#give them romance drama pls
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jonathanbyersphd · 2 years ago
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Broke: Reviving a dead love triangle 💔 Woke: Reviving a teen monster hunting trio 💕
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chocosvt · 4 months ago
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HER | part one.
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✧✎ synopsis: wonwoo, a heartbroken and burnt out writer nearing the end of his math degree, wants nothing to do with the seemingly perfect, intimidating girl who has everyone under her thumb. you. unfortunately, his literary talent has got him shoved him between a rock and a hard place when you want to write a book and require his expertise. you two are the furthest from compatible. wonwoo can’t see this going well. at all.
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pairing: wonwoo x fem!reader word count: 23.5k genres/tropes: writer!wonwoo, university!au, plug!vernon + boyfriend!mingyu as prominent side characters, SLOWBURN (i am not fucking around this is my slowest burn yet), relationship drama, soul searching, strong angst/hurt (i’m coming for the jugular), comfort, romance, smut, a smoothie of every emotion on earth.
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(!) warnings: drug use (weed, coke, ecstasy), wonwoo has anxiety + anxiety attacks + fairly dark thoughts, prescribed medication, gambling, intense language, infidelity, throwing up.
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✧✎ a/n: just some quick things i want to make apparent!
the fic is told from wonwoo’s pov, not the reader’s! 
all major timeline events are organized through chronological dates
potentially triggering scenes within the fic are NOT MARKED in advance
the content is already quite mature, so pls heed the warnings!
bolded and italicized text implies characters are conversing in korean, tho it doesn’t happen often!
the fic in its entirety is 140k, so it has been split into 6 parts
everyone's patience and understanding has been endlessly appreciated! you have no idea ;_; i give you all shining stars 🌟
⇢ part two | part three | part four | part five | part six ⇢ soundtrack for those curious! ⇢ read at ur own pace! :)
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—MARCH 19TH.
“I have a relatively big favour to ask of you.”
 No. Wonwoo didn’t want anything to do with favours.
The fact that Seokmin had actively picked out his presence in the coffee shop like he was some shiny contortion of plastic had actually offended Wonwoo. He came here for two things: to not be bothered, which his friend knew, and to work on the book he was halfway through typing and had been halfway through typing for the past six months. Call it writer’s block, or an inspiration drought, or an absolutely depressing lack of drive—it had been hanging over the writer with an annoying persistence and it seemed that no number of lemony scones or cold coffees were going to make it vanish.
“Uh, Wonwoo?”
“Sorry… what?” He forced his gaze to shift from the blank page on his laptop to Seokmin’s apologetic, softly expressional face, slightly flushed from his time outdoors in the chilled March weather.
“I was just wondering if you’d be up for a favour—a pretty big one—and I know this is your special creativity spot, but she’s been like, breathing down my neck about it and I can’t put it off again.”
“Whose been breathing down your neck?”
At first, Seokmin didn’t say a word, or even make a sound. His lips twitched for a moment, but then he pressed them together and his chest visibly sucked in with a breath. God, Wonwoo hated the suspense and he hated Seokmin for interrupting him when he had been so stupidly close to putting a sentence down that he probably would have back-spaced in frustration a minute later.  
“Y’know…” he trailed off, “Her.”
Her.
No, not her, you.
But most people—if not everyone—referred to you by an alias that had seemed to stick so well the majority believed it actually was your name. When people said her they meant Her, and so in a confusing mess of finger-pointing they really meant you. Come to think of it, Wonwoo had no idea where the nickname even came from or who gave it to you or what it even meant.
And he was perfectly fine with never knowing.
“What?” Wonwoo deadpanned. “What on earth could she want to do with me? She doesn’t even know me.” He slid down in his chair, fingers pulling at his circle-lensed glasses so they tilted uncomfortably across his nose bridge. “Or, is this a joke?”
“Oh—no! Absolutely not!” His friend was insistent on proclaiming, vigorously shaking his head. “I’m being serious.”
“Why don’t I believe you then?”
“Okay, well, if you let me explain everything, it’ll all make sense. I said I know someone who writes really well—”
“Meaning me?”
“Yes, meaning you. And the only reason that was even brought up is because she wants to write a book.”
Wonwoo couldn’t help it. He laughed a very short disbelieving laugh that flashed a transient smile to his face as he readjusted his crooked glasses. You were the last person he would ever envision wanting to write a book. He then navigated the trackpad on his laptop, deciding to close the document simply titled, 01, that harboured the fleet of pages to his own current work in progress.
“Yeah,” Wonwoo disregarded, “sounds like bullshit.”
“I’m telling you the truth!” Seokmin exclaimed, gripping onto the metal back of the café chair like he was squeezing someone’s taunt shoulders. “She won’t tell me about what, okay? Just that she’s been thinking the idea for a while now. It’s not like I didn’t try to get details. But she refused—said the only person who can know is whoever’s going to help her. Look, y’have to understand, she was pestering me about it nonstop. And you’re my only writer friend!”
“Well, you’re about to have none.” He answered, reaching for his coffee cup but stopping it just short of his lips. “How serious is she about this, anyway?” Wonwoo sighed. “Do you know how much fucking time you need to dedicate to writing a book?”
He stomached a slow, somewhat grimacing sip as he tasted the coffee’s coldness, meanwhile Seokmin swallowed heavily, and at last pulled out the chair he’d been white-knuckling to take a seat.
“Yes, I’m aware it takes time. I know that. And she is serious or else I wouldn’t be here, bothering you. She takes everything seriously.” The boy began unbuttoning his sleek black jacket. “Really, who knows what’ll happen? Maybe you’ll meet her once and she’ll decide she can’t stand you, and then you’re off the hook for life.”
“Yeah, well have you ever considered what might happen if I can’t stand her? Are my feelings even being considered? Minutely?”
“Minutely, they are being considered.”
“Liar.”
It wasn’t that Wonwoo disliked you.
In actuality, you scared him more than anything. But to be associated with you was to be drawn into your life and caught like a firefly in a glass jelly jar. The proof was right in front of him—to Wonwoo’s eyes, Seokmin was basically your little mailman that scrambled around in hectic nature to do your bidding, because most tasks apparently weren’t worth the time or effort.
“I can’t believe you’re trying to rope me into this. You know I can hardly write my own shit, right?” Wonwoo said bitterly, wishing it was the opposite, “my mind is a desolate, blank canvas of fuck-all and if she thinks I’m writing it then she needs a reality check.”
“No, no—of course you won’t write it!” Seokmin reassured him with his big, opalescent smile. “Really, you’re just giving tips, maybe guiding her process, helping with the planning… you know, this could be facilitated so much easier if you spoke to Her yourself!”
“So, my nightmare?” Wonwoo huffed, shaking his leg.
In an instant, Seokmin had whipped out his phone, tapping around the screen quickly using his thin pointer finger.
“I’m just going to pull up her schedule. It’s always pretty packed, but more into the summer break, it thins out a little. “
Wonwoo exhaled, staring off into the warm, afternoon sunlight that hailed in through the windows, striking all the shimmering flecks and pieces of dust afloat in the café air. When he breathed in again, he could smell the luxurious coffees brewing in their rich and distinctive notes. It was such a beautiful day—still chilly as the snow outdoors began to thaw—but pleasant nonetheless.
“This is such a fucking waste.”
And Wonwoo spent it being miserable.
“No, it’ll be useful. Trust.” Seokmin chirped.
“You’re trying to dip me in your optimism gloss again.”
His friend smiled affectionately, tilting his head.
“This will be good. You’ve been a hermit since I’ve known you.”
“Yeah,” Wonwoo scoffed, “so you think it’s a good idea to shove me with the person I relate to least on the entire planet?”
“Really? The least? So, what you’re saying is, you relate more to serial killers? Or animal abusers? Or like, literal fasc—”
“Stop.”
“You want to do this. I can see it in your eyes. I’ll set you up.”
A part of Wonwoo knew there might be no wriggling out of the situation, especially with Seokmin sitting across from him, characteristically eager and brightly pushy as always, like a goddamn salesman. For now, it could be easier to let himself get cuffed.
“Can I at least have some time to think it over?”
“Uh… well… the thing is… the thing with that is—”
“You’ve cornered me?”
“I wouldn’t word it like that.”
“… Okay.” Wonwoo removed his glasses, shoved his knuckles tender but deep into his eye sockets, massaging through flashes of white as he came to accept a fate he didn’t know even existed in his astrology. “Just, I don’t know—fuck—schedule me in wherever.”
“Ha! It doesn’t exactly work like that.”
“I really don’t give a damn how it works, Seokmin.”
“Right,” his friend laughed nervously, “I promise that I’ll get back to you pronto. Sorry for the disturbance. And, uh, good luck.”
 “With what part?” Wonwoo grumbled, fixing his spectacles back on to clarify Seokmin’s sympathetic face, the light bouncing off his head of brassy hair like a disco ball. “My incapability to write a goddamn thing or the fact I have to help your perfectionist friend who’s probably going to chew me up and spit me out?”
 “Both parts.” Seokmin grinned. “It can only go up from here.”
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Wonwoo had one very distinct memory of you: creative writing with Mr. T. It had been an elective class he took amongst all his compulsory maths, and at the time it was a much appreciated break when Wonwoo grew apathetically bored from looking at matrices and confidence intervals and equations that engulfed the length of his notebook. Professor T was late one day in the fall.
And that’s when Wonwoo remembered you walking in.
There was a sort of sharpness about your presence that pulled everyone’s spines straight. People tended to angle themselves away from you, though they did it subtly, feigning an adjustment in their seat or a plunge into their bookbag for something that wasn’t even there. Wonwoo lacked the words to describe you. To be honest, he most likely could if he put that infinitely expanding lexicon of his to work, but even then, he feared that everything would fall flat.
Some scruffy looking guy had made the mistake of sitting in your seat—someone who probably skipped most lectures and only happened to find himself near Gildan Hall purely by chance.
It was the seat squat in the middle of the small auditorium.
He remembered the hand propped on your hip as you sashayed up to him—you always sashayed places. Wonwoo found it funny, like there were paparazzi stuffed behind potted plants and vending machines waiting to spring out with their blinding flares, just to capture you picking up a half-empty bag of flavourless popcorn.
“Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no.”
“Hm?”
“Excuse me? Yes, hello. You—can you get up please?”
“Up...? Why?”
 “Who are you?”
  “I’m sorry… what’s this about?”
 “Are you a first-year or something? Never bothered going to class until now? All the moshing and beer pong and ending up in some random basement of a friend of a friend of a friend is done so you’re deciding to actually get your money’s worth? Well, let me tell you this—I’ve been showing up to class punctually, and this is my seat. I always sit here. It’s my unofficially-assigned-assigned seat, which seems to be a known fact to everyone in this room except for you. Everyone has one. Everyone knows you’re not supposed to sit in other people’s seats. I don't care who you are. You could be my own mother. You could be my best friend, even. President of the universe. That doesn't make it okay, 'cause it’s a respect thing. It's one of those assumed societal rules and you just fucking kicked dirt all over it.”
Whoever he was, he never came back to another lecture.
Since then, Wonwoo had dually made it his mission to never cross paths with you, look at you, or even so much as huff one single carbon-dioxide filled breath in your general direction, just in case that was some degree of unbeknownst personal law he might violate.
Seokmin had royally screwed it up for him.
What could you possibly want to write a book about, anyway?
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—MARCH 26TH.
Wonwoo didn’t know how he was expected to find you in this gigantic mall. As he brushed through the streamlines of people, bumping their shoulders and mumbling the driest, most insincere apologies, he couldn’t stop looking at his phone. Seokmin had given him your number with the instruction that he could find you, here, on a busy Saturday afternoon. So far, Wonwoo had sent you four texts, none prompting a response or the grey-dotted bubble, even. Fuck, why did he agree to this? He couldn’t stop thinking it.
Why did he agree to help you, whom he was beginning to not even like, or want to be aquatinted with, write a book, when he’d been struggling to fill the same page of his own story for months?
Squeezing the phone tighter in his fingers, Wonwoo’s broad shoulder then smacked into someone else while he was busy steeping in his misfortune. It earned him a wildly disgusted look.
“Maybe watch where you’re going," the stranger grumbled, some man with an engrained scowl and big, bewildered eyes.
But Wonwoo ignored him.
He didn’t fucking care, and he was sick of wandering through this mall. It made him feel overstimulated, like his clothes were sticking to his skin differently, like the back of his head was swelling, and like all the smells in his nose were somehow making him warmer.
The stranger just stared at Wonwoo as he walked away.
Ding!
A text, but not from you—Seokmin, instead. Apparently, you were in some clothing store on the second floor. Wonwoo stepped onto the escalator, pressing himself into the barrier to make room for the especially speedy people who couldn’t simply stand and wait. He felt a random touch on the back of his head. Scrunching up the glasses on his nose and turning around, Wonwoo stared at the downward escalator, locking eyes with a pretty dark-haired girl he’d never seen before. She wiggled her fingers at him with a flirtatious smile, the scent of her perfume still lingering. Fresh roses, he thought.
He blinked at her once, twice, then turned back around.
Never in a million years.
It was funny, though.
Once Wonwoo stopped outside the clothing store you were supposedly inside, he felt the myriad of distractions and scents and noises dampen behind him. The irritability he couldn’t shake was slowly transforming into nerves. He’d never met you before, unless half-glances controlled by fear from across the small, basement auditorium that hosted creative writing counted.
Focusing on one breath, and then another, followed by a deep, self-soothing inhale, Wonwoo attempted to convince himself that he was in control, not the emotions quivering at his fingertips.
He cracked his neck and walked in.
After a minute or two of confused isle-pacing, Wonwoo rounded a corner, his eyes immediately fixating on a girl who was picking through a neatly assorted dress rack, her head tilted elegantly and her lipstick glimmering under the sterileness of the lights—you.
He gulped. Just suck it up.
She can’t be that bad. You can’t be that bad.
“Uh, sorry to bother you. I’m Wonwoo. I know we have a mutual friend in Seokmin. Lee Seokmin. He’s in one of your seminar classes or something, and, uh…. anyway. I believe I’m supposed to help you with a book you’re interested in writing… that’s what I was told, at the very least. And… I know we’ve never met but… um… I guess…” he trailed off upon noting your lack of acknowledgement.
Suddenly, he was taking a step back, letting you progress further along the clothing rack, your fingers hopping between each hanger and your eyes scanning their corresponding fabrics.
Wonwoo jerked on the inside with panic. He hated the situation already, though he somehow found the resounding courage, or perhaps, humility, to address you again, even if he’d rather die.
“So, I’m not sure if you—”
“Can you move, please? Over here or something? I want this dress.”
He kept his mouth shut in order to avoid spilling out any obtuse nonsense, instead watching with a nervous, analyzing gaze as you removed the hanger and shook out the purple, wine-coloured fabric, its sparkles rippling when you stroked your hand along it.
“Woah. This is too pretty.”
Wonwoo cleared his throat, unsure if you were speaking to him directly. You already had a bundle of dresses tossed over your arm. Why would you meet up with him when you were clearly busy?
“Hey, what did you say your name was?”
“Me?” He found himself echoing.
“No, the mannequin wearing that hideous plaid mini skirt. Of course I’m talking to you. Should I get you a q-tip or something?”
“No... I don't need a q-tip. It’s Wonwoo.”
“Wonwoo?” You exercised the name slowly on your tongue.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well, just so you’re aware, it’s 11:35. You were supposed to meet me outside the boutique at 11:30. I can see you’re not very punctual, so that’s noted…” for a moment, you stood back, and the searing line of your gaze judgmentally raked him from top to bottom. “Anyway… you’ll have to assist me with some things now, thanks to your big delay. I got all bored waiting for you, so I decided to do a little self-indulgent shopping."
It could have been wiser to continue biting his tongue, but even Wonwoo, who had practically vowed to avoid you for all eternity  due to his fear, felt compelled to challenge your unorthodox logic.
“Big delay? I don’t mean to be rude, but I did take the bus to get here, and their timing is never right. I feel like five minutes is a reasonable time to wait. Not that I’m saying you’re impatient.”
“Well, here’s the thing…” your back turned to him as you took a few slow steps down the clothing rack, probing between the different, pricy materials for anything exuberant you might have missed. “That is what you said, isn’t it? That I’m impatient? I mean—jeez—why bother dancing around it when you can just say it?”
He watched you face him again, except he was keeping perfectly silent, clutching his hand into an anxious, balled fist.
“Well, I suspect you lack urgency, making you apathetic, so therefore you have no sense of initiative. I’m sure you’re already aware, anyway. I can be slow, too, with certain things. Like, when I’m icing a cake. Or painting my nails. But I don’t walk slow, ever. That’s for unmotivated, pointless people who will probably go nowhere in life.”
“… Pardon?”
“Hold this, please.”
Suddenly, you draped the wine-coloured dress over Wonwoo’s shoulder. And he left it there for a second, still gobsmacked, chest shuddering from the pressure of his pumping heart, and wondered how you were even a real person. Once you began walking elsewhere in the store, Wonwoo questioned a very understandable escape toward the exit, though, for some reason, he snapped from his stupor and quickly paced after you, now folding the dress more straightly over his arm. He realized he was too afraid to surrender.
“I’m supposed to help you write a book,” he stated, feeling his lungs dig deep for air, “Seokmin said you needed help.”
“Okay, I’m tired of holding these two. Here—” you again blanketed the dresses into his arms, “—please keep this olive one in good shape, no crinkles. I have yet to find this colour anywhere else.”
Swinging back around, you began heading toward the change rooms, your uncomfortably tall looking heels clicking with each step. Wonwoo stuttered, and he couldn’t stop doing it—just, absolutely baffled by you and your consuming sense of worth. He didn’t know what to say, he could only follow, producing bits and pieces of sentences that you were either ignoring or genuinely hadn’t heard in comparison to the monologues in your own head.
“At what point will we discuss why I’m here?”
Finally, he spat out something coherent.
You paused, and for a fleeting moment, flicked your very intense eyes up and down in an examination of Wonwoo, who felt like he was being intrusively picked apart under a microscope.
 He swallowed tautly, “I’m just wondering… that’s all.”
You pressed your wallet against the top of his shoulder, guiding him to sit down on the white leather stool placed just outside the fitting rooms. He sat, too, fighting the urge to wipe his clammy palms on his jeans—even worse, the dresses you’d dumped on him.
“Let’s talk after I try these on, ‘kay?”
There was something different about your voice. It fell lower, sweeter, and he shivered with the thought that you had quite possibly just hypnotized him. He looked up at you, nodding his head.
“Good. Everyone calls me Her, by the way.”
“I know.”
He held his breath as you reached out to take a dress, the wine-coloured one, which was more like a dark, nightly amethyst now that Wonwoo was observing the fabric up close. So, what the hell was he supposed to do? Just sit there, twiddling his thumbs and shaking his knee while you busied yourself with fitting into all those wildly sumptuous dresses? There was a plethora of other things he’d rather be doing—too many to name, in fact. But he wasn’t going to bother slithering away now, chiefly because you petrified him too much and he wasn’t in the mood to be further guilt-tripped by Seokmin.  
Throwing his head back, he blew out a tired huff and looked at the ceiling. Why the fuck was he doing this? He just couldn’t stop thinking it. What on earth could he possibly gain from being terrorized by your weird authority.
“Hey, I’ve been there, for sure.”
Wonwoo noticed an older man waltzing past him, probably in his early thirties or so, who’d spoken in a sympathetic tone. He seemed very polished and clean-cut, made apparent by his sleek suit, and as a university student who was routinely on the verge of going broke after most rents, Wonwoo knew money when he saw it.
“Pardon?”
The man stopped and smiled.
“Waiting for your girlfriend, aren’t you?”
“Oh, no. I’m just—”
He was interrupted by the squeak of the change room door.
“Be honest. How does this look?”
You had stepped out to examine your silhouette in the large, full-body mirrors against the wall, taking advantage of the heavier lighting to scrutinize every divot and ruffle that textured the amethyst dress. Wonwoo wasn’t sure what to say in the moment, and the man he was explaining himself to had wandered off into another aisle to answer a phone call. He watched your fingers pick and pull at the material so it could be readjusted in certain places, your bottom lip pursed as you angled your hips and tensed a leg to make a pose.
There were at least three other dresses strewn in his lap, and you were most definitely going to make him sit there and judge each one. Now, he could be honest. The dress was glittery yet sophisticated, something like a gloaming, purple-stained sky and its first emergent stars encapsulated into fabric, though he wasn’t completely sold on it. But he also wanted to leave the mall as quick as time would allow, so rather than being verbose, he shaved it down.
“It’s pretty, not great. I don’t really know.”
“Hmm…” you mumbled, keeping your eyes fixated on the mirror, “not great? What’s not great about it? The frilly parts?”
“Yeah, the frilly parts.”
God, he wanted to go home so bad. Warm tea would be nice right now. There were crinkle-cut fries in his freezer.
“Ugh, but I love the colour. I’m getting conflicted. Maybe I’ll toss it aside and think about it again later. Yeah, I’ll do that... okay, let me get the white one next. It’s a little short but I can make it work.”
 Wonwoo carefully pulled out the white outfit from the bottom of the pile and handed it off to you. The skirt was notably cropped.
Again, you strode back into the change room and softly clicked the door shut behind you. Wonwoo pulled out his phone almost immediately, navigating to his texts with Seokmin. His thumbs blasted against the screen, tapping out literary warfare that expanded into a decent sized paragraph Seokmin would most likely respond to with an apologetic smiley face. It might take a day or two for Wonwoo to cool off, but he always forgave him. Mr. Sunshine.
When he heard the door rattle, Wonwoo quickly hid his phone back in his pants pocket; however, he severely regretted that decision because holy fuck—that vinyl white skirt was indeed short and tight and the winding, crossed straps of the top were just maintaining your cleavage. He needed something to help avert his eyes because Wonwoo felt them itch with the urge to stare at your body despite how uncomfortable he was. The floor tiles—count the floor tiles, or count the lights—something, anything to distract his brain.
“Okay, this is like—if I bend over, I’m flashing someone.”
He prayed you wouldn’t ask him his thoughts.
“But like—okay, I can make this work, right? This has potential. If I stand really straight, and proper, and, just… pull this down a bit here—okay, fuck, that was too much. Don’t look for a second… don’t look…. don’t look… m’kay, fixed it.”
Wonwoo wanted to cradle his head in his hands. And, right when he swore that the situation couldn’t sink much lower, the wealthy, black-suit man returned from his phone call. He paused the second he saw you in the mirror, watching intensely as you fiddled with the vinyl and attempted to adjust the x-shaped top a little higher over your cleavage. Except he wasn’t exactly modest about his gaze. It was drinking you in like some sort of insatiable alcohol.
“This is tough,” you huffed, pressing your hands against your chest, “the top is super sexy. I love how open the back is. But it’s such little fabric considering the price. It sucks that I look so hot in it.”
Horrendously, Wonwoo noticed a jewel bracelet slip off your wrist onto the tiled floor. Even more horrendously, he watched in the tensest position possible as you began to bend over and grab it.
No. No, no, no, no way.
The last two dresses spilled in a silk and cotton heap off his lap, nearly tripping him during his rush toward you. He managed to cover your backside in the most heart-hammering nick of time, his hands accidentally brushing in static sparks against yours to help you pull the tight fabric back down your hips. Knowing the man was still watching in the mirror, Wonwoo clasped onto your arm and dragged you back toward the fitting room, his cheeks turned to rubies.
“Fuck, you need to be more careful,” he rasped, “the skirt is too short for you to bending over like that, alright?”
“I’m not leaving a gifted two-hundred-dollar bracelet on the fucking ground. Should I have just kicked it into the change room?”
“Gosh…” Wonwoo rubbed along his neck with tire and lowered his voice. “Bending over in a skirt that short, especially when there’s a fucking weirdo watching you, is not the best procedure.”
“So, it’s my fault he’s a creep?”
“Okay—that wasn’t what I—um—”
“Do you even like this outfit?” You deadpanned.
Wonwoo chuckled in disbelief, “I’m not answering that.”
“This is useless." Your eyes agitatedly rolled. “I’m changing.”
“Great, whatever. Do that.”
He gently pushed you further into the change room and closed the door with a smooth, loud shutter. His heart was still racing.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t let my girlfriend wear that either.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Wonwoo didn’t care that his tone was snappish and clearly tired as he collapsed back onto the stool, making a point to ignore the perverted bastard until he left.
“Wonwoo!” You called his name after a few minutes of silence from the fitting room, “please bring me the green one!”
He wanted to utterly vanish, have the building collapse and crush him in a pile of dust plumes and rubble. Sliding the dress through the small gap in the changeroom door, Wonwoo found himself pausing.
“Why don’t I just hand all these to you?”
“Because, I’m using the hangers in here for my clothes.”
“Why can’t you just pu—”
“Thank you!”
Impatiently, you nabbed the dress and shut the door.
However, that dress was the last one you tried on, and Wonwoo couldn’t have been any more relieved. Talking to you seemed like it might give him heartburn or a hemorrhage.
He thought the shiny colour of olive green suited you best.
The dress was silken and long, slightly form-fitting, with a slit cut far up the right thigh and thin spaghetti straps at the shoulders.
You picked the first three dresses to take home, and left the last shimmery one on the rack.
“We’re leaving now?” Wonwoo asked, cracking his fingers.
“Yes, after I pay. Don’t seem so eager.”
“With all due respect, this place isn't really my scene.”
“Your attitude isn't really my scene.” You swiftly corrected him.
He stood next to you at the counter, observing as you zipped open your small black wallet to pull out a credit card. If you were shopping at a store like this, you must be making bank. But Wonwoo was somewhat nosey, and when you set the card on the countertop, he glanced at its embossed name. It definitely wasn’t your name.
Kim Mingyu.
It was your boyfriend’s.
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[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm ]: Goddammit Seokmin answer me
[ Wonwoo | 1:15 pm]: I’ve sent you at least ten texts
[ Wonwoo | 1:16 pm ]: Truly how do you do anything with this girl? I feel like she’s somewhat psychotic and you just fucking had to flash your sad mopey eyes at me in that café so I would break and help her write her book. I’m sitting here with dresses in my lap, pretty much acting as her unpaid personal assistant. Why the fuck is she asking me about dresses, anyway? Did you help her orchestrate this bullshit? I’m actually pissed at you. I want an entire paid lunch.
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He wasn’t all that surprised you made him carry the matte silver shopping bag (with these twine handles that he absolutely hated because of how they suffocated around his fingers), and by a certain point, Wonwoo just didn’t give a damn any more. What little social battery he’d maintained since leaving his apartment had officially depleted, for he could feel it weighing in the plaza air around him like an imperceptible mist. Unfortunately, you weren’t lying about being a fast walker. He’d never seen someone stalk with such vigor.
It was nearly an endurance test to keep at your swaying hip, and the few times he fell behind, you would pause and beckon for him.
But Wonwoo discovered that even you needed to stop, to eat and drink like a normal human rather than the disguised cyborg he fleetingly speculated you were. Your touch was so abrupt—a hand had curled around his bicep and suddenly Wonwoo found himself being jerked into a café on the bottom floor of the mall. Of course, you had to pick the most expensive place to buy food in the entire fucking vicinity, and since Wonwoo was penny pinching at the moment, he opted to stand back and let you order.
But then he saw you flick open your wallet, waving Mingyu’s sleek yet flashy credit card between your fingers with blatant enticement.
“I can pay for you.”
He shook his head, muttering a careless, “no thanks.”
“Don't BS me. What do you want to eat?”
Wonwoo couldn’t stop staring at the credit card.
“What’s the limit on that thing?”
“Enough.”
“You haven’t burned through it already?”
“These openly snide comments you’re making aren’t appreciated, you know. Now, please give me an answer before I break off the temples to your glasses so I can use them to stir my drink.”
“… What?” Wonwoo mumbled, completely lost.
“Pick something!”
“Okay, fuck. I’ll just get a coffee, then.”
He took a step forward to examine the menu boards that the employees were wildly scuttling around underneath, browsing down their chalk-written cold brews until he picked one at random.
That was all Wonwoo asked for.
You bought a lemonade and some sandwich he didn’t catch the name of, toasted on panini bread. It felt amazing to sit down. Wonwoo let the silver bag slide completely off his arm and hit the floor, to which he could sense your gaze stinging over him in disapproval. He should have gotten a sandwich himself, but Wonwoo still wasn’t sure how he felt about using the money on your boyfriend’s credit card.
Wonwoo relaxed in his chair, angling a glance down at his phone that he kept below the table, checking for any Seokmin texts.
None. He was supposed to be Wonwoo’s stupid life preserver in this situation with you, and so far, he’d been left for dead. Taking a lengthy sip from his drink was the only way he could stomach it.
“You should put your phone on the table. Screen down.”
“For what reason?” Wonwoo responded in a dull tone, quickly checking his social media with impatient swipes of his thumb.
“So we can have a conversation.”
At that, he almost gagged, slapping down the coffee cup he’d just picked up.
“Now?” Wonwoo laughed, his deep voice reverberating louder than he intended around the café, “you want to talk now?”
“Uh, yes,” you answered, picking up one half of your sandwich and readying it before your mouth, “why is that shocking?”
“Because—you—ah, whatever.”
“You seem crabby. Is that your normal shtick or are you just hangry? Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat?”
He was in a worse mood than usual, but that could be blamed entirely on the mall and how exhausted it made him feel—everything about its environment sucked out his soul. It was most likely the reason he was even daring to act so impatient. You took another bite as you waited for him to answer, and the delicious crackling sound of the toasted bread managed to fissure something inside him.
“Your eyes tell all. Here’s the other half.” You offered.
Finally, he’d experienced his first flares of contentment that day, though he wasn’t expecting it to be from a panini sandwich with what he could taste to be lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, and different types of melted cheese.
“Thanks.”
“Well, I’ll at least give us time to finish eating.”
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[ Seokmin | 2:30pm ]: I can do one paid lunch :)
[ Seokmin | 2:30 pm ]: Her’s not psychotic she’s just uhh
[ Seokmin | 2:31 pm ]: She probs did it to mess with you 
[ Wonwoo | 2:37 pm ]: She thinks being 5 mins late warrants putting me through one of the worst experiences in my life.
[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Awwww
[ Seokmin | 2:37 pm ]: Who doesn’t like a little shopping??
[ Wonwoo | 2:39 pm ]: It wasn’t shopping it was torture. You owe me so much more than a fucking lunch.
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—MARCH 29TH.
Unfortunately, Wonwoo never got the opportunity to discuss your book that Saturday. In the middle of eating, your phone buzzed with a brief call that had interrupted your peculiarly passionate rant on the different cup sizes at the movie theatre (Wonwoo had listened without saying anything, mostly because he dreaded the circumstances that may come from peeping a word when you were so fixated on explaining that ‘the medium is too much but the small is too little and they’re both obnoxiously priced’).
He then watched cluelessly as you launched up from the table, collecting every little belonging between your fingers, babbling about some wax appointment that had escaped you.
It was just that simple—you were gone.
