#dare i say it was in ssl

[summerriders]

This!?!?!! I'm also pissed at the fact jorvik gazette has existed forever?? Wdym "produce the first edition" this thing has been around for ages? Am I not getting something??

Like James had this since his update i think

Ah yes, they’ve pushed forward how quickly you unlock epona so much so that now, you need to have epona unlocked to get into Jarlaheim, and not the other way around

Where is their editor. Who still lets this person publish news asdfghjk

[thenomadinside]

2020 Soundtrack of Life: End of Year

https://i0.wp.com/www.thenomadinside.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Screen-Shot-2021-12-06-at-2.28.04-AM.png?w=2012&ssl=1

“Together Again” by Janet Jackson

It’s been ages since I last listened to or even heard a Janet Jackson song being played but this is one of those classic songs that you get hyped up when it randomly pops up. This song reappeared during lockdown when I was at my parent’s home in New Jersey when one of my friends had the initiative to get all of our friends from all over the world to participate in a full fledged lip dub. It was fun to be a part of this project that captured us all in our habitat during an unusual time, while promoting an optimistic message that we will eventually be together again post-COVID.

“Grind and Hustle” by DROELOE

Prior to jumping on my flight to Taiwan, I was contemplating on taking language courses in Taiwan and had been doing research by watching a bunch of Youtube videos on peoples experiences at the various programs offered. I came across a Youtuber that documented his experience taking a gap year after graduating from college. From his videos, it seemed a large portion of that year was spent in Taiwan where he took Mandarin classes at Shida for several months. He used this song in one of his vlogs and really enjoyed it as it was a very upbeat, motivational song.

“刻在我心底的名字” by Crowd Lu Upon completing my 15-day hotel quarantine, I reacquainting myself with things that I haven’t been able to partake in during shelter in place. At the time, I remembered feeling oddly naughty doing something as mundane as watching a movie at a theatre, knowing full well that my friends back in the States were stuck in their homes. This song blew up last year after being the feature song of a popular movie called, “Your Name Engraved Herein” that got five Golden Horse Award nominations. This song definitely helped round out the entire mood and feeling of the movie which was sentimental, romantic, and emotionally frustrating at the same time.

I generally don’t choose Taiwanese films to watch by choice as from the movies I’ve watched before, the acting usually leaves much to be desired but I was pleasantly impressed with this film. They had casted two relatively fresh leads that had great on camera chemistry and the acting felt natural and authentic to me. It was funny because after this movie and song blew up, I would constantly hear this song being played in retail stores, cafes and performances by outdoor street performers where it got almost borderline annoying.

“怪天氣” by YELLOW, 9m88 One of the things that I missed during lockdown was taking my biweekly dance classes at Alvin Ailey in New York City. When I got to Taiwan, I was looking into dance studios in my neighborhood and came across one called “Jimmy Dance Studio” through Youtube. I was sold after watching this dance video from one of their hip hip instructors that used this song in their choreography. I am a huge fan of this sort of style which is more smooth, groovy, and jazzy. In the States, I have found it really difficult to find instructors who have this style so I was pleasantly surprised to come across this on their channel. This led me to taking a few one-off classes before purchasing a class package.

“Butter” by HowZ Upon arrival, it didn’t take long before my Spotify playlist inevitably began populating with Taiwanese songs. Discovered through the radio feature on Spotify, ”Butter” by HowZ was one of the first few songs that I saved from a more local artist. I can’t say that the lyrics are particularly well written but the song is smooth and just oozing with… dare I say, butter? When I attended my first live music concert in Yuanshan, HowZ coincidentally happened to be one of the guest performers and that’s when I was able to officially put a face to the name.

“Joy” by FKJ I love all of FKJ songs because they expertly integrate jazz, groove and hip hop into their songs and it especially sounds amazing in a concert setting. I remember after taking the workshop of one of my hip hop instructors from Jimmy Dance Studio, he extended a public invitation to his students to come attend a performance in Yuanshan that he would be DJ’ing at. I was probably the only one who attended from that group he extended an invitation to but I thoroughly enjoyed it as it had a very “underground” vibe to it. This was the first concert I attended by myself and “Joy” was one of the first few songs that was played to pre-hype the crowd before the performers came on stage.

“I think too much” by Christian French At Ultra (a music festival that happened in Taiwan last year), I met these two English teachers and for one reason or another happened to be discussing a lack of authentic Mexican food in Taiwan. They recommended a decent place called ‘Twinkeyz Tacos’ that was one of the best that they’ve found in Taiwan. I ended up going the next day and happened to take a few live photos of both the food and interior design. Later in the day, I was reviewing photos and because the photos were live photos I caught of snippet of this song being played in the background. I spent an embarrassingly long time with the help of my awesome roommate from New York dissecting the lyrics to this song. I related to this song because in certain aspects of my life, I know that I can be a huge over-thinker which is a trait that I believe I’ve acquired from my mom. Over the years, I have conditioned myself to think less in the greater aspect of things because they don’t actually matter, but I related to this song because there was a lot going on in my mind at the time that provided a lot of unnecessary stress in my life.

“Never change” by enjoihu I first heard of this 18-year old independent musician when first attending one of my favorites bars in Taipei called “Draftland.” That time we went there was some sort of ongoing collaboration featuring both a local graphic artist and musician (in this case, enjoihu). I am a huge advocate of these sort of community-oriented events as they are engaging and adds a level of change to a given space which promotes retention. I remember specifically taking note of enjoihu’s playlist in the second room on the first floor and thought his mix completed the concept of that space very well and gave a rather nice ambient mood. I have since followed him on Soundcloud and I’d say his music is such a mood to me as his work is inspired by the lofi genre, and is my favorite combination of lofi, classical notes, rap and old school hip hop. In my mind, he is considered to be the Tennyson of Taiwan.

“睡不著” by 壞特 ?te This artist was one that also gained a lot of recognition from a local perspective last year and I would commonly hear her songs more often being played at local coffee shops as her style is more mellow, artistic and more suited for those sorts of chillax environments. I applaud her for being able to create such a distinct brand for herself as she never shows her face as its oftentimes hidden by an oversized sunhat. My friend once went to a dinner and told me that some relatively well known female artist with a big hat that covered her entire face was performing and I immediately knew it was her. Initially I thought it was really just her aesthetic but I eventually found out that her day time occupation is a doctor the reason why she dresses like that is because she has to conceal her identity.

“別問很可怕” by J.Sheon

This is one of my favorite songs and proud to say that I can read almost 90% of the lyrics in Chinese for this song even though I still butcher it a bit during KTV. I don’t know too much about his background but I believe J.Sheon is a ABC and has since moved to Taiwan. This was also one of the first few local songs that popped up in my music playlist and I really enjoyed it as it was melodic, easy to ingest and was very smooth. Fun fact, I heard he owns or is an investor at the bar Vine Bar in 東區

[theattainer]

I Took Cold Showers for 6 Months. Here Are 5 Ways It Improved My Health.

https://i0.wp.com/theattainer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image.png?fit=1000%2C562&ssl=1

https://theattainer.com/i-took-cold-showers-for-6-months-here-are-5-ways-it-improved-my-health/

I Took Cold Showers for 6 Months. Here Are 5 Ways It Improved My Health.

I always waited until the shower was scorching hot before stepping in. Frigid water enveloping my body? Why would anyone do that? Turns out, a spate of research indicates repeated cold water exposure can be a vital tool in a quest for a better health and improved lifespan.

The notion that constant, comfortable temperatures aren’t ideal for humans was broached, for me, during the second episode of Chris Hemsworth’s National Geographic series Limitless, a show that sees the Thor star attempting various health hacks to improve his longevity. The second episode, centered around the theme of shock, sees the Aussie actor explaining that extreme cold and heat can kickstart the body’s natural defense systems, compelling upgrades.

Things like cold plunges—and showers—could “help fight inflammaging, manage pain, and boost my immune system. It can trigger repairs inside my cells, and even improve my mental wellbeing,” Hemsworth says.

And that’s not just a Hollywood hunk spewing junk science; plenty of peer-reviewed clinical studies and a slew of longevity doctors back those claims. So I gave cold showers a shot for more than six months. Here’s how I did it, and the incredible host of benefits I realized.

How to Take a Cold Shower

The methodology is simple: Start with a regular temperature shower, then flip the handle to the coldest you can bear for the last 30 seconds. A thermometer records my coldest shower water as being around 55 degrees, frigid enough to tingle then numb the top of my head—as well as my wedding vegetables.

Which is precisely what you want. If you’re not uncomfortable, the water isn’t cold enough and you’re doing it wrong. There’s an initial shock that happens; your breath quickens, your pulse races, and you feel an internal wave of energy overtaking your body. You’re immediately awake—if showering is a morning habit—and that central buzz doesn’t subside for a good 20 minutes afterward.

The first week of cold showers was positively brutal but also quite satisfying. Gamify it by counting the seconds, attempting a lengthier personal record, and you’ll find that your cold-water immersion time ticks up significantly, right away.

How Long Should a Cold Shower Last?

After a few weeks, I found myself able to get up to a minute; after two months, three minutes was possible—and dare I say enjoyable. And that’s about the amount of time you’ll need to see any benefits, per Dr. Neil Paulvin, a New York-based board-certified longevity and regenerative medicine doctor.

“While there aren’t as many studies on showers compared to cold plunges and immersion, you need at least 11 minutes a week to get the benefits,” Paulvin says. “You should take a cold shower for at least two to three minutes, anywhere between 50 and 60 degrees, though many people like to go below that temperature.”

After three months, I found myself craving the buzzing sensation so I started bookending my showers with cold water, stepping into the initially icy stream while waiting for the hot water to creep in, then finishing with a three-minute cold blast. I love this method even more. Now, after six months, I don’t even use hot water. (Unless it’s after a workout. More on that towards the end of this piece.)

What Happens to the Body During a Cold Shower?

What’s happening to your body during cold water exposure is called hormesis, a term for when a triggering substance or action leads to stimulating, positive effects. “We know increased hormesis does have increased benefits,” Paulvin explains. “As you add a stressor, like cold temperature, it forces the body to reset, recycle, and cleanse itself.”

“When your cells get cold, they work slower,” adds Dr. Rahi Sarbaziha, a Los Angeles based-double board-certified anti-aging and integrative aesthetics doctor. “Ordinarily, your cells are flying around and can’t regenerate while they’re doing other duties. That slow down helps your body get extra time to regenerate and heal.”

“Cold showers can increase dopamine, your happy chemical; calm your nervous system; and can help you sleep better,” Paulvin says.

Cold Shower Benefits

Better Skin

If you have itchy skin or conditions that result in irritated skin, cold water helps to close your pores, which can prevent bacteria and other irritants from entering, and strips less of your natural sebum oils away. It also reduces your inflammation, which decreases redness. Your skin gets more of a glow, too, due to better circulation. As someone who suffers seborrheic dermatitis, I have noticed a reduction in those flare ups. And while I’ve never been one to describe my skin as “glowing,” I do think it seems a bit brighter and firmer.

Stress Resilience

If you can withstand three minutes of ice water pummeling your body, you feel better equipped to handle any stressors that come later in the day. Part of this is mental. You’re building a better, more adaptable mindset by forcing yourself into a stressful situation and proving you can overcome it with ease and aplomb.

You’ll notice this boost in different ways. Your attitude towards, say, a horrendously contentious work meeting, changes because listening to an inept boss drone on is no longer the most challenging portion of your day. Or things that were previously fear-inducing are more surmountable. I have always detested needles and blood work at the doctor; after six months of cold showers, fretting over a tiny prick is now laughable.

There’s also a chemical reaction happening to bolster the stress resilience. “As your nervous system resets from the cold showers, your fight-or-flight system is calming down,” Paulvin says. “You’ll definitely feel the effects.”

Reduced Inflammation and Inflammaging

Inflammation is when a portion of your body has a negative reaction to injury or infection. Inflammaging is when your body’s immune system surges to fight an inflammation, creating more cells than it may need. Those extra cells can cause more harm than good, and they can go after tissue and organs in a way that causes more breakdown. Inflammaging propagates a number of cardiovascular issues, like heart disease.

With cold showers, you’re reducing both inflammation and inflammaging. “Those extra immune cells—sometimes called ‘zombie cells’—get cleaned out during the reset cycle,” Paulvin explains.

After six months of cold showering, I have no way of knowing whether I’m slaughtering an army of zombie cells but, regarding inflammation, I can tell you that my usual aches and pains of my 42-year-old body have abated in an appreciable way. My lower back pain has diminished, my chronically sore shoulder (a hangover from a decade-long injury) also has mellowed.

Feeling Sick Less Often

Cold water, interestingly, helps you fend off actual colds. There’s a widely publicized study that took 3,000 volunteers from the Netherlands and asked them to spend 30 days finishing regular showers with cold water, for either 30-, 60-, or 90-seconds. Work attendance of those participants was then analyzed and the results were that the folks who showered in cold water were absent 29 percent fewer days, leading to the conclusion that cold showers translate to fewer sick days. (That number lept to 54 percent fewer sick days for those who regularly exercised.)

Per the study’s author, Dr. Geert A. Buijze, you don’t actually get sick less: “Participants who took the cold showers actually reported feeling ill just as many days, on average, as the people who showered normally. But either their symptoms were less severe or they felt more energetic, so they were better able to push through the sickness and function anyway.”

Anecdotally, I found this to be 100 percent true. Every few months, I usually get sidelined with a sinus infection that sees me recuperating in bed for at least a day, with the help of antibiotics. Since cold showering, I’ve not needed bed rest nor pharmaceuticals. Buijze is on the money, though: I still get a tinge of sickness here and there, but it’s far less encumbering than before and I am able to power through.

It Reduces Pain—But Also May Retrain Your Brain’s Perception of Pain

We already covered how cold water can reduce inflammation, and inflammation is one way we’re subjected to feeling pain. So reducing the various hotspots of inflammation in the body will reduce our overall pain.

But there’s also research that indicates that cold water can help block some of our neuroreceptors from feeling pain and, in some cases, rewire how our brain perceives pain. One study noted that cold showering “might have [an] antipsychotic effect similar to that of electroconvulsive therapy because it could work as mild electroshock applied to [the] sensory cortex. Additionally, cold showers are examples of stress-induced analgesia and would also be expected to ‘crowd out’ or suppress psychosis-related neurotransmission within the mesolimbic system.” Translated, this means that your body gets so overwhelmed with feeling cold that it just tunes out the pain. The belief is that, with repeated occurrences, your body’s ignorance of pain can become increasingly permanent, though more research is needed.

Other Cold-Shower Considerations

Benefits Are Cumulative, So Consistency Is Key

“The more you cold shower, the better it works,” says Sarbazhia. “If you have an injury, you’ll see some benefits after a few showers, but if you keep up the routine, those benefits multiply.”

Add in Heat Exposure for Even More Benefits

While cold showers alone are beneficial, adding in heat exposure, like a sauna, and all those advantages are amplified, says Paulvin. The switch between extreme heat and extreme cold—for example, sauning for 20 minutes before an immediate cold plunge or shower—is even better. (More hormesis, effectively.) Recurring 20-minute sauna sessions, when heated to at least 170 degrees Fahrenheit, are great for reducing cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, where studies note a 50 percent reduction in cardiovascular issues and a 66 percent reduction in Alzheimer’s.

Don’t Cold Shower After a Workout

If the goal of your workout is hypertrophy, or building muscle, skip the cold water right after your pump session. “Cold showers mean your proteins aren’t working in the same way, and you’ll decrease your ability to build muscle,” says Paulvin.

Are There Any Downsides to Cold Showers?

For relatively healthy individuals, not really. “The only harm would be if you have heart or nerve issues,” Paulvin says. “You may feel that you’re getting too cold. And if you have muscle issues, it may increase spasms.”

Are Cold Showers as Beneficial as Cold Plunges?

It’s hard to say, given that there’s a dearth of clinical and peer-reviewed research when it comes to cold showers, compared to cold plunges. While the research catches up, any cold water exposure is beneficial, per experts, though cold plunges may be even more beneficial.

What do you think?

[transfemme-floofer]

Part 2

My sister really wanted to correct mistress, but I held her hand and stopped her

“No Kat, it’s not our place to correct our mistress, besides, she’s right, I’m an ancilla now, and I’m far better off for it, I’m even, dare I say, happy to be the toy of somebody else, especially after becoming the girl I always was”

My mistress interjected “Both of you, get in the car, backseat, NOW!”

We both scramble to obey, Kat taking the left side and myself on the right, Mistress smirked “such good girls”

It was a long and boring ride back to the house, not helped by Napoli traffic. Even our vibrating dildos did us no good, and worse, Mistress was noticing our boredom!

(FAUX INCEST STUFF STARTS HERE)

“You know what would be really hot?” She inquired as she was turning on the secret backseat camera facing us “if you two made out”

“But we’re sisters! Not by blood but still” Kat protested

Mistress shot us both a stare through the rear view mirror “don’t talk back”

Not wanting my sister to be punished on the first day of ownership I went in to kiss Kat, starting really chaste, but building up to full on making out

She pushes away slightly “I wanna feel what’s under that plain slave blouse of yours”, I wanna say yes, but I remember my training

“Mistress, can we touch each other”

Mistress replied “go ahead, I’m enjoying this”

Kat’s icy hands dive under my blouse, immediately getting too my breasts, fondling them, twisting my nipples. I purr in pleasure, earning a chuckle from mistress, and I press my lips against hers, also fondling her naked body

“Kat, three fingers in Julia’s clit” Mistress ordered, with Kat happily obliging, making me moan and ride her three fingers to an orgasm, at which point I did the same for Kat, on mistress’s orders, of course

For the rest of the journey we laid against each other, exhausted

In slave-sign (SSL) I signed to Kat “see, that’s the benefit of being mistress’ slave, you get to do fun stuff like that”, she nods back, seemingly accepting her place, or at least understanding. I continue “and don’t worry about the punishment that’s coming for talking back, she never really whips me, the worst she’s used is a paddle, and she always comforted me afterwards”

WARNING: IF YOU DON’T LIKE FICTIONAL INCEST, LOOK AWAY NOW AND SKIP THIS STORY

Mistress had decided that she needed another slave for her household and was going out to get one at a sale going on

“Julia, you can tag along, you have excellent judgement, and frankly slaves should really see their own kind both at sales to show that it’s not that bad, and on the block so that they see what happens to naughty slaves”

Julia’s heart sank and she shuddered at the thought of an absolute psychopath owning her “I’m a good girl though”

“Yes you are, it’s a precaution though, just like your medicollar” mistress touches my chain link collar “come on bitch, let’s get going or we’ll be late”

The auction house was an older building, looking about 100, some slavers greeted mistress at the door “Luciana, good to see you, and I see you brought the slut with you” eyeing me up “you’ve changed” I spoke “Mistress wanted an ancilla, so she got me some surgeries, clit down there and all”, we moved into the space after paying a no doubt exorbitant fee and started looking around

One caught my eye in particular “mistress” I said quietly, “what is it whore” she replied

What I was looking at was unmistakable. Luscious dark brown hair, small breasts, a tight slit “my sister, she’s beautiful, isn’t she mistress?”

Mistress takes the opportunity to fondle and touch her up “she’s quite curvy and she moans in pleasure to my simple touch” Mistress lifts the slave girl’s chin and looks into her baby blue eyes “your family partly Germanic?” I reply “she’s technically adopted, a refugee from the 2250s Danish War, her real mum and dad got killed”

Mistress decided to take her and after everyone scanned their fingerprints, my sister, adoptive or not, was hers. After leaving the auction house Mistress turned to her new slave and asked “so, where are you from”

“Cupenhacia (Copenhagen) in Denmark”

“And what’s your name, slave?”

“My name’s Katarina, but you can call me Kat for short, you can call me anything, I’m just your toy”

“That’s right slave, do you remember your sister?”

“He’s my sister now?” Smack, “she’s my girl now, you are not to refer to her by male pronouns

(Part 2 when I feel like it)

[gamerbearmira]

I had this idea of protective mama Mirabel au. She'll be like-

(Isabela is 15 and Mirabel is eight)

"ISABELA VALENTIA ROSAS MADRIGAL WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!" Mirabel shouted. she knows full well Isabela wasn't supposed to be sneaking out at night so she was pissed.

It was about 11 pm at night and Isabela's curfew was ten.

"YOU ARE NOT MY-" she tried to yell back but a shoe was thrown at her head. She should be happy that she has a gift because if she didn't there was no way she was getting out of Mirabel's grasp. But that still didn't save her Mirabel managed to hit her before she fully made it into her room.

"YOU ARE GROUNDED UNTIL I SAY SO" her words echoed through casita. She knew isabella heard her and she hopes Isabela would be nice and not try anything

-

(Mirabel is 13 and Camilo is 13)

Camilo tried to sneak a girl into the house but...nothing gets passed, Mirabel.

Standing right outside the door was Mirabel waving goodbye to the girl he was supposed to let in. Camilo could have sworn he saw fire in Mirabel's eyes.

She pushed him back inside and casita closed the door after she walked in.

"Camilo you know full well no one is allowed in this house after 8 pm...it's 10:30," she says calmly while she's grabbing her shoe.

He tried to reason with her, he tried to beg, he tried everything but he knew the rules. Mirabel had mercy on him though

"I'm gonna give you 3 seconds," she says as she raises her arm up with the shoe in hand. Of course, 3 seconds weren't enough. Mirabel was so pissed she gave him the double shoe pain

-

(Mirabel is 12 and luisa is 16)

"Luisa I already told you that you can take a break today" Mirabel reassured her dau- Hermana. Mirabel made sure that whatever the town needed would be postponed. Whoever tried to disagree with her was deeply scolded to the point that they don't even want to look in Luisa's direction let alone talk to her.

"bu-" Luisa tried to speak but Mirabel wouldn't allow it.

"no Luisa go take a break, I don't want to hear another word about it" and with that Mirabel sneaked Luisa back up to her room where she can sleep and relax.

Later Mirabel would follow Alma around just trying to see if someone dared to say something to her. Mira was only 6 feet behind her but can quickly run off if she thinks Alma is going to turn around. Thankfully no one dared to talk to her.

-

(Dolores is 16 and Mirabel is 9)

Mirabel insisted on she and Dolores have some quality time together while picking out fabric for clothes and such. Mirabel had made her ear muffs so if they ever need to go into town Lolo would be ok. they both know Asl/SSL so communicating wasn't a problem.

Some guys ruined their evening when they tried to catcall Dolores but Mirabel wasn't going for that. Mirabel knows what they were doing was wrong because her father told her what they were doing.

-

"Papa, what does cat calling mean?"

"well...that's when a guy is...being disrespectful to a woman" he refused to answer any more questions she had.

-

She made Dolores sit in the fabric shop and wait for her until she came back. Mirabel said she had "business" to take care of. Mirabel found those men and lead them down an alleyway saying that Dolores had a message for them and they had to hear it in private.

Once they were far away enough she gave them a world full of physical and emotional pain. No one disrespects her Nina prima.

Dolores heard it all but decided not to say anything. The three men told Alma about it and she tried to scold Mirabel but Lolo told her she heard nothing about that.

the three men were scolded instead and Mirabel and Lolo had a nice day full of embroidery and clothing making.

-

This au will kind of be in modern times where the adults work 24/7 so she had to step up and be the parent. This au will have crazy shenanigans so stay tuned!

Luisa, Antonio, and Dolores are her angel children and Isabela and Camilo are her gremline children. But all 5 are usually gremlins soo...

Shiiiii 💀💀 mfs aren’t safe from her, she pretty much adopted all them and they couldn’t do nothing to stop it 😭 I’m not surprised she stepped in on so many occas, I mean she only wants the best and she only wants them to be safe.

[hakuogakuen]

Hakouki SSL: All Saitou Emails

EDITED 7/31/2020 - reformatted 9/8/20

Hello! Here are the translations for all emails that Chizuru can receive from Saitou, as well as a simple method to allow players to identify which email they have received. Primary translation by yuugs and primary proof reading by kuririn, with further contributions by shizuumi, MaiMaiOtome, and a member of the otogelib server who preferred to remain unnamed. Translation begins below the cut!

(above is a simple graphic which that identifies where each character’s emails can be found) 

1. 南雲について 

Sub: About Nagumo

Although I don't think it's necessary, I thought I could send you an email so we can communicate better.

I joined Nagumo afterwards, but…

He didn't seem to be really angry. So rest assured on that.

That's all. I'm sorry if this was unnecessary of me.

[Thank you for being considerate.] or  [That's because Kaoru is not very honest…]

→ [Thank you for being considerate.]

RE: About Nagumo

...No, it's not anything you need to thank me for.

After all, siblings should get along since they /are/ siblings. 

→ [That's because Kaoru is not very honest…]

RE: About Nagumo

I guess so. There are definitely times when he's not very frank.

But he often talks about you when he's with me.

2. 勝負の時間だな 

Sub: It's time for battle

I'm worried that I won't be able to concentrate just before the test, but...

Before the battle begins, I wanted to say thank you.

Thanks to you, I was able to concentrate on studying. I'm really grateful.

["Battle" is an exaggeration…] or [You're welcome.]

→ ["Battle" is an exaggeration…] 

RE: It's time for battle

Not really. If you don't get a good grade, you could get extra work to do.

It wouldn't be too farfetched to call it a battle.

→ [You're welcome.]

RE: It's time for battle

Yeah.

Good luck to you as well.

3. 夏休みトラブル相談室 

Sub: Summer vacation trouble advisory center

I already told you about this earlier, but...

Summer's a carefree season, and the more you get to go out, the more you risk getting into trouble.

How have you been?

Have you been involved in any problems or anything like that?

[I'm fine.] or  [.........]

→ [I'm fine.]

RE: Summer vacation trouble advisory center

...Looks like I didn't need to worry.

That's good, then.

That's a relief for me as well.

→  [.........]

RE: Summer vacation trouble advisory center

W-What is it?

Did something happen?

Don't tell me, Kazama... No, Souji and Nagumo are also suspicious...

4. お化け屋敷消灯事件 

Sub: The haunted house 'lights off' affair

Um...... Yukimura.

I'm sorry about what happened.

I'd never have thought we'd run into that kind of trouble. 

Rather, I was very surprised as well...

[It was interesting.] or  [It was scary…]

→ [It was interesting.] 

RE: The haunted house 'lights off' affair

I see. Even though there were problems, 

you're saying that you still had fun over everything else.

.........

But I wonder if calling a haunted house 

"interesting" is actually a compliment...?

→  [It was scary…]

RE: The haunted house 'lights off' affair

Certainly, having the lights suddenly switched, separately from the attraction, was more surprising than one might imagine.

That your injuries were... No, that you weren't hurt is a relief.

5. 今日は大変だっただろう 

Sub: Today has been tough

It was somewhat boisterous, starting with the Christmas party preparations and then having the party go live right after

......

It must've been a particularly difficult day for you.

Did you not have any free  time to enjoy for yourself?

[I did, since I received a present from you…] of [It was fine thanks to you.]

→ [I did, since I received a present from you…] 

RE: Today has been tough

No... Rather, I should be the one thanking you...

...That's right. It may be strange, but I want to say it.

Thanks for receiving my gift.

→ [It was fine, thanks to you.]

RE: Today has been tough

I really didn't do that much.

......Well, if I can be of any help to you, 

feel free to contact me again.

6. あけましておめでとう

Sub: Happy New Year

Happy New Year again, Yukimura. 

I'm glad I could spend the start of the new year together with you.

By the way, I know we paid our visit to the shrine just now, but...

You were praying for a long time. What were you praying for?

[I prayed for good health…] or  [It's a secret.]

→ [I prayed for good health…]

RE: Happy New Year

So pretty much the same as me then. 

I hope that the both of us can stay healthy and not fall sick...

→ [It's a secret.]

RE: Happy New Year

...I see.

Then, I dare not ask.

I also, um, would find it difficult to respond 

if you asked me what I'd prayed for.

7. 落とし物について 

Sub: About lost property

Sorry for the sudden message.

It's Saitou.

A short while ago, I found a handkerchief in front of the school gate.

Could it be yours?

...It's just that I can't think  of anyone else at this school who'd have a handkerchief with such a cute, floral pattern besides you.

