to the list below; these are just examples to get you brainstorming about what you can auction off because trust us, even if you think you might not have something to offer, you probably do!

ART (VISUAL/ILLUSTRATIVE)

Drawings/illustrations

Single-page and multi-page comics

Pixel art

Paintings (oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor)

Mixed-media artwork on canvas

Ink-on-bristol art

Embroidery on canvas

Pour paint/spin art

Rotoscopes

Digital coloring books

AUDIOVISUAL WORKS

Fan music or filk inspired by characters, ships, or fics

Podfics

Videos (fic trailers, themed edits, vids set to songs)

Animations (making original art/animation or turning existing art into animation)

BETA SERVICES

Editing

Cheer reading

Soundboarding/planning/development work

Fact-checking

Culture-picking

Sensitivity reading

Knowledge about specific topics or experiences (e.g., identities, lifestyles, professions, interests, fields of study)

Research

CRAFTS & MERCH

Candles

Lip balms

Soaps

Stained glass/suncatcher

Scented beanbag-style sachets

Candy/chocolate/baked goods/jellies/sweets

Fic/character/ship/theme boxes (like book boxes)

Pins, magnets, patches, charms, standees, key chains, ring holders, calendars, stickers, bookmarks, temporary tattoos

Sculptures and clay figures

Ceramic mugs and other ceramic items

Apparel/wearable accessories (shirts, jackets, scarves, gloves/mittens, hats, face masks, regular masks, cowls, pajamas/onesies)

Backpacks, tote bags, itabags with custom window shapes, leather dice bags, wallets, pouches/pencil cases

Plushie animal or Tsum Tsum versions of Marvel characters

Dolls (crochet, needle felt, matte board, hand-sewn)

Embroidery hoops/wall art and cross stitch pieces

Jewelry (diamond painting, macrame, metal, crochet, wire, beads)

Woodwork/wood burning (cheese board, box/chest, USB stick, coasters, photo frame, alphabet blocks)

Glasswork

Custom Funko Pops

Paper cut light boxes

Pillow cases, quilted pillows, baby blankets, dishcloth/washcloths, potholders

Handmade leather journals

Linoleum stamps

Dog/cat/pet toys

Artbooks, paper doll books, and coloring books

Hand-dyed yarn skeins

Custom tea blends

DIGITAL (GRAPHIC DESIGN)

Gifsets

Graphics/edits

Mood boards

Photo manips

Fic covers/posters/banners

Icons and headers

Webweaving

Tumblr or website layouts

Digital calendars

Wallpapers

Custom Discord emojis

FAN LABOR & TRANSLATION

Typesetting

Bookbinding

Recipes based on characters, ships, or themes

Names, tags, and summaries for fics

Audio/sound editing and/or soundscaping for podfics

Book cover design and printing

Art/comic/fic translation

Website/game/AO3 skin coding

Fic rec lists

Fic playlists/fanmixes

Knitting/crochet patterns

Art coaching

Help with launching and organizing fan events

WRITING

Fic

Poetry

Meta posts

Social media AUs

Physical letters written by characters to the reader or between two characters

Remixes of your fic or an existing fic with the author's permission

Whether you can do something on this list or something else altogether (we're sure there are a lot of other things that you can do that we haven't thought about or seen before), we hope you'll consider signing up before the deadline: September 28, 11:59 PM ET.

[mariacallous]

In March 2007, Google’s then senior executive in charge of acquisitions, David Drummond, emailed the company’s board of directors a case for buying DoubleClick. It was an obscure software developer that helped websites sell ads. But it had about 60 percent market share and could accelerate Google’s growth while keeping rivals at bay. A “Microsoft-owned DoubleClick represents a major competitive threat,” court papers show Drummond writing.

Three weeks later, on Friday the 13th, Google announced the acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. The US Department of Justice and 17 states including California and Colorado now allege that the day marked the beginning of Google’s unchecked dominance in online ads—and all the trouble that comes with it.

The government contends that controlling DoubleClick enabled Google to corner websites into doing business with its other services. That has resulted in Google allegedly monopolizing three big links of a vital digital advertising supply chain, which funnels over $12 billion in annual revenue to websites and apps in the US alone.

It’s a big amount. But a government expert estimates in court filings that if Google were not allegedly destroying its competition illegally, those publishers would be receiving up to an additional hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Starved of that potential funding, “publishers are pushed to put more ads on their websites, to put more content behind costly paywalls, or to cease business altogether,” the government alleges. It all adds up to a subpar experience on the web for consumers, Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser says.

“Google is able to extract hiked-up costs, and those are passed on to consumers,” he alleges. “The overall outcome we want is for consumers to have more access to content supported by advertising revenue and for people who are seeking advertising not to have to pay inflated costs.”

Google disputes the accusations.

Starting today, both sides’ arguments will be put to the test in what’s expected to be a weekslong trial before US district judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia. The government wants her to find that Google has violated federal antitrust law and then issue orders that restore competition. In a best-case scenario, according to several Google critics and experts in online ads who spoke with WIRED, internet users could find themselves more pleasantly informed and entertained.

It could take years for the ad market to shake out, says Adam Heimlich, a longtime digital ad executive who’s extensively researched Google. But over time, fresh competition could lower supply chain fees and increase innovation. That would drive “better monetization of websites and better quality of websites,” says Heimlich, who now runs AI software developer Chalice Custom Algorithms.

Tim Vanderhook, CEO of ad-buying software developer Viant Technology, which both competes and partners with Google, believes that consumers would encounter a greater variety of ads, fewer creepy ads, and pages less cluttered with ads. “A substantially improved browsing experience,” he says.

Of course, all depends on the outcome of the case. Over the past year, Google lost its two other antitrust trials—concerning illegal search and mobile app store monopolies. Though the verdicts are under appeal, they’ve made the company’s critics optimistic about the ad tech trial.

Google argues that it faces fierce competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It further contends that customers benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts, and features that the government is challenging. “Google has designed a set of products that work efficiently with each other and attract a valuable customer base,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.

For years, Google publicly has maintained that its ad tech projects wouldn’t harm clients or competition. “We will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will fuel the creation of even more rich and diverse content on the internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 to US senators concerned about the DoubleClick deal’s impact on competition and privacy. US antitrust regulators at the time cleared the purchase. But at least one of them, in hindsight, has said he should have blocked it.

Deep Control

The Justice Department alleges that acquiring DoubleClick gave Google “a pool of captive publishers that now had fewer alternatives and faced substantial switching costs associated with changing to another publisher ad server.” The global market share of Google’s tool for publishers is now 91 percent, according to court papers. The company holds similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (around 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court filings say.

Google’s dominance, the government argues, has “impaired the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the ad tech tools they would prefer to use and diminished the number and quality of viable options available to them.”

The government alleges that Google staff spoke internally about how they have been earning an unfair portion of what advertisers spend on advertising, to the tune of over a third of every $1 spent in some cases.

Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be broken up into multiple independent companies, so each of its advertising services competes on its own merits without the benefit of one pumping up another. The rivals also support rules that would bar Google from preferencing its own services. “What all in the industry are looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.

If Google ad tech alternatives win more business, not everyone is so sure that the users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may shift, but the experience for investors—or in this case, internet surfers—doesn’t.

Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, users’ experiences would get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-block developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products also may cost more because companies need to not only hire additional help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an ad executive turned Syracuse University associate professor, told reporters in a recent call arranged by a Google-funded advocacy group.

But Dina Srinivasan, a former ad executive who as an antitrust scholar wrote a Stanford Technology Law Review paper on Google’s dominance, says advertisers would end up paying lower fees, and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would mark an end to the spell Google allegedly cast with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states, and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Everything advertised on social media is overpriced junk

In “Behavioral Advertising and Consumer Welfare: An Empirical Investigation,” a trio of business researchers from Carnegie Mellon and Pamplin College investigate the difference between the goods purchased through highly targeted online ads and just plain web-searches, and conclude social media ads push overpriced junk:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4398428

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/08/late-stage-sea-monkeys/#jeremys-razors

Specifically, stuff that’s pushed to you via targeted ads costs an average of 10 percent more, and it significantly more likely to come from a vendor with a poor rating from the Better Business Bureau. This may seem trivial and obvious, but it’s got profound implications for media, commercial surveillance, and the future of the internet.

Writing in the New York Times, Julia Angwin — a legendary, muckraking data journalist — breaks down those implications. Angwin builds a case study around Jeremy’s Razors, a business that advertises itself as a “woke-free” shaving solution for manly men:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/06/opinion/online-advertising-privacy-data-surveillance-consumer-quality.html

Jeremy’s Razors spends a fucking fortune on ads. According to Facebook’s Ad Library, the company spent $800,000 on FB ads in March, targeting fathers of school-age kids who like Hershey’s, ultimate fighting, hunting or Johnny Cash:

https://pluralistic.net/jeremys-targeting

Anti-woke razors are an objectively, hilariously stupid idea, but that’s not the point here. The point is that Jeremy’s has to spend $800K/month to reach its customers, which means that it either has to accept $800K less in profits, or make it up by charging more and/or skimping on quality.

Targeted advertising is incredibly expensive, and incredibly lucrative — for the ad-tech platforms that sit between creative workers and media companies on one side, and audiences on the other. In order to target ads, ad-tech companies have to collect deep, nonconsensual dossiers on every internet user, full of personal, sensitive and potentially compromising information.

The switch to targeted ads was part of the enshittification cycle, whereby companies like Facebook and Google lured in end-users by offering high-quality services — Facebook showed you the things the people you asked to hear from posted, and Google returned the best search results it could find.

Eventually, those users became locked in. Once all our friends were on Facebook, we held each other hostage, each unable to leave because the others were there. Google used its access to the capital markets to snuff out any rival search companies, spending tens of billions every year to be the default on Apple devices, for example.

Once we were locked in, the tech giants made life worse for us in order to make life better for media companies and advertisers. Facebook violated its promise to be the privacy-centric alternative to Myspace, where our data would never be harvested; it switched on mass surveillance and created cheap, accurate ad-targeting:

https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1128876?ln=en

Google fulfilled the prophecy in its founding technical document, the Pagerank paper: “advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” They, too, offered cheap, highly targeted ads:

http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

Facebook and Google weren’t just kind to advertisers — they also gave media companies and creative workers a great deal, funneling vast quantities of traffic to both. Facebook did this by cramming media content into the feeds of people who hadn’t asked to see it, displacing the friends’ posts they had asked to see. Google did it by upranking media posts in search results.

Then we came to the final stage of the enshittification cycle: having hooked both end-users and business customers, Facebook and Google withdrew the surpluses from both groups and handed them to their own shareholders. Advertising costs went up. The share of ad income paid to media companies went down. Users got more ads in their feeds and search results.

Facebook and Google illegally colluded to rig the ad-market with a program called Jedi Blue that let the companies steal from both advertisers and media companies:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/11/google-meta-jedi-blue-eu-uk-antitrust-probes/

Apple blocked Facebook’s surveillance on its mobile devices, but increased its own surveillance of Iphone and Ipad users in order to target ads to them, even when those users explicitly opted out of spying:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Today, we live in the enshittification end-times, red of tooth and claw, where media companies’ revenues are dwindling and advertisers’ costs are soaring, and the tech giants are raking in hundreds of billions, firing hundreds of thousands of workers, and pissing away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://doctorow.medium.com/mass-tech-worker-layoffs-and-the-soft-landing-1ddbb442e608

As Angwin points out, in the era before behavioral advertising, Jeremy’s might have bought an ad in Deer & Deer Hunting or another magazine that caters to he-man types who don’t want woke razors; the same is true for all products and publications. Before mass, non-consensual surveillance, ads were based on content and context, not on the reader’s prior behavior.

There’s no reason that ads today couldn’t return to that regime. Contextual ads operate without surveillance, using the same “real-time bidding” mechanism to place ads based on the content of the article and some basic parameters about the user (rough location based on IP address, time of day, device type):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#contextual-ads

Context ads perform about as well as behavioral ads — but they have a radically different power-structure. No media company will ever know as much about a given user as an ad-tech giant practicing dragnet surveillance and buying purchase, location and finance data from data-brokers. But no ad-tech giant knows as much about the context and content of an article as the media company that published it.

Context ads are, by definition, centered on the media company or creative worker whose work they appear alongside of. They are much harder for tech giants to enshittify, because enshittification requires lock-in and it’s hard to lock in a publication who knows better than anyone what they’re publishing and what it means.

We should ban surveillance advertising. Period. Companies should not be allowed to collect our data without our meaningful opt-in consent, and if that was the standard, there would be no data-collection:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/22/myob/#adtech-considered-harmful

Remember when Apple created an opt out button for tracking, more than 94 percent of users clicked it (the people who clicked “yes” to “can Facebook spy on you?” were either Facebook employees, or confused):

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

Ad-targeting enables a host of evils, like paid political disinformation. It also leads to more expensive, lower-quality goods. “A Raw Deal For Consumers,” Sumit Sharma’s new Consumer Reports paper, catalogs the many other costs imposed on Americans due to the lack of tech regulation:

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/A-Raw-Deal-for-US-Consumers_March-2023.pdf

Sharma describes the benefits that Europeans will shortly enjoy thanks to the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, from lower prices to more privacy to more choice, from cloud gaming on mobile devices to competing app stores.

However, both the EU and the US — as well as Canada and Australia — have focused their news industry legislating on misguided “link taxes,” where tech giants are required to pay license fees to link to and excerpt the news. This is an approach grounded in the mistaken idea that tech giants are stealing media companies’ content — when really, tech giants are stealing their money:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/18/news-isnt-secret/#bid-shading

Creating a new pseudocopyright to control who can discuss the news is a terrible idea, one that will make the media companies beholden to the tech giants at a time when we desperately need deep, critical reporting on the tech sector. In Canada, where Bill C-18 is the latest link tax proposal in the running to become law, we’re already seeing that conflict of interest come into play.

As Jesse Brown and Paula Simons — a veteran reporter turned senator — discuss on the latest Canadaland podcast, the Toronto Star’s sharp and well-reported critical series on the tech giants died a swift and unexplained death immediately after the Star began receiving license fees for tech users’ links and excerpts from its reporting:

https://www.canadaland.com/paula-simons-bill-c-18/

Meanwhile, in Australia, the proposed “news bargaining code” stampeded the tech giants into agreeing to enter into “voluntary” negotiations with the media companies, allowing Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp to claim the lion’s share of the money, and then conduct layoffs across its newsrooms.

While in France, the link tax depends on publishers integrating with Google Showcase, a product that makes Google more money from news content and makes news publishers more dependent on Google:

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-competition-authority-greenlights-google-pledges-over-paying-news-publishers/

A link tax only pays for so long as the tech giants remain dominant and continue to extract the massive profits that make them capable of paying the tax. But legislative action to fix the ad-tech markets, like Senator Mike Lee’s ad-tech breakup bill (cosponsored by both Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren!) would shift power to publishers, and with it, money:

https://www.lee.senate.gov/2023/3/the-america-act

With ad-tech intermediaries scooping up 50% or more of every advertising dollar, there is plenty of potential to save news without the need for a link tax. If unrigging the ad-tech market drops the platforms’ share of advertising dollars to a more reasonable 10%, then the advertisers and publishers could split the remainder, with advertisers spending 20% less and publishers netting 20% more.

Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen, shifting the market to context ads that let publishers, not platforms, call the shots. As an added bonus, the law would stop Tiktok from spying on Americans, and also end Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft’s spying to boot:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

Mandating competition in app stores — as the Europeans are poised to do — would kill Google and Apple’s 30% “app store tax” — the percentage they rake off of every transaction from every app on Android and Ios. Drop that down to the 2–5% that the credit cards charge, and every media outlet’s revenue-per-subscriber would jump by 25%.

Add to that an end-to-end rule for tech giants requiring them to deliver updates from willing receivers to willing senders, so every newsletter you subscribed to would stay out of your spam folder and every post by every media company or creator you followed would show up in your feed:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

That would make it impossible for tech giants to use the sleazy enshittification gambit of forcing creative workers and media companies to pay to “boost” their content (or pay $8/month for a blue tick) just to get it in front of the people who asked to see it:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

The point of enshittification is that it’s bad for everyone except the shareholders of tech monopolists. Jeremy’s Razors are bad, winning a 2.7 star rating out of five:

https://www.facebook.com/JeremysRazors/reviews

The company charges more for these substandard razors, and you are more likely to find out about them, because of targeted, behavioral ads. These ads starve media companies and creative workers and make social media and search results terrible.

A link tax is predicated on the idea that we need Big Tech to stay big, and to dribble a few crumbs for media companies, compromising their ability to report on their deep-pocketed beneficiaries, in a way that advantages the biggest media companies and leaves small, local and independent press in the cold.

By contrast, a privacy law, ad-tech breakups, app-store competition and end-to-end delivery would shatter the power of Big Tech and shift power to users, creative workers and media companies. These are solutions that don’t just keep working if Big Tech goes away — they actually hasten that demise! What’s more, they work just as well for big companies as they do for independents.

Whether you’re the New York Times or you’re an ex-Times reporter who’s quit your job and now crowdfunds to cover your local school board and town council meetings, shifting control and the share of income is will benefit you, whether or not Big Tech is still in the picture.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: freeimageslive.co.uk (modified) http://www.freeimageslive.co.uk/free_stock_image/using-mobile-phone-jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[Image ID: A man's hand holds a mobile phone. Its screen displays an Instagram ad. The ad has been replaced with a slice of a vintage comic book 'small ads' page.]