In the beginning moments of your absence, Wonwoo had sat there without much inclination of what to do next.
He’d worried it was another test, and that he was supposed to dutifully follow you to said wax appointment and continue bending to your every endeavour with no retaliation throughout the day. He had also found the silence across from him unsettling, in a way.
Nonetheless, if you weren’t there, then Wonwoo figured he didn’t need to be there either. So he left, taking the fifty-six back to his apartment, and you hadn’t contacted him since.
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Wonwoo actually knew his landlord quite well.
Her building was comprised of four apartments, which sat above her pottery shop on the ground floor. She wasn’t a very bothersome landlord and it was fairly easy to connect with her whenever something broke or caused problems.
When he first moved in three years ago, Wonwoo had ardently adored living there, constantly studying the shelves of shiny glazed vases in addition to the beautiful water colour paintings that were created by his landlord or her students. It had been an inspiration supernova in terms of his personal literature, and he was able to start writing his book. Though, at the time, Wonwoo hadn’t been living alone in his apartment, and it was an inescapable fact that the only reason he began writing his book was with the hope of eventually presenting it to his old girlfriend-slash-roommate.
Now, it was just him.
And as Wonwoo pushed up from his grave of rumpled bedsheets, feeling lethargic and empty, he tried concerningly hard to pinch those thoughts from his mind. It was nearly lunch. He knew damn well he shouldn’t have allowed himself to rot that long in bed, but the other half of himself, the self-sabotaging kind, just couldn’t be bothered to fucking care. Wonwoo reached for his glasses that lay half-opened on the nightstand, raking them onto his face while brushing the hair from his eyes. The first thing he properly saw was his tall, skinny, orange bottle of venlafaxine. No. He was ignoring it.
Wonwoo had been ignoring it for the past few months.
Whenever he got particularly sick of staring at the bottle, he’d shove it in his drawer, making sure to bury it deep under old, amply-scribbled notepads and inkless pens that he’d worn to the bone. At last getting up from the bed, Wonwoo experienced his entire body sway and he caught the room spinning at the distant edges of his peripheral. But he walked through it without a care in the world, utterly too used to the feeling of imminent nausea even without his medication. He decided on a shower, then dressing himself, one Poptart, a swig of water from the kitchen tap, and almost walked out the apartment door with the minty toothbrush still in his mouth.
After walking three blocks down from his apartment, Wonwoo stepped across the dead, spiky grass and into the lacklustre parking lot behind the bowling alley that always smelled like stale pizza.
He knew the vanilla Camry well enough to identify it—stalled smack and centre amongst the emptiness—the licence plate being chiselled into his head like his old locker combination from high school (16-12-24, because Wonwoo for some reason liked fixating on prehistoric details that were glaringly useless in his present).
Early two-thousands R&B was blasting from inside the outdated-looking car, though it was thankfully turned down once Wonwoo threw the door open and shimmied inside.
The odor permeated Wonwoo’s lungs in a heartbeat.
“I thought you were getting this dry-cleaned,” he sighed to his friend, Vernon, who was busy rifling through a backpack.
“Uh, didn’t happen. Didn’t wanna pay all that. M’gonna find someone else to do it that’s not taxin’ my ass. Air fresheners are all dried n’shit so you’re gonna have to deal. My bad, Glasses.”
Glasses. That nickname had always made Wonwoo huff a little half-chuckle, and almost instinctively, he pushed the glasses a bit higher back up his nose. He was introduced to Vernon at a New Year’s Eve party he was forced to attend back in December, though it had been difficult to speak with him because he was blitzed out of his fucking mind—not to mention the choking pain of ignoring the girl who had been sliding her hands along the divots of his shoulders and chest from behind, kissing at his neck.
But Vernon was branded in tattoos, and had all kinds of metal in his face, and was blessed with concupiscent, honey-burnish eyes magnetized every woman in the vicinity straight to him.
Somehow, Vernon had become Wonwoo’s plug in the mix.
“Now, what are you gettin’, Glasses? The usual quarter ounce, right?” Vernon’s tongue poked between his blistered lips as he dug a heavily-inked hand further into the backpack seated in his lap.
“Yeah, quarter ounce.”
“Oh, fuck yeah. Found it. This one.” Vernon exchanged the plastic-bagged ounces of weed with Wonwoo’s cash. “Gimme, gimme. I know it’s all here, but let me check… “ he flaked out the tinted bills with a satisfied head nod. “Prettier than a princess. You’re golden.”
“Did you just say princess?”
“Yeah. That’s what I said… what?”
“I’ve never heard that.”
“It’s not princess?”
“It’s picture, isn’t it? Prettier than a picture.”
“Really? Oh. That’s not how I remember—why the fuck are we even talkin’ about this? Doesn’t fuckin’ matter. Now, that’s gonna last you if you’re cute,” he said, throwing his notorious bag into the seat behind him, then tapping at his busted radio with a thick strip of tape across it, the next song rasping through the speakers, “don’t go crazy on it with your meds and shit. Do you still got enough papers?”
Wonwoo scoffed dryly at Vernon’s assumption while he hid the plastic bag within an inside pouch on his navy-blue jacket. A second later and his phone buzzed with a text message.
“Fuck the meds, honestly,” Wonwoo grunted, shifting his hips up in the seat to remove the phone from his back pocket.
Vernon itched his dark eyebrow. “Alright. Just askin’.”
Wonwoo opted to say nothing as he checked the text message without much expectation, and he was thankful that Vernon was the type to drop a subject easily. Instead his friend transitioned into a different conversation, something about another tattoo that he’d been debating, but in the kindest way possible, Wonwoo wasn’t listening to a goddamn word. You had texted him. Finally. For the first time. After three days of radio silence. And Wonwoo didn’t know why he’d suddenly exploded into such a fidgety, heart-pounding mess. You wanted to meet up again in order to discuss the book’s details.
“Who the fuck is that? Jesus Christ?”
“No,” Wonwoo laughed, clasping his right hand into an anxious fist, “um, I dunno. Just—Seokmin’s got me doing this thing with a friend of his. She’s trying to write a book and he kinda threw me into helping her. We’re supposed to meet up and talk about it.”
“Oh,” Vernon answered, leaning his elbow against the window and sweeping a hand through his black tresses, “do I know the chick?”
“Maybe?”
“She got any social media? An Instagram?”
“Yeah.”
“Ou, let me see.”
Wonwoo wasn’t following you. Then again, he was hardly following anyone. His Instagram had remained completely empty since his girlfriend left him, which had prompted Wonwoo to archive every single picture and delete all the ones that contained her, even the ones that captured mere traces of her in beaded bracelets and hair ties and white socks left on the carpet.
Wonwoo used Seokmin’s account to find you. Honestly, he hadn’t ever looked at your Instagram before. Without gleaning a single photo, Wonwoo thrust his phone at Vernon.
“Oh, yeah, I do know this chick,” Vernon chuckled, thumbing through your profile with a growing smirk, “Her, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Mm, yeah. Know her. Tried to fuck her. Didn’t work at all.”
Snapping his head to look at Vernon, Wonwoo gaped, “what?”
“Yeah, I mean—” Vernon adjusted himself in his seat, pulling up his knee to rest a tattoo-coated arm across it, “—ran into the chick at a party that some rich dude at your university threw. Sweet-talked her for a bit until I realized she had a stupid boyfriend. She told me a million different ways to kill myself. Yeah, she’s somethin’, for sure.”
“You’re lying.”
“Ha—a little. She didn’t tell me to kill myself,  just scolded me for about ten minutes. God, she was wired as fuck though. Her boyfriend—fuckin’, Mingyu, or whatever—he gets her coke. I’ve seen her take a line like it’s pixie dust, man. This was like, over a year ago, though. Dunno if she’s still that loopy. I don’t care. She’s pretty hot.”
Vernon then flashed him a picture from your account, a full body picture of you sprawled across sparkling white sand in a bikini, meanwhile Wonwoo could only stare at it with the blankest possible expression as his brain splattered with computing Vernon’s story.
“Is she still with him?” Vernon asked.
Wonwoo cleared his throat and sat with his spine rigid against the leather, nearly forgetting where he was and what he was doing.
“With who?”
“Lady Liberty. Mingyu.”
“Oh… yeah. They’re dating, still.”
“No fuckin’ way,” his friend lamented while he continuously plunged further into your pictures, thumb pressed to his chin, eyes glimmering, “you coulda flipped this book thing on its head and actually got some fuckin’ head, especially with that deep ass voice you got there. I know it’s gotta feel good. I mean, look at her lips—”
“You’re being gross as fuck,” Wonwoo groaned, swiping his phone back and stuffing it away, “get a girlfriend yourself, man.”
“I’m tryin’ to clean up my act a bit before I do that.”
“That’s definitely a work in progress, I’m assuming.”
“Asshole,” Vernon’s voice was gritty as he coughed into a fist, slipping his knee back under the steering wheel and proceeding to crank his stereo until the music was practically suffocating Wonwoo, “now get the fuck out. You’re not my only deal today. Sorry, Glasses.”
“Later.”
Wonwoo pushed open the door and stepped outside into the cold afternoon breeze. He sucked in a long, relieving breath. At times the fresh air disgusted him, especially when he cozied into one of his mental ruts and everything in the world seemed so grey it was soul-crushing, but Vernon’s car smelled like straight fucking cannabis.
Fresh air was heavenly.
“Don’t forget to text your girl!” Vernon laughed just before Wonwoo slammed the door shut to swallow up the melodic lyrics.
He wanted to make a snap comment before the boy drove off to his next endeavour, but he didn’t care enough to think of one.
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[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: hey wonwoo, it’s her. I think we should finally settle a date to talk about this book thing. let me attach a pic of my schedule and you can pick any open slots
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]: 145_348.JPG
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:35 pm ]:  seokmin isn’t going to be our communicator anymore, so u can stop complaining to him about it
[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm ]: Okay, thanks.
[ Wonwoo | 1:45 pm]: I’ll take a look soon.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:45 pm ]: I’m excited to see you again
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: no likewise?!
[ Wonwoo | 1:50 pm ]: Likewise.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 1:50 pm ]: ugh. thx
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—APRIL 1ST.
It was around six in the evening and Wonwoo was seated in the SRX building, the sky rolling with lambent, hazy-toned pastures of peach in the windows behind him. He had arrived about an hour ago, taking the staircase up to the third floor. It was much quieter there, making it easier for Wonwoo to endlessly stare with glazed, void eyes at his laptop screen and the cursed document he couldn’t finish. After tapping his fingernails in a bored, repetitious pattern against the shiny white table, he felt the urge to delete each and every paragraph as if he hadn’t poured months of earnest love into them.
You would be meeting him soon.
He could still remember looking at your schedule, pinching into the screen and examining all the different colour-coded blocks: dinner parties, SSA meetings, gym sessions, errands—how the fuck you managed to juggle those things and more left him marvelled yet terrified. You were pretty on point regarding your arrival time, to which Wonwoo could immediately identify you before even seeing your face due to the heel clicking and the sounds of tapping jewelry on your bag.
Emerging onto the floor with a very intense scowl and a notably crushing grip on your drink, you were to say the least, angry. Wonwoo gnawed slightly on his tongue as you sat down.
Your purse clunked like a cinderblock onto the table.
He watched you inhale a slow, shaky breath, raising your hand with the expansion of your chest in order to calm down.
 “I’m going to kill myself.”
Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, subtly trying to establish more distance between you. He flicked a glance at his laptop.
“Damn. Why is that?”
“Because of stupid, incompetent people.”
“Yeah?”
“I just—I don’t get it!” You laughed, though it wasn’t a particularly jovial sound and more than anything it seemed like you were going to start smashing glass. “I don’t get how people are unable to understand that we don’t do walk-ins unless one of the stylists are free—” you dug a hand into your purse, pulling out a straw, “—which in the salon’s case, is almost never! I tell them we can’t in my very sweet, established customer service voice: ‘I’m sorry, but the only way to receive a chair is to book online.'”
Wonwoo tilted his head, grinning a little.
“Blah, blah. I tell them the entire story in the kindest way I can, even though I want to grab them by their fucking neck and drag them over the counter to show them our website.” You slipped out your laptop next, accidentally dragging out a lanyard along with it that you agitatedly shoved back into the purse. “And then, they get all uptight and pissy when we can’t wriggle them in! Sorry, our makeup artists are busy! Working with people who made scheduled fucking appointments! The world doesn’t fucking revolve around you!”
You scraped the drink toward you, slamming the straw straight through the plastic film lid with such force that several people ended up turning their heads. After taking a long sip, you gulped and glared until they probably realized it was you and pretended not to care.
For a moment, Wonwoo didn’t know what to say, so he’d folded his arms instead. Considering that Wonwoo worked the late shift stocking shelves at the pharmacy department, your predicament sounded like an entirely new world to him.
“Ugh, I’m sorry to bring all this negativity with me,” you apologized, still exasperated, “I don’t need this fucking tea—I need straight vodka. I’m seriously frazzled.”
“Seriously frazzled?” Wonwoo repeated, finding your choice of words funny as he resumed leaning forward, arms still crossed.
“Very, seriously frazzled.”
“I’m sorry about your day.”
Again, you sighed deeply while removing your long, warm jacket to drape over the chair’s spine—it was a rather elegant reveal of the strapless pearl dress underneath, tinted by the evening light, peach-pink as it rained from the ceiling length windows and framed your body like you were some sort of resurrected angel. Tension at last started escaping your shoulders. Wonwoo quickly realized that he'd been staring, and his fingers curled into a nervous fist.
“You’re actually such a good listener.”
Wonwoo cleared his throat. “Um, thank you.”
“I like that you don’t interrupt me.”
Settling his elbows on the table and ruffling the back of his messy black locks, Wonwoo felt himself panic a little on the inside.
“Well,” he heaved in, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I know," you chirped, posturing yourself confidently, “anyway, the book. We need to talk about it.”
“Table’s yours.”
Wonwoo’s knuckles pressed softly into his cheek while he waited for you to prepare your laptop. His own document was glowing at him, and he swore the emptiness of the page made the screen brighter (in the absolute worst, most mocking way).
“Okay, I’ve got my ideas and such pulled up.”
He expected you to continue and introduce the concept, but you had suddenly stopped, and Wonwoo thought you appeared almost smitten and somewhat timorous. It was strange, because from what he’d known and gauged so far, you were nothing akin to that.
“Well, promise that you won’t think it’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t even know what it is.”
“That’s why I want you to promise!”
Wonwoo pushed up his glasses and sighed, “I will need to be honest at some points you know, depending on what kind of help you want from me. Not that I’m going to be a straight-up dick.”
You scoured at him from over your laptop.
“Whatever.”
“I’ll promise if it makes you feel better.”
“Just—shut up." You wiggled your hand at him dismissively and proceeded to tug the laptop closer. “I don’t even care anymore.”
Once you spent a moment affirming the document to yourself, you looked up at him and smiled. “I’m going to write a book for Mingyu. Our fifth anniversary is coming up in the winter—it’s actually on Christmas Eve—the day he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. I just want to write him a little memoire thingy that tells our story. I want it to walk through the events of our lives, and how I remember them. First encounter, first date, first kiss, stuff like that. I’ve already collected some good memories to include. I have… somewhat of an outline? But my problem is the writing. I can spew nonsense from my mouth at a million miles an hour, but when I try to actually write? It’s crickets.”
You sat back, a hand poised thoughtfully at your cheek while one leg folded over the other. Wonwoo knew you were granting him the space to speak and at least offer a slice of his thoughts, yet, in that moment, he found himself to be drowning. He didn’t believe in fate or destiny or anything of the delusional like; however, hearing you explain the exact premise of a story that he had been successfully writing until a certain breakup—it had shaken him, and Wonwoo felt like the universe was smearing salt fresh into his unsewn wounds.
“So…” your head cocked to the side. “Can I at least an ‘okay’ or a head nod or some sign of life? Or are you just too disgusted?”
What could he say? What was he supposed to say?
Wonwoo was genuinely clueless on how to help you write a story that he’d been utterly failing at writing himself. And, sure, maybe Wonwoo should just give up completely. His ex-girlfriend had ripped out his heart without a single indication that it would happen, and then exited his life in the blink of an eye, disappearing so fucking abruptly that Wonwoo could have said she was a shadow that he imagined in pure lunacy. But he hadn’t dropped the story because there was this very stubborn, unwilling part of his being that could not move on from her—her, who had been his love, and breath, and bones.
He’d decided to finish the story as a manner of easing into closure. If that closure never came, then so be it.
“Are you seriously fucking ignoring me right now?”
His silence had promptly disturbed your peace, and now you were glaring at him with the beginning licks of fire and hell in your eyes.
“I don’t think I can help you.”
“What?” You pronounced sharply. “Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said while closing his laptop and sliding it back into his shoulder-sling bag, “I just—I’m not the right person to help you. I’m not, and you’ll have to take my word for it.”
“Seokmin told me you could write fucking anything. He made it out like you were some literature God with a golden quill. And—great, you’re just packing up fucking everything. Are you serious? Am I even allowed more of an explanation or are you gonna leave it at that? Wonwoo, you couldn’t have told me this at a worse time.”
“I didn’t plan for it to be like that.” He could hardly push the syllables up his diaphragm. “It can’t be me. I’m sorry.”
You didn’t lift a finger to stop him from leaving, though the wavelength of your incinerating stare was felt like a hot, melting scratch down his neck. This was terrible, he was terrible—Wonwoo already knew that about himself. He wanted to go home. He wanted to shut himself away in his room and sink straight through the sheets until he was swallowed. His anxiety was webbing around him. It was pulling him down into the soil and earth like he belonged there.
He truly hated this part of himself.
More than anything, he truly hated when other people saw it.
Especially people like you.
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—APRIL 8TH.
Wonwoo didn’t think you would ever speak to him again, in person or over text message. In retrospect, he was fine with it. You were rather overwhelming and especially tiring for someone like Wonwoo who would be perfectly fine never seeing another human in his lifetime. Not to mention he was freed from helping you with your book, which he learned was a technical love letter to your boyfriend in addition to a romance he wanted a nonexistent part in. Going down that path once was already excruciating enough, and given his anxiety attack that saw him locked in a cold washroom stall last week, it was best you just forget about him. He assumed you already had, anyway.
After he stocked the last red bottle of sinus medicine onto the shelf, Wonwoo used his boxcutter to break down the cardboard package and fold it flat with the others he’d opened. It was time for his break, and then he would only have one more hour until the pharmacy section closed for the night. Once it hit ten o��clock, the store was automatically still and hardly anyone came in—minus the few student couples whom Wonwoo had to point in the direction of pregnancy tests or plan b. But it was a Tuesday night. He was at the bare minimum appeased he didn’t have to console a sobbing, snotty-nosed eighteen-year-old girl imploring for a First Response.
When he collapsed down at his favourite seat in the breakroom, Wonwoo pulled out his phone. He had sent Seokmin a text yesterday evening about going studying at the SRX building for their upcoming math midterm, though Seokmin had yet to respond and Wonwoo couldn’t evade wondering if you were pulling some strings behind the curtain.
He opened his bottle of juice and spent the remainder of his fifteen listening to music and jittering his knee.
Wonwoo took his earbuds with him back onto the floor, sneaking the wires under his shirt to pull out his collar. There were only a few boxes left on his cart that required stocking, and whatever didn’t fit would have to be scanned into storage. That shouldn't take long. Wonwoo could almost taste the crisp atmosphere of the night air and feel the gentle chilliness soon to ghost against his face.
However, halfway into shelving the cough drops there had been a polite tap on his shoulder, and Wonwoo wanted to wither up and lose his head right there on the tiles like a sundried rose.
He didn’t know who to expect when he turned around, pulling out a single earbud while the other continued to blast his music.  
“Oh, shit—I didn’t know you worked here.”
Fuck. He wanted to kill himself.
“Yeah, started a couple months ago, actually.”
Mingyu.
It’s not that Wonwoo didn’t like speaking with him, because they had definitely exchanged cordial conversations in the past, particularly when they both took that Probability Poker elective last semester and Wonwoo learned that Mingyu was a pretty decent bluffer. Unfortunately, Mingyu’s belief that he was a great bluffer was actually the one indication that he was indeed bluffing. It showed in his overly confident eyes before a twitch of the lips or a subtly shifted foot, meanwhile Wonwoo was able to sit there the entire time like he was an Easter Island statue incarnate.
Put simply, Wonwoo had always preferred to avoid Mingyu because he was your boyfriend, and per routine, he attempted to slip around most people that were associated with you.
“Cool.” Mingyu smiled and the flashes of his pointed teeth caught the light. “Stuff’s got switched around in here again.”
“New mods came out last week,” Wonwoo answered, placing the last cough drop box onto the shelf and facing it straight.
“Well, don’t know what the fuck that means,” his tone was brassy as he laughed, “I just came to ask where the plan b is now.”
 “Two aisles down, check the endcap.”
“Appreciate it, thanks—oh, condoms?”
“Next aisle.”
“Got it.”
“Just come get me when you’re done,” Wonwoo said, grabbing his boxcutter and running the blade along the taped seam of the cardboard to satisfyingly slice it open, “I’m the only one in pharmacy right now, so I have to ring you up.”
As soon as Mingyu disappeared around the corner, Wonwoo tossed the flattened cardboard onto his cart with the loudest, most life-draining sigh that could be harboured. He wasn’t the kind of person to cultivate those racing, panicky thoughts that consumed his brain like a merciless hurricane, rather it was typically one single thought that was an eternal black space to swallow him. But Wonwoo had to admit that seeing Mingyu had triggered something of the latter, and now he was feeling sick with the fact you possibly told Mingyu about his episode at the SRX building last week. To Wonwoo it had been the shackles of his anxiety, though it probably came across as a very ill-mannered, abrupt rejection from your perspective.
Mingyu didn’t take long picking out his items. It was clearly a run of the mill routine for him at this point—a mere grab and go.
At the register, Wonwoo mentally questioned why Mingyu had grabbed such a plethora of condoms. He didn’t mean to be vulgar in his thinking, but how often were you getting fucking railed?
Either that, or Mingyu preferred being well stocked.
Vernon would be bruising his knuckles on his steering wheel right now, considering how devotedly he attempted to seduce you.
As payment, Mingyu pulled out that godforsaken credit card that you had borrowed during the dress shopping. Wonwoo felt nauseous just looking at the damn thing. He swiped all of the items into a small plastic bag which he then handed to Mingyu with a notable impatience, wanting to whisk the boy out as quick as possible.
“G’night, man. Thanks for the help.”
“Night,” he answered in a deep, tired sigh, watching Mingyu’s head of thick and bouncy black hair disappear toward the aglow exit.
Well, clearly you weren’t wasting anytime thinking about him despite the dramatics pertaining to the situation last week, not even in the most marginal fraction. Mingyu must rail it out of you every night—not that Wonwoo would be surprised to learn such a thing considering the tall boy’s physique and your openly lascivious nature.
Well, good luck to you both, he supposed.
At least it was closing time.
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Wonwoo had always suspected there was something ever so slightly off kilter about his body, especially in the way it reacted to certain situations and emotions. He knew it probably wasn’t the most mundane, ordinary act—locking himself in his aunt’s washroom the day of his sixteenth birthday, sliding down onto the cold, hard tiles, feeling his heart jolt, punch, and thump again his chest like a battering ram. There had been a pattern of rubber ducks on her eggshell blue shower curtain, and Wonwoo remembered counting them row by row, over and over, until his breath managed to steady.
Twenty-four ducks. He could still recall the number.
A doctor’s visit about three weeks later had granted him the diagnosis and a scribbled venlafaxine prescription. Wonwoo was already collecting his sweater off the tissue sheet bed, ready to leave.
In the beginning, he was strict about his medication. He organized them into pill cartridges and set alarms and always ate them with cooked, warm meals. Understandably, his habits dwindled every now and again, however, Wonwoo was quite pious to the routine for a good couple years. But then he met his most recent girlfriend in university. She was shy and reserved. All about the books.
Cute as buttons.
He fell in love.
And it was all such a rush of rose petals and sweet symphonies that Wonwoo became distracted from his healthy habits.
Of course, everything crashed and burned once she abandoned him. He capitulated in an instant, and the sight of the orange bottle made him paler than winter moonlight. It’s not like he wanted to suffer, or despise the way his body put him through a neural hell beyond his own control. The fact of the matter was that Wonwoo just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take those stupid pills.
It was a mountain. Every. Single. Time.
And for the third time that week, Wonwoo found himself awake at an ungodly hour, rifling through the black lunchbox he kept in his closet with his glasses about to slip off the fine point of his nose.
He pulled out the baggie filled with the quarter-ounce, his silver grinder, and his rolling papers. Moving to his desk, Wonwoo clicked on the small overhead lamp to illuminate his space, in which he tapped some of the weed into his grinder and began twisting the lid until he was satisfied. He liked preparing joints to smoke on the roof. It wasn’t particularly hard to access, anyway. Right outside his bedroom window was a balcony with a short ladder attached to the brick, and once Wonwoo had discovered it, he made a habit of climbing up to spark his joints so that their pungent aroma could be carried away by the fresh winds usually stirred up at gloaming.
Honestly, it was the only thing he enjoyed.
Just before he slipped out the window, Wonwoo grabbed a pair of black jeans he’d worn earlier in the week, discovering the lighter he’d accidentally left in the back pocket.
The ladder shuddered slightly when Wonwoo gripped it, though if he were being candour, he didn’t care whatsoever if all the bolts suddenly loosened and he were to splatter against the sidewalk like an uncooked pancake. In fact, the fall probably wasn’t enough to kill him. Maybe a few broken bones and scrapes, some blood staining the street akin to little patterns of rain, bruises that signatured violets into his skin, but Wonwoo would still be painfully, vividly alive, enough to see the stars if the glasses didn’t snap off his face.
It was a colder night, so Wonwoo made sure to tuck on his beanie and huddle into his thicker-sized coat. He sat with one leg dangling over the building’s edge, feeling the wind whiplash against his back and crawl in these chilly, indecipherable whispers from his shoulders to his neck, almost tickling him, like it had missed him.
An orange flicker popped to life from the butane of his lighter, which he used to lightly singe the joint perched at his lips. Wonwoo then tilted his head back, blowing the cloud and its loose, airy curls straight into the sky’s deepest purples.
He loved being alone.
Even when his ex-girlfriend had moved in with him all those months ago, there was an unyielding part of him that hadn’t been ready to forfeit all his space and privacy.
But, over time, his love surmounted the sacrifice.
He would wake up to her sleeping face, and with thoughtful nudges, clear the hairs off her cheeks. He would spend an hour working on his homework or writing his story while waiting for her to stir so messily in the sheets that it became graceful. He would tease her with his cold hands as she boiled up tea in the kitchen, pinching at her hips with the utmost softness and giggling huskily into her neck when she would twist in the arms that bracketed her body against his chest. He would trap her between the counter, sunshine striking the room aglow in these nearly blinding seas of light, mouthing at her throat and tugging at her shorts and hitching his fingers so deep into her heat because all Wonwoo wanted to do was make her feel good.
Opening his eyes again, Wonwoo saw the stars rather than her face. The high was disseminating past his lungs and mingling with the pain that festered in his heart, concocting something that hurt so wonderfully, in all the right places, in all the right spots.
He was a fucking mess.
It wasn’t sustainable. But he didn’t care enough to fix himself.
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 —APRIL 15TH.
Why did Wonwoo keep coming back to that café? The number of times he’d sat down with conviction that today would be fruitful—today, the eloquence would flow from his fingertips like perfectly pitched music notes and the symphony would read as beautiful and mellifluous as it sounded in his mind. Today, he was going to write.
Except, he accomplished nothing of the sort.
Repeatedly tapping his index finger against the space bar, he waited for the right adjective or phrase to leap out—to grasp him in a headlock even—whatever it took, Wonwoo was willing to sit there all afternoon until one fucking word conjured in the infinite blankness that was his imagination. He reached for his drink, only to take a sip of dry air that smelled like his earlier cocoa. Wonwoo realized the cup was empty. Had he wasted this much time already?
It pricked similarly to a bee sting. His passions felt impossible. A sigh upheaved from his chest and fingers curled into his hair, musing up the already disarrayed strands and slowly warping himself to look more and more like a mad scientist. Wonwoo removed his glasses and slumped back in the chair, rubbing at the reddish prints left on his nose. Writing had soaked itself in agony and he was going to remain in the storm of it until the bitter, ungratifying end.
‘Till death do us part.
 And then, something struck.
Though it wasn’t what Wonwoo had hoped for.
Literally—it was your hand hitting the glass of the café window, which had jerked Wonwoo out from his self-pitying.
He scrambled to fix his glasses back on, your face clarifying in an instant. You smiled at him with your glossed lips, and he didn’t like the nuance of your countenance one bit. Watching you enter the café was jarring and uncomfortable and his fist immediately clenched, his index nail picking at the ruined cuticle of his thumb. Two weeks ago—that was the last time you had spoken. At the SRX building.
“Hey!” You sounded friendly. “Can I sit here?”
“Well, uh—”
“Great, thank you.”
You pulled out the chair across from him, then set your bag delicately on the windowsill. Wonwoo watched with nervous, fluttering eyes as you smoothed out your cropped skirt before sitting down, ensuring it was tucked under yourself appropriately.
“How are you?”
Gulp.
“Fine.”
“Good. That’s really good. I’m glad.” Your nails drummed once against the table. “I actually didn’t plan on coming here, but I saw you as I was crossing the street, and I thought, ‘I should stop by and check in on him’ because, y’know, we haven’t been talking.”
Wonwoo furrowed his brow. “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Slap your hand against windows to get people’s attention.”
You swept something off the table with your palm, and this sunshine-like laugh turned your entire face to sweetness, but it wasn’t entirely earnest, and Wonwoo bit into his lip because you fucking terrified him. He caught your sparkling eye and wanted to melt.
“Did I scare you? I’m so sorry.”
“No, you’re good.”
“What are you working on?”
“A paper.”
Obviously, he was going to lie. Whether or not you could pick up on his lie was beyond Wonwoo’s control at that point. He didn’t know what you wanted, or why you were interrupting the flow of your very organized scheduling system to seemingly toy with him.
You didn’t respond to his paper comment. There was a thick silence between you despite the distant clattering of dishes, bubbling coffee machines, and conversations that coalesced into one big buzz.
Wonwoo bit the bullet.
“Something you want from me, yeah?”
“Not… exactly… I mean, after you left me at the SRX building, I wanted to get very angry about the whole situation. My day was terrible, and you responding to my idea with that sickly look on your face didn’t help. But I thought about it. You said no. I can’t ask anything more of you, y’know? I have to respect what you said.”
“Oh.” Wonwoo unclenched his fist, stretched out his long legs a bit more. “Yeah, sure. I get it. Thanks for understanding.”
“I just didn’t think my idea was that bad.”
“Well… no. It’s not bad. It’s not bad at all.”
A twitch to your lip suggested you didn’t believe him. Wanting to clear the air a bit, Wonwoo stopped slouching. He sat straighter and lowered the lid of his laptop, inviting the space between you.