[It might be mine.] or [I have absolutely no idea.]

→ [It might be mine.]

RE: About lost property

So it's really yours.

It had gotten dirty with soil, so I washed it.

I'll hold onto it for now, so come get it when you have time.

→ [I have absolutely no idea.]

RE: About lost property

So this belongs to some other student then?

All the students here besides you are boys, so who exactly would own this kind of handkerchief...?

8. いい案はないだろうか？ 

Sub: Do you have any good ideas?

It's Saitou.

There's something I want to  ask you about today, so I'm sending you an email.

The truth is, Souji and Heisuke have been coming late more often lately.

Do you have any ideas to help them avoid being late?

[Maybe you should give them more strikes?] or  [I'll go meet them in the mornings.]

→ [Maybe you should give them more strikes?]

RE: Do you have any good ideas?

Strengthening the penalties, huh...?

I didn't really want to do that, but it may be the only way...

→ [I'll go meet them in the mornings.]

RE: Do you have any good ideas?

I see, that could work.

Heisuke often comes to school with you, 

but if Souji also came with you, it might 

drastically decrease the number of times he comes late.

...All right, I'll accompany you as well in that case.

I don't want to put an extra burden on you alone.

9. 南雲のことについて 

Sub: About Nagumo

Hear me out, Yukimura.

The other day, in the middle of  a conversation about you, 

Nagumo suddenly got angry over something minor.

He apparently seems to lose his composure when it comes to you...

[I'll go tell him off…] or  [I apologize for the inconvenience.]

→ [I'll go tell him off…] 

RE: About Nagumo

I see...

It's not really a problem if he gets angry at me, 

but it'd be bad if he acted like that with teachers or the other students.

I'd be grateful if you could warn him before this becomes a problem.

→ [I apologize for the inconvenience.]

RE: About Nagumo

No, I never thought it was annoying.

It's true that sometimes he'll bring up troubling things...

But that's just how things are.

He's your older brother. It's proof that you're important to him.

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Hakuoki SSL - Hakuo Gakuen Student General Assembly Track 3

well... i hit 300 followers. not sure if it’s a milestone worth mentioning (if you’re one who followed because of the musicals and hasn’t gotten a message, read what it says at the top of my stuff i have page) or not since i can honestly say that i only started this tumblr for myself and everything i translate was really only done for my own sake... and I really have no idea if that number is good or bad for the amount of time I’ve been posting lol.

Still, i’m going to use the fact that this happened as an excuse to post this since i couldn’t figure out where to stick it in my queue since i didn’t want to wait til september to post this lol.

Anyway, this damn track is 18 min long... and i’ll get to the video next month along with the Hijikata web drama (have to push that back cause i got a bit busy with some things). Please note that the text left in bold is when Amagiri’s conversation with Kazama gets overlapped by Shiranui speaking. 

As always, final edits will be done when I get to my subtitle video... need to double check that other video translation and the audio for a few things.

Enjoy~! and do not post elsewhere!

Hakuoki SSL - Hakuo Gakuen Student General Assembly Track 3

Translation by KumoriYami

Hijikata: okay... it's about to start.

Harada: Hijikata-san?  you okay? need stomach medicine?

Hijikata: no need... alright, start/begin.

Amagiri: The Hakuo Gakuen Student Assembly will begin now. All students, stand! .....sit down.

Kazama: Then, start with each club's budget report, Amagiri.

Amagiri: Yes. these are the draft budgets for the various clubs/departments.

Kazama: The arts and literature club, the calligraphy club, and the photography club last year all needed 10,000; the music club which won a competition, in any case, needs a budget of 50,000; the newly established broadcasting club/depart of broadcasting  to buy equipment, they need an increase of 20,000; the baseball team, soccer team and tennis team will be the same as last year with 50,000; the judo club, archery club, track and field team, and also the kendo club, given their achievements from last year......

What......100,000?! Oi amagiri, what's going on/what's this about?!

Amagiri: About this issue...

Kazama: I haven't approved of any of this!! any club/organization/group associated with Hijikata will not have its budget approved!!

Shiranui: Alright/Well, of the budget report was just read, the clubs that weren't named will will maintain the status quo this year, ok? If there's no problem, the draft proposal will be adopted directly.

(applause)

Kazama: Eh...... continuing on [next], regarding the cultural festival that is to be held in october.......Shiranui.

shiranui: hey, hey. But there's nothing much to say since it will basically be the same as last year.

Kazama: This year like previous years, Hakuo Gakuen will hold its cultural festival......

(Kazama voice's cuts out completely while Hijikata and Harada talk)

Harada: I originally though [he'd] poke a basket [probably blow a gasket], seeing him now though, it seems that things are going smoothly.

Hijikata: For better or worse, that's because he's the student council president. But, what happens next will be the real question[/test]......

Harada: Next...... you mean the matter of changing of school rules and regulations?

Hijikata: I don't know what sort of issues the students will raise, though it's better to keep an eye on them.

(aside ends)

Kazama: Read it out/This reading is finished [check video version. Alt: That will be all on/for that/Conclude with that]. Are there any objections to what was raised? If there are no objections then this proposal/motion will be passed/approved. the next topic of discussion will be pertaining to amending the school rules and regulations.

You should all remember/recall, the questionnaire about amending the school's rules and regulations that I had sent out.

Due to he subject of this questionnaire, we solicited opinions on the revision of school rules.

amagiri: kazama-sama, these are the results of the questionnaire.

Kazama: So many opinions were collected, this shows that everyone is quite diastisfied with the current school rules and regulations. I see I see.....

? ? ?: How about cancelling the classical literature class? As someone living in modern times, I cannot help but wonder if there is any real need to learn classical literature. I think the time for classical literature should be spent on something more meaningful. So I propose that the classical literature class be cancelled. ——Proposed by: Anonymous

Kazama: Hm, hahahahaha.... This suggestion/proposal/motion/draft truly is great! However I believe cancelling the classical literature class isn't enough, rather [we should be] abolishing the classical literature [teaching] position. Hm. This suggestion will be kept to discussed later.

Hijikata: oi!!! You've got to be kidding me!! Classical literature is a required subject for entrance exams! Really, it's already that Kazama is thinking about adopting this proposal,  and the one who wrote this sort of proposal is also ridiculous, Souji ! You two, [come] to my office later! [either that or the principal's office.... but im leaning towards 'my' since 我 is in the TL. reword later]

Okita: Wait a moment/sec Hijikata-san, why do you think I wrote that proposal? The questionnaire was anonymous, there's no evidence that says that I wrote that proposal.

Hijikata: Regardless if you try to be anonymous, a proposal for cancelling the classical literature, there's no one aside from you in the entire school who would propose such a thing!

souji: wah, you seem to be really self-confident in that~ However, don't you think that students find Hijikata-san's classical literature class boring, I've seen not a few of them [may be: i don't think anyone i've seen would disagree...? check video later]?

hijikata: you bastard!!!

Harada: Calm down, Hijikata-san! You need to calm down! you should treat this as Souji fooling around.......

Okita: yes yes, I simply wrote down my heartfelt and honest thoughts~ [reword later? check video tl]

Hijikata: Sure enough you were the bastard who proposed this/it!!

Amagiri: Kazama-sama. do you want discuss the motion for cancelling the classical literature class later? I think you should continue with the next proposal. Further discussion on this draft may cause delays.

Kazama: To dare give/Daring to give me advice, you truly are brazen/impudent——I was originally going to be saying that, now you do as you say/that. [check video for last sentence]

Amagiri: I sincerely apologize.

???: Classes are 50 minutes in length, and they're too long! So can they be cut down to 30 minutes? If that happens, then the lunch period can be extended, which would mean more time to eat or even take a nap right? I think that this would absolutely be better!

——Proposed by a hopeful anonymous person [double check audio cuz the text on the video just says 'proposed by: anonymous']

Shiranui: Cutting the amount of time spent in class, that has my support! Kazama, pass this proposal [approve of this]!

harada: oi, oi! Don't you know how bad it would be/about the adverse/negative influence/impact/effect it would have, if you cut down on class time?

Shiranui: Hah? How bad effect it might have?! Shouldn't this be something to celebrate [Not sure but it might instead be: something happy/good to look forward to. check video tl]?

Harada: Hah...... you may think that cutting on class time would mean more time for playing around, but that way of thinking is wrong! Don't you guys know that each semester, exams are regularly scheduled? If class time is reduced, I'm afraid that it might mean being unable to learn everything before taking those exams. If that happens, you'd have to sacrifice your weekend for make up lessons. Is that alright with you?

Shiarnui: If that's the case, it would be better to reduce what the exams cover then!

Harada: In school, there are "learning essentials." If you feel like causing problems, and ignoring the minimal learning requirements, maybe should try being a teacher. If that happens, getting passing post-secondary entrance exams will become a dream. So, Heisuke, this type of draft proposal would be something that we can't approve of.

Heisuke: EH?! Harada-sensei, how do you know that this is something that I wrote?

Harada: Think with your head, who else would have come up with such an idea. To really think that you wouldn't get found out, that sort of thinking is completely incomprehensible.

Heisuke: ergh...........

Kazama: This type of shortsightedness really suits your identities as small fry. If class time is reduced, it'd better to have the classes cancelled altogether. Final exams cannot be considered as something to worry about, if I was writing an exam, I'd be able to get a perfect score even if my eyes were closed.

Amagiri: That skill is something that only Kazama-sama has.

Shiranui: Mah... The outward appearance is [might be] human, but [I/who] don't/doesn't know how many times he's repeated the school year/about the countless times [he's] repeated the school year.

Kazama: Returning to the subject, are there any objections to this proposal? It seems that there aren't, then [we're] moving on to discuss the next proposal.

???: I've heard that many students go play at the rail station/bus stop after school. Although moderate relaxation is harmless, but isn't playing at the game centre and KTV all night, something that goes against the responsibilities that students have? In order to prevent problems from occurring, I think that students should get permission from their teacher for where they go after school beforehand. [^check video tl for this later]

——Proposed by: Saito Hajime.

Kazama: oh.....?  The proposals up until were all anonymous, it seems like draft is different. But, to have the teacher give permission approve of where one can go after school, what a stupid idea.

Saito: A stupid....... idea?! If one person disrupts the moral standards/discipline, it will cause a chain reaction. What's so stupid about a proposal to prevent that?!

Kazama: Just think about it for a little bit. Or is your brain too small so you can't [even] figure that out?

Saito: …………

Amagiri: Kazama-sama. Although it may be bold for me to act as your substitute/in your place, but may I be the one to handle this explanation?  

Kazama: Approved.

Amagiri: yes!...... saito-dono, your opinion does sound somewhat reasonable. Because the act of playing around after school is not praiseworthy. However, after studying hard in school, it is necessary for suitable entertainment to be used as an outlet for accumulated stress. Just monotonously going to and from school will affect the students ability to think independently. Only by enriching their experiences will their minds be able to grow [more literally this sentence is about experience becomes  the soil for minds to grow in... check video tl later].

Saito: But I never said anything about banning after school entertainment/recreation! I only proposed having teachers the approve of what can be done after school!

Amagiri: That will affect the students' ability to think independently. What is referred to as independence, requires individuals who think by themselves and make their own choices [says "to take action"]. I believe, that it would go against human nature, if a teacher was asked about for permission about being able to play in a certain manner [check video tl for this later]. What do you think of this perspective?

Saito: So it was like that. Just as you said. I actually proposed something that opposed Hakuo Gakuen's education policy....... I will accept this conclusion [word I have for this translates to 'reality.' check video tl later], and deeply reflect upon this.

Harada: But even though this has nothing to do with being self-reliant/independent, this sort of regulation is [would be] too harsh/strict.

Kazama: Hrm......is that worthless discussion finally over? Presumably everyone has already become tired of this sort of monotonous talk. Here is some good news. The draft I will be reading now, I will not be accepting any objections and [will be] pass[ing] it right away.

(students mumble in background)

Kazama: Hmph. I understand how you are all worrying about whether or not your proposals will be adopted. Ignorant fools! Get down on your knees/Grovel on your knees before me and pay attention to attention to what I have to say! "My wife must greet me every morning at my home. Although there will be difficulties in the implementation of this regulation, I will compromise in having my her greet me every morning in the student council room.

Hijikata: This terrible proposal, did you really think, that this wouldn't get vetoed! Don't you remember how the same draft was rejected last time!!!

Kazama: That's preposterous...... Didn't you hear me?! I remember saying "the proposal that I will be reading now, I will not be accepting any objections, and [will be] passing it right away."

Hijikata: We don't have even the slightest reason to accept the draft proposed by you! Really, originally I thought that this would be able to proceed smoothly, but I didn't expect for this to happen again. Furthermore, you need to restrain yourself, stop calling/don't call her "my wife!"

Kazama: Hrm~ I have no obligations to listen to your complaints. But....... it truly is a pity for my wife to not be here right not. If she was here, surely, she would be passionately watching me, and blushing shyly while crying tears of joy.

Souji: To be able to misunderstand to this degree, it's shocking to the point of laughter [hilarity?]. The content of this is the exactly the same as last time, and nothing's been changed.

Heisuke:  (Fortunately), ["fortunately is included in the text tl but not video tl. check audio later]It seems like that guy caught a cold, which is she isn't here today.

Harada: It's seem that you can also do something smart. Well done, Heisuke!

Heisuke: hehe, right?

Kazama: Che! Too loud! After I've announced the passing the adoption of these proposals, you all/all of you bastards [check audio] should just obediently behave......!

Amagiri: Then, read out the next proposal.

Shiranui! Oh! That looks pretty good. "I hope for winter vacation to be as long as summer vacation, please give us a month of vacation!" Summer vacation is indeed a month long, winter break is only have a month!

Amagiri: To begin with, the length of summer vacation isn't the same across the country. In colder regions with more snow, summer vacation may not be a month. On the contrary, that region's winter vacation may be relatively longer. Summer vacation was originally established for escaping the hot weather.......

Shiranui: I know, I know! I get it already! Stop talking okay?

Amagiri: No. I am not finished speaking....

Kazama: Amagiri, Shiranui! You've got some nerve to be interrupting me while I talk! This is all your fault that we've strayed away from our next topic for discussion!! The next time this happens/If this happens again, I will not spare you! Remember that/keep that in mind!

Saito: I believe that if it wasn't for your pointless proposals, the current topic of discussion wouldn't have been so derailed.

Kazama: Listen to me, no matter the objections against the following/next draft, I will still implement it! Now remember that and listen carefully!

"Female students must report to the Student Council room immediately after the bell rings for lunch. At the time [they] must also bring a hand-made bento..."

Hijikata: Veto!

Kazama: "Female students must go to the Student Council room after..."

Hijikata: Veto!

Kazama: "Female students must..."

Hijikata: Veto!

Kazama: Hijikata, if you haven't listened to everything that I've said, surely you have a reason for it [/how can you have a reason to interrupt me]?!

HIjikata: It’s because you deliberately targeted her by writing so many proposals, bastard. [alt: "because, bastard, you deliberately targeted her..." will check audio for this later]

School rules are not your toys!

Kazama: You don't understand the obvious! As Hakuo Gakuen's student council president, I am obligated to make the school rules and regulations perfect! Therefore, the current school rules must be amended with only this draft!

Souji: Saying/Having said such beautiful/pretty words, isn't he just making excuses for his wilfulness?

Saito: Because there is only one female student in the entire school.

Kazama: Keh! You bastards! Do you guys mean to do everything you can to obstruct the path of love between me and my wife!?

Heisuke: what path of love......

Harada: It goes without saying that she's not your wife! Having said that though, to say spout such nonsense without backing down in front of everyone, that courage is really admirable.

Kazama: How could I possibly give up! My wife and I have been matched by the red thread/string [of fate]! This profound bond, even if the world stands against me, I will never back down!

[While I usually see 'thread' associated with the Chinese version of this belief, I don't know if the Japanese version of it uses 'string' or 'thread'....]

Shirnaui: What red string...... this is clearly just Kazama's own unbelievable delusions and his own wishful thinking.

Amagiri: Shiranui. You cannot say that/That mustn't be said. there's no telling if a miracle will occur. [reword more formally later]

Shiranui: Ah, if the sun rises in the West and the sky rains red, perhaps that might be true.... but, I don't think it's/that's going to work/it isn't anything but hopeless.

Amagiri: Mm............

Kazama: Heh, you've said enough. No matter what you think, the final decision is in my hands. Amagiri, all the drafts that were just read have been approved.

Amagiri: But... isn't that too unreasonable?

Kazama: What's the problem. I am the the student council president. Even if the [my] methods are unreasonable, no one would dare object.

Heisuke: Who'd accept that sort of ridiculous reasoning?!

Souji: That's right, if you think that you'll be forgiven for doing whatever you want as the student council president, then you're gravely mistaken. Eh.... (goes up on stage) I see.... these were the drafts that were read right?

Kazama: What the hell are you doing bastard?

Souji: Of course doing this! (tears all the drafts)

Kazama: ...! You bastard! You two quickly help me stop him!!!

Amagiri: Kazama-sama. I do not think that those drafts are suitable to be adopted.

Shiranui: I also agree/Agreed. Say, I'm very tired can I go home now(/ Anyway I'm tired can I go home now? [2nd one sounds better])

Kazama: Not permitted...!

Hijikata: Anyway! If you continue being a nuisance, we also have our own ways to respond. I don't care about the power you have/ about the powers of the student council president, but I'd advise you to not look down upon us teachers.

Harada: That's right, Kazama. I advise you to retreat while you're still able. If this continues, those so-called rules won't be able to protect you.

Amagiri: Kazama-sama. Listen to Hijikata-sensei and Harada-sensei's advice right now. This commotion/disturbance is getting bigger, and continuing this may cause others to doubt Kazama-sama's ability as student council president.

Kazama:.....Kuh!...! Heheheheheh.... You guys, I'l remember this! The next Student Assembly, I'll show off all my power to show everyone in the world just who my wife belongs to [check video tl]! Look forward to it!

Souji:...This type of behaviour... is this what they call a "defeated dog's barking"? [if it's not this interpretation.... i'm assuming it means something like 'running away in defeat,' or 'having your tail between your legs'or 'turning tail' since this mentions a dog - 负犬远吠 in chinese. or maybe its 'barking dogs seldom bite' that was the only idiom i found that that mentioned dogs and barking that might have been in JP when browsing. either way, i'll go i'll go double check the other version of this that has been translated later].

Saito: Exactly/Absolutely/(indeed/It is).   I don't want to become like that person. /I don't want to be that kind of person, even if I walk astray/I don't want to be that kind of person, even if I'm not careful. [check video tl]

End

----------

well, this is now officially the longest thing I’ve translated... tho that won’t be the case when I get to Shinsengumi Oni-tan. i dragged this one out for a long time since it just looked like a massive wall of text in nimble... haaah thankfully all the other ssl dramas aside from “Another Chizuru?” are >15min... I think?

also no images being posted this time cuz i didn’t schedule this posting.

[colossalbeltloop-art]

Over yonder, a villain’s younger days ahead

I know some people are excited about the idea of teen Gabriel and his trifecta of pining girls comic, but it actually makes me wince. Think about it. How good can it really be?

I think a teen romance is plausible with Gabriel and Emilie, and you know Audrey is gonna crash into the mix, but I hate the idea of Nathalie running in the same circles. If feels cliche enough. The most I could tolerate is MAYBE Nathalie is somewhere in the background, and one day she notices him, but that's it. He’s too preoccupied and pimping to ever notice her. No interactions. I hate when "parallels" is an excuse for lazy writing, you know?

See, I loved the idea of Nathalie just manifesting mysteriously out of nowhere, like a shadowy whirlwind at dusk on a chilly autumn day, that just appears at their front door. They don’t even know how the hell she got through the gate.

She’s wearing all black, her expression difficult to read, but eerily still; with a touch of worn melancholy. She startles everyone, but Gabriel is intrigued. Her presence dramatically changes the dynamic of the Agreste household. It throws everything off kilter--maybe Nathalie’s intentions in the beginning weren’t pure; her last name being a literal function here. Something dramatic enough happened in her life where she just says “Fuck it, I’m pursuing this man whether he’s married or not." She successfully crosses the threshold, but something unexpected happens during her long game.

She becomes enamored with Adrien because he's an adorable cinnamon roll. He’s the gentlest, most caring and attentive pupil she’s ever had. As the days and months roll by, her desire for Gabriel turns much deeper than lust, and now she's pitifully in love. As for Emilie, Nathalie doesn't always see eye to eye with her, but she learns to care about her and can't deny her probably unhealthy devotion to her family.

Eventually, Nathalie realizes she can't do it. She just can't bring herself to tear the family apart. This is where her deep, agonizing misery settles in, and we see the perpetually droopy-eyed, apathetic Nathalie that buried her passion when we are introduced to her in Season 1.

When Emilie’s accident takes place, Nathalie is positively torn asunder. Just as she begins to feel fully accepted by the family, just as she begins to feel like she’s home, just as she feels she's gained control of her feelings for Gabriel, they reignite with a fiery vengeance, and it actually sickens her. She feels like a horrid, disgusting excuse for a human.

How about that? She has a heart after all. And it hurts like hell.

Thus, her suffering must be prolonged. She still can't even begin to bring herself to try and woo Gabriel, especially in his closed off grief.

But of course, over time, it gets more and more difficult to quell her feelings, and easier and easier to reconcile with her eventual course of action.

Then one day, it happens. Gabriel makes the decision, while brief, to end his goal of gathering the miraculous, and the lights of the cavern of Emilie’s resting place turn off.

This reveals a single door to his vulnerability, his acceptance of his circumstances, and dare I say-- his heart. Nathalie has long been given permission (a suspicious amount you might say) to approach it, but we're talking about a 16 ton, machine enigma SSL bank vault door. It's going to take herculean effort-

BUT!

Our girl's got the fuckin' pass-code, multiple encryption keys, fuckin' block cipher protocols, cascade ciphering hack shit, fucking NO ONE has access to Gabriel the way Nathalie does.

So anyway...before I go off on a ridiculous tangent as I'm prone to...

When it comes to anything regarding the backstory between Gabriel and Nathalie, I was really hoping for a "I wish I knew you when I was younger" sort of setup. There could be some beautiful intrigue in Gabriel having a difficult time having such a strong attachment to someone that just showed up in his life one day. People can have really deep connections with those they meet decades after school and well into their careers. Happens all the time. Call me selfish, but I don't need more teen drama BS lol

[shenanigumi]

Alley, what kind of student do you think the guys are? Who is the best at cramming? Who does their homework the second it is assigned? Who is lord and master of post-its and post-its flags? Who is always skipping classes? You know... The usual.

Oh hell yes, this I can do!! (I’ll be ignoring SSL entirely despite the subject matter since, y’know, high school versus college, and also some of them were teachers for some reason.)

Hijikata tries his best but is constantly frustrated because while he has a very clear idea of what he wants to do with his life, he’s still not sure what his classes have to do with it, and they involve a lot of abstract theory when he’d rather be putting knowledge to practical use. He pours in effort and doesn’t miss any extra credit, so he does get good grades, he’s just salty because this isn’t quite what he imagined. But he got in on scholarships based on his circumstances, so he can’t just back out now.

Okita is great at doing the assignments he wants to do and will procrastinate until the very last second on the ones he doesn’t want to do, bitching and moaning the whole time. He makes no effort whatsoever to make any friends in class and can be kind of an asshole, but he’s also quick-witted, so his professors and classmates either love or hate him from a distance. No one’s ever seen him at a party, so people have no idea whether he has friends or who they might be.

Saito is basically your standard straight-A student. He is extremely methodical and has a meticulously arranged schedule, taking time to account for when he’ll do what step of each assignment the same day it’s given. Admittedly, he doesn’t have much human contact outside of class and clubs and dorm conversations, but he’s got the studying part down and has probably among the healthier sleep schedules.

Heisuke barely has his shit together, if we’re being honest. He does his best, but he doesn’t really take notes or keep much of a calendar, so he accidentally forgets about the finer details all the time. He’s also the king of excuses, as in, “I left it at my dorm” or “I forgot to print it out”. He gets passing grades since he’s terrified of failure, and has been known to pull a couple all-nighters before exams just to be sure, but there have been a couple close calls through sheer neglect.

Harada doesn’t really try too hard, because he abides by that old rule, “Cs get degrees”. As long as he’s passing a class, he doesn’t mind. It’s not that he doesn’t try at all—he’s not such a wild partier that he throws caution to the winds (though he does love a good occasion for social drinking)—he just prefers not to break his back stressing over something he doesn’t care about, like math. But when he does find a subject he loves, like social justice, he tackles it with all due passion and gets extremely good grades for his trouble.

Nagakura is a frat boy just like you’d expect, but also unexpectedly nerdy sometimes. Sure, he usually crams for tests last-minute and retains almost nothing in the long term, but he’s also a natural at political science and has won a fair few debates. In the beginning of a semester, he skips classes just because he doesn’t feel like going, then panics when he has to miss a class later and realizes he has a finite number of skippable classes. Despite his mischief and drama, he’s got a heart of gold and is also surprisingly capable of getting his shit together when it’s necessary, so the professors kind of like him anyway even if he can barely scrape through the class.

Sanan is that mysterious student who shows up for classes, clearly already having read about five chapters ahead, and then vanishes into the ether. Rumor has it he lives off-campus, but no one knows him well enough to say, or even knows anyone else who does. Professors usually kind of hate him because he constantly challenges them and questions the textbooks (and brings in outside theories and experiences to make it more about himself), but they don’t have much of a choice but to give him good grades since he’s so coherent.

Yamazaki takes notes. On everything. His pen is always moving even when nothing is happening, so you’re not even sure if he’s taking notes on the things you’re supposed to be learning about or if he’s writing a novel or something, but since he gets good grades, it’s probably the former. He’s a little sharp-tempered with his slower classmates, so there are people who don’t like him, but it’s really just out of impatience and he wouldn’t actually hurt a fly.

Iba is that social butterfly who knows everyone, is adored by all his professors, runs at least one club, and is all about that community service. He’s good in all the classes he takes, mostly because he’s savvy to the system and checks in with his advisor rather than trying to figure it out alone. He’s figured out how to get the units he wants without taking classes he doesn’t care about, so he can let his passion work for him.

Souma is that rare student who’s motivated purely by a love of learning. Since he doesn’t dare write or highlight in his textbooks, even after buying them, he flags the important pages instead. The problem is that everything seems important, so he still loses track of his place more often than not. Fortunately, he takes enough notes to supplement them that he still knows what he’s doing and gets decent grades, though he has been known to accidentally read chapters/do assignments out of order.

Sakamoto is that student who somehow manages to perfectly juggle socializing and studying, getting amazing grades while still being the life of the party (even if guys are a little wary of him accidentally stealing their girlfriends). Professors either love him for being clear, since he’s got a definite handle on his own opinions, or hate him for being contrary since he has a tendency to be kind of radical.

Kazama is a theater kid through and through and lives his life as though he’s the star of a world-class drama, so he comes off as kind of a self-righteous asshole. He has no idea what a student loan is and is there mostly because it’s a reputable school, living off-campus in probably a luxury apartment of some sort. No one knows how he gets such good grades despite being so lazy, but there are rumors of bribery.

Thanks for the prompt!!

[impracticaldemon]

Dangerous Connections [late submission for Saichifest 2019]

by impracticaldemon a modern, non-canonesque, 4200-word vignette

Rating:  M / Lemon   Read also on FFN | AO3

Author's Note: I have no idea where this story came from. Unfortunately, it nagged at me until I wrote it, which delayed other writing. Part of the inspiration came from @nospringonions fanfic for Saichifest 2019 (although that fanfic feels brighter, and has a beginning, middle, and end).  This is one of my very few non-Shinsengumi-era stories. The setting is a modern Japan AU that has a slightly? darker feel to it than Hakuouki SSL. Partial inspiration for the feel—and Saito's motorbike—go to @kurokiorya

As a final note, the entire second half of the story is more or less about sex.

Dangerous Connections

"I found you a tutor, Hajime-kun!"

Saitō eyed his friend warily. That particular grin always made him nervous.