[your-lovely-rose]

“They’re cute” (Daki, Mukago & Nakime || Request by @cosmichorrorsarestillnicerthanme)

𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: Mature

𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Romance

➥ 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭: Fluff || Hurt/Comfort || Dark fic

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: ±9.5k || +12.1k || ±15.8k

𝐀𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭:  38 min. || 49 min. || 1h

𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: (Ume) Daki // (Lower Rank 4) Mukago // (Biwa Demon) Nakime x Human!Reader

𝐅𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐦: Kimetsu no Yaiba

⚠ 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: Minor death (suggested & mentioned), Eating people (mentioned)/dead bodies, Threats, Blood, Severe injuries on the body (not Reader), Misogyny, Desecration of a human corpse, Larvae and flies, Blood, Falling into madness, Mental problems, Muzan's goal (Spoiler for: Episode 34/Chapter 67), Presented the character's past (from "Kimetsu no Yaiba Official Fanbook: Kisatsutai Kenbunroku 2"), Forbidden Love/Mutual Pining || NOT EDITED

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: Before each story, I have included words that may cause readers difficulty. I tried to explain them in text, but if after reading something is still unclear then look there. I hope I've done good research and haven't misunderstood anything - if you have more knowledge on the subject, please correct me.

➵ “They’re cute” Part 2/2 (Nakime)

> (Ume) Daki Masterlist

> Mukago Masterlist

➻ Little dictionary:

Yūjo (遊女, lit. "Woman of pleasure") - common prostitutes, they could be found in brothels (hamirase).

Harimise (張見) - a kind of brothel, where sex workers lined up behind bars around 6 p.m. to attract potential customers.

Oiran (花魁, lit. "Leading flower" or "First flower", comes from the Japanese phrase: Oira no tokoro no nēsan (おいらの所の姉さん) which translates into "My elder sister") - is a collective term for the highest-ranking courtesans/prostitutes in Japanese. Unlike yūjo, in addition to their sexual services, they were artists and were expected to provide entertainment. They were highly skilled in the playing koto, shakuhachi, tsuzumi and shamisen (traditional Japanese instruments), igo (traditional Japanese board game), dance and poetry. They also had to learn from an early age classic Japanese, calligraphy, flower arranging (ikebana or kadō) and the tea ceremony (chadō). In addition, clients expected them to be knowledgeable in scholarly matters, and so it was essential that courtesans had the abilities to carry witty and intelligent conversation and write eloquently. Their art and fashions often set trends among the wealthy and, because of this, cultural aspects of oiran traditions continue to be preserved to this day.

Oiran dōchū (花魁道中, おいらん道中) - the impressive procession with which the oiran moved, surrounded by all the entourage and servants from their seirō. Example of oiran dōchū.

Maiko (舞妓) - is a young apprentice geisha in Kyoto. The equivalent of maiko in Tokyo is hangyoku.

Okāsan (お母さん, lit. "Mother") - that's how the courtesans called the owners of the brothels.

Seirō (青楼, "Green Houses") - refers to the yūkaku licensed pleasure quarters - specifically Yoshiwara. The place where they lived. The term seirō originated in Chinese to denote a pavilion in which a nobleman kept a mistress.

Chaya (茶屋, "Tea house") - oiran place to meet clients and work. To call an oiran, the customer must use a tea house as a mediator, but not just only ask the tea house, they had to spend a lot of money there beforehand. They had to prove that they had enough money and power to play with the oiran. Then, they had the right to call for an oiran.

Kanzashi (簪) - are hair ornaments used in traditional Japanese hairstyles. The term kanzashi refers to a wide variety of accessories, including long, rigid hairpins, barrettes, fabric flowers and fabric hair ties. // Hana-kanzashi - are ornaments usually in the shape of flowers worn by maiko. Each month is assigned a different theme.

Kusudama (薬玉) - spherical ornament made of, among others, artificial flowers or paper (e.g. origami method). Sometimes long colored ribbons or threads are attached to it from the bottom. In ancient Japan, a kusudama was a bag filled with scented substances designed to scare away evil spirits and demons, mainly during the annual "Children's Festival" (Tango no Sekku or Ayame no Hi (Iris Festival)) on May 5. Today, this decoration is used during various ceremonies, such as the opening of a new store or restaurant. Sometimes it serves as a gift. Kusudamas is considered a precursor of modular origami.

Futon (布団) - traditional japanese bedding. It consists of a mattress (shiki-buton) and a duvet (kake-buton). Futons after taking out for the night from the wall cabinet (oshiire) are laid on tatami. After they are rolled up and put in the wardrobe in the morning, you gain free space in the room for the day, which can be used for other purposes.

Tatami (畳) - is a type of mat used as a flooring material in traditional Japanese-style rooms. Because of the fact that they aren't cleaned, you cannot step on them with shoes/dirty feet.

Shōji (障子, しょうじ) - is a door, window or room divider used in traditional Japanese architecture, consisting of translucent (or transparent) sheets on a lattice frame. Shōji usually slide, but may occasionally be hung or hinged, especially in more rustic styles.

Kimono (着物, きもの, lit. "thing to wear") - is a traditional Japanese garment. The kimono is a wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn left side wrapped over right, unless the wearer is deceased. Oiran wore multiple layers of silk kimono and her outfit sometimes weighed 20-30 kg (44-66 lb).

Genre: Romance || Fluff

Word count and reading time: ±9.5k (38 min.)

⚠ Warnings for this part of the request: Minor death (suggested), Eating people (mentioned), Threats, Misogyny, Forbidden Love/Mutual Pining,

Numerous lantern lights illuminated the streets of Yoshiwara revealing to many people a new face of Tokyo - which, because of their bright red color, was often called the Red Light District.

For some, it might have been associated with big, ripe fruit on the trees or the sunset after a beautiful day, but for you, it was associated with a woman’s red lipstick.

In the air there was a strong smell of various dishes and spices that could make you dizzy, as well as brewed green tea from chaya. The night was filled with the sounds of shamisen played by geisha for their audience in okiya, where all sorts of people gathered to rest with their charms, watching them dance, but you didn’t count among them.

Walking down a street full of harimise - brothels with a view inside through the bars, where a lots of prostitutes yūjo were sitting and urging you to visit them by their beautiful looks - and some shops, your eye hung on the colorful paper windmills and various richly decorated hair ornaments exhibited at the stalls.

Since it was still February you could mostly see the hana-kanzashi depicting plum blossoms for maiko. They were meant to remind us of the imminent arrival of spring and were replaced in March into bright yellow flowers of rapeseed and daffodil, pink peonies and peach flowers, as well as multicolored, delightful butterflies, when their true counterparts bloomed on the trees.

All the ornaments were shimmered from the metals they were made of. From gold and silver for the nobles, and brass for the common people. There were kanzashi with one spool, two; in the shape of combs, and many of them had red-pink petals attached to them. From a distance, they looked so real and fragile.

There were also those with white kusudama balls in different origami patterns giving off a strong, floral scent of perfume. To them below were attached long ribbons and threads blowing freely in the wind.

For a moment, you were wondering if you should buy something for her, but you immediately remembered that you have little more just to meet her.

Besides, she had much nicer ornaments and none of them matched her beauty. She was like a rare flower.

And she’s not a child anymore, she would probably laugh at a cheap toy.

“Are you buying something or..?” asked the fat salesman, looking at you in surprise. He’d never seen anyone who look at a piece of colored paper and a stick with such a dreamful and wide smile on face.

“Um, n-no.”

Getting caught watching toys for too long with embarrassment and a slight blush, you put it back. The man just shook his head with a slight laugh.

“Ah, love!” he said aloud with understanding. “Love… it does strange things to people,” he added after a moment of reflection, turning his back to you and waving his hand, but you didn’t see it because you walked away from his booth in embarrassment.

Love?

Do you love her?

Yes, you enjoyed spending time with her and talking to her, but would you call it love?

At the very thought, your cheeks became warmer and butterflies appeared in your stomach, causing a pleasant tickling in your gut…

After a moment’s reflection, you would admit that you might like her a little more than normal.

But you know you didn’t call it love - or rather, you both wouldn’t admit it. Besides, this relationship would never stand a chance, and it’s not just because of her profession…

When you finally stood in front of the tea house affiliated with Kyogoku House, you checked your clothes to see if they looked good and you smoothed your hair, which was messy by the cool, night wind.

Thinking you looked decent, you walked into the lobby and caught the eye of all the people there. As always, you politely greeted the owner of this place sitting at a low table and two hosts from the aforementioned house, sipping tea together.

You were a little surprised to see them - normally they should be in their house and a lobbygow from the chaya would bring them your request to meet after a short time. Then they would deliver your letter to Warabihime, and she would reply by other messenger boy.

Oiran can’t contact any of their clients directly, nor can they contact her - custom didn’t allow it, so you all had to use lobbygow. It was a long process, but you didn’t regret any moment or a coin spent on it.

Also, you couldn’t meet her whenever you wanted - you had to first ask her permission (in a letter) and wait for her answer. She could always disagree. It was the oiran, who decided if they wanted to take the client, not you or anybody else.

But she’s never said no to you. And the attitude of the hosts to you after a short time from satisfaction turned into concern.

Regardless of that, with a polite smile and a bow, holding a letter asking for a meeting in both hands, you handed it to them.

So far, you’ve been her longest-lived client… and her only one - after a few meetings with you, she started automatically refusing other people who wanted to see her.

The host’s wife, a woman named Omitsu, more than once felt anxious going to the demon’s room to deliver a handful of letters, all of which would soon end up shattered on tatami.

She looked at her with irritation written on her face as if she were a disgusting insect and tilted her head slightly to the right in her characteristic manner.

It never bode well…

- - -

When Daki’s patience ran out, she threatened Omitsu, that the next thing she’d tear apart would be her guts, if she brought more letters not from you.

What happened between the two of you during those meetings? Did you put a spell on her? Or is she the one who has some evil plans for you? The owner of Kyogoku House didn’t know and was becoming more and more disturbed about it.

Not feeling right under constant stress, she ordered one of the newly arrived girls to carry the long-awaited letter from you, and the other to massage her shoulders. Warabihime only made her still worry and added her gray hair.

“I will do it, Okāsan,” offered Hinatsuru, because she was nearby and the other workers were too scared.

With a kind smile on her painted lips, she took the letter and went upstairs to the woman’s room, feeling the grateful gaze of the rest of the girls on her back. She could hear their whispers full of concern and questions like: “Will she be okay?”

She saw that something was up - she had been here for a while and had been keeping a close eye on all the Kyogoku House employees. So far, there’s nothing she could do except to not accidentally alert demon about her.

As she walked slowly through the corridors, she read the sender’s name and memorized it so she could tell Tengen if anything happened - the main Oiran was her most likely target, and it is necessary to gather as much information as possible to fight the enemy.

Who were you? One of the demons? A man helping her keep up appearances? Or did you know nothing about her true nature? Can a demon love? Was she really a demon? Or maybe a hunch confounded her?

But even she felt the terror beating from this room and the creature hiding in it. As she approached, she felt like a prey going to a predator for slaughter.

Even the most beautiful purebred cat won’t deny its nature and stop hunting mice.

She knocked and waited for a moment for an answer. Inside, she saw the beautiful Warabihime sitting by the mirror, whom she had already seen several times strolling down the hallway or looking at her from the balcony - she watched as she went with the whole long retinue of dōchū to the tea house to meet her client.

[Frist Name] [Last Name].

She always walked with her head held high and proud, as if everything around her belonged to her. Probably her position allowed her to do a lot, but in the same way, being an oiran meant limitations. Pretending to be human, too.

For Hinatsuru, one small evidence was enough. Any proof. Just enough not to report to Lord Tengen only her unconfirmed hunches.

She wished, she knew how the work for Suma and Makio was going. Maybe if she had better contact with them, she could figure something out. But if the demon noticed or suspected something, they could easily die.

Without even looking at her, Warabihime asked what she wanted while was correcting a red lipstick applied to her lower lip with her little finger. She looked perfect, just like a porcelain doll or a moon goddess. Pale skin untainted by any scar reflected the light of candles giving her a phenomenal appearance - even in incomplete makeup and without ornaments in the hair no one could deny her beauty.

“Okāsan told me to bring you this.”

Hinatsuru pulled a letter from the purple-white kimono hidden in her sleeve and waved it lightly in the air.

She saw the woman suddenly stop in her activity and focus her gaze in reflection on the rolled paper.

“Put it on the table and leave.”

She tried to pretend not to be very interested, but as soon as the paper door shōji closed behind the new oiran, Daki was next to the letter in a second. The rush of air dropped several layers of kimono, ruining the outfit she had just worn, but she didn’t care. Up close, your scent was even more intense, filling her lungs. It was like an aphrodisiac to her.

“Why are you so excited?” Gyutaro asked, scratching his cheek and standing over his younger sister.

He stared on her with letter in hand with a deep frown on his face, not understanding her. He recognized your handwriting, and while it was clear that you were trying to write nicely, it didn’t hide your unskilled hand and your lack of talent for calligraphy.

He had felt a change in the girl for some time and could see how she reacted to the very mention about [Last Name].

When other women even mentioned your name, she’d instinctively keep an ear out to catch as much of the conversation as possible or she’d stand nearby to listen for a while, although when he asked, she’d always deny it.

He wasn’t sure whether he should be happy she found a new toy or worry more. Ever since she started meeting you, she’s become… softer.

Messy.

Defenceless.

He would even dare to say dreamy. Her thoughts wandered unconsciously all the time and were always focused only on you. You were the culmination of her every thought. What did you do? How did you feel? Have you had a rough day? Are you going to meet her today? Is… is there anyone else?

She was no longer thinking about her previous priorities or gaining strength. It began to irritate him and frustrate him. So much, so that to get away from her thoughts of you, he began to leave her body more often. He couldn’t bear to see your smiling face engraved on her mind like a burn scar.

Daki, unaware of how great his dislike for you was, only turned her head to her brother, looking at him with joy hidden in green irises and a broad, but sincere and kind smile - he asked nothing more.

• • •

Did you know her brother? Yes, although at first he was a passive observer through Daki’s eyes for most of your meetings.

Personally, he thought his sister deserved someone better, 'cause you were really average-looking. He wouldn’t say you were ugly like him or above average beautiful like one person with colorful, rainbow eyes…

But he’d still judge you as a mediocre, who doesn’t stand out in the crowd. You were just average. Ordinary. If he walked past you, it’s very likely he wouldn’t normally noticed or pay attention to you.

That’s why he wasn’t annoyed by your looks, but he was jealous of your talk. You talked freely to his sister and often made her laugh. You’ve probably misled more than one girl with that kind of talk.

The thought provoked an anger that even Daki felt. She silenced him in her thoughts and tried to pretend that everything was all right, but she felt under her skin how her brother’s emotions filled her and how they crawled under her skin like little worms spreading all over her body. His anger was like an unquenchable fire, and he made her feel hot. Soon after, she felt the sweat run down her exposed neck and asked you to open the window.

The cool air from the streets of Yoshiwara was like a deliverance to her, though it didn’t put out the fire inside. She didn’t understand him. Where did this anger suddenly come from in him?

To calm him, she grabbed her hand and squeezed the garment more tightly with the other. That didn’t help. She could barely contain her own trembling and keep a cheerful smile on her face, although she was also beginning to get angry.

But her anger wasn’t directed at you. It was directed at him.

Oh, how much she’d want him to sleep through that meeting with you, like he used to.

Fearing that something would happen to you, she ended the meeting sooner than she wanted and slowly returned to Kyogoku House. People watched her colourful procession of many, both male and female employees from her seirō, but she was the only one who stole everyone’s attention - she was like a diamond. Beautiful flower among weeds and grasses. Although she usually liked the attention she received, today it was unbearably annoying to her.

Her perfectly smooth forehead was flawed by the folds created by her tightly furrowed thin eyebrows.

She tried not to step out of her role and moved with a slow dance step towards her present place of residence, although she could easily get there within seconds even on her black high-soled geta.

After she returned to her seirō and locked in her room, they even quarreled over it all. Very seriously and rough. Although it took place without much damage to the furniture, several other girls said they heard an unknown male voice from her room. Some thought it was just her throat torn from Warabihime’s (no one knew her name except her brother and later you too) screams and it was still her voice, other say that she was insane or possessed by evil spirits.

To avoid do something he might regret later, Gyutaro went outside while the night was still young.

He wandered through side and dark streets killing drunks and couples, looking for some privacy to pick on them and release the accumulated negative emotions, but nothing could improve his mood.

Anger flowed through his veins under his skin, triggering an increasingly strong desire to scratch himself, and he gave in to it (not that he resisted much). He do it so hard that blood started dripping down his forehead and clavicle - he didn’t care about it because he’d regenerate in no time.

Then among the sounds of people walking in the streets, the roar of machines, and the sound of his rough skin torn by his black fingernails, he heard your voice. He looked out of the alley with curiosity and saw you walking in the company of a black-haired man.

You talked to him about something gesticulating vigorously, although the conversation itself didn’t interest him. Seeing your movements and hearing the annoying voice, an idea popped into his head - if you give him reason by which you could make his sister sad, he’ll kill you.

The thought brought a wide, menacing smile to his face, revealing sharp teeth and capable of shivering the body of more than one experienced Demon Slayer.

He knew Daki would be angry, but you were the reason for their argument and his sour mood right now. He felt like with your disappearance, so would his current problems.

The rest of the night he followed you jumping on the rooftops of buildings and listening to what you were talking about - despite his dislike for you, he even laughed a few times at your remarks and comments. He also found out that the man in the brown kimono and tied hair is your close friend Kaito.