His mouth opened, and then closed.
Fuck, just breathe you idiot—he cursed at himself.
You did that little head tilt thing, half-smiling at him, looking radiant underneath the café sunlight and so oddly patient with his tied-tongue that Wonwoo was miraculously able to find his words.
“There is nothing wrong with your idea. I made it seem like there was. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to help you write a romance story, for personal reasons that would be useless explaining. But you seem very confident in everything you do. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Hm, well, thank you for believing in me. Romance can be a touchy subject—I didn’t think of that, and I get it… I guess I felt more insecure about your reaction because writing is the one thing I can’t ace. I do need help with my story, even if I don’t want it. Well, it’s just the truth, isn’t it? There are some things I can’t do!”
You chuckled at yourself, and Wonwoo thought it to be actually endearing. All your hard edges softened in that moment.
“So, I haven’t made any progress in my story, which sucks because I’m operating by deadline—” reaching into your bag, you unveiled a small, compact mirror, using it to remove something invisible from your eyelash, “—do you have any writer friends that would help me?”
Wonwoo scratched his nose.
“Uh, with the book?”
“Yes.”
“None.”
“What?” The mirror snapped shut as you gagged at him. “How do you have no writer friends? Isn’t that your major? Literature? Do you even have friends that aren’t Seokmin?”
“I’m a math major for fucks sake.”
“You’re fucking joking, Wonwoo. Please, tell me it’s a joke.”
He leaned back, folding his arms and propping an ankle onto his knee. You were still gaping at him, and he wanted to smirk.
“What’s wrong with math?”
“Nothing. Math is… math,” you gritted, shoving the mirror back into your expensive-looking, gold-buckled bag, “but why math? Why straight math? I thought you wanted to be a writer.”
“Man, Seokmin really didn’t tell you fucking anything, did he?” Wonwoo chuckled. Or, maybe you had only heard the things you wanted to hear, which was what Wonwoo assumed.
“Like I have space in my brain to remember the multiverse of information that constantly comes out of his mouth.”
“So what is there space for then?”
“You're toeing a dangerous line.”
“Well, I like math and writing.”
"And what kind of papers would you be required to work on as a math major? Did you stumble across some quintessential theorem that nobody else really cares about except for you and all the other pocket-protector wearers out there? Or is this a Good Will Hunting scenario? Even better—are you waiting for someone to walk by behind you and see all that really complicated mumbo-jumbo on your screen and think to themselves, 'woah, this guy is really smart. He's working on a paper with numbers, and I only work on papers with words. Where did I go wrong in my life?' so you can develop some sort of alternative complex that writing just isn't giving you?"
Wonwoo cocked his head at you, perplexed.
“What the absolute fuck are you talking about?” He felt a laugh in his chest, but he pushed it down. Wonwoo had never met anyone like you before. “You made up everything you just said.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I go on tangents. It’s just something I do.”
“Damn. I can tell.” Wonwoo rubbed at the corner of his eye and slipped the ankle off his knee, further spreading his legs. “You like hearing the sound of your own voice, yeah?”
He always hated when people bothered him at the café, especially when he was trying to write. Today, it was different.
“Well, that’s true.” You beamed at him so matter-of-factly, like it was obvious. “The most beautiful sound in the world, isn’t it?”
“Mm.”
“Thought so. Ugh, I just can’t believe you have no writer friends to hook me up with.” He watched you slouch forward, slapping your arms across the table. “I’ll have to go wait outside Gildan Hall and start ambushing all the smart-looking literature majors.”
Wonwoo found himself examining your perfect nail polish.
“Good luck with that.”
“Can you at least try to sound more sympathetic?”
“You don’t seem like a person who appreciates sympathy.”
“Pft. According to who? I like being comforted when the time is right, and you’re not being very comforting.” You groaned into the table.
“You like being comforted?” He scoffed.
Your head popped up, and you were pouting. “At certain times, yes. Most times, no. It’s a complicated system. No one’s really cared enough to learn it except for Mingyu, and that was by force, and I think even he hates it. But I’m not asking for the moon. Just a reasonably sized chunk of it. I have to be worth something, right?”
“What’s life without someone catering to your every whim at the drop of a hat, huh?” He couldn’t help but mutter with sarcasm.
“Yes, exactly! See—you read my mind.”
Wonwoo bit his tongue.
“Ugh, now where’s my stupid phone?”
It was in your purse. Immediately, your eyes lit up.
“Jesus Christ. I’m gonna be late to my electrolysis!”
Like a burst of lightning, you shot up from your seat and quickly fixed the cream-white purse back over your shoulder. It reminded him of that time at the mall. One second you were engrained into a tangent, and the next you were scrambling about, attempting to recover the lost time in your meticulous schedule.
“If you think of anyone, please text me!”
Wonwoo nodded his head.
Now, there was a vacant seat before him, left slightly tugged from the table due to your hectic departure. For a moment, he just sighed, feeling the breath emerge from somewhere so deep in his chest that it ached. That was the thing about you—in a confusing turmoil, you managed to fill him up when he felt empty, but then empty him once he felt full.
He didn’t know what kind of person you were.
But there was an odd thrill to it that Wonwoo couldn’t articulate.
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—APRIL 18TH.
Sat with Seokmin at the boy’s dining room table, Wonwoo popped a purple grape into his mouth while flipping a pencil between his fingers. The two had been staring plainly at their last problem from the math homework, but the question was horribly long, and his handwriting had morphed from legible penmanship to the most slurred hieroglyphics. Wonwoo wanted to dump a ramen packet into some boiling water and call it a night. He’d devoured a whole stem of grapes. His head was pounding and his stomach growled for a meal.
“Oh! You see—this is what gets me every time!” Seokmin exclaimed, leaned over his scattered papers, shoulders hunched with strain, “I mess up one multiplication in a matrix, and it screws me all up! Now I have to go over—uh! My fucking pencil just snapped.”
“Good,” Wonwoo mumbled, pressing a hand along the groove of his stiff neck, cracking it, “take it as a sign to give up.”
“We’re so close.”
Scooting the chair back to stretch his legs, Wonwoo then snatched his phone off the table. It was nearly ten at night.
“I’m hungry, and I don’t care anymore.”
Seokmin sighed, “are you going to eat now?”
“Yeah. Any ramen left?”
“It’s in the box sitting on top of the fridge. Soup broth is in the cupboard beside the microwave. I think there’s some eggs, too.”
Wonwoo easily grabbed the noodle packet off the fridge. He asked his friend if he wanted a bowl as well, and Seokmin agreed, abandoning their math homework after his defeating pencil-snapping incident. While they waited for the water to start bubbling over the stovetop, Seokmin had joined Wonwoo in the kitchen, though he leaned against the counter, holding his phone six inches or so from his face. Wonwoo had never seen anyone text that fast.
Gosh—he didn’t even need to ask who it was.
Noticing a few smudges on his glasses, Wonwoo lowered them down to the hem of shirt, beginning to massage the marks away.
“Our math final is the twenty-eighth, right?” Seokmin asked.
“Should be, yeah.”
“Thanks. If it’s on the twenty-eighth then I can definitely go.”
Wonwoo slid the glasses back onto his nose.
“Go to what?
Taptaptaptap—Seokmin’s fingers were practically electric.
“Uh, this thing that Her is having… at her parents’ house… like… a big dinner party… I’m helping her plan it… just need to make sure… I’m free those days… there! Okay, all settled.”
At last, Seokmin had clicked off his phone and slid the device back into the pocket on his sweatpants. Wonwoo folded his arms, staring at his friend with a deeply furrowed yet confused brow.
He sucked in a helpless breath.
“I don’t get you, Seokmin.”
“What—why?”
A few hot droplets of water had leapt from the pot, slightly scalding Wonwoo’s arm. He promptly ripped open the ramen packet and submerged the noodle brick, poking at it with chopsticks.
Wonwoo cleared his throat, “are you obsessed with her?”
Seokmin laughed, sounding astounded.
“No, I’m not obsessed. I’m just helping. We’re friends.”
“Right.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Setting the chopsticks beside the stove, Wonwoo turned around again, habitually crossing his arms low along the chest.
“I guess I don’t understand what you get out of that relationship.” He admitted. “Why can’t she do shit herself?”
“Ha!—That’s an interesting question.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“No, it’s not that.” Seokmin lifted himself onto the kitchen counter, his head thumping back against the wooden cupboard. “I just wasn’t expecting you to ask that. And—I meant it’s interesting to see your interpretation of it. Like, my friendship with Her.”
Wonwoo nodded. He wasn’t going to coax anything out of his friend that he wasn’t already willing to say. In fact, Wonwoo had only begun talking to Seokmin back in the early, rainy days of September, since they ended up in the same discrete mathematics course and happened to choose seats right next to each other. Their bond had formed fairly quick, but they never really conversed about topics more intimate than school work and their own interests.
“I’m sorry,” Wonwoo said, “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, don’t apologize. I mean, I totally get why you’re curious.”
Seokmin glanced down at his knees, scratched his chin.
“Uh—well, what did you say, anyway? Why can’t her do shit herself? I mean, her life is super busy. Her mom’s a writer and editor for that popular fashion and beauty magazine you always see at all those glamour stores—Stunning Monthly—something like that. Her’s dad is this business tycoon guy. He works with my dad, actually. I’ve known Her since high school. Our families are close, so naturally we’ve spent a lot of time together. Her family picked up all their stuff and moved into Hillcrest on account of her dad needing to relocate for work.”
Wonwoo remained silent at the revelation, even though he was urged by curiosity to badger Seokmin with questions.
“But, uh—without all my non-essential rambling—the relationship with her parents is tumultuous. Who doesn't have a shaky relationship with their parents, though? A few lucky souls, probably. But they've set things up for her quite well, in my opinion. Her mom got her a job at the Milestone—that fancy beauty place down Bank Street? She has a makeup chair from time to time and works reception. She’s definitely gonna graduate Cum Laude with some big fancy scholarship. Not to mention the little power couple thing she’s got going on with Mingyu. She just tends to be…” Seokmin winced, massaging his shoulder, “she’s just a bit unpredictable. It would be way too easy for things to start falling all over the place. She’s a busy girl so I figure it’s nice to help her out. Keep things organized.”
Wonwoo bobbed his head, thinking.
“I guess I’m curious about the book thing. I mean, if everything is so perfectly laid out for her, and she’s so busy all the time…. why write a book? That takes months, extreme dedication, planning out the ass… it’s loving everything you’ve written and then hating it so atrociously… I don’t know,” he sighed, shrugging with confusion, “if I were her, writing a book would be the last thing on my mind.”
Folding his arms, Seokmin leaned back against the cupboards and agreed. “I know. But sometimes she just lurches onto random things out of nowhere. One year she practically turned her entire living room into a freakin’ art studio and I slipped on an open tube of paint on the floor—nearly popped out my tail bone. To be fair, her passion projects never last long. She never has the time, as you said… I know you’re not helping her anymore. She’ll probably drop it without help.”
“Really? Just like that?”
“Yeah,” Seokmin answered, smiling, “just like that.”
For some reason, Wonwoo gritted his teeth. He would hate for you to discard the feat so readily, just because he couldn’t pitch in as initially planned. Yes, writing was not always a fruitful cherry blossom tree and sometimes chalking down one sentence was equivalent to a month of effort and squeezing out all the creative fibres in one’s brain, but there was so much worth and occulted beauty to it at the same time. It was the art of expression.
Wonwoo thought it was quite cruel to deprive oneself of the ability to express and articulate things as they coursed through the fragile skin and the warm veins, and chiefly, the heart.
“Anyway, maybe I didn’t really answer your question,” Seokmin laughed, “but, y’know, don’t worry too much about turning down the book. You’re right. She’s got more important things to focus on, as I was telling her over and over, and—oh! Fuck, the ramen’s bubbling!”
Wonwoo quickly twisted around as the water began spilling over the edge and sizzling like fried meat. He lifted the pot off the piping hot, orange element, to which Seokmin joined him, twisting the stove dial to a much lower heat. Blowing at the white froth, Wonwoo waited a precautionary minute before returning the pot.
Once dinner was ready, they gathered back at the dining table, entwining the noodles with their chopsticks and hardly allowing a second for the ramen to cool before they were shovelling in burning mouthful after mouthful. The bite in Wonwoo’s stomach was gradually appeased. He soon felt warm, and full, and less tempered.
“Seokmin.”
“Hm?” His friend glanced up from his phone.
“So…” Wonwoo leaned back in the chair, his fist clenched. “I guess what—from what I understand—if I don’t help Her, or if she doesn’t find someone who can, then the book just won’t happen ”
At his observation, Seokmin nodded, seeming unbothered.
“Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”
“That’s sad.”
“Hey, you two just aren’t destined for each other,” he replied, slurping his noodles, “you were right back at the café.”
Picking up the white and blue patterned bowl, Wonwoo prepared to drink the broth, feeling the delicious heat fan back against his face. Once he finished eating and helping Seokmin with the dishes, he planned to catch a late-night bus back to his apartment above the quaint pottery shop. He didn’t know if he would sleep or not.
Maybe, however, that would give him time to rethink some choices, even if he shouldn’t trust the musings his brain happened to curate past nine at night. Especially any musings concerning you.
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[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: Sorry to message you this late.
[ Wonwoo | 11:45 pm ]: I’ll keep it brief: I’ve given your book idea some thought, and if the offer still stands, I’d like to help you write it. Though, I understand if you want someone else’s help.
[ Wonwoo | 11:50 pm ]: Goodnight.
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[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: AHHHHHHHHHHH
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: good morninggg
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:35 am ]: no that’s so perfect
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: okay. OMG. there’s just so much we have to sort out. I’m trying not to overwhelm myself lol
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 6:37 am ]: thank u for giving it more thought. I’m excited to plan everything and see u again ofc :)
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[ Wonwoo | 12:55 pm ]: Likewise.
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—APRIL 24TH.
Since last November, Wonwoo hadn’t invited many guests to his apartment—not even his older brother, who had never stepped foot into the building after Wonwoo originally signed the lease. Seokmin visited once or twice, but everything was curt, and while there had been one time that Vernon slept overnight on the couch, it was hardly notable.
Knowing that you were going to be at his apartment in a few hours was a very daunting thought. Consequently, Wonwoo had done something he hadn’t properly completed in months: clean.
It wasn’t like he just threw out the garbage and wiped down the kitchen counter either. He legitimately cleaned, picking over his apartment with a fine-tooth comb, not allowing one coffee cup or coaster to seem even vaguely incongruous. He fluffed out the couch pillows and vacuumed the floors. He went through his entire room, tidying up piles of clothes on the floor and aligning every book on his shelf. For the first time in months, Wonwoo threw open his heavy curtains, pure sunlight engulfing the space in such a bright glare that his eyes stung and he hardly recognized his own bedroom. Most importantly, he remembered to hide the pill bottle in his nightstand.
After all the anxiety-driven cleaning was done, Wonwoo collapsed onto the couch and stared plainly at the ceiling, the reality of what he just accomplished beginning to sink into his pores.
What the fuck?
He doubted you would care even microscopically if his apartment wasn’t perfectly swept and polished and artistic like a photo from an interior design catalogue. But at the same time, it would have been impossible for him to leave it alone. The burst of productivity undoubtedly left Wonwoo rather hot and sweaty, so he opted to take a shower before you arrived. Standing beneath the cool water and taking slow, languid breaths helped ease his nerves.
And, for the first time in what he imaged to be—months, Wonwoo dried himself off with this feeling that everything was okay.
Not good. Definitely not great. But okay.
While he buttoned up a pair of blue jeans, Wonwoo heard his phone ding from his desk. Reaching over, he tapped the screen.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:05 pm ]: hi, I’m almost there
His chest fucking lurched.
Roughly jerking open his drawer, Wonwoo pulled out the first shirt he saw, tugging the white long-sleeve over his head before he wiggled his feet into a fresh pair of socks. Once Wonwoo found his glasses, he sat on the edge of his bed with his phone.
[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Okay.
[ Wonwoo | 12:08 pm ]: Would you like me to come down?
God—he felt like his stomach was going to collapse.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:08 pm ]: no that’s okay :)
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:09 pm ]: it’s really pretty down here
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm]: sorry I was looking at some of the pottery / painting stuff. it’s the staircase down the hall, right?
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:12 pm ]: unit 102?
[ Wonwoo | 12:12 pm ]: Yes.
He reminded himself to breathe. Calm and slow and lifting the pressure that dug so bluntly into his lungs. The webs began to burn away. It had been a narrow escape, but it was successful.
[ xxx-xxx-xxxx | 12:13 pm ]: heyy, I’m outside
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Wonwoo walked to the front door. His fingers brushed the knob in a flash of doubt, though his mind had already committed and now the door was pulled open and you were there, just as you said.
“Well, hello.”
He nodded at you, and then gestured for you to enter.
“Where should I take off my shoes?”
“There’s good,” Wonwoo answered, pointing to a textured mat in the corner that you proceeded to leave your simplistic heels on.
How absurd was this? Never in his life would Wonwoo imagine you at his apartment of all places—the one girl whom he adamantly tried to avoid because you were his gleaming opposite, and everything that you were, certain and in control, scared him. You were gazing around with your hands politely clasped together, ignited in the fulgurant sunlight, a small smile on your mouth.
“Wow, you’re very clean.”
Wonwoo stepped after you, maintaining a shy distance.
“It doesn’t normally look this neat,” he admitted, watching you readjust the strap of your tote bag, “I did clean for you.”
You turned to face him, and your laughter filled the space with a refreshing, long lost tone that made everything brighter. His fist clenched up anxiously and he knew his cheeks were pinkening.
“Um, cleaned or power-washed?”
He merely stared at you. Why couldn’t he fucking speak?
“Jeez, don’t look so afraid. I’m joking. And I obviously appreciate the effort.” You spun back around, continuing to walk past the coffee table and toward the kitchen. “It’s a lovely place, and it’s definitely got your personal touch. Oh—this is a cute mug.”
He breathed out, unfurling his hand and stretching his fingers until the air in his knuckles popped. You began wandering in the natural direction of the bedroom, and so Wonwoo followed, his eyes drifting up the jeans that hugged your legs and your sashaying hips, to back of your delicious-smelling hair. What was that scent, anyway?
Manuka honey?
But it was just a trivial glance, really.
Nothing meaningful.
“Is this your room?” You asked, stopping at the doorframe.
“It is.”
Biting your lip, you peaked inside and started to grin.
“Do you care if I go in?”
 “No.”
He tried not to crumble right there on the floor. Wonwoo’s room was his sanctuary, a fortress, something that barred out everyone but himself and granted him the freedom to do whatever he pleased (whether it was self-detrimental or not). The thought of others in his room was a gash in that perfect sanctuary, in which he could see the walls bleed out all their comfort and familiarity. His ex was the last person to be in his room, typically sprawled across the bed with a good novel in her hand.
It was a sour, sour reminder.
“Oh, and there’s the bookshelf,” you pointed out, “how fitting.” That penetrating gaze of yours roamed his desk and his bed and all his knickknacks in between. “Hey, why’s there a balcony outside?” You then asked, settling your hands onto the window frame and leaning out, the wind fluttering minimally through the layered curtains.
“Just a remodelling error,” Wonwoo explained, “it was supposed to be removed, I think. Never happened.”
Allured by curiosity, you leaned further out, examining the ladder that led up to the building’s roof. He looked at you again, specifically the arch in your back and the way your arms were planted so firm at the windowsill. He looked at the sunlight rippling on your cheek and your lips that appeared to sparkle, like you had kissed glitter.
“You definitely go up there, right?”
“Yeah.”
Half-shutting the window as to keep the breeze flowing, you chuckled. “I figured… so, I guess we should stop dawdling and get to the meat and potatoes. Is here a good spot? Or do you want to go back to the living room?”
“We’re in my room anyways,” Wonwoo commented, pulling out his desk chair and promptly sitting down, “so, why not.”
“Cool. Let me get my laptop.”
You slipped the tote bag off your arm and sat on the edge of his freshly made bed, being careful not to rumple the sheets.
“Okay!” Your hands echoed a series of soft claps. “I’m all ready now. I’ll try my best not to ramble—oh, and please, please don’t interrupt me until I’m done. I’m going to be very pissed if I lose my train of thought and I’d like this meeting to remain pleasant.”
Wonwoo nodded. “I know.”
You flashed him a brief smile.
“So, as you know, Mingyu and I’s fifth year anniversary is coming up in December. My gift to him is this so far nonexistent book. We’ve been through a lot as a couple, and as individuals, and I want the book to fully capture this journey we’ve been on and how much I… appreciate him. Also, I’m going to introduce a second, special element—” a hand plunged into your tote bag and suddenly a video camera was revealed, “—I want to record some of our brain sessions, and, like, our voyage of figuring this shit out. I like mementos. I hope that’s okay.”
“… Do I answer?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Then, yeah. I’m okay with it.”
“Secondlyyy—” you lilted while scrolling a little ways down the notepad on your laptop, the video camera stuffed back into your flower-and-honeybee-patterned tote, “—there are a few places we’ll need to visit—not the actual places that Mingyu and I went to since we grew up nowhere near here—but places that more so have a strong resemblance to the ones in my memory. I feel like it will help me with visual aspects of the writing. I’m a very visual person. Y’know, setting up the scene and technical things like that. I like touching and feeling and seeing and breathing everything in. I want all my senses on fire, basically. Like… the way your lips feel after eating insanely hot noodles.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
Wonwoo didn’t really care. He just agreed.
“Lastly, I want to make a schedule for us. So, I’m kindly asking you to set up a schedule of your own—work shifts, doctor’s appointments, tests—the like, so I can incorporate them into my own hectic life and make us one colourful, super writing schedule.”
And then, with a big, winded sigh, you shut your laptop.
“That’s it. Done. Thoughts?”
Honestly, the entire premise didn’t sound all that terrible. He had braced himself for the worst, but you were unsurprisingly organized and had pinpointed all your desires quite clearly. Of course, he knew it was going to be sheer hell—flames up to his knees and desert sun beating on his skin like a hot skillet frying butter. You were structured and dedicated and Wonwoo was none of those things.
No doubt, Wonwoo would have to learn to deal with you.
You would either be his trigger or his pulse.
But, even worse, you would have to learn to deal with him.
“I’m just following your lead on this,” Wonwoo announced, lacklustre of much interest, resting his hands against his stomach while he rotated back and forth in the swivel chair, “whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. How soon do you want the schedule thing?”
“Like, as soon as possible.”
“Okay.”
“Do you really have no questions?”
Wonwoo scratched the side of his head.
“Uh, have you got anything written down yet?”
“Yes,” you propped open your laptop again, “an intro.”
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t question me. It was already difficult enough to write it, and I agonized over it for hours.” You pouted, slumping slightly.
He shifted up straighter in the desk chair.
“I’m sorry. I was just wondering. It’s good you started.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
Wonwoo tilted his head at you. “Do I get to read it?”
Your feet crossed and twirled together. He didn’t think you had any nervous ticks, but that was something easy to pick up on.
“Um, not yet. Not until we officially start.”
“Okay.” He answered with a gentle voice, noticing your swaying feet still again and a bit of rigidity dissipate from your body.
Well, he didn’t really know what to do at this point. Wonwoo suspected you were constrained by more tasks for today and your time with him was limited. It’s not that you were sitting in an awkward, stifling silence, but he would rather occupy himself with something rather than nothing, because nothing left his heart to race.
“Are you hungry?” He asked.
Glancing up from the laptop, you shook your head. “I ate before I came here.”
“Are you going to be leaving soon?”
At that, your face crinkled with laughter. “Sick of me already?”
Wonwoo crossed his arms. “No. Just asking.”
“Well, I have a wax appointment soon. I’ll be leaving in ten minutes or so.” Finally, you looked up, and your eyes clicked with his in a way that made the fine hairs along his neck prickle coolly. “Does that answer your question?” A subtle grin pulled at your soft lips.
“It does, yes.”
“You don’t like having people in your room, do you?”
He huffed at the observation and delved a hand through his black hair, feeling the dampness slide against his fingers. “Not particularly.”
“You should have just said that.” Rising off his bed, you closed the laptop and shoved it back into the tote bag.
Wonwoo’s entire chest jerked. It felt like a ten-story drop.
“Are you leaving?”
“Mm, I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding.”
Why did his throat close up just then? Why did his vocal cords abruptly feel so coarse and tight? Why was his heart hammering? He didn’t mean to project the wrong impression. He didn’t hate you in his room. It just felt misplaced, and new. Like picking up a puzzle piece from the box and attempting to jam it into a different puzzle.
“It’s fine. Seriously. I should be early, anyway.”
Wonwoo stood up, realizing he needed to breathe. “Um… would you like me to walk you down?”
You stopped on your way out, faced him with a pretty smile.
“That’s okay.”
But then you did something rather strange; your hand sank into his firm upper arm and suddenly you were leaning into him, so carelessly close that he could feel the fanning, light warmth of your breath against his neck. Wonwoo’s head started to spin, and he thought a cloud had enveloped the room because his vision fuzzed.
“Sorry,” you took a step back, removing your hand, “you just smell really good. Like an ocean or something. It reminds me of this beach in Puta Cana. But your hair’s all damp and fluffy so that’s probably why. That was weird. I’m sorry.” Again, you laughed.
Why the fuck did you do that? He was almost angry. But not at you. At himself. For reacting in such a giddy, stupid way. Your touch and breath had burned him and there was this sharp, cutting flare inside Wonwoo that didn’t want to let you leave.
“All good…” he mumbled, sounding groggy and slow.
“I’ll see myself out then. Bye!”
And with a final chirp, you left, the front door closing in the distance while he could only stand there, shuddering and strangely hot and beyond confused. Wonwoo moved to swing the heavy curtains shut, the entire room succumbing into its usual shadiness. He sat on the edge of his very neat bed, removed his glasses, and buckled over while rubbing his veiny, pale hands through his hair.
The feeling was so lost and suppressed to his memory.
Wonwoo didn’t even know what it was.
He was relieved you were gone, but he also wished that you were still there, leaning out his open window with the wind and sunshine in your face. It was a sight so sweet and equally intimate.
Who are you?
What are you doing in his meaningless life?
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—APRIL 28TH.
Wonwoo had finished his math final with half an hour to generously spare, and now, he was sitting, bored, sketching his pencil against the last page of the thick packet. The professor wouldn’t care.
Hopefully.
On one hand, Wonwoo knew he  should really just stand up and hand the damn thing in, but on the other hand, he hated—no, abhorred being the first person to return a test, especially an exam at that. Wonwoo was pretty smart. He knew that about himself and he never bothered to maintain the guise he wasn’t. Still, Wonwoo wasn’t pretentious. If he had to wait until the final fucking minute to hand the packet in, solely to avoid being the first student up, then so be it.
Besides, there wasn’t anything too pressing that required his immediate attention—minus the pertinent schedule he was supposed to make and have sent to you approximately three days ago. You had called him last night, to which the phone crackled with a loud, static bark of his name as you admonished him for his lateness.
“I told you three days ago I wanted the schedule! Three days! I can’t believe this. What’s so hard about making a schedule? Beep boop, you press some buttons on your laptop and it’s done. It would take ten minutes tops! Ugh, I’m so done with you, Wonwoo. In fact, don’t call me back—don’t even text me until you have the schedule!”
And then the line had collapsed, leaving Wonwoo to stare rather expressionlessly at his phone screen, the boy huffing out a breath of tendrilled smoke while he relaxed on the apartment roof. That had been his first experience sat on the receiving end of your seasoned quips, and it left him with this very profound emptiness, like his insides had been scooped out and the shell of his body was nothing but a wooden nesting doll. It had been such a long time since he genuinely cared about disappointing someone. Wonwoo had grown far too complacent with the feeling of disappointing himself.
That would never motivate him to do anything.
But you were different. In the sense that Wonwoo mostly remained proactive out of fear you might bite his head off.
From somewhere near the back of the room, Wonwoo heard chair legs scraping, and he eagerly flexed his fingers while observing a girl with the slickest ponytail he’d ever seen march past him to the professor’s desk. She set her packet down. He thanked her. She left.
Jesus Christ. Finally.
“All finished, Wonwoo?” His professor mumbled in a tone that hardly escaped his own lips, glancing up at the boy expectantly.
Pushing up his glasses, Wonwoo nodded.
“I suppose it’s harder for you to sit there and wait than it is to write the actual exam, isn’t it?” The professor noted with an almost undetectable smirk as he slid the test packet inside a tan-coloured folder, to which Wonwoo turned January cold.
“I don’t know.” Wonwoo shrugged, pretending to feel unbothered when in reality his skin was slithering like a snake pit at the thought of being even marginally perceived. “Maybe.”
“You have a good summer, alright?”
“Thanks. You too.”
Wonwoo swept a quick glance over the classroom right before he left, noticing that Seokmin was sat beside the wall, one hand tangled tight into his black, ruffled tresses as his pencil scribbled all over the paper like he was writing pure nonsense. He probably was.
And Wonwoo meant that in a nice-this isn’t really your sweet spot, but you’ll manage nonetheless-way. After leaving the classroom, Wonwoo thought he might go home and plunge head first into his oasis of bedsheets and flat, foam pillows that he loved so much, and permit himself to decay until it was physically impossible to lie down any longer. But he decided against it at the last minute, turning up at the café instead with his shoulder-strung book bag and the timely urge for a scone. He then sat down at his favourite table.
Pulled out his laptop.
Opened the document he was at incessant war with.
The last scene he’d written was breakfast.
“Uh, okay. Orange juice… or orange juice?”
“Did you say orange juice?”
“I did.”
“So… chocolate milk?”
“Ha! Funny... is there any sort of correlation between being a complete nerd and making such well-woven jokes?”
“Not sure. But I’ll get back to you when I find out… thanks. Your tea is sitting on the island, by the way.”
“Thank you, Won. Oh—you even put it in my Woodstock mug!”
“Yes, why are you so surprised that I remember?”
“Because it’s always hidden at the back of our cupboard, behind ten other mugs that we certainly don’t need and all our plates. I mean, I guess it’s my fault. Half of them are from my mom.”
“It’s sweet.”
“It takes up too much space. But I can’t tell her no.”
“That, you’ve got to work on.”
“The Christmas thing isn’t happening anymore, if that helps. I think the thought of having to cram all my family into our living room for a night was what motivated me the most. My mom said she’ll send us poinsettias instead. I think that’s way easier.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, I can assert myself. Sometimes.”
“No, no. I do believe you. I’m proud. Okay—bottoms up.”
“How’s the combination of venlafaxine and orange juice?”
“I don’t know. Juicy?”
“Better juicy than anxious?”
“You could say that.”
Right, back when Wonwoo actually had the willpower to make himself breakfast rather than slapping a mixed berry Poptart into the toaster or worse, nothing at all. Back when he could wake up before noon without feeling nauseous enough to curl into a ball and drape the sheets over his aching head. Back when he actually took his medicine. Her face beaming at him from across their table had always been like a glass of sunlight and citrus. She had been his own vitamin.