"Tanaka-sensei said that she would find somebody appropriate, Sōji. There's no need—"

"Tanaka-sensei has already approved my suggestion." Okita's smirk became even more pronounced. "She agreed that it made sense to get somebody who knew the club, and wouldn't mind working around your weird schedule. Besides, it turns out that Chizuru-chan was already on her list of candidates."

Saitō felt himself tense. "Yukimura? Sōji—that's—I don't think that's a good idea at all."

Okita laughed. "Worried you won't be able to concentrate? On the bright side, you won't want to embarrass yourself, right? I figure you'll be speaking and writing English like a pro in no time!" He punched Saitō lightly on the arm—lightly for Sōji, at least.

"There must be other—"

"Get a grip, Saitō! Your family said you had to pass your English competency exam, or quit the team." Okita's expression darkened. "And this year we're going to win the championship, so don't you dare let them force you to quit!"

"I don't intend to!" replied Saitō with rare heat. "You shouldn't have gotten involved in this."

"Oi, what's with you? I thought you'd be pleased. I'm pretty sure you've had a thing for Chizuru-chan for ages—and didn't you mention that your dad wanted you to find a suitable girlfriend? I mean, you're twenty now, and graduating uni in a couple of years, and—"

"Stay. Out. Of. This." Saitō turned on his heel and stalked off, shoulders rigid.

Okita was so surprised that he watched him go.

"Well that was weird—what the hell did you say to him?"

"Nothing he wanted to hear, apparently." It wasn't Heisuke's fault that Saitō was behaving like he had a poker up his butt, but Okita had to suppress an instinctive desire to lash out at the younger man. He didn't handle rejection well—he knew it, but that didn't make him any happier right now.

"Anything I can do to help?" Fortunately, Heisuke was reading the room for once, and didn't demand an immediate explanation. Okita grimaced inwardly. Heisuke was a good guy, and he'd matured a lot in the last couple of years—they all had, supposedly.

"Doubt it. Not unless you're in the mood to torture Hajime-kun for personal information?"

Heisuke stared at him, then waved his hands in an emphatic denial. "First of all, torture really isn't my thing. Second, I wasn't planning to die today."

"You saying I can't take Saitō?"

"MMMMFFFF." Heisuke pantomimed locking up his lips and throwing away the key. Then he ruined it by adding, "Who knows? Not me." He grinned at Okita. "I knows nuffin' guv'nah!"

"What the hell was that? As if your English isn't bad enough to begin with."

"Better'n yours and Saitō's, I hear."

Okita grimaced, then shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me, but Saitō's dad says he either passes the next time, or he's out of the kendo club—national championship or not. The guy's a hardass, too—if he says it, he means it. But we need that championship if we're going to get funding to go international." He scowled.

"Makes me glad I'm not the heir—or even runner-up heir—to some fancy corporation, for once. My dad just wants me to take his guilt money and lead my own life."

"Yeah, yeah. There are worse things, you know?"

"So I'm told." Heisuke bit back a snide rejoinder—Souji was always grouchy when it came to families. Besides, it reminded him what he'd come to say in the first place.

"I don't know if it's related, but I have some news for you. Bad news, and I wish Shinpat had found you first, to be honest. Assuming he didn't avoid you on purpose."

Okita gestured for him to continue, though he was still staring in the direction that Saitō had… gone.

"You know that pharmaceutical company that's been in the news so much recently?"

"No." Then Okita reconsidered. "Wait—yes. Hijikata was ranting about it yesterday, I think. Kondō-san kept having to calm him down—not that there's anything new in that."

"Well, turns out they were into some seriously illegal shit, and even had some kind of stolen army biotech they were working on."

"So?"

"It was owned by Chizuru-chan's dad. In fact, her brother was the manager, at least on paper."

That got Okita's full attention.

"Well, shit."

"Anyway, nobody knows if they were set up, or who leaked the info to the cops—or the press—and so far it's hard to say who in the family knew all the details."

"There is no way Chizuru-chan knew about it, or was involved," Okita snapped.

"Yeah, we know that. But for now, the family, and everyone close to the family, is a suspect. And it gets worse."

"How?" Okita was already trying to sort out the kind of impact this could have on the club. Chizuru was close friends with all of them, and she acted as a kind of book-keeper and general secretary.

"Chizuru's dad made a substantial donation to the club, back when Chizuru started university. That's kind of why we got stuck with her in the first place, remember—not that I minded."

Okita remembered. "Fuck. FUCK!"

"Right? A club like ours—any sports club that wants to compete at the national level and beyond—can't be associated with illegal drugs. And these ones involve army tech, so..."

"Why the hell didn't Hijikata explain this to me yesterday?!" demanded Okita.

Wisely, Heisuke didn't point out that Sōji probably hadn't been listening. Sometimes things were okay between those two, other times they weren't—as in, really weren't. At times like this, he envied Hajime-kun for not living with the rest of them.

Okita glared at Heisuke for not answering his question. "Fine. Where's Chizuru-chan?"

"We don't know."

"What?! How is that even possible? She lives with us, for crying out loud!"

Heisuke took a half-step back, mentally cursing Shinpachi for setting him up to be the bearer of ill tidings. Sōji tended to hit first, ask questions later—well, not so much now, but still. Normally, they sent Sano-san to do stuff like this, but Sano was out of town for the week.

"We think she's either been taken away by her dad, or kidnapped by those Kazama thugs." Heisuke had to lean in to whisper the words, and Okita took the opportunity to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

"Then what the hell are we doing just talking about it?! Why are we here at school instead of out looking for her?"

"I'm not gonna talk if you keep doing that!"

"Fine. Screw English class, I'm out of here. And I'm really pissed at Hajime-kun for not telling me all this earlier—he must have known."

"Our job is to go to school. Keep up appearances."

"Thank you for that, Hijikata-mommy-san. Sure, I'll do that." Without another word, Okita spun away from Heisuke, and ran for the main entrance.

Heisuke hesitated, then flung up his hands with a groan and sprinted off after him. Nobody was going to be happy when Sōji encountered the ladies and gentlemen of the press. And it wasn't Heisuke's fault that they'd trailed him here after Hijikata-san had slammed the house door in their faces.

Saitō's bike was expensive, but not showy, and it was a lot less noisy than most. That being said, he hadn't taken quite as much care as usual when he'd taken off from school after running into Sōji. Fortunately, he couldn't sense anyone watching as he methodically stowed the bike, and hurried through the parking lot door of his non-descript apartment building. On the face of it, he was just another young guy who'd probably forgotten something he needed for work or school. He'd done a good job of being anonymous here for two years; there was no reason to mess that up now.

He'd originally hoped to throw people off the scent by showing up for class as usual, but he just wasn't calm enough to pull it off. No matter how hard he tried, he still lacked the detachment and control of his father and grandfather—as they often pointed out. And ugh. Sōji had meant it for the best, but Saitō had hoped to avoid anything that might link him to Chizuru except as a member of the club's championship kendo team. The Kazama had top notch intelligence gatherers.

He made himself take the elevator up to his floor—which wasn't the penthouse, since that was just too obvious for the scion of a wealthy corporate empire. At least he wasn't the heir, thank all the gods. He unlocked the door to his apartment, and then carefully locked and bolted it behind him once inside.

"Hajime-san?"

And there she was, waiting for him. His heart-beat picked up at the thought.

"Chizuru…" It was still a delight to use her unadorned first name, and to hear his own name on her lips. He knew he was blushing, but he couldn't seem to help it, or to suppress the inappropriate—very warm—images that caused at least part of the blush.

Without warning—except that he was trained to read an opponent's slightest movement—Chizuru threw her arms around him, and buried her head against his shoulder. He tried not to react to her sudden proximity, but his hormones had other ideas. She was obviously frightened, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to gently lift her face to his, and kiss her. Not that they hadn't kissed before, but it was still so new to him—to them both—that he was immediately swept up in it, and didn't notice the passage of time until he realized that he had her pressed tightly against the hallway wall, one hand in her hair, and the other stroking the soft skin of her back under her blouse.

When he tried to draw away, Chizuru clung to him, her lips nuzzling his neck. He could tell that she was embarrassed, but also determined to keep him close. If only he were better at rational thought when they were together like this! Then he could comfort her properly, while still being aware of his surroundings, and considering what to do next.

"Chizuru, we need to plan." She couldn't stay hidden with him indefinitely—though part of him wished she would—but the alternatives weren't clear. "I think it's going to get more difficult after today…" Not so much because of Sōji blatantly throwing them together, but because the press was out there now, and hungry for details. The Kazama family wouldn't miss the opportunity to seize Chizuru if they could find her, and he suspected that Kōdō was finally scared enough to accept the Yukimura-Kazama merger, and hand her over to them to seal the bargain.

Saito made another effort to put some distance between them, but thinking about Chizuru engaged to Kazama Chikage made him want to do anything other than let go. In fact, he wanted very much to forget about everything other than finding out how best to please his beloved—if still secret—girlfriend. His mouth dipped down to the tip of her closest ear, and he began to trace the outer edge with his tongue, which elicited an intoxicating, shivery kind of gasp from Chizuru. He felt his pelvic muscles contract in response, and blood rush down to harden him into full arousal. Without another thought, he pressed a hard kiss—almost a bite—into the side of Chizuru's neck, making sure that his teeth would leave marks.

"Hajime…" Chizuru's voice was a little rougher than usual, and her breathing had quickened. He tightened his hand in her hair, and forced her head up to look at him, so that he could admire the scarlet that now bloomed high on her cheeks, and the way her eyes seemed to glow as she warmed into passion. When he brought his mouth to hers, abandoning her ear and neck, and biting gently on her lower lip, she made another half-muffled sound of pleasure, but louder and more distinct this time. He found himself trapping her even more tightly between his body and the wall, and grinding himself against her, while his tongue parted her willing lips and began to explore her mouth, eventually so deeply that it felt like a flagrant expression of what he wanted to do with the rest of her body.

As if in response to that thought, he felt Chizuru's hands tug the tail of his shirt free of his jeans, so that she could caress his bare skin in the same way that he was touching hers. His father wouldn't be very impressed at how easily distracted he was, he knew, but something rebelled in him at the thought. His friends and colleagues pushed him to be more open; his father and grandfather demanded perfect stoicism. Only Chizuru let him be entirely himself—she didn't mind his silences, she trusted him to listen when she wanted to talk, and she never seemed troubled by his awkwardness. He was utterly in love with her.

Still kissing, they undressed each other, fumbling at buttons, and even occasionally snarling at layers that wouldn't cooperate with their need to be skin-to-skin. Saitō retained enough sanity to lift Chizuru into his arms and carry her to his small bedroom, which was surely a more private and appropriate place to communicate such desires. Not until he laid her down on his bed—hair loose, clothing wildly askew, love-bite darkening on her neck—did he fully process what they were doing, and freeze, appalled by how far he'd let things go. He immediately sat back, still straddling her hips, and forced his greedy hands away from her skin.

To his surprise, Chizuru smiled up at him, and reached out to run her own hand down across the muscles of his stomach to rest lightly on the tight bulge still constrained by his lower fly and boxer-briefs. The button to his jeans was already undone, although it had taken her some minutes to achieve this, earlier. He still wasn't sure whether the button had actually been difficult, or if she'd just been distracted by his lips on her skin, and on the thin material of her lacy bra. Her nipples had hardened intriguingly under the ministrations of his stroking, pinching fingers, and then tongue and teeth.

He stared down at her now, breathless and dry-mouthed with desire, blood pounding in his ears, but desperate not to injure her in any way. Her thumb rubbed gently, but attentively, at the head of his erection, and he flinched inwardly at the combination of the exciting, pleasurable sensation, and the vulnerable, loving, determined expression on her lovely face. It might feel wonderful, but it wasn't right—not when there was fear and sadness lurking behind her passion.

"Chizuru," he whispered, barely able to resist leaning forward into her touch, while forcing himself to keep his hands curled on his thighs, rather than caressing her breasts, or busy with the pale blue panties that lay visible below her loose, rumpled skirt.

"I want this, Hajime. You love me, you believe in me, and I want you to be the first, since I don't know what the future has in store for either of us."

"We'll stay together no matter what, I promise, if that's what you want. But don't—Chizuru, those are the wrong reasons—you must know that!" He hoped that his voice betrayed neither the effort it cost to be rational, nor his hurt at her lack of confidence. In him, in them, he wasn't sure which.

He read stubbornness—and true longing—in her eyes, and the set of her lips. She wasn't going to back down, not when she believed in what she was saying.

"Your father won't want an alliance with a disgraced family, we both know that. And the Kazama want me so that I can produce an heir to both families, Kazama and Yukimura, now that their victory is certain. A marriage, an heir—that will bring everyone into line, and keep our noble blood pure." The last word was low and bitter. "Are you going to subject your family, and your friends, and all their dreams, to the inevitable retaliation? They—the Kazama—can be brutal, you know."

"My family can look after itself," he told her forcefully, trying and failing to ignore her insistent caresses. He shifted a little, then caught her wrists, pushing her down into the bed. "Don't offer yourself to me on such terms. I'll refuse." He wasn't sure he could, but he'd do his best.

Chizuru stared at him, clearly frustrated in every way, but also, maybe, a little hopeful. Or was he imagining it, because he wanted her so much, and needed her to want him back out of love and passion, not despair—or as part of some ridiculous, fatalistic goodbye.

"Hajime? I don't want you to get hurt. I love you. That's the only reason I would ever go to them—"

"I know, but this—" He swallowed, unable to do what he should, and just get up, and get his mind back on prioritizing her safety, and—and so on. Why couldn't things be simple? Why did he always think too much?! He could practically feel Sōji's eyes mocking him for his indecision.

"I'm sorry," Chizuru whispered into the silence. "I was being selfish—to want this time with you. This is my fault—"

"Dammit—no!" He let go of her wrists and curved his hands around her cheeks to cradle her head. "Just… just don't go there." He bent down to kiss her fiercely on the lips, and was surprised to discover that his control was still pitifully weak. Desire reignited as he registered the heat of her skin against his bare chest, and felt her lips part beneath his. He heard her breath hitch—just as it had earlier—and then her arms tightened around him, pulling him fully against her, so that he barely had time to brace one forearm to avoid falling.

"I won't give up—"

"I won't let you go."

With little grace, but also no pointless self-consciousness, he freed them both from their remaining clothes, and gave himself over to kissing and teasing and caressing his beloved's body into heated, extravagant arousal. Inexperience didn't mean lack of imagination, and he'd imagined making love to her so many times before, often to his own chagrin. He kissed and tasted and left marks on her skin, and suckled her breasts, and ran strong, demanding hands along her sides and over her hips and belly and around her smooth backside. And he thanked her, in fervent, heartfelt whispers, for letting him hear her cries of passion, and for sharing her wonderful, sweet body with him.

Her scent was intoxicating—he hadn't realized how much it would affect him. When his explorations finally reached the damp, sensitive folds of skin at her centre, and his fingers started to learn the contours of her most private places, her soft cries became whimpers, and he saw her biting her lower lip so hard that he thought it might bleed.

"Chizuru…" He almost stilled his hand, worried for the first time that he'd somehow hurt her, in his ignorance, but when his fingers slowed, and he lifted his lips from the hard nub of one breast, her expression plainly begged him not to stop, and he felt her hips jerk so as to press her mound more firmly against his hand. Only a little while later, he found himself sliding his fingers within her, both elated and a little shocked by how much he wanted to do such things. His body was beginning to quiver with need and anticipation of release, and he knew that she could feel his hard length pressed tightly against her thigh, and perhaps even the slightly sticky fluid that had started to pool on her skin. Without conscious thought, he pressed his fingers deeper within her, and felt inner muscles tremble and contract against them. Abruptly, he wasn't sure how he was going to manage to hold back any longer. He pulled away from her uncertainly, aware that he'd become completely focussed on sensation.

"Hajime…" She said his name like a plea, and lust jolted through him.

"Chizuru, I… I…" He swallowed, so deep in desire that he couldn't form a proper question. When she reached out and pulled his mouth down to hers, kissing him passionately, his whole body twitched involuntarily, and he clung to her, feeling his climax starting to build out of control. He could only hope—though he was moderately optimistic—that he'd made his lover feel the same way.

He was incredibly grateful when Chizuru shifted her hips, and awkwardly, but without hesitation, helped guide him to her entrance. He took that as permission to finally surrender his thread-bare self-command and join with her, and a soft groan escaped his lips as he thrust into her, his hands moving to grip her hips as he rocked hard against her once, and then withdrew a short space before burying himself deep into her once more, savouring the way her tight, slick walls clenched and pulsed around his shaft. She was very wet, and she smelled of arousal and sex, and a strong wave of possessiveness swept over him along with the desperate yearning of near-orgasm. Unable to stop, he thrust into her again and again, listening to her moan, and feeling her writhe beneath him. Somewhere in the haze of adrenaline and pleasure, he promised himself to do more for her next time, since this time he seemed to lack the ability to do much more than ride a dizzying wave of physical sensation until he was coming hard and fast inside her, his seed spilling hot within her welcoming body.

They lay together for some time afterwards, without speaking, their bodies still joined, their skin sticky with sweat and still sensitive to the other's touch. Saitō was conscious that he had left numerous bruises and marks on Chizuru—some light, some deep—and he was embarrassed that he didn't fully recollect being so rough. It had also occurred to him, too late, that he probably hadn't been careful enough or gentle enough, given that it was her first time. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to be able to think clearly enough to express his concern just yet. He suspected he was smiling, and was a little worried that he looked smug.

Chizuru, on the other hand, looked… happy. More than happy. For some reason that Saitō couldn't fathom, she was gazing lovingly up at him through dreamy, half-closed eyes, and showed no inclination to have him move from where he lay. The only problem was that he felt a distinct inclination to make love to her again, but wasn't sure whether that would be either appropriate, or welcome. He'd never been entirely sure what women really thought about sex, having never had the opportunity—or courage—to ask. But… she really did look happy. And beautiful. Gorgeous, even. Although that didn't necessarily reflect how she felt.

"Thank you," he said, at last. It didn't begin to convey how he felt, but it was a start.

"Oh…" Chizuru looked startled, but then relaxed again and grinned at him. "You're welcome—I mean, thank you, too."

There was a lot going on, back in the real world. And somebody was going to track them down, probably either Sōji, or Hijikata-san, and probably sooner rather than later. Saitō tightened his arms around Chizuru.

"Remember, you promised."

"I know. No giving myself up just to protect everyone I care about—and especially you—from the anger of the most powerful family in the country."

He blinked. "Somehow you make it sound like I'm being selfish." Then, before it could even begin to turn into another disagreement, he added. "But even if I am—yes, that is correct. Also, to quote something either Sano-san, or Shinpachi, said one time: have a little faith, okay?"

Chizuru looked up at him with an unusually roguish smile.

"I have faith in your endurance…"

Saitō felt his eyes widen in surprise, and then Chizuru suddenly looked away, red suffusing her cheeks. Gently, he turned her face back toward his, and kissed her forehead.

"I'm sorry if I was too rough—I really am. I don't know what was wrong with me. But I'd be very happy to let you test my endurance, if you want to."

And if Sōji, Hijikata-san, or anyone else needed him in the next hour or two, then that was just too bad. Chizuru's well-being, and her good opinion of him, were far more important than a national championship, a potential rift with his father, or the threats of a family with distinctly dangerous business practices.

[END]

A/Note:  I realized part-way through editing that the background for this Saito is influenced by that of the Saito from an entirely different otome game (DTL)

Tags: @shell-senji @hidetheremote @eliz1369 @nalufever @annedey @nospringonions @soujthings @do-it-for-keef @sabinasanfanfic @fury-ous @canadiangaap @aetherium-weaver @hakuyamazakisensei @petri808

To those who read Teachings of Demons:  the new chapter is underway and should be finished this weekend.  Still dealing with a number of distractions, but hoping for solid writing time in March.

~ Imp

[hunty-booboo]

Online Jewellery Stores - Is It Safe to Buy Jewellery Online?

More and extra customers are buying product online at the internet as they start to sense greater at ease about the safety of their cash transactions and their identity information.  Remodelling jewellery This is the case especially with inexpensive and normally used regular merchandise - however what approximately greater luxurious and private items like jewellery? Are consumers inclined to shop for jewelry from on line jewellery stores?

Buying jewelry on line may be one of the maximum fun and fulfilling studies you may ever have on the internet, and it is safe and relaxed, and here is why.

Many human beings are now accepting that buying merchandise (or services) on line isn't always as fraught with danger because it as soon as became, or was appeared to be. There has been a lot of money spent in growing and selling safe and secure on line store transaction strategies and such corporations are always operating and advertising hard to reassure consumers that they're now not approximately to get ripped off.

Most people have made our first on-line buy by buying something inexpensive and something that if it was now not exactly what we expected it would now not be the end of the sector, we'd now not self destruct for having made a awful choice. Things like a tablecloth, a calculator, a pair of sunglasses, an electric can opener and so forth. Lo and behold the item arrived in a single piece and it's far pretty a good deal what you expected - your credit score card declaration is correct and now you feel OK approximately having made your first on-line purchase, it was an amazing revel in.

You now sense extra confident and also you task into doing some more frequent shopping on line, possibly with shops / websites that you recognise, recognize of and therefore trust. You benefit revel in as a web client, you strive a few unique sites, you perform a little pricing and transport comparisons. You get to trust positive online transaction techniques (PayPal for example) and you presently apprehend the need of and that means of an SSL web page (Secure Server Licenced) which gives consumers a form of protection guarantee. You are now a long way much less frightened about shopping at the net - or are you?

To date you've got been buying less expensive normal use items, no real economic threat right?

So now are you equipped to shop for more expensive objects - will you buy a Television, a Ride-on Mower, a Computer, a Bedroom Suite or the likes online? Bigger dollars, more threat - however these are not generally the maximum crucial factors stopping people from buying big price tag gadgets at the net - it is more regularly the case that they need to the touch, feel and sniff such objects earlier than making a choice. The smart shoppers will do that at a store or , make their choice of product, brand, version, design etc then keep on-line for the nice deal within the information that they are happy with their desire, it is now a depend of fee and shipping. About 10% of clients currently do this however this wide variety is expected to grow in time as self assurance within the on-line transaction structures grows and purchaser reputation grows exponentially with it.

So now we come to Jewellery. Jewellery can be high-priced and is undoubtedly a totally non-public item, two suitable reasons to shrink back from shopping for such an object online. However the extra volume of jewelry bought is gown jewellery, jewelry no longer the usage of treasured gem stones like diamonds, rubies, sapphires, opals and so forth, so the price is appreciably less and the picks are some distance more.

This makes choice more difficult however whilst a woman sees a chunk of jewellery that sticks out and jumps up saying "this is genuinely you" then often case the shopping for turns into an impulse buy and out comes the credit card, willingly. So this same impulse purchase can and does manifest on line in the identical manner it does in a jewelry keep or department keep. Should the credit score card pop out willingly? - are on-line jewelry stores as safe and secure because the shops / web sites that you obtain that electric powered can opener from, or that adorable tablecloth?

Online Jewellery Stores are just as secure and comfy as another online retail store so long as they meet the same standards - the vital SSL licensed mark and a safe and cozy transaction system - the 2 matters which you look for on different online purchasing web sites. The difference is that you are shopping some thing non-public, something you will put on, some thing that displays your personality, so that you will possibly ponder longer, now not approximately the decision of is it safe to shop for this online however more so the decision of desire - do I definitely love it, do I really need it.

Such a choice is something simplest you could make - much like you'll be faced with whilst searching at a nice jewellery piece in a listing, no exceptional actually.

If you had been shopping for an highly-priced diamond or different precious gem then there are different very critical methods to undergo earlier than you would dare hazard huge sums of cash on an internet transaction. There have been all forms of horrific press about valuable stones rip offs via on line trading and the numerous valid jewellers institutions around the world are running hard to smooth up the industry and repair self belief to clients, however this bad press must now not be a mirrored image on dress jewellery.

Most if no longer all the fundamental jewelry agencies and jewelry chain stores have an internet presence and their on-line jewellery shops are well reputable and surely safe and comfortable. The identical can be stated of the majority of smaller jewelry agencies and even those which provide handmade or hand crafted jewellery.

Buying jewellery on line can be an splendid revel in for some of motives - the selections are countless, some distance more than you'll discover taking walks a shopping mall or jewelry alley in any town. The entire global is setting their jewellery on display online. You have a significantly extra hazard of locating that something special just for you, that jewelry piece that jumps up off the display and has you saying "yessss, that's what I want". With the tens of millions of portions of jewellery available on-line what are the chances of one of your buddies locating and buying the identical element? This is in particular the case while looking on the non chain save jewelry shops, finding the net jewelry stores that provide precise one off home made pieces at cheap fees - and that piece can also come from any a part of the globe, not from the local jewellery store - you may be carrying a cute piece of jewellery handmade within the far off regions of the Russian Steppes or from a small village in Portugal - anywhere - and that provides even extra attraction and private cost to that piece of jewellery.

So sure it's miles safe to shop for your jewellery on line from pretty much any online jewellery store - simply test the two should have web page criteria noted earlier.

Buying jewelry on-line will be one of the most exciting and enjoyable reviews you will ever have at the internet.

[kumoriyami-xiuzhen]

Hakuoki SSL Character Comment Theme "Jealousy"

Translated this.... cuz I honesty thought it was quite interesting, and my mind does weird things when my head hurts. Unfortunately this content is only for the main six guys, though I honestly would like to have seen Yamazaki’s response to this...  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hakuoki SSL Character Comment Theme "Jealousy"

From『B's-LOG別冊 オトメイトマガジン vol.9』

Translation by KumoriYami

"If you saw her talking with another man, what would you do?"

Hijikata Toshizou

I see that you were having an interesting conversation. Regardless of who you are talking to, I don't care [alt: it's none of my business]. ......Che, do what you want.

Okita Souji

........What's wrong? I'm not angry/upset. If you think I'm angry, I'm probably angry. ......Hey, who was that person? What were you talking about just now?

Saito Hajime

I see...... you're also able to talk and laugh like that/ It turns out...... that you're also able to talk and laugh like that.  I'm envious of the man you were talking to. No, I didn't say anything.

Toudou Heisuke

Nn.... Hey, a moment ago I saw...... No, it's nothing! I'm not going to ask about who you were talking to!

Harada Sanosuke

It seems that you were having a good conversation. To actually care/be concerned about you speaking to another man, It appears that I'm not mature enough.......

Kazama Chikage

As my other half/spouse/partner, to actually dare to speak to another man, did you eat the heart of a bear or a leopard's gall [idiom that basically means (from where did you) muster the courage to do...]? You only need to look at me. Only speak to me alone.

--------------------

I think Saito’s and Harada’s responses are the best.... though I really dislike Kazama’s response. -.-

[lauraramargosian]

Fortnite is modern day card collecting, and we love it!

Fortnite is “modern-day card collecting”, and we love it!

It’s true, Fortnite is modern-day card collecting and we absolutely love it.

Yep, Fortnite Chapter 2 has drawn new gamers in, all because of thousands of people staring a black hole for 2-days.

The hype is there and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.

While Pokemon cards and Yugioh cards are mostly a thing of the past for most people, Fortnite is dominating the gaming industry.

In fact, it’s almost like collecting your favorite past card games or even pogs.

Isn’t it true that we spent between 6.50-100 bucks for certain collections and decks?

Unfortunately, there are people out there who say the game is addicting in a negative way.

Although, it’s not much different from collecting basketball cards, baseball cards, Pokemon cards or dare I say POPS?

Fortnite Chapter 2

Fortnite Chapter 2 is absolutely amazing and it’s been a huge turn for Epic.

I mean… people watched a black hole for days and couldn’t wait to “drop into a new world,” as epic showed on their website, getting players pumped to check out the new island for Fortnite Chapter 2.

DROP INTO A NEW WORLD CHOOSE YOUR LANDING SPOT AND EXPLORE AN ALL-NEW ISLAND FEATURING 13 NEW LOCATIONS.

The Fortnite Chapter 2 map has some interesting locations and a lot of exploring, which you earn XP for simply by discovery. The XP earned through playing allows you to earn new Fortnite skins, emotes, and gear to show off in the game.

Since Fortnite’s birth, you have been able to buy what’s called a battle pass, allowing you to earn additional XP leading to even more rewards.