• • •

It’s been a few days since he started following you and got to know you better - he already knew how you make a living and what your routine looks like. During the day he hid from the sun in a nearby house (whose owners suddenly disappeared under unexplained circumstances) and waited for dark to fall, when he could again follow you like a watchdog.

He didn’t even notice when all the hatred for you burned out inside him like an old bonfire, leaving nothing but smoking residue.

He was no longer actively looking for faults in you, and followed you more out of habit and curiosity. But he still had mixed feelings for you - maybe not as negative as at first.

Although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone (even to himself).

Your friend would show up at your place sometimes with a carriage full of stuff, and sometimes you’d go out with him for drinks at a cheap bar nearby. It was a good opportunity to see what you thought of his sister.

Was she just one of many women for you to play with? Have you been seeing anyone besides her? Did you really respect her? What are you saying about her behind her back?

Thoughts like this popped into his head, but he wasn’t worried about hearing something bad from you about her.

But the words of a drunk are the thoughts of a sober, and with that thought he put his ears to hear you better, when your friend dragged you home. He hasn’t drink to much, because of the experience he’s had with you.

“Ahh, I want to go to Warabihime!” You were whining and trying to get away from your friend. It was a poor attempt, but it was difficult for the demon to judge whether it was alcohol or you were always so weak.

“You’ve been here last time and you don’t have money to meet now. Besides, you have to get permission first,” the black-haired man admonished you, tired of your drunken self.

“No, I wanna now! Let me goooo.”

“If you want to go to prostitutes go to some cheaper yūjo. There are a lot of them in harimise. No one will even know.”

Kaito casually offered knowing the rules of the pleasure district - after all, he used their services not so long time ago.

If oiran chose you as her client after three (very expensive) meetings, during which you tried to convince her that you were worthy of her, you couldn’t use the services of other women. Especially some cheap prostitute or some other oiran - it would be an insult to her, and although you know perfectly well that she would probably never know about it, you couldn’t look her in the face afterwards.

“No, you don’t understand, I can’t. I want to go to Warabihime!”

You still whined like a baby, but no one paid attention. You’ve already moved far away from the Entertainment District. You were surrounded only by low family houses and dark streets lit only by the light of a full moon watching you silently from above. He wasn’t the only one, although the other observer showed more interest, hiding yourself in the shadow.

“Is she really that good?” asked older man without even looking at you and suddenly got hit on the head by you.

The hit wasn’t strong, but it was painful enough that he suddenly let you go and you fell flat to the ground. The scene surprised Gyutaro so much that he stopped breathing, and he might even laugh, if he wasn’t shock of your reaction.

“What was that?!” Kaito asked, screaming in anger.

If it wasn’t for the sake circulating in your veins and spinning in your head, you could see the veins coming out of his forehead and his tightly clenched fists tremble. Your friend hated being insulted. Even as a joke, and now you’re overreacting.

“What was that supposed to be? What’s gotten into you? Are you… A-ah,” he said after a moment understanding and laughed unexpectedly. He didn’t expect that from you. Especially from you.

Yes, he was still angry, but he knew what oiran and other women of her type were like - they said many beautiful words and promised even more just to keep a well-paid client. Their living piggy banks. And you’ve obviously fallen for it more than he thought.

Not long ago he had been dating one, but when the first enchantment had passed he saw how much he had been deceived and trifled. No one has ever humiliated and ridiculed him like that woman had.

To this day, he can still smell her perfume reminiscent of peaches and kept the letters he couldn’t burn. He tried not to get drunk because of you, to walk you home safely, although he would love to do it.

He’d like to keep his mind off the time he was seeing her. To those brightly colored and sunny times with sweet feelings like her lips, and yet… fake.

He would like to forget her unique hair color, looking like the sun and and the deep black of the night at the same time. Throw out a strand of golden curls from her bangs. Forget her loud laugh and her sometimes out of control temperament, which he loved so much. Forget about these light brown eyes, which never looked at him with affection.

Every gesture she made was taught by years of practice, and every sweet word devoid of feeling - she was like an empty porcelain doll, and he found out too late. He always thought she was thinking about someone else, when she was with him.

He learned that she was playing with him by chance, when he heard another drunk man telling about his oiran’s great love for him and showing her letters for proof. Kaito would always recognize the scent of her perfume and her writing style.

However, he hoped it was a mistake and went to Ogimoto House to listen to other women’s gossip. All he had to do was stand by the window and he could have found out everything. The sound of their laughter and mockery directed at him hurt him. Those kind night ladies voices said such bad things about him that he just wanted to curl up and die in shame.

From that day on, he never returned to tea house.

But sometimes he stood near her balcony, when unconsciously his legs led him again towards Ogimoto House, and he would looking with longing and chest pain.

Against his will, he waited for her to see her feisty face with sharp features and small cute nose or silky hair again.

He saw a black crow come to her every now and then, and she’d pick up a letter attached to its leg. She then unfolded the red kimono and hid a piece of paper under it - he could only guess how close it was to her heart and who her lover was…

Sometimes, however, it was she who secretly sent the letter, plunging Kaito even more into dark despair.

Was he angry? Of course, he was. Even mad, but he couldn’t stop loving Makio either.

“All right, it’s fine,” he helped you get up and cleared your clothes. He understood what a wonderful feeling it was to love and be loved, but some of the flowers that grew from the seeds of that love were… poisonous. “Come home and get some sleep.”

Kaito helped you get undressed and put you in a futon. Your grey kimono (not so official, worn only because you didn’t mind destroying or staining it) he cleaned out the sand and dust of the street. The man decided open the window for you, so you could sleep better and the air in the room wouldn’t get stale from your stinking breath.

He was your good friend, but he treated you like you were his younger sibling (although you two were almost the same age). He was also your business partner - he would bring in goods from the far reaches of Japan, and you would sell it on the busy streets.

When Kaito left you had a strange dream - you dreamed that a skinny, grotesque figure stood over you like one of worst nightmares.

His morbidly yellow eyes stared straight at you through a veil of fat, dark green hair, piercing you through like daggers.

Even though you were tucked under a duvet and covered with a blanket to keep you warm, you felt like you were instantly getting cold - probably through an open window (through which the stranger must have entered) illuminating his monstrous face.

He looked like Death or a being closely related to it - did he come for your soul? Maybe he was just a seriously ill homeless man looking for shelter on a cold night?

The stranger was looking at you with a mysterious grin on his face like he wasn’t satisfied with something and was wondering about something at the same time. You felt like a disgusting insect under his judgmental gaze. The man scratched himself on the gray skin on his cheek, causing a rough chill on your back.

Scratch, scratch, scratch echoed across the room when you looked at each other in silence.

For a moment, the thought crossed your drunken mind, that you might be able to fall asleep when your eyelids became too heavy to keep them open, but then the he spoke in a hoarse voice.

“You annoy and irritate me,” his voice was loud in the quiet room like the sound of a bell. “But for some reason I can’t hate you.”

The gray creature leaned over you so that your noses almost touched.

The strands of his bangs tickled your forehead and a piece of loose material hanging around his neck fell on your covered chest. You could smell his bad breath stinking like rotten flesh and blood.

“But if you hurt my sister, I’ll kill you.”

The threatening words sounded like a promise he was determined to keep. Although you had no idea how you’d know his sister.

Still, you picked up something in his voice that made you think he didn’t want to do it. As a trader, you had to be able to read your customers, and that’s why you knew who wanted what, when they were hiding something and when they were honest with you.

That’s why you knew Warabihime was completely honest with you about her behavior, although sometimes she seems to want to show you more than she can. Something keeps her from telling you about her worry, that makes her seem depressed sometimes and she masks it with a gentle smile.

You never asked about that because you didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere and lead to unpleasant situations between you two.

After the man’s words, you were able to sleep. You weren’t sure if it was the alcohol circulating in your body or the fear helped you, but when you woke up next day, you almost forgot the night guest. A slight throbbing of your head in the morning and a dry mouth only helped you remember what you were doing early in the evening with Kaito. You remembered the rest when you sat on the futon and saw a huddled figure in the corner of the room.

He squatted with his elbows on his thighs and his fingers touching the floor between his legs. He was so crooked that just looking at him made your back hurt. You didn’t believe he was comfortable like that. You regretted that only piece of his wardrobe was baggy navy trousers and red pieces of fabric loosely tied around his shoulders - seeing his extremely skinny body and morbidly gray-green skin, you had another headache again and you were getting nauseous, which you somehow stopped with a stone face.

The creature looked at you with boredom as if you were an unexpected and even more unwanted guest than the other way around - he didn’t budge or even blink like a grotesque sculpture.

He reminded you of Kaito’s stories of horrible, ugly, stone figures placed on the rooftops of many temples and cathedrals in faraway lands that he’d heard from other people - whether it’s tourists or foreign traders. They called them chimeras or gargoyles, depending on their function.

Was he a product of your mind as a sign to stop drinking?

“Are you finally get up?”

He asked, interrupting the silence and tilting his head slightly in a way familiar to you, but all you could do was nod your head and issue from a clenched throat quietly “Uh”.

You noticed that the window was closed now by wooden shutters and he was sitting under the wall adjacent to it as far away from it as possible.

“Don’t you have work today?”

You swallowed your saliva and nodded your head again. Feeling like an unwanted pest in your own home, you got up and folded the sheets. You put it on the other side of the room (under the window) and moved into the kitchen feeling behind you the watchful gaze of the bulging eyes and the menacing aura of your guest.

You entered the kitchen (the largest room in the house), where you had a low table and a stone stove, but you didn’t use it. An iron kettle for boiling water you set over a small fire. You remember when you dug a hole by yourself and then you covered it with bricks for safety. You liked to use it.

When you looked back, you saw a caricature of a man standing at the entrance to the room, still hidden in the shadows. He watched you from semi closed eyelids with boredom.

Does he have a skin condition? Can the sun hurt him? Is he afraid? Or maybe, like a vampire, you have to invite him?

A distant memory flashed through your head - how, as a little kid, you overheard a conversation among adults about bloodthirsty creatures turning to dust while they were standing in the sunlight. At that time they told you to leave then so as not to scare you, but curiosity was stronger.

Why do you suddenly remember that after all these years?

You shook your head and closed the shutters. To make sure the wind wouldn’t open them, you pulled the metal lock too for safety.

The room was semi-darkness.

Why did you do that?

Just to avoid a worse headache, and he decided to take advantage of it by walking into the kitchen.

Close up, when his position didn’t hide too much from you so you could see how bad he was - appearing rough and sickly skin was marked by numerous black marks, and the abdomen was practically concave. There were also bony hips protruding from behind the his material trousers, and you could describe him as a living skeleton, although he had heavily scratched muscle tissue gathered around his shoulders.

You placed two small clay tea cups on the table (remembering that you still had some medicinal herbs left for a hangover) and caused a mischievous smile on your comrade’s face as if you had done something stupid.

Yet he sat beside you at the table with his legs crossed and watched in silence as you ate a piece of dry meat with buttered bread. You weren’t sure how you were able to swallow when his constant gaze on you made your throat clenched itself. He didn’t even blink.

You paid him back with the same, but you couldn’t stand it for a long time and you started looking into the space above him. When you looked at him, you felt some kind of regret that made you offer him a piece of meat in your hand.

With this you caused him a loud burst of laughter, from which you jumped up in your seat. You amused him so much that he closed his eyelids and covered his mouth full of sharp yellow teeth with one hand, and he started hitting his knee with the other.

You didn’t know what was funny about it, so you just sat in front of him with a disconcerting face and with your hand still out holding a piece of meat pointing at him, but now you felt like an animal who had done a trick.

Gyutaro amused the absurdity of the situation and this irony, as you, a human - practically defenseless against him and unaware of his initial intentions (he still judging you) offer him, the demon, who has killed hundreds of people, a piece of food. If he was hungry, you’d be the first course on his menu.

When he calmed down a little, the broad smile still didn’t come off his face revealing his big teeth and made small wrinkles near his eyes showing how cheerful he was now.

You had a shiver for a moment, but you decided not to show it. If he isn’t a vision of your sleepy mind induced by alcohol, then it was better not to provoke him and didn’t let him know you’re afraid of him.

The stranger, feeling comfortable enough with you, lay down on the floor on his left side and resting his head on his fists, watched your morning routine without moving.

When you went to the other room to pick up some clothes (your house had only three rooms, one of which was a storage room) he just turned his head towards you and again returning to his previous, bored posture.

Even though he wasn’t physically moving, his eyes followed you, tracking your every move.

Then you also had to set up your wooden stall and load the goods on it. Unfortunately, your mare died a few months ago and you had to pull the carriage on wheels to the nearest town. If it weren’t for your expensive encounters with Warabihime, you could probably buy another horse sooner…

Actually, you were planning on taking the day off, but your unexpected visitor made you not want to stay home.

When you came back late in the evening, the only sign of him was the untouched clay cup of cold tea that you put in front of him.

For a moment, you really believed it was just a hallucination, but he came back after a few days.

• • •

You came home again at night after another day’s work in a remote city and he was already waiting for you inside. When you closed the door behind you, cutting yourself off from the sound of crickets in the nearby fields, you heard a quiet, characteristic for him scratch, scratch, scratch carring over a small building. You didn’t have time to escape to the street because he showed up right next to you.

There were several deep wounds on the right side of his face caused by his nervous scratching. Seeing you seemed to upset him even more because his movements got even more intense.

“Ne, ne, where have you been? Why don’t you come to her?”

Completely surprised by his sudden appearance, you took your breath away and all you could do was just stupidly open and close your mouth like a fish pulled out of the water. It was probably the first time, when you didn’t know what to say.

“Daki is impatient. She’s been waiting long enough for you.”

The man said that with a grudge against you. He was mad at you for not trying harder and making his pretty sister angry.

“Who… Who is Daki?”

You only managed to mouthed through a clenched throat as the monster in your kitchen continued to scratch nervously. He paused for a moment, reminding himself that you didn’t know everything yet, so he just said:

“Warabihime.”

Her name made your heart beat a little faster and you started to wonder how much you really know about her? Why did he call her Daki? How much does she have to do with him and who is he?

But before you could ask him anything, he threw you on his shoulder. Afraid he would drop you (or roll over with you), you propped on his bony back, but he had a surprisingly strong grip for someone looking so hungry.

Holding you with one hand, he went out in front of your house, jumped high and landed on the roof of a nearby building. It happened so fast that you only felt a sudden rush of cold air and could see your wooden geta fall down where you were just now.

Surprised and even more frightened, you clung tighter to a man, who seemed to mock your fear. You could have sworn that for a brief moment before he ran on the rooftops toward the bright Yoshiwara District you could see a smile on his face.

The fact that he only held you with one hand didn’t help you calm down at all.

A few minutes later, you were facing your black-haired oiran at Kyogoku House. It was the first time you had been in her seirō - you had always only met in tea house, but you didn’t have a nerve now to look around the room.

She sat in front of you proudly like a princess on a tatami dressed in a beautiful, silk, white kimono with a broad smile on her painted lips and a joy dancing in her bright eyes. She seemed even more radiant with affection, when she saw you.

Unusually, she was dressed more skimpily than usual - when her clothes opened you saw that instead of many other colorful layers of attire she was wearing only pink and black, lace panties and a wide obi of a similar color in a floral pattern tied around her slim belly. Her breasts were covered only by two straps of black material held by the belt, and her long, slender legs were dressed in stockings to match her underwear.

The man who brought you here unceremoniously dropped you off his shoulder on the floor and looked at you as if you were his new problem.

You jumped with your gaze from a figure standing above you to a woman sitting nearby without knowing what to do or why they brought you here.

Finally, the green-skinned man turned on his heel and walked toward the window you just came through, saying:

“I think you two have a little talk to do.”

And he jumped outside. He expected you to be too embarrassed to talk to Daki when he was around (although he was there all the time during your previous meetings, not that you knew about it) and he wanted her to explain this all to you.

You certainly had a ton of questions, and whether you survive afterwards will depend only on you.

Gyutaro crouched over the open window listening attentively to every word. His hand instinctively found its way to his skinny clavicle and began to unconsciously scratch it to relieve the stress.

After a long and, it would seem, difficult conversation for both of you, there was finally a deaf silence. He wondered for a moment if she killed you and if he could come back now. Then you spoke again. You were insecure and nervous - he could tell from your voice, but you surprised him again.

You wanted to try and keep seeing her. Despite knowing they’re both bloodthirsty demons eating your kind.

Gyutaro couldn’t take much time to think about your decision because he saw the black ink sky slowly change to a bright blue and red-orange flashes of the sun appear on the horizon, reminiscent of lanterns hanging in the Entertainment District.

Suddenly interrupting for you two, he went inside and kidnapped you again (despite his sister’s protests) jumping out with you to the street - he didn’t have much time and because you lost your shoes earlier, he couldn’t just leave you there. He knew Daki would be even more upset with him.

- - -

You were at the entrance of your house in just a few minutes. He stopped on the roof and grabbed you tight under the armpits. Your [Hair Color] hair was blowing in every possible direction by the wind and your head was spinning slightly like you were drunk again.

He bowed his head slightly and the orange sky looked like hellish flames behind him. He looked at you from behind his black-green hair, narrowing his menacingly yellow eyes.

“Do you have any idea what will happen if you ever cheat on her?”

Already less intimidated by his appearance, you nodded and said loudly, “You’re going to kill me!” and he slightly tilted his head as if you were irritating his ears.

“At least you’re smart.”

After these words, he let you fall on the gravel road outside your door. You moaned from the pain of a beaten ass, but you didn’t break anything - fortunately the height was too low for that.