Wonwoo knew he wasn’t going to write. He was just going to stare and mope and ensnare himself in the pinwheel of memories that blew over him whenever he had the gall to reread his past literature.
The Woodstock mug. She’d taken that with her.  
He decided it was strange and sometimes irritating how love, broken or not, could suture itself into even the most mundane things. Orange juice was just that—juice—the carton he used to pick up and impetuously drop into his grocery cart every so often. Now, it wasn’t juice at all, but slow mornings, steaming tea kettles, and reading together on the couch with legs all tangled up until lunch time.
Now, Wonwoo couldn’t drink it at all.
Breaking the lemon raspberry scone in half, Wonwoo dropped a flaky piece into his mouth before it got too cold, and then proceeded to close the document. There was no way in hell he would write, and while he loved drowning in his own misery in order to snuff any glimpse of productivity more than the average individual, he thought it might be worthwhile to finally start that schedule.
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[ Wonwoo | 8:20 pm ]: schedule.pdf
[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: thanks
[ Her | 8:56 pm ]: don’t piss me off again
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—APRIL 30TH.
For an April morning, it was surprisingly bright. The sun was out in full and glistering warmth by the time Wonwoo stepped onto the sidewalk and began pacing down to the park, practically needing to squint the entire way. He almost hated it. Early mornings were not his friend, nor were the blades of light cutting across his glasses. But today was his first writing session with you and Wonwoo knew it was more than crucial that he was the furthest thing from tardy—it would be akin to willingly setting his hands inside a burning fire if not.
You agreed to meet at the park since it was roughly equal distance between Wonwoo’s apartment and some breakfast place you wanted to stop at. He thought it was uncharacteristically thoughtful of you to shoot him a text asking if he wanted anything, though Wonwoo declined nonetheless. It was damn near impossible for him to eat a bite of food until lunch time, hence his expression softening in confusion when he at last climbed into the passenger seat of your sleek silver car and was greeted by you passing him a cold tea.
“Am I… holding this for you?” He wondered, sitting still.
You shook your head. “No. It’s yours.”
“I didn’t ask for anything.”
“Yes, I realize that. I can read, thank you.”
Wonwoo wasn’t going to argue. He simply shut his mouth, clicked on his seatbelt, and set the tea into the cup holder. He then began looking around at your car’s interior. Everything was exceptionally clean and smelled sugary, like iced gingerbread.
The thing was, Wonwoo still wasn’t very sure how to talk to you, and most often there was the stiffest frog in his throat whenever he sat around you in silence for too long. Your thumbs were tapping against your phone at light speed. It reminded him of how Seokmin was texting you back at the boy’s apartment when they were studying for finals. Wonwoo couldn’t help but wonder if Seokmin was naturally more inclined to respond to you out of friendship or fear. Maybe even a pinch of both if that was possible. Another quiet minute passed by.
“Okay, fuck, sorry,” you suddenly spluttered at random, quickly slotting your phone into the GPS holder, “just some shit with my mom. Um, okay. Yeah. We can get going.”
“All good," Wonwoo answered.
“You know where we’re off to?”
“Vaguely. The track by Caldwell High School.”
He watched you flit him a smile. “That’s the place. I’ll explain more once we get there. And, by the way, I am expecting you to drink that tea. It’s not anything crazy. It’s oolong. Only a bit of caffeine.”
“I drink coffee, you know.”
“Yes, and it probably makes you jittery and insufferable.”
Wonwoo preferred not to comment.
The car ride wasn’t too long. Actually, Wonwoo did love a good car ride. He remembered the long trips he used to take with his family to the water park when he was a child, the sensation of the breeze blowing into his face and how different shades of green would scatter in through the windows as the sun hit the tree leaves like emeralds. There was something so limerent and sadly distant about the memory that Wonwoo felt his chest hurt. Even if he were to take that same road, and smell the same breeze, and see his skin glow with the same hues of the forest, he doubted it would feel the same.
His mouth had gone awfully dry. Wonwoo then reached for the cold tea sitting in the cup holder and took a sip, suddenly very appreciative that you had thought to get him something, anyway.
And while he couldn’t be too certain, Wonwoo wanted to think that maybe this would be a good memory, too.
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After the half-hour long car ride, Wonwoo made sure to stretch when he stepped out into the empty parking lot. It was cloudier now, a bit more of a breeze to help counteract the warmth that remained in the air. You came around to join him, twisting out a cramp in your leg while adjusting the purse over your shoulder.
The walk to the track field wasn’t long, no more than a few minutes, and Wonwoo obediently trailed at your side until he witnessed the bleachers slowly coming into view. It resurfaced memories from his own high school days in PE, which Wonwoo had actually been quite successful at despite his distaste for sports and their atmosphere in general. He remembered liking kickball the best.
You sighed in a wistful tone while staring across the marked asphalt and fresh April grass. “All high school tracks look the same, don’t they?” Then, you carefully set your purse onto the bleachers.
Wonwoo rolled his shoulders, taking a more observant look around. It wasn’t strikingly different from the track at his high school.
“Sure. I guess.”
“I mean, there are some differences. We had ditches by our track. Come to think of it, I honestly believe they put them there for kids to hurl in from heat stroke or over-exertion… that’s what I did, anyway. It was right before I had to do triple jump. I hated it because you had to really build up speed. I didn’t want to run. So, even if I hadn’t thrown up from heat stroke, I probably would’ve made myself throw up some other way. Straight to the nurse. She gave me a popsicle.”
He glanced at you sideways. “Seriously?”
“Mmhm.”
“You’d rather throw up than hop, like, three times?”
“I said it was the running part I didn’t like.”
Wonwoo couldn’t imagine purposefully making himself upchuck in order to get out of something. If his anxiety was terrible enough, then he wouldn’t even have to worry about it, really.
That was its own mechanism of disaster.
“Running is eighty-percent of Activity Days," Wonwoo said.
You clicked your tongue at him. “Exactly. And I’d do anything to never run. I tried to sit in one time with the seventh graders. They were in their art block and they were doing painting under the trees; birdhouses or something. But their teacher kicked me out. And she didn’t even let me take the fucking birdhouse that I was painting.”
“The nerve,” Wonwoo answered, scratching his temple.
He proceeded to take a seat on the metal bench, rubbing his hands together. He still didn’t know how Mingyu fit into everything.
“So… what’s your plan, here?”
You sat next to him, folding one leg over your thigh and proceeding to reveal a journal that you had stuffed inside your expensive bag. The tips of your fingers skimmed through a few fluttering pages, until you stopped on one in particular that was ink-abused with cursive scribbles. Wonwoo assumed you did most of your planning on a laptop, hence his surprise to learn that you actually used a journal. He had a journal himself, though it hadn’t been touched in months. It mostly contained small poetic excerpts.
Next, you pulled out a pen.
“This is how I first ran into Mingyu. At my school’s track field. He was new and good at all the activities. I swear, his name spread like wildfire. Anyways, I haven’t figured out all the bits and bobs. I want to really soak in the feeling of—oh!” Suddenly, you grasped the journal back onto your lap, the pen hitting the paper in a cursive ribbon that Wonwoo could hardly read. “I just thought of a great line. His eyes, I wanted to soak in them, like an oasis.”
You stabbed the paper again to make a period.
“Not bad,” Wonwoo commented.
“Okay, here it is!” A black case was pulled from your purse, and once you unzipped it, Wonwoo realized it was the video camera that you had initially shown him at his apartment. “Okay, I want you to film some stuff. The field, obviously. I need it from different perspectives. It will help me with setting the scene later on.”
“Why do I have to film it?”
“Because, Seokmin told me you’re quite handy with film equipment stuff, and I don’t want to drop it. So just do it, please?”
Accepting the video camera from your hand, Wonwoo sighed in agreement. Flipping open the side-screen of the camera, Wonwoo began clicking some buttons and adjusting the focus. Luckily, he was familiar with the particular camcorder thanks to a film education course he’d taken outside of school.
While you busied yourself at the bleachers with starting up your laptop, Wonwoo began collecting footage, slowly panning the camera across the vast length of the gravel track and the grassy soccer fields situated beyond. He kept a concentrated eye on the side-screen to ensure the lighting wouldn’t change too drastically. A wind had picked up from over the forest, and he could see how the clouds were consequently being pushed along like herded sheep in the sky.
Once he brushed back the floppy, black hair that kept tickling his face, Wonwoo lowered the camera and turned to you.
“So, where else should I film?”
You were typing something, and didn’t bother looking up.
“Go across the field. Film from the other side.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“I have to go all the way over there?”
“Yes. Walk, crawl. Skip, hop. I don’t care. Just do it, please.”
“Jesus Christ,” he huffed out, feeling tired and yearning to go home, “I hate how seriously you’re taking this, y’know that?”
Your fingers continued blitzing against the keyboard.
“Nobody likes a complainer.”
Ironic, he thought, but obviously kept to himself.
There wasn’t a point in expecting any sympathy from you—that, he already knew—which engendered Wonwoo’s long, trudging walk from one side of the track to the other, the wind irritably blowing his grown-out locks over his glasses every time he attempted sweeping them back. Hoisting the camera back up, Wonwoo adjusted the side-screen and began his same ritual of steadily panning the camera along the landscape.
You appeared in the view, still sat on the bleachers, though nothing about your face or figure was too discernible. It felt like you were a background character in a painting, just a little glob of acrylic.
“All done?”
Finally, you had glanced up at him with a smile.
Wonwoo nodded. “Unless you need anything else filmed?”
“No, that should be enough. The track is most important.”
“Right.”
He tried giving back the camera.
“Actually, do you mind keeping it?”
“Um, okay. But how will you look at the footage?
“Dropbox. We’ll share one. Upload the clips there.”
Wonwoo plopped himself back down on the bench, fitting the camcorder into its black case. He pulled the zipper along the seam.
“How much longer do we need to be here?”
“Not that much. Just let me finish this paragraph.”
There was a dull pain throbbing at the front of his skull, edging down to his temples—across his nose bridge where his glasses pressed in more tightly than usual. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled a deep breath, trying to escape the feeling, the nausea, the chills that were beginning to seep up his neck as the wind blew turbulently against him. It would be embarrassing if this happened here, right in front of you. The hard lump had suddenly lurched forward in Wonwoo’s throat but he leaned his head down last minute and swallowed it despite the roughness. No, everything was okay.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Wonwoo opened his eyes, staring down at the trembling hands buried in his lap. Subtly, he pulled the sleeves of his cardigan over them. He assumed his face was reflecting a sheer, sickly opacity.
“Nothing.”
“Uh, sure. Now look me in the eyes and say that.”
Again, Wonwoo swallowed, but he managed nonetheless.
“Nothing’s wrong. I get headaches sometimes. That’s all.”
“… Oh. Well, I’m basically done here. I was gonna ask if you wanted to walk a lap around the track with me, but maybe we should just go home. I mean, how bad is it? Your headache?”
Yes, yes. Home. Wonwoo wanted to go home. He had only been away from his apartment for a solid two hours, and yet all his mind and body’s energy had completely drained. He felt dried out, withered, fragile as tempered glass. Going home sounded cosmic. 
“It’s getting better. I wouldn’t mind walking with you.”
“Oh! Cool. If it gets really bad, just tell me.” You then spent a minute collecting your belongings back into the cream purse.
Wonwoo immediately looked the other way, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair, mouthing a string of guttural curse words directed at his discombobulated head. Because what the hell was he doing? All his relief and peace had just suckled itself down an invisible drain. Why on earth did he agree? Why?
“I think this will help me, too," you said, having left the shiny bleachers behind, instead kicking the pebbles at your feet, “if we walk the entire track, then it’s like we did the four-hundred meter.”
“You’re supposed to run the four-hundred meter.”
“Well, I know that.”
“I’m surprised you hate running. I mean, you walk so fucking quickly sometimes.”
He heard you snort, clearly amused by his observation.
“It’s because I’ve mastered the art of sashaying. To have a perfect sashay, you can’t walk too slow, but you also can’t walk too fast. It’s like a strut. You need to have confidence while you do it. It lets people know that you’re serious and professional. I’m not dragging my feet, but I’m also not in a rush. It’s the perfect pace.”
Wonwoo sniffled and scrunched the glasses up his nose, continuing alongside you at a pace that was rather aimless.
“I didn’t realize there was a science behind sashaying.”
“Now you know,” you declared.
Wonwoo’s  upper lip quirked slightly, and a small grin appeared on his face, which was starting to dapple with colour.
“I don’t sashay, do I?”
At that, you laughed, “no, you amble.”
“Yeah, I’m an ambler… which basically means I’m an unmotivated, pointless person who will probably go nowhere in life.”
For a moment, you stopped walking, and you merely furrowed your brow at him while your forehead creased with thought. Wonwoo stopped as well. He raked back his fluttering, windswept hair and smirked, flashing his teeth. The behaviour was uncharacteristically snide and a bit of a dig at your bluntness, but he couldn’t help it.
“Don’t remember, huh?”
“No… but it sounds familiar.”
“You told me that, the day I met you—that people who walk slowly are unmotivated and pointless. Their life is a waste, basically.”
He noticed your eyes shift up toward the right, as though you were pulling the memory forward from the intricate files of your brain. And then you started to smile, and it made Wonwoo smile, too.
“Oh, I do believe I said that.” You started walking again, and he followed. “Ha! Wow, you’re right. I said that. I’m so funny. I mean, I was right. You only walk slow when you have nowhere to be.”
“I did have somewhere to be. I was going to meet you.”
“Well, then you just didn’t care.” He felt your elbow press shallowly into his rib. “See what I mean? Unmotivated and pointless. And, honestly, I would have taken your apathy as more of an insult if it wasn’t for the fact that you seem to treat most things like that.”
“So, I’m just supposed to accept that you’re calling me a loser? How do people normally react when you say things like that?”
“Things like what? They’re just my observations about the world. You are a person in this world. I was making an observation about you. Albeit, it came across strongly. But I don’t know. No one ever cared about being gentle or sugar-coating with me. Gives you tough skin, y’know? Metaphorically, of course! I always moisturize.”
 Wonwoo scoffed, smiling at your nonchalance. “The way you word things is honestly fascinating.”
“Psh. How do you even remember that?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem that hard to remember. It was a pretty memorable, somewhat awful experience, to be fair.”
“Awful?” You retaliated in unprecedented disbelief, pushing into his arm until he allowed his tall frame to stumble. “Try again.”
“Interesting?” Wonwoo substituted, his heart thumping. 
Your eyes were narrowed at him, glimmering with a sharpness that made his fingers clench into anxious fists.
“… That’s a little better.”
He exhaled a soft breath of relief.
As you began nearing the full circle, Wonwoo realized his head had eased from its horrible aching and the chills dampening down his neck were gone. Everything didn’t feel as awful compared to before. He was still tired, and his energy was sputtering in tiny, dying sparks, but at least his desire to crawl under the earth and degrade to his bare bones had subsided into something less morose.
“I heard you were having a get together next week,” Wonwoo decided to ask, rounding the last bend in the track.
“Oh, the dinner party?”
“Yeah. Seokmin’s helping you plan it, right?”
“He is. Which I appreciate. My mom is usually the one in charge of everything, and she loathes it. But, I mean, when we try to help her, she just ends up fretting even more—says we’re basically getting in the way and ruining it. I don’t know. She’s such a snappy perfectionist. Seokmin can have fun dealing with that.”
Wonwoo almost made a thoughtless comment in response to your story—he’s probably had eons of practice with you—though the pieces connected just in time and his mouth sealed shut.
“Your dad can’t help either?” He questioned instead.
“Ha! No way. My dad helping is a recipe for fucking disaster if I’ve ever seen it. He’s painfully bad at decorating, can hardly be trusted to cook or invite anyone from the guest list. The most my mom allows him to do is set the table.” You then scoffed, shooting a pebble forward with the tip of your shoe. “I swear, he knows exactly how to push my mom’s buttons. The faster he does it, the quicker she kicks him out and he’s absolved of all chores. What a cheat, huh?”
“Hm, yeah… is Mingyu going?”
“Of course.” You smiled. “He always goes.”
At that point, you had circled back to the bleachers. Adjusting the bag strewn over your shoulder, you heaved out a longing sigh.
“Well, that’s four-hundred meters in the books.”
“Is it everything you hoped and dreamed it would be?”
You cackled, “not even close. I think I was right to avoid it.”
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—MAY 3RD.
Wonwoo slid his pharmacy badge through the time-machine until he heard the beep. After an eight-hour shift, he was hungry and tired, but Wonwoo also knew the second that he got home, his urge to eat and desire to sleep would be gone. Instead, he would spend his midnight staring up at the ceiling, thinking. About anything and everything, and nothing at all. When the first cracks of dawn light would spill in from under his curtain, then he would close his eyes.
It was all very typical.
He stood outside the store, phone in hand, waiting for Vernon to pick him up because Wonwoo hadn’t felt like walking home despite the softness of the nighttime wind and the alabaster moon’s shining ambiance. The mirage was pretty and he enjoyed it, but his feet were too sore to inch him another step. Luckily, Vernon didn’t take long.
Luckily, he was the only one of Wonwoo’s few friends with a sleep schedule just as horridly fucked up as his. It was eleven at night, but on a weekday? The dead, empty street testified for him.
“Heyy, Glasses,” Vernon sang in his throaty voice as Wonwoo climbed into the passenger seat, “you look like a prostitute standin’ there, waitin’ for me to come get your ass. But a sophisticated one.”
The interior didn’t smell heavily of weed, he noted. Thank fucking god, Vernon had finally paid someone to dry clean it. Either that, or he took the initiative into his own hands.
“I highly doubt you have ever seen a prostitute in your entire life. And the fact you think they’d be standing outside a pharmacy at one of the quietest parts on this block attests to that.”
“God, I hate when you get all technical n’ shit. Such a stiff.”
“I’m tired.”
“Yeah, well. You’re always tired. N’ for the record, I have seen a prostitute, outside Room 319. It was a week before Christmas; she had this huge coat on, walkin’ up to people in her pink heels and this crazy eyeshadow that made her eyes pop. I bet she’s a nice girl.”
“Mhm. I bet she was.”
“Oh, you’re a cunt, yeah? You don’t believe me.”
“Does it matter?”
“I’ll take you one day. Room 319’s got a table with your name on it. They’ve got this one shot, the Stabilizer— it’ll put you down like a fuckin’ sick dog but it gets you the best drunk of your life. Maybe we’ll even run into Pink Heels lady. She’s our Halley’s Comet.”
“Halley’s Comet only comes once every seventy-five years. “
“You know what the fuck I meant.”
“Not interested.”
Vernon blinked at him for a moment in the dull light, and then he sighed, forfeiting. He placed the tip of the key in the ignition, but he quickly removed it as though he remembered something.
“Wait, I’ve gotta ask—how’s it going with Her?”
Biting down on the inside of his cheek, Wonwoo reached for the seatbelt and pulled it slowly across his chest, debating how intelligent of an idea it would be to entertain Vernon’s curiosity. But he could also understand the allure. You were like this enigmatic myth that people craved to know about, even if it frightened them.
Wonwoo’s head collapsed back against the seat.
“It’s going well.”
Vernon spat out a boisterous laugh, a hand slapping down on his knee. “Jesus Christ. You’re so dry, man. That’s it?”
“I mean, it’s true. We’ve started the book. Or, she has.”
“Okay, and?” Vernon attempted to engage him further.
“And, what?”
“What’s she like, obviously? Is she actually a fuckin’ psychopath? Is she normal? Can she walk on her hands? I dunno!”
Wonwoo rubbed underneath his glasses. He didn’t really want to talk about you when you weren’t there. It felt like a Bloody Mary situation, where you’d magically conjure in the backseat to sinch your cold hands around his neck and wrangle him limp and lifeless. But then there were Vernon’s shimmeringly prying eyes that just wouldn’t stop burning Wonwoo no matter how hard he bit his tongue.
“I have nothing to say. She’s cool.”
“Oh my fuckin’ God.” Vernon slacked back into his seat, clutching at his steering wheel. “You just don’t wanna talk about it… oh! Shit. I just remembered. She’s having a dinner party tonight, isn’t she? In Hill Crest. Or as I like to call it, Rich People Neighbourhood.”
“Yeah, that’s where her parents live… how do you know that?”
“Shit!” Vernon immediately shuffled up in his seat and delivered a hard smack into Wonwoo’s shoulder. “We should drive down and check it out! Right fuckin’ now!” He was lit up with excitement, even though Wonwoo considered it a terrible idea.
“No. Absolutely not. And answer my question.”
“Was sittin’ behind Seokmin at Solar Pop, he talks really loud, happened to overhear some things—doesn’t matter. I think we should go! C’mon, allow some spontaneity into your life! Why not?”
“What the fuck do you mean, why? It’s a family party. With some close friends, which—in case you haven’t noticed—neither of us are. You can’t fucking crash a family dinner party. Who does that? Not to mention the fact that it's eleven at night. They're probably washing up. Sending people home. By the time we get there, it's lights out."
“Aren’t you her friend?”
“No. I’m just someone who’s doing her a favour.”
“Favours are from friends.”
“We’re. Not. Friends.”
“Okay—fuck, Glasses. Fine. We won’t crash the stupid dinner party. But don’t you wanna go for a drive or something? I’m tellin’ you, the houses are insane. Last time I went down there, it was for a big fuckin’ party some dude at your university threw. I think I ran this by you already, when I talked about tryin’ to chat up Her. I stopped by with my old friend—y’know, Dots, the guy that died from the overdose and everything. That party was crazy. It was in a mansion.”
“Vernon,” Wonwoo had just finished massaging the throbs at his warm temples, “we are not going to Hill Crest.”
His friend swung his head in disapproval, making a tsking sound with his teeth. “Such a fuckin’ stiff.” He started the car. “It’s the fact I know you have jack shit to do tonight, or tomorrow.”
“I’m not gonna do some stalker drive-by on her house.”
“You don’t wanna do Room 319. You don’t wanna judge a bunch of richies sittin’ up in their ivory towers. I mean, it’s not like we’re eggin’ them or spray painting fuckin’ curse words on their eight-door garages. What do you wanna do?”
Wonwoo rolled down the window and leaned his face toward the moonlight, to which he could feel the wind brush up against his skin in feathery strokes, as though it were caressing him. He knew that Vernon meant in a general sense rather than in the heat of the moment. But in a general sense, Wonwoo would rather not be anywhere at all. He would rather do nothing, or even exist.
“Can you just take me home? Please?”
Vernon exhaled a defeated gust of breath and began to angle his tires away from the curb, the pharmacy lights pulled behind them.
“Yeah, ‘course. Mr. Boring.”
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—01:49
Wonwoo hadn’t been able to fall asleep since Vernon dropped him off a couple hours ago. He’d anticipated that. Usually, Wonwoo wouldn’t do anything. He wouldn’t toss or turn, or pace circles around his bedroom, or count down from one-hundred, because even if he did, none of it would work. His mind would still be wide awake.
Hence Wonwoo’s decision to grab his phone. Staring at a lurid screen definitely wasn’t going to help, though he wasn’t trying to sleep, anyway. That conversation with Vernon was repeating in his head like a chattering bird, pushing him, pushing him, pushing him to find your Instagram and dig into your pictures because now Wonwoo was thinking of your dinner party and how vehemently you seemed to hate it. He saw that you had posted something quite recently, around the same time Wonwoo had left the pharmacy.
For a moment, his thumb hovered over the post.
He didn’t want to press it because he didn’t care.
Or, maybe he did.
There were multiple pictures in the set, and Wonwoo flicked through all of them. Some were of food, close-ups of your jewelry—you even included a picture with Seokmin. But then Wonwoo had settled on the last photo and something in his stomach convulsed.
He recognized the dress like a flash of light—the sapphire one with the glimmering detail that you had modelled for him at the expensive boutique in the mall. Of course, that arm hanging cheekily low around your hip belonged to your boyfriend, Mingyu. He had a champagne glass pressed to his lips, fitted in his black suit with his hair neatly combed and styled into place. The smugness in his face was stifling. Wonwoo rolled onto his stomach, his eyes refusing to drift from the picture for even an instant. He just kept staring.
Staring and thinking. Staring and thinking.
One minute spent staring at your smile.
The next minute at the low placement of Mingyu’s hand.
Another minute staring at your sparkling dress.
The next minute at Mingyu’s brutally cocky expression.
He would switch back and forth.
But Wonwoo didn’t really care. He was just bored.
And alone with his thoughts.
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—END OF PART PART ONE.
NOTE! while i truly cherish & adore all comments, pls refrain from remarks such as "pls post part x" "i need part x" "when are you posting part x" while i do understand the sentiment, i find these comments very dismissive & kinda disrespectful! i don't prefer to post series fics and so i don't receive these often, but pls note that if you comment this i will delete the comment!
the fic itself is completely done, so all i have to do is get the parts ready for posting. however, bc this is the first part, i don't have a set posting schedule just yet. i think it will depend on roughly how long those who read the fic take to finish it! but i will be sure to make a post about it or include the schedule in part two once i figure it out!
again, thank u so much your ur patience :3
much luv!! 💕
993 notes · View notes
maplesyrupsainz · 11 months ago
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˖⁺。˚⋆˙do-over | MV1˖⁺。˚⋆˙
pairing: max verstappen x fashion designer!reader y/n (she/her)
genre: social media au, "enemies" (exes) to lovers
warnings: i just be making shit up fr
summary: in which they meet again and rekindle their relationship much to the delight of their fans
a/n: tbh i got no idea how to do enemies to lovers so i went for like a past messy breakup nd rekindle of the relationship now they're older nd more mature or wtvr let me know what u think!!! this was a req but it was super duper vague so i jus pulled this together nd pls fr bare in mind tht im not a max verstappen fan by any stretch lol
request!!!: Enemies to lovers with Max please
fc: maggie lindemann
my masterlist
alternate ending
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instagram ->
yourusername posted a story
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liked by yourbff, yoursister, and 83,238 others
twitter ->
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messages ->
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instagram ->
yourusername
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liked by danielricciardo, yourbff, and 927,194 others
yourusername heard you need inspiration
view all 18,293 comments
yourbff my girl forever nd ever ⭐️
liked by yourusername
user1 new fan gained
user2 omg i rmmbr her from when she dated max & now im just rediscovering her she's sooo gorgeous wtaf
user3 i can't believe max fumbled her
user4 my competition for her hand jus tripled
user5 quadrupled more like
user6 max verstappen found dead
user7 cant wait for a new collection
yourusername posted a story
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liked by maxverstappen1, yourbff, and 318,928 others
ynupdates I LOVE YOU SO MUCH
yourusername i love u 🫀🫀
user8 u are fr the coolest girl in the world
yoursister so proud of you 🥹
yourusername stop it you'll make me emotional 😭
user9 you are so so loved
user10 nothing you could've said would put us off supporting u forever🤟
messages ->
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instagram ->
maxverstappen1
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liked by landonorris, yourusername, and 719,948 others
maxverstappen1 life lately ⏰
view all 15,283 comments
user11 Y/N IN THE LIKES I REPEAT Y/N IN THE LIKES
user12 no freaking way
user13 i need to know what's going on have they spoken since the podcast ?!!
user14 exes to lovers arc incoming🥹
user15 he's so cute
landonorris why is your comment section so full up of drama max
maxverstappen1 i didnt ask for this
user16 max is so tired of us LOL
user17 not sorry
user18 i love drama
user19 max acting dumb like he didnt post this to get her attention
ynupdates
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liked by user17, user3, and 18,294 others
ynupdates y/n y/l/n spotted today outside a cafe with ex beau max verstappen, following the release of a podcast episode on which y/n discussed her feelings on how the relationship played out. the meet up has come after they were seen liking each other's instagram stories & posts, however the discussion they were having reportedly seemed heated and as though they were having a disagreement. rumours/theories of them rekindling their romance were rife but what is the consensus now? we are sending our love to y/n as always!
view all 6,183 comments
user20 omg what is happening
user21 im so surprised she even met with him
user22 he wants her back & she cant deny him bc every girl has a soft spot for their first love
user23 agree but tbh it's probs good tht they argued or wtvr coz she isnt giving in to him she's making sure he fights for her 🤷
user24 some of u guys are delulu af
user25 what i would give to be a fly on the wall in that convo
user26 i hope he's changed or at least fr lets her move on
yourusername
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liked by yourbff, maxverstappen1, and 798,373 others
yourusername never lonely 🖤
view all 6,183 comments
user27 omg first time we've seen y/n with her guitar in ages
user28 the guitar omg
yourbff best girl in the world
yourusername i love u 🫀🫀
yoursister hard at work or hardly working?
yourusername shut up you
danielricciardo you better not be drinking tequila without me!
yourbff we wouldn't dream of it
user29 omg daniel publicly being friends with y/n !!?
user30 something is changing here
user31 there's something in the air 🤔
yourusername posted a story
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liked by yourbff, danielricciardo, and 88,294 others
danielricciardo hang tight
yourusername lol thanks??
user32 send locaysh 🤟🤟
user33 we miss u y/n
user34 omgggggg i cant wait for more designs from u
maxverstappen1 posted a story
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liked by danielricciardo, landonorris, and 213,293 others
yourbff MAX WHAT ARE YOU DOING
maxverstappen1 getting coffee what does it look like
yourbff i know you're not taking that to y/n
danielricciardo if y/bff/n msgs u ignore her
maxverstappen1 👍
user35 SOMETHING IS HAPPENING HERE
user36 is this for y/n
user37 this plus y/n's story .... the maths is mathing
user38 No freaking way
yourusername posted a story
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liked by danielricciardo, charles_leclerc, and 134,293 others
charles_leclerc im on the edge of my seat!!
yourusername 😭 hi charles
yourbff I KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING Y/N U GUYS ARE NOT SLICK
danielricciardo ignore y/bff/n
yourusername done & done
user39 im spinning around
user40 i've connected the dots
twitter ->
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instagram ->
yourbff posted a story
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liked by maxverstappen1, danielricciardo, and 22,293 others
danielricciardo have you forgiven me yet
yourbff i'll forgive max before i forgive you
maxverstappen1 have you forgiven me?
yourbff what do you think max emilian
yourusername you are not mad at all
yourbff of course not. i always loved max
yourusername 😜
ynupdates posted a story
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liked by user22, user8, and 84,283 others
user45 oh my god it's real
user46 NO WAY IS SHE BACK IN THE PADDOCK
user47 & she said she couldn't ever be just friends with her first love...
ynupdates NO YOU'RE RIGHT
user48 they are soulmates for real
user49 i can't believe all it took was a podcast episode
yourusername posted a story
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liked by maxverstappen1, danielricciardo, and 548,293 others
charles_leclerc i will say i am shocked but happy beyond words to have you back!
yourusername ❤️❤️ catch up soon!