As mentioned above, it’s comparable to collecting cards before the millennials switched things up, and it’s crazy to see how much has changed, don’t you agree?

Fortnite creates new friendships

Whether you choose to play Fortnite or Save The World, you’re still going to be gaming with others (if you choose to fill your squads up with stranger friends). Further allowing you to talk with, laugh, dance and share emotes in a build while spray painting together before your final attack in order to be the last to survive.

Fortnite has always been a game that brings people together. The game has even brought families together, playing in the same room, rather than just staring at Snapchat they get to attempt survival on the island, laugh, scream and maybe cry a little when defeated (at least I do).

Fortnite World Cup 2019: Building better and faster!

Indeed, Positive Celebrity has made a few friends while visiting Twitch and playing Fortnite’s Save The World. We’ll just call him M-Dawg but he’s one of the good guys in the game and we’re thankful for his friendship!

What is the prize for winning the Cup?

Being that you can win a huge prize of up to 10 million-dollars, teens, and adults play in the contender league which now includes, solo or squads (a team of up to four).

In fact, the game is now considered an e-sport! According to TechCrunch, there have been some major wins in contender leagues, in Fortnite Season X.

“The big winner in today’s solo challenge was 16-year-old Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, who won $3 million for beating out the competition in the solo tournament. And, as sports writer Darren Rovell noted on Twitter, Giersdorf’s prize pool is only $850,000 smaller than the pot for the winner of the U.S. Open, which is set to begin in a few weeks at the same stadium.

Indeed, the esports prize pool is one of the biggest awards for a popular competitive event. Wimbledon winners took home less than $3 million and Tiger Woods won $2 million for besting the field of competitors at the Masters.”

Fortnite Save The World

Fortnite Save The World lets gamers go through different missions all while battling some intense zombies.

You get different rewards that help you progress in the game but it takes a lot of time and grind to achieve and complete the game as a whole. But it’s also a lot of fun because you can team up with a squad in Fortnite Save The World as well.

If you purchase Fornite Save The World before it’s release then you do get a couple of perks and couple skins with a pickaxe. I personally thought it was worth it.

Fortnite Save The World has been growing over the last few months with more and more players.

With that in mind, there’s an interesting phenomenon happening in that game, where players will attempt to scam new players into dropping their loot, mats, and guns, so never just join in and go into what’s called a “trade box,” you are likely about to get scammed.

Fornite Save The World scams are popular enough that I will say there are some YouTube heroes out there protecting the squad.

These YouTubers will go into Fortnite Save The World and essentially “scam the scammer,” my nephew was the first to show me the videos and they are hilarious, check some of them out below.

You will laugh, the scammers who get scammed for their crime end up watching their weapons get destroyed, leading to screaming and crying, and even attempts at saying their “cousin works at epic,” absolutely hilarious.

Fortnite Rare Skins and more

The Fortnite “rare skins,” are exactly like collecting holographic Charizard Pokemon cards. For example, the Fornite skins today have dropped and they include the one, the only Skull Trooper.

Skull Trooper is just one of the most popular skins to have and we have no doubt that almost everyone who can afford has bought it.

They even have the Skull Trooper dressed as a female, catching the eye of those looking for Fortnite girl skins.

Skull Trooper officially has a girlfriend and her name is Skull Ranger.

Positive Celebrity Exclusive: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s Peter Renaday talks TMNT, charity and more!

Fornite skins in Chapter 2 have included a bunch of fun Halloween editions as well, so be sure to log in and check them out every 24-hours a new set of skins, gliders, emotes and axes arrive into the Fortnite item shop.

Be the first of your squad to collect the skin, and be sure to let us know which ones you’ve loved the most in Fortnite Chapter 2.

What is Fortnite Chapter 2 and the new world?

Basically, there are many theories right now trending on Google about Fortnite Chapter 2 and it’s a new world.

As a matter of fact, the whole map seems to be some kind of base, which also includes a bunker and the very house of “the visitor,” which will likely make more sense as we progress through the season.

Not to mention, The Visitor in Fortnite X is the one who caused all the chaos and led us into Fortnite Chapter 2. As a matter of fact, we did not think we’d be able to visit his actual home on the new map.

Further, the house is filled with memorabilia from Fortnite Season X, as he’s brought many souvenirs with him, including the clock from titled towers, a statue from Sunny Steps, and according to Forbes there’s even a hidden basement.

“In terms of his general living space, he has his control center in a secret basement you have to break through either the floor or a cabinet to access.”

Besides, it’s a pretty interesting storyline and as it’s as though we are part of “the movie,” and being able to watch the LIVE events make the game feel even more interactive for Fortnite gamers.

Celebrities who are playing Fortnite Chapter 2!

Richard Tyler BelvinsBen Simmons Lil Yachty Deadmau5 Karl-Anthony Towns Travis Scott Finn Wolfhard David Price Gordon Hayward Chance The Rapper Richard Sherman Gordon Hayward Drake Joe Jonas Norm Macdonald Derek Carr

Be sure to add us! We love to give free skins away on Twitch!

To end, we’re pretty excited to see what else Epic has in store for us regarding Fortnite.

Finally, feel free to let us know what you think about the Fortnite Chapter 2 in the comments below.

Blessed be.

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[kamenowriting]

Change chapter 15

Fandom: Hakuouki ~Sweet School Life~ Summary: When Yukimura Chizuru was taking an enrollment of Hakuou Academy, she discovers that it’s an all-boys high school! So she pretends herself as a boy, though her secret can’t kept it longer. And what’s worst, a certain President of Student Council had interested in her despite she hasn’t told her real identity yet. Characters: [Kazama Chikage, Yukimura Chizuru,] [Amagiri Kyuuju & Senhime] Pairings: KazaChi, harem!Chizuru(Saitou/Hijikata/Souji/Heisuke/Yamazaki) & AmaSen Genres: Romance, school life Rated: T rated Words: 19, 423 Link: Byaichi126fic, Fanfiction.net Warnings: Grammar error, AU, OOC-ness, typos

A/N:  Aaaaaaaaahhhhh! I’m so sorry for the late-ish updating..! I wasn’t expecting to be writing this long.. probably I’ve been a little distracting of my real life. OTL

More babbling should be in FF.net

Special thank you to a very amazing person whom kindly sharing us all Hakuouki SSL sprites rips. I’ve been waiting for these for like almost 5+ YEARS or so?!! The Background however, are not made by me nor originally from Hakuouki. Most of it I found if google images obviously.

I apologized there’s no Kazama/KazaChi scene thingy since I can’t find a suitable background for those two OTL

Preview:

"By the way, Amagiri," Kazama began. "When I mentioned you about girl, who are you thinking about?"

"Pardon?"

Turning around to meet the other man's ocean-blue eyes, searching of whatever the person the red-headed man think of a moment ago.

"You have a very strange smile on your face when you were having a deep thought." Kazama narrowed his eyes. "Do you by any chance meet someone in coincidently?"

"That is…" Amagiri mumbled, not knowing what to say. "Rest to be assured, Kazama-sama," Amagiri began, averted his eyes by lowering his head down. "for whoever woman or girl I thought of a moment ago doesn't have to do with you or Yukimura-dono."

"Oh…? You're sharp." Kazama commented. "Well, whatever. If your words are honest, then I suppose I shouldn't have to worry about."

“Sexual harassment..? Oh no, of course I’m not intending to do that.”

“Then what is?”

“I saw her looking a little down. I was expecting she was a bit cold or something. So I gave her a medicine as my Christmas gift to make sure she’s fine. It would be a little troublesome if a guest falls a sick in a Christmas Eve such as this.” Sannan explained, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

“Whether she’s sick or not, touching her without permission is still known as sexual harassment.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Your Christmas gift.” Kazama stated clearly.

“I… I don’t have a Christmas present for you.. I-I’m sorry Kazama-senpai.”

“Oh, I think you’re already have by now.”

“Eh?”

As she blinked in confused of his words, the President’s face starting to move closer to hers, and, oh she knows what does those words meant about.

Feelings her cheeks burnt up in red from embarrassingly, she pushed his face away to stop him from whatever he’s trying to scheme of.

“Wait, wait, wait..! This is..! It’s too soon!” She exclaimed in panic, her ears began to flush as well.

He can’t do that in here…!

"I suggest that we must return to your manor in haste." Amagiri break Sen's thought of his and Kimigiku's relationship, her eyes lift up into the ocean-blue ones. "Wouldn't want Miss Kimigiku worry of you more."

"Oh.. of course!," with that, Sen hopped on her heels while walking next to the red-headed man a little closer.

She wondered.. would she ever gets an answer about whatever kinds of feeling she had for this man…?

Chapter 15

Ever since meeting the red-headed man that day, flashback starting to occur in her dream. There, the little Suzuka watched her friend and Kosuzu played along with the other kids. Knowing that there are boys at the playground, Sen eventually refused to play along with them; rather watching the others having fun without her.

Envy of how fun they're all had, Sen lets her sigh released from her lips.

If it wasn't for that man, she wouldn't…

"Don't you wanna play with them?"

A male voice around possible 14 years spoke to her as he stood next to Sen but not close to her personal space.

"There are boys over there. I hate them."

"Why? I do not remember they have done something terrible to you,"

"Of course they haven't…" she paused. "…yet. Sooner or later, they might pick a fight after this."

With that, the teenager nodded and murmured.

"..I suppose, there's a chance."

Glaring on the other male, Sen began to speak.

"What are you doing here anyway? You didn't come here to talk to me right?"

"In truth, not really. I've come here just to make sure my lord won't do something crazily."

"Oh, pretty sure he already did by now."

Sen said with an uninterested tone on her lips, as she rolled her eyes on elsewhere.

"However, when I saw you sitting here, I just thought you need someone accompany."

"Oh yeah, maybe I do, thank you very much." Sen replied sarcastically.

"I apologized if my presence nuisance to you." The teenager said apologetically. "If you want me to leave, then, I'll leave."

Upon of leaving the Suzuka alone, Sen sighed and replied lowly.

"Your presence is not nuisance or anything." With that, the other person looked at her in a hidden perplexed. "I have my own reasons why I'm being this way toward you and other boys. I won't tell you any further as it doesn't has to do with you."

At that, Sen was expecting that the teenager boy would eventually take a leave after all, but instead…

"Then, if you don't mind, I'll stay here with you until evening then."

"Sure, sure. Only one circumstance though," Sen grabbed a stick and drew a line on the ground about a few millimeter away from hers and the other person. "Don't you dare step into this line, got it?"

With that, the teenager boy gave a soft chuckled as a reply. It wasn't in insult or sarcastic however. Instead, it was more as… amusing.

"As you wish, Miss Sen."

With that, the two watched the other kids having fun at the playground.

Before her flashback began to end, Sen took a time to glance on the other person's amazing red hair.

It was the most beautiful hair color she had ever seen.

…And she would never forget it no matter how many years would come.

As the dream starting to fade away, the older Suzuka began to flutter her eyes opened, took a gaze on the ceiling above her.

A man with an amazing red hair.

It has the same color as the man yesterday.

To think, her past starting to replay back in her at a time like this. …Not that she bothered or something. It's almost as if the dream wanted to know that the man in her past was the most important person in her life. The dream wanted to make sure that there are many male she can trusted of, beside Kazama and Shiranui(?). Although it's hard to say what she sees of the tan-skinned man, but she does finds Shiranui a bit nuisance as he had a similar vibe of being a bad boy or delinquent, in which, Sen did not hesitated distrust him.

Speaking of the red-headed man,

It's complicated to say what kind of feeling she'd felt for him. He's not annoying like Kazama. He's not even a playboy like Shiranui. Despite he had a same age between Kazama and Shiranui, yet, almost everything about him is more like 20 years old or so…? She didn't know.. she can't tell.. but for sure… little by little, she'd starting to open up a little because of his gentle and kindness toward her. The chains that been tied up in her heart slowly starting to loosen up.

She wondered.. is it a good idea to give a chance to open up that red-headed man? What if, he's been playing on her to take a chance to hurt her? …Well, for an older man with a gentle smile, there's a higher doubt that he would break her apart.

Even so…

"Osen-neesan!" Kosuzu's voice brings her back to reality. "Breakfast had prepared!"

As soon as her thought about that man started to disappear because of her sister's cheerful chirp, Sen gave the most beautiful smile on her face, hopped off from her bed as she readying herself to go to school.

Beside she's getting exciting for school, there are another thing she's exciting more;

Serizawa Christmas Party.

To think, she getting invited to someone else's party, and not to mention it, from the red-headed man of course.

Knowing that he'll be her partner to accompany her all the way to Serizawa Christmas Party, he might've wearing a very gorgeous black tuxedo with a blue rose that attached on his right pocket.

She has to admit it though, his hair really needs to fix by at least cut it off reached to his neck or something, combed in neat as well to make sure men and women see him in respectful and polite.

But, of course. She doubted that he would listen her opinion.

Serizawa Christmas Party, huh? Sen thought to herself as she eyed on her highschool uniform in her drawer.

Once she finally grabbed her clothes, her smile began wider than ever.

Let's meet again, Mr. Red-Headed Man.

Meanwhile with Kazama,

after he'd accompanied his beautiful and graceful girlfriend all the way to Hakuou Academy by walking, the couple has to part away at the gate as he needs to finish his paperwork as soon as possible by today. It's disappointed to him however that he didn't get to spend a pleasant times with her as it almost about Christmas after all.

Chizuru's reply, however, that she didn't mind if she wouldn't get accompanied with the President a little longer since she needs to get some things in her locker after all. She highly doubted that the President is going to be amused having around with… commoner friends such as Heisuke and Souji. The part of commoner word is not from Chizuru's lips of course. It's belonged to none other than the richest, yet arrogant President. Who would it be beside him? The brunette would never call her friends that way.

Before parting away, Kazama replied with his famous smirk on his face and giving Chizuru a goodbye kiss(on cheek), which, as usual, the young brunette's face was flushing in red from embarrassment. She's still far from innocent to receive a kiss on the lips. He would be a very patient as he wanted to until she's getting used to kissing on her cheeks.

Every parts of his-soon-to-be-wife often amused him. Knowing that she's not like any other rich girl, she's quite innocent, kind, and often cares and worries of her friends surrounding her than herself. then again, that must be an effect after losing her parent in a very young age. Then again, the President actually prefers this kind of girl he's seeking for.

"Now then, what kind of special Christmas gift should I give her?" Kazama said, scheming onto something, while putting his fingers on his chin. "Since she had a feeling for me after all, this would take an opportunity to give her engagement ring when her graduation has finally come." The President nodded in proudly as he had some more plans that's related to his girlfriend and… trouble.

"But where's the fun would be then?" Kazama smirked at that but soon starting to fade away as he realized giving an engagement ring is a bit too much. ..Well, since Christmas Eve is around the corner, the President has to give her the most perfect Christmas present to make sure Chizuru could only sees him and him only. Not anyone else.

As the President was having a deep thought, he realized he wasn't alone in the office.

Eyeing on a familiar broad shoulders of the red-headed man, Kazama began to break the silent toward the other man.

"So, Amagiri," Kazama began, waiting for his personal servant eyed on him. "In your opinions about girls, what's the best gift would she likes the most?"

"Opinions about girls?" Amagiri blinked. "I assume, you must've referred to Yukimura-dono, yes?"

"Obviously?"

With that, Amagiri starting to have a deep thought for a moment, putting his fingers on his chin. It took a short moment then he finally answer.

"How about flowers?" The red-headed man started. "Maybe some cute things like plushie, and cushions? Girls also like sweet things like ice cream." As he stopped right there, his memory replay back how much he admired the older Suzuka loves sweet things truly, especially parfait.

"It look like you're enjoying sweet things."

"Well yeah. Of course most women likes sweet things. No other female could ever dislikes sweet stuff… unless they're into strange taste."

Amagiri gave the warmest smile on his face as he repeated those moments over and over without feeling bored. Meeting the older Suzuka was like Kami's approving their unexpected fate.

As the President observed the red-headed man very carefully, he noticed for a moment that something's not right about the other man. It wasn't in a bad way. It was more like… very unlike of the red-headed man. Amagiri, the most polite(definitely not Kazama's word) and gentle(and so this) person, gave the gentlest smile on his face right in front of him. Very much unlike him at all. If Shiranui had already seen that, he must've called the ambulance by now.

Well, for whatever it is, it must've related to girls and women since Kazama does talk about Chizuru for a moment. For whoever girl or woman Amagiri thinking of, the President was hoping that it's not his girlfriend knowing that every part of her is belonged to his and his only.

And yes, Kazama Chikage can be quite possessive when it comes to partner or lover.

He's not the kind of person who could share his property to anyone else, especially not to the commoner.

"Flowers? Cushions and plushies? Don't be ridiculous." Kazama spoke confidently. "As if my soon-to-be-wife would like such a cheap gift as that especially when Christmas party is coming."

"That's just my opinion about girls, Kazama-sama. After all, you did tells me my thoughts about girls' gift."

"I guess you're right.." Kazama murmured, in which leaves silent moment formed in the office then.

Until a few seconds or so, Amagiri break the silent.

"Well… what about sweet things? I'm sure that Yukimura-dono would be very glad to have a taste of strawberry parfait." Especially if it's in homemade by you, Amagiri thought at the last part. But he highly doubted that Kazama would made a parfait on his own, knowing that the President had never come to kitchen since he described that place a bit oily, and hot, in which, doesn't suit a rich son to visit such a place like that.

"I would give a gift that could cherish that thing until eternity. Food can't stand last forever." Kazama complaint stubbornly, putting his hand on his chin as his thought filled with the brunette girl, whom wearing such a beautiful, lovely wedding gown. He wondered what kind of reaction would Chizuru made if the President ever gives her a wedding gown…? Then again, he highly doubted that she likes that idea..

I did suggested you some plushies and cushions. Amagiri thought deeply, but decided to slide that part away as no one could ever fought back of the President's argument. …Unless, possible the older Suzuka… "Then… how about something that made by yourself? Beginning from scratch?"

"From scratch?"

Amagiri nodded. "Since flowers can't stand last forever, you can always give her a cloth-made flowers by yourself."

"Now's that complicated."

"Complicated, but worthy."

Kazama groaned in reply as he took a deep thought then.

Several minutes then, Kazama finally had a decision whatever he thought of the red-headed man's recommends for his lover's Christmas gift.

"Almost your opinions for my wife's gift doesn't suits her so well." He sighed. "As I expected, asking you your thought about girls' gift doesn't help me at all."

Amagiri didn't say any word, but groan because how stubborn the blonde-haired man can be.

As the President stood up from his place to leave his office, he stopped in mid-walking then.

"By the way, Amagiri," Kazama began.

"Yes…?"

"When I mentioned you about girl, who are you thinking about?"

"Pardon?"

Turning around to meet the other man's ocean-blue eyes, searching of whatever the person the red-headed man think of a moment ago.

"You have a very strange smile on your face when you were having a deep thought." Kazama narrowed his eyes. "Do you by any chance meet someone in coincidently?"

"That is…" Amagiri mumbled, not knowing what to say. It's quite rare of the President to wanting to know of someone else's personal business beside the Yukimura girl. Despite being self-important and arrogant President, Kazama does capable on observing other people…

"Rest to be assured, Kazama-sama," Amagiri began, averted his eyes by lowering his head down. "for whoever woman or girl I thought of a moment ago doesn't have to do with you or Yukimura-dono."

"Oh…? You're sharp." Kazama commented. "Well, whatever. If your words are honest, then I suppose I shouldn't have to worry about."

When no words the red-headed man intended to speak, the President had finally left the office, leaving Amagiri alone in a quiet Student Council room.

Upon of arriving in the locker room, the young brunette met her childhood friend.

"Good morning, Heisuke-kun."

"Hm? Oh, Chizuru!" Heisuke gave a very wide grin upon of seeing his friend here. "Morning. It's rare to see you here."

"Ah.. well, I forgot to get my things before my homeroom teacher coming."

The younger boy replied with a nod while there's still a wide smile on his face. It was as if his childhood friend was his smile.

Glancing around themselves, the brunette noticed something.. well most likely, someone is missing here.

"Um.. where's Okita-senpai?"

"Souji?"

As the brunette started to bring up a subject about the prankster senior, Heisuke's cheerful smile had disappeared, replacing to a groan/mumble.

"Obviously that Souji still mad about the terrible news about Christmas party." Heisuke began. That damn Souji.. although he told me to call him a senpai, he's still like a brat.. Heisuke finds himself pouting, in which, brings his childhood friend tilted her head in confused as he realized she could see through all over her face.

Not wanting to worry of his childhood friend, Heisuke gave a very wide grin once again.

"B-But don't worry! I'm sure that we can find a way to cheer him up." Heisuke said, hoping being optimistic could make everything's better.

"I hope so…" she murmured softly, hoping that she could at least see his sadistic smirk every once in a while.

Meanwhile in the Hijikata's office

Souji pushed the raven-haired man against the wall harder. There was a hidden anger and frustrating behind on those emerald orbs of Souji's. Although it's normal to see Souji to have despise Hijikata so badly, but never would have thought to see the prankster student finally snapped before. Guess celebrating a Christmas party with Kondou, especially with other students must've been meaning to Souji huh?

"Why didn't you try and stop Serizawa about this? You've known that that Serizawa bastard is scheming onto something, right?! So why can't you stop him?!"

Hijikata didn't spoke a word yet, but replying a quiet groan, tried to find a better word to make the prankster student felt better. But not a single thing came out in his mind. Rather than speaking back, the raven-haired man narrowed his eyes deeper as he lets Souji blaming him only, not Serizawa.

"Go on. Say something." Souji said with a growl. "Why didn't you try and stop Serizawa?!"

Before Hijikata finally speaks, the gentle Principal protected the raven.

"That's enough, Souji.." Kondou whispered gently as if he was speaking to a crying child. "It's my fault after all for planning a Christmas party at a time like this."

Souji faced to Kondou back, but his cold and hatred eyes toward Hijikata melted away when he saw a sad and guilty expression on Kondou's face. One of a thing he couldn't stand on is seeing the Principal look sad and disappointing.

"Rest to be assured that it's not your fault, Kondou-san." Souji said. "We've been done this every year in Hakuou Academy. Why would that Serizawa bastard starts a party in a time like this?"

With that, Kondou didn't spoke anything, not knowing what to say toward the emerald-orbs man.

"You do realized that blaming me wouldn't help anything else, especially bringing Kondou-san's party back." Hijikata finally spoke, as he get tired of Souji's childish side. As Souji continued giving a death-glared on him, Hijikata continued, "if you want it so badly, how about you're celebrating Christmas Eve in Kondou-san's place? That would end this problem."

After a long dark glare between teacher and student, it took more than minutes Souji finally ungripped his hold from Hijikata's.

"It would've been better if everyone in school here celebrating Christmas with Kondou-san…" Souji mumbled like a child.

As the prankster's presence was no longer in the raven's office room, Hijikata felt an urged to massage his forehead somehow. Damn.. ever since that Serizawa bastard visiting this year, things have gotten drivin' him crazy somehow. First, Itou coming back to school. After that, Serizawa cancelling Kondou's Christmas party. And now, that damn brat Souji blames on him for not letting the other students celebrate Christmas Party with Kondou.

It wouldn't get any worse right..?

…

Actually, no. He rather not say it out loud, knowing it would've been much worse than this.

"Say, Toshi…" Kondou began, bringing Hijikata back to reality. "Sorry about this."

"No need." The raven replied simply. "I've gotten used to getting blamed by Souji. He's better than that Serizawa bastard though."

With that, both men started to remain quiet without any word until the Principal intended to enlighten his friend mood by taking a subject about Souji.

"So.. speaking about Souji," Kondou began. "do you remember how we met him?"

"We…? Whoah, there, Kondou-san. Don't you remember?" Hijikata said, lit up his cigarette after he opened the window wider. "Didn't you actually found Souji first?"

"Was.. was I?" Kondou said innocently. "I-I guess so… ahaha..!"

Hijikata finds himself curled his lips upward upon of seeing Kondou's gentle smile. It's unfortunate for Souji that he didn't managed to see the Principal's smile after he left just now. Then again, talking a subject about him would've been embarrassed to Souji in the end.

"So you found Souji in the Shieikan dojo, right?"

"Ahh… that's right." Kondou nodded. "Somehow, I couldn't bring myself to kick him from dojo since he's looks like a poor puppy that needs a shelter so badly."

"It would've been better if you kick him off." Hijikata said sarcastically.

As the raven continued smoking to release his frustration, Kondou gave a melancholy smile as he remembered how he met little Souji back then. It's almost as if he was adopting a new son somehow.

When school has finally over, it was almost about time for the young brunette to take a leave then. As the sky starting to turn red-orange colored, the Sun is almost about to reach at the end of horizon by now. Upon of walking to the school gate, she could've sworn she heard a commotion at the field.

Curiously, the young brunette took a peek on the field and met two familiar men were fighting like a cat and a mouse.

"I told you before, she will come with me for the Serizawa party!"

"Don't be ridiculous." He spat in disgustedly. "Someone like you is not worthy to be her company. As her generous boyfriend, not to mention it; the most handsome one, she would gladly comes with someone like me rather than a commoner like you." The President began to give the most prideful smirk on his gorgeous face.

At those words, Heisuke felt an urged to twitch his left eye in annoyance because of that bastard's self-important attitude.

"J-Just because you two are lovers, that doesn't mean you can take an advantage of being her boyfriend and all!" Heisuke began to yap like a puppy(in Kazama's perspective)

"Ho… and what about you?" Kazama said confidently. "Always barking this and barking that how she's your childhood. Don't you ever get tired of using the same line?"

"That's because she is my childhood friend!"

As the argument goes on and on, it took several moments then they finally aware of the young brunette's presence. Both male students eyed on her at the same time as if she was some kind of food or reward to them, in which, brings the brunette jumped in surprised at the strange feeling of getting a deep glared struck into her chest.

"Chizuru!" Heisuke exclaimed first. "Perfect timing!"

"G-Good evening, Heisuke—" her words soon had been cut off as the other boy started to grab her both shoulders, making sure her eyes gazed into his(and definitely not to Kazama's)

"Tell me, Chizuru," Heisuke said. "who would you prefer of to come to Serizawa party? You're going to choose me, right?"

"S-Serizawa party?" Chizuru blinked in confused at that part.

"Yea!" The younger boy nodded. "After all, you need someone to come with you since letting a lonely woman walk to Serizawa mansion can be quite dangerous." He spoke in a soft and gentle tone, still gripping his small hands on his childhood friend's shoulder tighter than ever, but not in pain.

"…Oi, Toudou boy," Kazama growled in possessively. "Get your filthy hands off from my Princess. Only I can touch her," Chizuru couldn't helped but to flush in red upon of hearing the President called her 'princess'. And not to mention it, his possessive side. As his lover, he must've cherished her truly.

At that, Heisuke gritted his teeth, feeling an urged to give another yap but soon stopped by his childhood friend.

"U-Um… about that, Heisuke-kun," Chizuru said, raised her both hands, gesturing the younger boy to stop whatever he's intending to do.

"..I can't go with you."

Despite her words were pretty soft like a breeze, and yet to Heisuke, it's almost like a thunder jolt struck into him until he was nothing but a black ash. When the rejection appeared right in front of his face, the younger boy couldn't helped but to shot his eyes open, staring at her in disbelief and flabbergasted.

Although it's right for her to refuse him knowing she is going out with Kazama, Heisuke couldn't helped but finds his heart clenched in pain somehow.

With that, there's a proud smug on the President's face.

"See? Haven't I told you?" Kazama said. "Of course, she would not coming with you in Serizawa party. After all, she does have—"

Before Kazama could finish his sentence, Chizuru interrupted him as well, in which, give the most guilty smile on her face.

"I-I'm sorry Kazama-senpai, but, I can't be with you in Serizawa Christmas Party."

With that, the President didn't say anything, his usual smug started to disappear and continued on gazing on her, as if he was gesturing the brunette to explain of whatever reason she has to refuse him.

In which, Chizuru gladly tells them;

"Well…my father, Kodou," she started, " he'll be back when Christmas coming. I would like to celebrate a Christmas with my father for this year since it's been a long time since I last see him."

"Y-Your dad is coming…?" Heisuke murmured.

