#i was genuinely going through so much grief with this one
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rootspiral · 1 day ago
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Agatha All Along deep dive: episode 8 part 8
(AAA entries: ep1 [1][2][3][4] ep2 [1][2][3][4] ep3 [1][2][3] ep4 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][+1] ep5 [1][2][3][4][5] ep6 [1][2][3] ep7 [1][2][3][4][5][6] ep8 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8])
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so anyway rio could have stepped in at any moment and ejected billy into oblivion / prevented agatha from getting a full recharge. but did she? no, no she didn't. this is absolutely a fucked up game they're playing instead of talking about their feelings. rio tried to talk and agatha rejected her (almost) every time, so theatrics and blood it is! god it sucks so much that this stupid flirt/hurt/posture/dance is the only way agatha allows them to communicate.
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agatha's smirk! she's like, now you're gonna get it! now I'm gonna fuck you up!!! rio has been throwing her around like a rag doll, but now that she has her powers back agatha can finally put allllll her shields up and do a little show of her own.
when it comes to agatha everything is about being in control of the narrative, being the one who hurts rather than being hurt, never showing any weakness or vulnerability. she was awfully vulnerable without her powers and that has allowed rio to creep in closer, something that agatha had managed to escape for so long. it's no coincidence that she chooses this appearance, the same one she chose when going face to face with wanda. this is what she was trying to look like with her purple coat too: the formidable, merciless witch. it's an armor she clings to, a mask to feel powerful that won't ever show the mess she's hiding underneath. this is what agatha chooses to look like when she's scared.
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rio: fuck off you little meddling twink the adults are talking
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agatha: mwhahahah I'm such a big scary villain just lemme check if billy's okay real quick.
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actually let me gush for a second about agatha's greenhouse being full of herbs and potions! her witchy basement disappeared because she had built it with a magical illusion, but in here she's been totally experimenting with physical craft (neeeerd).
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billy's like, are those two fuckers honestly actually flirting right now
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CHILDREN I swear to god
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LEAVE MY INFURIATINGLY STUPID EVIL MOM ALONE!!!
poor rio. just her luck that when she finally gets to corner agatha a baby maximoff comes into the picture. I love my perfect mama's boy.
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the bittersweet look she gives billy. she's truly having a lot of firsts, now she finally admits that all her dancing/fighting with rio is futile, it's just for show and it won't ever truly solve anything. what is she even doing, involving billy? billy who's still so earnest, so eager to help.
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I SEE YOU JAC SCHAEFFER! I SEE YOUR EVIL WAYS! I SEE YOU CREATING THESE SILLY LITTLE SHOWS SO YOU CAN EXPLORE THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF LOSS AND GRIEF AND OUR OWN MORTALITY!!!!
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but she's being 100% genuine here???
okay, no, this is still agatha we're talking about.
she's being aT LEAST 80% GENUINE! she's having a moment of clarity, she's contemplating the true awfulness that would be sacrificing billy on the altar of her own fucked up issues. the mask has slipped and the real agatha is peeking through, swords in her heart and all.
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her parting words to billy: you are not bad. the same words she wanted to imprint on him when they had their first mask off conversation. don't let people cast you as a villain, like they did with me.
Neither are you, says Billy.
You're the only one who thinks so.
The thing is, being so hated, doing all the fucked up things she does, really hurts agatha. It's no justification whatsoever, doesn't make her any less of a villain. she goes out of her way to be misunderstood, to never show any weakness, to selfishly rationalize all the horror she inflicts, because the alternative is opening up to more potential hurt, and she's been hurt too fucking much in the past. and the more she pushes people away, the lonelier she is. it's a vicious circle.
three people loved her despite it all: rio, and she ran away from her when things got too overwhelming. nicky, and that's a whole other mess that I'll get into next episode.
and now billy loves her, and she craves that love just as much as she wants to run away from it. she'll hurt billy to protect herself, she'll hurt him first because she's afraid that he eventually will leave or die or get mad and will hurt her. because right now? she's feeling so much love for billy, and that's terrifying to her. the more she loves, the more she opens up to heartbreak.
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both gorgeous shots
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billy: I'm not that nice.
also billy:
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then she got an idea. an awful idea. agatha got a wonderful, awful idea.
oh this is perfect, isn't it, agatha? you somehow convinced the boy to turn himself in! if he goes through with it, rio has promised to leave you alone! you'll be free to crawl back to your dark dark corner and accumulate bodies and power like the old miserable smaug you are!
you can see agatha's survival instinct kick into high gear. this is how she has survived so long. this is what she does.
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BILLY'S FACE. I got to laugh a bit, sorry kid.
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rio shaking her head both in triumph and exasperation. of course you betrayed the kid, agatha you piece of shit. rio didn't expect any less from you.
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and she can't even look at him, the coward.
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but I thought we were having a moment??
he went ahead and made a grand gesture without being ready to actually sacrifice himself whatsoever, and now he's going "mom??? come back and pick me up, I'm scared??" it's like agatha is kicking a puppy.
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the slow, dramatic turn. the evil grinchy grin. this is the most egregious example yet of agatha putting her mask on, and we have all the context to understand exactly what she's doing and to see what's going on both on the surface and inside her wretched little soul. she's not cruel and uncaring, that's play acting - she's actually small and scared and a coward. she's once again running away screaming, rationalizing it as a smart choice and breaking her own heart in the process.
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so I know billy's telepathic line was added in post because disney execs feared audiences wouldn't buy agatha turning around on her own. what absolute buffoonery, such massive disregard for your viewers' intelligence.
...on the other hand. billy full on misreading the situation and trying to fix things that are beyond him, only to accidentally hit the target? somehow fixing a delicate fragile problem by hitting it with a hammer? totally on brand for him.
is this how nicky died? it kind of is. she did choose her own fear over nicky's well being, despite loving him so so much.
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whether you choose jac's version or disney's version, here's what happens next: agatha stops in her tracks. her stupid grin fades away, and she clutches her chest. she finally did it, she told a lie too big. her poor heart, already bleeding from all the swords stuck in it, simply cannot take one more stab. sure she's all about self-preservation, but at this point she's damned either way: she either goes out saving billy or she's killed by her own regrets and sorrow.
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she turns around. she runs. not to billy. to rio.
going back to what my mother jac schaeffer (whom I love more than jesus or pizza) said: this is not agatha enacting a grand plan, she's not taking a ~calculated risk like she'll tell billy later, the fucking liar that she is. sure, she had a vague hope of turning into a ghost, but she didn't know for sure. this is agatha's emotions taking over her brain - like they tend to - and forcing her to use what are probably her final moments on earth to TAKE WHAT SHE'S BEEN CRAVING ALL ALONG
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agatha grabs rio's face and SMASHES their mouths together. FULL ON proceeds to EAT HER FACE she wants her so much. rio is shocked for a moment and then closes her eyes and gives in completely. and you can see the poison taking over because this idiot - this gorgeous, tragic dork - has decided to kill herself by absorbing rio's powers - but this is not going to be a mere 'peck of Death', no sir, that's not what it's called! agatha is gonna SNOG Death, she's gonna TONGUE that immortal being, she's GETTING ALLLLL HER MONEY'S WORTH. dear lord the HUNGER and YEARNING and DESPERATION on her face.
and I love that she's taller here. they're basically the same height so who's taller depends on the shoes they're wearing, but I love love love that agatha gets to engulf her for once. agatha taking control, rio giving herself up completely
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what? you thought that now that magic has been absorbed THE KISS would be over???? well THINK AGAIN. because now we're going to switch angles, we're going to linger, we're going to make it look like almost gratuitous fan service, oh yes we are!!!
I truly don't know what to say. I would like to thank jac of course, and kathryn hahn and aubrey plaza for MAKING THE FUCK OUT and exchanging so much spit on camera like the true professionals they are. thank you writers room, thank you to all the crew who had to listen to the ungodly noises these two were undoubtedly making. thank you gandja monteiro for directing this. I'm going to even thank the lighting department for making it thunder so we can (more or less) see what's going on. this was truly a group effort. well done you all!
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and they keep kissing until the very last available moment, and rio doesn't know how to let her go
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but this is so on brand for agatha. you know if rio was in her place she'd try to be as gentle as possible to ease agatha's grief. agatha literally went for the most dramatic, most over-the-top, most emotionally devastating way to go. this was supposed to be rio's big moment! and what does agatha do? she makes it all about herself. again. should be the other way around, but once again rio gives, agatha takes. you just gotta laugh at this point.
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Death looks on stone faced as her love turns back to nature and balance is restored. she wraps herself in her cloack and tries very, very hard not to cry.
agatha really went and made rio kill her, didn't she? rio, who isn't ALLOWED TO. these two are soooo wrong and so toxic for each other and yet they love each other so freaking much, I truly cannot get enough of them.
go to episode 8 part 9
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goodqueenaly · 15 hours ago
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Considering the public version of Baelish and Sansa's situation, as in him being a doting father to his only child, albeit illegitimate, does it raise some perplexity among the Vale nobility that he wouldn't ask for a legitimisation? Alayne is his only child, he's unmarried at the moment, and any male heir he could have in the future would preceed her anyway. Or is legitimisation done exclusively in cases of emergency, aka when literally no other legitimate heir is available?
It’s worth emphasizing that legitimization is a relatively pretty rare process: of the dozens of acknowledged bastards we know of in the history of Westeros, only two (outside the blanket legitimization issued by Aegon IV on his deathbed) have ever been formally legitimized (three if you count Jon Snow, who was all but certainly legitimized by Robb’s will but whose legitimized status is not yet widely known in-universe). Importantly, in each of those cases - Ramsay Snow, the sons of Marilda of Hull, and Jon Snow - the legitimization came about specifically because the lord or king in question had no surviving legitimate son to inherit after him (at least officially - I very much believe Mushroom’s assertion that Corlys was the biological l father of Addam and Alyn of Hull). (Again, Aegon IV is the exception here - I don’t even think he was really trying to push Daemon as his alternative heir - but I believe Aegon’s move was a sort of final “fuck you” to the future King Daeron II, a last petty stab at the son he hated rather than a genuine politico-dynastic decision by the dying king.) Likewise, only Aegon IV ever chose to legitimize a daughter (and again, only in the context of a blanket legitimization); even Oberyn Martell, for example, who held out each of his daughters as his own far earlier than Littlefinger was supposed to have done for “Alayne” (and indeed, lived with the mother of his four youngest daughters as effectively a married couple in a nuclear family), never apparently sought to legitimize any of them. Nor indeed should it be forgotten how serious a process legitimization is: only a king can legitimize a bastardborn Westerosi, and once so legitimized, both that person and his (or her) descendants would be legitimate forever.
So far from the assembled aristocracy of the Vale finding it odd that Littlefinger would not be pressing for Sansa-as-Alayne to be legitimized, I think these aristocrats would be surprised, even shocked if Littlefinger tried to make his “daughter” legitimate by royal decree. After all, the public narrative about “Alayne Stone” is that Littlefinger didn’t even know of her existence until very recently - when “at [her] flowering [“Alayne”] decided [she] did not wish to be a septa and wrote to [Littlefinger]”. While Littlefinger might have publicly recognized Sansa-as-Alayne as his daughter, and treated her relatively well by Westerosi standards (remember, this is a world where Lord Hewett made his own extramarital daughter a house servant to his wife and their children), Alayne’s social position is at best a liminal one - able to act in some ways as the lady of the Arryn household, but in other ways (as Littlefinger, Myranda Royce, and Harry Hardyng all remind her) very much considered the inferior of her blue-blood neighbors. Moreover, I think many in the Vale would anticipate that Littlefinger - now Lord of Harrenhal in addition to being Lord Protector of the Vale and the richest thief man in Westeros - would marry and produce legitimate (male) heirs of his own; indeed, Myranda teases Sansa-as-Alayne on this point, remarking that Littlefinger “needs a pretty young wife to wash away his grief” and that he “could have his pick of half the noble maidens in the Vale” (including, as she later jokes to Sansa-as-Alayne in TWOW, Myranda herself). In turn, the idea that Littlefinger, having such standing, would choose to go through the significant effort of petitioning the king to elevate a bastard teenage girl as his heiress, when he himself could marry a suitably aristocratic bride and have a legitimate son of his body to succeed him, would so grossly contrast with the patriarchal and classist socio-political expectations of Westerosi aristocracy that I think the move would cause nothing but muttering and suspicion.
What Littlefinger wants to avoid most of all with Sansa-as-Alayne is undue attention being cast on her, at least until Littlefinger himself feels ready to reveal her as Sansa Stark. Indeed, this was the entire purpose of choosing a bastard disguise for Sansa in the first place: when Sansa suggests that she could portray herself as “the trueborn daughter of some knight in [his] service”, Littlefinger reminds her that “[s]uch a tale would draw unwanted questions”, while then noting that “[i]t is rude to pry into the origins of a man's natural children”. Therefore, Littlefinger’s treatment of Sansa has to fit within the socio-political expectations of Westerosi and specifically Vale aristocratic life - which is to say, not promoting bastards above their station (again, according to the rules imposed by the elites in this society). No one, I think, would expect, much less encourage, the rich and powerfully landed widower Littlefinger to hold out his bastardborn “daughter” as his heiress, still less to go through the process of legitimizing her; better, for Littlefinger’s scheme at least, to leave her as a recognized but still illegitimate child, and trust in polite society’s reluctance to pry further, rather than foster speculation by taking the unorthodox move of pressing for her legitimization.
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killcodesashes · 8 months ago
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BLOODMOON IS AN ONLY CHILD NOW
Or we'll kinda
HAVE HUMAN[?] AU COMIC I DID I'M SOBBING I CANT I MISS THEM SO MUCH
Straight up I was grieving and crying the whole time I was doing this
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I hope that the brother that remained is handled well by the writers in the future
Fingers crossed T.T
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rainedroptalks · 22 hours ago
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Hot take but Teen Titans vol 3 era Cassie wasn’t that bad. Her designs were kinda terrible yes, BUT. It did have some interesting characterization and I feel like people wanna ignore that completely because they gave her lipstick?? Like how can you ignore her arc around the grief of losing her basically sister just cuz she kissed some boys or whatever. Ttvol3 Cassie definitely could’ve been better, like, leagues better, but still. It’s important to her story and it’s weird when people try to ignore it entirely
ALSO without ttvol3 we wouldn’t have had the mess that is Rose and Cassie. This is the price we have to pay for toxic yuri
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bizlybebo · 4 months ago
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lightspeed taking over a lot of the responsibilities miss G usually took care of when she gets sick and gaining a new appreciation/perspective for all that miss G does and suddenly understanding why she has such a fear of commitment while miss G has so much time to think while she's away from the public eye/hero life and realizing how much lightspeed does mean to her hahaha. ounches a wall
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orcelito · 3 months ago
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Considering the. Ahem. Ways this year has gone, I've not been thinking about it all that much, but. I did start this year with the motto of Year Of Unfucking My Life. With a few goals involved in that.