Gyutaro watched for a moment as you lay before he disappeared behind the edge of the roof and rushed back to Kyogoku House. You didn’t know why he didn’t stay with you if he’d been there before… unless he was bothered by being with you all day.

Before any of your neighbors could see you, you got up with difficulty and took the geta that had been left on the street. Maybe someday you’ll find another…

You looked over the buildings thinking you’d see a big dark figure running over them, but he was gone, and you still had in your head nervous voice Warabi– … No, it’s Daki.

She told you her real name and what she was. She told you about her older brother and their history. She didn’t plan to hide anything from you from now on and exposed herself to you more than to anyone else.

Many had seen her attractive, firm body hidden under many layers of silk, but no one had yet known her heart.

Could you ignore something like that?

• • •

And you tried to come more often anyway. You couldn’t break your routine, but sometimes she was so impatient that she would even give you money, so you could get there early. Of course, it would have been easier if she intimidated the homeowners, Omitsu and her husband into letting you meet whenever you wanted, but you forbade her.

You could understand eating people, you would be a hypocrite to condemn her for eating the only food she could when you ate beef, veal, chicken and fish, when you were hungry. So that you could live on your own, you ate the flesh of other beings like many other species, and the fact that demons could only eat human was not her fault.

But you couldn’t tolerate, much less accept, terrorizing others so that only for you could meet. You could never accept senseless bloodshed or hurting and scaring others.

Your first face-to-face meeting was two weeks later, and it was the first time you were with all two of them. Gyutaro was ready to go out and hide somewhere not to disturb you, but you stopped him. You didn’t feel embarrassed or disgusted by him, although when you first saw him, he terrified you.

“Huh?” he murmured and his hand raised to scratch his neck. He looked at you with a mixture of surprise and amazement, and Daki felt a pleasant warmth pouring into her interior. So far, only two people have been kind to her brother.

If it wasn’t for her full makeup, you might see her cheeks blushing with delight. She slightly opened her lips in surprise, and her eyes glazed in the light of candles - she looked like a child at the sight of an unexpected, dream gift.

The man looked at his sister to see if she was okay with it and, not seeing any objection, sat down, but still keeping his distance. As time went on, he began to sit closer and closer to you.

You didn’t always just talk - sometimes Daki played koto or shamisen, that already were in the tea house or you played a board game Go.

• • •

Gyutaro finally fully understood why she was so angry when he came back from his long absence smelling like blood and you.

At first she was just angry with him for leaving her alone and even tried to look for him (without success), but when she smelled your strong smell from him she feared the worst. This led to another fight, and this time she didn’t pay attention to the furniture or the appearance of pretending to be a human being.

Frightened Omitsu told all the girls to stay away from her room hearing the sound of broken wood and her screams.

Hinatsuru then became more suspicious of the demon’s identity, but she was unable to send Kasugai crow to Tengen with her suspicions. She had to wait for her, and due to the increased demon activity in the city, she might have been caught. It wouldn’t be hard for a strong demon to kill a bird and then her.

She couldn’t have made a mistake. And she needed a real proof so she wouldn’t accidentally bewray herself by pointing out the wrong person.

• • •

Honestly, you were doing pretty good right now. Your insistence on stil making appearances all the time irritated Daki, who, if she could, would see you every day. Her brother supported you, although on the other hand, he hated saying no to his sister.

However, they both noticed that someone was watching their every move, and not only at Kyogoku House, so they had to continue the farce, at least until they got rid of all the pests.

But back to the present…

After giving the letter of request, the man (the owner of the seirō and Omitsu’s husband, whose name you couldn’t remember) told you that Warabihime was already waiting for you on the floor of the tea house.

Kyogoku House was the residence of oiran, kamuro, shinzou, other workers and owners couples - the women never brought their clients there and specifically went only to the chaya associated with their houses.

Surprised by her impatience, you let him lead you to the room. The little girls (probably kamuro, supporter housekeepers who cleaned and learned the artistic part of oiran work) looked at you with curiosity as always, not knowing how you could want to meet someone as cruel as Warabihime.

Out of politeness, you smiled warmly at them and waved, recognizing a few faces. Behind them, you saw a woman with bright purple eyes, coming out of one of the rooms. Her kimono fit her violet eyes like metal clips grafted into her fantastically arranged long hair. Under her left eye, you saw a tiny beauty mark through the white make-up that adds charm to her.

You thought maybe Daki mentioned about her once or two - she didn’t like her and complained about her a lot. What did she do to her? She never said it, although it was very likely nothing. The demon sometimes acts like a spoiled child around you when she’s completely done pretending.

“So, [Last Name]” the old man began as he stood with you in front of the thin shōji door. “Why are you with Warabihime? What do you like so much about her?”

You answered without hesitation.

“She’s cute.”

And you heard a loud man’s laugh coming out from behind the door. Gyutaro laughed uncontrollably, making the man next to you pale and almost fall over. At the last minute, you grabbed him by the arm and didn’t let him.

He nervously wiped his forehead with a cloth handkerchief and, saying he could handle it now and ran to the frist floor to be as far away from the monster and this cursed room as possible.

When you went inside, you saw the green-skinned demon shaking all over, holding his belly and laughing, covering his mouth with his other hand, trying to be quiet (which he didn’t do very well). His yellow eyes narrowed and took the shape of crescent moon. You thought you saw a tear drops out of one of them.

Daki tried to silence him by standing over him with wrinkled eyebrows, repeating over and over “Shhhh, shhhh,” loudly with her finger pressed against her narrow lips, but it didn’t help. Despite the white foundation all over her face and neck (part of her oiran makeup), you could see her ears turning deep red.

Gyutaro’s amusement also came to you, and after a while you also began to laugh, enjoying the next meeting with the demonic siblings.

As always, you spent a few hours together. Daki was playing shamisen, and you and her brother were playing Go while you were talking. You could have sworn that the whole meeting, the black-haired girl was strangely thoughtful. When you caught her looking at you, she looked away fast and her ears turned red again.

• • •

After all, just as you were leaving, you were suddenly dragged by the shoulder into a dark room. It was one of the new oiran. What did Daki say her name was? Hinatsuru? Maybe a little different.

“Um, yes?”

You asked without knowing what she might want from you. Her eyebrows wrinkled with concern and her lips slightly extended as if she was still hesitating about what she was doing. She kept holding you under your arm, squeezing your clothes tighter.

She had thin and slender fingers, but her grip wasn’t delicate. If you didn’t know, you’d think you were caught by a hard-working young man.

“I–, I need help,” she whispered finally looking into your eyes. She looked desperate. “It’s important and only you can help me.”

“Excuse me?”

There was still a deep horror on her face, worrying you a little bit and making you wonder how you could help her? You had never spoken until now. But despite this, Hinatsuru knew you well - the girls at Kyogoku House talking about you, because you were probably the longest customer of cold Warabihime and now the only one.

She didn’t want to imply anything, but everything suggested that others might be dead, and she didn’t want anything to happen to you. Also, you must have gotten to know the cruel oiran very well by that time and you could help her in her mission.

She now had limited movements and lost contact with the other two women. She tried to send a message to Tengen some time ago by mices, but he still didn’t respond. Maybe the demon found out.

“Please come here tomorrow and meet me. You have to talk to me,” she said as quietly as before.

You were about to ask why, but when you saw the feelings in her eyes... You just nodded. It must have been something important if she insisted, and there was a reason why she couldn’t talk about it now.

Was she afraid of someone?

The first thing that came to your mind was Daki, but she promised you no more terrorizing the inhabitants of her seirō. Maybe you’re thinking too much about her secret and that’s why she’s the one that comes to mind. Maybe it’s not about her at all…

“And take it.”

She handed you a object wrapped in a purple fabric. You couldn’t tell from only the touch what it was, so you hid it smoothly behind your kimono and nodded again.

Now she let you go. And yet you walked out of there with a bad feeling and a heavy burden on your shoulders.

- - -

Hinatsuru breathed a sigh of relief when you said yes. She was hoping to save you. She waited a moment before leaving the room herself and the first thing she saw, was Warabihime’s face contorted in a grimace of anger.

Her head was slightly tilted to the right and she frown to form a wrinkle on her smooth forehead.

“What are you doing?” she asked through clenched teeth.

Suddenly, cold sweat sweated all over the woman and she was covered with goose bumps. Her whole body was screaming, “RUN, FIGHT!” but she couldn’t move a single limb. It was hard even for her to breathe.

“N-nothing.”

The oiran leaned dangerously close, so Hinatsuru could easily smell her delicate sakura perfume and she whispered into her ear.

“So don’t touch what’s not yours, or you’ll lose your hands.”

Daki stepped away from her, threateningly staring her in the eyes for a moment, and left to return to Kyogoku House. She still could her talking as she walked away:

“I heard some girls disappeared from Tokito House recently. Take care of yourself.”

Hinatsuru felt she had to get out of here. She instinctively squeezed a small dose of poison hidden in the sleeve of the kimono she took with her just in case to simulate illness.

Yes, it’s time to bring in Uzui.

➻ Little dictionary:

Kimono (着物, きもの, lit. "thing to wear") - is a traditional Japanese garment. The kimono is a wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn left side wrapped over right, unless the wearer is deceased.

Futon (布団) - traditional japanese bedding. It consists of a mattress (shiki-buton) and a duvet (kake-buton). Futons after taking out for the night from the wall cabinet (oshiire) are laid on tatami. After they are rolled up and put in the wardrobe in the morning, you gain free space in the room for the day, which can be used for other purposes.

Zataku (座卓) - is the generic term for this kind of low table.

Onigiri (御握り) - is made of rice formed into a triangular or oval shape, sometimes wrapped in a nori (Japanese name for different species of edible seaweed). This dish is stuffed with, among others, marinated Japanese apricot, roe, shrimp, fish, etc. The stuffing is usually salty to protect the rice from spoilage.

Gyūdon (牛丼, Japanese Beef Rice Bowl) - is one of the most popular and inexpensive fast food dishes in Japan. Its name can be literally translated to beef bowl.

Ikejime (活け締め) - It is a technique of killing fish neutralizing the nervous system of a live animal from bleeding. This ancient practice, of Japanese origin, has the effect of reducing stress and pain in fish. His muscles are not as tight, his flesh holds better, and his taste qualities are better compared to the usual way of strangulation.

Genre: Romance || Hurt/Comfort

Word count and reading time: +12.1k (49 min.)

⚠ Warnings for this part of the request: Minor death, Eating dead body, Severe injuries (not Reader), Forbidden Love/Mutual Pining,

Mukago’s life as a member of Twelve Kizuki was… stressful. She thought if she could join a group of the most powerful demons in the world, it would be easier for her, but it’s just getting harder.

She felt the constant pressure exerted by Muzan, the Upper Ranks looked down on her with superiority and contempt, and she was constantly afraid to maintain her position as the Lower Four.

Rui, Lower Five, was strong and probably if he wasn’t interested in climbing the ranks of Twelve Kizuki he could easily beat her - she could feel it just by standing near him during meetings.

He gave off a dense and suffocating aura showing how many people he had eaten and illustrating how ruthless and insensitive he was.

Apparently, he didn’t spare even the members of his “family”, which Kibutsuji kindly allowed him to create. Its size changed very quickly and often - someone joined, someone left (usually from his white hand in monstrous torments) and a new replacement appeared again.

This made him Muzan’s favorite, and all the Lower Ranks looked at him with jealousy, although he didn’t seem to notice or care about it.

She wouldn’t have beaten him if he challenged her to the Blood Battle - she knew her abilities and the differences between their powers that divide them like a deep chasm.

This didn’t mean that she wouldn’t try to defend herself, she would be foolish to surrender without a fight.

He didn’t need weak and cowardly demons. He wanted nothing from them but boundless devotion and ruthlessness. It’s the only way she could go far as a demon, as Lower One and all the Upper Ranks have shown.

And that’s why she was relieved that the spider boy was indifferent to the rat race in the ranks of Twelve Kizuki. As a result, she could still live.

But even though she had been one of Kizuki for some time, she still didn’t feel like a member of their group. It’s like she totally doesn’t fit there.

The Kibutsuji once said that they all should get rid of their humanity. Their greatest weakness, but just because she was a demon doesn’t mean that she still has no human feelings - she could still laugh, cry and feel gratitude for the kindness showed for her.

That’s why she remembers with pleasure her first encounter with [Last Name], which she tries to hide even from the Kibutsuji, fearing how he might react.

She was wounded and running from the Demon Slayer. She hoped her Lower Rank 4 position would somehow deter him, but he was determined to kill her. Too late she noticed that he was one of the kinoe - hashire she would have sensed from afar long ago.

With dizzying speed she ran through the trees, hearing his footsteps behind her, not at all far behind her. He easily kept up with her.

Every time she heard him pull out his katana with a metallic sound, she tilted her head down or changed direction to avoid the colored blade. Once he managed to cut the tips of her horns. She felt sweat run all over her body and her hair stand on end.

This chase could go on indefinitely unless one coincidence - a cliff that neither she nor he noticed.

With the menacing sound of a katana cutting through the air, she tried to dodge once again and cover her head with her hands, but suddenly she lost ground under her feet.

She didn’t have time to scream when she started falling, with the Demon Slayer next to her.

In the dark she had much better eyesight than humans in the dark, and in the dim moonlight she could see a surprise painted on the boy’s face - he didn’t even understand, what was happening before he hit the stones below them with a crack.

The fall, despite appearances, was quiet - the sound of broken bones was no louder than the sound of breaking a dry branch. Neither of them screamed. The only thing that escaped their mouths was the air collected in their lungs, which came out stifled.

She landed on her abdomen - she felt pain in her bent limbs and collapsed lungs.

Her nerve endings were burning her throughout her body, sending a message to her brain about her numerous critical injuries, and liters of blood spilling from her wounds made her feel cold as if she were lying in the snow. The punctured lungs prevented her from breathing, and the blood flooding them from the inside would probably have drowned her long ago, if she hadn’t been a demon.

Either that, or she’d die of pain because, unfortunately, she fell frist on her feet.

The nameless Demon Slayer fell out of her line of sight, and it cost her too much effort to lift and turn her head to see where he lay.

She didn’t hear his groans or heavy, unsteady breathing indicative of an agonizing state of great pain, so she suspected he fell on his head and split his skull. He died quickly and probably painlessly, unlike her - she was waiting for a long and painful recovery now.

If she faints for a few hours it would be a grace, but her mind stubbornly kept her conscious.

After about thirty minutes (which seemed like an eternity to her), her throat regenerated, and although she was still in pain, she was able to emit squeaks of pain. She sounded pathetic even to her own ears - not like a member of the most powerful demons in the world, but like a mouse tormented by a cat.

Tears continued to flow from her eyes, like endless waterfalls, blurring the view of white flowers from her face. It hurt, everything hurt her so much.

Suddenly she heard footsteps approaching her, and then saw a brighter and brighter light illuminating everything in front of her. Rocks, trees, plants… For a moment she feared it would be a rising of the day, but she didn’t burn after standing in all its glory.

The person, who arrived, stood behind her back and she could only guess who it was - a lost trader in the mountains? Another demon? Or maybe another Demon Slayer?

In her present condition, she couldn’t escape. She was scared, but at the same time she wanted all the pain to end.

Will that be the end of her? Will she find peace? Will she go to hell for her sins? Will she be reborn and get a second chance?

The person stood over them for a moment and heard only the hiss of the fire burning land in the candle that human had brought and its faster breathing.

She saw how the light moving and long shadow on the stones in front of her as the mystery figure covered the flame.

The traveler was afraid. She was sure of it. Mugako didn’t have a sharpened sense of hearing as well as the Upper Moon, but the person’s heart was beating so hard that she could hear it as if she had an ear on their chest.

Despite panic, this heartbeat calmed her down a bit. With a sore throat in a hoarse, quiet voice she said:

“He-help…”

And finally, she began to float away into blissful unconsciousness, listening to the sound of a rapid heartbeat.

• • •

Mukago woke up some time later in an unfamiliar place. She didn’t see the black sky above her or even the surrounding her before mountain landscape, but the wooden ceiling of a small house. She lay on a soft futon tightly covered with numerous blankets to keep her warm.

Where was she? Did she die? This is reincarnation?

Her sense of smell was immediately attacked by the numerous sweet smells, which was mixing with each other and surrounding her from all sides. She couldn’t pick up one that would tell her where she was.

Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of sliding wooden doors and footsteps. With difficulty she turned her head and saw the figure standing in the dark - she knew from the smell that it was a human. Unfortunately, it was too dark for her to tell more about person from place where she lay. She’d have to get up and get closer, but her head (and all the limbs) seemed to weigh hundreds of kilograms.

The stranger gently put down the wicker baskets on the ground next to the entrance and went to the furnace nearby. As quietly as before, person threw in a few logs of wood and lit a fire.

Are you afraid of her? Is that why you were so careful? But then why would you take her to your home?

In the dim orange light from the stone furnace, she saw better the facial features of her new companion. You didn’t look like a Demon Slayer, and your worried, wrinkled eyebrows didn’t indicate bad intentions. More like regret.

Maybe you regretted your decision and wondered what to do next? What should you do with a dangerous demon under your roof?

Suddenly you noticed she was awake and with a quiet “oh!” you froze motionless. In the warm glow of fire, she saw the surprise that appeared on your face for a second and then how you looked at her with those [color] eyes with an expression she didn’t recognize for now. She hasn’t seen it on anyone’s face too long time to tell immediately what kind of emotion it is.

She knew perfectly well the fear hidden in the stiff faces of her dead victims or the sadness when they begged for mercy in tears. She had seen pain and anger, but this… It was something new.