danielricciardo she's back for goood
yourusername don't speak too soon
yourbff can i come
yourusername max said only if you forgive him in writing
yourbff 😑
user50 shameless 🥹🥹🥹
user51 YOU GOT THAT GLOW OF A NEW OLD RELATIONSHIP
ynupdates not you trying to pretend you aren't ecstatic
user52 i want whatever max verstappen has
ynupdates posted a story
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liked by maxverstappen1, user44, and 128,103 others
user53 the lol
ynupdates trying to pretend i care about racing😕😕😕
user54 he's down bad for her always has been always will be
twitter ->
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instagram ->
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc, and 828,045 others
yourusername weekend off
view all 5,921 comments
user55 they're just friends they're just friends they're just friends
user56 i dont believe it for a second
yourbff get back to work
yourusername im busy right now
yourbff oh i wonder what with
user57 max max max max
user58 she gets prettier everytime i see her
maxverstappen1 so glad to have you back on the paddock y/n ❤️
yourusername glad to be back !
user59 they r so stiff
user60 trying to trick us into thinking they arent in love
twitter ->
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instagram ->
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, yourbff, and 982,193 others
yourusername all the good in my life
tagged: maxverstappen1, yourbff
view all 21,283 comments
user64 SHE LOOKS SOOO HAPPY
ynupdates her smile😭😭😭
yourbff the way you're glowing
liked by yourusername
maxverstappen1 i love you ❤️
yourusername i love u too 🥹🫶
user65 i'll never recover
user66 the new (old) f1 it couple
user67 best wag of all time
user68 cant wait to buy all of y/n's new collection
user69 literally same it looks soo cool
maxverstappen1
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liked by yourusername, yourbff, and 1,284,083 others
maxverstappen1 i won
tagged: yourusername
view all 34,838 comments
ynupdates omg she is so hot what the hell
maxverstappen1 you're telling me
user70 OH MY GODDD
user71 her in max's car oh myyyy
yourusername wow
yourusername i love u fr
maxverstappen1 ❤️
danielricciardo you're welcome everyone
yourbff you do not get credit for this
danielricciardo have you forgiven me yet
maxverstappen1 and me?
yourbff no never
yourusername tell the truth y/bff/n
yourbff ok fine i was never mad
THE END 🤍
2K notes · View notes
poetryvampire · 3 months ago
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Well, I feel like utter trash tonight so
Rating BG3 men on how well they'd take care of you on your period
This is dumb and not well thought out and probably a bit bias let's gooo
Gale 🔮 Sweetheart cannot read the room bless him. Is so ready to help easy the pain, he's cracking open dusty books, going through all his herbs, spends all day trying to craft the best potion for your needs. Very sweet but honestly Tara sitting on your lap is doing a fine job. Once you get him to cuddle you're golden 6/10
Wyll ⚔️ Cmon. Are you kidding me? He's got you babe. Need something picked up? Done. Craving something? Made. Just want to lay around in bed all day? Hell yeah he's right there with you, you couldn't get out of his arms if you wanted to.Also a fan of romance novels? Wyll would 100% read to you. Like voices and everything, really amps up the mellow drama. He's happy to keep you laughing or get sultry with it. Makes a great opening act to spicy times. 10/10
Halsin 🐻 Woof. Very happy to help chase away those cramps by some good old fashioned pounding you into the earth. You're not gonna be able to feel anything after he gets his paws on you. Not put off by blood that's nature ba-by. Also pls consider bear sized teddy cuddles. 7/10
Astarion 🍷 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀 9/10
Rolan ✨️ As usual baby boy is too awkward to live. Not like super knowledgeable about them but wants to help you the best he can. Won't ask you directly though. Is a very quick study and takes note of what you need and like. If you need space or want to be glued to him hes already in place.If you're the kind of person that's laid up with cramps for a day or two he just happens to have those days off to be with you. You'll go for a hot water bottle and the kettle is already on. Honestly after awhile he knows your cycle better than you do. 8/10
Zevlor 🔥 If there's one thing this man knows it's being sore. It just comes with being a swordsman and an older gentleman. He is a god of working out sore muscles. Feeling achy? He goes all the way. Expect a long bath with a full body massage. He's gonna work out every inch of you and praise you like his personal god. Very patient really gonna go for the slow burn from sensual to sexual. Doesn't even expect anything back just wants to make you feel good. Will turn a downer day into a wildly romantic night. 11/10
Haarlep 😈 Couldnt give less of a shit. It's not that he's put off by it, he's had lots of experience with them but it doesn't do anything for him either. As for your suffering? He's a little empathetic, poor mortal with your poor weak body. That being said he does like you and to cuddle once in awhile so if you need some comfort he'll be there. 3/10
Raphael 👿 Jfc listen, he's waaaaay into it but will Not admit. In fact goes out of his way to let you know how off putting it is. He'll tell you how its nice to know you could still bare his young, like if he let's you. Loves the thought of breeding you and just the simple humanity of it that gets him. He cannot keep his hands off you but again will not admit why and will get mad about it. Like, how dare you look so good now of all times it's so rude. Guess I have to fuck you even though your pathetic little body keeps getting blood on my sheets smh -3/10
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peacheeeliz · 2 months ago
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COMMUNITY
profiles ⤏ study group
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Y/N JUNG @ yn__jungie : second year linguistics major. just wants to go at least one week without some girl in her dm asking about her older brother, jaehyun. she doesn't really go out of the way to talk to anybody else, but once you get to know her: clinically insane.
MARK LEE @ onyourm__ark : second year creative writing major, with a music minor. kind of a loser when it comes to romance, so when hyuck suggests to form a study group to talk to y/n more... he thinks it's a great idea.
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DONGHYUCK LEE @ haechanahceah : first year drama major. he's like y/n, clinically insane except he's very up front about it. he's the master instigator, just gives dumb idea after dumb idea.
JULIE HAN @ thee_julieh : first year dance major, with a fashion design minor. literally the sweetest girl, a very nice break from the chaos that is lee donghyuck. taking so many classes, so she's a busy girl.
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JIWOONG KIM @ jijiwoong : third year drama major. honestly like the dad of the study group, can't seem to catch a break when he's with them.
NICHA (MINNIE) YONTARARAK @ min.nicha : fourth year photography major. like jiwoong, she feels like the mother of the group. they're a lot...
ALLEN MA @ leniima : second year music major, with a dance minor. he knows everyone, everyone knows him. he's just really popular bcs he makes music outside of school.
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JOHNNY SUH @ professor_suh : japanese professor at ncity college and the study group's teacher. no one knows how he got this job; he doesn't know how he got this job; the dean doesn't know how he got this job. he's just here for a good time.
masterlist / next profile
ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ taglist is closed!
@teenyfinds @kittydollzz @dudekiss3r @413ktz @aek1ra @nneteyamss @mmjhh1998 @onlyhyunjin @malaysianctfan (can't tag you for some reason so pls check your permission settings!!) @txpxwxk @urlocalbeaner5 @injunnie-lemon @stareaa @rikisluv @nessaassen02 @nicholasluvbot @slayhaechan
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thefiery-phoenix · 7 months ago
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YANDERE HITOSHI SHINSOU HEADCANNONS
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Lol, this purple haired insomniac was MADE to be a yandere. As it is he never used to get proper sleep and when he met YOU, that's when his sleep schedule literally went right out of the window and down a drain, no joke. In fact, the reason he keeps having those dark circles beneath his eyes is because he always loses sleep thinking and fretting about you every second of the day. Are you safe? Are you all right? Have you eaten properly? He doesn't want you to neglect your health
He's always deeply worried and concerned for you but negative thoughts always cloud his mind and make him lose his sanity. You were a beautiful sweet innocent little angel. Why the HECK would someone so cute and sweet like you fall in love with someone who has such a villainous quirk? You could never love him the way he's OBSESSED and INFATUATED with you since he's a creepy weirdo (Is it bad I laughed while writing this?)
One day you made the mistake of praising him for using his quirk on Mineta after he tried touching you inappropriately. You clung to him like your life depended on it and YOU of all people actually PRAISED him for his quirk and you even called him your 'hero'. By now he was on cloud INFINITY and you just added more fuel to his crazy little fantasies he has of the 2 of you in his head along with his delusional psychotic thoughts about you 2
One hand, Shinsou just WANTS to use his quirk on you desperately to find out whether you actually like him or not, but part of him tells him not to or else you're gonna hate him till time exists. Surely you'd reject him if he ever asks you out and he's no professor in the romance department nor is he a flirty Romeo. Eventually, he'll turn to Aizawa for help but it's gonna turn out to be useless as hell since even HE'S clueless ASF. Lol, poor souls) but most of all, he's afraid of what sort of monster he might become and what he'll do to YOU if you don't reciprocate his feelings back 
If you accept them, well and good. You might have a stable and strong relationship and you have similar interests. But he will kidnap you eventually but ONLY if he ever gets insecure and scared that you're gonna leave him (Someone pls give this boi a hug!) And if you don't accept his feelings, you're STILL gonna get kidnapped in either case, you're gonna be toast....
He just wants to use his quirk on you SO BAD to make things much simpler and easier for both of you but he knows that if he does so, he's gonna be no more than some sort of sick psychopathic villain, like everyone always tells him. You told him he was a HERO, YOUR HERO and heroes wouldn't do something like that AT ALL. He's deeply conflicted now and he doesn't want to betray your trust 
He might stalk you whenever you go somewhere (Secretly, of course) just to make sure that you're gonna be safe. As each day passes, your presence to him is like oxygen. So, he'll resort to breaking into your room at night and try stealing some of your possessions that you won't bother about because of his overwhelming desire for you 
Like stated before, if Shinsou ever kidnaps you, it'll be a frantic act of him being an insecure scardey pants. He'll be apologizing so many times and asks you so nicely as to not hate him 
He'll give you your space. He knows how conflicting this whole kidnapping drama fest is for you and he'll let you cry, scream and sob all your anger and feelings out. He'll try reasoning with you in a sick and twisted way trying to convince you that it's for your own good and ensures he'll NEVER hurt you at all. He will NEVER use his quirk on you to make you do things you aren't comfortable with so you're safe with him 
He'll try his best to make you comfortable (As comfortable one can be while they're chained to a headboard of a bed) and he'll give you whatever you want. He'll let you roam around the house after the first week or so since he doesn't like seeing you tied up (As much as he secretly enjoys it). If you're being stubborn with him by refusing to talk to him or even acknowledge his presence, well... if you're testing his water levels of patience, you better know how to SWIM in them. He isn't really THAT patient and hence, he'll isolate you by just giving you basic necessities like food and water and warm clothes and leaving abruptly after that 
If you're STILL stubborn with him, THEN he'll use his quirk on you but just for simple stuff like hugging him and burying your head in his chest while he holds you like you're the most precious thing in the world. This was ALL he ever wanted from you, was that TOO MUCH to ask? When you realize he used his quirk on you, you'll be terrified of him for sure, and you'll hate him and it'll be a very long time for you to love him back but if you go back to square one and ignore him like you did before, he won't hesitate to use his quirk on you for more... dark and dire things
''Need I remind you what happened the LAST time you ignored me Kitty cat"
Just play your cards right and in time, you'll see his really soft side for you. He cares about you ALOT, he really does. But if you push him over the edge, he'll make you do all sorts of unsatisfactory things that you won't have a fun time doing. When it comes to rivals and enemies, he'll just use his quirk on them and make it look like some sort of suicide or accident
Loves to spoil you every now and then and he might even get you a pet cat so you both can take care of him
If Shinsou can't convince you to love him, he'll just have to FORCE you to......
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alornights · 1 year ago
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Bro I am obsessed with your bimbo!Reader it was so good and it honestly reminded me about the song bimbo doll by Tula Tsoil AND PLS THE THINGS I WILL DO FOR A KYLE ONE 🙏🏾🙏🏾
⟢ smarties
➜ in which ! kyle tries to resist the pretty bimbo girl.
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🌷 ﹫kyle broflovski.
✩ 🦩 warnings﹗suggestive.
🍧 ⟡ notes — BIMBOS BIMBOS I LOVE BIMBOS LORD
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masterlist [ check mlist for details ! ] — previous | next
🏷️ taglist | @corpseinpink , @stephs-inluv , @cyberrmishh , @itszzmoon , @elizabethnightingale4 , @woahnotmecryingoverafanfiction , @venom-ology , @weird0o0 , @loopycorn1123 , @twwkk , @h-harleybaby !
"I don't know..." The girl beside Kyle whined as he finally looked up from his page having spaced out.
Mr. Garrison sighed, "How the hell do you forget your backpack."
"I was in a rush." You murmured with a pout crossing your arms.
Kyle tilted his head somewhat amused by what was going on, usually, it was Cartman or Clyde making a fuss so this was new.
The girl turned to Kyle batting her long lashes with a smile, "Hey you, help me out?"
"Huh?"
You giggled pushing your desk to be next to him before leaning into him, "You'll help me out with this stuff, right?"
"Huh."
the only reason you guys even started talking was because you were failing half your classes and you begged kyle to tutor and how could he resist with the way you were staring at him.
even though he's mentally scared due to cartman from continuing relationships he just cant help himself.
trust, he tried desperately not to fall into the rabbit hole everyone else at school was going down with you.
but the way you just seemed to be a little more happier around him made his heart beat and he gave up.
yet he can't help but smile knowing cartman can't nor won't be able to get in the way of you two like he has with kyle's past relationships.
you're too dumb to notice, or you just don't fucking care.
maybe he likes you because your so naive in a way.
either way his head spins and his heart begins to explode with every passing day, his desire to be around you intensifying.
"Who would've thought that you of all people would be interested, let alone falling for Y/N of all people." Stan teased with a chuckle gulping down his soda.
Kyle rolled his eyes taking a sip of his own drink, "Me neither."
"Probably because you're too up your ass." Kenny joked with a grin throwing his bottle at Kyle's head.
everything you did was intoxicating to him, he couldn't breath.
the way you would plop yourself up on his desk your chest a little too close to his face, the urge to just plant his hands on your waist becoming all the prominent in his mind.
the way you'd link your arms with his as you walked through the halls, not paying anyone but him attention.
the way you'd just grab his hands without any notice and start playing with them sent shivers of delight down his body.
he lowkey feels like he's on drugs.
and when you start getting along with his brother? its over, he officially fallen head over heels for you.
and once again i give you a romance trope. bimbo pretty girl with the nerdy hot boy. MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN PEOPLE-
and when you started full on flirting with him he thought he'd die.
"You're so handsome Ky..." You murmur with a smile placing your hands on his shoulders, rubbing them slightly.
"You're making me go crazy." He groaned into your neck, wrapping his arms around your waist to bring you closer.
You giggled wrapping your arms around his neck to bring him closer, "Am I now?"
he's so interested in the gossip, like actually.
at first, he was iffy when you started telling people's drama but after a while, he was fully invested in these fucking plot lines.
somehow managing to get him to skip class, lord knows how.
oh he turns into such a "rebel" at times with you, maybe even lets you make out with him in the most obvious but not places.
bro starts getting real bold really fast though, calls you angel, precious, darling and all these other things.
confidently just starts bragging to all his friends about having you wrapped around his finger (even tho its also the other way around)
makes a living off of tutoring and dedicates half of it to you.
his dad is also somewhat rich, the guys a lawyer, he probably makes bank and gives allowances to his kids.
"What do you think?" You questioned walking out of the changing room, doing a little twirl before looking at yourself in the mirror to see if you were liking the look.
"Divine." Was all he could say giving you a thumbs up, looking anywhere but your face, watching as your dress began to hike up to your ass due to how tight it was.
"Really?" You questioned happily turning back to him.
He smiled with a laugh. "Really, you look beautiful angel."
you so totally got him into haircare and skin care.
you thought kyle was good looking before? he's looking like an angel sent from heaven a few weeks after consistent care.
you also some how manage to get him to drive you anywhere you wanted for lunch, of course, to study.
loves loves loves getting you to play basketball with him.
lord have mercy on him when you start running. the man is gone.
he'll help show you how to shoot a shot coming up behind you letting his arms go all over you with a smirk.
and god knows what happens when you full on just start making actual moves, actual meaning risky moves.
"Mmmm, Kyle can we go home." You whined, tugging him away from his friends. "Please? 'M so bored watching this."
Kyle sighed kissing your lips lightly, "Soon precious. We're almost done with the match."
You pouted letting your hands go under his shirt to draw circles on his stomach. "Please Ky?"
Kyle paused sucking in a breath taking a look at the other guys who to engrossed in playing basketball before looking at you. "Angel."
"Let's go..." You demanded with an innocent smile, letting your hands fall lower and lower.
Kyle groaned, "The things you do to me, let's go."
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unicorncornflakes · 1 year ago
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Summer Isles - Modern!Aemond x Reader | Chapter 2
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Paring: Aemond Targaryen x Reader
Summary: After two years in the Summer Isles, Aemond returns from his international stay during his doctorate ready to be with the girl he left Westeros for.
Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern/ Setting Emotional Hurt/ Comfort/ Drama & Romance/ Eventual Smut.
Warnings: Not at this moment, maybe later :P This is the best I can write these days, sorry :(
General Tag-List (If you wanna be tagged in thi series or all of my work, let me know): @thedamewithabook @bluevxnus @hiddencurator @tempt-ress @watercolorskyy @tsujifreya @qyburnsghost
Tag-List for this series (If you wanna be tagged in thi series or all of my work, let me know): @snh96 @thetrueblackheart @zenka69 @darkenchantress
Author´s note: Pls, enjoy! Feedback, shares and comments are always welcome!
Word Count: 3.4K
Aemond returned to pay for a cigarette without having barely taken a couple of drags. It was the third cigarette that he put out discouraged at that party. He knew that some of Aegon's friends were trying to be nice, asking him how his time in the Summer Isles had been... trying to be nice, most of them, not all.
He had been terribly grateful for their attitude to all those who had ignored him. It was the best they could do. Especially when Aemond had tried, without much success, to smoke a quiet cigarette on the huge terrace of Aegon's new bachelor pad. Because that's what it was. It even had a swimming pool. The damn terrace had a pool that he was sure Aegon wouldn't use with just you.
He looked at the cigarette crushed against one of the flower pots on the terrace and leaned against the wall without much encouragement. He assumed you were supposed to be with Aegon. He hadn't seen you again all night and he regretted taking the first flight. He had only done it to impress you, as if that act of love could erase the fact that he hadn't texted to you in two years. He had been a terrible friend all that time. He had also been the friend in love and scorned.
“There is a terrace in Aegon's room too. I know how much it bothers you that you can't have a cigarette when you're stressed.” Helaena approached her brother and leaned against the same wall, looking at the sky. “I don't think it's going to take much longer for the fireworks to appear. After them, you can go home without looking rude” his sister smiled sweetly. Aemond prepared to enter the house again and go to Aegon's room, the same one that you would share with him that same night. “But, I know you're not here to see the fireworks.” Helaena looked back ahead, just after giving her brother a sideways glance.
“Hmm,” was all Aemond sighed as he walked back into the house. There he saw Aegon lying on a couch with a couple of his friends. There was not a single trace of you. Aemond had thought you would be at the party with him. Unnoticed, he tried to look for you with his one eye, but all he could find were drunk or high people. Maybe... you were in the bathroom, why wouldn't you be with your boyfriend on a night like that?
Aemond walked the entire hallway in silence. He took a cigarette from the barely opened package as he walked through it. All full of quite contemporary paintings. He thought his brother had finally learned to value that kind of thing, or surely it had been you. The one-eyed man knew that it was better to contribute for the second option. Aegon wasn't all that refined about that sort of thing, but you were. You always had been, that's why he had always thought you were the perfect girl for him.
He went to reach for the doorknob to Aegon's room when he heard barking inside. They were powerful, a big dog. “Shhh, Sunfyre, now, now. Stop” He heard your voice and Aemond flung open the door, almost worried that something was happening to you.
As soon as he opened the door, he found you on a pile of coats on top of Aegon's bed. A young Doberman puppy was jumping on top of you. Licking your face. He must have been almost a year old, but the youth of a young dog still shone in his eyes. He was almost as big as you and the dog could only wag his stump of a tail as he watched Aemond open the door. He ran towards the Targaryen.
“No, please, don't let him escape,” you squealed in amusement at Aemond and he only stopped you with a quick movement of his leg, closing the door behind him. "Thank you. I don't even want to think about having to chase him around the party again” you smiled as you grabbed the dog's leather collar and Aemond's heart just melted.
I'm in love with you. It was the only thing that was going through his mind, what he wanted to scream at you.
You continued grabbing the dog and locked him in the bathroom, leaving him jumping on the glass door of the bathroom. “He's always scared by fireworks,” you tried to smile while the dog filled the glass of the bathroom door with fog and drool. You sighed tiredly and looked at Aemond with a sweet half smile. “He destroyed your cigarette,” you laughed, pointing to the destroyed cigarette in his hand just as he had stopped the dog and he could only sigh as he took another one out of the package. “How come you're not at the party?” you told him as you turned and walked out the door to the small terrace of the bedroom. You simply sat down in one of the two chairs there and were grateful to stretch out while you loosened all the bones and muscles in your body after a long day of work.
“I need a quiet smoke” was all he told you as he took the zippo out of his front pocket and sat down next to you in the other chair. He took a couple of drags while the flame of that Zippo continued to feed the cigarette fire.
“You still have it,” you stated. It was not a question, but a statement. He handed you the old Zippo as he blew out the smoke from the last puff again. You bit your lower lip, suppressing a satisfied smile. That meant so much to you. You were amazed that Aemond still maintained something like that.
“Well, I have modified it slightly,” he confessed to you as you passed by the Targaryen shield engraved on one of the sides of the lighter. Your perfect fingers caressed him with great care while Aemond smiled pleased. “It was your father's fault that he started smoking. The least I could do was keep the lighter he gave me.”
“Yeah, sure, blame my dad for starting smoking,” you laughed. He resists you, precious, and Aemond felt his entire heart melt. How could you be so perfect? “He only left you the lighter because you had forgotten it at home,” you rolled your eyes in amusement, remembering that night in your own adolescence.
“And because of him that night I didn't stop smoking. If it hadn't been for that saint, that poor young man wouldn't have smoked a single cigarette that night."
A couple of days later, he had tried to return the lighter to your father. He never confessed it to you, but the man just looked at him with sympathy as he cleaned his hands after fixing one of Daemon's many cars. His personal mechanic, that was what his uncle had called him, and how he still was even in those days, although he was already close to retirement age. “Keep it, boy,” he smiled as he opened a beer during work hours in his workshop and offered it to Aemond, who rejected it with a polite wave of his hand. “I have many lighters. One more, one less, it's not going to make a difference,” he responded with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Yeah, but it's a Zippo,” Aemond said, almost embarrassed, when he offered it to him again. He knew they weren't cheap. Your family didn't have as much money as his. They would never have it. With his weekly allowance, he could buy four Zippos and still have money left over to take you out to dinner. Your father smiled tiredly and looked right at the entrance to the workshop. You were sitting on the sidewalk, watching the bikes, yours and Aemond's. Although your father knew that you were not a stupid girl. You had sent Aemond to return the lighter because you just wanted to know one thing.
“I liked the way she looked at you,” your father whispered in a knowing tone. Aemond looked at him strangely when he said those words and your father pointed his head at you. “I liked the way she looked at you when you wore it. Keep it,” he asked again as he returned to work. “But don't tell your uncle that I gave it to you,” he said as he crouched down to get under a car again. “It was a gift from him,” he added, but Aemond was no longer listening to anything your father said.
His heart was just pounding. He was then 17 years old. He was a couple of months older than you and couldn't believe your father's words. How had you looked at it? How? He couldn't stop turning that fantasy over in his head. And if… and if, were you interested in him too? As much as he was for you?
Your father heard him running in your direction and came out from under the car. He saw you both go together, pedaling. He knew that that afternoon you had agreed to see an exhibition at the cultural center of that small city. He took another sip of his beer. Fresh always came in better, but he couldn't stop looking at you.
That was the kind of boy he wanted for you. A boy with ambitions, studious, educated, who was looking to have a future. Aemond Targaryen was everything your father wanted for you, even though he had taken up smoking. We all had our flaws, but Aemond was perfect in your father's eyes and he had always found it cute how your cheeks would blush when you talked about him.
"How is he?" he asked you after a comfortable silence. You looked at him as if you didn't know what you were talking about. “Your father, I mean.”
"Oh, good. Great. Working hard, as always” you smiled at him as you leaned back in your chair. The truth was that your father had been terribly angry because Aegon had been late to his birthday party. You knew that he didn't like him, that neither of them really liked each other, but your father had tried to break the ice that existed in their icy relationship by finally inviting him to his birthday party. Aegon had shown up three hours later, relaxed and with a smile from ear to ear, as if provoking was always with him. Your father had asked you not to invite him to anything related to the family again. That was something you hadn't discussed with Aegon. You knew how it was going to be with your boyfriend and you knew that he would say again that all that was because he wasn't Aemond. Jealousy rarely came to the fore, but it always did in Aegon's relationship with your father. That was stupid. Your father didn't care who you dated, or so you thought.
“I should go see him to check the belt on the Mustang,” Aemond smiled at you and you smiled back shyly. Yes, that was just what your father needed to despise Aegon even more, knowing that Aemond was back. “Why aren’t you at the party?” He asked you sincerely while you curled up, taking off your shoes on the lounge chair that you considered your place on that small terrace.
“The truth is that I ended up terribly tired today,” you said without much encouragement, as if all your good humor had vanished, as if you didn't have to pretend that you were fine. That was Aemond's great magic. You didn't have to pretend. Sometimes it was stressful how much you pretended to be in Aegon's presence, as if his always carefree nature led you to it, as if you had to hide what you really felt for the sake of the relationship. “And I don't want to have to put up with Aegon's 'friends',” you confessed, as if not a single day had passed since you had last seen him. Because those were the great friendships, the ones that no matter how much time passed, you always spoke as if you had seen each other the day before.
“Yes, I thought I saw Cass Baratheon at the party,” Aemond laughed, taking a drag and you narrowed your eyes tired, but amused.
“I can't stand her. I've tried, but I can't stand it” you waved your arms and Aemond smiled.
“Don't worry, I can't stand Maris,” he responded with a shrug. He still remembered how she had laughed at his lack of manliness after the fight with Luke in their last year of high school.
"They are unbearable. Daddy’s girls” you replied, looking back up at the night sky and Aemond couldn’t stop looking at you. You were still as beautiful as when you were gone. Just as perfect. That conversation reminded him of the old days, when you were still nothing more than two kids who talked about the absurd things that happened to you in class.
Silence settled between you again. You were too tired to notice, but Aemond hadn't stopped looking at you for a single moment. He imagined that this was how he wanted to spend the rest of his days. With you. After a hard day of work, the two of them together. He saw you pass your hand over your cervical spine, grimacing painfully, but you stretched again. He finished his cigarette and in an irresponsible act threw it over the terrace. “Aemond!” You scolded him, almost amused, and he sat next to you in that armchair.
You never said anything, but the proximity of his body, in such an intimate context, made you feel slightly uncomfortable. But, it only made you feel that way, because you were dating Aegon and yet you were liking Aemond's proximity. You crossed your legs trying to find a new position in that chair and he just placed you against him. “Stand up straight,” he whispered to you and all the hair on your body stood up.
“Really, it's not necessary…” everything you were going to say died in a pleasant moan that escaped your lips as Aemond began to massage your neck. “Fuck…” you whispered under your breath and Aemond smiled again.
“I'm glad it wasn't necessary,” he responded while massaging a cervical spine that was terribly burdened by the stress accumulated over weeks. You continued to make little moans of pleasure which Aemond found adorable. That's what you needed, to be taken care of, to be pampered... and Aemond was back to do it. He had done a lot of reflecting during those two rather lonely years on the Summer Isles.
He saw the strap of your bra and slowly added it, as if he were trying to make you enjoy it. He licked his lips. He was going to kiss your bare shoulders first, then continue down your neck, and finally end up on your mouth. “Thank you for the massage. It was very good” you replied as you turned to look at him again, while you raised the strap of your bra back to your shoulders.
“Yes, it was good” he pursed his lips and looked at the ground again. He had to have been an asshole who had stayed silent while he imagined him kissing the neck of the girl of his dreams. “(Y/N), I…” he started saying. That was the moment. He couldn't put it off any longer. He did not want to. You were both alone at that party. It was like old times. Completely the same. What was stopping you from being together? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Aemond thought about Aegon, but he ignored you at best. He had thrown that party without thinking that you might be tired.
“Helaena told me that you have gotten a job at the University of King's Landing” you changed the subject and you could only see the disappointment on his face. You weren't prepared for what he wanted to confess. You weren't a stupid girl. But, Aemond had had his chance many years ago. He had only broken your heart by starting to date Alys, who was then your best friend, and after breaking up with her he, had run away to the summer islands, where he had not written you a single message, not once. You could tell what was going through his mind. You knew him well, or at least you had known him well before he went on that international stay that had lengthened the unspeakable. You didn't know if you were ready to hear I love you from his lips. Maybe you'd never be again. “I'm very happy that you are achieving everything you set out to do,” you smiled sincerely, because you were really happy that he was achieving what he had set out to do.
“Yes, it's a good position,” he whispered, as he took out a cigarette and lit it again. “I think that in three years I will be able to direct the History department,” he responded while settling down next to you in that chair that was clearly for only one person. You knew he was only saying that to impress you. Aemond's way of flirting had always been that, but you were with Aegon. You had chosen him two years ago. Just like Aemond had chosen Alys.
He grabbed your legs and lifted them onto his lap. Why had he had to choose Alys? Why? You would have been a great couple. You couldn't deny the chemistry that had always existed between the two of you. That simple conversation had reactivated it, as if you no longer knew what you wanted, because you didn't. You had never known it. “I guess… I'll look for an apartment in the city and drive to the university. It is not far. Only half an hour"
“You always wanted to return to the capital…” you said, not daring to look at him.
“There…there is someone who ties me to this place. For the only reason that I have returned after two years…” there was the confession. You didn't want to hear it. You couldn't hear it. Not now. Not when your whole world was crumbling around you, it almost seemed as if Aemond had waited for that moment to confess. At the moment when you were weakest and most vulnerable. "I…"
“Hey, I was looking for you, what are you two doing alone so far from the party?” Aegon just appeared there, still with a glass in his hand. He approached the two of you and you smiled at him, while Aemond thought of a thousand ways to kill him for that interruption. “You look beautiful,” he whispered to you as he grabbed the necklace Aemond had brought you. “Are you tired after work?” he whispered to you again, creating an intimate atmosphere in which Aemond was not invited.
“Yes, I'm quite tired,” you replied while he brushed his nose with yours, in a gesture that implied more tenderness than Aemond had imagined your relationship. He gave you several quick pecks. Kisses that made you laugh between each one of them. He whispered something to you that made you laugh, and Aemond began to feel uncomfortable, more and more.
“Oh, Aemond, Alys gave me my regards to you. I was shopping and I found her by chance” he said sounding completely innocent, but Aemond knew why he had said it, why he had said it right in front of you. As Aemond was about to answer, the first firework appeared in the sky and Aegon hugged your shoulders while you continued to sit. “I love fireworks,” he whispered and your heart sank.