I got an official adhd diagnosis, as well as a diagnosis for PCOS. Other diagnoses in progress. Gotten adhd meds and birth control to regulate periods. I've gone back to school and I'm keeping up with it better than ever before. I've even been working on practicing driving, something I've been largely neglecting since I first got my driving permit, um... 11 years ago...
I just need to actually Get my license. And I need to get it before the end of the year. If I can accomplish that, then I'll say the Year Of Unfucking My Life was successful.
#speculation nation#i had some pretty major negative And positive influences for this goal of mine.#primary negative influence of course being my dad abruptly dying.#but that also led to the primary positive influence of the life insurance payout that's letting me just focus on school for my final year.#it's like a monkey's paw curl kind of moment. i got a genuinely astounding amount of money#more than enough to live off for a year+ and pay off the rest of my schooling.#with this i have finally exited the purgatory of part time school full time work to pay my way through school#a setup that led to endless stress (both physically and mentally) and suffering grades.#failing some classes and taking longer bc part time Anyways. locking me into years and years of this perpetual fucking Hell.#ive escaped it. school is so so so much more manageable when i dont have to work a job. im actually keeping up with my assignments.#for once theres no uncertainty about passing any of my classes. i Will pass them all. and i expect As in most if not all of them.#it's been fucking Amazing. everything i couldve wanted. and it came with the low low cost of losing my father when i was only 26.#... 'low' being sarcastic here of course. he was the 2nd worst person i couldve lost in my life. second only to my sister.#the 2nd worst grief i will Ever experience. bc he was my Good parent. hes the very reason i have a future at All.#and losing him fucked me up Severely. im still working on recovering. i kind of figure i always Will be.#thank god id already been taking spring semester off bc that would've been Horrible to go thru while in school.#i honestly probably would've just withdrawn from the semester. theres no Way id have kept up with it#given how damned BUSY those first few weeks after were. between funeral prep and inventorying and packing up his house.#so fucking much involved in settling an estate. and im the lucky one in that my sister's been handling all the legal shit.#so i simultaneously was dealt one of the most severe blows i ever Will be dealt#while also being given probably the biggest boost i'll ever get in my life.#if everything goes well with graduating and getting an IT job then i'll never want for money again.#considering there was a time early last year when i got as low as literally $7 in my bank account. this is a pretty big deal.#it's just... strange. the ways things go in life. this has been a very strange year for me.#just doing my best to use this boost to the best of my ability. even if it feels like im taking advantage of his death.#it's what he wouldve wanted me to do.
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longagoitwastuesday · 3 months ago
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Kusakabe, dear, you're too beautiful to be saying that kind of stuff
#jjk spoilers#All the prettiest characters were brought back from apparent death#Nobara was okay and it's true that when I read the lawyer's and Kusakabe's fights against Sukuna I thought it was being kept vague#but to pull a Nobara with all of them... idk#No one stays dead here except for the people who actually care for the kids and by that I mean 'including Yuuji'#kinda lowkey bitter about it#Don't get me wrong I like the characters and also they're super pretty but idk It makes death feel cheap? And the high stakes kinda fake?#Choso Gojo and Nanami actual only characters who died apparently#Well. Poor Itadori#And Kusukabe goes and runs his mouth that way in front of the kid. He is not entirely wrong but also he very much is#And yes he also says 'don't worry it's not for you to feel guilty over anything you're just kids' but also he did very much say that thing#about it all being Gojo's fault for not killing Itadori. In front of Itadori who feels guilty for that precisely#and in front of Megumi who asked Gojo to spare him and also went through the experience of Sukuna using his body as well#So Kusukabe's reassurance about them just being kids and not to feel guilty falls a bit empty#It does feel in character but man it truly makes one appreciate the way Gojo and Nanami dealt with the kids a lot more haha#Ui Ui seems like a dear#Anyway... this chapter felt a bit lame for the most part for me? I like the idea of the characters discussing the could have/would have#and feeling guilt and helplessness over their choices but the way it was done felt a bit lame and without any real emotional punch#It felt more like an explanation to the reader in an awkward way. And there's a lot of empty chat about guilt and grief#without any of the characters really giving off a grieving air about everything and everyone they've lost#And this is precisely what I felt was going to happen with this manga's writing haha#I truly don't understand this kind of writing choices. Contrary to some other shonen writers this author did seem to have the potential#to write this kind of thing well besides the worldbuilding and powers and fight stuff. It's truly a pity. It so breaks my heart#And still this is considered one of the good shonens. Well. WELL haha#I do think shonen can be good! I just think it falls almost always even when there's potential into bery shallow writing#I don't know. Maybe I should read that one Alchemist manga#I've been repeatedly told that one's good and it does seem like it doesn't do... this. But I find the art style so not to my linking#I wish I had never gotten into JJK for real for real. I absolutely adore it. I always end up frustrated. It could be so good. Genuinely good#And yet it's just okay in a sort of forgettable way. What a pity#Everything good ever is present but it never dares do anything to fully explore what it sets. It just does the typical shonen stuff
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roseofcards90 · 1 year ago
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The Shidou hate I’ve been seeing recently is so fucking funny omg LMAO HUMBLE THAT MAN RN BEFORE HE THINKS HE CAN CHOOSE WHO LIVES AND WHO DIES JUST BECAUSE HE’S A DOCTOR 😭💀
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lovelornlamb · 2 months ago
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this time around i don't have anyone to just hug and collapse against. it's eating me alive. last time i got through it with him and he's further away than ever. it's getting really hard to keep going
#my post#not to doom post but im so exhausted#like genuinely im so fucking exhausted#i am not going to lie the only reason i've stuck it out since may 10th is his promises to come back which feel less and less true#he won't even give me a simple assurance even if it's a lie but he'll say i love you and that he's happy to see me doing stuff on my own#which feels so underhanded. i just want fucking honesty. if he moved on with rooke and is staying in california#just let me move on if you've made up your mind i want to stop suffering so fucking much for nothing!!!!!!#the thing is that i am bearing it because the promise he'll come back is worth it!! but if he doesn't then!!!!#the only thing holding me back is my pets. that's about it#really truly. with him or with anyone i feel i have a purpose and a goal and something to strive for and a reason to carry on#but in my heart he was the last one. my soulmate honest to god i feel this strongly half a year later#im not strong like my parents carrying unrequited love like this. i don't think im cut out for it#and now all this shit with the country#im so tired#im not going to do anything#i don't think i am. i don't know anymore. i haven't felt this lost and despondent in a long time#i lost the one thing that really truly mattered and made me the happiest in the world and he won't give me a simple assurance#about the promises he made#i don't have parents. brothers don't speak to me unless i pull teeth#it's all getting to me now#i've beared it for so long and thought i was through with loss and grief and having my heart mishandled#im so tired of losing the ones i love and need most#and now all this shit#im so fucking tired and i just want a hug that won't make me feel gross
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kaydalixza · 7 months ago
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Inflicting trauma upon my sweet OCs so I don't have to go through my problems alone-
#cw sh#cw self harm#(just a warning for my tag rambles to come)#my trauma response to my own history of self harm is that i find it VERY endearing in other people#if i can notice your scars i s2g you're instantly my bestie okay#one of my coworkers has the most extensive scars I've ever seen and i swear i feel safer with few people than i fo with her#she's the most incredible person ever amd though i would NEVER EVER ask about her past I'm so SO grateful she fought through it to be where#-she is right now#and just like ooooooh fuck i find scwrs cuuuuute#i genuinely think its a Trauma thing ig like to make my own body Not Disgusting To Me#that i see scars and go ☺️☺️☺️🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰#not in a fetishising way#but in a genuine 'holy shit! you went through sonething and survived it?? i love you!!!' kinda way#i only noticed my ex's piercing scar after we broke up tbh and i just KNOW if inoticed it while we were together it would have made me fera#i so vividly remember seeing people's scars ig#i remember standing next to someone in a queue for a metalcore gig and he had scars on his upper arms#no new cuts but old scars#and nearly 10 years later I'm still thinking about that#my cuts are my my thighs#at my worst my wrists and chest and stonach#but never my upper arms#and i carry the grief of that action with me#to be feeling SO MUCH that that's tye onlybplace that will do#was it strategic? was it impulsive? I'll never know#but i can inspire my ocs upon this trauma tuat i experience Alone at least#i know I'm not alone but rn no one gets why my left thigh hurts so bad-#and ifvi can hurt kayden like i hurt#like that guy standing next to ke hurt#like so mamy of my friends before me have hurt#leigha and chel and so many others
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jellojelli · 5 months ago
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Fontaine Boys: Calling them by their names
Lyney
This guy pretty much made it a thing after you started using pet names that you no longer knew a Lyney, only a baby, sweetie, honey, sugar, etc. So, don't think that pulling this prank will go over his head or that he'll let you off easy for trying to tease him like this. Because Lyney? He will never forget this injustice until he can return that favor tenfold
When you say it, just as he is leaving for work/practice with Lynette, he stalls in the hallway as he tries to process what you just did to him, because surely his sweet, loving, and gorgeous lover would never stop using his pet names without a justifiable reason. This man goes through 4 stages of grief in .2 seconds and basically sprints to the nearest calendar to see the date, anniversary, or birthday he surely must've forgotten
Because, surely, he missed something, right? right?
"Love... did I forget something?" Lyney sounds so different from usual. Almost panicked really.
This can go one of two ways:
If you can keep a straight face and keep calling him Lyney he gets more and more panicked, basically begging at your feet to tell him what he did to deserve such cold, heartless, and diabolical treatment until you give and tell him its a prank
If you can't keep a straight face Lyney can see the devious little smile on your face and pretty much gawks at you in disbelief
either way it ends with him giving you a taste of your own medicine for the rest of the day. Because really, how could you do this to him right before his practice?
So if you can't handle that, don't do that to Lyney because he can be just as teasing and mean about it no matter how much he loves you, and if you keep it up through the whole day too he will continue it into the next day until you stop
or maybe he'll do something about that attitude of yours? ;)
Freminet
Are you a monster?
Genuinely why would you do this to him after all the work it took to get him to accept and also call you petnames?
Fremi thinks the world is ending tbh. He was on his way out to go diving and you just??? dropped this on him?? Are you breaking up with him?? Is he in trouble?? Please tell him it is a prank immediately or he will cry
Just like his brother he rushes to a calendar and checks every box to make sure he didn't miss anything today and for the last month or so just to be sure. And the panic that sets in when he sees that he didn't, now he's really sure you're about to say you don't love him anymore
It doesn't even matter if you can keep a straight face or not because he is in full panic mode and can't think straight enough to see that you're just pulling his leg
This poor boy is taking off his backpack and shoes and either sitting across from you or standing right in front of you with the most pitiful face asking you what's wrong
"My little marintine rose.... y/n honey....what's wrong? Did I... make you angry? Is it the diving? You can come with me, you know I love it when you come with me" Cue the biggest puppy eyes with tears
Please tell him soon that this is just a prank because again, he can and will cry if you keep this up any longer than a few minutes.
Neuvillette
He deadass walks out the door and takes a few minutes outside before he turns around and makes his way back inside calmly. Neuvillette is positive he misheard. His mind is playing tricks, or maybe he's getting old and his hearing is failing him because there is no way you just called him Neuvillette, his full government name, and not Neuvi, baby, honey, love, or something like that
He'd even accept a weird pet name like your fridge or your little hilichurl
The thing about Neuvillette is he knows he didn't forget anything. He will not rush to a calendar or even think to do so because he remembers everything you tell him, even things you say in passing. Like that dress you told him about 2 months ago, or the cute sea otter that you said reminded you of him
"Mon amour.... my love, my life, I think I forgot to tell you that I love you and that I'm leaving" He tries to play it cool, Nevi thinks if he can pretend he forgot to say anything that you'll correct yourself
When you don't, you're pretty sure you can hear thunder rumble in the distance as a storm tries to roll in
Say it's a prank right now or it'll storm for a week straight, he may be a big and tough dragon but he cannot handle this from you
If you crack and smile or start laughing Neuvi is not pleased, he's not pleased regardless when you reveal it's a prank
The storm is rolling in for different reasons now
He won't play the prank back on you but expect some long, displeased stares and some major frowns from him
You almost made his heart beat out of his chest in panic
Wriothesley
Wriothesley almost laughs when you call him by his full name and not at least a Wrio
like there is no way he doesn't know you're being a menace right now
so please be prepared for the entire next week because Wrio is ruthless when it comes to payback and he will get his just desserts
I mean really, Wrio is vicious when it comes to throwing this back in your face
"Oh hey there y/n, buddy, pal, my best friend" for a week straight...
So rude....
He will tell you upfront before he leaves for work when you do this that since he's just some guy you know now that he'll call you his friend from now on
and he will just walk right out the door after that. Not even a glance back or a teasing smirk, just leaves the house and goes to work unbothered for the rest of the day
that's what you think anyway, even though he knows this is a prank he actually is really bothered and talks to Sigwennie about what happened and he's pouting and sulking at work
even the inmates at the fortress can see that their boss is bothered by something
Please say sorry soon and start calling him his cute pet names or he's going to struggle at work and Sigwinne can't deal with this for anymore than a day because Wrio can be insufferable
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luveline · 9 months ago
Note
i think it would be adorable seeing a conversation of spencer freaking out about pregnant!bombshell and hotch just calmly telling him all about different ways to help and them talking about new dad fears :((
pregnant!reader, 1k (sorry it was more about the pregnant part than the new dad fears!)
Hotch doesn’t know what Spencer’s going to say when he knocks, but he ushers him inside his office regardless. He has the appearance of someone with grief to share; Hotch immediately starts to think of the people he and Spencer have in common. 
“I need your advice,” Spencer says desperately. 
Hotch puts his pen in its holder. “Of course.” 
“She won’t sit down.” 
Hotch lets himself relax. “Ah.” 
“She’s acting like she isn’t pregnant at all. I want her to be happy, but she keeps running up the stairs. What if she falls?” 