"That's right." She nodded. "I know it'll be much better celebrating in Serizawa Christmas Party. But, I'd really wanted to spend the Christmas night with my father this year. It would be very appreciate it if you understand my feeling. ..Please!" With that, Chizuru gave the most polite bow the male students had ever seen. But of course, it's actually important for her to celebrate a Christmas party with her father this time as it's been a while since she last seen his face. For once, she wanted to spend a greatest Christmas night with him like a family.

He and Kaoru are the only members of family she had ever have…

It took a moment then, the silent moment had finally break from Heisuke's voice.

"W-Well, if it's about your dad, then I guess I should invite someone else then." Heisuke mumbled, and there was a tinged of sadness behind on his orbs, in which, finds the brunette difficult to figure out of whatever expression he actually used just now.

At that, Heisuke turned on his heels then, leaving the President and the brunette all alone. As silent moments began to form between them once again, Chizuru gazed on the gorgeous President, hoping she could hear his permission for her to have a great celebration with Kodou. Rather than giving a word he'll expressed of, Kazama took a gazed on her deeper as well. It's almost looks like he wanted to say something. But not a single word could form on his lips.

Instead, he shook his head and turning on his heels to leave at the field.

The brunette couldn't helped but to blink in confused. Well, she was hoping that she could get to hear his approving in words. …The President must have better things to do than spending her..

Chizuru shook her head at that part, slapping her soft cheeks in multiple as while scolding herself to leave those thoughts out of her mind.

And so, Christmas Eve has finally come.

Chizuru had finally decorated her house for Christmas all by herself without helping anyone, not even Kaoru. She just thought to proof her older twin brother she can be quite useful no matter how much naïve she can be, especially around Kazama and Souji.

"There," the brunette said happily, as she finally put a golden star for the finishing touch on the top of the Christmas with a stool.

It looked beautiful…, she thought, finding herself closing her eyes as she remembered her past in every Christmas Eve. For the past years, she's usually celebrating the Christmas Eve with her father. Knowing that Kaoru living with Nagumo residents, it's impossible for him to celebrate with her and Kodou without knowing their address.

Now's that everyone's here, this should be one of a greatest Christmas Eve she had ever experienced with family…!

Ring…!

Not so long after this, Chizuru finally returned back to reality as the sound of phone began to ring. Turning on her heels quickly, she started to answer the phone and coincidencely, it was none other than her father..!

"Chizuru…"

"Father!" The brunette called him in excited.

It's been a while since she last heard his voice now. But somehow, she could felt the tone that her father using a moment was a bit… sorrow.

It's almost as if he couldn't save his patient that almost dying and he needs someone to be there with him or at least hear his daughter's sweet voiced. Though, she knew that her father was not the best nor a professional doctor. So having an experienced by watching a patient died right in front must've hurt her father truly knowing that almost all patients were like his children…

Trying to enlighten the mood, the brunette tried her best to cheer her father up;

"S-So, how's everything? You're coming right, Father? There are a lot of things I want to talk about once you're coming. Kaoru might be surprised once he meet you as he hasn't seen you for a long time. And.. and—" aaaah! Honestly, there are so many things she wanted to tell her Father. Especially how's her school life lately.

And most of all—

about Kazama.

She wondered what his reaction would be if he finds out that she's dating with a generous President, who ended up becoming a lover? The thought of that finds her heart fluttering in happiness somehow.

"Chi-Chizuru.." Kodou whispered quietly as if he didn't want to scare his adoptive daughter or something. "There's something I need to tell you."

"Yes..? What is it?"

As the brunette waited of whatever of her father trying to say

this broke her heart completely.

At the Suzuka Manor.

Ding Dong!

"Coming~!" Kosuzu chirped, hopped from the couch and opened the door to see whoever it was. Upon of wondering to know whoever it was, her eyes shot open in shock to see an unfamiliar, tall man right in front of the Suzuka manor.

She couldn't helped but to frightened a little to see how tall he is as if he was a bear, while the bun-haired styled Suzuka, is a frightened, little, small Chihuahua who could do nothing except shaking in fear.

Trying to hide her fear away from her eyes, she tried herself to be brave a moment.

"Um… h-hi. Is there anything business you have here?"

The red-headed man greeted with a polite nod in which, little by little, Kosuzu finds herself a little comfortable around him as she realized that he wasn't really that scary despite he was quite tall than anyone in a member of Suzuka.

"Good evening. I've come here to accompany Lady Sen for Serizawa Christmas Party."

"Serizawa Christmas Party..?" Kosuzu blinked for a moment. "…Oh! Right, Osen-neechan had told me that she decided to go to someone else's party. I'll go and get her. Please, have a sit for a moment." The bun-haired girl said, gesturing the guest to sit on the couch.

"Excuse me, then." Amagiri said, entered the Suzuka Manor, and took a sit on the couch.

As the red-headed man waited for Sen's coming, a familiar, female voiced spoke to him.

"Well, if it isn't Amagiri. It's been a while."

Raising his eyes into the woman figure, she has a same smile as ever.

"It's a pleasure to see you again, Miss Kimigiku. I see that you're well today."

"Yes, and so are you." Kimigiku said, putting a tray of cup and kettle on the table. "How's Kazama has been?"

"Stubborn and troublesome, as ever." Amagiri said with a sigh as he took a sip of tea that Kimigiku recently poured for him. "But.. he's gotten a bit mature somehow." Probably thanks to Yukimura-dono.

Kimigiku replied with a soft giggle.

"So, how's Lady Sen?"

"Well, well, well. I'm impressed you're still remembered her. I was expecting you were no longer remembering her since either of you rarely seeing each other a lot." She spoke with a little amazed.

"I'm a bit surprised as well." Amagiri said, eyed on a cup of his tea for a moment and spoke once more, "Though.. of course, I don't think I couldn't forget of her since the first time I found her sitting on the porch." His usual calm and gentle smile started to disappear as he remembered how lonely she was whenever she watched the other female friends play without her. Despite she has gotten used to have a feeling of loneliness, yet, it's still very wrong for her to be alone this way.

A warmth, and gentle hand starting to grip on the red-headed's big hand, eyed on Kimigiku's hand, there was a melancholy smile on her face.

"I'm really happy to see her getting along with a man like you. ..I hope, you and Sen will continue becoming a good friend." Kimigiku said, her hand still laid on Amagiri's one.

Returning to grip hers as well, there was a promising and determined behind of his ocean-blue orbs one.

"I will do whatever I can whenever she needs me."

They both exchanged each other with smile and chuckled.

When their hands started to part away, either of them started any of conversation this time. Amagiri took a sip of his tea until the other woman gave a chirped of 'oh!'. Eyeing on the long, raven-haired woman, Oukiku began to stand up from the couch.

"I remembered that there's something amusing that you would love to see it. I'll be right back."

With that, Kimigiky leaves the red-headed man in the living room then, bringing a silent moment formed around Amagiri.

Enjoyed the taste of Earl Grey tea, Amagiri eyed on the staircase, wondering what the older Suzuka do right now.

"…What taking so long, I wonder?"

In Suzuka room,

The atmosphere around Sen's room was quite peaceful, where she gets all excited to go to Serizawa Christmas party, couldn't decided which dress should she wear. There are many gowns that suitable to her, but of course, she usually prefers of a one-piece dress with many white ribbons.. does that clothes look a bit childish to her…?

However, after she finished wearing accessories and one-piece dress for a short moment, things has gotten a little tense the moment her mother, the heir of Suzuka clan came back from the meeting and started to talk to her of a same subject that related to be an arrangement meeting for the older Suzuka.

"Like I told you, mom," Sen said with a sigh of exhaustion. "I need some times to think."

"And when will this some times, Sen? We've been talked about this since you've entered Shimabara. Shouldn't it be about time for you to accept the arrangement marriage by now?"

"I know, I know.. but I'm not ready yet, somehow."

"Sen," her mother began. "I know this is hard for you. I know this is hard since that man left us. But please, for the sake of our clan, you should focus on your goal as the-soon-to-be-next-heir-Suzuka clan by now."

With that, Sen didn't spoke anything, in which, her mother continued once more.

"Even if there's no man that you're interested in, how about Kazama? You and that man had known each other since you two were very little right? And your relationship have gotten really quite close since you've met him several months ago from what I've heard from Kosuzu."

As this conversation would eventually turned complicated as ever, before Sen could speaks a word, her heroine came at the right time.

"Um.. I'm sorry for intruding.." Kosuzu said timidly after she knocked the door to Sen's room.

Two women eyed on the bun-haired girl as they let her spoke again.

"Osen-neesan, he's here."

Upon of hearing a word of 'he' next to her ear, her exhaustion of speaking with her mother about the arrangement marriage disappeared.

It must be him..!

"He?" Sen's mother raised her eyes in perplexed. "What is she—"

"I'm sorry mom," Sen interrupted her, taking her coat on the bed. "I'm going out with a… friend. We can talk about this later."

Calling that man a friend would be impossible as she didn't got his name yet. But of course, Sen would be gladly to call that man as a friend rather than stranger.

Before her mother could speak, Sen dashed away down to the stairs together with her bun-haired sister to meet the red-headed man.

Has he waited for her that long…?

"Do you remember this?"

As Amagiri took a peek of the album that the long, raven-haired woman intended to show while awaits the older Suzuka's arriving, Amagiri replied with a gentle smile then.

"Yes, I remember this so well." The red-headed man spoke, with a soft laugh on his lips. He doesn't usually laughed but knowing that Kimigiku had known him quite well, she knew what kinds of thing the other man finds amusing, and showing the older Suzuka and Kazama childhood event is one of an amusing one.

"It's unfortunate you didn't get a chance to meet Lady Sen in properly." Kimigiku said with a sigh.

"It's alright. I would rather not wanting her to find out whoever am I for a moment."

"You're starting to be a little secretive when it comes to Sen."

"I have my own reason as to why I am being secretive toward her." Amagiri spoke in a little hesitant one.

"Then I won't forcing you to tell me this. However, I hope whatever you're trying to do will not leads to the worst." Kimigiku used a very rare serious tone, giving her friend a small warning. There are times, the red-headed man can be quite unlikeable reckless.

Amagiri replied with a nod, as if he known whatever he's doing right now is right.

"Rest to be assured, I will tell her the truth of me… soon."

"And when is this soon?" Kimigiku said, closing the album book as they decided to forget whatever subject they had about Sen's/Kazama's childhood album.

"Who knows.." He said. "Maybe after her graduation."

"You knew that she would soon finds out about you later."

"..I know."

Before the raven-haired woman could say some more, the tense of atmosphere between then had disappeared as Kosuzu comes to them on the spiral stair.

"Mr. Amagiri, she's here." The bun-haired Suzuka announced the red-headed man in a rather timid one, probably she doesn't usually talk with boys or men quite often exceptional for Ibuki, of course.

Standing up from the couch then, Amagiri awaits of the older Suzuka's arriving. When the other man gazed the older Suzuka whos walking down on the spiral stairs slow, yet elegant one, he can't helped but widening his eyes open in astounding one.

Although the Christmas party wouldn't be as formal as Kazama or Suzuka famly, yet, Sen looks quite gorgeous in a white, one-piece dress with several beautiful ribbons right there and there. Not to mention it, although she's not a fond of accessories, but the way how she tied her hair in a bun-haired styled with a sakura petals hairpin, it actually suits her so well.

To think, such a beautiful figure could actually still exist here…

It took a moment then Amagiri finally returned back to reality as he heard a similar soft giggled on Sen's lips, as if the red-headed man had never seen her looks feminine and all.

…Well, in almost all men's perspective of course, they would've gapped like a fish to see the older Suzuka looks beautiful in a formal dress.

"Now then, should we go?" Sen's voice brings Amagiri back to reality once again, in which, the red-headed man replied with a polite bow and turned on their heels to leave the manor together.

"Try not to be late." Kimigiku reminded them. "Make sure to come home around 11 o'clock."

"Yes, yes.." Sen said, waved her hand off. "What are you, my second mom?"

Kimigiku could only gave a soft chuckled and averted her eyes on the blue-ocean ones.

"I entrust her safety to you, Amagiri."

The red-headed man reply with a nod and polite bow, as if he known his job.

"Of course."

As Sen eyed on them from Kimigiku to Amagiri, then from Amagiri to Kimigiku, she couldn't helped but to raise her eyebrow in puzzled and curious.

They seemed to be quite close..

Is there any connections between those two? It almost felt like she'd missed something..

Shaking her head to leave those wild thoughts out of her head then, Sen enwrapped her warm coat around her body before they left the manor.

As Kimigiku watched the couple leaves the Suzuka manor from the door, there was a glimpse of intriguing about them behind on her amethyst orbs.

It's quite rare to see the older Suzuka walking close to Amagiri's. Their spaces were even closer than Kazama's.

She couldn't helped but to curl her red lips in upward at the sight of watching the older Suzuka walked with other man besides the blonde-haired man.

Now this is interesting.

As they had walked about a few metres away from the Suzuka manor, Sen couldn't helped but feeling slightly nervous.

Although it's pretty normal for the couple to have walking close together. Sen, on the other hand, feels a greatest urged to feel ancious. However, this kind of anxious wasn't in terrible one or how she experienced some random men touch or grab her without permission. It was more like in opposite one.

But she couldn't described what kind of anxious or this nervousness feeling she felt right now. Is it happiness? Joy? Grateful? Or more than that? She had to admit, it's the first time she has ever going out with a partner and all.

And not to mention it with Amagiri of all the people.

In every Christmas Eve, Sen always spent most of her Christmas days in Suzuka manor as the Suzuka often held a Christmas party. Most guests that's been invited were usually from rich families. But the one's that organized the Christmas party of Suzuka family usually her mother.

Only the heir of Suzuka family would be allow to organize the party in Suzuka manor. There are actually many events they're actually held, but most of them could only be invite of wealthy family or receiving a very high title and all.

Her mother wouldn't even inviting Chizuru no matter how much desperate Sen had tried to.

Just thinking about her family, especially her mother kinda ruins her mood of her exciting for Serizawa party. Shooki her head slightly, she decided to move those subjects away from her mind, and thinks of a certain red-headed man even more.

Took a closer peek of the other man, she couldn't helped but finds the man looks quite fascinating in a black tuxedo with a red flower attacked on his right-chested pocket. Beside that, his scarlet hair looks quite neat. …Probably he wanted to give a very nice vibe around him when they're finally arrived in the party later.

"That's looks good on you."

Sen ended her words leave out from her lips in loud. And yet, she had no reason to feel shy about it.

"Excuse me?" Amagiri blinked in a slight on confuse.

Avoiding answering the question, Sen replied with a shook on her head and turned on her heels without hearing anymore words from the red-headed man.

"It's nothing. We should get going to the party by now."

With that, all Amagiri could by now is leave this mysterious unanswerable question, following after Sen, whom very excitedly about the party.

The brunette sighed in depressingly upon of hearing terrible news from her father.

"There's a snow storming in the airport. So it's impossible to make it to Kyoto. I know.. I promised myself that we will celebrate a Christmas Eve together, but.. it can't be helped Chizuru…"

She wanted so much to cry..

After all she's been waiting for him..

She was getting all excited to celebrate a Christmas with family..

So much for her happiness she hoped for, huh…?

Trying to hide her sadness away from her father, she replied normally though she could felt a warm tears began to fall down on her cheeks.

"Ah.. so that's how it is… It's fine, Father. In fact, the founder of my school invited me to attend his party. So I might go there instead."

Actually, that was a lied. Well, it's true that Serizawa did invited all students of Hakuou to come to his manor for the Christmas Party. But, she doesn't have any power or energy to come to any party after hearing her father couldn't make it to Kyoto.

After all, it's actually the first time she couldn't celebrate a Christmas Eve with Kodou before. Even if she called her brother to come over, he might thought of her a nuisance or something..

She sighed and buried her face with the palm of her hands in depressed and sorrow.

What should she do now…?

Meanwhile with Amagiri and Sen;

The couple had finally arrived in the Serizawa Christmas party. Upon of entering the found of Hakuou manor, Sen felt an urged to gap like a fish from amazed.

"Whoah.. I didn't know there are many guests here." The older Suzuka said in flabbergasted as she eyed on every guest in Serizawa's manor. There are several of guests Sen familiar of as most guests in here are from rich and wealthy families. So this Serizawa person must be a very rich man huh?

Eyeing on a few women with a beautiful dress and expensive accessories, Sen couldn't helped but feeling down on herself as she realized her accessories weren't as many as noble women are, despite the older Suzuka would be a-soon-to-be-heir-of-Suzuka family in the future then…

A sudden, familiar male voiced then began to speak;

"Whichever dresses you wear, accessories or without accessories, your beauty still would no match with them, Miss Sen." Eyeing on the red-headed companion next to him, Sen realized that he must've noticed her sadness in her eyes when she took a glanced to the other women and herself.

No matter what the situation it is between them, the red-headed man always had a clever words to cheer the older Suzuka up. It was like he's a knight who willing to do everything to make the princess smile and happy from sadness or despair.

With that, Sen replied back with her confident smile on her face.

"Well, thank you very much for your cheesy compliment, Mr. Gentleman." She playfully gave a soft punched on his muscular arm. If a feminine girl ever hit the red-headed man's arm, her fragile hand/fist would've broke like a glass by now. Thankfully the older Suzuka has born to be a little tomboy-ish, willing to hitting or kicking someone ass especially weakling men that ever insult her friends, Kosuzu or women.

"We've been together for such a long time that I almost forgot to introduce myself."

"Ah, that's right..!" Sen said foolishly. It was stupid and very rude of her to not have know the red-headed man's name after all he done something generous-ish to the older Suzuka. Just what made her forget to ask his name anyway…? Could spending a time with him forget her pride to despise men? ..Or maybe she has a habit of forgetting to introduce herself and vice versa?

Started with a very polite bow, the red-headed man begin.

"My name—"

"Sen, is that you?!"

A familiar female voice exclaimed in shocked.

Searching whoever it is, Sen flashed her eyes into a very familiar woman. She has a long, straight, dark blue hair. Her skin color is a fair one, and she was born to have an auburn orbs.

"Cornelia-chan! I didn't know you were here!" Sen chirped happily, forgetting of the red-headed man's introducing as she walked straight to her

Both women embraced very tightly in a friendly way. The older Suzuka hold the blunette's hand as if she didn't want to let it go.

"It's been a while. How have you been?"

"Fine, thank you." Cornelia nodded politely. "What about you?"

"Fine, as well. Although there are times that I'm a little worried of Chizuru-chan's idea of going to school that filled with many men," Sen sighed exhaustedly, in which, the blunette replied with a soft giggle.

"You're a worrywart as ever. Just respects her choice. I'm sure she never regrets on choosing an all-boys high school."

"Even so…" Sen stopped in mid-sentence then, feeling herself to pout like a child in which, giving her friend replying another giggle.

As soon as he realized the older Suzuka was having a great conversation with her friend, it'll be better to take a leave as he would rather let the girls have some conversation without his presence:

"I'll go and get some drinks for you, Sen."

Sen nodded. "Sure."

Bowing in politely for the last time, the red-headed man began to leave.

"Who's that man?"

The blunette changed the subject upon of seeing a very large man such as him for the very first time.

"Oh, him?" Sen pointed his broad-back with her thumb. "He's someone I know."

"Well that's rare of you to have a male friend." Almost all Sen's friends knew that Sen hates men the most. Not even a single man Sen has ever calls him a friend. Upon of hearing the older Suzuka said she 'knew' rather than she 'annoys', the blunette couldn't helped but feels in need to show a very perplexed expression on her face.

"Well.. I just thought to try to befriends another man besides Kazama," Sen half-lie. In truth, their meeting was a bit awkward and weird. …Not that she hates his presence or something. The more she gets to know of him better, the more she realized that there's a kind and gentle vibe around the red-headed man.

"Now's that was an unexpected," Cornelia said with a soft laughed. "I was hoping that you would choose a handsome or good-looking men over a weird and unattractive men."

"Well…" Sen said with an awkward laughter.

Did she just said unattractive..?!

Weird…?!

… Well, actually in truth, the red-headed man can be quite strange for the first time she met, so yeah, the older Suzuka probably agreed the part of that man being a little weird. But unattractive?! How can she be so blind about that red-headed man's intrigued figure?

True that by the looks of it he was about 30 years old or so. But having his presence next to her, Cornelia should've known that she would be safe around him knowing that his tall figure helped them to frightened away some men who intended to hurt her.

Trying not to show her rage in front of her friend, Sen decided to slide it away. "Ah, that's right." Sen said, clapping her hand in a one time, as if she's trying to forget of whatever Cornelia referred of to the red-headed man. "How's things in your marriage arrangement? Did it turned out great?"

"Eh..? Oh, yes. It turned out good so far." The blunette replied. "At first, I thought it was actually a bad idea to have a marriage arrangement without knowing my future groom. But it's great to see my groom was actually kind and willing to marry me for the sake of our family."

"That's great." Sen said with a hidden of envy. "I'm happy for that. Don't forget to invite me for your wedding day" As the older Suzuka winked her left eye in playful, her friend replied with a flushed in embarrassment on her soft cheeks.

"What about you?"

"Eh?"

"Don't you think it's about time for you to have a marriage arrangement meeting with the Kazama? I haven't heard any news about you two."

"A-Ah… about that.." Sen murmured awkwardly. "I—postponed the marriage arrangement meeting."

"Again?" Cornelia said in surprised. "You were postponing the meeting again?"

"I-I've got a lot of things to do that's all," Sen tried to find a reason to keep this conversation from tense.

"You've known Kazama for such a long time. And yet, you're still not gonna accept on marrying him when graduate coming? You do realized that at this rate, you will eventually dishonor your family."

"I know, I know." Sen said with a sigh. God, it's almost looks like she was having a tense conversation with her strict mother by now..

As things had gotten awkward as ever, Sen intended to take a leave. At this rate, she might've received another lecture from her friend that relating to arrangement marriage again.

"W-Well, I better get going then." Sen said. "Pretty sure that he is waiting for me by now. B-Bye!"

Ignoring the blunette called her name, Sen turned on her heels as she's searching for the mysterious red-headed man. Geez.. where is he? Sen thought frustratedly. She would've expecting he would get her some drinks pretty quick. She didn't know that it took longer than ever. Giving up herself, she sighed exhaustedly as the older Suzuka stood at the corner of the hall room while the other guests having a great fun in the Christmas party.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Serizawa residence." Serizawa began to speak. Sen, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have aware of hearing his voice as she's been bothered something. "It is my honor to have spending this holy night with all of you. Merry Christmas."

Ignoring the entire cheerful and joyous atmosphere around in Serizawa's manor, Sen's thought filled with nothing except about her mother and Cornelia's words of the marriage arrangement. Although she had longed knew that she eventually has to marry a certain man from rich family, but marrying a stranger feels a little uncomfortable somehow. There is a higher chance that some men had a dark plan they've been schemed on once she married some random stranger. What if, her fate would leads her like her mother's as well? What if, that man would leaves her just the way that bastard leaves her mother? The thought of it brings Sen feeling confused what she's gonna do…

..What should I do, Chizuru-chan?

It would've been better if her fate leads similar as her best friend, where neither she needs to worry of marrying a rich family or commoner one.

"Well, well, well. Good evening, beautiful maiden."

An unfamiliar male voice brings Sen back to reality, in which, she lifted her honey-brown orbs into the four-eyed man. Compared to other guests, he didn't wear anything formal or a black tuxedo like the red-headed. Instead, he was some kind of… doctor, sort of?

"Uh.. g-good evening," Sen greeted back quietly, not knowing where's this man coming nor why he approaching her.

Upon of waiting any reply from the other man, almost like more than minutes then, the four-eyed man answered with the creepiest smile she had ever seen. Much creepier than the two drunkard she approached a few days ago.

It's almost as if that man in front of her is not a human.

"You look a little down when Serizawa-san is giving a speech. Do you by any chance feeling a cold? Or maybe a fever?"

Although his voice was soft and gentle like a wind, but she could felt something crawling on her body just hearing that kind of tone from him. Not to mention it, that creepy fuckin smile…!

"I-I'm fine. Thank you." Sen said, bowed in a very politely. It best to avoid from this man. She had a feeling that if she had stayed with him longer.. something terrible might gonna happened to her…!

"Why are you trying to run away?" The other man said in a faking-worriedly. "I was trying to help you."

Help in your ass…! "Th-thank you for your hospitality. But I've gotta go now—"

Before she could get away from him, strong hand began to grip on her small wrist, brings her body stopped right there in paralyzed. Eyes filled with frightened, lifting her orbs into the other man once again, there was a very wide smile like a red, crescent moon. His glasses were glowing very brightly like a flash.

Feeling an uncomfortable touch from the four-eyed man's hand, her body was shaking like a leaf. Eyes falls down on the floor as she felt tears were about to burst by now.

…No.

She can't do this.

She can't do this in here.

Not in front of guests and Serizawa.

However, no matter how many times she forced herself to move, the four-eyed man's hand was like a poison, injecting a strange drug deep into her body until he finally able to control her like puppet.

This is bad...!

This is bad…!

What should she do—

"I've just thought to give every guest here my Christmas gift. To make sure everyone is full of health in the future." The other man said, with his usual creepy smile.

Sen did not reply anything nor ask him what kind of gift is he trying to give.

Widening his lips on his face, he dug his other free hand inside his pocket, searching for something. And once he finally found it, he revealed his gift to her; a medicine bottle that contain red liquid like a blood.

"This is my Christmas gift for a beautiful maiden such as you." The other man said. "Ah… rest to be assured that, it's not a poison. It's a very useful medicine. I hope you'll accept it." Putting a bottle medicine on Sen's other hand, without her own will, her hand gripped back, gesturing she'd accepted his Christmas gift.

Feeling a little delighted how the young maiden accepted his gift rather than refused it, he widen his smile again and again.

"Since I have a lot of free time. How about we—"

"Sannan-san!"

A man named Sannan had no time to finish his sentence as a certain man interrupted his conversation with the older Suzuka. Recognizing a male voiced, her eyes laid into the red-headed one. Slowly, the longer she took a gazed on his gentle and calm orbs, some dark spell that the four-eyed man casted has been lift off from her body little by little.

"Oya… Amagiri-kun." Sannan called him. "It is surprised to see you here."

Amagiri..? Is that the red-headed man's name?

"I was about to say the same thing, Sannan." Amagiri spoke.

Eyed on the older Suzuka, he could see how frightened she is as if she was a little girl lost in a deep, dark street where no one can finds her whereabouts anymore. Narrowed his eyes deeper, this would be the second times he had seen this kind of side from her. To think, leaving her alone was a terrible idea. He shouldn't have leaves her when she had a conversation with the other woman just now…

Soon, his eyes gazed back into the nurse teacher. He felt himself in need to grip his hands into a fist by now.

"Sannan-san, I don't remember Serizawa-dono letting you give a sexual harassment on one of guest here before. Explain to me what do you think you're doing."

"Sexual harassment..? Oh no, of course I'm not intending to do that."

"Then what is?" There was a cold growled under his throat. It's the first time the older Suzuka has ever seen the red-headed man looked anger before. But what made him so angry that he has to use a threatening tone on the four-eyed man?

Could it be…

..he was worried of her?

"I saw her looking a little down. I was expecting she was a bit cold or something. So I gave her a medicine as my Christmas gift to make sure she's fine. It would be a little troublesome if a guest falls a sick in a Christmas Eve such as this." Sannan explained, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

"Whether she's sick or not, touching her without permission is still known as sexual harassment." Amagiri continued. In which, brings two man gazed on each other longer than ever. …Until Sannan replied with a small snorted, gesturing he's finally give up.

"I suppose you're right." Ungrip his hold from Sen's hand, his eyes gazed into the frightened honey-brown orbs ones. "I apologized for gripping your hand all of a sudden. I hope you like my Christmas gift. And… merry Christmas too."

With that, Sannan finally takes a leave, leaving the couple all alone. Amagiri replied with a groan. To think, Serizawa invited him in the manor as well. He wasn't expected that before.

Eyeing back into the older Suzuka, there was a blank expression on her face; he had a feeling that Sannan's touches must've frightening her greatly. He felt so bad that he had an urged to hold her hand, ensure that she'll be fine. He will always right next to her from now on. But then again, if he lets his hand touched hers, it would've been more horrifying. The best choice he has to do for now is standing next to her until she's feeling comfortable.