“Are you still going to sleep? Are you all right?” you asked, confusing her even more.

Why would you ask that and care about her? With every moment she spent with you, she have more and more questions popping into her head, and the uncertainty of your intentions twisting her guts. She didn’t know what to expect from you.

She nodded hesitantly and again there was silence between you for a few minutes.

You turned your gaze away from her looking at a distant point in front of you, focusing on your thoughts, and she felt the atmosphere getting more thicker.

You didn’t look like you were planning on speaking anytime soon, so she decided to do it, but before she spoke she already knew that it wouldn’t be an easy - no sound would pass through her dry, sore throat, and her swollen like a sponge tongue, stuck to her palate.

She swallowed her saliva with difficulty a few times and opened her glued lips with a wet sound attracting your attention again.

“Where–?”

“At my house,” you said quickly and didn’t let her finish. “Don’t bother yourself, lie down. Try to get more sleep.”

She closed her mouth obediently and continued to stare at you with a startled look.

Unable to stand her attentive, unblinking gaze, you turned your head the other way and looked into space. You felt awkward when she did it.

The windows were closed with wooden shutters, so the only source of light in the small hut was the fire from the furnace, and the sound that interrupted the uncomfortable silence was the crackling of wood in the heat and your quiet breaths.

When you entered the house you noticed a change - her breathing was no longer as loud and whistling as at the beginning, when you found her.

Have her lungs already regenerated? If so, how long will it take for her to fully recover?

You tightened your lips in anger and frowned slightly in frustration. What are you gonna do next? What will she do?

How stupid you were…

You chastised yourself in your mind for your recklessness and wondered what you should do now, when the demon was watching you all the time.

She could see perfectly well how your face changed under the influence of emotion - honestly, anyone could read you like an open book, but she hoped you wouldn’t suddenly pull out a nichirin blade from somewhere to kill her.

She wasn’t sure, she would have been able to defend herself from you in this state.

- - -

The night passed for you… without much 'attraction' - you didn’t talk to Mukago anymore and after a few minutes you fell asleep by the stove through its warmth and she didn’t try to wake you up. She focused on regenerating as quickly as possible so she could leave.

But unfortunately, she couldn’t sleep at the same time anymore, so she just lay alone with her thoughts, staring at the ceiling. Hunger squeezed and twisted her guts, the recovering drained a lot of energy from her, and when she looked at you, saliva flowed into her mouth.

You looked so good with that calm face untainted by any worries when you were conscious. Your scent filled her nostrils until she got dizzy - she felt drunk from your scent. You weren’t a marechi, but everything in the cabin smelled like you - the floor, the furniture and even the sheets she was lying in.

The years spent in the wooden walls made the entire house to soak up your scent like a handkerchief thrown into the water, although you probably didn’t smell it - demons have a much more sensitive sense of smell than humans, and her hunger with numerous, severe injuries only made it worse.

You were like an aromatic, fat chicken covered in honey over a fire. With skin flushed from the warmth and slightly shiny from the sweat running down your forehead.

You were definitely well seasoned. Just looking at you, she could imagine the structure of your muscles, feel the distinct iron taste of blood on her tongue spiced with your emotions.

There were many chemical reactions in the human body that were also caused by hormones and enzymes - from what she remembered about butchering meat or fish, when she was still human. Apparently, fear killed the taste of meat by the adrenaline and acids released in muscle tissues during stressful situations, so now you were perfect. Hunters and fishermen tried to kill the animal as quickly and painlessly as possible to prevent it. This killing technique is called ikejime.

You weren’t special, but in her condition, you were everything she could have dreamed of right now.

Normally, she’d sneak up on you while you were asleep and kill you before you could react, but she couldn’t. She still had broken bones (not only in her legs) and too severe internal injuries. All she had left was to wait and suffer in the silence still lured by your scent like a bee to a flower.

You unknowingly tortured her and turned your little house into her own private hell. You were her executioner, even though you didn’t do anything to her.

Her belly murmured low and long for food like a dog waiting for a bone, but it was a sound too muffled by the blanket to wake you up. You didn’t even move in your position.

An unpleasant spasm passed through her bowels like a spear, and the emptiness in her stomach became even more painful. Even more saliva poured into her mouth and flowed down her unnaturally pale cheek to soak into the pillow under her head and into her messy hair.

All she could do now was looking at you with a deep hunger in her eyes.

- - -

Shortly after sunrise you woke up - although the shutter was tightly closed and covered with some material she could tell by the singing of the morning birds.

Your sleepy eyes slowly opened and you stretched your bones with a quiet crack. From being in an awkward position for hours, your back and neck hurt. You grabbed the back of your neck to massage your tense muscles and looked around with tired eyes into a dark room, but you didn’t saw anything - the fire from the furnace has long gone out, leaving behind a delicate smell of smoke.

Moving around in a small room using only your memory, you walked up to the door and a little opened it, letting light in - luckily for your adopted guest, they didn’t face east or west, so it was half-dark.

Now you could see a white horned head with silver hair around her like a halo from beneath your bedding. Her dark eyes stared at you, making you less comfortable with a constant observer.

Honestly, if you forgot her, you’d scream in terror until the nearest village heard you and waking everyone up.

How about you become a new legend about a ghost living in the mountains with a killing voice, hm?

Her eyes followed you wherever you went in a small room - whether you made yourself breakfast or a bento for lunch at work. You pretended you didn’t notice how the unnatural irises moved, tracking your every slightest movement. When you disappeared out of their area, she even struggled to move her whole head towards you.

Was it uncomfortable? Yes. Was that disturbing? Most of all.

And you could have left the door locked and forgotten about her… Or leave her in the mountains till morning to burn.

“I’m going to work, don’t destroy or touch anything,” you said coldly when you changed (hiding behind a curtain made from an old blanket and hung from the ceiling on a beam supporting the roof) clothes and turned to the exit.

You didn’t even look at her knowing she’d still stare at you quietly with those dark eyes.

- - -

To your surprise, when you came home that evening, the demon woman was still lying where you left her.

Demons don’t regenerate faster?

You thought slowly chewing an onigiri ball. A little white rice stuck to your cheeks around your lips, but you didn’t pay much attention to it when you were focused on the lying demon.

“You still can’t move?” you asked her, still standing in the red light of the setting sun.

You had a bag of groceries hanging loosely on your one shoulder and an axe in the other hand. You weren’t stupid enough to walk into a dark room with a predator without any weapons.

But you were stupid enough to let a monster in and fall asleep next to her.

You reprimanded yourself quietly in your mind, frowned at that and clenched the handle of the iron axe tighter.

And then you left her unsupervised.

Were you mad at yourself? Yeah, but you can’t change the time. You could only hope she was really too hurt to get to you.

“Hey, come on, move,” you ordered to her still not going inside.

“I-I can’t…” she said in a slightly hoarse voice. You couldn’t tell if it was because of her bad condition or the long time she hadn’t used it.

So far, her body has taken care of numerous internal injuries and setting her ribs in right place. Maybe if she had eaten in the meantime it would have gone faster, but she was completely alone all day without any food.

Unfortunately, despite healing most of the injuries from her body, she felt weaker because of the amount of energy it consumed from her. Probably even after she’s completely healed, she won’t be able to stand on her feet for a while.

“This better be true,” you threatened, and she could have seen your embrance on the wooden shaft of the tool tighten. She even heard the wood crackling quietly under your hand.

You were ready to attack her at any moment if she suddenly jumped at you, and she was sure you wouldn’t hesitate.

You went inside and put a white wrap from a fabric bag next to her. It emitted a strong odor that attracted her on the one hand and repelled her on the other. Like water in a poisoned lake, a dehydrated animal. Like a Venus flytrap bugs.

“Eat,” you said looking down at her, and the command acted on her like letting the dog off a leash.

She had one big word in her head: “FOOD” - she immediately turning to the bundle with a weak, pale hand ending with sharp claws and she tore the material.

It was meat.

She felt she was about to cry. She didn’t understand your kindness and she had many questions.

Who are you to her, after all? You helped her a lot, but your behavior shows her how much you despise her (or her kind). You still gave her mixed signals that caused her a headache.

If she still goes on like this, she’ll go crazy because of you.

With a trembling hand, she grabbed it and shoved it into her mouth, almost choking. The sudden sweetness that attacked her tongue turned into a bitter and tart taste, making her want to vomit.

She quickly spat out a large piece of meat and began coughing and spitting with effort to rid her mouth of the residue. When she looked up, she saw you looking at her frown in a grim grimace of discontent.

She knew that look, you reminded her… It’s better not to mention his name here. Even quietly, because he’d find out, and he’d be angry to see one of his moons in such a weak state. He would probably consider her unworthy of that rank.

And what would he do next? Would he downgrade her to a lower position? Would he expel her from Twelve Kizuki? Would he kill her?

Those thoughts gave her the creeps.

“What is it? Why can’t you eat?” You asked, and your voice sounded sharp in her ears. She lowered her head. She couldn’t look you in the face for some reason.

“You’re a demon, you eat meat,” you said as if you were stating the obvious, such as that it’s bright during the day and birds fly in the sky.

“I can’t,” she admitted quietly and reluctantly, still trembling. “I can’t eat an animal.”

Are you gonna kill her now? You gonna call a Demon Slayer? Why don’t you just expose her to sunlight?

All she heard was your unhappy sigh above her and saw how you take the bag of the rest of the meat from her. There was still probably kilo in there.

“Well, it’s sad, but it won’t go to waste.”

You turned away from her and sat by the stone oven with the dry twigs from the wicker basket. Moments later, you put a pot on it and started preparing food for yourself.

In the next few minutes, the hut was filled with aromas of spices and the sound of bubbling water for sauce. All your attention was turned to cooking and she could see your calm face again illuminated by a yellow, warm flame.

You looked as if you had forgotten about her presence and all your problems - now there was only you and your little cabin. Your home. The outside world didn’t exist. You probably didn’t even worry about the probable sudden intrusion of some dangerous intruder.

Mukago would like to have such a quiet haven. A place, where she can come and forget everything - about demons and people, the rest of Kizuki and about her Master, fear of whether she’ll survive another day or the slayer she encounters is stronger than she is.

But looking at you, she finally calmed herself - it was nice to see you at work, even when you weren’t doing anything special.

Lying in your futon and covered with a blanket (she could still smell your scent, even though it had begun to faded) watching you cook - this scene was almost family-like. Affectionate. Intimate.

If she were human, the smell would make her drool. Maybe you could eat together.

When you were done, you put your food in a clay dish and sat in the corner not far from the furnace that was still generating heat. Suddenly, as if you remembering something, you looked in her direction without moving.

“Are you going to watch me eat like that?” you asked hesitantly.

Surprised, she forgot she was staring at you so intensely. Slightly ashamed, she looked away and focused on the ceiling this time.

Now the roles were reversed and you were staring at her, slowly eating the steaming gyūdon and wondering what to do next.

You should have gotten rid of her this morning, thrown her in the sunlight. What went into your mind to take her with you? If not now, she’ll kill you the next time. The only thing demons can eat is human flesh, and now you’re sure, and she even confirmed it. She’s hungry, you can’t feed her anything else. The sooner you take care of this, the better it will be.

You thought as you put the dish next to you and turned to the door. The sun has already set.

With resignation, you promised yourself you’d get rid of her in the morning (even though you knew, you wouldn’t keep it as usual).

“How long will it take you to regenerate?”

You suddenly broke the silence. The horned demon looked at you and the fire reflected in her silver irises. The red sclera all around it made her look like she really came out of the depths of hell, but there was something endearing about her - if it weren’t for the unnaturally eyes color and horns, she would have been really lovely human.

“I don’t know.”

She admitted it honestly, because she had nothing else and asked instead what will you do with her, still not looking at you.

“I don’t know,” you said as if you wanted to tease her.

Although the way your body was tensed up and your pulse quickened, she knew you were lying, but there was nothing she could do about it.

- - -

Mukago suddenly felt her blanket lift. She wasn’t sleeping - she just lay there with her eyes closed trying to speed up her recovery by focusing on healing individual fractures and injuries rather than trying everything at once.

With her slightly open eyelids, she saw you squatting next to her, holding the same axe on your shoulder as before, and staring at her belly with squinted eyes.

She quickly raised her hands, trying to shield herself from the blows, squealing like any woman in the face of unexpected danger. Surprised she was awake, you shivered and dropped the covering her material. A deep blush of shame appeared on your cheeks from being caught in the act of disgrace.

“I was just checking to see if you’re recovering well,” you said right away so she wouldn’t have any bad ideas…

And you thought you could change the sheets soon, because lying in stains of dried blood leaking through the bandages didn’t seem too hygienic to you, but you never mentioned it.

You sounded like you needed to explain yourself to her.

And stupid.

When you realized it, your surprised (and definitely guilty) face turned into a grimace again. You made a loud “tsk!” with your tongue and walked away from her.

Before you left, you took a big basket with you, and in the first rays of the sun coming through the door, she saw your ears are still red.

She was alone.

Again.

She felt like the small progress you had made in your unexpected relationship had been reduced to zero, and even as if you had taken a few extra steps backwards. She felt guilty about it because you really seemed nice even though you were hiding under the hood of a rough person all the time. She wished she hadn’t kept her eyes closed or called you.

Although she had spent years as a demon, she had not had many opportunities to meet another person to talk to. Humans quickly ended up as her food, weaker demons fled or died fighting for rank, and Twelve Kizuki treated each other as enemies.

Why did she only now feel how lonely she was? Or maybe it’s by tasting a sweet a little bit of the other person’s company?

Is it gonna be hard for her to get back into her life now after that you’ve just walked into it so unexpectedly?

Will she be able to return to those cold, lonely nights surrounded only by the dead bodies of her enemies who only hated her? Who only wanted to kill her?

You never gave her the feeling that you wanted to hurt her or that you were angry with her. You made ugly faces sometimes, but she saw you were only mad at yourself.

You did it when you said or showed her too much. You pretend you don’t care about her, but she doesn’t think it’s true. You’re a good person.

And maybe you were lonely in those mountains too. In these four wooden walls, where it is futile to look for the smell or traces of any guests.

Will she forget the heat from your furnace? The smell of flowers surrounding your home? The sound of your clamly beating heart or quietly breathing while you sleep?

When will she forget your voice or the color of your eyes? Or all those faces, that even though she didn’t feel comfortable with you at first, she found it funny now.

Did you know that when you get nervous, your left temple pulsates?

Here it was so… Pleasant. Nice. Different.

- - -

“How much more time do you need?” you asked when you came to see her in the afternoon.

She was now able to sit up and hardly felt any pain in her abdomen. The only thing stopping her from leaving was the sunlight and the broken bones in her legs.

“About twelve hours.” However, after a moment of reflection, she added. “Maybe a little more.”

Hearing an answer that satisfied you, you nodded your head and put away the new dry branches and charcoal. The last one you got from a friendly family, and the rest you found on the way home from the city where you work.

Despite living near the woods and mountains, you were neither a hunter nor a lumberjack. This meant, you had to get up early in the morning and drive your carretela the next few kilometers to your workplace, but you liked it. The other employees were always nice and there was always a customer to whom you could please with your goods. An additional plus was the specific place where you live allowing you to experiment with it.

And what were you trading?

“What are you doing?” the girl asked, when she felt a little more confident and saw you pull a little wrap from behind your kimono.

“I’m planting.”

You sprinkled seeds from a small handkerchief into a pot and wrote the name of the plant with charcoal on it, before you pulled out a thin notebook from the book cabinet and starting to write something in it. She thought you wouldn’t want to talk to her, but after a while, you started more talking.

“My boss sometimes gives me different seeds to record the growth of plants under different conditions than in the greenhouse.” You paused for a moment to see if you wrote the name on the other page correctly. “And there are also plants that won’t grow anywhere else, but in the mountains because of this.”

“Are you a gardener?”

“I work in a flower shop, but yes - I’m also a gardener. I even have a nice garden in front of my house thanks to this.”

“Do you know a lot of plants?”

“Oh, yes, boss probably brings them from all over the world.” You said in a tone showing that you don’t consider it a great feat. Like you’d be better off without that knowledge. “He has many shops and contacts with abroad. He’s a businessman and lately he’s trying to make a deal for his services with some old family of pharmacists.”

“Is that why you were there? To study the growth of flowers in the mountains?”

The quiet shuffle of the grey pencil on the paper went silent when you looked at her. She was no longer hiding from your gaze - after all, she was Lower Rank 4.

“Yes, you fell into my Hayachineusuyukiso.” Seeing that the name doesn’t mean anything to her, you added. “Also called Edelweiss or Beautiful Star. A rare, white, mountain flower, not difficult to grow, but it was difficult for me to make suitable soil conditions for it.”

The only thing she answered was “oh” as an understanding of the subject of the plant, and then she added even louder and more confidently “Oh!” when she understood exactly what she had done.

She swooped in (along with the Demon Slayer) and destroyed your hard work to grow these flowers. She didn’t know what you had to do to get this, so she was even more worried. And you were probably doing it for your boss. She was hoping, he wouldn’t fire you for it.

“I’m sorry,” she said with guilt, putting her hands on the sheets covering her. There’s almost nothing left of your scent on it, replaced by her sweat and blood.

“You don’t have to, you can’t fix them with words.”

You lifted your eyes from the pages and saw the demon staring at her clenched hands. The bangs and longer strands of hair fell freely over her face, concealing her like a silver hood, but were still too short to cover her tightly held lips.

Was she clutching them out of hunger or guilt?