“Y/N has very likely thought of that possibility already.” 
“Then why doesn’t she stop?” 
Hotch chews his cheek for a moment. “Spencer, sit down.” 
The chair squeaks as Spencer sits, scrubbing at his face roughly. 
Hotch has watched Spencer grow up, in a way, moving from twenty three to thirty quick as blinking, and he’s watched him fall in love with you, and now he gets to watch Spencer have daily conniptions over your apparent lack of self-preservation. He’s enjoyed it, genuinely, and he doesn’t mind offering some wisdom now as a partner who’s made enough mistakes to know better. 
“Spencer, you can’t make her sit down if she doesn’t want to. And she’s four months pregnant. Pretty soon, she’ll have no choice but to sit down. It’s best if you let her stay active as long as she can, so she stays as healthy as she can.” He leans back in his chair. The smirk is unbidden, but he can’t help it. “But you know this.” 
“Her ligaments are weakening, because of the baby. The pregnancy. It’s about to get much more painful for her,” Spencer says. 
“So?” Hotch prods gently. 
Spencer nods. Glances out the window down into the bullpen, before dragging his chair closer to the desk. “Hotch, it’s like she’s two different people. Or three. There’s the crying one, and the happy one, and the…” 
“The hates you one?” he offers. 
“Yes. Which is luckily quite rare, but terrifying.” 
“Just hormones, Spence.” 
Spencer breathes out. Hotch can’t help the immeasurable wave of fondness he’s feeling for his colleague. He genuinely wants to round the desk and pat Spencer on the back. This is all a learning curve, a way of life. Partners have been wrestling with their scary pregnant wives for long before he and Spencer came around. 
“The happy one is worth it, though,” Hotch guesses. He had some lovely days with Hayley. 
“You know what she’s like,” Spencer says.
Hotch can imagine. Before your pregnancy, you adored Spencer. You’ve doted on him since you met him, and if the glimpses Hotch has seen of you these last few months are any indication, you are immovably in love. Yesterday, you brushed the sesame seeds off of Spencer’s sandwich one by one because he doesn’t like them. The day before, you’d pushed your chair next to his and drawn circles into his arm the entire workday (while, impressively, still managing to finish your assigned consults). 
“There’s a common theme, I think, when she’s angry. She’s usually uncomfortable. I’ve started to go through a checklist,” Spencer says. He sounds guilty. 
“I think it’s a good idea. I noticed you’ve been keeping candy in your bag.” Hotch laughs. Spencer joins in. 
“Just the essentials.” 
Hotch doesn’t doubt that you’re on every prenatal vitamin you could ever need, that Spencer has researched pregnancy from the latest journals to the very rarest myths. He has no doubt that you’re well taken care of. You’re going to be fine. Spencer has no need to worry about you. Hotch might have cause to worry about Spencer, though. 
“Reid, I’ll tell you a secret. It might not work for you, but it worked for me.” 
Spencer holds his hands together. “What is it?” 
“The next time you want her to slow down,” —Hotch lays it out carefully, without judgement for you or any private teasing, just genuine care for the both of you— “you can distract her with the baby.” 
“I’ve tried that,” Spencer says. “She tells me I’m worrying.” 
“Not about the baby’s health. If she thinks everything is alright, it likely is. I mean about the future.” Spencer doesn’t seem to understand. Hotch searches for an example. “Baby shoes, clothes. I once calmed Hayley down from an hours-long meltdown by telling her I thought Jack would have her eyes.” 
“That works?” 
“It’s probably much nicer for her to have you encouraging positive thoughts than negative,” he says gently. 
“I guess I worry too much.” 
“Not too much, Reid. I’m just telling you what worked for me. When it’s over, you’ll miss it. A few years later.” 
They smile. Hotch watches with a distinct fatherly pride as Spencer retreats down into the bullpen where you stand talking animatedly to Anderson. You’ve been on your feet all day, in kitten heels no less, and you look tired but not unhappy. 
Spencer joins you for a while. You show no signs of moving. Hotch figures he’ll give Spencer time to act on his advice and goes back to his paperwork, losing track of time, ignoring the beep of his watch that signals lunch time. 
He finishes his paperwork a little while after. 
“I wonder what she'll have,” he hears Spencer saying. 
“She’ll have my hands,” you insist suddenly, your voice floating up the steps. You’ve always had one of those tones that attracts attention, even when you aren’t shouting. “Don’t girls often get their mom’s hands? And their dad’s noses?” 
He’s expecting Spencer to cite an article on genetic lottery, but he doesn’t. He sounds the polar opposite of how he’d panicked in Hotch’s office. “I think so. I got my mom’s hands, too. She had short nail beds.” A pause. Hotch glances out the window to find you sitting in Spencer’s chair, a sandwich laid out in two halves on a napkin, a tray of vegetable batons in your hands where they rest on your bump. “I hope she has your everything.” 
You lift your chin. Spencer taps your noses together. 
“Can I get you a drink?” he asks hopefully. 
“Yes, please. Anything you’re having.” 
Hotch isn’t smug, exactly, but he is admittedly very pleased at the outcome of his advice. 
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redflagshipwriter · 10 months ago
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Mamabat- enter Jason 1/2
MASTERPOST
The air was different with Cass, now. Danny felt a little anxious as he followed her to the study after breakfast. Something about her was serious-determined-protective. 
She always felt protective towards him. That was why he'd followed her in the first place. Some ghosts lied, but they couldn't do it with their aura. He knew what she really felt for him. 
“Sit?” She asked him. She gestured at the big squashy chair. Danny did without complaint. Cass perched behind him and started dragging her fingers through his hair, relaxing him.
Man. She was good at this. Top tier mothering, right here. Danny went limp. 
“I'm worried,” Cass broke the silence. She didn't sound worried. She never really did. Her voice was quiet and serious, but still kind. Her thumbs dug into his scalp. He pushed his head back against it. Bliss. “Barbara made you sad. Because you miss your sister?”
Danny tensed. 
‘I should have figured that Batman would track me down.’
Maybe he had known, if he was honest with himself. It didn't hit him like a shock.
“Tim thinks your name is Fenton,” she added, brutally sensible as always. And yup, that was it. No point in denying it. “Declared dead. In danger?”
He sucked in air through his teeth. He wasn't going to lie to her. 
“Worried,” she repeated. 
He thought about it. He really did. Danny bit his lip. 
She was liminal. That probably meant she'd come really close to death, in at least one sense of the word. Would that mean she was desensitized to it, or extra paranoid?
…It was hard to imagine Cass over or under reacting to a possible danger. She was just so steady. But would she see him as a possible danger if she knew what he was, what he really was? 
He could feel it out before he took a plunge with the whole truth.
Maybe it was wrong. Maybe it was invasive. She didn't seem to realize that she was liminal. That meant she definitely didn't realize how much she was communicating to him under her words and gestures. 
But Danny deliberately tuned into her quiet aural communication and tested the waters. “Tim is right, I'm Danny Fenton,” he said. He knew he was too tense. She would definitely feel it. But what could he do about that? He was nervous. “I… Maybe I did die.”
Her heart dropped to her stomach. He could feel the crush of grief on her heart. 
But it didn’t wash away the thudding repetition of love-protect-my darling. There was no suspicion, no guilt, no fear. It was just pain for his sake, with no calculation about how to solve a sudden problem. 
God. He wanted so badly for that to have been how his parents reacted. His eyes started to sting.
Danny sniffled. He thought it was safe to tell her. “I died,” he corrected, and he knew he was right when Cass made a little wounded sound and leaned her body into him, aiming to comfort. “Not then, but a couple years ago. I’m different now, and it’s uh… It’s dangerous to be this way.”
“Affects?” Cass asked quietly. She started to pet his hair again. “Mood? Health?”
“...Huh,” he said, because that was a sensible question he hadn’t expected. If he really thought about his mood and emotions before and after the accident: “Yeah, uh, there’s sometimes a mood thing. I might be a little more aggressive than I was before? And I can get kind of intense sometimes.”
He had thought that was basically just a reaction to having a whole bunch of new threats in his life. But would pre-electrocution Danny have been able to actually stand and fight Skulker? He had genuinely been afraid of the jocks. Maybe… Maybe he was different. Sure, Sam and Jazz were up for shooting ghosts with Fenton tech. Would he have been if he was just human? 
…He didn’t really think so.
Oof. Well, that wasn’t exactly great for his sense of self.
Cass shook him lightly. “Health?” she repeated.
Danny forced down that revelation to deal with later. He didn’t like acknowledging that he was kind of a chicken by nature, but historically, there wasn’t much evidence of bravery pre-mortem. “Uh, my heart rate is really slow, body temp is low, so I can’t really afford to go to a doctor for a checkup,” he said. “Uh, sometimes I’ve got none at all and my hair turns white.” He paused there. That was- that was enough, yeah? He was going to be honest with her because she deserved honesty from him. But that didn’t mean he had to explain the whole great beyond and his inhuman status.
“Sounds like Jason,” Cass said, after a long silence.
Danny short-circuited. “Wait, what?” He craned to look at her. “Who?”
Cass darted forward to kiss his forehead. “Little brother,” she said cheerfully. “Want to meet him?”
Uh, yeah. Danny nodded vigorously, wondering what the hell she was on about. “Do you mean he died?” 
“Died,” Cass agreed, getting out her phone and tapping away at it rapidly.
“Not like, heart stopped for a minute on the operating table and he was revived, or what?” Danny pressed.
“Dead in the ground, came back later,” Cass said. “Dead for months. Now, very crabby.”
Danny balked. “What?”
“White hair too,” she said. Then her face did something funny. “I think he dyed it recently,” she said. 
Danny huffed a laugh. “If it’s the same thing as mine, you can’t dye it.” He saw her look over his head for white streaks. He didn’t correct her line of thought.
He hadn’t thought that anything could top the anticipation of meeting Batman. But Danny had to admit the rest of the day was a wash. Apparently Jason couldn’t make it until the evening, about an hour before patrol.
Danny nearly paced a line into the carpet. He had enough energy to do that now, even without ecto. He was getting soooo much food here. A guy couldn’t even stress out for an hour without someone coming by to make sure he had fruit and yogurt or a hot drink.
He didn’t need someone to come and tell him that the much anticipated Jason had shown up. Danny knew it when he went to take a sip of cruelty-free chocolate milk (hand delivered by the most frightening child in the world) and choked on vapor.
Damian gave him a glare and snatched the drink away. “Are you incapable of drinking beverages?” he demanded. His face looked so goddamn cross but he was just worried.
Danny managed a smile. “No, went down the wrong pipe, sorry.”
Damian didn’t seem to even see the fog, so- so that meant that either he was really unobservant or he wasn’t liminal enough to see it the way people did in Amity. That was a small blessing. Danny appreciated it and he took back his drink to have something to hold onto.
That was a whole ass ghost. That was a whole ghost coming onto the property, one that felt big and mad and old. Danny smacked his lips, disconcerted. 
He, uh, didn’t know what to expect from this.
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velvet4510 · 9 months ago
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Here’s the thing.
Many Bagginshield shippers, especially in fics, focus on how Bilbo never got over Thorin, to the point where some describe Bilbo’s entire life as sad and empty and unfulfilled because of that loss.
Don’t get me wrong: I do agree that he suffered terrible loss and undeserved torment by the Ring. And the fact that he never married probably did have some connection to the memory of Thorin.
But, y’all, don’t forget or ignore the fact that, in Tolkien’s text, Bilbo does move on from grief and live the rest of his life well.
He does not become bitter from his pain. He retains his kind heart.
He is generous with his wealth, helping in every way he can the very community that ostracizes him.
He sees in Frodo a kindred spirit and takes it upon himself to be the parental figure that Frodo so badly needs as an orphan.
He and Frodo develop an uncle-nephew (really more like father-son) relationship built on trust, keeping no secrets from each other, to the level where he tells Frodo the truth about his encounter with Gollum. (And probably the truth about his feelings for Thorin, too.)
He and Frodo have so much fun, going for walks every day, studying the Elvish languages, and throwing big birthday parties to show the community a good time. It’s plain to see that caring for Frodo filled that massive void inside Bilbo, finally giving him someone to love and devote himself to looking after, after his first chance at that (albeit the first being a different kind of love) was taken from him.
He does not see himself as superior to the lower class despite his riches, and always treats the Gamgees with the utmost respect.
He teaches Sam to read and write.
He tells his story to the younger hobbits, inspiring more of them to want to learn more about the outside world and not be so sheltered and ignorant…an effort which ultimately saves Middle-earth because the Travelers learn from him to be curious and interested in the lands outside the Shire, and he inspires them daily, as they constantly say to themselves “if Bilbo could go there and back again despite great danger, so can we.”
He even learns to love having a tarnished reputation, ultimately taking advantage of being “mad” to play a fun prank.
When he is no longer at rest in the Shire, he gifts Frodo all his property which will ensure Frodo is set for life, and through all his passive aggressive gifts to his relatives, he gives the Gaffer genuinely useful items that he knows will help him, including ointment for creaky joints.
He gets a peaceful retirement among his Elven friends, which he spends writing his memoir so that future generations will know all about his lost friends.
And ultimately, he embraces the special gift of an exception from the Valar and rare permission to set foot in the Blessed Realm for one last adventure, where he will continue to look after his beloved nephew.
And the fact is, he never would’ve gotten any of these things if he’d stayed in Erebor. He would never have developed that special bond with Frodo - he may never have even met him - and consequently, Frodo may never have met Sam.
Yes, a lot of his life was lonely and somber. But much more of it, even after experiencing such a tragedy, was full of love and joy and fun and excitement. He became an invaluable caretaker and mentor to the next generation of hobbits, got a taste of fatherhood, passed on his expertise and his story, and spent his last years surrounded by friends and family.
Bilbo Baggins may have lost the love of his life, but he did not give up on life itself, and he lived a full one. Don’t forget that.
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greywardens · 2 years ago
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i just had probably the most special conversation i’ve ever had in my life
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defmaybe · 1 month ago
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Mistake
NewJeans' Kim Minji (Angst) & NMIXX's Oh Haewon (Smut) x Male Reader
15.4k words
Some discussions of suicide
Tumblr media Tumblr media
A/N: A few things before going in:
This is essentially an unedited, raw first draft. Expect an insane amount of errors and self-indulgent metaphors.
It's also unfinished in parts.
Still, I do genuinely hope that you enjoy this!