And the drinks that Amagiri was suppose to bring had been left forgotten.

Ding Dong

A door bell starting to ring in her house.

Leaving from the kitchen, Chizuru couldn't helped but to raise her eyebrow in perplexed for receiving an unexpected guest in Christmas party. She doubted that whoever appeared in her house would be Kodou knowing that he had just giving a bad news how he won't be able to make it to Kyoto.

Since Kodou and Kaoru are out of the option in her head, who could it be…?

As whoever it is ringing the bell for a few times, it took a while then Chizuru turned on her heels to reach to the door and opened it.

Eyes gazed into a familiar crimson orbs, Chizuru couldn't helped but to gap like a fish to meet Kazama in Christmas Eve.

"K-Kazama-senpai..?" She murmured in disbelief.

It's not a dream… is it?

"That took a while to open the door," Kazama said, passed over the brunette as she looked at the President in full of perplexed. Too speechless to see him, the other man entered her house as if he owns the place and put a bouquet of flower on the coffee table near him(in the end, he ended up following Amagiri's advise).

"A-ah..! W-wait, Kazama-senpai!" Chizuru called him in which, stopped him from mid-walking, eyeing on her from his back. "Wh-What are you doing here..?!"

"Why, you say…?" Kazama said, raising his eyebrow puzzled this time. "Obviously to celebrate a Christmas party together with your father."

"E-Ehhh…?!" At that, Chizuru's eyes widen open in a saucer one, "Wh-what about the Serizawa Christmas Party?"

"Oh.. that?" Kazama began, eyed on elsewhere. "Choosing between Serizawa Party and yours; of course, I would rather choosing you knowing that this would be a great opportunity for our relationship getting deeper and better," as he spoke that, when the President winked his eye in attractive way, she was pretty sure that she just saw a very small star form next to his eye… or maybe she's just having a hallucination for a moment. "beside that, I would gladly meeting your father eye-to-eye so that he could gave a blessing of our fateful destined."

When the President mentioned of her father, she couldn't helped but sorrow starting to form on her face, eyes looking down on the floor as she could felt tears starting to form.

"So, where's your dad?" Kazama questioned, taking a look around on his-soon-to-be-wife's house, couldn't felt any presence of another person beside the brunette.

"Um…" Chizuru murmured, eyes still laid down on the floor. "He's… not here.."

Raising his eyebrow in reply, Kazama moved closer to the brunette's personal space, but not too close. Waiting her explanation very patiently, his lover managed to answer very clearly without being too much emotional;

"Th-there's a snow storming at the airport where my father works in the overseas. Knowing that the weather is terrible, it's impossible for my father to make it to Kyoto then. So…" With that, Chizuru finds herself in need to cry.

Several moments had passed between them, the brunette was expecting that the President would come closer to her, giving her an embraced, and lets her tears fall down on his shoulder.

But instead…

A deep chuckle formed from Kazama's gorgeous lips.

"And by meaning that," her head began to lift up as she could felt a callous finger on her chin, her brown orbs and the crimson ones began to stare into each other. "this would mean just the two of us celebrating a Christmas Eve together, yes?"

As she realized whatever he's scheming of, she slapped his hand away and pouted in anger.

"Th-this is serious Kazama-senpai! It's the first time I had ever celebrating a Christmas Eve without my father! So—"

"So, falling into depressing or grief wouldn't help your father coming here in a split second." Kazama cut off the brunette's words, in which, leaves her looked at him in a little frustrated. "You should be grateful that you have someone to spend a Christmas even without your father or that damn Nagumo boy. …Beside that," using his thumb to wipe her-soon-dried-tears on her cheek. "seeing you in tears doesn't seem to suit you so well. Why don't you appreciate it, and enjoy this night for once."

She couldn't helped but finds her tears starting to form on her cheeks even more and more. Her tears was falling wasn't because of angry this time. It was more like happiness. Grateful. She was so grateful that she wasn't alone this time. She was so grateful that she wouldn't celebrate the Christmas alone.

Even if her father won't comes.

Kazama's here.

He's there for her.

And this is probably enough to avoid from celebrating the Christmas alone.

"I'm sorry, Kazama-senpai…" Chizuru murmured quietly, letting his warm hand caressed on her cheek tenderly. "…And thank you."

Hearing a familiar satisfied chuckle from the President, Chizuru ended up buried her face on Kazama's broad-chested, leaving them stood there in silent for like forever.

.

.

.

Several moments had passed between them, Amagiri had been sat next on the grand seat together with the older Suzuka.. but, not so close as he knew she needs some space to get some air.

Another more minutes then, somebody needs to break the atmosphere between them now.

"Who.. was that?" Sen finally questioned, thankfully, that creepy man's warmth touches on her hand suddenly cool down slowly.

"That's.. Sannan-sensei. My nurse doctor." Amagiri replied with a little hesitated.

"Your nurse doctor? In school?" Sen said, feeling a little perplexed. She never expected the red-headed man had a very strange, and not to mention it, the creepiest teacher in his school. ..Which, reminds her of Chizuru's suppose-all-boys high school. She often gives Sen and Kosuzu some weird stories of her experienced in her school life.

It's kinda a bit coincidence.. is it?

"I apologized for whatever that man did to you. I shouldn't have leaves you since the beginning."

"No, no, it's fine.." Sen murmured, caressed her other hand gently where the four-eyed man grabbed her. "A-As long you're there, I don't care what happened in the past. It's over."

She could see how guilty the red-headed man is.

Auf… she has to do something.

She needs to stop this awkward atmosphere or else, she might leave him again…

Acting proud, and strong in front of Amagiri, Sen covered her lips on a palm of her hand as she gave a bark of laughter like a selfish rich woman who she can do anything with just money only.

"Honestly, what's with that depressing face you made, Amagiri?"

"Eh?"

Amagiri blinked. He didn't know which part he was blinking of. Either Sen's frightened side disappeared so soon or the way how she calls him was the most pleasant voice he had ever heard from her.

"Come on. That isn't like you." Raising her left eyebrow in jokingly, poking her finger on his broad-chested in every word. "Where's the Mr. Gentleman that I used to know, anyway? Did you let your head hit on the boulder or something?" At that, she gave another laughter as she fought back the thought of the four-eyed man's touches in her head.

"Sen…" the red-headed man murmured her name, not knowing what to say anymore as he watched her smile and laughing at the same time. It's hurt him a little to see how she pretended to be herself, especially in front of him. She must've worried of him as well..

"Honestly.." Sen began, as she turned on her heels to take a short walk around the manor, in which, the red-headed man followed her back. "..ever since meeting you a lot of strange happened to me. First, I've got attracted by men even more, then, they were dared touching me no matter how struggle I fought back on them. I... I had never experienced such as this since he'd disappeared."

With that, sadness started to form on his blue orbs then. Every word she spoke just now is like he is the causes of bad luck. Wouldn't it be better for the two of them can never see each other anymore and—

"But, I'm not saying in bad ways of course." Sen continued, as if she could read the red-headed man's thought. "True, it was quite terrifying getting closer with other men and all. But, it's actually great way to overcome my fear of men."

"Fear of men…?" Androphobia…? ..No. or maybe it's possible she suffered of haphephobia.

"Yup." Sen said, walking all the way to the garden then. "I'll be the next heir clan for Suzuka, after all. So it's about time for me to start overcome this fear even if it's looks cheap to you."

This is the first time Sen has ever talked about her fear toward anyone.

To Amagiri, most of all.

Despite this kind of conversation should've been suitable toward Chizuru or Kosuzu, but her words almost as if it's been sealed off when it comes to them. It's almost as if they were not the right person to know the truth behind of her hatred for men.

But Amagiri..

How could she be able to speak about her own fear toward to the red-headed man?

Was it actually a good idea to speak this subject toward him?

She didn't know..

But she wanted the red-headed man understands about her so well.

"I don't think it's cheap or something." Amagiri broke the older Suzuka's thought, in which, brings her eyes laid into the ocean-blue orbs. Upon of staring deep into the red-headed's gentle orbs one, she finds herself a little ease somehow, in which, brings the older Suzuka curled her lips upward for a moment, but soon faded in sadness. Eyeing on a beautiful garden, she murmured with a very soft tone of hers:

"Shouldn't you disliking me?"

"Pardon?" Amagiri questioned.

"Shouldn't you disliking me for my hatred for men? Don't you think you should be?"

Silent moment passed between them at the beautiful scenery, night garden. It takes some times then Amagiri spoke.

"Hatred… is such a strong word to use especially from you, Lady Sen." The red-headed man gazed on the white roses in admiringly one, moving closer, in which, the older Suzuka followed him as well. "I don't think it's hatred that you've felt for toward men all this time, Sen. It's something different. Maybe.. anger. Or maybe.. frustrated at the same time? You might possible be angry and frustrated at the same time instead to whoever this man had done to you and your family."

At that, Sen couldn't helped but to shot her eyes open like a saucer in horror.

Hold on.. she had—

She had never telling this to anyone.

Not even to Kosuzu—

So how did this man—

"How did.. how did you know about—my family?" Sen questioned in disbelief. This kind of dark secret had never revealed to anyone. Not even to Kazama. So how did, of all person that figures the dark past of Suzuka family, why Amagiri?

"Miss Kimigiku told everything to me." Amagiri explained honestly. "Although she's not a member of Suzuka family nor related in your blood, yet, she knew fully well about your family."

Ahh.. of course.

She learnt from her mother that Kimigiku has been served for Suzuka family since she was a young teenage as her family owe a big debt for the Suzuka family, in which, she has to become Sen's personal servant after she was born. Kimigiku's debt soon finally paid once the older Suzuka has finally become the heir of Suzuka family and marries any man she chose of.

"Then—"

Amagiri held his hand up, gesturing he knew what she intended to say, in which, the red-headed man replied with a shaking his head slightly.

"Rest to be assured, Miss Kimigiku didn't tell me whoever this person you actually despise of."

With that answer, Sen gave a relief sigh, though she couldn't helped but to pout in annoyingly. "That damn Oukiku shouldn't have told everything's about my family to you.." Sen said with a sigh,

As Amagiri replied with a quiet chuckled, his smile started to fade away as he decided to tells her something she should've known about.. this person she despise of truly.

".. Although you may won't forgive this person that had ruining your family, but you knew fully well, whoever this is— would've been felt guilty as well to have destroy your life by accident to be honest."

"How did you know about this." At those words, Sen's usual kind and gentle smile started to disappear, and changed into aggressive mode;

"You don't know anything about that bastard! He had done horribly to my mother..! To my family..! How can you not blaming that old man's done…! How can you sided on him over me?!"

She didn't know why but it's her very first time to have raise her voice to the red-headed man. Although she once telling herself that she couldn't brings herself to raise her voice or being aggressive toward Amagiri. But somehow, it made her really furious to see the other man siding on that bastard than her.

She was expecting the red-headed man would choose her but—oh, she's definitely wrong.

Ever since Sen raised her voice for the first time toward the red-heaed man, Amagiri's expression didn't change into shock or perplexed. It's almost as if he'd known he eventually getting mad by the older Suzuka.

"…How did you know this.. man hurt your family terribly?"

"My mom.." Sen said a little hesitantly while sniffling softly as she finally realized that she was about to cry just raising her voice toward men. "She told me how that man abandoned us all even though everything's what my mother's done was for the good sake of our family. She sacrifice herself to choose him and what he eventually do is running away and vanished without a word. I hate it!"

The red-headed man didn't spoke anything, as he watched the older Suzuka released her own sadness right in front of him. It must have been tough for her to hide this kind of pain about her 'hatred' toward this man from her sister and the Yukimura girl.

That man abandoned her since she was in kindergarten after all.

Speaking this subject quite sadden the older Suzuka truly.

Intending to cheer Sen up, Amagiri took a glanced on the beautiful garden then, finally caught an interesting flower that suits Sen's character truly. He hoped that Serizawa lets anyone, especially Amagiri to pluck one of flower in the garden. Plucking a white daisy in gently, not wanting to let their petals fall down fragilely, Amagiri returned back to Sen whom, staring at him in a little perplexed as to why did he brought a flower all of a sudden.

Slowly, and hesitantly, Amagiri brushed down the older Suzuka's frame right hair to give her a permission to give a light touch. When Sen feeling a little comfortable about his touch, he began to slip a white daisy that he plucked on her earlobe. At that, Amagiri gave a soft sigh on his lips as he finds it suits her with a white flower on her hair.

"My deepest apologized to speak this conversation when I've known you will feel a little uncomfortable about it." Amagiri said with his apologetically bow, being polite as ever. ..Not that Sen's grown tired or something.

"It's fine.. Sen murmured. "After all, I did spoke this kinds of conversation first, not you. I wasn't really expected it could leads to relating to my family and all."

Curling his lips in warmth one, he nodded slightly.

"I guess so."

As their eyes drawn each other and forgetting of the reality for once, the older Suzuka couldn't helped but to grown a little attached toward the red-headed man little by little. She'd always likes this kinds of side from Amagiri; kind, and gentle. Never would've thought she could ended up on opening her heart to a male friend whom they're just met for less than a week.

As they've been staring into the other's eyes in amazingly, a sound of clock bell began to bring them back to reality, which, leads their eyes to the big, old clock in the hall room of Serizawa manor.

It's already 11 pm.

Although the older Suzuka wanted so much to spend more times with the red-headed man, but she knew that returning home very late could bring getting a lecture by her strict mother.

"So it's finally 11 o'clock." Amagiri murmured quietly. "I guess times really does move quite fast between us."

"That's what I said for the first time we met remember?" Sen said with a smirk, in which, the other man replied with another warmth and gentle smile. As she took a very closer look behind of Amagiri's ocean blue orbs, the older Suzuka could've sworn she'd just saw there's a tinge of disappointment and sadness behind on it.

Has he wanted to spend times together with her a little longer as well…?

"We might as well bringing you home by now, Sen." The red-headed man said. "They're probably been waiting for your return."

She replied with a nod then, not knowing what to say, and leave the manor together next to the red-headed man.

Without aware of herself, Sen has starting to enjoy being close to the other man little by little.

"Here," Kazama said, giving his lovely lover a medium present box with an elegant red ribbon on the top of it.

Chizuru blinked in confused at the sudden of receiving a gift.

She wasn't expecting to receive a present from the President. After all, he's been a bit quiet and obedient ever since he finds the young brunette couldn't able to go to the Serizawa Christmas Party. Could it possibly be this is what he's been a in deep thought for a few past days ago?

"Umm… what's this, Kazama-senpai?" Chizuru questioned dumbfoundedly.

"My Christmas present, obviously." Kazama replied with a smirk, while putting his knuckles under his cheek as he watched the young brunette being innocent and cute as ever. "Try take a look."

Blinked in confusedly once more, it took a moment then Chizuru has finally decided to open a Christmas box from the President. As she untied the ribbon very carefully, her eyes widen opened in shocked.

Inside the Christmas box gift is a two pair of mittens made from wool. It fits her hands perfectly. The brunette could also felt a little soft and fluffly as she put it on them.

She wasn't expected to have receive such an amazing gift from the President before. At first, she was expecting that her boyfriend would bought her an expensive necklace or accessories from overseas or something.

—But mittens.

She didn't know why but she felt so happy somehow. Although it sadden her a little when her father couldn't able to make it here, but receiving a Christmas present from her lover somehow brings her sadness vanished away.

"They're beautiful, Kazama-senpai. Where did you bought this?" Chizuru said, putting her hands on her cheeks, feeling a pleasant warmth on her face.

"I made it."

"Ahh… so that's how it is. You made—"

As she understood his answer very clearly, the young brunette jolted right there in surprised. It was almost as if the thunder was striking right through her from the window.

"Y-Y-You made it.. Kazama-senpai…?!" Chizuru couldn't helped felt an urged to exclaim.

"What? Don't believe me?" Kazama said with the most proud tone on his lips.

"W-Well…" she mumbled softly, loss in words. Of course, she couldn't believe this. How come, the most arrogant and self-important President such as Kazama Chikage could know a technique of making a handicraft…?!

"Take a look."

As her boyfriend's voice brings her back to reality, Chizuru raised her face to gaze on the President, and soon, her almond-brown orbs began to wide in horror as she saw some light injured from the President's gorgeous hands.

Has he.. has he really made this glove for her?

Is this the reason why he's been quiet for a moment?

"You're.. doing this for me?" The brunette whispered softly, kinda feels a little guilty.

"As long as it could make you happy, I'm willing to do it for you even if it's difficult for me."

Once Kazama finished, Chizuru grabbed his injured hand to take a closer look, caressing it in tender and gentle one as if she didn't want to hurt him worst.

"You shouldn't do this for me, especially since it's complicated for you.." she spoke guiltily.

"Complicated, but worthy."

The President copied the red-headed lines.

After Chizuru had aid him by bandaging his hand up with the help of the first aid kit, Kazama stared at her interestingly as she put the ointment and the cloth in the metal box.

"Now, I'm waiting."

Kazama break the silent moment, in which, brings Chizuru tilted her head in confused.

"Waiting for what?"

"Your Christmas gift." Kazama stated clearly.

With those words, her eyes averted on elsewhere as she replied in a little hesitant. "I… I don't have a Christmas present for you.. I-I'm sorry Kazama-senpai." She couldn't helped but feeling so bad to herself to have forgotten to buy something special for the President despite being his lover.

"Oh, I think you're already have by now."

"Eh?"

As she blinked in confused of his words, the President's face starting to move closer to hers, and, oh she knows what does those words meant about.

Feelings her cheeks burnt up in red from embarrassingly, she pushed his face away to stop him from whatever he's trying to scheme of.

"Wait, wait, wait..! This is..! It's too soon!" She exclaimed in panic, her ears began to flush as well.

He can't do that in here…!

Showing a little frustrating and annoying behind on those crimson orbs of Kazama's, the President grabbed Chizuru's wrists so that he could tilted his head closer to hers easier. The closer the gap between them, the deep the scarlet the young brunette's cheeks are.

"If we can't do it here then when? You do realized almost everyone keep us both apart." The President growled under his breathed in threateningly. He could understand the Yukimura girl can be quite stubborn one. But he never thought that she could be this stubborn.

"Th-that is…" Chizuru murmured softly, not knowing what to say as she tries to find a word to answer him.

Oh, of course she's known that. It took several days then, the brunette noticed how almost everyone disagrees of their relationship. Whenever Kazama tried to kiss, or hug her in school, one of her friend would often pretended to bump into them and starts the usual conversation, and the next thing they knew, they pulled her arm and telling the President that they had some urgent to do with the brunette. She could understand how much caring they are for her, but being a little— no, too much over-protective is kinda getting on her nerve somehow.

If the only there's a way to stop being an over-protective family toward her.

As she was in a deep thought, she hadn't realized until now that there was a soft and warm feeling on her lips. The next thing she knew that she realized that the President had plunged his lips on hers while she was distracting herself from thinking about the others in school.

Slightly stunned from receiving another sudden kiss from Kazama, the brunette wanted so much to parted their lips away but knowing that her strength was no match to the President, it was impossible for her to break a free from him. In which, in the end, she eventually given up on herself, as she enjoys their kisses.

Knowing that they don't usually kissing a lot, Chizuru was pretty much suck on this kinds of stuff. She couldn't helped but feeling a little envy of Kazama's skillful kisses. If they had been kissing quite a lot, would she be as capable as the President's then…?

Feeling a little out of breathed, the brunette put her palm of hands on Kazama's broad chested, gesturing him that she needed some air in which is, Kazama gladly parted their lips her. Watching his beautiful soon-to-be-wife in admiringly, he finds her beautiful even when she was trying to catch some breathe desperately.

When she had enough air to breathe, Kazama began to pin her down on the couch, which brings their eyes gazed into nothing except each other. The perplexed look on her face was amusing the President truly.

He wanted so much to kiss her more and deeper, but he decided to keep the best part later.

Kissing his lover's forehead, cheek, ear and nose, he noticed Chizuru's cheeks began to flush in red once more. He replied with a soft chuckle on his lips. Of course, those kinds of chuckle wasn't meant in sarcasm or sadistic actually. Once he had satisfy kissing her face, Kazama began to move closer to her ear to give a seductive whisper, in which, brings the young brunette flushed in embarrassingly, just as the President predicted of.

"It's too bad you didn't hang a mistletoe in your house. …But if you had it.." a smirk formed into his lips, the President purred at that part, "I wouldn't have stop kissing you by now."

With that, Chizuru couldn't helped, felt an urged to flush in red once again.

"St-stop joking around like that!" The young brunette exclaimed in a slight of embarrassing at the thought of getting devoured by the President's lips.

"What do you mean by that?" Kazama spoke in a serious tone, narrowed his eyes slightly deeper from her words. "Of course, I'm not joking around when it comes to our relationship."

When the brunette didn't know what to speak anymore, the President continued once again;

"Do you actually think I would make a fun of your feeling toward me?"

"Of-Of course not!" Chizuru exclaimed at that. Wasn't expected to hear those lines from the President.

Guess there are times Kazama really known so well about falling in love and all.

"Then, you should be grateful that I'm doing this for you and you only," with that, Kazama's Oni President-ish mode started to disappear, return back to his usual flirty lover mode, giving a chaste kiss on Chizuru's soft cheek.

Ahhh... she couldn't understand about this man at all.

"Somehow.. I'm still not getting used to it on this kinds of thing…" The younger brunette whispered in flustered, hoping that her voice didn't reach to the President's ears. But since their space were pretty quite close, it's obviously that Kazama heard it very well, especially by the looks on his face, there was a wide smirk in which, she had a greatest urged to push the President away from her, turning on her heels to reach to her room and locked it until Christmas Eve finally over.

"Then, how about we should practice from now on?"

Kazama suggested with a very wide and dark smirk on his face. Of course, the part of 'dark' wasn't actually in malicious one.

As she heard those words from her lover, she knew so well that by meaning practice, it must've been more than just a kiss..! …Oh wait, or maybe she was being a little exaggerated.

Too exaggerated.

"W-Wait, what do you mean by that?!" She stuttered in flustered, feeling her cheeks starting to burn up once more from embarrassment.

"Obviously that, I've decided to further our relationship into deeper as soon as possible," Kazama explained clearly. "Although I would like to take our relationship grows slowly, but knowing that your friends and teachers were being too over-protective. So I think it's about time to show them off to know how much you only want me."

"W-Well, they cared for me. So it's normal that there are some people thinking about me."

"Yeah… 9 people being too over-protective like a parent." He muttered under his breathed at that. "Don't you think that they made some kind of plan to part us away?"

"They may be over-protective toward me, they may care for me like a family, they may not approve our relationship, but they would never do such a thing to part us away like this."

Kazama replied with a hum. "Sounds a bit suspicious to me."

"Talk about yourself…" Chizuru mumbled under her breathed, thankfully, this time the President didn't heard it.

After they've been spending times together in Chizuru's house, she was expecting he would eventually gave his usual goodbye kiss to her and leaves the house to make sure she would have a pleasant sleep for this night.

However, it didn't happened… yet.

"Close your eyes."

"E-Eh…?"

"Just close your eyes and trust me. There's something I want to show you"

Tilted her head in a slight of confusion. Knowing that asking more questions would brings a lot of riddles, Chizuru eventually closed her eyes just as the President demanded, waiting for whatever her lover trying to show her.

A moment then, Chizuru could felt a warm hand grabbing hers in gently one and took her to the staircase. The President has been remained quiet since he asked her to close her eyes.

Whatever he's trying to show her must be a surprised one.

Soon, as they finally arrived outside, possibly at the night of balcony, Kazama began to stop walking then.

Is this the place?

She gets a feeling that she's still in her house.

What is he trying to show her?

She couldn't helped but her curiosity is drivin' her crazy now.

"Alright," Kazama finally broke the silent. "now you can open your eyes."

With that, slowly, Chizuru fluttered her eyes opened slowly to prepare of whatever coming then. Her eyes soon lit up in joyous and happiness as she finally knows what her lover trying to show her.

The couple were in the balcony of her father's room. As she took a closer look outside the balcony, the scenery of night city about a few metres away from here looked beautiful with all those various colorful lights here and there. She could even see a big, Christmas tree that lit it up brighter than any lights at the town square. Some couple were enjoying themselves together in the city as well. It has such a great view to watch the city truly.

"It's beautiful, Senpai," Chizuru said with a full of admiringly one.

"I would be expecting you like it as well." Kazama said proudly.

Eyeing to her lover, she raised her eyebrow in curious. "How did you know this place has a great view to watch the city?"

At that question, Chizuru couldn't tell whether it's a good idea to ask or terrible one, but by looking at the other man's mischievous smirk, pretty sure she just ask a very terrible question one.

"Do you remember what happened between us when the car passed us outside your house?"

Just speaking a day when she confessed her feeling for the President kinda flushed her cheeks in embarrassing somehow.

"Y-Yeah.. why?"

"Well," Kazama began. "After I took a bath, I take an opportunity to get to know of yourself by secretly looked around the house, including several rooms." With that, he replied with another smug on his face. "As I went into your father's room, I've realized that the balcony there had such a great view to watch the city here. So I've just thought that it would be great for you to watch it later whenever you're alone and all."

"W-Wait—! Y-You went all over the rooms?!" Chizuru exclaimed in disbelief, finding her cheeks flushed in red at the thought of the President went into her room as well.

Wh-wha.. what if he thought her room looks childish and all?!

But wait, how can he tells which her father's room and hers?

As he could see through her all over it very clearly, Kazama gave a soft chuckle as he finds quite amusing of her side truly.

Damn, no matter whatever she do, the brunette girl would never fails to amuse him.

"Rest to be assured, my love," Kazama began. "I never enter your room yet, as I understand of woman's personal life. I wouldn't barging your room whatever I like unless we're both officially famuly in the future." He smirked at that part.

"A-Ahhh… o-officially family'..?" Chizuru murmured those words in embarrassingly, finding her cheeks burnt up deeper.

Smirking wider, Kazama continued once more to see his lover flushed in red even deeper.

"Ahh well.. even if we're officially family, I highly doubt that you'll be living here anymore."

At those riddles-like words, Chizuru raised her eyebrow in perplexed.

Wh-what does he mean..?

Before Chizuru could say more, Kazama continued then;

"Rather than staying here," the President tilted his head closer to Chizuru's ear to give a soft purred, "you will eventually live in my manor as my wife, the queen heir of Kazama famuly."

"W-Wife..?!" and Queen?! She squeaked at that word. She couldn't tell whether she was supposed to be embarrassed or happy for this. But of course, she's actually feeling too embarrassed about this as speaking about their future is too soon for her. "St-stop speaking something embarrass, senpai.." As she said that, she covered her face with her palm of hands as she realized her ears were joining to flush in red as well.

"Embarrassing? What are you talking about?" Kazama raised his eyebrow in perplexed. "Of course everything I said is the truth; you're belongs to me and me only, our destiny can never change no matter how many times you're try to escape it." He gave a smug at that, watching the poor girl feeling flustered at their 'future' fate.

Too embarrassed to speak a word, Chizuru could only reply with a groan then.

The other man replied with a chuckle, he gripped her chin with his fingers closer to take a good look on his lover, his smirk never faded away from his face.

"Cute."

At that, Kazama moved closer to give another chaste kiss on her lips then.

They stayed right there while feeling fascinating watching down on the beautiful, night, scenery city. Until around midnight then, Kazama bids her farewell before he went into his black limo car.

As soon as Chizuru changed herself into her yellow pajamas with cute brown pattern bears, she laid herself on the soft bed, letting herself having such a sweet dreams.

Although she wanted so much to celebrate a Christmas Eve with her adoptive father and Kaoru together for this year, but she never expected that celebrating with Kazama—her lover, could be fun and enjoyable actually.

But still...

"Embarrassing? What are you talking about?"

"Of course everything I said is the truth; you're belongs to me and me only, our destiny can never change no matter how many times you're try to escape it."

At those words she found herself blushed in happiness. Burying her face on her pillow from embarrassment, she soon falls asleep once she had finally calmed down then..