You had never liked fireworks. They would never do it. Another exploded into the sky again and Aegon grabbed you tighter. While smiling. You didn't want to look at Aemond, but you knew he wasn't watching the fireworks. His head was very far away, almost as far away as yours.
But you both thought it wasn't fair. Aemond thought it wasn't fair for you to give your love to Aegon. You kept thinking that it wasn't fair that Aemond wanted to come back to confess something that you both had always known. Neither situation was fair to anyone. And in it, there were only losers.
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mononijikayu · 6 months ago
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monster like me.
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The weight of Gojo Satoru's presence became increasingly palpable as he shifted his gaze towards the setting sun. An oppressive silence enveloped them both, one laden with the shared grief too profound for words. Their unspoken understanding needed no verbal reinforcement. Two unhappy people together had no need for words, after all.
GENRE: pre - hidden inventory arc to shibuya arc (1990s to 2010s);
WARNING/S: domesticity, fluff, angst, trauma, implied death, violence, romance, hurt/comfort, character death depiction of death, depictions of loss and depression, depiction of anxiety, mention of death, mention of grief, profanity, family drama;
LISTEN: monster like me by morland and debrah scarlett
NOTE: i wanna give satoru and genmei a hug pls,,,,,,why are they being mean to you both??? (its me, im mean to them)
masterlist
u s and t h e m
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[ Mikoto Shrine, September 2007; Kyoto Prefecture ]
ZENIN GENMEI THINKS ITS HARD TO THINK STRAIGHT THESE DAYS. Perhaps it was the unrelenting heat, or maybe the absence of a soothing summer breeze, but Genmei felt a restless impatience brewing within her. The days seemed to stretch endlessly, each moment dragging longer than the last, reminiscent of a past she thought she had managed to bury deep within her.
It felt like those days all over again—the days when Kaiko left her. Yet, there was a stark difference now, a disparity that puzzled and tormented her. Back then, the pain was sharp, a sudden severance of a bond she had known her entire life. It was a profound loss, the kind that reshapes one's entire existence in its wake. But this current feeling, this lingering ache—was it worse? How could the loss of someone she had known for merely three years weigh so heavily on her, seemingly more painful than the loss of someone who had been a fixture in her life from the beginning?
The question gnawed at her, a persistent echo in her mind that refused to be silenced. Each day without resolution brought with it a heavy sense of sorrow, mixed with a deep-seated confusion about the nature of her attachments.
Had her years with Kaiko been so deeply ingrained in her being that they became a part of her subconscious landscape, a piece of her identity that she could detach from, however painfully, because it was expected? Was the surprise of forming a new, profound connection later in life—only to lose it unexpectedly—somehow more jarring, its abrupt end more disorienting because it was unforeseen?
Genmei pondered these questions, feeling the weight of her thoughts like the oppressive summer heat. The lack of clarity frustrated her, the inability to rationalize her emotions or predict their impacts made each day a maze of memories and what-ifs. The absence of Kaiko had been a void she learned to navigate, filling it over time with new experiences, allowing it to scar over in a way that became manageable, if not entirely healed.
But this—this was different. This pain was raw, fresher; a wound reopened before it could fully heal. It questioned her understanding of attachment, of love and loss. It forced her to confront the possibility that perhaps the intensity of a connection isn't measured in the length of time it's endured but in the depth it reached in one's soul.
Maybe, in those three years, she had allowed herself to open up in ways she hadn't with Kaiko, to be vulnerable in a manner that was both terrifying and exhilarating, which now left her exposed in the aftermath.
Letting out a small, weary exhale, Zenin Genmei could do nothing but sit still. But she seemed to hate that more than anything.The stillness provided no answers, only the space to acknowledge the deep caverns of this beast of feelings. Perhaps understanding would come with time, or maybe it wouldn't. For now, Genmei had to accept the drowning in her emotions. And she cannot run away. She can never run away.
As Genmei wrestled with the tumultuous thoughts swirling through her mind, she began to realize that perhaps the profound sense of loss she felt was intricately linked to who Geto Suguru was—and, more importantly, what he had represented to her. If Satoru was the moon, Suguru was the sun. The moon cannot exist without the sun. And Genmei cannot live them both. Not even if she tried.
The more she thought about it, the clearer it became that her suffering stemmed from a deep yearning how deeply she felt about Suguru. She'd never reflected on it this deeply before. But it's all Genmei had.
Genmei could only think about how she longed for his smile—so full of warmth and life, so distinctly his. She ached to hear his voice again, tender and reassuring. It was as though he was life in itself. And she could only dream, that he would come back. Even after all he had done.
Genmei can only sigh as she leaned her head against the tree. Her lips locked in a tight line as she looked at the small echo of the setting sun. Her hands tried to reach far and wide, but even as her fingers caught the light, there was nothing that could prevent the sun from leaving.
"You're getting too quiet."
Genmei looks to her corner, the silver halo echoing from the peripheral of her sight. "Temples are usually quiet, Satoru."
"People at temples aren't this quiet."
"It's for prayers."
His blue eyes looked at her, as though searching for something she could not understand. "Then pray. I'll listen."
"You're too much of a brat, Satoru."
He snickers, leaning his body towards the small of her back. "You'd never cared before."
Genmei couldn't help but snicker quietly. Gojo Satoru had never once believed in gods his entire life. If anything nowadays, he was more like a god than anything. But Genmei thinks she'd deny him of her prayers being said out loud. Genmei had never been eager to celebrate grief with others. She'd never been good at it. The Zenin kept things to themselves. No one talked about anything.
The Mikoto thinks it should be discussed in the depths of one's lonesomeness. To let it all drift away with the wind itself. Mother had always told her that reflection heals all wounds. That was expected from her mother, she supposed. Her mother was born to reflect, to keep those emotions, those echoes of loss, in the silence of reflection. A priestess through and through. An attribute she supposed she earned from her.
Father used to say the opposite, Genmei could recall. Her father with her loud boisterous voice, his warm hands and his bright starlight eyes. One must wonder how he was ever a Zenin. He often said that humans are not islands, cannot exist as islands. Islands need life. Islands need the touch of humanity. Genmei did not know if she agreed with her father, but it was something she was mindful of, to at least learn. To understand.
Genmei had seen it all too many times with the people that are left behind each and every mission. She noted each and every emotion on their faces, as though she was remembering what they used to feel like. How they fit her face when she had learned it all those years before, on the bright gaze of a bright eyed young wonder. Her father, Kaiko, Namie and now Suguru. They taught her how, to blossom in wonder. And now they took it away too. What had been relearned, Geto Suguru took it away with him too.
When people are sad, she remembered how people crave the need to be together. They yearn to feel whole at the thought of loneliness abandoned. Genmei never needed that before. The warmth of another person's touch, the space to let the eyes dampen with those unspent tears. The cries that ring desolation. Genmei wondered if she ever allowed herself to be like that. To be able to cry again like that. To be human.
Emotions expressed, of what she learnt at one point ─ the dead took it with them. Suguru himself took what remained. All that warmth that had built the fullness of a human's home had died once more. Genmei supposed it's what helped her last in Zenin manor recently. Like all those times before, Zenin Genmei ran to her emptiness to survive.
Yet, as she sensed the subtle tilt of his head resting against her shoulder, Zenin Genmei thought that deep down ─ she was allowing herself to dig through that numbness. He was warm, Satoru always was. Even the moon he was, he was still more warmth than barren cold. Even in the grief that dug through him, he brought the coldness she felt back to life with his warmth.
She noticed a faint, inaudible sigh escaping her mouth while a dull ache began to take root in her legs. She was feeling the discomfort of the stiffness that comes with the way she sat under the grass. Nevertheless, she remained unmoving, steadfast in her conviction. He wanted to rely on her in this moment, the most humbly human of requests. He needed this, she supposed.
The day would soon draw to a close. Genmei could not remember when the last time her world stopped for such a moment of quiet. Jujutsu sorcerers rarely had the time to savor things like these. When they do, it was a treasured thing. Blue hour was upon them, gleaming like the dark deep shine of Okinawa's deep blue. Memories hit her, tugging at her heart to remember the humanity that dwelled with the love that she wanted to lock away.
Years ago, such treasured moments were stolen moments. Even from where they sat, the thought of all those times beckoned her on. To unlock the key and return to those moments. Genmei purses her lips tight as she looked onward upon the dancing grass. Laughter filled her ears, as though it was a song stuck in her head. The smiles glistened panel after panel in each fragment hidden under lock and key. Before Satoru, before Suguru, before Shoko.
Those memories haunted her. All those echoes retorted to her, gnawed at her with all it had. Just one look at the sunset beam, Genmei recalled it all. The youth where she smiled the truest, the past three years where she reclaimed that smile. The young daughter of clan Zenin blew a soundless breath in the air.
The day unfolded with such breathtaking splendor, resembling a veritable Eden unveiled before their eyes. Both of them long discarded their talk. The sudden breeze serenading their languid forms, the unyielding tree bark etching its presence upon his charcoal uniform, the slight glimmer of scarlet light dancing against the slit of her hakama.
The descending sun showered them with its farewell caress, a poignant parting gesture. Not all days boasted such perfection, nor did they all weigh as heavily on the heart as this. All death, all tragedy, all lost of youth, its worth mourning. Even beautiful skies must be mourned.
The heron heralded its imminent arrival, casting the benevolent embrace of the ethereal blue hour that gradually consumed the fiery vestiges of the scarlet sky. On an ordinary day, Zenin Genmei might have lamented her perceived lack of productivity. Even then, she can't blame Satoru for it.
The gods demanded honesty and clarity from their priestest. Yet, she knew she would not be able to give that to the gods. Not when Suguru's words replayed over and over in her mind like a broken record. His smile so genuine as he spoke of the world he dreamed of. The one where the world burns and his conviction would remain steadfast in the joy it would bring him.
Genmei thinks it was better to say nothing to Satoru.
He wouldn't be able to handle all of it, she thinks.
He'd never be able to understand how Suguru smiled.
‘It repeats over and over, the song of tragedy rhymes again,’ Genmei contemplates with an air of exasperation as if a disconcerting sensation tempts her away for a brief dalliance with nicotine. The key was unlocked, she was sure.
The throes of her humanity fighting its way to come alive. She yearns for the noxious tendrils of smoke to vacate her lungs, as if they held the power to purge her thoughts, her endless sufferings. ‘With all that I could have seen and have not allowed myself to say…’
Her solitary recourse lies in the graceful inclination of her head, a poignant gesture born of inner turmoil as she contemplates the disheartening notion of history unfurling itself once more. The weight of self-reproach deepens as she revisits the keenly missed telltale signs, those subtle cues that her discerning eye had once so deftly unveiled.
Her lilac eyes, now narrowed, bear the heavy burden of accumulated recollections spanning years, all converging inexorably to that austere conclusion—the same deluge of denouement. It was bound to happen all over again. She warned them. Souls that break can never return. Yet they did not listen to her. And they repeated the same mistake. And all is left is tragedy.
Yet, despite the overwhelming emotions that surge within her, the most she can muster is a profound, resigned sigh.
With a leisurely closure of her eyes, she wished for reprieve. The young woman yearns to erase her thoughts. Though, that in itself may be tedious work. Genmei had tried to forget. Tried to fight the box that had burst from within her. But the memories come rushing back one way or another. Genmei mourns, then she cries. Then she marches forward and then loses to fate. The cycle repeats. The worst of it she supposed is to remember in the quiet.
One that had plagues her as she sits to meditate. The words so sweet from the mouth of someone she loved, visiting her like a curse that had been willed to haunt her. Tilting her head slightly downward, she permits the weight of her contemplations to rest on Satoru. As he leans into her, he seems content to remain motionless. To lose any sense to the mundane.
The warmth shared between them feels like fire, intensified by the uneven caress of the vanishing sun. Infinity appears to exist only in the obscurity behind his dark glasses. Genmei remains uncertain about his countenance to reality, yet she cannot help but imagine that their faces had dried against a torrent of mournful tears. Not that Genmei could even blamed him. She would have gone mad with all of it, too. Well, she has. 
When he sought her out, he did so without uttering a single word. Veiled in impenetrable silence behind the obsidian lenses of his dark shades, he extended a hand and gently beckoned her away from her solitary stance. He stole her away from her own bitterness, so they may sit together, bitter.
Their departure from the temple was a measured procession, their hearts coursing with the blood of shared experiences, and their bond weighed heavy with the burden of mutual silence. In time, they found solace beneath the same trees where joyful memories had once danced in her mind like fragments of a shattered mosaic.
Genmei ponders whether he had nearly forgotten how to draw breath. Yet, she could scarcely hold it against him, for the shock of such a profound loss was an expectation that accompanied it.
Youthful love is the most grotesque loss, Genmei knew from the start. When one thinks of curses, love  is the worst. Much more with the denial that it is lost forever. Most cases Genmei found that the cases she deals with comes from the madness of love becoming the curse that people bear. 
Satoru's not the type to unleash such malice upon the world, she knew that at the very least. But it did not stop the hurt, nor will it ever stop it from breaking his heart. To be separated from the person he held dearest, the one who tethered him to humanity. In the solitude of divinity, kamis often found themselves lonely, far too easily. You never get use to it. Genmei was certain to speak from experience. She hasn't let go after all this time, either. 
Nevertheless, they were aware that they could never truly attain humanity. Yet, in the union of Satoru and Suguru, there existed the closest semblance of a kami becoming fully human. Genmei's head lowered gently as she contemplated the glistening grass underfoot. She reminisced about the gentle smile that had once graced humanity within the soul of Suguru Geto, now replaced by an overwhelming sense of grief for what might have been.
‘Was I like this back then, with Kaiko? With Namie? With my father?’ she pondered silently, opening her eyes to witness a small bird taking flight. Suppressing a quiet laugh with a bite of her lip, she added, ‘I don't remember.’
‘No,’ a voice whispered back to her, almost mockingly. ‘You do remember, and now you feel it once more, clawing at you. But you realize it, don't you? How worse it is now? How you let yourself break like the weakling you are. You loved that boy too much and now it burns you whole.'
Her lips tightened against her jaw. ‘Silence.’
The voice chuckled but refrained from further conversation. She didn't anticipate it would speak further.
At that moment, the young woman found herself immersed in the world around them, the clouds waning as the sun continued its haunting descent beyond the horizon. Lost in her thoughts once more, the young woman with lilac eyes inwardly cursed the voice in her head as youth flooded in like an unstoppable tide.
Genmei's thoughts churned like a turbulent sea, brimming with memories, regrets, and unspoken sentiments, all of which remained tightly sealed, many of them never to be revealed, not even on her final day. Yet, perhaps one day, some of those words would find their way into the world.
The weight of Gojo Satoru's presence became increasingly palpable as he shifted his gaze towards the setting sun. An oppressive silence enveloped them both, one laden with the shared grief too profound for words. Their unspoken understanding needed no verbal reinforcement. Two unhappy people together had no need for words, after all.
As the light faded, she discreetly stole a glimpse of Satoru, his face still concealed behind those dark glasses. She wondered about the world he perceived and the emotions he harbored. However, there was no need to inquire; their connection transcended mere words. She sensed the tempest of emotions raging within him—a storm of pain, anger, and sorrow.
"I wish I could alleviate your pain." she murmured, her words barely more than a breath of air. She meant those words. That she was certain. Yet she knew he heard her. There was no necessity for a response; her mere presence sufficed for now. "To make it easier—"
"You can't." Satoru responded nonchalantly, maintaining his cheerful facade. Her lips pursed into a line, and she could only sigh. "Not even if you tried."
For a moment, Genmei closed her eyes once again, allowing the world's sounds and sensations to wash over her. She felt Satoru's warmth against her, a small source of comfort amid the overwhelming grief. Memories of happier times with him flashed before her—moments of shared laughter, dreams, and quiet intimacy, a bittersweet montage.
"I won't let you face this alone," Genmei whispered in her words a solemn pledge to the man beside her. She had confronted her demons and regrets in the past, and now she was determined to help him confront him. They were two souls intertwined in a shared history and a profound understanding.
He snickered, almost haughtily.
He looks at her, almost mockingly.
Genmei's used to it, after all this time.
"Promises being met? Rare these days, Genmei - senpai." He always liked to bait her into mockery with the word 'senpai'. Suguru had always scolded him for that. But Genmei knew she did not mind. She never truly did. "Don't promise something you can't fulfill."
"Do you doubt me, Satoru?"
"You've given me no reason to trust you right now." Oh. He knows. He felt him here, his residuals. Genmei bit her lower lip. Of course he did. He is the honoured one, after all.
Lilac against blue. "No, I have not."
The world beyond their cocoon of grief carried on, oblivious to their suffering. Birds continued their evening serenades, and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves above. It was as though nature itself sought to offer solace, reminding them that life persisted, even in the face of loss.
At that moment, beneath the darkening sky, Genmei and Satoru became acutely aware of the world's indifference to their pain. It presented a stark contrast to the intensity of their emotions as if the universe had turned a blind eye to their heartache, a nearly jarring dissonance.
Yet, as night deepened and the stars gleamed brilliantly, a sense of unity with the cosmos began to seep into their souls. It was a silent recognition that their grief, however profound, was just one thread in the vast tapestry of existence. They were but specks in the grand scheme of things, yet their pain was real and valid.
Genmei glanced at Satoru, still shrouded in darkness, his presence a constant reassurance. Despite the void that had taken root in their hearts, they were not truly alone. The world might not pause for their sorrow, but it continued to offer its beauty and wonder, and they could choose to find solace in that. Genmei turned her gaze away, focusing on the darkening sky.
"Genmei," he called to her again, unmoving. He dropped the honorifics, though he had never needed to use them. Genmei sensed the eerie strength in his tone.
Deep within Genmei, one kami recognized another—the Honored One.
The voice within Genmei snickered, almost excited.
All of it had made her head hurt more than anything else.
"What is it, Satoru?"
"Promise me.”  
“What do you want from me?”
“Don't ever leave me."
Four words reverberated, four words etched in their shared history. Genmei would have laughed, had this been years ago when she was younger and more brash, overflowing with confidence and unburdened by the weight of unmade choices and untraveled paths. But now, older and wiser, she understood the significance of those four words, as meaningful as the three or even one. 
Satoru was not offering her a choice; it was a command, and Genmei's words constituted a promise—an island reaching out to another, a connection of lonely souls. Zenin Genmei closed her eyes, her fingertips reaching toward the warmth of his hand.
Gojo Satoru made no move to stop her. Infinity once again ceased to exist between them as their smallest fingers intertwined in a solemn pledge, like children binding themselves to a sacred vow.
"I swear it," Genmei whispered to him, as his grip tightened around her finger. "Monsters have to stick together."
He laughs at her words. "Monsters, huh?"
Her eyes softened. "Well, aren't we?"
"Hm, I guess we both are."
64 notes · View notes
tiniedemon · 2 years ago
Text
— ♡
comforting after a breakup headcanons
main 4 / reader (platonic)
— ♡
cw | suicide jokes, mentions of violence
stan
— has no fucking clue what to do when you show up on his doorstep bawling your eyes out
— just awkwardly lets you cry on him
— “what’s wrong?” “i just got dumped” “damn that’s tough” “STANLEY”
— offers you booze
— absolutely lets you have aux
— turns into the messiest bitch the second you spill about what happened
— *dramatic gasp* “oh my gosh they didn’t” “no fucking way are you so fr right now”
kyle
— immediately guesses what happened
— “you got dumped didn’t you?” “how’d you know ☹️” “you look like you’ve been listening to olivia rodrigo”
— lets you cry against him
— only responds when he gets the full story
— “i’m so sorry sweetheart. what can i do?”
— super duper supportive
— anything you say goes & i really do mean anything
— “can we key their car pls 🥺” “i’ll call the guys kenny has ski masks”
kenny
— hugs you the second he sees the tears
— puts a blunt in your hand and lights it while you rant about what happened
— matches your energy 100% to the extreme
— “i fucking hate them!” “yeah what a fucking douche canoe!” “oh but i loved them so much” “ugh me too i really thought it was meant to be”
— gets your mind off it by asking a stupid stoned question
— will not stop rambling about his sudden high revelations until you’re dying laughing
— offers to slash their tires but won’t actually do it unless you agree
eric
— closes the door in your face
— only opens it when you knock again
— lets you in but has a major attitude about it
— “what is it this time? did your little s/o cheat on you? ……… wait they did?”
— laughs for a solid two minutes about it
— gives you movie pick privileges
— “you can pick the movie this time but i swear to god y/n if you pick some dumbass romance movie i’m killing myself”
— shares his snacks but only if you go get them
— lets you fill him in on all the drama and then makes a whole plan on how he’ll get revenge
— “…. i’m just saying if we paralyze them they can’t fuck other bitches” “eric… no….”
416 notes · View notes
writemywaytoyourheart · 1 year ago
Text
Bedeviled | Chapter 10: The Harder They Fall
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Pairing: demon!jungkook x female reader
Genre: E2L, romance, drama, angst, horror
WC: 9.5k
Warnings for this chapter: strong language, bullying, cruelty, name-calling, past trauma, blood, frightening depictions of Hell and those in it, gore, some tensionnnnn muthatruckaaaas If there's something you notice that I ought to put in warnings that I missed pls kindly let me know
Previous ML
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"I will kill you myself."
You gulp, breathing out through your nose slowly as he runs his fingers down from your cheek and right to your throat, where he places his hand around it and squeezes ever so gently. 
He seems to get distracted, his eyes appearing unfocused as he stares at the sight in front of him. 
His hand makes a good necklace for your lovely throat. 
"Fuck," He whispers under his breath, but you can hear him, "I could snap your pretty little neck right now if I wanted to, couldn't I?"
You gulp and nod shakily.
"Yes," You brave looking up at him and notice him staring back at you, his gaze no longer on your neck but looking into your eyes, "But you don't want to."
You think you see a flash of fear in his eyes before he smirks and smothers any hint of emotion besides amusement. 
"Of course not, darling." He drags his hand down slowly, his icy fingers running along your throat and down your chest before they pull away, "You still have some use to me after all."
When he steps away, you reach a hand up to cup your throat. 
You knew he wasn't going to kill you, he wasn't even going to hurt you. 
He prides himself on being able to intimidate you, but he doesn't know that you can see right through him. 
You'll keep that to yourself for now. 
What scared you the most was the overwhelming urge to raise yourself up on your tiptoes and close the distance between you two. 
You mentally give yourself a pat on the back for not ruining everything just a minute ago. 
Gathering yourself and your skirt in your fists, you stumble after him, who has (obviously) continued on like nothing happened. 
Him and his little games. 
Little do you know, his mind is far from laughing at the situation. It's twisting and turning and trying anxiously to figure out what the hell is happening to him. 
____________________
You had thought before that the mountains would go on forever. 
But you were wrong. 
In the distance, you can see where they end. 
It's still miles away, but it's something. 
"What's with the in-between stuff?"
JK stops and turns around to look back at you, who is scrambling over a large rock, panting heavily. 
He rolls his eyes. 
"Care to elaborate on that question?"
You sigh and plop yourself down on top of the rock, legs dangling at least four feet from the ground. 
Wiping your wet forehead fruitlessly, you gesture out into the distance with your bandaged hand, "It's- it's such a long way to the seventh circle," Gulping in as much air as your lungs can take, you shake your head and wipe at your eyes, "Why all the extra sp-space?"
He doesn't answer your question and you don't ask again, deciding not to waste your time or breath. 
Squinting at him, you huff tiredly at the fact that he doesn't look like he's struggling in the slightest. 
You wipe at your eyes again, the sweat dripping into them. 
"It's so hot," You mumble, hissing quietly at the stinging in your eyes from the salty droplets that reach them, "Gosh."
JK makes an effort not to look in your direction, but ends up breaking his own rule for a second when you're busy wiping at your eyes. 
You're perched on top of the huge rock, legs hanging off in front of you, dirty cloth-wrapped feet kicking absentmindedly as you rub your fists in your eyes in an effort to ease the sting. 
His eyes travel up your body, lingering on the cuts and bruises that appear to be new. When his gaze lands on your scrunched up face as you wipe and wipe desperately at your eyes, he squints. 
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Ach," You grunt, "My eyes are burning like fire- ow!" You shout, shoving your fists into your eyes and trying not to start crying. 
He watches silently for a minute as you blindly try to find a piece of clothing on you that isn't covered in dirt, grime, or blood. Your eyes are pinched shut as you pat around, hands landing on nothing but dirtied garments. It's all you can do to keep from shouting out again, it feels like someone dumped hot chilis in your eyes. 
Just as you're about to try the sleeve of your cardigan no matter how dirty it is, you feel a cold hand wrap around your left wrist. 
"Stop, you look like an idiot, scrounging around like that," You hear him grumble, then you feel something soft get shoved into your hand. 
Is that a-...handkerchief?
Desperate enough not to question it, you bring the cloth to your eyes. Relief pours over you when the pain starts to subside as you're finally able to wipe the sweat from your face. 
"Thank you."
He turns back at the soft, whispered thanks called to him. 
Your eyes are still closed, but no longer pinched shut in pain. 
The demon looks down at your hands to see you twisting the small cloth in your fingers, knuckles turning white as you clench it tightly in your fist. 
Seemingly getting anxious, he sees your hands start to tremble as you rock back and forth where you sit on the rock, still clutching the cloth, now biting your lip harshly. 
An unfamiliar feeling suddenly invites itself in, making him freeze as he continues to stare at you. 
What is this?
He can't pinpoint it; doesn't understand it. 
JK snaps out of it and turns away. 
He won't entertain things that he doesn't understand.
"Here."
He turns back to you again with a sharp sigh, annoyed. 
You're holding out the handkerchief, eyes still closed as you gather your strength. 
The demon's gaze flickers from your face down to your hand and back a few times, noticing the way the cloth shakes as you hold it out. 
"Keep it," He snaps, "I don't want it now that you've dirtied it. It's useless."
The hurt evident on your face is brief, then you pull it back and blink your eyes open carefully, looking at the cream-colored handkerchief in your hand that now has streaks of dirt on it. Your bottom lip trembles as you squeeze it tightly.
He doesn't look at you again, shouldn't have looked in the first place. 
Instead, he stands with his arms crossed as he looks out into the distance, eyeing the planes he knows are coming. He's not sure how you're going to manage them, but there's not much of a choice now. 
You're hellbent on saving your stupid little friend, and nothing he says or does is going to stop you. 
JK glares at nothing as he waits for you to just get on with walking already. 
He thought about it pretty early on in this journey, but he's still curious on what exactly is going on with you. 
How is it that your body is failing faster than other humans down here? He knows it's meant to torment anyone that comes here, but physically you're fading faster than is usual. 
Mentally on the other hand, you seem to be excelling. The mental and emotional toll this place has on humans that venture here is typically what makes them fail before the elements even get a chance to destroy them. The realization that they will never leave hits them pretty early on and their hope dwindles quickly after that. 
So why are you still so hopeful? 
Why are you so insistent on saving this poor excuse of a human?
Why won't you acknowledge the fact that you will never leave Hell? Has that even sunk into your thick head yet?
When you walk past him and stumble on a rock, your arms going out to the sides to keep your balance, he suddenly wonders what part of Hell you will be sent to first after the deal is over. 
A sick feeling burns in his stomach at the sudden thought, but he pushes it away immediately. 
He doesn't fucking care.
Your fate after this deal is of no concern to him. 
It never was and it never will be. 
You are nothing but an annoying little mortal creature, he has no interest in your future, or lack of it for that matter. 
You are nothing to him. 
Tripping a little when he bumps into your shoulder, you look at him in confusion as he walks ahead, then you shake your head and keep walking across the slippery gravelly ground. 
__________________________
After a few more hours of walking, you stop. 
"I'm taking a break," You call out, watching as he stops in his tracks, clearly annoyed. 
Before he can say anything, you turn and plop on the ground, wincing at the uncomfortable feeling of rocks on your thighs that the thin material of your dress does nothing to cushion against.
You notice that he doesn't even turn to look at you as he says, "I'm going for a bit."
"Ok," You say just as he walks off and once again disappears into a cloud of smoke. 
Sighing, you rest your chin in your hand as you look out at the smoky terrain covering all that you can see with the naked eye. 
The mountains are nearly gone, most of them behind you now. 
The deep red glow still makes you anxious, you can't get used to it no matter how hard you try. 
You won't have to get used to it. 
You're leaving. 
Looking down at your dirty fingers, you gulp and nod, absentmindedly picking at the dirt caked under your nails. 
-
JK strolls along the streets of Seoul, hands in his pockets as he walks straight ahead, not moving for anyone coming towards him. 
No need to, they can't see him anyway. 
The lights of the city are shining so bright that if one were to bother to look up, they wouldn't be able to see the stars scattered across the night sky right above them. 
Couples walk hand in hand, laughing together. 
Friends run past, screaming about how the last one to get to the arcade has to pay for the games. 
Business men and women walk briskly through the crowds, briefcases swinging gently and looks of boredom etched into their faces. 
Elders work tirelessly as people come up to their food stands, feeling peckish after a long day of shopping. 
Students run for the bus that will be here any minute, the one that will take them home after studying for so long today. 
The noise of people milling about is a constant buzz that has become the norm, music plays from storefronts, street dancers collect money as people film them happily; ready to post it on the internet and hopefully go viral. 
JK watches all of them, eyes hard with hatred as they flit between the people in different stages of life. 
Oh how little they know of how insignificant they are.
They worry so much of others caring about them, of likes and shares and paychecks, of grades and colleges and careers. 
They worry so much just to fill up their miniscule amount of time on this sad Earth. 
How pathetic. 
But how perfect for him. 
The stress of everyday life, the temptations of things one could have, the anger, the resentment, the lust, the pride, the greed, the twisted insatiable need to always have more. 
It's all the perfect combination for a demon that is currently on the prowl, looking for souls to ruin, to drag to Hell for the rest of eternity. 
Oh how misery loves company. 
As he walks amongst the crowds, his eyes land on a young college student walking with his head down, hands grasping the straps of his backpack that seems to weigh him down more than usual. 
‘Are you so stupid that you really couldn't manage to pass that test?’
The young man bites his lip as he continues to walk towards the bus stop. 
‘You worked so hard, and for what? No matter how hard you try, you'll never be good enough.’
Vision blurring, he blinks a few times and tightens his grip on the straps. 
He studied so much for that test, for the past week he had done nothing but pour over all of his notes, quizzing himself over and over again, missing out on parties and nights out. Just to fail in the end.
‘You know your friends probably passed, right? They didn't even have to try. You're just stupid.’
He wipes at his eyes quickly. 
‘Now you're crying?’ 
‘How pathetic.’
‘You won’t get anywhere in life. You'll never amount to anything.’
JK chuckles as the young man breathes anxiously and hurries to the bus stop, his heart aching deeply and his hopes for a bright future diminishing rapidly. 
The demon looks around once more and sees a teenage girl looking into a shop window at a jeweled necklace. 
He walks over and leans close, whispering something into her ear. 
The way she bites her lip in determination clarifies that she took his words and is going to run with them. 
He smirks and strolls away, eyes shifting among the crowd. 