Thanks to Tyler and and Summer for putting me on the right track of being a writer!
Big inspirations from Caps' Departure, Nichu's Where Our Blue Is, Ddeun's Our Love Language is Sex, and Challengers
Prologue
Mistake all the time, You’re my mistake all the time, yeah
Mistake all the time, I’m your mistake all the time, yeah
You realized that you’ve never possessed the creative calibre as much as a writer should’ve had. Perhaps it’s appropriate that you’ve never pursued it as your major career. You read all these stories, and you knew that you just can’t come up with these plots. You don’t know how to do character developments, hell, you can barely write dialogues. The way people talk in real life remains a mystery to you. So, it’s probably for the best that you’re in engineering.
Though, it just takes a mistake to change it all. Many stories start with a catastrophe, a turning point, or something that puts the protagonist on their journey. So, here you are, you have a story right in front of you, so should it be transformed into something commendable? award-worthy? a selfish portrayal of what’s supposed to be just a passage of life? The goal of it doesn’t really matter much (though some recognition would be nice); you just had to write it out.
You don’t know how much time you have for this. Everyone has been telling you it should be long enough for the forgiveness to be ready, but you’ve also been wondering whether, if that day comes, it would be too long that the cadence won’t strike you as pristine as before.
Though, it hadn’t stopped you from fantasizing how this encounter would play out. You’d say something witty with a chuckle, and she’d smile back, or even better, a laugh. Both of you would see the separation as some childish actions of the past. The two of you would go back to where you were: grief-stricken, exhausted, scared high school students. 
The sunlight would force you to retreat to some cafe during the afternoon, letting you two trade stories between the gaps. And as the sun sets, you’d sit beside her in some park, laid back a bit, hands on the grass to offer some balance. She’d do the same. Then your hearts would slowly be reconnected with each other, hoping to reclaim solace missing in the separation, as if you are the only two people on earth.
Firstly though, those events would have to be triggered by your words. And despite thousands of days of you trying to perfect every syllable, they just conveniently stuck in your throat. This isn’t what you’ve been readying yourself for. Awestruck and powerless is an understatement, and no tests have ever made you feel so drowned in your gargantuan number of thoughts.
You cannot say a word to her, and there may not be any second chance for this.
You are her mistake, and you’ll always be.
One: About You
There was something ‘bout you that now I can’t remember
It’s the same damn thing that made my heart surrender
And I miss you on a train, I miss you in the morning
I never know what to think about
I like you
What
I like you! Like do you wanna go out on a date?
(Seen)
It isn’t the longest silence you’ll experience with her, let alone with someone else, fourteen years on earth won’t give much of an insight to you, but it’s enough for you to know what she’s going to say next.
I’m sorry
Regret in her words bled through the pixels. 
But I just see you as a friend
Being on text messages takes out the awkwardness a bit, but that doesn’t help transform the dagger, really.
Kim Min-Ji, your entire relationship was based on this encounter, and that three-week phase of some bullet crush upon entering a new school preceding this. You were charmed by a girl’s look, and then no one can compete with that.
You had found her face appealing, then you fantasized your whole life with her. One thing led to another, and you were head over heels for her in just a week. 
Nowhere that you haven’t gone with her in your head: a date at an American diner—drinking milkshakes, a trip to the theater—watching some schlocky romance and cringing when the couple on the screen are kissing each other, and the most ambitious one: marriage, she’s smiling, everyone you’ve ever known is surrounding you, cheering as you are leaning in for a kiss.
Too bad you didn’t have a backup plan if it failed.
Consequences of the rejection had you decompressing every, single, thing you’ve been admiring about her to your friends, yeah, the same ones. You treated that as if it was the end of the world. 
It was quite a phase, and you inevitably got closer to those people. They were slowly fading away eventually, one by one, but at least, at that moment, you felt like there’s someone listening to you.
While the dagger stuck, you kept eluding her, avoiding eye contact as you were walking past each other. You had to let her know you were hurt. God, that shit looked so damn petty in retrospect.
It was a month later when the heartbreak dissipated, and both of you decided that the next three years cannot be spent evading each other. (To be honest, it’s mostly just for you to stop being weird.) A nod was all it took, and that probably was a lot better than having her as a girlfriend.
She wants you to live on your life, separately
Being on text messages (and having it delivered through a friend) takes out the cruelty a bit, but that doesn’t help transform the dagger, really.
It started with just some petty acts, a crude joke. Then, just over a month later, you deleted every single picture of her, almost five years of them. It wasn’t a hard thing to do when you were so deep in melancholy, just a few minutes after a friend brought the breakup message to you. 
You thought you had to block her everywhere. But with every step taken to create some distance from her, those actions just, somehow, create unending echoes tormenting you.
Why
You really wanted to fix this; you really fucking did. You’ve never wanted it to end, even when you sent some faux, response-seeking farewell messages after days of waiting for her confirmation of how she felt, just to have her come and reply about the exam she was having just a few minutes later.
Are you gonna send something to her again if you know?
But even with her crying emojis, you were relentless with your replies. I fucking hate you still echoes to this day. It shaped how you see yourself: a selfish, yet codependent, self-indulgent, unlovable person. Even with the apology texts you sent a few weeks later (which she never saw), those four words were tattooed on you.
I won’t
You wished you could, but this answer seemed to be the way to satisfy her.
Think about it
Like all those years
What have you done to her
It was supposed to end with your first apology text, when she called herself an asshole over it. Then, you became one yourself. It turned out that reading only the preview message doesn’t give you the full picture, so you paid the price just a month later. You replied to that, then you waited. And with how God made you so insecure, you thought she wanted it to end after a week you took to reply.
You had problems.
It’ll all be okay
Someday
Looking at your friend’s text, you sighed, knowing that you can only let fate and time lead you to it.
You were nothing more than a friend. She sure loved you, just not in the way one would perceive as romantic. There were kind words, there was thoughtful advice, there were chatting deep into a lot of nights. 
Any form of physical contact though, you brought it up in some conversations (which one eventually being the spark that burned it all), were always quickly suppressed by her. So, there you were, having her as a friend, and the bar for where your future girlfriends should be.
hey
need some advice rn
uh huh
there’s this guy
send me his pic
alright wait a sec
[photo]
my god
what
okay yeah I know why he’s a big deal
fuck auto caps on I again
fuck
just turn it off in the settings lol
thanks
[Replied to: okay yeah I know why he’s a big deal] ikr
[Replied to: thanks] no prob
so
how is it with him
As it was flourishing, there were times that you wished for it to be as easy as a kiss and a happily ever after, with how well-gelled you’ve always been together. But the distance between you is just too much. 
You can’t conveniently visit her on every other weekend, while she really didn’t want to close the distance from being a close friend (or as you would think to yourself later: “our love may not coincide at the same time”). So, there you were, you became each other’s advisor for those times you’ve had.
All of what you saw as confidential: all the vibrations of your heart, all the tears running down your cheeks when alone, all the ties you cut and formed, as any teenager would do, was at last, delivered to your parents, at the age you didn’t think it was possible for such change. 
You didn’t expect that your parents would take it well, with how you’ve withheld everything for the last half decade, reducing every answer to their questions into a binary set consisting of yes and no. But as they’ve always been, they didn’t leave you in the dark.
You pleaded guilty to all of it – how you were wretched inside. How she became so much to you, how you took everything she says as an oath, how her jokes lit up a smile on your face every time, and how they still haunt you, to this day, keeps you from initiating any new, proper relationship with someone. 
They kept coming back, even if you thought time would slowly fade them away. The minor details, yes, but the bigger ones are still having free shots on you every now and then.
The first few months were difficult. Bed seemed to be the best place you could’ve been, lying down, your fingers sliding reels after reels for god knows how long. Though, it hits you, years of being alone, walling people out was detrimental to you. It starts with some small repairs: story replies to disconnected peers, dates with your close friends, more exposure to your family. 
You seek connections, desperately, to fill up the hole she once occupied. You took too many side jobs aside from the grueling university classes, and to be honest, you did meet a lot of new people in the next semester, even more than you did in the last two or three years here.
The space though, five years of freestyle carving put it into this twisted, incomprehensible, harrowing state in which all the adjectives in the world aren’t enough to define the shape of its former owner. How every fibre of your existence was tied to her was, as seen from outside, sad. 
Sure, it’s not wrong to let someone into your life, but with this extent – thousands of words to pry out a response - it just reeks codependency in retrospect.
It took some time, and a bunch of people, to cover up the space. You never quite make it like it was; there’s always a hole somewhere, and you can still see the footprints she left on you through it.
How you tell people close to you, most of the time, is that there was a fight - one you started. Then you were being a bitch for too long, and by the time you returned, she put you out of the picture. You added some bits of how you were dependent on her for your heartaches, how you treated her like shit for years, how you sent waves of messages that she didn’t reply because she was busy, how you said you hated her, only to retract and regret it a few days later, then it all ended.
It could be some way of unearthing emotional vulnerability under that “cold” façade - as often pointed out by your friends, which you deflected as crippling social anxiety. You thought people would trust you more if you decided to tell them how you succumbed to those inner demons. It works most of the time.
You told them that you cried to some K-pop song that you can only understand like two lines. 
You told them how you tried to recover the photos with some external program not a week later. 
You told them, with an otherworldly consistency, that it’s your fault, never hers. 
You told them you’d send something a year later, as an apology, to return to where you once were.
You told them that you might crumble again if the response is anything but a warm embrace.
Your taped-up heart remained intact when the day came, having your friends around and such after a year of reconstruction, and you surrendered to the fact that you really can’t do much more than a guilt-ridden text. But it’s not easy at all to watch “Sent just now” become “yesterday”, then “last week”, then “last month” slowly unfold. Then you knew that your strength just cannot handle this; cadence can’t exist with a single note.
It took you back to that day, when the future was just this black, unbounded, silent yet serene space. Times where every knife suddenly became alluring, heights weren't what you were afraid of anymore, the next trip to a pharmacist might be a deathtrap.
This eternal apathy: it was tempting to give in to it – to just leave all of these behind. Yet, you weren’t so sure to give yourself such an ending. People won’t like it, or do they? A lot of stories saw their main characters to their ends, no matter which way it would be. And to be fair, a lot of them became cult classics. You weren’t so sure which would be the right ending for yours.
Two: Now That We Don’t Talk
You grew your hair long, you got new icons
And from the outside, it looks like you’re trying lives on
One advice you took from your therapist is to keep journaling your emotions, each day. And even with the poor self-discipline, whether in a book or a journal, you carved your grimaces, laughters, and tears into words. But perhaps that became too customary. And as time passes, you find the storyteller side of yours magnetized outwards. So, there you were, in front of your old laptop, nibbling on the dagger.
Your plane landed in Tokyo mere hours ago. It was a few days after your sophomore year finals. You were paying for your inability to sleep with the shaking cabin, and it was just nine (Tokyo Standard Time) in the morning. Your eyes went dry, and you can feel the irregular beats of your heart. The sleeping pills from your psychiatrist can’t handle the excitement of getting on a plane, especially if it’s to Tokyo.
It’s cold, spring cold. Snow is nowhere to be seen, but your tropical genes are already shaken with a small breeze. You excused yourself from your family for some minutes outside the airport, to get some air for alertness.
The train would depart in an hour, but with the risk-averse nature of your parents, you had only 20 minutes to snap a few photos around Narita. You quickly pace yourself against the crowd, to the outside. You strode through the arrivals terminal, before reaching the automated door, finally catching the air. And it’s cold, spring cold.
It was cloudy, yet the sun was bright enough to deflect your vision away from the matter of protecting it. You pick up your camera to snap a few photos, testing the recipes you had looked up from home. And god, wasn’t Japan so pretty?
But maybe it’s the wind, maybe it’s the temperature, maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, you’re drawn to her, again. It was just over a month ago since the incident. Yet miles away from your parents’ car, when Minji had her dagger delivered through your phone, and as the distance grew, you realized that it’s poisoned.
Should I check my block-list?
It echoes, even if you had no reason to do it. And you gave in, under that spring air: cold, dry, unrelenting, merciless.
You took a seat by a slanted cream walkway outside. A man was sitting across from you. He looked up, before going back onto his phone, nonchalant to your presence, and it’s like you could complain about it.
And immediately, you take out your phone, so eager to check your blocked accounts.
She changed her profile picture into something that you can’t even make sense of: her. Even under the face of the drawn character, you could feel her radiate through your screen. Locals and tourists are still marching towards their destination, either into the city, or a plane, unbeknownst to your internal collapse. It’s probably the way your face is always the same - concealing the tears so well - cheerful or devastated.
She moved on from you: her old persona shed, bio rewritten, era changed. Yet there you were, at least a sea away, crumbled into pieces.
Perhaps it was time for you to shed a new shell.
“Minji will be here too!” One of your friends said.
It was the first time you had a sleepover at your friends’ apartment. Alcohols were, of course, involved. A bit of drunk chatting with your friends and walking around helped with the university-induced depression, which you, then freshman, naively dismissed as a normal thing. Then, you heard she would come for some lunch before you go back to the mundane routine you got yourself into.
“Heyyyyy.” You shouted into the room as soon as the apartment’s door was closed. She was sitting on the sofa in the middle of your friends’ studio-sized room.
“Hey!” She seemed to look different from her high school days, crimson on her lips, longer eyelashes, paler cheeks. She wears makeup now, and you wouldn’t lie that it took you by surprise - how beautiful she was. It may have been contributed to the fact that you had just six hours of sleep the night before, but she was gorgeous that day, breathtaking even.
“God, I miss you so much.” You said, sitting down beside her on the couch, while looking over the screen of her ancient phone.
“Awww, thanks babe.” Minji blew you a kiss, irony, to which you happily caught. 
“Long trip?” You asked, knowing how far she is from the city.
“Hour and a half.” She murmured.
“Sorry about that.” You chuckled, laying your back on the couch. It’s a display of your insufferable narcissism as usual, a humble smugness.
Your friends were too busy on their phones, waiting for a member to finish his shower before taking a trip into the city.
“No need, I’m here to see you.” Minji beams.
“Thanks, Minji.”
Not that you haven’t seen love blooming in front of you before, it’s just that you can’t grow the petals to display your stern sentiment. It has been, to say the least, difficult for you to express any tinge of compassion.
“ROMEO TAKE ME SOMEWHERE WE CAN BE ALONE, I’LL BE WAITING ALL THERE’S LEFT TO DO IS RUN.”