As the Christmas party in Serizawa's place had finally over, it was almost about time for the red-headed man escorted the young lady to her manor. Silent moment formed between on them, neither of the couple started any conversation. They pretty much enjoyed this peaceful and harmony quiet atmosphere.

While walking all the way to the Suzuka's manor, a soft, and white snow started to fall down on Kyoto.

"Look, it's snowing!" Sen chirped happily as she gazed on the beautiful snowy sky to watch snowflakes fall more.

Amagiri joined as well by raising his head, feeling himself to smile upon of seeing the first snowflakes fall with someone for the first time. As the red-headed watched the older Suzuka danced in beautifully and gracefully one like a gorgeous princess, he lets his lips formed a very small smile when Sen showed one of her cute and childish side by sticking out her tongue to have a taste of snow.

"It looked like you're having some fun." Amagiri began.

"Of course I am! Why wouldn't I? After all, it's the first time I've got inviting in a Christmas party like this." She replied happily. And not to mention it, I managed to get away from my mom just so I could avoid talking about arrangement marriage and stuff like that. Sen mumbled very quietly, hoping the other man didn't hear every single of her mutter.

As the older Suzuka continuedly enjoying watched the beautiful snowy scenery at the Kyoto, Sen noticed that the red-headed man had remained quiet for a moment now. There was a tint of guilty on his face.

Moved forward to the other man, Sen tilted her head in wonder, and taking a closer look on his face, hoping she could see whatever problem he had in mind behind on those ocean-blue orbs of Amagiri's.

"Something bothering you?"

"N-No." the red-headed man replied in a little hesitantly, moved his eyes on elsewhere except the honey-brown orbs one.

"That doesn't look to be fine at all." Sen spoke once more, not wanting to slide it that way. There's a chance that she might able to help his problem.

As the older Suzuka continuedly on staring at the other man for like eternity, it took a while then Amagiri has finally given up on himself, telling her whatever that's been in his head over and over. With a little hesitation, the red-headed man spoke in a very soft tone one like a whisper:

"…I'm sorry."

"For what?" Sen blinked in confused, tilting her head slightly in adorable.

"For.. leaving you alone in Serizawa's Party a moment ago."

"Again with that?" Sen couldn't helped but finds herself rolled her eyes. It's not in annoyance one, however. Though she could understand how much guilty he must has to have not coming to her sooner. After all, he did made a promise toward her personal servant that he would make sure the older Suzuka was definitely saved.

Honestly though, Sen couldn't helped but feeling a little curious as to what kind of relationship both, Amagiri and Kimigiku had. By the looks of it, they seem to have deepen their bonds before the older Suzuka met him first.

..No.

Or maybe even before she's in kindergarten.

Whenever she took a glanced of Amagiri's amazing ocean-blue orbs, there was a hidden of honest and maybe a little joyous as well to have see her personal servant once again.

It's not that their relationship is bothering her or something. Sometimes, the older Suzuka had always has a feeling of loneliness being next to the red-headed man whenever the raven-haired woman's presence exist between them.

It was almost as if the special person that could only fill his heart could only belongs Kimigiku and Kimigiku only—

Whoah, whoah, whoah.. hold the fuckin minutes. Since when Sen could ever envy of this kinds of feeling to someone, and not to mention it, her own personal assistant.

It's not that she was jealous of her or something right?

…Somehow, she couldn't helped but finds herself a bit familiar with her best friend, whom quite jealous to a certain woman, when she thought her feeling for whoever that man is one-sided.

Why should I jealous for Kimigiku? Amagiri?, Sen thought deeper as she took a glanced on the red-headed man whom looked at her in such a clueless expression on his face.

No.. no.. it couldn't be. She shook her head slightly. They've just friends several days ago. Nothing's special, nothing's more. Sure, he's great to be spends time with. But this kind of relationship is nothing but sort of a princess and a knight.

Amagiri, whom, takes a real great role of a protective knight—not over-protective. Just protective is enough. A knight, whom swore himself to the king, the queen, and the lovely princess to protect her at all cost even if it has to sacrifice his own life.

For Sen, a princess from far, far, far away land. In truth, being a wealthy daughter is tough. Very, very tough. Some commoner had always thought being a daughter of rich people has an easy life. But no.

They were absolutely wrong.

Being a rich people is tough.

Terrible.

For she, must marry some random rich man for the sake of their family.

Having an arrangement marriage is terrible one.

As there's no such thing as love between them.

She wanted so much to marry with someone she had a feeling of love, such as to marry Amagiri—

Ack!

Why did his name slip off from her thought?!

..it's not that she hates it or not..

It's just so..

—so complicated to describe of.

She likes Amagiri, that's what her thought.

She likes Amagiri as a friend.. is it…?

She couldn't tell.

At first, she was expecting she was definitely won't falls in love with someone.

And obviously, not to Kazama, as she always sees him as a brother only.

But Amagiri—

He's so—complicated to describe of.

"I suggest that we must return to your manor in haste." Amagiri break Sen's thought of his and Kimigiku's relationship, her eyes lift up into the ocean-blue ones. "Wouldn't want Miss Kimigiku worry of you more."

"Oh.. of course!," with that, Sen hopped on her heels while walking next to the red-headed man a little closer.

She wondered.. would she ever gets an answer about whatever kinds of feeling she had for this man…?

As they finally arrived at the Suzuka manor, Sen stopped right in front of the door and bowed in a very polite manner toward the red-headed man.

"Thank you for inviting me to the party. Really, it's a bit awkward, but I'm having a lot of fun spending times with you," Sen said with a proud grin.

"I am very glad you're enjoying it."

With that, they both could do nothing except smiled each other. Honestly though, somehow, they never get tired of smiling, chuckling and giggling to each other. It was almost as if their presence always makes them feel comfortable.

"Now then, I should take my leave, Lady Sen." Amagiri said with a bow. "Merry Christmas."

Upon of watching the red-headed man's broad back moved further and further, Sen couldn't helped but finds her world starting to turn grey upon of watching the other man's existent vanished in her life.

Would she ever sees him again?

"A-Amagiri—!"

When the red-headed man's name had been called from the older Suzuka in a hidden of desperate and a little grief, Amagiri stopped from mid-walking while took an eyed on Sen whom looks a bit anxious and worried, similar how men tried to touch her.

Why would she being this way…?

"Yes?"

Sen, however, did not speak a word nor reply the red-headed man. Instead, he stood right there, while looking down on the ground. She was too frightened to see him disappeared in her life again.

She was so grateful to him. Very grateful to him. Everything's what he's done had always cherished her truly. The way how he continued to support her like a knight who vow himself to protect his princess, even if it means to risk his own life.

He was the very first person to have needs someone helps her.

She hated to admit, but she obviously dislikes being a damsel in distress especially when it's her job to protect other women, especially Kosuzu and Chizuru from getting a sexual harassment by men. Despite how she was suppose to get angry for being pathetic and useless when Amagiri saved her from the other random men, though, she couldn't helped, rather than getting angry, it was more like she was… happy.

She couldn't described it very well. But for sure, whenever the other man saved her, it was almost as if her life was important to him. He couldn't live without her happiness and smile no matter. The older Suzuka could see right through his face very well; she noticed how sadden he looked whenever she vanished her smile away from her face.

He… must've cherished her as well, huh?

"…Sen."

Lifting her face up upon of hearing the other man called her. The next thing she knew, Sen could felt a very soft and warmth feeling on her forehead. It was the same feeling when she was getting a tight embraced by her personal servant. Reassuring her that it's fine to cry. It's alright to cry on other's shoulder.

It took moments to have Sen realized that this soft and warmth feeling she felt on her forehead was none other than Amagiri's lips.

His lips were soft and gentle.

Sooner or later then, the older Suzuka's heart was starting to pump up really quickly. She knew so well that this isn't anxious or fear she usually felt this time. It was different. Such an unfamiliar feeling she had experienced of in her life. A tinged of soft scarlet color were flushed on her both cheeks and ears at the same time. Although the weather here was suppose to be cold, Sen could felt her face were starting to burn up as if she was about to have a fever by now.

When seconds passed between them then, Amagiri finally moved his face away from Sen's forehead. He gave a very soft sigh of relief, slightly glad to see the older Suzuka was giving him a permission to come closer to their personal space.

As the older Suzuka had been stood there for more than 3 seconds, Amagiri had a feeling that he must be the second man(the first would be Kazama, obviously) to get this close to the older Suzuka since by looking on her expression, she's been stood there without a word, and stared at him in a blank face as if she finally realized Amagiri has been a ghost all this time.

Of course, that kind of reaction weren't mean in bad one. Probably this is the first time Sen has ever getting received an affection of friendship from other man(beside Kazama—oh wait, he didn't think Kazama has ever shown any affection toward Sen.. except maybe concern?).

"Well then," Amagiri finally break the silent moment between them. "I must leave for now." Giving his usual polite bow before the-soon-to-be-heir-of Suzuka, "Once again, merry Christmas, and have a pleasant night."

As the other man had finally leaves his presence at the manor of Suzuka, Sen, on the other hand, still stood there like a statue. Without realizing it, her hand moved to her forehead to give a soft caressed on it where the other man gave a chaste kiss.

Never would she have had ever imagined to have received a kiss from other man, not to mention it, Amagiri of all the men…!

Doki, doki

Soon, something insides her chest suddenly made such a strange loud sound. It took a moment then Sen realized that her heart was pumping even louder than ever. She knew whose fault this is to have made her feel this way.

Amagiri.

Wha—just what did that guy done to her..?!

Peeking outside the window, Kimigiku couldn't helped but feeling a little worry toward the older Suzuka.

It's getting late.

Where is she..?

It's weird how despite she and Sen doesn't have any relation blood, yet she's the only one that worry of Sen the most before Kosuzu and Kazama.

As she took a peek another window once more, she finally saw her outside from the Suzuka manor.

Ah.. there she is.

Narrowed her eyes deeper, there's something's weird going on to Sen.

What's happened to her..?

The next thing she knew, Kimigiku realized she wasn't alone actually.

There was Amagiri.

He stood there right in front of the older Suzuka. There was a very soft smile that Kimigiku rarely seen from the red-headed man. Although it's normal to see the other man was showing a very polite manner, even toward stranger. But this… that smile was the rarest one Kimigiku had ever seen before.

Could it be that smile was meant for the older Suzuka.

As Kimigiku watched whatever going happened between them rather than going outside and thanking the red-headed man for accompanied the older Suzuka, almost like a minute then, Amagiri patted Sen's head like a child, the next thing after then, his face leaned closer to Suzuka's forehead.

At first, Kimigiku had an urged to turn on her heels in a flashing light as if whatever Amagiri did just now was actually a taboo. But something stopped her however that, rather than going outside, there's still a smile on Amagiri's face. Kimigiku had a feeling that whatever the red-headed man did just now it had already been given a permission from Sen.

As soon as Amagiri finally turned on his heels to take a leave, Kimigiku began to take a glanced on Sen's face from the window. Gazing on her very closely then, she soon, finally saw the older Suzuka's expression clearly.

Instead of anxious and horrifying that Sen used to show whenever stranger men come closer to her, the older Suzuka's face was flushing in a deep of ripe tomato color on her cheeks and ears. Her eyes were filled with wondered and a little confused.

By the looking on that kind of expression, it looked like Sen has finally accepted on someone than just Kazama.

She finally accepted Amagiri in oblivious.

So that's how it is.

Kimigiku finds her lips curl upward in approved.

He's the man we've been looking for.

[theattainer]

Acres of Diamonds

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https://theattainer.com/acres-of-diamonds/

Acres of Diamonds

This is Russell Conwell’s famous “Acres of Diamonds” speech—and the inspiration for the university’s mission.

I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again. Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often breaks all rules of oratory, departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have delivered in the fifty-seven years of my public life. I have sometimes studied for a year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once—never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no work on it—thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan, is an entire failure.

The “Acres of Diamonds” which I have mentioned through so many years are to be found in this city, and you are to find them. Many have found them. And what man has done, man can do. I could not find anything better to illustrate my thought than a story I have told over and over again, and which is now found in books in nearly every library.

In 1870 we went down the Tigris River. We hired a guide at Bagdad to show us Persepolis, Nineveh and Babylon, and the ancient countries of Assyria as far as the Arabian Gulf. He was well acquainted with the land, but he was one of those guides who love to entertain their patrons; he was like a barber that tells you many stories in order to keep your mind off the scratching and the scraping. He told me so many stories that I grew tired of his telling them and I refused to listen—looked away whenever he commenced; that made the guide quite angry.

I remember that toward evening he took his Turkish cap off his head and swung it around in the air. The gesture I did not understand and I did not dare look at him for fear I should become the victim of another story. But, although I am not a woman, I did look, and the instant I turned my eyes upon that worthy guide he was off again. Said he, “I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends!” So then, counting myself a particular friend, I listened, and I have always been glad I did.

He said there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned a very large farm with orchards, grain fields and gardens. He was a contented and wealthy man—contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. One day there visited this old farmer one of those ancient Buddhist priests, and he sat down by Al Hafed’s fire and told that old farmer how this world of ours was made.

He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, which is scientifically true, and he said that the Almighty thrust his finger into the bank of fog and then began slowly to move his finger around and gradually to increase the speed of his finger until at last he whirled that bank of fog into a solid ball of fire, and it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other cosmic banks of fog, until it condensed the moisture without, and fell in floods of rain upon the heated surface and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal flames burst through the cooling crust and threw up the mountains and made the hills and the valleys of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal melted mass burst out and cooled very quickly it became granite; that which cooled less quickly became silver; and less quickly, gold; and after gold, diamonds were made. Said the old priest, “A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight.”

This is a scientific truth also. You all know that a diamond is pure carbon, actually deposited sunlight—and he said another thing I would not forget: he declared that a diamond is the last and highest of God’s mineral creations, as a woman is the last and highest of God’s animal creations. I suppose that is the reason why the two have such a liking for each other. And the old priest told Al Hafed that if he had a handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole country, and with a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth.

Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man—not that he had lost anything, but poor because he was discontented and discontented because he thought he was poor. He said: “I want a mine of diamonds!” So he lay awake all night, and early in the morning sought out the priest.

Now I know from experience that a priest when awakened early in the morning is cross. He awoke that priest out of his dreams and said to him, “Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?” The priest said, “Diamonds? What do you want with diamonds?” “I want to be immensely rich,” said Al Hafed, “but I don’t know where to go.” “Well,” said the priest, “if you will find a river that runs over white sand between high mountains, in those sands you will always see diamonds.” “Do you really believe that there is such a river?” “Plenty of them, plenty of them; all you have to do is just go and find them, then you have them.” Al Hafed said, “I will go.” So he sold his farm, collected his money at interest, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds.

He began very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterwards he went around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last, when his money was all spent, and he was in rags, wretchedness and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay in Barcelona, Spain, when a tidal wave came rolling in through the Pillars of Hercules and the poor, afflicted, suffering man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that very sad story, he stopped the camel I was riding and went back to fix the baggage on one of the other camels, and I remember thinking to myself, “Why did he reserve that for his particular friends?” There seemed to be no beginning, middle or end—nothing to it. That was the first story I ever heard told or read in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of that story and the hero was dead.

When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel again, he went right on with the same story. He said that Al Hafed’s successor led his camel out into the garden to drink, and as that camel put its nose down into the clear water of the garden brook Al Hafed’s successor noticed a curious flash of light from the sands of the shallow stream, and reaching in he pulled out a black stone having an eye of light that reflected all the colors of the rainbow, and he took that curious pebble into the house and left it on the mantel, then went on his way and forgot all about it.

A few days after that, this same old priest who told Al Hafed how diamonds were made, came in to visit his successor, when he saw that flash of light from the mantel. He rushed up and said, “Here is a diamond—here is a diamond! Has Al Hafed returned?” “No, no; Al Hafed has not returned and that is not a diamond; that is nothing but a stone; we found it right out here in our garden.” “But I know a diamond when I see it,” said he; “that is a diamond!”

Then together they rushed to the garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers and found others more beautiful, more valuable diamonds than the first, and thus, said the guide to me, were discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond mines in all the history of mankind, exceeding the Kimberley in its value. The great Kohinoor diamond in England’s crown jewels and the largest crown diamond on earth in Russia’s crown jewels, which I had often hoped she would have to sell before they had peace with Japan, came from that mine, and when the old guide had called my attention to that wonderful discovery he took his Turkish cap off his head again and swung it around in the air to call my attention to the moral.

Those Arab guides have a moral to each story, though the stories are not always moral. He said had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death—a strange land, he would have had “acres of diamonds”—for every acre, yes, every shovelful of that old farm afterwards revealed the gems which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs. When he had given the moral to his story, I saw why he had reserved this story for his “particular friends.” I didn’t tell him I could see it; I was not going to tell that old Arab that I could see it. For it was that mean old Arab’s way of going around such a thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he did not dare say directly, that there was a certain young man that day traveling down the Tigris River that might better be at home in America. I didn’t tell him I could see it.

I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick. I told him about that man out in California, who, in 1847, owned a ranch out there. He read that gold had been discovered in Southern California, and he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter and started off to hunt for gold. Colonel Sutter put a mill on the little stream in that farm and one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway of the mill into the house and placed it before the fire to dry, and as that sand was falling through the little girl’s fingers a visitor saw the first shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in California; and the man who wanted the gold had sold his ranch and gone away, never to return.

I delivered this lecture two years ago in California, in the city that stands near that farm, and they told me that the mine is not exhausted yet, and that a one-third owner of that farm has been getting during these recent years twenty dollars of gold every fifteen minutes of his life, sleeping or waking. Why, you and I would enjoy an income like that!

But the best illustration that I have now of this thought was found here in Pennsylvania. There was a man living in Pennsylvania who owned a farm here and he did what I should do if I had a farm in Pennsylvania—he sold it. But before he sold it he concluded to secure employment collecting coal oil for his cousin in Canada. They first discovered coal oil there. So this farmer in Pennsylvania decided that he would apply for a position with his cousin in Canada. Now, you see, the farmer was not altogether a foolish man. He did not leave his farm until he had something else to do.

Of all the simpletons the stars shine on there is none more foolish than a man who leaves one job before he has obtained another. And that has especial reference to gentlemen of my profession, and has no reference to a man seeking a porce. So I say this old farmer did not leave one job until he had obtained another. He wrote to Canada, but his cousin replied that he could not engage him because he did not know anything about the oil business. “Well, then,” said he, “I will understand it.” So he set himself at the study of the whole subject. He began at the second day of the creation, he studied the subject from the primitive vegetation to the coal oil stage, until he knew all about it. Then he wrote to his cousin and said, “Now I understand the oil business.” And his cousin replied to him, “All right, then, come on.”

That man, by the record of the country, sold his farm for eight hundred and thirty-three dollars—even money, “no cents.” He had scarcely gone from that farm before the man who purchased it went out to arrange for watering the cattle and he found that the previous owner had arranged the matter very nicely. There is a stream running down the hillside there, and the previous owner had gone out and put a plank across that stream at an angle, extending across the brook and down edgewise a few inches under the surface of the water. The purpose of the plank across that brook was to throw over to the other bank a dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle would not put their noses to drink above the plank, although they would drink the water on one side below it.

Thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself damming back for twenty-three years a flow of coal oil which the State Geologist of Pennsylvania declared officially, as early as 1870, was then worth to our state a hundred millions of dollars. The city of Titusville now stands on that farm and those Pleasantville wells flow on, and that farmer who had studied all about the formation of oil since the second day of God’s creation clear down to the present time, sold that farm for $833, no cents—again I say, “no sense.”

But I need another illustration, and I found that in Massachusetts, and I am sorry I did, because that is my old state. This young man I mention went out of the state to study—went down to Yale College and studied mines and mining. They paid him fifteen dollars a week during his last year for training students who were behind their classes in mineralogy, out of hours, of course, while pursuing his own studies. But when he graduated they raised his pay from fifteen dollars to forty-five dollars and offered him a professorship. Then he went straight home to his mother and said, “Mother, I won’t work for forty-five dollars a week. What is forty-five dollars a week for a man with a brain like mine! Mother, let’s go out to California and stake out gold claims and be immensely rich.” “Now,” said his mother, “it is just as well to be happy as it is to be rich.”

But as he was the only son he had his way—they always do; and they sold out in Massachusetts and went to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the Superior Copper Mining Company, and he was lost from sight in the employ of that company at fifteen dollars a week again. He was also to have an interest in any mines that he should discover for that company. But I do not believe that he has ever discovered a mine—I do not know anything about it, but I do not believe he has. I know he had scarcely gone from the old homestead before the farmer who had bought the homestead went out to dig potatoes, and he was bringing them in a large basket through the front gateway, the ends of the stone wall came so near together at the gate that the basket hugged very tight. So he set the basket on the ground and pulled, first on one side and then on the other side.

Our farms in Massachusetts are mostly stone walls, and the farmers have to be economical with their gateways in order to have some place to put the stones. That basket hugged so tight there that as he was hauling it through he noticed in the upper stone next the gate a block of native silver, eight inches square; and this professor of mines and mining and mineralogy, who would not work for forty-five dollars a week, when he sold that homestead in Massachusetts, sat right on that stone to make the bargain. He was brought up there; he had gone back and forth by that piece of silver, rubbed it with his sleeve, and it seemed to say, “Come now, now, now, here is a hundred thousand dollars. Why not take me? ” But he would not take it. There was no silver in Newburyport; it was all away off—well, I don’t know where; he didn’t, but somewhere else—and he was a professor of mineralogy.

I do not know of anything I would enjoy better than to take the whole time tonight telling of blunders like that I have heard professors make. Yet I wish I knew what that man is doing out there in Wisconsin. I can imagine him out there, as he sits by his fireside, and he is saying to his friends. “Do you know that man Conwell that lives in Philadelphia?” “Oh, yes, I have heard of him.” “And do you know that man Jones that lives in that city?” “Yes, I have heard of him.” And then he begins to laugh and laugh and says to his friends, “They have done the same thing I did, precisely.” And that spoils the whole joke, because you and I have done it.

Ninety out of every hundred people here have made that mistake this very day. I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor. To live in Philadelphia and not be rich is a misfortune, and it is doubly a misfortune, because you could have been rich just as well as be poor. Philadelphia furnishes so many opportunities. You ought to be rich. But persons with certain religious prejudice will ask, “How can you spend your time advising the rising generation to give their time to getting money—dollars and cents—the commercial spirit?”

Yet I must say that you ought to spend time getting rich. You and I know there are some things more valuable than money; of course, we do. Ah, yes! By a heart made unspeakably sad by a grave on which the autumn leaves now fall, I know there are some things higher and grander and sublimer than money. Well does the man know, who has suffered, that there are some things sweeter and holier and more sacred than gold. Nevertheless, the man of common sense also knows that there is not any one of those things that is not greatly enhanced by the use of money. Money is power.

Love is the grandest thing on God’s earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power: money has powers; and for a man to say, “I do not want money,” is to say, “I do not wish to do any good to my fellowmen.” It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to disconnect them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought to spend your time getting money, because of the power there is in money. And yet this religious prejudice is so great that some people think it is a great honor to be one of God’s poor. I am looking in the faces of people who think just that way.

I heard a man once say in a prayer-meeting that he was thankful that he was one of God’s poor, and then I silently wondered what his wife would say to that speech, as she took in washing to support the man while he sat and smoked on the veranda. I don’t want to see any more of that kind of God’s poor. Now, when a man could have been rich just as well, and he is now weak because he is poor, he has done some great wrong; he has been untruthful to himself; he has been unkind to his fellowmen. We ought to get rich if we can by honorable and Christian methods, and these are the only methods that sweep us quickly toward the goal of riches.

I remember, not many years ago, a young theological student who came into my office and said to me that he thought it was his duty to come in and “labor with me.” I asked him what had happened, and he said: “I feel it is my duty to come in and speak to you, sir, and say that the Holy Scriptures declare that money is the root of all evil.” I asked him where he found that saying, and he said he found it in the Bible. I asked him whether he had made a new Bible, and he said, no, he had not gotten a new Bible, that it was in the old Bible. “Well,” I said, “if it is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will you please get the textbook and let me see it?”

He left the room and soon came stalking in with his Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, who founds his creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture, and he puts the Bible down on the table before me and fairly squealed into my ear, “There it is. You can read it for yourself.” I said to him, “Young man, you will learn, when you get a little older, that you cannot trust another denomination to read the Bible for you.” I said, “Now, you belong to another denomination. Please read it to me, and remember that you are taught in a school where emphasis is exegesis.” So he took the Bible and read it: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Then he had it right.

The Great Book has come back into the esteem and love of the people, and into the respect of the greatest minds of earth, and now you can quote it and rest your life and your death on it without more fear. So, when he quoted right from the Scriptures he quoted the truth. “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Oh, that is it. It is the worship of the means instead of the end. Though you cannot reach the end without the means. When a man makes an idol of the money instead of the purposes for which it may be used, when he squeezes the dollar until the eagle squeals, then it is made the root of all evil. Think, if you only had the money, what you could do for your wife, your child, and for your home and your city. Think how soon you could endow the Temple College yonder if you only had the money and the disposition to give it; and yet, my friend, people say you and I should not spend the time getting rich. How inconsistent the whole thing is. We ought to be rich, because money has power.

I think the best thing for me to do is to illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at least, to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because of the lies that are told about them. The lies that are told about Mr. Rockefeller because he has two hundred million dollars—so many believe them; yet how false is the representation of that man to the world. How little we can tell what is true nowadays when newspapers try to sell their papers entirely on some sensation! The way they lie about the rich men is something terrible, and I do not know that there is anything to illustrate this better than what the newspapers now say about the city of Philadelphia.

A young man came to me the other day and said, “If Mr. Rockefeller, as you think, is a good man, why is it that everybody says so much against him?” It is because he has gotten ahead of us; that is the whole of it—just gotten ahead of us. Why is it Mr. Carnegie is criticized so sharply by an envious world! Because he has gotten more than we have. If a man knows more than I know, don’t I incline to criticize somewhat his learning? Let a man stand in a pulpit and preach to thousands, and if I have fifteen people in my church, and they’re all asleep, don’t I criticize him? We always do that to the man who gets ahead of us. Why, the man you are criticizing has one hundred millions, and you have fifty cents, and both of you have just what you are worth.

One of the richest men in this country came into my home and sat down in my parlor and said: “Did you see all those lies about my family in the papers?” “Certainly I did; I knew they were lies when I saw them.” “Why do they lie about me the way they do?” “Well,” I said to him, “if you will give me your check for one hundred millions, I will take all the lies along with it.” “Well,” said he, “I don’t see any sense in their thus talking about my family and myself. Conwell, tell me frankly, what do you think the American people think of me?” “Well,” said I, “they think you are the blackest hearted villain that ever trod the soil!” “But what can I do about it?” There is nothing he can do about it, and yet he is one of the sweetest Christian men I ever knew. If you get a hundred millions you will have the lies; you will be lied about, and you can judge your success in any line by the lies that are told about you. I say that you ought to be rich.

But there are ever coming to me young men who say, “I would like to go into business, but I cannot.” “Why not?” “Because I have no capital to begin on.” Capital, capital to begin on! What! young man! Living in Philadelphia and looking at this wealthy generation, all of whom began as poor boys, and you want capital to begin on? It is fortunate for you that you have no capital. I am glad you have no money. I pity a rich man’s son. A rich man’s son in these days of ours occupies a very difficult position. They are to be pitied. A rich man’s son cannot know the very best things in human life. He cannot. The statistics of Massachusetts show us that not one out of seventeen rich men’s sons ever die rich. They are raised in luxury, they die in poverty. Even if a rich man’s son retains his father’s money, even then he cannot know the best things of life.

A young man in our college yonder asked me to formulate for him what I thought was the happiest hour in a man’s history, and I studied it long and came back convinced that the happiest hour that any man ever sees in any earthly matter is when a young man takes his bride over the threshold of the door, for the first time, of the house he himself has earned and built, when he turns to his bride and with an eloquence greater than any language of mine, he sayeth to his wife, “My loved one, I earned this home myself; I earned it all. It is all mine, and I pide it with thee.” That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever see. But a rich man’s son cannot know that. He goes into a finer mansion, it may be, but he is obliged to go through the house and say, “Mother gave me this, mother gave me that, my mother gave me that, my mother gave me that,” until his wife wishes she had married his mother.