Even though the thought occurred in your head, you didn’t consider her a serious threat. She reminded you of a child, which somebody yelled at - sad and ashamed of their actions. Sitting in a corner for punishment and left with her thoughts to calmly reflect on her mistakes. Unwillingly, you added while closing the small notebook with a slam.

“I didn’t need them for anything anymore anyway - I just had to get the flowers to unfurl to confirm a theory.”

When you stood up, she followed you with her eyes, watching you slowly getting to leave, before you stopped for a moment.

You came back and put some similar notebooks in front of her.

“If you’re bored, you can read or draw on blank pages. I’d probably be bored to death with nothing to do here.”

“Are you going back to work?” she asked, hoping you’d stay with her.

“There’s a charcoal-burning family on the other side of the mountains, and I promised Tanjiro-kun I’d come and visit them after I checked on you.”

“Oh, okey.”

Her sad and disappointed tone made you feel like you just kicked a little cat. Before guilt and duty completely took over you, you left planning a meeting with the rest of the Kamado family, picking prettier flowers for a bouquet for Mrs. Kie and her two daughters.

- - -

“Any improvement?” you asked when you finally came back.

Although you left your friends before dark (knowing how treacherous mountain roads can be), you still reached the hut only after the sun had hidden behind the horizon.

The abdominal pain practically disappeared along with the dark blue and purple spots adorning her skin and she could move her toes, but it was still a problem for her to bend her knees. She still can’t walk on her own.

“I need a few more hours.”

“Is there any way to speed this up?”

“I could, but…”

She couldn’t finish a sentence knowing there was no way you’d say yes. She looked down and silver hair again obscured her view.

She heard you sighing and leaving. In the backyard, you threw something on a gravel road that gave off a metallic reverberation and dragged it, destroying a few of the stray little twigs.

Through the entrance to the cottage, she saw you standing in front of a wooden trailer. You harnessed a little brown horse to it and started pulling off the fabric bags and bringing them home, putting them in a corner.

She watched your actions with curiosity until you stopped, stood over her and asked with a neutral expression.

“If I help you, can you make it to the carriage?”

She looked at the vehicle one more time and then nodded at you. You uncovered her body, pulled her out of the futon - there was a large dark stain of clotted blood where she lay, but you’ve seen a significant improvement. You were involuntarily happy about it.

She reached out to you like a baby. You held her under her armpits and then you tried to put her hand across your neck. The last time, when you carried her home unconscious, she was definitely heavier and harder for you to maneuver.

Unlike the first time you met her, she was no longer cold - the gentle warmth of her body made you believe she was truly human, if it weren’t for her appearance.

Relying on you, she came to the carriage and you put her in the trailer. Her legs were still weak and flabby, but the fact that she could walk a few steps with the help was a good sign.

“Where are you taking me?”

She asked, watching you step forward and sit in the coachman’s seat. Holding the leather reins, you swung with it at the animal to make it move.

Not very glad with the night ride, the horse initially resisted, but after a few pulls, he finally moved. His clattering hooves resounded in silence along with his loud hisses, making it even less real.

When was the last time Mukago rode in a carriage? It must have been when she was still human.

Was she afraid? No, even though you didn’t answer her question and you kept your distance almost the whole time. She knew you weren’t bad.

And she knew it would finally come. She couldn’t hope that you would let her live with you - after all, you were natural enemies.

When after a long ride you stopped the horse before the entrance between the two mountains, she knew it was time to say goodbye.

You went around the carriage again to get to her and took her down, before you led her deep into a narrow, stone road and sat her on a big boulder.

“I can’t go any further.”

You said crouching at the height of her eyes. You pointed your finger at the dark behind her and added. “That’s where I found you, with any luck he should still be there, if the wild animals haven’t gotten him first.”

The demon nodded. She still didn’t understand what was inside your head and why you decided to helping her so much, but she was very grateful to you.

She looked at your back for a moment as you walked away from her and when your footsteps silenced in the other sounds of the night, she slowly crawl into the corpse of the Demon Slayer.

She had to make several stops along the way to rest, but she had all night to get there.

Surprisingly, the corpse was still lying where he fell. Flowers were arranged around it, as if someone was trying to make it up for the dead boy’s lack of burial.

As she got closer, she could see that the animals had found their way to him during those three days. His right hand was missing and in the place of his eyes were two black voids staring straight at her. The dried blood on his cheeks now looked like tears. Equally bad must have been the hole in his belly, where something was still moving under the stiff material of his uniform.

Unable to complain, she tried to ignore the horrible smell coming from the rotting body and after a few minutes she could walk normally again.

- - -

You didn’t leave from the entrance to the ravine long before dawn. What told you to stay? Guilt? Duty to a stranger’s girl?

No, it’s a demon. You can’t forget that.

But even your own admonitions didn’t move you. Your horse turned his head restlessly waiting for you to let him to turn back and lie down again in the dry straw in a small barn, but you waited.

For what? Until she finishes eating and comes back for you?

Tired, you rubbed your eyes and struggled with drowsiness. You decided to wait another ten minutes, and if she doesn’t signal that she needs help by then, you’ll leave.

- - -

You were awakened from a shallow sleep by the restlessness of the horse. The animal tromped its hooves and neighing, trying to wake you up and keep you away from the danger in front of you.

When you got up quickly, you grabbed the lantern next to you and lit your way, but you didn’t see anything. Not any demon or a wild animal.

Feeling a sudden movement of air next to you, you looked to the side, but there was nothing too. You could have tell someone was here a moment ago - you still felt the warmth on your shoulder.

Deciding you’d wasted too much time here, you ordered for the horse turn around, still looking back to see what would upset him so much. When you took a closer look, you saw on the road an elongated shape sliding slowly into the nearby bushes.

A snake? Well, at least it wasn’t your still hungry friend…

On the way home, you could have sworn that you felt a constant gaze stuck into you like two daggers. It wasn’t very pleasant, you could feel how its hidden owner buzzing with bad emotions and the desire to murder.

It gave you the creeps all over your body and all you could think about was getting back to a safe house as soon as possible.

Maybe it’s just your wild imagination? Being alone late at night in the dark woods are good food for it.

The only thing you heard that night (apart from the moaning of the wooden wheels of your carriage) was the loud flutter of the wings of some bird flying over your head, but because of the thick branches of the trees you couldn’t even see the starry sky above you. You knew something was there because once you even got hit in the head with a pine cone that broke off under his weight.

- - -

For the next few days you had some peace and quiet - no one fell to your flowers or needed your help.

The only people, who disturbed you were mysterious men in brown suits, who came to ask you for the way to the mountains. They explained that they worked for some organization and one of their members had a terrible accident nearby.

The road to this place was easy from your house, so you pointed them in the right direction.

All you saw was how they looked at each other through the gap in the material attached under their hats in understanding and they left you without a word.

The first time you came to this place, the view was terrible, now it must be a lot of worst especially after you left the corpse for decay, wild animals and brought there the starving demon.

But it’s not your problem anymore, although you could have sworn the birds that accompanied them looked at you like they knew what you’d done.

They looked at you with their black eyes, judging you quietly and with the intelligence you’ve never seen in any animal.

But maybe you were just imagining it? Maybe you’re just too paranoid?

- - -

Mukago thought no one would find out about her weak. That it would remain her little secret.

Oh, how wrong she could have been.

As much as she wanted to stay and be around you, she knew it would be too dangerous for both of you. Just thinking about you, no matter how pleasant, could get her (and not only her) into trouble.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, nothing could escape the attention of the Demon King.

One day he summoned her to Infinite Castle by a woman with biwa.

She was wandering through the forest and all she heard was an unexpected sharp tug of the strings of the instrument, when she suddenly stood in front of the cold face of Kibutsuji. The demon was dressed in white pants and a black suit still remaining in his current role of a good husband and father.

The demon has recently found a new family to serve as a cover for him, so he can hide from the Demon Slayer Corps.

What did he do to achieve this?

She couldn’t be sure, but she expected him to stain his hands again with the blood of an innocent person. People were nothing but food and tools to him, just like the members of Twelve Kizuki.

He stood in front of her, staring at her like she was an uninteresting animal. An insect. A miserable subspecies.

Seeing him, she immediately turned even more pale and fell on her knees before him, lowering her head as low as she could. Her forehead touched the hard, dark wood beneath her and she felt how sweat ran down her temples. Mukago barely holds back the trembling from nervousness.

His forehead was not tainted by any wrinkle created by furrowed brows. The man's posture, though it was and did not seem tense, she still could feel the dread floating in the air.

“What was that supposed to mean?” Muzan asked calmly but harshly, standing over her. As he always did when he gave the order for Twelve Kizuki.

“I–”

She didn’t know what to say. How was she supposed to explain all of this? Or was it about puncture the Demon Lord’s pride, thinking he wouldn’t know? Here, among the demons you could die for lesser offenses.

Or maybe she should already start apologizing and writing her last mental will?

“You had a perfect source of information right under your nose,” he started to speak, and his immaculate image began to break like a broken vessel. With every word, she could hear the anger rising within him. “How could you leave so easily? When others work hard to find even the slightest clue as to where Blue Spider Lily is, you just turn down the chance that fate has given you!”

With his scream, something glass snapped near them, making Mukago squirm even more. She trying to hide inside himself and shaking like a frightened rabbit.

She began to wonder if the next thing that snapped would be her skull.

This time, however, he spared her life. It just ended with an unpleasant reprimand that she won’t forget for long, really long time.

Black-haired woman barely teleported her to the vicinity of the wooded areas of the mountains, she already started instinctively running towards you with tears in her eyes.

Were those tears of fear? Relief from a life saved yet again by luck? Happiness of seeing you one more time?

Or maybe just a rush of cold air caused them?

Her whole body was still trembling and covered with goosebumps, the cloud of shock was just started leaving her mind, her heart was beating fast fueled by adrenaline, but there was also an unusual lightness in her legs, as if she weighed nothing.

Her feet carried her to the door of your hut, lured by the familiar scent of flowers from your garden, dug-up earth and…

You.

Mukago is alive.

For now…

- - -

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.” Mukago heard your voice along with approaching footsteps.

She waited for you as usual, sitting on the wooden beam supporting the ceiling, that she had spent so much time staring at during her long convalescence.

She has been coming to see you almost every day since she had the conversation with her Master - sometimes she disappearing for a quick hunt.

She tried to deal with it quickly, but at the same time she chose villages a little further away from your home. She didn’t want to bring here another slayer or, even worse, a Hashira.

That would be too suspicious and it could lead them to you.

What would they do when they found out you were friends with a demon? With the murderer of countless people? One of the Kizuki?

She didn’t even want to think about it…

Another reason was a little selfish, because she didn’t want you to hear about her victims. She didn’t want you to start looking at her like everyone else, like the demon that she is.

But this time when you came back, you weren’t alone - she heard other footsteps too.

From the sounds she might have deduced your comrade was a man. He walked quietly, but confidently. She could hear the clatter of the scabbard on his katana slapping against his hip and belt when he was walking, and his calm breathing.

A hunter?

No, the slayer.

And from his strong aura, she could have infer that he must have been high-ranking. Perhaps, he was even a Kinoe.

Outside the door, she heard a man walk away from you. When you entered the hut, for a moment the orange rays of the sunset fell inside, drawing your long shadow on the ground. You immediately looked up expecting to see your guest there as usual.

And as usual, she was there. With a nice smile and soft eyes waiting for you. Just like a domestic cat.

A large, predatory cat that could easily devour you if she only wanted to. She was now like a wild tiger in her territory.

You no longer saw in her the same fear as before or the pretended confidence.

But tigers are big cats, who also like to lie down sometimes without stress.

She often watched you at work too. You didn’t know exactly why she came back to you or where her interest in plants came from, because she never made it clear before what she was interested in. When you asked her about it, she only said:

“Because I can’t and you know a lot about this.”

You sensed her sincerity at the time, even though you didn’t quite understand what she meant.

Maybe if you knew Muzan Kibutsuji you could understand, but she couldn’t tell you about him.

And her mission wasn’t the only reason why she couldn’t leave…

Sometimes you felt like you were playing a game with her, where you slowly discover more and more about each other.

It was nice talking to someone and not going back to an empty hut where no one was waiting for you, but it brought new problems for you.

You began to get attached to her presence and miss her when she was gone. Wait for her to come back to you, when she suddenly disappeared at night after you fell asleep.

How many times have you woken up in the dark and waited for her appear to the first rays of the sun?

How many more excuses are you gonna need for your eyes bags, when people ask for them? When will you stop worrying others with your absent-minded behavior, often getting lost in your thoughts and falling asleep in a quiet corner at work?

“Demons don’t feel love or empathy, they’re monsters.” Someone told you once, and you took those words to heart. “Bloodthirsty beasts, who only want to quench their hunger.”

But are all demons really evil?

Are there any good demons?

You followed the girl coming down from the wooden beam with your eyes. Even though she smiled at you, you could tell she was nervous.

Is it because of that guy with the katana?

Suddenly, remembering something, you asked her putting away your packages of things you bought in the city on the table next to the fireplace.

“There's been some missing in the area lately… Do you know anything about that?”

Mukago seemed surprised by your question - she turned pale (although you didn’t expect it to be possible) and a smile faded from her face, replaced by the uncertainty you saw in her during your first conversation.

“Um, no. I don't think so. Why?”

It didn’t sound very convincing and all you could do, was take her word for it.

Some time ago a child went missing and was found after two days - he had lost into the woods and fallen into an old, but deep bear pit.

Luckily, the villagers found him safe and healthy (not counting the fear and hunger he must have felt during that time, as well as the numerous abrasions he made, when he tried to climb on the slippery rocks).

Mr. Bear was probably on a trip or was long dead, killed by hunters.

Missing husbands were found drunk in pubs, and and young womens were found with their chosen ones not accepted by their families.

But there were also unsolved disappearances, where no clues have been found to tell what might have happened to the missing.

You didn’t dwell on the subject and unpacked your bag, carefully placing its contents in a locker nearby. These included various spices, rice, bread and meat, in addition to seeds from your boss.

You might have gone a little crazy, because you had an unusual customer, who come to see you in the morning.

A mysterious black-haired man in western clothes entered the flower shop before the sun came up and asked your friend Misaki (who was standing behind the counter) about flowers. He wanted to buy something for his wife and daughter as an apology for spending so much time at work.

When she disappeared into the other side of the store behind one of the larger plants to bring ribbons to tie the flowers stems, you saw him looking around, although you could tell from his eyes that he was bored rather than curious.

His red irises wandered along the shelves with vases and multicolored plants without any reaction - none of them surprised or delighted him, as if he had seen them all more than once.

Well, this place certainly weren’t the only store selling exotic plants, there were more of them in Tokyo for sure. The only difference between you and them is the price - because your boss tried to grow most of them here, the prices were much lower than those in the center of the capital.

You barely managed to keep your eyes open, sitting where you usually sit hidden in a corner on the windowsill.

Monstera deliciosa - an ornamental plant, imported from distant exotic forests, with large leaves in the usual heart shape was the perfect cover for you. From behind its jagged leaves, you could see who was going in and out without fear of being noticed. You liked working here, but didn't always feel like dealing with customers.

Misaki, with her open and warm personality, was the perfect worker for such tasks and kind enough to let you laze in your corner. Unlike you, she was unfamiliar with growing plants and thought you were digging up in mud every day. So with minimal work you could have had extra hours of sleep or read a book, sometimes aloud to pass the time for both of you.

But now she is gone and your slumber was interrupted by an unexpected nice voice.

“Excuse me,” the client said with a polite expression. He had an even nicer, smooth face and a gentle smile. “I’m also looking for something for my mother’s grave. She died just a few days ago.”

Surprised, he’s addressing to you, you just pointed your finger at Spider Lily standing nearby. The slender flowers already had their characteristic upward spindly stamens and corrugated petals, giving them their unique charm. They attracted by their furiously red color that matched his irises.

That color spoke loudly: danger! They made you as anxious as when a man turned his attention to you.

You were disturbed, when he talked about his dead relative like he didn’t care what happened to her and how fast he was right next to you. You didn’t hear any footsteps or the creaking of the wooden floor under his weight.

Even more puzzling was how he could see you hidden behind many large leaves in a dark corner of the store.

You wanted Misaki to come back and take him away from you, but undeterred by your unkindness behavior, the man continued.

“Yes, I thought about it, but she didn’t like red. She associated it with bad luck.”

He spoke, looking at other flowers, but you still somehow felt his gaze on you. It was as if he was trying to keep you within the corner of his eye so you wouldn’t escape him.

You didn’t know what they were associating with for her, but from now on for you, they were with his eyes. Red as fresh blood.

“Is it available in blue?”

You swallowed your saliva with difficulty and nodded insecurely, when his cat’s pupils landed on you again without even turning his head towards you. You weren’t even sure you heard him right - he hypnotized you like a snake.

He finally turned his head to you and closed his eyes gently. It seemed to shine its own light. “Where are they?”

“We don’t have them right now… It’s very hard to grow and maintain them.”

You finally managed to gather inside enough to speak up and come out smoothly from an unconscious lie.

The man’s smiling expression turned to disappointment when he frowned. He pulled out a small leather purse from his pocket and handed it to you. The coins inside clinked pleasantly with every shake.

“Well, if you ever manage to grow them, could you keep them for me?”

At the same time Misaki returned from the warehouse with colored ribbons and decorative paper.

He immediately drew all his attention to her as if he had never spoken to you and composed with her advice one lovely, little bouquet for his wife and one for his daughter.

When he finally left, he didn’t ask for a refund or tell you how to notify him when the job will be done.

You felt like you made a deal with the devil and that it was too late to withdraw.