It’s only the two of you screaming between the other guys in the karaoke room. Even if it’s Taylor fucking Swift, she still seems to be threaded just between you two.
“YOU’LL BE THE PRINCE AND I’LL BE THE PRINCESS, IT’S A LOVE STORY BABY JUST SAY YES.”
You were pointing to each other, with others baffled by how enthusiastic you were.
Both of you kept going like wannabe singers until the end.
“WE WERE BOTH YOUNG, WHEN I FIRST SAWWWWW YOU.”
And the song ends, leaving only you two sharing the only spotlights in the room.
“Minji, fuck, god, that was great,” you panted, trying to catch your breath after screaming Love Story.
“You should thank me for listening to only English songs,” she scoffs, smiling at you.
You attempted to make a cute face, sarcastically. “Thanks, Miss Kim.”
“It’s my job to listen to Taylor Swift for you.” She bowed and smiled.
It’s always the irony-infused conversations, but deep down, you know you could trust her, at least once you do. So many of your problems were solved by her. Just tell them directly, just do this, just do that. And if you didn’t even want to, she’d take your place to show how competent in the field she is, just for you.
As your friends continue with the songs you two can’t capture the lyrics, you slid yourself towards her. “So, how’s the med school?”
She finds the words to answer the completed question for a while. Your other friends are still screaming their lungs out. “It… fucking sucks, yeah, it beat my ass back to high school.” She’d frowned at her script.
“I guess so, I shouldn’t have asked, even. We should talk about light things instead, I’m sor—”
“Don’t be.” Minji cut you off. “It’s fine, I needed a place to vent, anyway.”
The mood, again, swung into glee along with the background. “Oh, so what, Miss Kim, you’re going to use me as your personal venting tool now?”
As if you predicted your future.
“I might, if it doesn’t get better.” She’d snickered at her own comment.
Your expression softens to sympathy. “Well, I’m here. Miss Kim, Go ahead.”
“Really? We can chat about this later, to be fair” She negotiated your offer, not wanting to ruin the mood.
You pondered for a moment, as the song came to an end. “I suppose so, wanna pick the song?”
Minji smiled. “Sure.”
It was these small moments that you kept digging up, even if it is surrounded by smiles and laughs. I wasn’t kind enough to her. I said the wrong things. I was selfish. And it slowly grew into something far more sinister. I am a bad person.
“Okay, I’ll post this and tag you all.”
After the group selfie, it was time for you to go back to your regular depression-inducing activities at university.
“I have to get going now. I have class tomorrow morning.” Slightly annoyed by the time restraint, it’s evening now.
“Don’t forget to tag me~” Minji would speak out, playfully, a façade for the fear of being excluded.
“What if I do?” You pointed a finger to your chin.
“I’ll block you, that’s what I’d do”
“Aww, I’d be so sad.” You sarcastically pouted, before giving a farewell, “Bye, babe. Bye, everyone.”, waving.
“See ya.”
That was the last time you’d see her face.
Upon reelings, you can only recall the words as a vague, half-hearted goodbye. Oh how you felt so secure with her back then you just gave some shitty farewell, unbeknownst to how it would stick with you as her final image of you – the fact that has been gripping you tightly ever since.
Maybe, in a way, it is to broadcast the insides of your heart to the world. It’s always been what you do best. You found yourself sitting down in front of your laptop, pondering on the word choices. You were walking on a minefield of words, avoiding repetitions that would make your readers groan at such occurrences.
It could’ve been easy - the one who left was the villain, and the one who found you is the typical manic pixie dream girl any man would want. You would boast it when you meet her again, saying something along the lines of “I won the breakup.”, or “Guess who’s crying now.”. It’s quippy, snarky, made-ready, and gives some sense of revenge to the readers, and to you.
It’s not hard to give in to the waning under the half-lit moon; the vengeance is too alluring. Still, perhaps it was that single, small spot in the dark sky - the one that keeps on flickering a signal. And it was decrypted into the ending you didn’t want, acceptance, even if the creeping clouds are slowly curtaining the sky. The star keeps on flickering, to guide you.
And you followed it. The piece didn’t get as much recognition as you’d like, as the grudges were, even if partly, let go, and only mentioned as your thorns. Yet, that day, those spikes were shed, for a new shell to form to protect you from your own hatred.
Three: Feels Like
Met you at the right time
This is what it feels like
You were told that it’s going to be some kind of joint committee between universities. And so, as one of the chosen, you are here, in such rare occasions of being in a suit. It’s tiring - you just got off from your senior project, internship is approaching in a week, right after the Christmas holidays. Yet, being given a few activity hours from your university isn’t a bad offer at the time.
Some classical music you’ve never bothered to look their names up were sent through speakers; they probably couldn’t afford a real band. The grandiose, dimly blue-tinted-lit hall was occupied by hundreds of representatives. Waiters were walking back and forth to corporate demands for the food and drinks. The sounds from all kinds of conversations are lighting this ball up. It’s, from a whim, lively for now.
As always, you felt out of place here. You’ve never been the type that would slot into a conversation with ease. Every word you say might be interpreted as an insult, a showboating of your dull wit. So, silence seemed to be the best choice here. You can’t have people see you as some lowly, dense, out-of-place ordinary guy.
You kept checking your watch, anxiously, it should have been eleven when you were to leave, and time gets slower on purpose. Words around you were slowly, but surely on its way to push you to your edge. There were a couple of people from your university too, just that they were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they are in the toilet? Maybe they can talk to strangers? Maybe they don’t want to be around you?
With every second ticked, an uneasy feeling crept up your body with confidence, eager to take control. Your eyes were stuck to your phone, with right thumb swiping short videos after another. Each one elicited a dopamine shot to keep the shadows at bay, but it could do just that. You know this stuff is going to shave off your attention span bit by bit, but not faltering in front of everyone now just matters more.
Until-
“Sorry.” A stark, yet tender voice shook you, despite its message. You expected someone to come take you into their company, but it’s still a long way to go to get rid of this shell.
You turned your head back until she’s in your vision. A short-haired woman stood before you, around your age; her lips formed a weak grin. Her left hand was holding an empty plate, though with a few hints of red velvet’s frosting on it. “Can I have some more cake?”
Her right hand was in her blazer pocket.
You realized you had been standing in front of the cake stand for the last fifteen minutes. Fuck, this is embarrassing. You immediately moved away from the front table. What if I was seen as some fucker guarding all those cakes?
“What’s with that face?” 
“Uh—uh—” Being heavy in your thoughts can sometimes send some erratic, unwanted instructions to your facial features. This Fuck, this is embarrassing ordered the classic eyebrow squints, and a slight mouth frown.
“Are you seriously getting mad because I told you to move a bit?”
Ok, ok, shit, what the fuck is happening now. You were lost, failed to come up with a response. Those doe eyes were sure to be flammable with how you can feel trickles of sweat on your forehead now. First, you were all by yourself in what’s supposed to be a networking opportunity, and then this. This is how you are going to be viewed by these people now, an entitled, selfish asshole. A real chance pulled away from a single mistimed expr—
She pulled you back with her contagious simper. “I’m sorry. I was j—” She broke into another chain of laughter; there’s no reservation in those, like at all. “I was just fucking with you.” She put her right hand to cover her gaping mouth, while swaying her upper half back and forth like it was the funniest shit she has ever pulled. 
You may have just felt the largest absolute emotional slope in your life - it doesn’t really matter in terms of good or bad, just closest to being a straight line. You let out a shaken sigh, then, without knowing, you can’t help but start laughing with her in unison.
“God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect you to be s–so anxious about that.” The hilarity subsided, as she was starting to regain her composure.
You replied with some remnants of the previous guffawing. “It’s fi—ha, ha, it’s fine.” Still taking in what’s just happened.
You finally got a proper look at her. And on that exact night you first met, she wore a gray blazer, perfectly compatible with her decent height, just a few inches shorter than you – did she get it tailored? The navy wide-leg pants she had on her really gave her this “young and rising executive” look. Her short hair was a bit messy, probably from all the walking and talking she had while finishing that poor red velvet cake. 
Her nose was supposed to be the part that had you gawked, with how its bridge was flawlessly sculpted while still fitting with every other part on her face. And with the crimson lipstick on her plump lips, those features alone, perhaps, had Aphrodite working overtime. 
Then, just a bit above those, her hazel eyes, the ones that will have you gladly trapped in it for hours. The sunsets you will be sharing is going to be reflected in her eyes, as you bring your face closer to hers, to realize that she’ll be the person you can, and want to spend the rest of your life with.
(We still need to come back to the first night though. You haven’t gotten much more of her personality than that joke.)
“So, aren’t you going out and talking to someone?” She asked, her right hand using the cake server to pick up the lone chocolate one in the center of the table.
“Well, uh, it’s kinda hard to explain” You gestured your hands into an “I don’t know” pose, moving them up and down a little to imitate a weighing scale, as if you know what’s on both sides.
She puts on her curious face, staring straight into your eyes, trying to pry out an answer. “Try me”
You tried to hit back with your straight face, ready to not give in to her request, but to no avail. Her stare was getting even more intimidating. God, that gaze is strong.
“Fine.” You replied, as she giggled with her victory.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” She furrowed her eyebrows. She really looks like a confused bear with that face.
“Never have the courage to do it.”
“Well, you look like you have enough to talk to me.” She cuts the chocolate cake with her fork, before putting the piece into her mouth.
“That’s because you’re the one initiating.”
“Oka—“ She tried to reply with a stuffed mouth, but the content was still too big. She chewed it a bit more with her right hand covering her mouth, the other putting a stop sign on you. “Okay? And am I wrong for doing that?”
“No! I—“ Her right hand moved to her waist; she was burning you with her eyes, cheeks still moving. It is important that you don’t say the wrong words here. “Thanks?”
“You’re welcome~” She twisted the last syllable into a melody, before letting out a cute giggle. “I’m Haewon by the way. And sorry for fucking with you a little too much.” She offered a handshake, which you reluctantly accepted. 
You suspected that there’s something weird with her then, with how chatty she was with you. Who would be going around, talking like this to other people?
It turned out a few years later that you’re the weird one.
“Aren’t you supposed to have some friends with you?” Haewon continues her pressing on you.
Shrugged, “Yeah, but I lost them like an hour ago, so—", as you fanned your eyes around for the umpteenth time of the night. The crowd rumbled, but still no sight of your peers. “I really have nowhere to go.”
Haewon kept switching her gaze between you and the crowd, as if to make more topics and banters out of it.
“You wanna join?” Haewon finally locked you within her sight; her thumb pointed away, into the uncertainty of the crowd.
“Uh—" 
It’s one of the few times you picked the right choice, even if it was clear as day.
“Let’s go then”
Joy gleamed her face, “Great, follow me”
Along with Haewon, you walked with her into the crowd. You bumped into some people who are apathetic to your action, and some even give you an understanding look, unbothered by your mistakes. The classical music blaring around seems to calm everyone down.
You’d finally reached a group of similarly-dressed students. “Welcome back Haewon, what took you so long?” One of them muttered out.
“Him.” Haewon replied, while looking at you and beams a smile.
Four: Cutie
Woke up in your orbit
Now where do I start?
Eighth wonder of the world: how the fuck can you secure a date with the royalty, Oh Hae-Won. You were aware – made known by her friends teasing you during a few group dates, knowing how Haewon has been spending a lot of time on her phone lately, too often with a grin on her face. 
“Hey” Haewon appears behind you in a sudden, voices in your head are now scattered.
A little shocked, “Hey”.
White tee, brown, modern crossbody bag on her shoulder, light navy jeans, hair a little shorter from that day, topped wi—
“Haiyah!” Haewon calls out, snapping you out of your trance. “You’re doing that again, aren’t you.”
“Doing what?” You replied, hoping she didn’t notice your pondering, borderline ogling on her choice of garments.
“Thinking.” She taps her head lightly. “Like you were being hypnotized or something.”
Rebuttal, “No, I wasn’t?”, and your eyebrows are marred.
“Yes, you were. And the first time I met you was also like this; you were lost in your head, and staring at me like you were trying to gauge something out of me.” She retorts with an arrogant chuckle.
“Alright, alright, fine, I’m a daydreamer, and what’s the problem with that?” You deflect the guilt. Shit, what the fuck did I say?
“Well—" Haewon nibbles her chin while finding the word. “People don’t really like being stared at, you know.”
“Yeah, that’s a fair point, my bad.” The people pleaser inside you got the better of the debater.
“Hey, look, let me give you some advice.” Determination sparks in her eyes, her hands holding on to the string. “Don’t think, just—do it, or feel it, you know.” You aren’t quite sure how to play along with her words. “The reason I’m here today is because I see something in you, and I’m sure you see something under this pretty face.”
And it’s true, Haewon sparks a sense of an adventurer inside you, even if they’re through internet lines. She brings up quite a number of places in the city you’ve never even heard the name of, and thinking of the list is, to say the least, nauseating. But under the boulder, your determination to match her venturesome nature isn’t crushed after all.
“You’re speaking like one of those life coaches, you know.” You sarcastically reply with a chuckle.
“It’s called encouragement, get used to it.” She nicks your shoulder softly. “Shall we start the walk?”
“Sure.”
You two stride along the road, catching the sight of other sightseers, both local and foreign. Graffitis are etched into the walls by your sides, interspersed with numerous coffee shops aimed to lure gen z customers with their furnishings. And one seems to work on you guys, because you now have an iced thai tea, while Haewon has a matcha latte, also iced.
“So.” You cut the silence, taking a sip of your content. “Are you here often?” It’s one of the more “talky” questions you can think of right now. Your head slightly turns towards her; your eyes during the rest (more than half actually) of the work to catch her in the bullseye of your vision.
“This is just my second time, to be honest.” She replies, drinking her matcha. “And I love how these buildings look; they probably look gorgeous on your camera, don't they?”
“It’s a good substitute for my Tokyo needs.” You scoff, scanning over the old houses around you.
“Oh yeah, those photos did look breathtaking, I can see why.” She brings up the photos from over a year ago, letting out a tiny smile in the process. “I’ve been to Osaka once actually.”
Surprised, “Osaka? How come you haven’t told me this already?”, she has never brought it up during the six months you’ve known each other.
“I can’t describe it as well as you, really.” Haewon looks down, still strolling at the same pace as before. “Plus, it was just for a project. We didn’t have much time for sightseeing.” She mutters out, eyes fixated on the ground.
“I think it would be fun, please?” A chortle escapes you, thinking it would let her know your enthusiasm.