They're too easy.
The sight of a homeless man crouched in a dark alley brings him to a stop. He stands there and watches him for a moment, pleasure rising at the way the miserable creature shivers and pulls his torn coat around himself more. 
A few highschoolers walk past, one of them stopping long enough to call to the freezing person lying on the ground. 
"Are you cold?"
The homeless man looks up fearfully and the demon watches in mounting amusement as the teen walks over and proceeds to dump his hot chocolate on the ripped blanket, all over his face and his already useless clothes. The kid then tosses the empty cup onto the man.
The rest of the group laughs heartily before moving on, screaming about how they got too close to him and how they hope they didn't catch anything. 
JK walks closer, crouching down and watching as the man wipes at his face in a poor attempt to clean himself off. 
Chuckling, he leans close.
‘You really thought they'd treat you differently? You're lower than animals here, they would sooner give a bone to a rabid dog than look at you like a human.’ 
‘And they're right to.’
‘Look at how disgusting you are, how fucking miserable. Begging for food and crawling in the gutter like the dirt that you are.’
The single tear that slips down the elder's face makes JK smirk as he stands up. 
He's about to move on when something makes him turn back. He sees a middle-aged woman walk over and bend down, handing the man a warm roll and a cup of tea with a kind smile. 
"Stay warm," She whispers, touching his shoulder gently before walking away. 
The demon stops, his teeth clenching in annoyance. 
The homeless man watches after the woman with wide eyes full of confusion and uncertainty. 
JK stands there as she walks past him, her eyes directly meeting the demon's as she stares him down; unflinching. She turns a corner as the old man quietly watches her leave, still shivering.
Only a moment later, the same woman, who now has a soft glow about her, comes up to the man once more. This time though, he does not see her. 
She sits beside him, the light pink wings on her back resting against the ground as she places an arm around the filthy man and sets her head on his shoulder; holding him gently as he nibbles on the bread. The guardian angel makes no effort to look at the demon again, blatantly ignoring his presence. 
JK breathes out through his nose slowly, controlled. 
It makes no difference to him. 
He doesn't need to make as many deals as one would think. The most souls that are damned to Hell are from temptation alone. He's whispered many words of encouragement to do unsavory acts and they more often than not take it. Deals are only for the desperate. 
The rest of the humans buy their own ticket to Hell. Seldom do they need much persuasion. They are all too eager to come on their own, if it means they get those brief moments of satisfaction. 
These nasty little angels can try and bring all the comfort they want; he's still winning. 
She might have soothed a single soul tonight, but he has pushed many over the edge already with little to no effort. 
Ridiculous. 
JK scoffs and turns away, walking off before the sight pisses him off even more. 
He's got stuff to do, souls to bring to despair. 
And nothing is going to stand in his way. 
________________________________
You yawn and rub at your eyes, body aching so deeply; beyond anything you've felt before. The wings that are tucked up in your cardigan are cramping, begging to get some much needed room. 
The only thing you feel capable of doing right now is curling into a ball and falling asleep. 
You don't have that luxury though. 
An anxious sigh puffs out of your lips as you place your chin into your hand, your elbow resting on your knee. 
How long is he going to be?
The thought of him walking around and spreading temptations and hopelessness turns your stomach to rot. 
Come on. 
Please just stop and come back. 
You jump when there's a thick billow of smoke suddenly appearing in front of you. 
He walks out, an irritated look on his face but nothing compared to what he was like last time. 
When he sees you, he looks you up and down in suspicion. 
"What?" You ask, confused as to why he's staring at you like that. 
"Nothing," He snaps, watching in disgust as you stand up and dust yourself off, fixing your cardigan carefully. 
"Well, I'm ready."
"Feeling rested?" He asks, clearly mocking you by the tone of his voice. 
"Very," You say sleepily, a tired smile on your face even though there's a really deep and uncomfortable feeling in your gut at the knowledge of where he's been and what he's been doing. 
You've got this, do not despair. 
You take a deep breath and let it out in one big huff. 
I won't. 
Without acknowledging your jesting, he turns and keeps walking. 
___________________
You'll never forget the way your heart plummeted to your stomach when your mother told you about the arranged marriage. 
"I have been patient with you, ____," She had said through gritted teeth, "But I will not continue to be humiliated by your lack of motivation to do something with your life."
You had scoffed in disbelief, "I never said I didn't want to do anything with my life! I only said I didn't want to marry so soon. Mother, why can't you just-"
"Do not tell me to accept you as you are," She hissed, "You saying that over and over again does not change the fact that you do not have a choice in the matter."
"But it's my life-"
"Not when you live under my roof."
"Then I'll just leave!" You cried. 
"You would gladly shame your own mother by running off?" She was furious, "I raised you. This is the least that you could do to repay me."
"Mother, I-"
"This discussion is over. You will marry Hoseok and that is the end of it, do you understand?"
You shook your head, "No I don't, I don't understand. I don't understand how you could treat your own flesh and blood like this. I don't understand how you could not wish me happiness-"
"Happiness? Really, ____?" Your mother stepped closer, glaring down at you, "Happiness has nothing to do with it. You are useless if you don't do this."
Her words struck deep into your heart that day more than they ever had before. 
You couldn't even find the words to respond. But she had plenty to share. 
"Look at you," She gestured at you in disgust, "Might as well try to bring something to the table. You are so self-centered. How do you think I feel? How do you think Hoseok feels knowing he's going to be stuck with you? The village whore.”
Your eyes fell to the floor, unable to look at her any longer. 
"M-Mother-..."
"If you disobey me, if you ruin this in any way...you are dead to me. Do you understand?"
It took a moment for you to find the strength to give her a small nod. 
She walked away, never acknowledging your heart bleeding out onto the floor, the ache she placed deep into your bones, the hurt that could never be repaired. 
You turned and ran out of the barn where the two of you had been talking, running all the way to the old apple tree and collapsing on the ground near the worn down swing that still hung there. 
No matter how hard you cried, it didn't fill the hole in your heart that your mother had carved out. It didn't release the indescribable pain in your body that continued to grow each day. 
No one heard your sobs, no one came to save you from the hurt. 
He wasn't around that day to come to you. 
He never even knew what happened. 
You had never felt so alone in your entire sixteen years of life.
________________________________
Only a couple miles ahead, you can see a forest. 
It's a small speck in the distance, but the long line of trees has got to be a forest as far as you can tell.
After hours upon hours of nothing but bare mountains as far as the eye can see, it's almost a relief to see something different. Although, you know that the forest will only contain more unspoken horrors that you have yet to be subjected to. 
Wracking your tired brain, you try to remember what the seventh circle consisted of. But you can't. Your mind is so blurry with confusion, anxiety, and a deep exhaustion that will never let go that you cannot keep a single thought clear enough to understand. 
He walks in front of you, silent. 
You're not sure why, but you feel an incessant need to talk. Exhausted, you don't want to. But the need to fill the silence is so strong you almost break a few times. The only reason you don't is because you know he wouldn't bother to reciprocate. You would only be listening to yourself speak and making the exhaustion stronger in the long run. 
So you stay quiet, continuously trying to gain some semblance of clarity in your thoughts. 
Then suddenly the forest is in front of you. 
For a moment you think you just teleported closer, but then the tiny part of your brain that hasn't flown yet realizes that you simply checked out for however many hours it took to get here. 
You just stand there and stare at the trees. 
This forest is different. The trees are not burnt or molding like the other circles; instead, they are simply gray. Nothing else. Gnarled and colorless, the trees sit there in dead silence. 
There are giant roughly broken stones scattered across the ground, some in and some out of the forest, as if a structure was once there thousands of years ago and was brought to ruin. Somewhere in your fuzzy memories you remember there being something a little like this at the entrance to the second circle too.
"Was there something here?" 
The sound of your voice doesn't sound like your own, it sounds strange; disconnected from you after not being used for a while. 
"Yeah."
You turn your head and look at him, watching him scan over the ruins with a look of hatred in his gaze. 
"What happened?"
The demon looks at you, "The earthquake."
"Earthquake?"
"The one that shook the earth at the time of His death."
There's a swell of something deep in your chest, something like sadness but also an undeniable hope. 
A brief thought passes through your brain as you scan the ruins, wondering if these rocks would hurt you if you were to touch them. 
The urge to reach out and caress them is so visceral that you don't stop yourself from stepping forward and doing just that. 
JK looks on in confusion as he watches the human walk forward, a deep sadness in her gaze as she stretches a hand out and places it on one of the jagged stones. 
A deep shudder goes through the forest, making you step back and look around, not aware of the fact that he's watching closely. 
You look at your hand and gulp when you see a small streak of red there. 
The blood isn’t your own.
Looking back at the stone, you see nothing there that would have been the cause. 
"What're you doing?" 
You look at him to see him glowering at you, which isn't unusual.
"Hm?" You mumble.
"You're a freak," He mutters before shaking his head and walking on ahead. 
Looking down at your hand, you stare at the red smear for a moment before cradling your hand to your chest and following him into the dense and unwelcoming wood.
The further into the forest you go, the darker it becomes. The trees do not gain any more or less color, it feels as though the entire area has become a black and white film. The trunks become closer together, the branches above your heads tangle into each other more and more until even the blood red sky of Hell is nearly gone entirely; only the tiniest slivers coming through every once in a while; a stark contrast to the rest of the surroundings. 
You walk in more silence; which isn't easy to try and get re-accustomed to after speaking a few brief words with him. 
It's more than a little alarming when he suddenly stops moving and whispers a hushed order to be quiet.
Even though you weren't speaking, you still freeze so that you can't be heard walking. Soon the sound of footsteps reaches your ears and you can physically feel the color draining from your face as you listen intently to whoever is getting closer and closer. 
The demon makes no sound either, which makes the situation that much more terrifying. 
Why should a demon be afraid of one of Hell's many inhabitants? Isn't he one of the worst among them? One of the most feared in those hearts that believe?
You gulp, trying not to breathe too loudly as the footsteps continue to get closer. 
They sound heavy and slow, which does nothing for your anxiety. 
Whatever it is, is very large. 
When you feel his cold hand on your arm, pushing you in a certain direction, you don't stop to argue. You let him shove you into a small grove of shrubbery separate from the main path you had been on. 
Crouching down when he motions to, you make yourself as small as possible in order to conceal your presence behind some of the gnarly plants.
You get yourself situated right before the footsteps are right where the two of you were previously standing. A horrid stench like that of a barn that's not been cleaned in months wafts through the air and you cover your mouth before a gag can come out. 
What is that horrible smell?
Without moving at all, you look through the skinny branches of the bush in front of you, but you can't see anything. 
A loud snort makes you flinch, a chill running down your spine as you freeze up in fear. 
There's something out there, but you don't know what it is. 
Would it be better to see it, or to let your imagination run wild?
As you stay crouched there, unmoving, you realize that your legs are beginning to cramp up in the awkward position that you've held longer than usual. 
You silently look to your left to see him crouched next to you, seemingly unaffected as he peers through the bush at whatever is there. Then he turns his head and sees you looking at him. He slowly brings a finger up to his lips to remind you to be quiet, then he points at a part in the branches. 
Carefully, you move your head a little to the left and look where he's pointing. 
Heart slamming into your throat immediately, you almost choke on it as you force yourself to stay put and not move a muscle. 
In front of the bush, not even twenty yards away, is a massive creature with matted black fur and horns. It's standing on two feet, bulging arms hanging at its sides as it swings its head back and forth, sniffing the air. 
A minotaur. 
That's a minotaur. 
The fear in your heart is so intense that you're afraid it might just stop and you'll keel over before the beast even has a chance to attack. 
You jump when there's a touch on your shoulder, then turn to see him looking at you with a raised brow. Ignoring him, you look through the bush again at the guardian of the seventh circle, sweat starting to form on your lower back. 
Then there's a hand on your waist, pulling you to the left and right into him as the demon places his lips right next to your ear and whispers. 
"Calm down, little girl. You're only making it worse."
You pull away and look at him indignantly. 
What is he saying? It seems like this is far from the time to be making jabs. There's a giant beast out there that could tear anything to shreds in mere seconds. 
Well, you at least. 
JK rolls his eyes and pulls you against him once more, hand gripping your waist firmly while he holds you in place as he brings his mouth back to your left ear. 
"He can smell fear. And you, darling, absolutely reek of it."
You gulp. 
How are you supposed to not be scared in this situation? And him telling you that has not helped at all. 
You're about to say this, but get cut off when suddenly his other hand is grabbing your chin and turning your face towards his. 
Staring into his dark eyes, you have no idea what to make of his actions as he leans in closer. 
His lips unnecessarily brush your cheek as he moves to your ear once more and ever so quietly whispers, "I can think of a few things that will take your mind off of it."
What in the world is he doing??
"Are you insane?" You whisper harshly as you pull back and look at him. 
His smirk only widens as the glint in his eyes shines mischievously. 
"Absolutely fucking mental." And he looks it too. 
You blink, mind going completely blank. 
He's insane. 
He's actually insane. 
"Don't you dare put your hands on me," You finally snap quietly as you pry his fingers from where they grip your side and shove him away.
JK leans closer again, face dangerously close to yours, "Shh, don't get too mad, doll. You're supposed to be quiet, remember?"
Anger flares up in your chest when he reaches a hand out, probably to touch you again. You slap it away and point a finger in his face.
"If you try anything at all while we're stuck in this tiny space," You're seething even as you whisper with rage, "I will kick you out of this bush and let the minotaur have his way with you, you miserable little creep!" 
To your surprise and annoyance, he only smiles at your words. 
Then the sound of footsteps makes you whip your head back and look out of the bush, watching breathlessly as the minotaur walks in the opposite direction, long heavy strides and a rank smell following closely behind.
Your brows furrow and you lean closer to the opening to watch in mounting confusion as he continues to stomp away. 
When you look back at the demon watching you smugly, it all makes sense. 
He had intentionally riled you up in order to distract you from the fear holding your body captive. The anger had certainly made you momentarily forget about your almost inevitably gruesome ending, and apparently was enough to conceal any smell the guardian was attracted to. 
Why did he do that?
It's almost like he can hear the question in your mind as he raises a brow, "What? You think I want to deal with having to save your ass from more than I need to? If you didn't have any value to me, all you would be right now is the leftover meat stuck in his teeth."
You make a face at his disgusting choice of words. 
"Whatever."
"No 'thank you'?" He asks with a tinge of amusement in his voice. 
"I'll let you know if I start feeling grateful later," You shoot back, then take a deep breath to calm yourself. 
You don't want to be mad. He's just so good at pushing your buttons until you snap.
The more you let that show the more power he has over you. He's not stupid, he can tell what annoys you, and reacting to it only confirms certain things for him. Demons have done this since the beginning of their days, they only continue to learn more and more over time. 
So take a deep breath. 
And try to stay calm. 
You swipe away the hair that stuck to your sweaty forehead and look through the bush again to see the minotaur is much further now. 
"Can we go or is he going to come back?” You chew on your bottom lip, “...should we just stay here for a bit?"
"You can do whatever you want, doll. I'm flattered that you want to be this close to me for longer-"
He cuts himself off when you unexpectedly lean over into his space, your nose mere inches from his own. There's a fiery glint in your eyes as you lean even closer, making him move away and sit back. 
"What ever happened to you threatening to kill me, hm?" The taunting smirk on your pure little lips has him swallowing, "Have I really had that much of an effect on you, demon? Feeling a little weak? Poor little thing."
Before he gets a chance to reply, you stand up. When his gaze follows you, his teeth grind at the sight of you looking down on him, a pitying smile directed right at the demon. 
Neither of you says anything. 
You can see his chest rising and falling in heavy angry breaths as he glares up at the 'human' that has suddenly become bold. 
But it doesn't affect you. 
At this moment, he is below you. 
Finally, he stands up; once again towering over you as he glowers. 
But he says nothing. 
For the first time, he truly doesn't have a comeback. 
You see him swallow before he shoulders past you.
Once he's far enough away, you let out the breath you were holding. Then you look upwards and send a quick prayer of gratitude before turning and following him. 
-
The silence in the forest is unsettling, almost as if the trees themselves are afraid of the circle guardian's presence lurking about. 
You're not sure where the minotaur went, but with how loud its footsteps were when it first approached the two of you, you're not worried about it sneaking up. 
He keeps a good distance between you as he leads the way, saying nothing. 
It's not uncommon for him to be in a mood, but this one feels different. What you did back there must have really struck a nerve. 
You contemplate this as you walk through the gray wood. 
The trees continue to grow closer, either that or your mind is seeing things that aren't there. 
"Ah," You trip on a gnarled root that has found its way across the path and wound itself up into another root from a lumpy tree. 
No, they're actually closer together. It's not in your head-
Wait a minute. 
You look to your left and right as you walk, but everything is as still and silent as it's been since you came into the wood. 
Something's different though. 
Even as he continues to walk, you stop where you are. 
A moment of dead silence passes, then you hear the smallest creak. 
Then the slight rustle of dried leaves. 
Now that you've stopped, you can see and hear things you couldn't while you were moving. 
Another slow look around you and you know your suspicions were right. 
The trees are ever so slowly growing closer and closer together as you stand there. 
A long snake-like root slithers excruciatingly slowly past your bare feet, making its way to the other side of the path. 
It's almost as if the trees themselves are trying to swallow the path whole; no wonder it's been feeling more and more cramped the further you walk. 
You stand there for a moment, a sudden wave of sadness washing over you as the dead yet very much alive plants writhe around in search of more room to accommodate them. 
The deep pit in your stomach has no reasoning behind it, at least not one that is clear to you right now. 
-
JK keeps his eyes locked on the ground before him as he walks, not even flinching at the roots and twigs that twitch and reach for each other as he makes no attempt not to step on them as he passes. 
Stupid fucking human. 
Always thinking she's got something over his head, acting like she knows something he doesn't-
Wait. 
He stops walking, coming to a complete stand still in the middle of the nearly undetectable path, all the roots grown over it and each other until they themselves have become the walkway through this section of the seventh circle. 
Eyes narrowing, he quickly flits through everything the mortal has said and done since he had the misfortune of stumbling upon it. 
His brain rifles through all of the information; every twitch of her eyelid when he says something specific, every little choke in her breath as she tries to get certain words out, even the way she's tried to conceal the pain consuming her body, as if he couldn't already tell. She's a whiny little bitch, but not as much as he would expect, knowing what her body must be going through at this point. 
Why...in the ever-living fuck...has she not given up yet?
This other human. 
This so-called best friend that she’s madly in love with, even though he clearly feels nothing for her.
That's where the answer lies, he's sure of it. 
But who is it? 
Surely he can figure it out without too much trouble. 
Enough wasting his time with trying useless methods of breaking down her spirit-
What if something were to happen to the best friend?
If he means enough to her to make her endure Hell to get him the Flame, she will be willing to do anything for him.
The demon pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, chewing on it as he stares at a dead leaf bitterly. 
Other humans typically break when it comes to things such as pain and longing that are brought upon themselves. This one is different.
She might be smart, but she's not brave enough to challenge him if he brings the best friend into the equation. 
Whatever it takes. 
JK turns his head, expecting to see her watching him silently as she always does; zoning out and not paying attention to a damn thing like the useless human she is. 
But she's not there. 
He stares at the empty space where she's supposed to be for a solid minute. Then he finally turns the rest of his body around, hands moving to his hips as he sighs loudly. 
Where the fuck did she go this time?
Idiot. 
He walks back down the path a little ways, brows furrowing more the further he goes without coming upon her. 
Foolish fucking mortal-
The demon stops when he finally sees her standing in the middle of the path. 
She seems out of it, more so than usual. 
The faraway look in her eyes is clear even from where he is, almost twenty feet away. 
"What are you doing?"
No acknowledgments of his words follow. 
He sighs through his nose and walks closer, noticing that her hands are clenched into fists at her sides as she stares at a branch on the ground that fell from its tree some time ago. 
"I'm not going to stand around and wait for your lazy ass."
Isn't that exactly what you're doing?
He grits his teeth. 
There's no sign of her even hearing his threats. 
Reaching out a hand, he roughly pushes her shoulder, making her rock back a little before she seems to slowly come out of whatever trance she was just in. 
You blink slowly, seeing his strikingly handsome face come into view before blurring a bit, then clearing up again a second later. 
"Hm?"
"What do you mean, hm?" He snaps, "What's so fucking important about a stupid branch that you're being so dramatic and wasting my time?" As he says it, he kicks the branch, not even watching as it flies a little ways off the path and lands in the decayed grass with a soft thump. 
Your brows furrow in confusion at his outburst. 
"What are you talking about?"
He's about to lose it, then he suddenly realizes that you're not just fucking with him. 
You're genuinely confused. 
As you silently watch him look you over with a suspicious gaze, you try to wrack your brain for an answer as to why you were just standing there, frozen. 
Nothing comes to mind. 
"We should keep going," You eventually whisper. 
JK rolls his eyes dramatically, "Oh should we? Pardon me for making this whole fucking shitshow take longer by standing around like a moron!!"
His last words echo around the forest, making you cringe at the shattering of the silence. 
A moment passes, the quiet even more achingly evident than before, even the roots halting their journeys to the other side. 
Then you look at him, an eyebrow raised in unamused judgment. 
His mouth twists in annoyance as he tries not to say anything else. 
Then he leans down close to your face and hisses fiercely, "Just fucking walk."
Unable to help yourself, you stick your tongue out at him as he pulls away. 
He scoffs but says nothing more as he turns and continues deeper into the unsettling silence waiting ahead. 
-
As you walk along behind him, you mumble to yourself, mocking his grumpy insults. 
You know he can hear you, but he doesn’t make you stop, just lets you continue to huff and puff quietly. 
If that’s how you wish to entertain yourself, he doesn’t care. 
As long as he doesn’t have to speak to you to keep you from whining at him. 
It’s a win in his book. 
“Walk, walk, walk, just walk, walk, walk. Stop whining, you’re so stupid, meh meh meh,” You watch your feet in order not to trip, “Idiot, so stupid, bleh bleh bleh. No need to be so mean. Jeez.”
“Think you could complain a little quieter?”
“I won’t.”
He rolls his eyes. 
After another few minutes, you realize that maybe you should’ve been more quiet. 
But you’ll never admit that. 
Once again, you don’t hear it until you see him freeze. 
To be fair, he was the one that yelled not long ago.
The heavy footfalls soon reach your ears after you stop behind him. 
Again??
Before you can even panic, there’s a harsh grip on your wrist and suddenly he’s taking off through the brush and dragging you with him.
You’re stumbling along behind him, head whipping left and right as you try to figure out where the minotaur is coming from. 
The uncovered parts of your feet are stinging as the pale twigs stab unforgivingly. 
If they’re in pain, you should be too.
The echoing footsteps sound like they’re coming from everywhere all at once. You don’t understand how the demon knows where to go. 
An ear piercing roar makes your chest tighten with horror, the spindly trees quivering along with you. 
Eyes locked on the back of his silky black shirt, you focus only on not falling.
Then he’s pushing you into a tree. 
You wince at the pain in your wings from being pinned between your back and the rough bark. 
His hands are on your shoulders, keeping you in place. 
After the initial shock of pain, you notice that he’s breathing heavily, chest rising and falling rapidly as he keeps you against the trunk. 
You gulp and breathe carefully, trying not to think about anything but being quiet. 
He looks down at you, black hair falling into his dark eyes as he glares at you before speaking lowly. 
“I told you to be quiet.”
“Sorry,” You whisper back. 
He shakes his head, still catching his breath. 
The sound of something large crashing through the forest makes you freeze up again as he pushes you more into the tree, arms on either side of you and locking you in. 
Almost as if he’s acting like a shield, the only thing that would be between you and the minotaur…
You don’t notice when the loud crashing eventually gets further and further away. 
Neither does he. 
There’s a thick heat in the air, different from that of Hell’s typical weather. 
When he looks down at you again, it only gets worse. 
You’re staring into his eyes, not a single word spoken between you. 
The demon swallows the lump in his throat as he looks at the ridiculous doe-eyed human that has caused him nothing but grief since first they met. 
Then he’s leaning down, eyes searching your face carefully, as if the answer to all of his questions is written there somewhere, if only he can find it.  
When you see him moving closer, you notice that he’s not smirking. He’s not whispering lustful words to try and tempt you into something. Even the look in his eyes is different. 
He’s not trying to confuse, or trick, or threaten you in any way. 
Soft but cold fingers are suddenly cupping just under your jaw, his thumb barely on your left cheek. 
JK leans in even closer. 
You’re drawing him in, like a spider in its web; ready to capture the prize that mistakenly ended up there. 
For the first time, he thinks he might actually be the fly. 
He knows this. 
And yet he doesn’t stop. 
He comes closer still, until his forehead barely touches yours. 
“Damn it.”
His breath fans over your lips.  
What is she doing to him?
What is this mere mortal doing to him?
Unable to resist it when he pulls away, you bring your hands up and cup his cheeks in order to stop his retreat. 
His eyes lock on yours, a look of pure shock in his. 
The warmth of your hands sends something deep into the untouched parts inside of him. Somewhere he has never dared to explore. 
A place so dark and twisted that even he will not acknowledge it.
You pull him closer, nose bumping his and your soft breath warming his skin in a way he never thought was possible. 
He watches silently as you seem to struggle internally with yourself for a moment, eyes closed. 
Then you move and ever so gently place your mouth close to his ear, lips more soft than he’d have ever guessed. 
“Not yet,” You whisper before pulling away, not missing the way he almost chases after your lips when you move back. 
The look in his eyes as he stares into yours sucks the breath out of you. 
Then suddenly he’s moving back, taking his arms from beside you and dragging his eyes away. 
It’s like a switch has gone off in him. The dark curtain has returned in his eyes, the stiff and irritated aura that always surrounds him back stronger than before. 
“You’re so gullible,” He scoffs. 
You say nothing, not denying nor confirming his words. 
You know he’s trying to regain his control. 
You know that he almost gave in, and it was in no way an attempt to make you fall down that slippery slope of temptation. 
It was his own want. 
He’s not going to admit that, though. 
The way he won’t even look at you before gesturing and muttering something about continuing is telling enough. 
-
Just as the long silence was painful enough to make one's ears bleed, the sudden noise is almost a thousand times worse. 
It comes out of nowhere. 
One moment you were walking behind him along the path, the next there were the sounds of screams so tortured that your heart lodged itself in your throat and you stopped cold, the blood running through you freezing in your veins.
You hadn't even realized you were turning around to run the other direction, until you felt a hand grab the neck of your cardigan and unceremoniously yank you back. 
The instinct to fight the demon as he wrestles you into a secure hold is strong, but you're no match against the strong arms that pin your back into his chest. 
Only seconds pass before he's practically lifting you off the path and carrying you behind a thick tree. 
"Calm down, you idiot!" He hisses in your ear. 
"I don't wanna look- please! JK please!" You breathe out, panicky, "Please- please don't make me look, I don't- I can't-" 
The feeling of you shaking in his arms gives him pause for a millisecond before he's back to rolling his eyes at your weakness. 
The tears come before you can even process what's happening. 
Because it's too late. 
You already saw; you're already staring straight at a thin middle-aged man, covered in something red and steaming as he screams while trying to climb out of the deep river of boiling blood that is full of his heartless companions. 
The only reason he never climbs out is because each time he tries; an arrow is shot at him, causing him to shriek again before tumbling back into the thick crimson waves. The other sinners fare no better. 
Centaurs patrol the sides of the river, crossbows at the ready as they shoot mercilessly at anyone that tries to escape. 
Dear Lord, please help me.
An anguished cry falls from your own lips as you try desperately to close your eyes. 
Help me.
He tightens the grip he has on you before turning you both around so that his back is facing the river and all you can see are the once again colorless trees. 
The sight of a weeping angel wrapped in the arms of a demon as he slowly sinks to the ground with her would baffle any living thing. 
"You won’t be able to close your eyes, just look at the trees," He mumbles as you cry uncontrollably. 
‘Can't close your eyes.’
‘Can't close your eyes.’
‘Look at the blood upon your hands.’ 
‘Look at what you chose to do.’ 
‘Would you do it again?’
‘Of course you would-’ 
That haunting voice that entered your mind when you were being thrown around in the second circle creeps back in, sending a burning chill into your bones. 
‘-because look at that blood you drown in.’ 
‘Look at that blood upon your hands.'
‘It's too beautiful to resist.’
‘You hate Him, don't you?’
‘You hate Him because He did this to you.’
‘He created you.’
‘Look at His creation now.’ 
‘Wallowing in the blood of innocent victims.’
‘So pathetic.’
‘But you'd do it again, wouldn't you?’
‘Of course you would-’
Your whole body is shaking like a leaf as you use every ounce of strength in you to push that vile voice from your brain. 
You will not stand to hear it. 
You know who it is now. 
You know those words were not aimed at you, but at the prisoners here. As they were in the second circle. 
They merely happened to get stuck in your head as a side-effect of being present there. 
You will not listen to the poisonous wretch. 
Get out. 
Get out of my head. 
You are not allowed in my mind. 
Get out right now. 
GET! OUT!
JK feels your whole body tense up for a few moments, then you slump against him, no longer fighting. 
You stare blankly at the black and white and gray smudges around you, the sound of screams muffling as you blink slowly. 
"-is it?"
A loud ringing pierces your ears as you stare ahead numbly. 
You can't close your eyes, but at least you aren't watching what is happening behind you. 
"-ell me what's-"
A small smile lifts the corners of your lips when you see the wispy image of two little kids running through the naked trees, their ghostly laughter reaching your ears. 
"-idiot. You n-"
"Apple!"
"Hey-"
"You're late, Apple-"
"Hey!"
"I'm sorry," The mumbled words from your lips make the demon frown in confusion as he gently smacks your forehead. 
"Hey, come to your senses, idiot."
He sighs and adjusts you the best he can with your dead weight as you mumble and stare at something deep in the forest that isn't there. 
When you slump back into his chest, he gives up and leans back with a heavy sigh, his long legs parted to fit your figure in between them, his arms behind him as he leans on his hands, shaking his head in irritation. 
As if the situation could've gotten any worse. 
They must be having fun.
You swallow, your dry throat making it a bit hard to breathe.
You can feel hands grabbing at you as you start to slip, a voice calling to you, but the words are whisked away by the wind. 
I'm sorry. 
I'm so sorry.
I won't let go. 
The rest of the dead forest fades away, soon being replaced by lush bushes full of berries, trees full of long branches that squirrels scamper across, and golden sunlight kissing the soft earth. 
Cold fingers touch your face. 
Warm sun heats up your freezing cheeks.
A chilled breath whispers something softly. 
You want to whisper back. 
The words get stuck in your throat. 
You don't have to be scared anymore.
I can take care of you now.
I promise.
I'll never let go again.
The sound of a bubbling brook reaches your ears, followed by little giggles that float through the air and dance through the ruffling leaves of the apple tree. 
They sound so happy. 
You blink slowly, the smile on your face growing a little more even as your consciousness slips from you. 
Then you can see them once more. 
Running. 
Running through the trees.