So you did some more shopping after work. Your boss let you go home earlier seeing your fatigue written on your face (again) and thought you were sick.

By the time you returned home, the sun was already slowly sinking into the west, even though it was still early. The charms of the coming winter.

That’s when you ran into the Demon Slayer. Hashira. You’ve occasionally seen low-ranking slayers in the city passing through or staying to take a break there, but you’ve only seen Hashira twice.

Your first meeting wasn’t the most pleasant, and if you could, you’d erase it from your memory.

It was a few years ago, when you still had no idea of the importance of their uniforms and demons walking among humans as myths inserted between other fairy tales.

But one unlucky night, your… friend was turned into a demon.

Terrified and badly wounded, she escaped from her home where the attack took place, but soon after, she was transformed into these things. Driven probably by hunger and instinct, she ran to you - to the place, where she felt most safe and where she knew, she could get help.

In the middle of the night you suddenly heard a loud sound, waking you from a deep sleep. Rubbing your eyes, you weren’t sure what it was until you heard it again.

It sounded more like the roar of a wounded animal than the weeping of a woman - through the thin walls you could hear her heavy gasp and squeak, when she stood in front of your house.

Why didn’t she attack you right away? Was she out of strength? Did she sense anything else? Something stronger than her?

Or was she fighting with herself?

Are there any good demons?

With the only weapon you had (and it was a metal fire poker) you opened the shōji door. There you saw in the full moonlight your friend lying in a pool of blood, curling in pain.

Without thinking, you ran to help her. Your head was empty, all you could think about was your friend. Wounded.

You didn't even have time to kneel beside her when she suddenly threw herself at you knocking you over onto the mud. You tried to push her away with a metal tool, but it was like a new force came into her.

Her jaw snapped in your face, almost biting your nose off. Saliva dripped from her mouth and chin splashing you, but you barely felt it.

Nor did you feel the strong gust of wind blowing her hair and knocking her head off her neck.

Suddenly she froze and her head hit you before fell to the ground next to you. Still on the poker, you held the rest of her inert body, which became even heavier.

“Oi, move.”

He said in a cold tone as he hid the katana in the cover - the green sheen of its blade blinded you for a second.

"Oi, you can't hear what I'm saying to you!? Get out of here!"

He saw you open and close your mouth before you muttered something, still in shock, looking back at the stagnant corpse in front of you.

“You...ed her... Mur...”

"Hmm?" He asked without hearing what you said. He sounded harsh and cold, like what he did was just killing a worm. "What?"

“A murder! You kill, killed her! Mur–!”

You weren't allowed to finish because a stranger punched you in the jaw and you fell face down again into the dirt beneath you mixed with her blood. Then stranger tugged you by the shoulder, dragging you to stand on your knees to look at him.

The air between you, besides the stench of blood, was filled with the strong smell of smoke and decomposing flesh.

"She wasn't a human anymore," he began unconsciously squeezing you by the shoulder and other hand. He almost broke your arm. You tried to wrestle, but you were too weak. "It's a demon!"

"No! It was–"

"It doesn't matter what or who she was to you before," he interrupted you violently and shook you again.

It made you feel some of the shock go away, allowing you to focus more on the man and the environment. You saw he was covered with numerous ugly scars. He reminded you of the monster the old women of your village warned about.

"Demons don't feel love or empathy, they're monsters. Bloodthirsty beasts who only want to quench their hunger."

When he let you go, you fell back to your knees. In an instant, your safe picture of the world crumbled into a million tiny pieces.

Tears slowly flowed into your eyes, but before they blurred your vision, you saw her body crumbling into dust.

Was that true or nightmare?

With nothing more to do for you, the man left. You didn't even notice, when he walked away from you. He left you alone to mourn your friend.

Although that's what he let you do.

Crying loudly, you didn't know what to do. You tried to lift her head, but you couldn't. You were still scared and shaking. You felt an invisible hand clutching your heart and throat as if it were about to crush them.

But you were still alive.

And she was falling apart right in front of you.

When the moon looked out from behind the thick clouds, you saw wet, shiny marks on her crumbling cheeks.

Are there good demons?

And when the sun came out of the horizon, there was nothing left of her but her bloody clothes. The only proof of what happened here.

After what happened and the mourning you shared with her family at the funeral, where you buried only her clothes, you wanted to know more.

You found out who white-haired man is and more about demons, but you didn't become a Demon Slayer.

The first ones killed your friend, the second hurt.

Since then, you've been trying to live your normal life, and you've started asking yourself...

Are there good demons?

You shake your head trying to get back to the present. That was long time ago, and you've get over with it, even though the memories still haunt you.

"I've brought some new seeds, but we'll probably plant them in the spring." You turned to the girl standing behind you.

She smiled at you gently nodding her head. Her silver hair swayed with her movement, reflecting the light of fire.

She looked amazing.

- - -

Your joint meeting was interrupted by a sudden knock and a vigorous shout of your name through the door.

It was Tanjiro Kamado.

Surprised by his visit, you went outside the cabin so he wouldn't see your guest. The snow fell quietly beneath your feet. In the mountains, winter came faster, and in the higher areas it can last even the whole year.

"Hello, Kamado-kun" you greeted him. The frost pinched your face and a small cloud of steam came out of your mouth. "What brings you here?"

"Ohayō!" Younger boy bowed to you. His nose, cheeks, and ears were fiercely red despite wearing a shawl on his head. "I thought you might be running out of coal and I wanted to see how you were doing."

Sweeten by his kindness and sincerity, you thanked him for his efforts. You both lived on the same mountain, but your cabin was on the other side. To reach it, he had to go down to the village, and then walk for a long time along a path circling the mountain before he started climbing again.

The road wasn't hard, but it was a long one, which is why you preferred to buy coal from him when you were downstairs so as not to bother him.

If you were alone, you'd have offered him in and tea. Maybe even the overnight stay, so he wouldn't have to come home in the dark and in the morning you would have escorted him to the village before you went to work.

"Oh, thank you. I'll pay you right away..."

You were reaching for your belt looking for a purse of money when suddenly he asked.

"Do you have a visitor?"

"Um, yes." You've been spin around trying to count the coins, but you've had a hard time doing it without feeling your fingertips.

You figured he must have sensed Mukago. The red-haired boy, as long as you can remember, had a perfect sense of smell. You wondered what exactly he sensed.

"The same one you took care of when she was sick?"

You nodded and didn't stop counting.

"What's she like?"

He asked unexpectedly. He knew a lot of smells, including the smell of human sadness, sorrow, or joy, but this one was completely new to him, so he couldn't determine who your mystery guest was.

"Oh, she's..." You've been thinking about trying to decide which term might best fit Mukago.

To a man-eating demon, who likes to wait for you in your attic. A demon who likes to watch you work on flowers and ask a lot of questions about them. A demon who, when she thinks you're asleep, strokes your hair or cheek gently.

"She's cute."

The boy nodded understandingly, knowing you were completely sincere. Then he stood with you for a while, trying to give you back some of the coins you gave him extra for coming all the way to your house, and you watched him leave happy.

The sun was half hidden behind the horizon and he didn't have time to get home before dark, but you weren't afraid for him. As far as you know, demons are very territorial, and Mukago's presence should deter weaker demons.

You didn't even think of the possibility that there might be a demon more powerful than her nearby...

But you weren't supposed to find out until the next morning from the other villagers and see two survivors disappear among the massacred bodies.

But that's not until tomorrow. Today, blissfully unaware, you returned to the inside of your home and your guest stiffly seated at your low table.

You could tell right away that she was more dreamy looking at you with her slightly spread lips showing white fangs, dilated pupils and...

You weren't sure, but is that the blush on her cheeks? She didn't hear you talking to Tanjiro, did she?

Right?

[literaila]

a virus 

tasm!peter x fem!reader 

summary: 

“did you try turning it off and then back on?” 

“three times.” 

warnings: peter is an asshole, reader is an asshole (a great paring i assure you)

a/n: this was a work in progress. and now it is out on the internet. because i need storage and you need some of my sarcastic comments 

*

in all fairness, you were a little bit stressed. 

and by a little bit stressed—depending on a paper for 30% of your grade without any internet. 

or a computer that worked. 

and of course, the lack of any manners. 

"did you try turning it off and then back on?" 

if you were going to try anything it would be banging your head against your desk until you properly erased any record of your existence.

"three times." 

the man--who by the way, left you on hold for five minutes--hums. "what'd you say you were doing?" 

"trying to write a research paper." 

"on sketchy websites?" 

you take a deep breath. you try and avoid yelling at this man through the microphone. “from a bunch of google approved websites,” you say, voice tight. “what can i do to get it working?” 

“it sounds like you have a virus.” 

“great," you drawl because this conclusion had not occurred to you. "what do i do?” 

the man is silent for about thirty seconds, and then: 

“i can get you an appointment to bring your computer in sometime in the next week.” 

“what can i do to get it working tonight?” 

there’s a quick huff of air. “do you know how to code?” 

“are you serious?” 

“that was rhetorical.” 

if this man didn’t sound completely nonchalant, about the age of a fifty-year-old—meaning your age—and had any more attitude than he does, you would hang up. 

if your paper wasn’t due tomorrow, you would hang up. 

“i need my computer tonight.” 

“you could try walmart.”

“aren’t you supposed to be helpful?” 

the man laughs like this is funny. “sorry, i’m a bit out of practice. most people don't click on the link a random ‘banker’ sends them.” 

“i didn’t click on anything.” 

“you have a virus.”

“i’m really bad with computers. i’m pretty sure i’m incapable of clicking anything.” 

“apparently not.” 

“can't you do anything? you’re smart.” 

“you assume that because i got this job that i’m smart?” 

“okay. you’re supposed to know what to do.” 

“i could fix it,” this man says, “if i was there.” 

he also hates you.

“okay, great. just tell me what to do.” 

“i already asked if you knew how to code…” 

you groan and fall over in your seat. 

he laughs again. “you could ask for an extension.” 

“an extension,” you repeat because you obviously haven't thought of that. 

you obviously don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. 

“for whatever you’re working on.” 

“because that’s how life works. are you going to ask for an extension to fix my computer?” 

“im just saying.” 

“no. i already got the extension.” 

“you already got the extension?”

this man thinks you’re an idiot. 

he’s also got a very nice voice. 

“there were some… personal problems. my professor was nice enough to make an exception.” 

“but not nice enough to do it twice?” 

“it feels wrong to ask.” 

“did it feel wrong to put it off until tonight?” 

you pause. looking for an argument that isn’t there. “you need to work on your customer service.” 

he laughs. “so i’ve been told.” 

and you stop. 

you think about all of the possible solutions to this problem. 

and the man who you have subjected to your irresponsibility. 

“i’m sorry,” you whisper, knowing that he can hear. “i’m being rude. i’m just stressed.” 

“it’s okay. you’d be surprised how many people yell at me each night.”

“i don’t think i would." 

he laughs. his voice is smooth and warm. a bed to fall into and sleep until eternity. “what’re you working on, again?“

“a research paper.” 

“is it done? are you just editing? because there are libraries open all night.” 

“no. i thought it was, but there’s a… it doesn’t matter. and it's cold.” 

“you have more research to do?” 

“yeah.”

“is it a lot?” 

“no,” you say. “not really.” 

there’s a brief pause. 

he might’ve hung up already. 

but then the man whispers, “okay.”

you wait. 

“what should i look up?”

*

"wikipedia." 

"just click on it." 

"this is how you got the virus." 

you sigh again, fingers tapping restlessly on your desk. 

you've been sitting here for the past twenty minutes, waiting for this boy to listen to you. 

he hasn't, of course. it turns out that you both share the lack of social ability. because you can't seem to be nice to him, and in return, he understands none of this. 

but he's pleasent enough. he laughs at your absurdity instead of mocking it. 

and you've already thanked him more than once. 

"i wouldn't have a virus if someone was better at his job--" 

"--that's a strange thing to say to someone helping you--" 

"now, will you just read me the quote?" 

"you're stressed about a research paper in which you're using wikipedia as one of your sources?" 

"i'm stressed about failing out of college." 

"that's not really how it works," the boy says because he's infuriating. 

but also nice. because he's been sitting here arguing with you and still hasn't hung up. 

even when you threatened to steal his computer. 

nonetheless. 

"i know how it works. what does it say?" 

"it says 'find another source.'" 

you are silent. you type a million curse words into the text on your phone. swear to whatever god is laughing at you right now that you will get them back. 

swear that you're going to go to bed right now and face the actual consequences of procrastination. 

or you'll fake your death. either way. 

"i'm not going to help you bomb an essay," the boy scoffs. "i'm gonna go look at the websites linked." 

"or you could just do what i say." 

"who's the one with the computer here?" 

"...what does it say?" 

*

"i disagree." 

"you disagree on the undeniable brilliance of footloose?" 

you spin around in your chair, smile slightly unnerving. "i disagree that you have good opinions." 

"says she who has broken her computer." 

this boy has a warm voice. he has a slightly teasing tone, even when he's attempting to be serious. and in the short time that you've known him, you've already picked up on the sardonic voice. different from his sarcasm. 

"the internet broke my computer." 

"the internet is a very noble place. it would never. now, scammers on the other hand..." 

"i understood about three percent of what you just said." 

he laughs, microphone muffled as something moves in the background. "okay, so you hate good movies. noted. what do you think about good tv shows?" 

"like what?" 

"um," he pauses. "friends." 

"i really hope you didn't just say that to me." 

"there's a reason that it's popular." 

"that reason would be conventional attractiveness combined with stupidity." 

"or that it's really good." 

"you know, i know a really good doctor. he can help you." 

any research paper that you may or may not have almost finished is forgotten. 

instead, you've been talking to this boy--the boy who refused to help you fix your computer and instead has monopolized this conversation completely--for the last hour. 

about movies and school and winter break. leaving and never coming back. 

anything, really. 

he is surprisingly easy to talk to. easy to laugh at. 

and, of course, you're completely delirious because it's four am and you have a paper due in the morning. but, at this current moment, it doesn't seem to matter. 

you want coffee. 

"maybe you should give him a call," this boy says. "not for me. just... to chat." 

"i am very mentally stable," you say, thank you very much. 

"you threatened me earlier." 

"an un-rare occasion, i'm sure." 

the boy laughs because there's something funny about that. "i'm very likable." he mocks your tone. 

"again with the opinions..." 

"i can't just not share them." 

"you can actually. you really can." 

and you, apparently, can't hang up. 

*

"no." 

"wow. and i thought we were getting close." 

"as usual, you're wrong." 

he laughs. "this is ironic, coming from you." 

"i'm hanging up." 

"you still need to finish your research." 

you scoff, throwing another piece of paper at the wall. 

it's not a waste, merely art. 

"i just have to finish the citation. easy." 

"that is definitively the hardest part." 

"maybe for you, tech guy."

he laughs again, softer this time. 

you've both gotten quieter. laughter is a mere whistle in the wind. 

and your throat is a bit sore. 

you've been talking to this man for four hours.

"how long are you supposed to be on the line?" 

"it's available until two in the morning." 

"it's almost six." 

"yeah." 

"you've just been sitting here talking to me?" 

"well, it's not really worth it to go to bed anymore." 

"yeah." 

something lingers. 

"i'm peter, by the way." 

peter, you think. you wonder nothing about him. you think nothing of the name. 

you think about walking around campus until you accidentally run into someone. 

"y/n," you say. 

he echoes your name back to you. 

*

part two

my masterlist here.

tags:   @moonlarking-blog @v1ci0us @preciousbabypeter @alexxavicry @directioner5life @inthegetawaycarwithtaylah @localrockstargf  @thestudiouswanderer @take-my-hand-time-boy @thoughtsofagodlovingsunflower @nyomjoon   @raindropstearsandtea @rqmanoff​

[nursingassignmentshelp]

Best Nursing Assignment Help Service

Nursing is one of the most challenging yet rewarding professions in the healthcare industry. However, the path to becoming a nurse isn't easy. Nursing students often find themselves overwhelmed by the rigorous coursework, clinical practice, and the countless assignments that come with the territory. These assignments play a critical role in their education, helping them develop the knowledge and skills necessary to provide quality patient care.

But what happens when the pressure becomes too much? Many students turn to nursing assignment help services to ease the burden. In this guide, we’ll explore why nursing assignments are so important, the challenges students face, and how nursing assignment help can be a valuable resource.

The Importance of Nursing Assignments

Nursing assignments aren’t just busy work. They are carefully designed to help students grow academically and professionally. Through assignments, students learn how to apply theoretical knowledge to practical scenarios, preparing them for the real-world challenges they'll face in clinical settings.

These tasks also serve as a tool for educators to assess critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills—key traits of any competent nurse. Furthermore, nursing assignments contribute to a deeper understanding of patient care, medical procedures, and ethical considerations.

Common Types of Nursing Assignments

Nursing students encounter various types of assignments throughout their education, each focusing on different aspects of nursing practice.

Case Studies: These assignments require students to analyze patient scenarios and develop care plans. They help in understanding patient care from diagnosis to treatment.

Research Papers: Research assignments encourage students to engage with the latest medical literature and contribute to evidence-based practice.

Care Plans: Developing individualized care plans allows students to apply theoretical knowledge in practical scenarios, ensuring patients receive tailored care.

Reflective Journals: Reflective writing helps students think critically about their experiences in clinical practice, encouraging personal and professional growth.

Challenges Students Face in Nursing Assignments

Nursing assignments come with their own set of challenges. Balancing academic work with clinical practice, family obligations, and personal life is a struggle for many students.

Time Management Issues: Nursing students often juggle tight schedules, making it difficult to complete assignments on time.