It’s quite a clear day for a rainy season - hints of white clouds here and there, but never enough to rage against your first date. You two remain at a distance, still, leaving a gap between your shadows.
“No, no, you even laughed at the idea of it, I won’t tell you that.” She calls you out, whimpering as the sentence ends.
The next thirty seconds go by in silence, the two of you keep glancing at each other, evading contact at any signals. People pass you by as you walk, widening the distance between the tip of your fingers. Guilt, fear, uncerta–
“I won’t laugh again, I promise.” You give her an assurance, and that’s the best you can do.
“Really?” She looks up at you, catching your honest compassion.
“If it’s funny, I might.” You chuckle. “But I’m sure it was a good experience for you.”
“Thanks.” You lit up a grin on her face, as she’s getting all excited to tell you about her adventure.
“So, this was like three years ago, back when I had just finished my freshman year, it was a subway surveying thing.” Haewon starts her tale, with you two turning left, now walking to the river. “I went with a group of people, and it was mostly lecturing around the tracks, really.” She chuckles. “So we had just the evening for ourselves for like, a week.”
“We went to a firework festival on the first day. God, it was so fucking crowded, but the sparking lights looked spectacular. They did the color work well.” As she tells the story, you can’t help but get immersed in the words. There’s clarity in the way she recounts it, greatly assisted with how often she says “flickering”, “cold”, “bright”, “exhausting”, “overwhelming”, and much, much more.
“The wagyu just melted in my mouth.”
“The system was confusing, to be honest, like a spider’s web, but they helped me with that a lot.”
“Yeah, it was fucking cold, and I brought so many shorts because I underestimated late spring Osaka.”
You two walk past some more old buildings and a few more cafes, with her story as the melody. It sweeps your leg like a damn good movie. How vivid the atmosphere she’s enamoring you in, how she’s so enthusiastic in her reminiscence, and how she grins and narrows her eyes upon any mention of food.
After a while, the river is finally in your view, as she’s getting through her final day at Marble Beach.
“I pulled a friend I made there to see the beach with me, and he said that it changed his life.” She laughs. “It was beautiful, you really should see it.”
A soft smile escapes you. “Well, I kinda get him, really.” You two finally reach the cement barrier, heighting just on your hips. It’s not too short that Haewon would have to throw a life ring to you, yet not too tall to obstruct your river view, enough for you to rest your arms on it as if you’re posing.
“Yeah, the Odaiba Beach, right? I saw the photos, once you mentioned that.”
[More dialogue]
“How far is your stop?”
“Four stations.”
“Wow, I’m on six, then interchange to another four.” She sighs at the daunting route, knowing she’d be alone.
The carriage slightly shakes as it takes a small turn. Sight of people are only a few; both of you are holding onto a pole in the middle. You’re gathering all the willpower to keep your weak hand from falling onto hers.
Haewon is looking out the window in the same direction as you, eyes examining the view outside - nocturne. “Have you ever gotten bored of this?” She asks, turning her sight to face you still looking out along.
You ponder for a moment. “It looks pretty at night.”
“That’s true, but it’s not the question.” She replies. “And the way you talk is strange, you know that? Especially with how you answer questions”
“Probably from watching a lot of movies, I guess.” You deflect.
“See? You did it again!” She points at you, unbeknownst to the inadvertently closing distance between your hands on the pole. “It’s not a peeve or anything, really, but I see that you always answer yes-no questions with a reason, not directly yes or no.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve got this complaint a bit often. I have to say the same thing twice, or even thrice to a lot of people.” You reply.
“They probably expect a yes or no, perhaps?” Haewon ends the playful nudge with a chuckle. “I don’t mind though; I can catch your words.”
You can only smile in response. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to do that for a while.” You laugh, in a volume that wouldn’t make it echo inside the whole train.
“Woah, getting daring just being with me for a day? I’m having a good influence on you~” Haewon playfully takes a jab.
“You’ll have a lot of influ–” You pause. “That’s the same joke, yeah, that’s the same joke, I’m not saying it.”
She laughs, not quite as contained as yours, attracting a few looks onto you. “Yeah, I’ll see my schedule first.” Her laughter would dissolve into a smile. “I think I can sort out a few things for us.”
Us. You can melt right here and now. The way she says it so easily is just too attractive. What does she think of me? Are we a thing now? Should I kiss her?
“U—Us?” You stutter out, mind flayed.
Haewon is locked onto her calendar. “Yeah, I know I’m not that good at planning but—” She meets your eyes. “Oh.”
[You are blushing and there’s going to be a kiss at the end of this chapter.]
Five: Party Police
You don’t have to leave
You can just stay here with me
Forget all the party police
We can find comfort in debauchery
= = =
The sound of the air conditioner fills the room, emulsified with your anticipation, forming a perfect cadence. The air between you is a mixture of both minty breaths you insisted the two of you to take a spearmint candy, the gender-neutral-honey-scented body wash both of you used in separate shower sessions, and the summer breeze air purifier Haewon bought from your first trip to the convenience store together.
You two are inside her room, sitting on the queen-sized bed, hands clutched between the hole your tangled legs make.
Haewon’s lips are slightly parted, as if their owner is about to make out a sound, yet the whirring fan blows any of her half-thought intentions away. And instinctually, to which you realized a few blinks later, yours are also making their own gap, and the whirring fan blows any of your half-thought intentions away.
“I—" Haewon would be the first to stabilize her frequency, ever so mildly fluctuated by your proximity. “I love you.” She can only confirm it in a whisper, barely vibrating the dormant air around you.
Yet, it seeps in, perhaps by the sincere nature in her voice. Haewon has never looked this fragile before, and your next move can actually ignite her neurons with blue flame this time.
“I—I love you t—too.” Flushed, presto heart rhythm, you muttered out these simple words. Resting air now shook with the expressions.
You’ve kissed her many times before, the end of the first date, the middle of the second date, the start of the third date, then a full on make out session during one of The Academy’s International Film nominees, with an unknowing crowd in the theater (it helps that the movie is quite a rare action triumph, so that the wet smooches of your lips are buried under clips after clips being unloaded, and the bullet cases clanking on the floor). Though, never once has it ended with her uncontrollably uttering fucks or shits, or even deity names neither above nor under you.
Haewon starts to lean closer to you, wholeheartedly knowing that this won’t be a normal kiss. Her head tilts so acutely, barely deviated from the axis. The small, deep hum from her throat is unexpected, with her eyelids closed and all. Yet, who are you to say no to her proclamation of love.
The expectations are high, yours, hers, on this kiss to capture much more than your lips. It’s both of your first times after all. And with the contact, you can’t help but match her tone in lovestruck. Hands are still stationed, too afraid to take this further, until they aren’t yours that touches a face first. Haewon fondles your cheeks with both of her hands as the kiss ensues, persuading you to reciprocate, and you do.
Fervor rises along the ticks of all the clocks, Haewon pierces the gap you opened with her tongue, invading your mouth. You gasp in shock, signaling her to break off from the session.
“Shit, are you okay?” Haewon’s eyes enlarged, her breathing still out of rhythm.
Giggling, “No, no, no, just a little shocked, let’s continue”, as you initiate the action this time, hands holding her cheeks, tongue sweeping the insides of her mouth.
Again, fervor rises along the ticks of all the clocks, the sound of the kiss becomes the only thing you can hear now. It’s wet, a little salty, albeit ardent, and rapturous. 
And with an unknown source of bravery, your hand traverses down from her cheeks, grazing her neck. Haewon hums a minim into your throat as your fingers hit the ridge of her chest. And through the fabric, you give her left mound a squeeze, eliciting another two-beat note from her. Tender, addictive are the first few words as your fingers sink into the cloth, and the desire arises.
Your voice, muffled through the kiss, and raspy in hunger, asks such a bold question. “Fuck, God, Haewon, may I suck on them?”
Haewon would hum another note into your mouth, before unlatching from the torrid endeavor. “Make me moan, and don’t use your teeth.” She commands.
It’s all instinctual now, don’t think, just feel echoes. You playfully push Haewon onto the bed, eyes focus on your targets. The rhythm of her ragged breaths now takes over the room.
You run your hands down her luscious curves, feeling every hill and hollow on the fabric, before hitting an edge. ”May I?” As you grab the hem of her shirt, so eager to expose her.
”Of course, babe”
Permission granted, you swiftly pull the edge of her garment up, with her putting her arms up for easy exposure. The stream of the sight of her somewhat toned midriff, perky chest, and collarbones runs through your eyes, and it’s almost too heavy to take it in. “Fuck.” And you can only give a profanity for it.
“I know, right?” She responds, chuckling.
Magnetized, and sudden, your lips latch onto her left, brown peak, coating her breast with your saliva. She complies with your action under you, letting out a symphony whenever your mouth is right at the top of her areola, right before leaving, then swallowing it again. 
The buds, excited, erect under your touch. This seems to go on for minutes. You keep switching between her left and right mounds, one hand kneading the mound that isn’t currently savored, with the other traversing her upper body, marking every square inch as yours. You won’t get bored of this easily, especially with her moaning this loud.
“More, baby, more” Haewon pleads. Her hands start to push your head onto her erect nipples now.
If you’re going to be honest, it tastes just like any other part of a human body: skin, with some honey aroma after the shower. Perhaps it’s desire, perhaps it’s ardor, or perhaps it’s love, maybe all of them together, you were drawn to them. Her writhing cries only fuel the attraction further, and the force you use with your lips.
Until–
“Fuck, fuck–, yeah.” She whines. “That–That’s good, but I want more now, baby.” Haewon mutters in the same pitch as her moans, unable to retain her usual deep tone. “You seem to– love my tits– a lot, don’t you.” Her talking is constantly cut short to make ways for the ragged breaths.
“Twenty-one years of drought, babe” You chuckle, turning your head to face hers, chin hovering above her hard nubs.
“You wanna use your mouth or your dick, huh?” Slightly annoyed, yet excited, and perhaps too lecherous that she comes off as a horny cutie joke bear. “I gotta cum first, or at the same time with you, isn’t it” She seems to be aware of how your body works, and she’s right. You don’t wanna risk being unable to get yourself up again within five minutes, while she waits, unattended.
”Damn, babe, you’ve come prepared.”
”No?, I’m gonna come with you here!” She lets out another laughter, breaking the lustful mood a bit. God, she just can’t go a minute without making a joke. Her pursuit in digging any giggles out just kills you every time, even if that means the problems were hardly addressed, tingling a small part of you on the occurrences.
You sink into the glee with her. “Oh fu— fuck off babe.” But this lustful tryst just drives you into a whirlpool right now. You quickly dispose of your shorts (why the fuck would you guys even wear clothes if you’re just going to fuck after???), freeing your delirious digit.
“God.” Haewon stares at your erect cock in awe, twitching, a glint of concern in her eyes. You wouldn’t say that it’s exactly big, but it’s enough to make her gulp. “Do I have to take all of this?”
“I’ll push slowly.” You replied, panting from the brimming anticipation.
Without a word, Haewon yanks her shorts away. Another stream of her eden, thighs, and the full lower body strikes you. And Haewon is now bare in front of you, glowing, despite her cheap light hanging above. You want to cherish this moment forever, freeze it in time, or at least just slow down a bit. Oh Hae-Won trusts you enough to expose herself, fully, in front of you. And you aren’t sure which gesture can compare to this as her proclamation of love (maybe a marriage proposal, but let’s not get into that yet).
“I thought you’d do it slower”
“All that foreplay got me so fucking turned on, babe, plus, I’m not on the shy side.”
“The nipple sucking?”
“Yeah, that meal you just had. Also, take off that shirt, I wanna feel all of you.”
Ordered, you hastily get rid of the last piece of garment, tossing it into the void, following your shorts. Both of you are now fully naked, only the cold, compressed air is your barrier now.
“Good, now come here” She says with a wink, provocative, commanding, yet so greedy. Haewon is resting on her back, with her elbows lifting her abdomen just a little from the bedsheet, enough to face you without much eye movement, smiling with desire. She bends her left leg a little, and it drives you crazy. 
Fuck, she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, perhaps ranked among the gods: Hera, Artemis, Athena, Hestia, and Haewon’s victory is a certainty. She can even go bar for bar against Aphrodite, her own creator, under this cheap room lamp. And you can’t just wait to be tied to this lady with her deity-defying charm with such an intimate act.
“You want my cock that bad, Miss Oh?” You slowly, to make it a tease, slide your knees against the bedsheet towards Haewon, getting closer to her, inch by inch. Haewon opens her leg, giving you permission and space to be in her proximity. Her eden is now in view, glistened with arousal. 
“There’s just this thing, ma’am, that I wanna take a sample of first.” Playfulness is attached in your message. She’s still on her elbows, heads slightly tilted at your defiance, as if you also have a god-challenging act in your pocket as well. And with some more inspection, it’s apparent that Haewon isn’t a firm believer in having cleanly-shaved hair, and somehow, this kind of nature just drives you into a frenzy.
“And what is it, mister?” Haewon asks, still with seduction, eyes locking on yours.
“You.” And without another word, you dive face first onto her wet, needy sex. Your nose is pressed against her mound, pubic hair brushes against it, but the “distraction” never succeeds in repelling you away. Further, it feeds the ferocity inside you to take in her scent, with a deep breath. With the sight alone, you thought you reached your limit, yet, spellbound under her musk, a hint of sweat, the honey-scented body wash, and her mildly tart aroma from the inside sends you into a literal mind break, like a morning coffee. Haewon is fucking addictive, and you can’t go a single day without her smell.
“She s–smells good, doesn’t s–she?” Her voice starts to quiver again, as your nose tickles her hair.
Meanwhile, your tongue, with a mind of its own, is lapping up her nectar, savoring the salty, tangy taste of her canal. Her sensitive nub, the one you’re sure it’s clitoris, is now stuck in your philtrum. Every swipe just grazes it, eliciting squeals from her.
“F–fuck.” Haewon cries out, starting to get lost in her immediate pleasure, “Ah.”, and your enthusiasm. “Just f-five minutes babe.”
Mouth busy in a sinful act, you hum an affirmative note out. Her vagina is now coated with your saliva, mixed with her lubricant. And with each time you pull yourself out, there’s sometimes a string of the cocktail connecting your lips to her sex - a thread between you and her.