There's the swing, gently swinging back and forth before jolting when the little girl grabs the rope handles, laughing loudly before a squeal leaves her lips. 
The boy is there, touching her shoulder gently, "Get on, I'll push you."
She climbs onto the swing as he holds it steady, then he moves behind it and holds the ropes tightly and walks backwards. 
"Hold on tight, Apple. This is going to be the highest one yet!"
The small girl has a huge radiant smile on her face as she kicks her feet excitedly, waiting patiently as her best friend pulls the swing back farther than usual before letting go. 
As he pushes her, the smile on his face widens at the sound of her joy. 
"Higher!"
The blue sky and fluffy white clouds peek through the leaves above her, a mesmerizing view. 
This must be what it feels like to fly. 
She closes her eyes and pictures soaring up and up. 
She has wings like a bird. 
Maybe they're blue. 
Maybe they're black.
Maybe they're white. 
She looks down at the tops of the trees, the tufts of green that look so different from up above. 
Nothing can reach her up here. 
Here she can laugh. 
Here she can cry. 
The sun is so close that it reaches out to kiss her cheek as she flies by. 
Here there is no pain. 
There is no fear. 
Here she is free. 
She calls to him. 
He can be free too. 
She calls for him to come have fun. 
He has wings like a bird. 
Maybe they're blue. 
Maybe they're white.
Maybe they're black. 
It's okay. 
Nothing can reach them up here.
Here they can laugh, and cry, and love. 
Here there is no pain. 
There is no fear. 
Here she can live. 
______________________________
a/n: tysm for being so patient loves, it's good to finally be back 😭
Tag list; @kookxin @butterymin @telepathytae @kooliv @highoffbaddecisions @meanum @smitssharon02 @kmpac @ggukkieland @jjanjankook @sugaslittlekookies @hobispriteu1306 @kimchibrat @slowlydeliciousjiminie @screamertannie @i-dont-give-a-fok @hopefulrascalstatesmantoad @ohyeahjk @babycandy111 @ttipa @ggukcanim @era-genius @katlumiiine @xmochiloverx @sopikooo @berryonasummerevening @jamlessstars @bangtannie7 @iftheworldiswritten @nuttykittypainter @geniejunn @mal99 @ane102 @charlesswife @jeonssm @ashbxnny @veronawrites @jjkw-7 @jinsundor @h-g-bts @justvibingsblog @hyuneyeon @hellbornsworld @hiii-priestess @nuttypizzacat @vidaficrecs @royallyjjk @thvslvt @hoseoksluv89 @moonchilddna​ @idkjustlovingbts @taiwan0618 @aurorathi
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intuitively-her · 1 year ago
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How can you improve your finances?
Pile 1-(Page of pentacles, 8 of pentacles, Page of cups, 7 of cups, Knight of swords, 3 of swords, 4 of wands rx, 9 of swords, Death) *angel answers: You're ready! ; communicate clearly with others
You've gotta do some self-improvement babe. Get focused and figure out what career path fits you best. Now is the time to hustle! Separate your needs and wants. Figure out your likes and dislikes. Stop being so unsure of yourself. You've got this! Set small goals, and then move to the bigger ones. Life is not a race. Pace yourself. Stop searching for the "perfect" thing and realize the potential that already surrounds you. Everything you need is right in front of you. Literally at your fingertips! You've got to change your negative thinking and eliminate your fears as well. It seems like you had some type of falling out with someone or maybe there was some drama at a past workplace. It feels like this has caused you to turn cold and not be as receptive to others. You need to connect and put yourself out into the world more. Closing yourself off like this will only create more blockages.
Pile 2-(Temperance, Wheel of fortune, 6 of pentacles rx, Queen of swords, King of swords, The Moon rx, Ace of swords, 8 of cups, 8 of swords) *angel answers: Don't stop! ; Ask your angels
It's time to pour into your own cup for once. Do something nice for yourself. Even if it means a solo date/vacation. Practice discipline with people and certain habits you have. This could include smoking, etc. Learn to say no! Stop hanging out with that certain friend/lover when you know you shouldn't be. This could even be people that come and ask you for money often. Don't be so over extensive to others. Not everyone deserves your time and energy. You need to start seeing people/situations for what they really are. Take your rose-colored glasses off pls. Your environment/whoever you're choosing to spend time with is literally holding you back. You're too distracted and over giving to others right now. Go into hermit mode and focus on yourself for a while.
Pile 3-(The Star, The High Priestess, 9 of pentacles, 4 of pentacles, 5 of pentacles, The Sun, 2 of swords, 5 of wands, Queen of cups, Knight of cups, Page of wands) *angel answers: It's up to you! ; Ask for help from others *angel # confirmation: 555
You need to stay true to yourself and do what you feel is right. Follow your intuition! It's stronger than what you think. I feel like sometimes you let opinions of others affect you. This may cause you to get in your head a lot about whether or not you're doing the right thing. These people could never reach the success that you're meant to reach in this life. So stop giving their opinions so much weight. Stop caring what others think. Stop telling people about your ideas. Just follow your dreams! Whatever creative ideas you have right now, put them into action. Maybe you've been wanting to start a small business or something related? DO IT! I'm also feeling like you don't enjoy a lot of attention and may like to remain in the background. You're meant to be in the spotlight babe! You've gotta get used to it. I think there's actually many people that would want to collaborate with you. You have to express yourself more. BE WHO YOU ARE!🤣 Seriously tho, you need to get comfortable in you own skin. Let people see the real you. You're way too amazing to keep yourself hidden the way you do.😘
*channeled song: Human nature by Madonna
Pile 4-(8 of wands, The Lovers rx, 3 of cups, 2 of cups, 2 of pentacles, 8 of pentacles, 6 of cups, 6 of swords) *angel answers: Wait! ; Romance *angel # confirmation: 888
You need some balance in your life. I'm feeling in your relationships mainly. This could be with family. Maybe there's some loose ends from your past that still need to be tied? You've gotta balance your work and play as well. It's okay to let yourself have fun, but not to the point where the party life controls you. For others, you need to go out and have more fun! Stop keeping yourself so wrapped up in work. Practice having more control in situations and standing your ground. Stop letting others walk all over you. Travel would benefit you as well. Even if it's just an hour or so away. I feel like seeing different walks of life will open your mind to new possibilities. Lastly, you need to go with the flow of life more. I know you're probably tired of hearing that.🤣 Everything will happen as it's supposed to tho. You are right where you need to be. I promise babe.
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vagabond-umlaut · 1 year ago
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ramé 6.0
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love.
a word everyone spells as l-o-v-e, except one certain young sorcerer – to whom it appears h-a-p-p-y, to whom it appears h-a-v-o-c – to whom it appears the shape of the letters of your name.
you, on the other hand, forget how to spell when the same word is before you – a fact which, your admirer reckons, would have been a major problem were he not he – that is, were he not the one and only 'gojo satoru'.
and thus begins, the plan.
and thus begins, the six steps to catch one's crush's eye — by the six eyes.
|6/6| this isn't really a way. if you're at this step, just fuckin' stop and retreat. your crush won't ever notice you – you sad, pathetic loser.
[READ 1.0 HERE AND 2.0 HERE AND 3.0 HERE AND 4.0 HERE AND 5.0 HERE!]
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▸ student!gojo satoru x student!reader; fem!reader; the promised sunshine ending to this work's finally here!! ft. the classic angst-to-tooth-rotting-fluff trajectory, the best four friends one can ever get, and, the sweetest romance between 'toru and shortie becoming official freaking-finally! [THE CHAP TITLE'S MISLEADING. OF SORTS. :))]
▸ sorry but i had to squeeze in a scene of shoko and suguru being the best drinking buddies ever. AND AND AND- jjk season two, my beloved-beloathed...
▸ find other parts of 'ramé' and other [stand-alone] fics set in the same universe as this work here! anyways, image, divider & characters ain't mine. pls don't plagiarize, translate or repost this. enjoy reading! ❤️
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"is that what you really think?"
gojo wonders if a momentous occasion as the one now deserves one brawl thrown into it or not. it won't be anything much; just dumping a bowl of soup down suguru's shirt and/or landing a pretty solid kick to his stomach and/or-
"careful, senpai or you might've to go home, bloody and beaten," the most monotone voice ever possible crashes into his thoughts in the worst possible way. a snicker, far too familiar, joins in. "yeah, nanami's right. besides, we haven't even clicked a pic yet. you wouldn't want to wear a black eye in it, would you?"
clinking his glass with shoko's, the white-haired watches suguru gulp down a shot of tequila, then give a mighty firm shake of his head. "no, of-fucking-course not. today is our dearest kouhai's important day; i don't wanna get involved in any drama now; though..." trailing off, the black-haired boy shoots gojo an awfully obvious side-glance before a look shared with the others.
the boy lets his eyes wander away from them. an abominably sharp acrylic nail pokes him in the cheek. gojo exhales a sigh, so exhausted.
were it just a day, the boy's certain to the hell and back, that he would have whipped up a snarky insult to the stink-eye aimed his way. the boy would have slapped his drunk classmate's hand away, calling her sense of fashion the worst names possible.
gojo, however, decides to resort to neither today. he decides to settle for a sigh - the second in the last minute, longer and wearier than the one before - and rests his face into the hollow of his palms, screwing eyes shut.
an exasperated grumble - or two, maybe - permeates the air.
"gojo senpai," the words ring out in a tone far too soft and worried. he muses he doesn't need to look to see the sympathetic frown haibara must be wearing, nor the varying degrees of pity and concern etched into the others' features. a warm hand squeezes his shoulder slightly.
haibara continues, "geto senpai is not entirely wrong, y'know? yes, of course, implying you might kick up drama is sorta wrong, i admit so. but otherwise... you could've tried to, i don't know, somehow find out the reason behind her sudden distance from you?"
opening his eyes, gojo twists to face his kouhai, ready to interrupt him, but stops at the earnestness in his gaze. "turning into a recluse or moping around isn't gonna solve anything, senpai. it's been more than a month since then and from what little i've seen, i can say it's eating the both of you alive. you, way more than her. so, go, speak with her," he urges him with a smile, "the others are not very well at showing their emotions but trust me when i say, we all are worried for you both, senpai."
the white-haired boy drags his gaze away from the speaker. suguru gives him a smile, shoko pokes him in the cheek again, nanami offers a fleeting impression of something smiley before looking away with a grimace.
gojo's eyes flit back to the encouraging boy before.
"okay," the upperclassman relents with a sigh, which instantly grows into a frown the moment every piece clicks into place in his mind and the goggles-wearing boy swears his heart skips a beat, "but what did you say about seeing shortie and know-"
stopping in the middle of the question, the boy stiffens.
three glasses shatter on impact with the floor, freed from the waiter's grasp, soon followed by two maids screeching your name in the most terror-struck voice ever manageable. gojo's six eyes provide him with enough details as always; albeit it seems miles from enough now, the way it always is in your case, further deepening the sorcerer's need to physically see you once; to soak in the brilliance of your gaze and the sweetness of the curve of your lips once.
who knows if he'll ever see you again from as close as- okay, no, wait-
"did you just run all the way here-"
"i love you."
"-in your heels?"
everything falls silent the moment the last word leaves gojo's lips and a shuddered breath escapes him into the bittersweet fragrance of the citrus perfume he remembers you using. in a lilac dress with a messy hairstyle and diamond studs, the youngest and newest leader of your clan stands before him, cheeks stretched in a wide grin.
whirling his seat round completely, the boy gives you one long look, only to earn a hauntingly soft look in return.
you smile.
"i know you might see me as the most inconsistent, lying, crazy bitch at best or as the most opportunistic bitch ever, trying to seduce you, for lack of a better term, to satisfy her craving for power, at worst; but no matter how you see me, how others see me, how i see myself - i'm in love with you, that's one thing which won't change no matter what."
you pause.
and as he watches you catch your breath after that long as hell sentence para, the first realisation which crashes on gojo's otherwise numb brain is: you too haven't changed.
not. one. bit.
from the way you stick to your minimal makeup look; to the way you speak sans any break and curse yourself as you confess to something (you think you did) wrong; to the way your gaze remains fixed on him, acutely trained on even the mildest twitch of his facial muscles... one whole month has passed since that stormy evening yet you're still the same you.
a little sweet. a little sour. a whole lot perfect-
who loves him-
who loves him-
you. love. him. too.
for the first time in an apparent eternity, gojo feels his lips lift in a free smile. although the chuckle leaving him sounds laden with moisture and emotions.
"i'll die before calling you a seductress, shortie," the boy says, "you're way too dumb and naive for that." your eyes move to the girl drinking beside him for a second, before settling back on him, a light sheen in them. smile widening yet growing a tender quality, he goes on to say, "and i know you aren't a liar; but regarding the inconsistent claim... i think an explanation's long overdue, isn't it?"
you huff a mild chuckle. stuffing your hands into your dress pockets, your senpai watches you draw in a long breath before letting it out in a whoosh, a tiny smile nestling in the corner of your lips. you begin.
"you know, right, my eldest brother was the clan leader before me? y'know, after my father just decided, one fine day, he's growing old and so he wants to retire somewhere peaceful now, with my mom, leaving me in the care of takeshi nii-chan and his wife?"
four pairs of eyes switch to him in silent query. ignoring them, gojo nods. it isn't everyday you speak so openly of your family, especially this topic concerning them.
considering how painful and sore it is for you.
how big of an escapist your father is.
how big of an asshole your brother is.
how utterly difficult it is for you to navigate in this household daily.
your sigh interrupting his thoughts, he hears you continue, "well, all was going well until it was not; and i decided i'd already spent too much time being a spectator to my life and future keeping getting kicked around like a fucking soccer ball."
few gasps sound in the vicinity, undoubtedly at you cussing. nanami's smooth voice cuts in through their shocked surprise, and through the bubble, gojo was under the impression, he and you had slipped into.
judging from the tiny start you give, the white-haired boy surmises you too must have felt the same.
your classmate's solemn voice sounds in the hush, though traces of a hesitation can still be found in it when he asks, "they... didn't arrange a wedding for you in the month you were here... did they?"
"they did," you're quick to answer, voice growing a steely quality, "the higher-ups and my brother decided to get me engaged to-"
"to whom?"
gojo's lips quirk up at the way you roll your eyes at suguru's impatient question, then look at him, a tired smile creeping onto your features. but, hey! is that a tinge of shyness on your face that the boy can see?
you point your chin at him. "to 'toru, who else?"
the second (or maybe, the third) bout of silence would have followed this statement of yours too - if not for the cackling girl beside gojo. the latter makes no effort to conceal his irritation, shooting the most vicious glare ever; shoko simply raises her glass, as if in a toast, then tosses you a smirk.
"you love him, still you don't wanna get hitched with him? not very clever of you, yeah?"
"yeah," haibara chips in, albeit much less teasing and more a worried timbre than shoko, the shades-wearing boy deems. the other student continues, brows creasing together, "plus, i doubt gojo senpai saying no to the proposal. so, why didn't you go ahead with it?"
your head tilts to one side. your lips twitch in a knowing fashion.
"you just said the reasons yourself, yu-kun."
years later, if someone asks gojo when's the time he realised he's in love with you, too deep and too far gone to ever consider anyone but you by his side, as his other and undoubtedly better half, the sorcerer will grin the goofiest grin ever and sigh the dreamiest sigh ever, and say, "every day."
which is the truth, really-
yet, from those 'every day'-s, there exist few such days, whom the six-eyes user's brain subconsciously frames in a golden frame and places on a dust-free pedestal.
for instance, today.
a day your senpai dreaded to begin by leaving the comfort of his bed, knowing the person whose ascension to the metaphorical throne he has been invited to witness today, blood chilling and condensing into tears on his lashes as memories from long ago and not-so-long-ago hurtle into his brain.
only to morph, by evening, into the day the boy realises: love isn't just what made him switch his infinity off and pull you under him, a shield to protect you from the crumbling roof, forgetting everything except your safety and life; but love is also what made you push him and the emotions within yourself away.
forgetting everything - the boy knows from knowing you these many years - except your very evident aim of shielding him from the vicious schemes of those responsible for this damned jujutsu hierarchy.
no matter how easy and rewarding the other path would've been for you.
no matter how difficult and painful this current path must've been for you.
just 'cause you love him.
just 'cause you know, at the end of it all, he's going to be safe, away from the manipulating hands of the higher-ups - away from even the slimmest chance of experiencing a shred of the ordeals you suffered as a child, losing your free will and living as a mere puppet, subject to those old geezers' whims and fancies.
the two of you are not-too-near to the threshold of adulthood; still, through those unsure lenses of transition between immaturity and maturity, gojo feels sure this very moment that his eyes are viewing now - of watching his feelings being reciprocated not only in words (which, he knows, are true; your body language is as familiar to him as the back of his hand) but also in actions - so pure, so selfless, so utterly... loving-
the boy reckons his six eyes have never landed on a sight so ethereal and just so good, that it makes his heart want to burst right out of his chest.
drinking in the way you're regarding him, fingers fidgeting and teeth gnawing on your lower lip, gojo cracks a smile.
your restlessness abates a little.
"you became the clan leader just to make sure this story remains ours and only ours, didn't you?"
you take a moment before answering with a big nod.
"yeah," you say, "but that doesn't mean you need to be grateful to me or anything of the sort. you can give me any answer you want to give. you can also give me no answer, now or ever, if that's what you really want to do. just know that i love you, and that your answer can never really put a dent in it, no matter what it is."
"no matter what it is?" your senpai echoes your words back to you. a small nod is what you send in reply; yet it seems to be more than the quantity of oil required to set the cogs of gojo's brain whirring to life and mischief. eyes narrowing, he asks, "not even if my response is an 'i love you too, shortie', hm?"
the clock in the room ticks thrice.
two known voices mutter curses behind him.
five maids of yours scurry out the door, whispering excitedly.
you narrow your eyes back at him.
"i asked you to not feel pressured, didn't i? tell me what you want to say, 'toru," you say; his name in your mouth sounds sweeter than the sweetest mochi the boy's ever tasted, "and not those stuff you think i want to hear you say."
your statement draws an amused chortle from gojo. "did you really forget what i told you last that day, shortie? or did you not again not understand what i was telling you then?"
"what's there to not understand in that!?" your indignant reply arrives without missing a beat, "you said you've always seen me as way more than a childhood friend: true 'cause we're best friends. then- oh yeah," with a click of your fingers, you add, face steeped in contemplation, "you also said- oh."
"yep, oh," gojo nods his head in an exaggerated fashion, revelling in the way you're looking at him right now, eyes round as saucers and cheeks ruddy as the expensive wine being served now.
you still seem so beautiful to him.
it takes a pinch more than a while before you breathe out a breathless giggle. straightening in his seat, gojo feels his cheeks hurt a bit from the wide smile digging indents into them.
"you really lo-"
"ma'am, the guests for the evening party will be here very soon. you should get ready now," one of your maids interrupts you. the sorcerer feels his smile shrivel a little. you're barely back with him; yet you'll be stolen away from him-
"aw, is it so?" your entertained query cuts in through his thoughts. the boy looks up from his shoes his gaze had moved to before, to you, an awfully fake apologetic smile lighting up your face.
gods, why do you look so fucking kissable when you're like this?
"you know what, the people invited aren't really the kind i want to talk to and ruin my mood. besides, i've already met 'my' guests, so..." the boy watches you inch closer to him slowly as you trail off; your maid's eyes narrow before widening. you grin. "toodles, mrs. matsui!"
that and the salute you throw at everyone in the room are the last two memories clear in gojo's mind, before everything turns into a mush of everything yet nothing in the end.
well, barring a few exceptions, of course.
your contagious chortles, for instance, while you both dash down the hallways of your mansion; or your delighted gasp when he wraps his arms round you and warps to that patisserie in nikko; or your million-watt-bright beam to him, as you slap the latter's sneaky hands away from stealing a bite from your plate, whilst the latter declares this to be where you two will celebrate the future milestones; or the-
"ieiri senpai was right, y'know?" your tired voice cuts in through your senpai's rather-muddled recollections. the latter tears his gaze away from the inky-black night sky dotted by the twinkling lights of tokyo, to your drowsy form resting her head on his chest, his one arm tight around your shoulders, while the other rests behind his head on the cold hood of the car.
moving to brush the strands of hair away from your forehead, the boy presses a kiss to the tip of your nose, earning a sweet kiss to his chin in return, and hums, "not really the person i wanna chat about right now with my girlfriend..." you suddenly twist your body towards him, throwing an arm over his stomach and nuzzling into his neck; making a mental note to address you as that more often, he sighs. "but carry on, i guess. you won't be you if you can't gush about that damn shoko every third sentence or something."
planting your lips to his jaw for a mere second, gojo watches you pull away an inch from him, grinning. "senpai said you'll be the first one to confess but i'll be the one who makes things official and public and all that shit," you explain, then gasp, grin turning wider.
"oh my god," you mutter, "geto senpai and iori senpai are gonna lose so much money to her. them two never thought you could ever say 'i love you' to me, did you know that? oh my god... i kind of feel bad for those two."
the gleeful expression you're wearing tells your boyfriend otherwise - choosing to ignore it, he throws you a smirk. "well, i don't. those two people shouldn't have doubted me. i'm the one and only gojo satoru," he proclaims, puffing his chest out a bit, "of course, I'll be successful in my mission of getting you to notice my love for you."
"nah, i don't think so," you shake your head the very next instant. lips into the most adoring curve he's ever seen on you - something which steals his retort away from him and makes him want to pinch his arm hard, to see if he's dreaming or not - you hum.
"you could confess your love to me, not 'cause you're gojo satoru. but because you're my 'toru and i'm your shortie... isn't it so?"
gojo thinks back to the time utilised in carefully drafting and finalizing the steps via which he can catch your eye, only to watch them not go the way planned.
gojo looks back to you, only to find your eyes trained on him, glitters of love in them unbelievably similar to those loud crackers bursting in his chest right now.
the young sorcerer runs a reverent finger down the side of your face.
"yeah, it is because you're my shortie and i'm your 'toru, sweetness," he whispers, "and we'll always stay this way, yeah?"
you reply by engraving the shape of your smile into his.
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▸ AND MY MAGNUM OPUS IS OVER! 🥳🥳
▸ I GENUINELY HAVE NO IDEA ON WHAT I SHOULD SAY RN BUT I THINK I WANNA SAY ONE HELL OF A BIG THANK YOU TO EACH AND EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN WITH ME ON THIS JOURNEY SO FAR. 'TORU AND SHORTIE'S STORIES ARE LIKE, WAY FAR FROM BEING OVER, IG. BUT YEAH, THANK YOU SO SO SOO MUCH, PPL. I LOVE Y'ALL SO MUCH! 🥰🥰🥰
▸ series: we're the summer to our winter rain
▸ masterlist
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ladyravenjadethe2nd · 4 months ago
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My MHA crossover with HxH series
This is going to be my finest work. It's very ambitious and the first two parts are already on Ao3.
The series is called If Wishes were Kisses.
There are going to be ten parts to this series in total.
The overall plot is this.
Nanika grants a wish and as a result several characters from HunterxHunter are reborn with their memories into MHA. They are reborn to aged up MHA characters.
Part One which I have called Baby Making starts the story with Kaminari who has a one night stand with Hatsume at their graduation party. Hisoka is born from these characters. This is a humor focused story with a good bit of found family. It's as wholesome as you can get with Hisoka in character. You could call it crack with plot.
We are 22 chapters and 44,127 words in. Hisoka is 3 years old and I will aim to end the story when he is in his 20s. It's going to be a long and wild ride.
Part Two which I have called Family Making starts with Momo and Shouto fighting a villain who uses his quirk to kill people, but little do they know that under certain circumstances instead of taking a life this quirk can create one. As a result Momo and Shouto are the parents of Illumi. This is a drama focused story and it begins when Hisoka is nearly 3 years old.
We have a lot of healing here. A lot of family drama and a very slow burn romance happening between Shouto and Momo.
This does not focus on petty drama. This is me taking the Todoroki family drama in one hand and the Zoldyck family drama in the other and clapping my hands together so hard that Momo manifest her own family drama.
We are 12 chapters and 27,388 words in. Illumi is 3 months old.
Note: These two stories are being written at the same time. You do not need to read both of them to understand the other. I'm trying to have Hisoka and Illumi's relationship as cannon as possible which is complex. You can read my Hisoka/Illumi head cannon here. https://www.tumblr.com/ladyravenjadethe2nd/755780079329656832/hisokaillumi
Part 3 isn't out yet, but I already have the first chapter written. It will take place when Illumi is 7 years old. This will have a new character focus and I'm leaning into making it a parody with some angst elements.
Part 4 and Part 5 will be posted at the exact same time. They will both have new characters. First chapter for part 4 is already written.
Part 4 with be a light hearted RomCom. Very funny and sweet and nothing hurts although I'm going to trick you into being sad a few times just to find out I'm lying about it.
Part 5 will be a heart wrenching dramatic Romance with a good bit of Hurt/Comfort with focus on the Comfort.
Yes this is the same romantic relationship told in two very different ways. You could read it apart from each other, but why would you want to?
Part 6 will have only 2 chapters. I will post the first one anytime after part 5 and it will be the prologue. We will get the details of how this wish came to be. The last chapter will take place after part 8 and it will be the Epilogue. I will set it up in such a way to be primed for a sequel if I chose to write one.
Part 7 will finally go into an action adventure plot. Bits of foreshowing for this will have been everywhere.
Part 8 will be a shared story between two characters. It will be sweet, but I don't want to give anything away.
Part 9 will be One shots of side characters. This will actually be amazing. I have ridiculously cool ideas for these and everyone will be shocked and awed about it. Your welcome in advance.
Part 10 is just where I'm gonna shove all the sex! There are gonna be a lot of relationships going on, but in most cases a detailed sex scene is going to take away from the story I'm trying to tell. So that's where the porn will go and I may take requests.
Here is a link to the Series. If any of this sounds interesting to you pls check it out. I've never been prouder of my work and I am very actively working on this story. I wouldn't be hyping it up this much if I had any doubt that I would finish it. Nothing short of my death will stop this from being completed.
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bengiyo · 1 year ago
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Hey there!
I've seen a bunch of peeps echoing your thoughts on the KH adaptation, like how it's kinda "Japanese" and might be hard to transfer. Can you talk about what exactly gives KH that "Japanese" vibe? I've checked out some JBLs, but my memory of KH is lowkey foggy. Or if you've talked about this before elsewhere, can you drop the link pls? (btw, loving your stray thoughts posts – they're a life saver keeping up with all the BLs. Thanks!)
I'm trying to find a useful way to describe this. Japanese live-action media still hearkens back to a stage tradition, and as such you need to widen your eye to appreciate what's going on.
Close-Ups
I think Westerners watching Asian media rely heavily on close-ups of actors doing things to read their emotions in a scene, and that's not always where the most important stuff is happening in a Japanese drama.
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I'm struggling with the gif search, but this shot above is a good example of that stage tradition. Hashimoto was feeling embarrassed at this moment and wanted to leave, so she literally exists stage right. The Japanese also love depth of frame. We see Aida as the barrier she has to cross to leave in the foreground, and we can see that life is still going on in the background.
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I think a lot of us in the West rely on close ups like this to read characters from any given moment, and you see this reflected in what gets giffed and what doesn't. Michieda Shunsuke has incredibly large and expressive facial features, and he exaggerates them constantly to play up the hyperreal aspects of Aoki, which is another staple of these kinds of Japanese stories.
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You got a lot of this in Mr. Unlucky Has No Choice But to Kiss! as well.
I'm struggling right now because I don't feel like fighting Viki and God Himself to get screenshots of the wider shots in the show, but the wider shots allow for us to get information about multiple characters and the dynamics between them quickly.
Thematic Focus
Another thing that Japanese dramas have that sticks out for me is focus. Because filming in Japan is expensive, most of their comedies of any sort are in a half-hour time slot, a lot like US comedies. You have to use your time wisely, and so there's far less mission creep to create an in-show ad for juice or to insert or expand side characters to try out other pitches that didn't make the cut for the whole show.
The entire focus of Kieta Hatsukoi's TV Asahi adaptation focuses on the complications around the confused romances between Aoki, Hashimoto, Ida, and Aida. We spend time with Aoki's disaster bi revelation, his and Hashimoto's cowardice in romance, and Ida's demisexual discovery. We cover a lot of ground in 10 short episodes that Thailand media won't in 12 long episodes.
As a result, the pacing overall tends to be extremely consistent and you're rarely asking yourself why a narrative beat is happening. Because this show is about two characters having a queer awakening, we get interactions across age groups about what it means for these boys to be Known Queers in their community and see them deal with that.
Emotional Communication
One of the other things that feels distinctly Japanese is the ways characters will communicate their feelings to each other. Sometimes there's a stoic layer coming from male characters who won't express themselves because they think their actions are making it clear, and then another character will come through to challenge their presumptions about what has been done and what hasn't been said.
One of my favorite moments is in episode 9 when Aoki gets frustrated that Ida doesn't seem to be straining under hormonal urges the way he is, which lands well because the audience and Ida knows that Aoki is struggling with those urges.
Some of this could come down to translation issues and the things that are presumed in Thai that don't always make it specifically onto the screen, but oftentimes I find that Thai characters are having a big confrontation about the wrong issue that misses the core fight, and then that gets resolved as if it was the core disconnect.
Those are just some of my thoughts firing from the hip. The vibe felt off in the trailer we saw yesterday and it left me feeling deeply uninspired. I'm hoping that as they work on the script and preparations for the roles the Thai version will be solid, but adaptations don't always work.
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mochipanko · 1 year ago
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I've been wanting to give JJ a go since it was released, but now that I know you're so enamored with it, I think I finally found my reason to finally go through with it lol. The concept seems so neat but if I'm being honest, the cover art for the case is what got me 😂
Ahh yay please give it a try! What made me hesitate at first was the price (50 bucks seemed like a lot to me for a VN) but now I really think it’s worth it! I don’t even play otome games (the last one must be Mystic Messenger 😂) but this one is so much more than that honestly!
forgive me for the lengthy answer now but I wanna talk a bit more about it to convince some more people ^///^ :
The romance is pretty subtle, I feel like it’s not even the main point of the story. And what I REALLY REALLY love is the heroine you play as. She’s not only voiced and has a face, she’s a full fledged own character that you can sympathize and identify with.
The characters (not only the main cast/Love interests but also side characters) really grow on you with time, and you wanna cheer for them and feel all kinds of emotions with them :”) it’s so wholesome.
And as mentioned before, the music! The story setting is in a drama school so the characters prepare for several performances throughout the school year, with dance choreographies and songs. So of course, music plays a big role in this game and it delivers!
And lastly, all the beautiful artworks from Sui Ishida. They alone make me want to play all routes just to unlock all CGs 😂
I could go on and on about this game and I’m not even through with my first route lmao!!
TL;DR pls give this game a chance if you like VN, the English version came out a month ago or so but I feel like it didn’t really get much attention here in the West :”)
Imma attach some non-spoilery artwork from the game to visualize what I’m talking about lol
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