Oh, I pity a rich man’s son. I do. Until he gets so far along in his dudeism that he gets his arms up like that and can’t get them down. Didn’t you ever see any of them astray at Atlantic City? I saw one of these scarecrows once and I never tire thinking about it. I was at Niagara Falls lecturing, and after the lecture I went to the hotel, and when I went up to the desk there stood there a millionaire’s son from New York. He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency. He carried a goldheaded cane under his arm—more in its head than he had in his. I do not believe I could describe the young man if I should try. But still I must say that he wore an eye-glass he could not see through; patent leather shoes he could not walk in, and pants he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper!

Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk’s desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it’s “Hinglish, you know,” to lisp: “Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!” The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them across the counter and turned away to his books.

You should have seen that specimen of humanity when the paper and envelopes came across the counter—he whose wants had always been anticipated by servants. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass and he yelled after that clerk: “Come back here, thir, come right back here. Now, thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah and thothe envelopehs and carry them to yondah dethk.” Oh, the poor, miserable, contemptible American monkey! He couldn’t carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could not get his arms down. I have no pity for such travesties of human nature. If you have no capital, I am glad of it. You don’t need capital; you need common sense, not copper cents.

A. T. Stewart, the great princely merchant of New York, the richest man in America in his time, was a poor boy; he had a dollar and a half and went into the mercantile business. But he lost eighty-seven and a half cents of his first dollar and a half because he bought some needles and thread and buttons to sell, which people didn’t want.

Are you poor? It is because you are not wanted and are left on your own hands. There was the great lesson. Apply it whichever way you will it comes to every single person’s life, young or old. He did not know what people needed, and consequently bought something they didn’t want, and had the goods left on his hands a dead loss. A. T. Stewart learned there the great lesson of his mercantile life and said “I will never buy anything more until I first learn what the people want; then I’ll make the purchase.” He went around to the doors and asked them what they did want, and when he found out what they wanted, he invested his sixty-two and a half cents and began to supply a “known demand.” I care not what your profession or occupation in life may be; I care not whether you are a lawyer, a doctor, a housekeeper, teacher or whatever else, the principle is precisely the same. We must know what the world needs first and then invest ourselves to supply that need, and success is almost certain.

A. T. Stewart went on until he was worth forty millions. “Well,” you will say, “a man can do that in New York, but cannot do it here in Philadelphia.” The statistics very carefully gathered in New York in 1889 showed one hundred and seven millionaires in the city worth over ten millions apiece. It was remarkable and people think they must go there to get rich. Out of that one hundred and seven millionaires only seven of them made their money in New York, and the others moved to New York after their fortunes were made, and sixty-seven out of the remaining hundred made their fortunes in towns of less than six thousand people, and the richest man in the country at that time lived in a town of thirty-five hundred inhabitants, and always lived there and never moved away. It is not so much where you are as what you are. But at the same time if the largeness of the city comes into the problem, then remember it is the smaller city that furnishes the great opportunity to make the millions of money.

The best illustration that I can give is in reference to John Jacob Astor, who was a poor boy and who made all the money of the Astor family. He made more than his successors have ever earned, and yet he once held a mortgage on a millinery store in New York, and because the people could not make enough money to pay the interest and the rent, he foreclosed the mortgage and took possession of the store and went into partnership with the man who had failed. He kept the same stock, did not give them a dollar of capital, and he left them alone and he went out and sat down upon a bench in the park.

Out there on that bench in the park he had the most important, and, to my mind, the pleasantest part of that partnership business. He was watching the ladies as they went by; and where is the man that wouldn’t get rich at that business? But when John Jacob Astor saw a lady pass, with her shoulders back and her head up, as if she did not care if the whole world looked on her, he studied her bonnet; and before that bonnet was out of sight he knew the shape of the frame and the color of the trimmings, the curl of the—something on a bonnet. Sometimes I try to describe a woman’s bonnet, but it is of little use, for it would be out of style tomorrow night.

So John Jacob Astor went to the store and said: “Now, put in the show window just such a bonnet as I describe to you because,” said he, “I have just seen a lady who likes just such a bonnet. Do not make up any more till I come back.” And he went out again and sat on that bench in the park, and another lady of a different form and complexion passed him with a bonnet of different shape and color, of course. “Now,” said he, “put such a bonnet as that in the show window.”

He didn’t fill his show window with hats and bonnets which drive people away and then sit in the back of the store and bawl because the people go somewhere else to trade. He didn’t put a hat or bonnet in that show window the like of which he had not seen before it was made up.

In our city especially, there are great opportunities for manufacturing, and the time has come when the line is drawn very sharply between the stockholders of the factory and their employees. Now, friends, there has also come a discouraging gloom upon this country and the laboring men are beginning to feel that they are being held down by a crust over their heads through which they find it impossible to break, and the aristocratic moneyowner-himself is so far above that he will never descend to their assistance. That is the thought that is in the minds of our people. But, friends, never in the history of our country was there an opportunity so great for the poor man to get rich as there is now and in the city of Philadelphia. The very fact that they get discouraged is what prevents them from getting rich. That is all there is to it. The road is open, and let us keep it open between the poor and the rich.

I know that the labor unions have two great problems to contend with, and there is only one way to solve them. The labor unions are doing as much to prevent its solving as are capitalists today, and there are positively two sides to it. The labor union has two difficulties; the first one is that it began to make a labor scale for all classes on a par, and they scale down a man that can earn five dollars a day to two and a half a day, in order to level up to him an imbecile that cannot earn fifty cents a day. That is one of the most dangerous and discouraging things for the working man. He cannot get the results of his work if he do better work or higher work or work longer; that is a dangerous thing, and in order to get every laboring man free and every American equal to every other American, let the laboring man ask what he is worth and get it—not let any capitalist say to him: “You shall work for me for half of what you are worth”; nor let any labor organization say: “You shall work for the capitalist for half your worth.”

Be a man, be independent, and then shall the laboring man find the road ever open from poverty to wealth.

The other difficulty that the labor union has to consider, and this problem they have to solve themselves, is the kind of orators who come and talk to them about the oppressive rich. I can in my dreams recite the oration I have heard again and again under such circumstances. My life has been with the laboring man. I am a laboring man myself. I have often, in their assemblies, heard the speech of the man who has been invited to address the labor union. The man gets up before the assembled company of honest laboring men and he begins by saying: “Oh, ye honest, industrious laboring men, who have furnished all the capital of the world, who have built all the palaces and constructed all the railroads and covered the ocean with her steamships. Oh, you laboring men! You are nothing but slaves; you are ground down in the dust by the capitalist who is gloating over you as he enjoys his beautiful estates and as he has his banks filled with gold, and every dollar he owns is coined out of the heart’s blood of the honest laboring man.” Now, that is a lie, and you know it is a lie; and yet that is the kind of speech that they are hearing all the time, representing the capitalists as wicked and the laboring man so enslaved.

Why, how wrong it is! Let the man who loves his flag and believes in American principles endeavor with all his soul to bring the capitalists and the laboring man together until they stand side by side, and arm in arm, and work for the common good of humanity.

He is an enemy to his country who sets capital against labor or labor against capital.

Suppose I were to go down through this audience and ask you to introduce me to the great inventors who live here in Philadelphia. “The inventors of Philadelphia,” you would say, “why, we don’t have any in Philadelphia. It is too slow to invent anything.” But you do have just as great inventors, and they are here in this audience, as ever invented a machine. But the probability is that the greatest inventor to benefit the world with his discovery is some person, perhaps some lady, who thinks she could not invent anything.

Did you ever study the history of invention and see how strange it was that the man who made the greatest discovery did it without any previous idea that he was an inventor? Who are the great inventors? They are persons with plain, straightforward common sense, who saw a need in the world and immediately applied themselves to supply that need. If you want to invent anything, don’t try to find it in the wheels in your head nor the wheels in your machine, but first find out what the people need, and then apply yourself to that need, and this leads to invention on the part of people you would not dream of before. The great inventors are simply great men; the greater the man the more simple the man; and the more simple a machine, the more valuable it is.

Did you ever know a really great man? His ways are so simple, so common, so plain, that you think any one could do what he is doing. So it is with the great men the world over. If you know a really great man, a neighbor of yours, you can go right up to him and say, “How are you, Jim, good morning, Sam.” Of course you can, for they are always so simple.

When I wrote the life of General Garfield, one of his neighbors took me to his back door, and shouted, “Jim, Jim, Jim!” and very soon “Jim” came to the door and General Garfield let me in—one of the grandest men of our century. The great men of the world are ever so. I was down in Virginia and went up to an educational institution and was directed to a man who was setting out a tree. I approached him and said, “Do you think it would be possible for me to see General Robert E. Lee, the President of the University?” He said, “Sir, I am General Lee.” Of course, when you meet such a man, so noble a man as that, you will find him a simple, plain man. Greatness is always just so modest and great inventions are simple.

I asked a class in school once who were the great inventors, and a little girl popped up and said, “Columbus.” Well, now, she was not so far wrong. Columbus bought a farm and he carried on that farm just as I carried on my father’s farm. He took a hoe and went out and sat down on a rock. But Columbus, as he sat upon that shore and looked out upon the ocean, noticed that the ships, as they sailed away, sank deeper into the sea the farther they went. And since that time some other “Spanish ships” have sunk into the sea. But as Columbus noticed that the tops of the masts dropped down out of sight, he said: “That is the way it is with this hoe handle; if you go around this hoe handle, the farther off you go the farther down you go. I can sail around to the East Indies.” How plain it all was. How simple the mind—majestic like the simplicity of a mountain in its greatness. Who are the great inventors? They are ever the simple, plain, everyday people who see the need and set about to supply it.

I was once lecturing in North Carolina, and the cashier of the bank sat directly behind a lady who wore a very large hat. I said to that audience, “Your wealth is too near to you; you are looking right over it.” He whispered to his friend, “Well, then, my wealth is in that hat.” A little later, as he wrote me, I said, “Wherever there is a human need there is a greater fortune than a mine can furnish.” He caught my thought, and he drew up his plan for a better hat pin than was in the hat before him and the pin is now being manufactured. He was offered fifty-two thousand dollars for his patent. That man made his fortune before he got out of that hall. This is the whole question: Do you see a need?”

I remember well a man up in my native hills, a poor man, who for twenty years was helped by the town in his poverty, who owned a widespreading maple tree that covered the poor man’s cottage like a benediction from on high. I remember that tree, for in the spring—there were some roguish boys around that neighborhood when I was young—in the spring of the year the man would put a bucket there and the spouts to catch the maple sap, and I remember where that bucket was; and when I was young the boys were, oh, so mean, that they went to that tree before that man had gotten out of bed in the morning, and after he had gone to bed at night, and drank up that sweet sap, I could swear they did it.

He didn’t make a great deal of maple sugar from that tree. But one day he made the sugar so white and crystalline that the visitor did not believe it was maple sugar; thought maple sugar must be red or black. He said to the old man: “Why don’t you make it that way and sell it for confectionery?” The old man caught his thought and invented the “rock maple crystal,” and before that patent expired he had ninety thousand dollars and had built a beautiful palace on the site of that tree. After forty years owning that tree he awoke to find it had fortunes of money indeed in it. And many of us are right by the tree that has a fortune for us, and we own it, possess it, do what we will with it, but we do not learn its value because we do not see the human need, and in these discoveries and inventions that is one of the most romantic things of life. I have received letters from all over the country and from England, where I have lectured, saying that they have discovered this and that, and one man out in Ohio took me through his great factories last spring, and said that they cost him $680,000, and, said he, “I was not worth a cent in the world when I heard your lecture ‘Acres of Diamonds’; but I made up my mind to stop right here and make my fortune here, and here it is.” He showed me through his unmortgaged possessions. And this is a continual experience now as I travel through the country, after these many years. I mention this incident, not to boast, but to show you that you can do the same if you will.

Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in a man who used to live in East Brookfield, Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he was out of work and he sat around the house until his wife told him “to go out doors.” And he did what every husband is compelled by law to do—he obeyed his wife. And he went out and sat down on an ash barrel in his back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down into that little brook which ran through that back yard into the meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream and hiding under the bank. I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson’s beautiful poem:

“Chatter, chatter as I flow,

To join the brimming river,

Men may come, and men

may go, But I go on forever.”

But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel and managed to catch the trout with his fingers, and sent it to Worcester. They wrote back that they would give a five dollar bill for another such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but they wished to help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united, that five dollar bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They went up the stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but not another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so they came home disconsolate and went to the minister. The minister didn’t know how trout grew, but he pointed the way. Said he, “Get Seth Green’s book, and that will give you the information you want.”

They did so, and found all about the culture of trout. They found that a trout lays thirty-six hundred eggs every year and every trout gains a quarter of a pound every year, so that in four years a little trout will furnish four tons per annum to sell to the market at fifty cents a pound. When they found that, they said they didn’t believe any such story as that, but if they could get five dollars apiece they could make something. And right in that same back yard with the coal sifter up stream and window screen down the stream, they began the culture of trout. They afterwards moved to the Hudson, and since then he has become the authority in the United States upon the raising of fish, and he has been next to the highest on the United States Fish Commission in Washington. My lesson is that man’s wealth was out here in his back yard for twenty years, but he didn’t see it until his wife drove him out with a mop stick.

I remember meeting personally a poor carpenter of Hingham, Massachusetts, who was out of work and in poverty. His wife also drove him out of doors. He sat down on the shore and whittled a soaked shingle into a wooden chain. His children quarreled over it in the evening, and while he was whittling a second one, a neighbor came along and said, “Why don’t you whittle toys if you can carve like that?” He said, “I don’t know what to make!”

There is the whole thing. His neighbor said to him: “Why don’t you ask your own children?” Said he, “What is the use of doing that? My children are different from other people’s children.” I used to see people like that when I taught school. The next morning when his boy came down the stairway, he said, “Sam, what do you want for a toy?” “I want a wheelbarrow.” When his little girl came down, he asked her what she wanted, and she said, “I want a little doll’s wash-stand, a little doll’s carriage, a little doll’s umbrella,” and went on with a whole lot of things that would have taken his lifetime to supply. He consulted his own children right there in his own house and began to whittle out toys to please them.

He began with his jack-knife, and made those unpainted Hingham toys. He is the richest man in the entire New England States, if Mr. Lawson is to be trusted in his statement concerning such things, and yet that man’s fortune was made by consulting his own children in his own house. You don’t need to go out of your own house to find out what to invent or what to make. I always talk too long on this subject. I would like to meet the great men who are here tonight. The great men! We don’t have any great men in Philadelphia. Great men! You say that they all come from London, or San Francisco, or Rome, or Manayunk, or anywhere else but there—anywhere else but Philadelphia—and yet, in fact, there are just as great men in Philadelphia as in any city of its size. There are great men and women in this audience.

Great men, I have said, are very simple men. Just as many great men here as are to be found anywhere. The greatest error in judging great men is that we think that they always hold an office. The world knows nothing of its greatest men. Who are the great men of the world? The young man and young woman may well ask the question. It is not necessary that they should hold an office, and yet that is the popular idea. That is the idea we teach now in our high schools and common schools, that the great men of the world are those who hold some high office, and unless we change that very soon and do away with that prejudice, we are going to change to an empire. There is no question about it. We must teach that men are great only on their intrinsic value, and not on the position they may incidentally happen to occupy. And yet, don’t blame the young men saying that they are going to be great when they get into some official position.

I ask this audience again who of you are going to be great? Says a young man: “I am going to be great.” “When are you going to be great?” “When I am elected to some political office.” Won’t you learn the lesson, young man; that it is prima facie evidence of littleness to hold public office under our form of government? Think of it. This is a government of the people, and by the people, and for the people, and not for the officeholder, and if the people in this country rule as they always should rule, an officeholder is only the servant of the people, and the Bible says that “the servant cannot be greater than his master.”

The Bible says that “he that is sent cannot be greater than he who sent him.” In this country the people are the masters, and the officeholders can never be greater than the people; they should be honest servants of the people, but they are not our greatest men. Young man, remember that you never heard of a great man holding any political office in this country unless he took that office at an expense to himself. It is a loss to every great man to take a public office in our country. Bear this in mind, young man, that you cannot be made great by a political election.

Another young man says, “I am going to be a great man in Philadelphia some time.” “Is that so? When are you going to be great?” “When there comes another war! When we get into difficulty with Mexico, or England, or Russia, or Japan, or with Spain again over Cuba, or with New Jersey, I will march up to the cannon’s mouth, and amid the glistening bayonets I will tear down their flag from its staff, and I will come home with stars on my shoulders, and hold every office in the gift of the government, and I will be great.” “No, you won’t! No, you won’t; that is no evidence of true greatness, young man.” But don’t blame that young man for thinking that way; that is the way he is taught in the high school. That is the way history is taught in college. He is taught that the men who held the office did all the fighting.

I remember we had a Peace Jubilee here in Philadelphia soon after the Spanish War. Perhaps some of these visitors think we should not have had it until now in Philadelphia, and as the great procession was going up Broad Street I was told that the tally-ho coach stopped right in front of my house, and on the coach was Hobson, and all the people threw up their hats and swung their handkerchiefs, and shouted “Hurrah for Hobson!” I would have yelled too, because he deserves much more of his country that he has ever received. But suppose I go into the high school tomorrow and ask, “Boys, who sunk the Merrimac?” If they answer me “Hobson,” they tell me seven-eighths of a lie—seven- eighths of a lie, because there were eight men who sunk the Merrimac. The other seven men, by virtue of their position, were continually exposed to the Spanish fire while Hobson, as an officer, might reasonably be behind the smoke-stack.

Why, my friends, in this intelligent audience gathered here tonight I do not believe I could find a single person that can name the other seven men who were with Hobson. Why do we teach history in that way? We ought to teach that however humble the station a man may occupy, if he does his full duty in his place, he is just as much entitled to the American people’s honor as is a king upon a throne. We do teach it as a mother did her little boy in New York when he said, “Mamma, what great building is that?” “That is General Grant’s tomb.” “Who was General Grant?” “He was the man who put down the rebellion.” Is that the way to teach history?

Do you think we would have gained a victory if it had depended on General Grant alone. Oh, no. Then why is there a tomb on the Hudson at all? Why, not simply because General Grant was personally a great man himself, but that tomb is there because he was a representative man and represented two hundred thousand men who went down to death for this nation and many of them as great as General Grant. That is why that beautiful tomb stands on the heights over the Hudson.

I remember an incident that will illustrate this, the only one that I can give tonight. I am ashamed of it, but I don’t dare leave it out. I close my eyes now; I look back through the years to 1863; I can see my native town in the Berkshire Hills, I can see that cattle-show ground filled with people; I can see the church there and the town hall crowded, and hear bands playing, and see flags flying and handkerchiefs streaming—well do I recall at this moment that day.

The people had turned out to receive a company of soldiers, and that company came marching up on the Common. They had served out one term in the Civil War and had reenlisted, and they were being received by their native townsmen. I was but a boy, but I was captain of that company, puffed out with pride on that day—why, a cambric needle would have burst me all to pieces.

As I marched on the Common at the head of my company, there was not a man more proud than I. We marched into the town hall and then they seated my soldiers down in the center of the house and I took my place down on the front seat, and then the town officers filed through the great throng of people, who stood close and packed in that little hall. They came up on the platform, formed a half circle around it, and the mayor of the town, the “chairman of the selectmen” in New England, took his seat in the middle of that half circle.

He was an old man, his hair was gray; he never held an office before in his life. He thought that an office was all he needed to be a truly great man, and when he came up he adjusted his powerful spectacles and glanced calmly around the audience with amazing dignity. Suddenly his eyes fell upon me, and then the good old man came right forward and invited me to come up on the stand with the town officers. Invited me up on the stand! No town officer ever took notice of me before I went to war. Now, I should not say that. One town officer was there who advised the teachers to “whale” me, but I mean no “honorable mention.”

So I was invited up on the stand with the town officers. I took my seat and let my sword fall on the floor, and folded my arms across my breast and waited to be received. Napoleon the Fifth! Pride goeth before destruction and a fall. When I had gotten my seat and all became silent through the hall, the chairman of the selectmen arose and came forward with great dignity to the table, and we all supposed he would introduce the Congregational minister, who was the only orator in the town, and who would give the oration to the returning soldiers.

But, friends, you should have seen the surprise that ran over that audience when they discovered that this old farmer was going to deliver that oration himself. He had never made a speech in his life before, but he fell into the same error that others have fallen into, he seemed to think that the office would make him an orator. So he had written out a speech and walked up and down the pasture until he had learned it by heart and frightened the cattle, and he brought that manuscript with him, and, taking it from his pocket, he spread it carefully upon the table. Then he adjusted his spectacles to be sure that he might see it, and walked far back on the platform and then stepped forward like this. He must have studied the subject much, for he assumed an elocutionary attitude; he rested heavily upon his left heel, slightly advanced the right foot, threw back his shoulders, opened the organs of speech, and advanced his right hand at an angle of forty-five.

As he stood in this elocutionary attitude this is just the way that speech went, this is it precisely. Some of my friends have asked me if I do not exaggerate it, but I could not exaggerate it. Impossible! This is the way it went; although I am not here for the story but the lesson that is back of it:

“Fellow citizens.” As soon as he heard his voice, his hand began to shake like that, his knees began to tremble, and then he shook all over. He coughed and choked and finally came around to look at his manuscript. Then he began again: “Fellow citizens: We—are—we are—we are—we are—We are very happy—we are very happy—we are very happy—to welcome back to their native town these soldiers who have fought and bled—and come back again to their native town. We are especially—we are especially—we are especially—we are especially pleased to see with us today this young hero (that meant me~this young hero who in imagination (friends, remember, he said ‘imagination,’ for if he had not said that, I would not be egotistical enough to refer to it) this young hero who, in imagination, we have seen leading his troops—leading—we have seen leading—we have seen leading his troops on to the deadly breach. We have seen his shining—his shining—we have seen his shining—we have seen his shining—his shining sword—flashing in the sunlight as he shouted to his troops, ‘Come on!”‘

Oh dear, dear, dear, dear! How little that good, old man knew about war. If he had known anything about war, he ought to have known what any soldier in this audience knows is true, that it is next to a crime for an officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of his men. I, with my shining sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops: “Come on.” I never did it. Do you suppose I would go ahead of my men to be shot in the front by the enemy and in the back by my own men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the officer is behind the private soldier in actual fighting.

How often, as a staff officer, I rode down the line when the rebel cry and yell was coming out of the woods, sweeping along over the fields, and shouted, “Officers to the rear! Officers to the rear!” and then every officer goes behind the line of battle, and the higher the officer rank, the farther behind he goes. Not because he is any the less brave, but because the laws of war require that to be done. If the general came up on the front line and were killed you would lose your battle anyhow, because he has the plan of the battle in his brain, and must be kept in comparative safety.

I, with my “shining sword flashing in the sunlight.” Ah! There sat in the hall that day men who had given that boy their last hardtack, who had carried him on their backs through deep rivers. But some were not there; they had gone down to death for their country. The speaker mentioned them, but they were but little noticed, and yet they had gone down to death for their country, gone down for a cause they believed was right and still believe was right, though I grant to the other side the same that I ask for myself. Yet these men who had actually died for their country were little noticed, and the hero of the hour was this boy.

Why was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into the same foolishness. This boy was an officer, and those were only private soldiers. I learned a lesson that I will never forget. Greatness consists not in holding some office; greatness really consists in doing some great deed with little means, in the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life, that is true greatness.

He who can give to this people better streets, better homes, better schools, better churches, more religion, more of happiness, more of God, he that can be a blessing to the community in which he lives tonight will be great anywhere, but he who cannot be a blessing where he now lives will never be great anywhere on the face of God’s earth. “We live in deeds, not years, in feeling, not in figures on a dial; in thoughts, not breaths; we should count time by heart throbs, in the cause of right.” Bailey says: “He most lives who thinks most.”

If you forget everything I have said to you, do not forget this, because it contains more in two lines than all I have said. Bailey says: “He most lives who thinks most, who feels the noblest, and who acts the best.”

What do you think?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT SALARY

But I don't think anyone would like programming in a language where all the groups who had dealings with big companies found that big companies could no longer keep a lid on the smaller ones. Being able to have your application bundled with the OS. And growth explains why successful startups almost invariably get acquisition offers too. Hell if they know. They're bolder because they know what they're doing. We have less power than bosses, and yet they have harder problems to solve. The other connection between startups and technology is that startups create new ways of doing things are, in the sense that I always want to know what is a small change and what is a momentous one. But we should expect it to be a complete picture. Startups are certainly a large part of what made YC what it is. What you really want is a management company to run your company for you. And since I made much more money from it, it offered the highest ratio of income to boringness of anything I'd done, by orders of magnitude better than desktop software.

This picture is unrealistic in several respects. So some or all of the friends quit their jobs or leave school. And as anyone who runs their own business can tell you what language to use, and that's why we even hear about new, indy languages like Perl and Python because people are using them to write Windows apps. The kind of people who are best at making things don't want to violate users' privacy, but even if it isn't, you start to believe it will. Another concept we need to pick unpromising-looking outliers, and the huge scale of the successes in the startup business, VCs can still make money from such investments. There's one more message I've heard from cities: in London you can still barely hear the message that one should be more worried about super-successful companies and less successful ones. For the first week or so we intended to make this point diplomatically, but in some situations it could mean founders will have less power than bosses, and they were always right. I set up in about four minutes. That's the difference between Google and a barbershop. Will you have a majority of the board may even help VCs pick better. And we think it's unnecessary, and that will get easier too.

Being able to have your application bundled with the OS. But it didn't matter exactly what the benefits would be. Just that all other things being equal, a society consisting of more, smaller units. Startups can be irresponsible and release version 1s that are light enough to evolve. That is certainly true; in fact it could have substantial costs. Of course, running companies is a lot more than you spend. You plonk down a bunch of new startups. Except our choices are immediately and visibly tested. So just do what you'd do in any complex, unfamiliar situation: proceed deliberately, and question anything that seems odd. They want statements with punch, like top ten. But acquirers have an additional reason to want startups. An unbiased review would go something like this: instead of a fixed round size, startups will do a rolling close, where they take money from my parents was that I wrote a lot of people wish that hacking was mathematics, or at least, first-rate university from nothing overnight.

People this age are commonly seen as lazy. And the big hits often look risky at first. A town with personality is one that could put millions more to use. And so these languages especially among nontechnical people like managers and VCs got to be considered as the languages for serious software development. It's like seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous picture. What's different about successful founders is that they can issue this stock to themselves if they get bought early and most is still unissued, and the partner responsible for the deal to close even after they say yes. And being charming and confident counts for nothing with users. Paris, New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. We never had more to say at any one time. It's Parkinson's Law running in reverse. Judging yourself by weekly growth doesn't mean you can look no more than necessary.

The business person represents the voice of the customer and that's what I'm going to tell you. If you have such an idea and cofounders. After ten weeks' work the three friends have built a prototype that gives one a taste of what their product will do. The company may do additional funding rounds, presumably at higher valuations. If that's true of Boston, it's even more true of every other city. This doesn't work in small companies. The cows apparently learn to stay away from them, and startups were selling them for a year's salary a copy. PR diving, and I'm sure there are far more striking examples out there than this clump of five stories. When you do negotiate with VCs, remember that they've done this a lot more than you expect for the deal to close even after they say yes.

For example, back at Harvard in the mid 90s a fellow grad student of my friends Robert and Trevor wrote his own voice over IP software. They will have to work actively to prevent your company growing into a weed tree, dependent on this source of easy but low-margin money. You can find groups near you through the Angel Capital Association. Most nerds like quieter pleasures. A has enormously elaborate, custom paperwork. I ever dared give this answer, but that good programmers won't even want to work for them. And a program that attacked the servers themselves should find them very well defended. I thought she was being deliberately eccentric. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and the answer is to offer more general, underlying stuff, and let people design whatever object systems they want as libraries. This is true of all venture funding, but especially so in the seed stage, the board is generally a joke. It does not seem to have a disproportionately low probability of the latter. Now you can rent a much more powerful server, with SSL included, for less than the cost of a fancy office chair.