At first, it’s a savoring session of her taste, for you, but as her wailing grows louder, you can only be curious about the limit. And without hesitation, you give her clitoris a brush - the same way you suck her nipple. As your lips contact, delicate, her moans would reach such a forte to the point you’re quite sure that everyone in the dorm would be able to hear.
Conspiring her frustration, “Want a few more, babe?”, you retreat your ministrations to her pale thighs, making a few marks here and there, robbing the pleasure that was once hers.
“Fuck you.” Haewon groans out. “Please, keep eating my pussy, please.”
You bring your fingers into play, caressing her inner trunks. And, with instinct, you slip yourself under her ass. Your eyes are still locking on her wet hole, and she seems to gush out streams of honey now. “Y–You are f–fucking insuf–” She moans out as you relentlessly withholding the release she deserves.
“Can’t hear with my hands under your ass, babe” It’s as if something possessed you into a womanizer, a shot of complacency.
Haewon would be able to muster up her remaining inhibition to define you with an adjective. “I–Insufferable.”
“That’s a little mean.” Your hands give her firm butt a squeeze, feeling the soft flesh. This is probably how Indiana Jones felt when he got his hand on the golden idol: like an ascendant. “Considering how soft your ass is.” You lick just beside the spot, motioning parallel to the pink labia.
Haewon groans in frustration, climax stolen by a thief. “Sh–shut the fuck up and put that tongue to use!” In forte, all the pent up energy can crush you into bits and pieces in minutes, while you are still drawing circles around your supposed target, pushing her to the edge of wrath, right before it turns into destruction. “FUCK!”
You are actually scared of her now, and perhaps the complaints of her neighbors about some tenant bossing a guest around in the nocturne. So, complying, you put your tongue to use, taking another sample of the mixture, tasting her and yourself again.
“Good boy, yeah, like that.” She whimpered out, being put back en route to paradise.
Constant pace, don’t go too fast. You tell yourself an advice you’ve read somewhere years ago, and you do as it says. You try to keep the speed the same, but it’s starting to get harder as Haewon decides that she needs something to hold on to, which is, unfortunately, your head. I once had a guy go too fast when I told him I’m gonna cum, and that was the ride down, my mood died completely. A comment you’ve seen somewhere pops up.
Your jaw can never get tired, if it is to devour her into ecstasy. But the force pressed upon your head is starting to be a double-edged sword to her, a place to hold on to, and the act that might close the golden gate.
The five minutes she gave earlier might come into use.
“B—babe.” You cry out between licks, voice muffled. “I wanna use my cock now.”
Haewon lets go of the grip she has in your hair locks, as she looks down from her lying position. “Really?” Expectations running high, she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Alright.” She thwarts her arm along the bed for a little while, a little lost, until she catches her colorful spot-covered pillow. And without any word, you help Haewon lift her hips up to insert the fluffy object below, bringing her puckered hole into your focus.
Tranced, “Can I taste it?” the words fell out without any restrictions.
“Don’t fucking kiss me again if you do; I don’t wanna taste my asshole.” Haewon commands, trying to regain her composure. “Maybe another day.”
You whine out. “Ugh, fine.” Before getting on your knees for the main event.
You use her spread thighs as a handle while aiming with your eyes. You line up your twitching digit on the center, resting it on her now-swollen clit. And a small whimper from Haewon would reach your ear, fueling your fire.
“You want this inside you, huh?” You tease, sliding your shaft against her core from the outside, glazing yourself with her honey resting on the nub.
“Fuck… yeah, I—I want it inside.” Haewon chokes out at your heavenly connection; her attempt at putting any façade is crumbling.
Slowly, your rod still above her center, you traverse your hands up her immaculate legs, onto her stomach. Her breaths are now short, out of any earlier rhythm, as your touch starts to overwhelm her senses. “F—fuck.” You’d only move upwards, creeping up her beautiful chest, until they are up for your hands to conquer. She’s yours now.
Now, you have her tits as a grip, ever so carefully fondling them while slowly juggling the movements: your hands squeezing, your hip thrusting, and your upper body leaning in to see her giving in closer and closer. It’s all there, eyes fluttering, lips shaking, loud moaning, and her whole firm frame writhing under you.
You aren’t going in for a kiss, really, but she forces you nonetheless. Hands gripping the sides of your head, Haewon would scream from the overstimulation, all restricted in your mouths, into you, letting out any control she has left.
“Babe.” You mutter out. And even slightly distorted by fervor, she’d break off from the locks under your voice.
Mouth agape, she looks into your eyes, using the final bit of her inhibition to predict your next words. “You can put it in, baby.” And you can only smile.
You guide your rod down to her engine, but neither of you has ever been more ready to ignite the moans. Your left hand has her thigh on the same side as a handle.
Wet, indeed, she welcomes you. The excessive preparation gives easy access, and you become the same groaning lump as she was, swallowed by rapture. In the wake of bliss, you tilt your head down until the sight of your disappearing cock is in the frame, inch by inch. 
The insides of her tighten when you reach halfway, and you can feel your tip grazing a rough patch. “Fuck!” Haewon’s body tenses up, and she lets out a higher note than usual. You also pitch a sound lower than hers, but also noticeably higher than your regular octave.
You slowly bury yourself up to the hilt, now able to let go of your flesh. Haewon stutters a moan out when your patch makes contact with her. 
“S–Seems like you can handle all of me, babe.” Your voice is quivering, without any movement to your body. You keep yourself whole with her.
Haewon can only whimper in response. 
“I-I’ll start fucking you now.” You say as you start to grind your hips back. Haewon nods, giving you the right to control the pace.
Your cock, at an agonizing speed, comes back into view. You can feel the muscles inside gripping you and how the rough patch grazes the top of your digit, evoking staccatos from her. God, anyone would kill to be in your position right now.
And at the halfway point, it’s where you push back in again, still carefully. Haewon surrenders any power she has now, with her g-spot being pleasured by another person for the first time. The suffocating squeeze she has on you persists, sending waves of pleasure around your dick.
It becomes a loop: retreat and thrust, retreat and thrust, and you finally find your rhythm. It’s ecstatic - the way her flesh embraces you. You repay her accommodation with a little angling, aiming for the sensitive patch in the second step. Both of you are lost now, blinded by the passionate endeavor you’re engaging in.
Haewon’s brain can only register euphoria, howling as your tip brushes against the g-spot. And you are no better, bucking hips back and forth, chasing your release while huffing out such notes you could hit before the existence of your Adam’s apple. The only concern now is that your roller coaster would reach its peak before hers.
“Hey, I t–think I’m gonna c–cum now.” Haewon’s words came out tattered, divided by exaltations in her groans. It's a heaven’s message, as you can also feel your climax close by.
Keep your pace; don’t go faster.
You make no attempt to go rougher with your drilling; she’s already a blushing, wailing mess under Allegro Vivace. You can also feel a knot starting to form inside of you, begging to be untangled. “M–Me too, babe.”
Haewon’s moans become even louder than the oral session minutes ago; her orgasm is close by. You can feel the way her vagina contracts around your movements, and you aren’t far from it, either.
Two lost souls search for intimacy, and they eventually find each other. And the mistakes they’ve made don't matter anymore. The people they’ve passed through, either able to find solace or dissonance, have become nothing more than a plot device to drive them forward, for them to meet. And even if the future remains clouded, it’s just them at this exact moment, becoming each other’s sanctuary.
“FUCK!” Haewon cries out. As her hip convulses, bending your digit slightly. She pulls her legs back, feet touching her pale ass before they go up in the air. Haewon cums, violent, ferocious, cathartic. Her whole body tenses up; her tits are shaking. Her walls tighten around you, begging to milk every upcoming drop of you until dry. 
You take in the view but can only register a few words to describe how you feel right now: fuck, and god. She screams from the top of her lungs to accommodate such pleasure. And isn’t it a symphony that’s so pleasing to hear, knowing that they are products of your doings?
Haewon’s breathing starts to slow down, but seeing how she becomes undone beneath, you quicken your thrusts to chase the high you’re anticipating. “Fuck!” Under sensitivity, Haewon squeals.
“Do you want me to slow down, babe? I can still cum no matter the pace.” With care, you ask.
“I–I wanna t–try.” Her syllables come out in stutters, “Keep going.”,  as your length rams into her cunt even faster than before her high.
You keep your fast, lively tempo, and that seems to be the right choice. You can play the melody faster, yet you already fail to register all the fucks and shits, Haewon mutters out while being pounded. You’re guided by your intuition at this point. It builds up inside your stomach, calling to be broken free. You feel your legs wobbling like jello, and your awareness of whether there’s any left, opposite Haewon’s, has left your body already.
And with a single, final thrust, “FUCK!” you bend yourself down to capture her lips, screeching all the satisfaction from your high into her mouth. Spurts of cum released into her welcoming cunt, while you basically buried yourself inside her, twitching under orgasm. Haewon moans into your mouth at each of your vibrations. Lustful, your tongues are swirling inside each other’s mouth, tasting each other as much as you can.
Thick cum is still discharged into her, painting her insides with white. And slowly, you start to slide down from the precipice. Your cock still twitches inside her cunt; the remaining cum only dribbles out from the hardness now. The kiss remains magnetic; you two are too hungry for each other. You can only taste the mint candy from earlier.
Finally, it breaks, a string of saliva connects your lips together, as both of you are bathed in the afterglow. Haewon’s face is drenched from her own sweat, panting, and smiling. “I love you.” She mouths, trying to make sense of her heart rhythm, soft breaths touching your face.
You’re still panting, attempting to take in her words. Even if they’re the same as from the beginning, when the clothes are still barriers between you, it sears you this time. A lock has been solved, yet you are still questioning the contents inside the box.
Then, you realize that it’s your heart, “I love you too, babe.”, and it can explode right here. Love floods, lust flows, binding you two together, in the vast sea of possibilities.
Haewon smiles before pulling you into another kiss. This one is much less passionate than the ones preceding, but it’s, nonetheless, affectionate. The way she captures your lips is too confident for you to be unsure about the attachment she gives you, and that might be the first time in your life that you’re so certain of someone else’s love, and her name is Oh Hae-Won.
Exhausted and spent, you let yourself fall onto her side, looking up. Your left arm is resting on her collarbones. “Fuck.” Your vocabulary seems to shrink under ecstasy as the cadence rings too loud for you to think properly.
“That was fun.” Haewon scoffs, before turning her bare frame towards you, head resting on her hand. “We should do this more often.”
“Should? I’m fucking you everywhere, babe.” You reaffirm with a simper.
“Shit.” Haewon chuckles before seeming to remember something. She quickly gets up from the bed. “I’ll go pissing first. It’s this–”
“UTI. Yeah, I’ve read about it.” You cut her off to show off your knowledge of sex education. “Can we cuddle after?” You plead, attempting to make a cute face.
“Sure.” She laughs, pointing at you. “If you don’t mind having your back getting a bit wet.”, and you can only smile back at her. Haewon would saunter out to her bathroom with a slight limp, managing to sway her reddened cheeks. Fuck. 
And despite the low light, you can see drops of your cum, dribbling a shine down her legs. “Are you going to clean th–”
“No.” She winks before disappearing into the bathroom, leaving a trail of nectar in her path.
You bite your lip in another rise of your arousal.
You hear the sound of tap water running from inside the bathroom before the lock clicks. Haewon appears in front of your eyes again, still naked.
“I kept the promise.” She says.
Immediately, still on her bed, you press your vision down her body. Her pussy remains glistened with your white cum, mixed with her tangy lubricant. Perhaps your saliva is also blended into the liquid.
“God, Haewon.” Again, your mind goes blank. “It has been just five minutes. I really can’t do that.”
Haewon chuckles, swaying her alluring hips closer to you. “I know.” Before she pounces you on the bed, staining the sheets with your fluids. Haewon prints a few kisses here and there, usually in the proximity of your lips and neck. And, in disbelief, you watch over her body to see that the five-minute gap is enough for your cock to be ready again.
“Fuck.”
Haewon’s glance follows yours to your erection.
“Another round, babe?”
Six: Just Another Girl
Now why can’t I sleep at night?
And why don’t the moon look right?
Sunlight peeks through the gap in your curtains, casting on the blanket that’s covering any visual hints of last night’s debauchery. Her arms retain their restrictive nature, an environment you’d enthusiastically enlist for. Her fingers barely interlocking on your heart, feeling the thrumming lullaby she holds on to like the greatest hits.
Her chest is pressed against your back, and the fact that you notice this (and how you savored their peaks last night with such unbeatable hunger) only entices your morning wood to last longer than it should’ve. You snuggle into her embrace further, establishing yourself as hers and pressing yourself into her perky breasts even harder, wanting to feel every inch of them.
“Hmm?” Haewon finally wakes up, fading her tightness wrapped around you.
Slightly panicked, you grab her escaping hand onto your warm skin. “Hey.” And you greeted her.
Haewon chuckles. “Oh, this boy needs a hug, huh?”
You close your eyes and hum in agreement, since her embrace becomes another gesture you’ve grown to love now, even if it was discovered just a few minutes ago.
“How was last night, my baby boy?” She questioned you with a tiny simper.
You can only chuckle along. “Cathartic, babe, but I’m not doing the whole mommy thing right now.”
Haewon laughs. “Okay, fine, I’ll ask you properly later, though.”
The cuddle went on for minutes. You are unwilling to let her go after such intimacy you had. After a while, you notice the scar on your chest. This may be the time you show her, but you need bravery. And you’re not sure if love could muster it up.
[A paragraph demonstrating Haewon’s good influence on you and how you’ve influenced her]
“I wanna tell you something, with us being this bare and such.” You gathered a little courage to speak up, adamantly attempting to show her your so-called scar. 
Haewon would let out a tiny chuckle at your cheap joke. “Unload them to me, babe.” She lets out another tiny chuckle, resting her head on a makeshift stand of her fist. You can’t help but join along with her.
“Oh my god, fuck you.” You said, along with a laugh.
“You just did.” 
“Okay, okay, I’ll start now, don't distract me this ti—" You let out a small giggle, as she’s still soaked in her own hilarity. “It’s like seven years of story; trust me, it’s more fun than you’d think.”
“Seven years? Is it like, a long-term heartbreak or something, and what’s with you making everything into a story, catastrophic or not.” Haewon asks.
“Well—” You contemplate - whether to spoil the ending for her or not, but she can probably guess by the way you purposefully hold out the information in lieu of instantly answering. “Seven years ago, in late April, I just started high school.”
You can see the late morning sunlight reflected in her eyes, single-minded on your tale.