Understanding Complex Medical Terms: Nursing is a specialized field with its own language. Mastering medical terminology can be daunting, especially for those new to the field.

Critical Thinking Development: Transitioning from textbook knowledge to real-life application requires strong critical thinking skills, which many students struggle to develop.

APA Referencing and Formatting: Academic writing standards, like APA formatting, are strict and can be tricky for students unfamiliar with them.

Why Seek Nursing Assignment Help?

Given these challenges, it’s no wonder that many nursing students seek outside help to complete their assignments.

Managing Workload: Nursing assignment help services can alleviate the pressure, allowing students to focus on other aspects of their studies, such as clinical practice.

Improving Grades: These services provide expertly written assignments, often resulting in better grades.

Learning Through Expert Assistance: By working with professionals in the field, students gain valuable insights that enhance their learning.

Time for Clinical Practice: More time can be allocated to hands-on learning, which is crucial for any nursing student.

Features of a Good Nursing Assignment Help Service

When looking for nursing assignment help, there are a few key features to consider:

Expert Writers with Nursing Background: Look for services that employ writers with nursing or healthcare backgrounds. This ensures the assignments are accurate and relevant.

Timely Delivery: Meeting deadlines is crucial in nursing school, and a good service will always deliver on time.

Plagiarism-Free Work: Originality is key, and the best services will provide plagiarism-free assignments.

24/7 Customer Support: Look for services that offer around-the-clock support for any last-minute questions or changes.

Customization and Adherence to Guidelines: Every assignment is different, and a good service will tailor the work to meet your specific requirements.

How Nursing Assignment Help Services Work

Most nursing assignment help services follow a simple process:

Submit Your Requirements: Provide detailed information about your assignment, including the topic, word count, deadline, and any special instructions.

Work with Expert Writers: The service will assign your task to a qualified writer who understands the subject.

Review the Draft: You’ll receive a draft for review and have the opportunity to request revisions if necessary.

Final Submission: After making revisions, the final assignment is delivered to you, ready for submission.

Tips for Choosing the Best Nursing Assignment Help Service

Not all services are created equal, so here are some tips to help you choose the right one:

Look for Expertise in Nursing Field: Ensure the service has writers with healthcare qualifications.

Check for Reviews and Testimonials: Student reviews can give you a good sense of a service’s reliability and quality.

Consider Pricing and Budget: While you want quality work, make sure the service fits within your budget.

Ensure They Offer Revisions: Revisions are crucial to getting the best final product.

The Ethical Considerations in Using Assignment Help

Using nursing assignment help services ethically is important. These services should be seen as a learning tool rather than a shortcut to success.

Ensuring it’s Used as a Learning Tool: Use the assignments provided as a study guide to improve your understanding of the subject.

Avoiding Plagiarism: Always ensure the work is original and properly referenced.

Fostering Independent Learning: Nursing students should use these services to complement their learning, not replace it.

How to Write a Nursing Assignment on Your Own

While assignment help services are great, learning to complete assignments on your own is crucial for academic and professional growth.

Understanding the Question: Break down the assignment question and identify what is being asked.

Researching the Topic: Use credible sources like peer-reviewed journals and textbooks.

Developing an Outline: Plan your assignment structure before writing to ensure clarity.

Writing Clearly and Concisely: Avoid unnecessary jargon and keep your writing precise.

Citing Properly: Follow the required citation style to avoid plagiarism.

Common Mistakes in Nursing Assignments

Many students make similar mistakes when completing their nursing assignments:

Failing to Answer the Question: Always ensure your work directly addresses the assignment prompt.

Poor Research: Relying on non-credible sources weakens the quality of the assignment.

Inadequate Referencing: Ensure you cite all your sources correctly to avoid plagiarism.

Not Proofreading: Spelling and grammar mistakes can easily lower your grade.

How to Improve Your Nursing Assignment Writing Skills

Improving your nursing assignment writing skills takes time and practice:

Practice Regularly: The more you write, the better you’ll get.

Seek Feedback: Always ask for feedback from professors or peers to help you improve.

Use Online Tools: Grammar checkers, citation generators, and other tools can help you refine your writing.

Benefits of Collaborating with Peers on Nursing Assignments

Collaborating with classmates can be a great way to tackle nursing assignments:

Sharing Knowledge: Group discussions can lead to better understanding of complex topics.

Different Perspectives: Collaboration exposes you to different ideas and approaches.

Improving Problem-Solving Skills: Working together helps develop better solutions to nursing challenges.

Nursing Assignment Help and Academic Integrity

Maintaining academic integrity is essential, even when using nursing assignment help services.

Maintaining Integrity in Academic Work: Always use the service as a tool for learning, not just for completing tasks.

When Help Becomes Cheating: Ensure that you’re still doing your own work and using help services ethically.

Conclusion

Nursing assignments are an integral part of the educational process, preparing students for the complex world of healthcare. While they can be challenging, nursing assignment help services offer a valuable resource for those who need assistance. However, it’s important to balance external help with personal effort to ensure true learning and academic integrity.

FAQs

What are the most common nursing assignments?

Case studies, research papers, care plans, and reflective journals are the most common nursing assignments.

How do nursing assignment help services maintain academic integrity?

Reputable services provide original content and encourage students to use the assignments as learning tools, not as a way to cheat.

How can I ensure my nursing assignment is plagiarism-free?

Use a plagiarism checker and ensure all sources are properly cited.

What should I do if I struggle with referencing in my nursing assignment?

You can use online citation tools or seek help from your institution’s writing center.

Are nursing assignment help services ethical? Yes, as long as they are used to supplement learning and not to replace personal effort.

[writingsharks12]

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[mwcowan]

A Whole New Chapter

In past blogs I’ve written every week or two. Here I am nearly 3 months into this current adventure and I finally sit down to write. I was really planning to give this up but I’ve endured a fair amount of grief from some of my readers, and with a hopefully blog-worthy event coming up (road trip!) Georgia has encouraged me to get back with the program.

Lots of catching up to do! But before I even get to the Philippines, I’ll take you back all the way to our previous trip. One day, as I was paying the bills necessary to maintain a home in the mountains of California, I thought about the monthly costs for electricity, propane, water, sewer, home & auto insurance, property taxes, etc. and wondered why we were paying so dearly for a home we only used half the time, and planned to use even less in the future. Georgia and I thought about it and talked and decided to downsize and relocate our base in the US, and spend most of our time over here – maybe 9-10 months a year.

And between May 2023 and our return here in March, that’s just what we did. We first found a small home on a ¾ acre lot, still under construction, in Fernley, Nevada. This promised much lower expenses than Graeagle, plus Nevada has no state income tax. As one example, our homeowner’s insurance is $328 per year, while we paid more than that every month for the house in Graeagle. Everything else has scaled accordingly, and though we’re not particularly in love with Fernley, it gives us what we need when we’re there, and we feel safe just locking up the house and leaving for 5-6 months at a time.

The new US Headquarters in Fernley

The house in Graeagle was put on the market in September, and in one day we had a buyer, with cash, and the deal was done! We stayed in the house until after Georgia’s son Matt was married (in Graeagle) then began the move to Fernley. By November 15 we were Nevada residents.

Max

Although Max was well taken care of while we were gone, by Georgia’s sister Dignah, we were the ones who suffered, missing him terribly. We decided to bring him with us, and leave him here during our short return trips to the US. Our caretakers love dogs so it should work out well.

I asked my nephew, who flies for a major airline, about the best way to fly a dog overseas. “Easy” he said, “he just needs to get registered as a medical service dog then he gets to fly in the cabin, for free.” Lucky for us, he’d done that for one of his own dogs and knew the ropes. Soon enough, Max was a “trained and certified” service dog, able to alert to Georgia’s condition. And no, ADA laws do not allow you to ask what that condition is.

Doesn't he look handsome on his ID card?

That was indeed the easy part, and only guaranteed Max a comfy seat on the plane. The path started with Max’s vet, who researched the health and vaccination requirements both for import to the Philippines and export from the US. Max got to know his vet well over the next few months but, as attested to by the lengthy USDA export form, he was perfectly healthy. A complete medical and vaccination history was provided to the Philippines Bureau of Animal Imports to receive an import clearance, and various US DOT forms had to be completed.

Thus armed with a large stack of paperwork, and a suitcase full of Wubbas and Chuckit balls, we set off for our flights from Reno to SFO, then SFO to Manila. The gate agent in Reno didn’t want to see any of the papers; she told us that it would be handled at SFO before the international flight. Nope, at SFO we just walked onto the plane and settled into our business class seats. Max had it pretty good for sure!

Surely we’ll have to provide paperwork to get Max through the airport in Manila, right? Well, again, no. Through Immigration, baggage claim, and Customs, Max just trotted along beside us. The whole trip and not once were we asked to provide any documentation. Welcome to the Philippines, Max!

The most amazing thing though, was Max’s bladder control. He used an animal relief area outside the Reno terminal before our first flight, wouldn’t go near the stinky in-terminal relief station in SFO, held it through both flights, then through the terminal in Manila, finally taking a potty break outside the terminal. Super-human!

Kawayan Cove

It was nice to get back to our home, after being back in the states for a very busy 10 months. Nice especially as the caretakers had done a good job maintaining both home and gardens. Ready to move in and relax!

After greeting everyone and making some instant friends, Max spotted the swimming pool. It was a hot day (and he soon found out that every day is hot here!) and in he went. A quick lesson on where the steps were so he can get in & out and now swimming is a daily activity. Usually when one of us is there to throw the Chuckit ball, but we’ve seen him go down by himself and sit on the bench with water up to his chest, just cooling off.

Mabini

Last trip, I wrote about our visit to nearby Mabini/Anilao, a famous dive spot in the Philippines. We noted that the second hotel we stayed in was dog-friendly so for Georgia’s birthday this year we decided to go back, taking Max this time. We all enjoyed relaxing, swimming (both pool and beach for Max), getting massages (sorry, not you, Max), and of course the bar and restaurant. We went diving one day and I got in a couple enjoyable dives, spotting lots of fish, octopus, nice corals and crinoids, turtles, and a number of colorful nudies (nudibranchs).

Where's Dad?

New Car

I had a plan for this trip to replace our Innova with a Toyota Fortuner SUV (a model not available in the US but similar to the Toyota Highlander). More luxurious, better ride and handling, but still retaining a lot of utility for hauling people and stuff around. Georgia had a better idea (as she's prone to have), to get a really small car mainly for use in and around town, something that will be easier to drive and park in the crowded markets.

We originally settled on a Toyota Wigo (again, no equivalent in the US), a very compact “city car” with a mighty 1.0L engine. Buying a new car here isn’t like in the US, where you practically have to shake salespeople off your legs. Even a test drive isn’t standard here; we actually had to go to 3 dealerships to get one. OK, one dealer did let us drive a Wigo, but only around the dealership parking lot! In the 3rd dealership though, we noticed a little bit larger mini-SUV called the Raize. About the same height and width as the Wigo, but somewhat longer and with lots more room inside. Comparison drives between the Wigo and Raize convinced us that the Raize’s even mightier 1.2L engine was worthwhile, plus it was more comfortable overall. A deal was struck and we’re now enjoying our new mini-SUV!

Georgia’s mom is also wanting a car for the Philippines, and it turns out that our Innova is exactly what she’s looking for. We’ve made a deal to sell it to her, so now we’re looking for its replacement. I may get my Fortuner after all!

Driver’s Licenses

Regarding the story above, I got to test drive the cars; Georgia didn’t. The salesperson noted that her license had expired the day before, which was her actual birthday. Mine didn't expire until July so I was good to go.

We’d been clued in to the existence of a Land Transportation Office (LTO) branch in a nearby shopping center that only handles driver’s license renewals, which was said to be very efficient compared to dealing with the full-service LTO. The requirements for renewal are basically passing a medical exam and a written test. We went to the medical office, conveniently next door to the LTO, for our exams. After filling out a short medical history, my exam consisted of getting weighed, height measured, and reading one line of inch-high letters on an eye chart. Every other result of the required “exam” was just filled in by the staff. And then, as I was waiting for my exam results to be registered, I was handed a certificate stating that I’d passed the written test with a score of 92%. VERY efficient indeed, considering that I’d never seen a test. I do wonder what questions I got wrong though…

In less than an hour overall, we both walked out with 10-year renewals on of driver’s licenses. I’ll be almost 80 when this one expires, hope I’m around to get it renewed!

And BTW, I’m mad because Georgia outscored me on the written test, getting a 96!

Billiards

Billiards is a popular activity in the Philippines, probably because it’s played indoors in air-conditioned rooms. I’ve played occasionally here with Herve, who has a table, but this year we’ve hooked up with Kawayan Cove neighbors Graham (of English garden fame) and Andy (a New Yorker who lives mostly in Singapore). Also in our group, from neighboring developments, are Jean (Belgian), and Robert (Canadian). We call our informal group the “Sandy Balls Billiards Club” and we play a “tournament” every weekend, each putting 100 Pesos (about $1.75) into a winner-take-all prize pool. I’ve won once, hoping to continue to improve my game.

L-R: Robert, Jean, Graham, me, Herve (Andy not pictured)

Road Trip!

We’ve been talking about a road trip to the far northern reaches of Luzon for some time; we finally decided to do it. And just like our road trip to Baguio and Sagada in 2018, we’re not driving or taking our car, rather hiring both. Reminds me of an old commercial…

Car rental = $40/day

Driver = $20/day

Food and Lodging for Driver = $10/day

Sitting in the back and enjoying the ride = Priceless!

Our itinerary will include La Union, Vigan, Pagudpud, Santa Teresita, Tuguegarao, and Baguio. Stay tuned!

Sunset(s)

We’re still enjoying our sunsets, nearly every evening. Since it’s been almost 3 months I’ll throw in some bonus photos!

From our home:

From Mabini:

All for now, take care everyone!

[robert-peters]

Academic writing service

When it comes to online essay writing services, one platform that students may come across is EssayMarket.net. This website claims to provide assistance with various academic writing needs, including essays, research papers, and dissertations.

Before using any writing service, it is essential to exercise caution and conduct thorough research. Consider the following factors:

Reputation and Reviews: Look for reviews and feedback from previous customers to gauge the reliability and quality of the services provided by EssayMarket. This can give you an idea of the experiences of other students and help you make an informed decision.

Plagiarism Concerns: Ensure that the writing service guarantees original and plagiarism-free content. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense that can have severe consequences, so it is crucial to choose a service that values academic integrity.

Communication and Support: Check if the platform offers a convenient and reliable means of communication with the writers. It's important to have clear and open lines of communication to address any questions, provide additional instructions, or track the progress of your paper.

Pricing and Policies: Consider the pricing structure and refund policies offered by the platform. Make sure you understand the payment process and any potential extra charges to avoid any surprises.

Personal Responsibility: Keep in mind that while using a writing service can provide assistance, it is ultimately your responsibility to learn and improve your own writing skills. Use such services as a learning tool and reference, rather than relying solely on them.

[heavenlysphere]

is this concept art if it’s writing concepts for my essentials idea

CW: sentient game characters

“What’s that?” May asks as she looks over the counter, Volo flipping through the paper money with a disinterested look. Neither of them exactly wanting to make eye contact with the other. This was just expected eventually through gameplay to meet one another. The brief little moments aggravating them both.

Though as she looked over at the item. Volo with a pleasant smile set his hand down on the counter, fast and snappy, without missing a beat continuing with, “That’s not for sale, my second favorite customer!”

“It looks like a brick.”

“I assure you, the Poké Mart does not sell bricks.”

“Why not? What is it?”

Volo keeps the smile up despite the energy he gives off is like he wants to punch the child in front of him.

“It’s the Normal Plate. Hurry along now.”

“What’s it do?”

“That’s not important if it’s not for sale, is it?”

“I want to know.”

“You are a child of spite, May.”

“Okay, and?” May squints, “What’s so special about a plate?”

“It is… something in the past. A reference if you will.” Volo clicks his tongue, standing up straighter as he explains, “There’s plenty of them in here, you know this.”

“And it involves you.”

“You’re astute as ever.” May rolls her eyes at the sarcasm, despite its in the airy ‘customer service’ voice.

“Just tell me. It can’t be as bad as ‘deities have a spat.’”

“Find the other ones and I just might.” Volo huffs, shaking his head, “No, as far as I can tell, what can even use this? It isn’t in the game.”

“Ugh, why have it at all if you haven’t programmed the Pokémon at all? A reference is lame without payoff, isn’t it?” May scoffs, stamping her foot lightly.

“The reference is the payoff.” Volo says, shaking a finger.

“Can you stop doing that?” May mumbles, shrugging, “What else you got?”

“Mega Stones. Here, a Flygonite.” Volo hands May one, her palms holding them out as she stares, a bit disappointed.

“This is a marble and says Pinsirite.” May furrows her brow, “Whatever. How much do I owe you?”

“It’s free if you leave me alone for an hour!”

“Deal, see you.” May grins, waving a goodbye as she puts it in her bag. Volo waving back as she walks out the door.

As soon as she’s gone, a lightbulb flickers in the store, Volo looking up at it. No particular reason other than it caught his eye. His fake pleasantries slowly turning into grit teeth and his hands gripping at the ends of the brown Sinnoh Poké Mart employee apron.

Somehow, Volo wondered how not seeing a deity was both a blessing and a curse. For he would hate to meet this one face to face. And yet? They liked to taunt him more than Arceus. The plate on the counter mocking him.

A part of his researcher self died a little inside when he knocked it off the counter, now burying his face in his arms on it.

[cosmicadventurersblog]

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