“You want me to close the curtains first?” You direct your thumb toward the gap.
“No need, plus, you look better with the light.” She smiles, sincerity can be felt from it, maybe it’s the way the light drapes on your right half of her face.
“Thanks, babe, okay, where was I— Yeah, seven years ago, late April, high school.”
“And then I met you.”
“You know that you’re the asshole in this one, right?” Haewon hits you with such a question.
Certainty of a weeping eluded, “Fuck, not even a single tear?”
“Wow, this lack of self-awareness is concerning, babe, and this is out of love.” She scoffs. “You’re the bad guy here.”
“Look, I’ve been telling myself about the same statement since that day, so yeah, Haewon, I’m aware that I’m the asshole in this story.”
“Were you hurt by it or something?” Haewon asks with genuine curiosity, she caught the sadness in your tone, yet unable to make sense of it. Her head remains resting on her fist, albeit making a ninety degrees apart from you.
“I— yeah, I know it was my fault, but—“ You avert her gaze, staring at the blanket covering her midriff. “It was five years, almost. And it still hurts sometimes whenever I see something that reminds me of her.”
Haewon would give you a blank expression; her next words are unpredictable.
“I kinda— get the idea? You can’t deal with college life, so she becomes a–no, the source for you to vent shit. And one day, it became too much, with that fight making it wor–no, apparent.” It’s nothing short of incredible that she gets all of it within the first iteration and gives you the much-needed feedback (even if you’ve already considered this possibility). 
“And she wants you to get better. She didn’t think she could be the person you could rely on anymore. This is how I see it.” With ease, Haewon recounts the most plausible explanation, the one you’ve been avoiding accepting.
“Yeah, it’s…” You resist the urge to argue with her point, realizing that such emotional manipulation cannot work. Perhaps the amount of self-awareness poured in just doesn’t work anymore. “You’re right.”
“There’re some points that I… kinda understand you? Like the whole being insecure stuff, but all of this is just a shitshow, babe. You even write a fic about it.” A tiny simper leaves her mouth.
“Spielberg made a film about his parent’s divorce; Taylor Swift has, well…”
“Steven’s was like… sixty years? And I think Taylor can be an asshole, to be honest, aside from All Too Well.” Haewon replied without a delay.
“Agree to disagree.” You can only sigh afterward, and maybe it’s the way your breath taps on her chest more heavily than it should or the way you avert the eye contact you’ve been maintaining.
“Hey, are you okay?” Her doe eyes hints concern, while the fingers lightly caress your cheek.
Destined, your tears well up just a little, but enough for you to detect and hold back. “Kinda.”
Haewon lets out a sigh, the back of her free fingers still fondling your cheek. “I’m sure you’ve changed.”
“It's been more than two years now.” Your lips quiver. “B–But telling you here, it’s just…”
Like the first time with your therapist, like the first time you tell your colleagues, your tears are always on the hinge as the story ends.
“I know I can’t fix it - this whole weird love-hate relationship of yours.” She finally sits up. “But I know you aren’t the person you were.” Your cheeks are suddenly cupped by both of her hands. “And as long as you… try to be better, I’ll be with you.” Haewon ends her speech with a caring look.
Nothing in her deliverance is poetry-worthy; they’re basic quotes you’d find in the self-help books. Though, the words not coming from some self-centered guy melts the cynic inside you, and that’s when tears start to fall.
“I also know that it hurts, even if you’re the one who’s wrong.” She softly cheers up.
Through the sobs, “Y–You’re quite di–direct, babe.” You try to wipe the tears off your watering eyes.
She lets out a sympathetic titter. “I’m not the best at this, sorry.”
“I-It’s fine. Thanks for being here.” You succumb to the lamentation, crying your heart out, as Haewon embraces you. Maybe it’s the way you’re naked on someone else’s bed, maybe it’s the way her chest presses up against your chin, or perhaps it’s the way she puts her leg over yours as if she’s using a side pillow, but you’ve never felt more vulnerable in your life. And you’re probably being engulfed by it under the right person.
Epilogue: Keeping Tabs
I wish I never met you.
You are the worst thing that I’m still
Keeping tabs on for some stupid reason.
“It’s quite a lot of stations, babe. Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah–”
It was your birthday two days ago. How old are you now, twenty-five? Three years after graduation, you rejected a job offer from Japan because you didn't want to leave your girlfriend. Not that it was a wrong choice, since the number of fights, sex, and after-fight, angry, heated sex between you and Haewon sits on the average rate. 
Further, not having to buy a plane ticket every time you want to see your parents, or your friends is definitely a plus. Just a few hours after the plane landed in Narita, you want to break Japan’s immigration law. God, those streets are miles better than what you have at home.
It seems that trying to reach Odaiba Beach from Meguro Sky Garden takes an hour, plus walking. Sure, it’s ninety minutes to sunset, but you can feel doubts in her voice and your own. It’s the few final days, and all of your words hyping this exact place up only make her feral.
“Maybe we can make it if we start walking now, instead of like– arguing over this.”
Haewon shoots you a glare. “This trip would go to waste if we can’t make it before sunset.” And she takes a step towards you, pointing at your chest. The sun still casts a long shadow of her on the ground.
“Waste?” You arch your eyebrows. “Says the one who spent a whole fucking day at Shinjuku to sweep Uniqlo’s stocks.”
The wind blows over the metal fence, assorted colors of leaves swirling around you.
Her eyes remain fixated on you, before giving an apologetic expression. “Yeah that’s fair. It’s a bit of a quickfire for me on that.” 
You snap a photo of her before replying. “Those cardigans are cheaper here anyway, don’t worry.”
She reaches for your camera, X-E4, examining the image of her, and smiles. “Let’s go.” Before leading you, handheld, to the elevator down from the garden.
“God.”
“It seems like we’re here at the right time” You speak, before taking another photo of Haewon, showered under the orange of the setting sun.
Haewon is left speechless at the sight in front of her: Rainbow Bridge, salmon sky from the sunset, tinged with clouds, some purple, red, orange. You think it’s probably from some kind of refraction. People aren’t scarce, but to say that there’s a crowd is an overstatement. It’s pretty much the same as in your memory from five years ago. How are the people in my photos doing now?
Similar to the last time, when the breakup was just over a month, you take in the view. It’s just that you aren’t basked in melancholy anymore. Sure, you’re still keeping tabs on her every few months, but it’s nothing more than a blocklist check. You aren’t ready to face Minji, really, and not seeing each other again would be a kind gesture by the gods. However, the hate etched into your wrists isn’t quite as visible anymore.
Still, you can’t play down her impact on your life. In spite of the indirect nature of the teachings, you learned how to love and what to do with one.
“I’ll be back, babe. I’ll see if I can swim to the bridge from here.” Haewon speaks out, like the first encounter, snapping you out of your trance.
Shook, “I’ll wait here; make sure not to get swept into the sea.”, and you joke, smiling.
“See ya.” Haewon grins back, gesturing a goodbye, before stepping out towards the water.
[A few paragraphs leading up to the encounter with Minji again; yeah, it’s a little anticlimactic for you to see this in your first read, sorry]
You failed to say a word to her, and there may not be any second chance for this.
It’s funny, miles away from where you’ve feared most. No soul in the world would’ve expected this. 
The sun continues on its path, too busy rushing to make its predetermined setting time, ergo apathetic to the colors it casts onto the sky and the way Minji is elegantly bathed by it. Her features are frozen, you alike, mouth slightly ajar. Waves crashing onto the sand keep filling in the silence between you, each encouraging your heart to push out a syllable you’re choking. There’s no battle on who would give in to snapping back into reality first since the argument on the encounter being a dream is too plausible.
Though less often as time goes on, Minji has been your recurring nocturnal figure. Occasionally, she appears as the one who has disregarded your cries during those final days – unresponsive, cold, unaware of your collapse. If not, it’s you and her enamored in what you’ve always wanted her to see, conversing like high school students again. Either way, you usually classify the world surrounding you as nightmares after the alarms are off, almost always with tears welling and ragged breaths, as if her presence alone is enough to give vitality to your nights.
But if this is a lucid dream, both of you would’ve laughed by now, under the Odaiba Beach sunset. Memories are washed away into the sea, making way for you to run along the shoreline, free from any grievances. You wouldn’t go as far as saying that it could’ve been her on the flight here with you, even if the potential of it touches you in more than one way.
The bewilderment of meeting her in where’s supposed to be your sanctuary hasn’t faded one bit. It clouds the fact that she has preserved her high ponytail. She grips her denim jacket ever so tightly while slightly parting aside from the center, revealing a pitch-black turtleneck shirt beneath. The brown string crossing her body is holding her likely expensive handbag resting on the side of her hips. All of these are topped with beige, all-creased pants, undercut with sneakers of the same color, or not, you don’t seem to care anymore.
Voice notes and texts are woven into a tapestry, the one you and she cut as your paths diverged. Yet, your threads, somehow, have been remaining set to interlock with each other again after all this time. The track was divided into a parallel, just with a sea of hatred, sometimes reflecting a spark of care.
It’s still clear as day, the way she left you blind, likely without remorse, any glimmer of hope was eradicated with blocks on social media. The way you tell the version of your story enough times for you to find the median and average spot where people would start to cry. And not that you were left unshaken with each iteration; you just stop before giving in to the sorrow hanging off the edge of your tear ducts. And at one point, it became another tale, a cult classic to you.
Still, this is no place and time to assert your wounds anymore. It’s Tokyo, and five years have passed. Getting one over her shouldn’t matter anymore, you know that. What’s left to achieve in triumph is just plunging the dagger into yourself once more, revisiting how shaken you have been without her for all these years. And three, you’re the one on the wrong side.
Plus, it’s not so awful that she left, even if it casts you in a state of bereft in the first few months. You deleted her photos, and both of you blocked each other. You learned to collect yourself up again, shredding what was once shared while coming to terms with the ones rooted in the essence of you, learning to let them be shared with others. The cadence doesn’t entirely sound like it was, yet it’s what you’ve accepted as days pass.
You still hate her; it’s a known fact. I fucking hate you rings true to this day - a half-thought during a fire burned into your wrists, calling out to be crossed off. Guilt, shame, and self-loathing have been rooting off it, yet you can’t bleed the source out.
In the shadows that the sun cast, you feel a twitch in the corner of your mouth - the determination to conceal any hints of glee at her presence is trying to keep itself afloat. Another gulp in your throat only delays the inevitable; your cheek is trembling from an unknown feeling. It’s teasing the brim. It’s tasting the uncertainty. It’s towering over your hatred. And it brings the nocturnal summer wind that embraced you on the first day at high school, the day she picked up her name tag when everything was in the right place.
“Kim Min-Ji.” Your teacher called as she stood up to pick up her name tag.
“I like you.”
And it flows through you–
“Him? Not really.”
“God, you suck at badminton.” You did “outscore” her by quite a margin (twenty-one to six).
–all the words you’ve said–
“I’ll probably be a doctor. You haven’t chosen yours yet?”
–all the words she has said–
“I think she’s the one.” (She wasn’t.)
“These early mornings are killing me.” Her high school project was killing her.
“Yeah, I can’t be bothered with all this studying. I’ll probably make some nice portfolio and pray.”
–all the dreams drawn together–
“If someone wants to enter here, they can just look at these pics and follow the instructions. It might not be for everyone, I guess. I still wish I could help them, though.”
“I really fucked up a lot during quarantine, like my mental state was dwindling.”
“Now I’m going to be a tired doctor all my life.” She scoffs, downplaying her success.
“This place is filled with rich people.”
–all the struggles vented–
“God, I look so pretty in this.” The red lipstick looks good on her; you wish you knew the exact shade.
“We need to recreate this photo; you stand here.”
“See ya.” She said, not knowing it would be the last time you would see each other face to face.
“Really fucking drunk right nowww, just wanna say you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had, like definitely top five, haha.” It was a drunk text in a bar under the blaring music.
–all the love proclaimed–
“I’ll probably have to study another year. You’re still invited to my graduation, though. We’d be like twenty-six by then, right?” 
“I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have done that, too.”
“I fucking hate you.” The line that became a part of you ever since.
–and the ending.
“Don’t message me anymore; just go live your life separately. Have a pleasant life.”
Are you sure to delete 525 photos permanently?
This action cannot be undone.
Delete Permanently
It’s as if someone made a supercut of you two.
It's excruciating, the way it seeps through your brain, the same one that hung you to be ravaged by the abyss. A wave of serotonin washes over your face, sheathed within the Tokyo Bay’s serenity. And a smile forms, over five years of her name being a crucifixion. It’s you breaking the cadence, and you can only beg her to accept it.
Alas, you have never been in the position to ask for anything. You’ve always been the convict in the sad songs supposed to bury you under their alphabets, robbing the sorrow you meant to drown into. You are her mistake, one that she’s likely so enthusiastic to cross off in her diary.
Yet, under the setting sun, in such a foreign place, and after years of it, maybe she forgets, maybe she forgives, or perhaps she doesn’t care about it. But if even it is written in the sand of Odaiba Beach, it would also be etched on the same wound you see on your pulse, that Kim Min-Ji reciprocates your smile, with a chuckle even, back bent forward the same way you remember to accommodate such elation.
And free from conviction, you are. It’s not the late-night, thumbs-on-keyboard kind of relationship anymore, neither being two free spirits against the world; it’s two people, unshackled from grudges. It’s the closure in the same veins of La La Land, a tapestry of love remains, despite the zeroes and ones translated as blocks, plus the frontal lobe chemicals interpreted as detestations. There has always been a part of you that cares - under the miles of self-loathing from guilt and the despise entrenched in you.
As cued, the setting sun is refracted in the drop of tear grazing your left cheek. She seems fine, even if she’s drowned in her droplets, thirty, forty, or fifty—you aren’t sure anymore—meters away from the idyllic waves. It won’t be the same, and it can never be. Years of walling each other out only dims any remaining glimmer. But here you are, under the Tokyo sun, laughing and crying on such an unfortunate encounter.
You aren’t fourteen again. It doesn’t feel like the first day or the first words of you two. It’s two grief-stricken adults with a shared past. Both cannot hold on to their grudges, though, just you being an asshole for having them.
You aren’t her mistake after all, and she’s not your mistake anymore.
And it’s not witty, but it would suffice.
“Hey.”
“That was her, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How was it? I see that you guys were kinda smiling.”
You ponder for a moment, a little too long before Haewon would ask again.
“It ends well, right?”
“I suppose so.”
I need to get over you.
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