#if anyones curious this scene is for the finale when julian heads to the hospital !

[morawcrumb]

Buses.

[yangssunglasses]

logh happy au where no one dies and yang and frederica have a kid together.

AN: This was a lot of fun to write! Thanks for the prompt! I also included Julian/Katerose scene. Let me know if you have more prompts for this AU or other :)

AO3 link 

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The Victory of Peace

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“History teaches us many valuable lessons. Thanksto it we can study the past mistakes and choose better solutions. Thepast determines our future as the species, as the nation, even asindividuals.

“The history of humanity, unfortunately, is ahistory of war. Bloody, countless wars across the ages, but alwaysfollowing the same patterns. The reasons for starting a war arealways the same. People find it easier and more profitable to fightrather than negotiate or trade. They believe there’s something moreimportant than human life, something worth dying for. The wars areended for the opposite reason, when the people decide that there’snothing more precious than the human life.

“You might find this cynical and that is fine. Thehistorian needs to know all the facts first, then draw conclusionsand make interpretations of events. We’re not only interested in whathappened, but why and how and, most importantly: to what end? We needto take the history, good or bad as a lesson for ourselves, becauseeveryday we are the ones making the newest history. I am notreally your teacher, I am just your guide. In here, only history isthe teacher of us all.

“Today, I’d like to talk with all of you about oneof my favourite lessons – the modern miracle that changed the lifeof humanity in this galaxy. The Treaty of Iserlohn that ended over acentury of a bloody, pointless war between the Free Planets Allianceand the Galactic Empire.

“You probably wonder why I called this myfavourite lesson when I spent hours upon hours extolling thegreatness of ancient pre-space civilizations to you. For me, theTreaty of Iserlohn symbolizes hope for humanity. It teaches us that afew good people in the right place at the right time can make achange for the better.

“'Good people’ is of course a relative term here.I doubt anyone here would agree to call the kaiser Friedrich IV agood man, but at the right time his heart was swayed to choosesomething that was in the interest of the galaxy, not just himself orthe Empire. This can’t be denied. Biographers still argue about histrue reason for agreeing to negotiate with rebels, as the Empirecalled us once, but whether it was his mistress’ plea, the losses inhis military or a whim, he still did it. He showed willingness tolisten and for that we should be grateful.

“On the side of the Alliance, the situation wasthe same. Our leaders had just as little obligation as Friedrich tostop the war. Capturing Iserlohn was more than advantageous to them.It finally secured the Alliance territory and even allowed them thepossibility of preparing an invasion. However, while what Friedrichdid is solely on his shoulders as his subjects had no influence overhis decision, in the Alliance we have this thing called democracy.And for once, our people chose their leaders wisely. Let that be alesson every time you’re going to the voting urn…”

The door to the lecture hall burst open and bangedon the wall, allowing a young blond man in. “Professor! It’s time!Miss Frederica’s water broke!”

The renowned professor of the Faculty of History ofthe Heinessen University, Yang Wen-li looked from the young man, hisstudent, neighbour and friend Julian Mintz, to the clock. “It’s tooearly,” he said, stupefied. He could have meant the hour, it wasonly ten past eight a.m. And he only got started with his lecture,but he actually was thinking about the doctor’s prediction. The babywas supposed to be born next week, which is why he’d come to workthis morning instead of staying with his very pregnant wife.

“Hurry, we need to go! She’s on the way to thehospital!” Julian informed him, grabbed the lecture notes spreadbefore Yang before shoving them into his bag and taking it himself.

Yang scratched his head and looked at the huge groupof curious students gathered in the hall. His lectures were quitepopular, even those at the most despised early hours. He was the kindof a professor that got very passionate when talking about hissubject, which drew him a larger audience than he would haveexpected. “Well, this is the end for today. We’ll continue thisnext week. Everyone, have a good day, and goodbye!” he told themand rushed after Julian, almost tripping on the step of the podium.

They called an automatic taxi which took them offthe campus and towards the Heinessen General Hospital.

“Julian, why didn’t you call me?” Yang asked,embarrassed that they had made a scene in front of his students.

“I did, but you didn’t answer! So after I calledfor General Greenhill to take her to the hospital, I ran to get you,”Julian explained.

Julian lived next door to Yang. They had madefriends after an incident with water sprinklers. The young manimpressed Yang with his diligence and they quickly developed afriendship. Julian not only was taking care of his disabled father,he also worked part-time in the local cafe and excelled in hisstudies. And above all, he made the most delicious tea Yang had evertasted.

General Greenhill was Yang’s father-in-law.Actually, Yang’s wife Frederica was also military, however she had adesk job at the Heinessen Joint HQ at the Strategic Data AnalysisCenter. In times of peace, Yang had no reason to worry she’d be sentout to fight somewhere far away from home and for that he waseternally grateful. He himself had almost been recruited intomilitary academy to achieve his dream of studying history, butfortunately he was able to qualify for scholarship. Again, the peacetime had benefited Yang’s life because if the war still raged on,he’d have had no other choice but to become a soldier against his ownwill. He always thought he’d dodged the bullet with this one.

Yang met Frederica through a mutual friend andmeddler extraordinaire, Alex Caselnes. Yang often joked that Caselnesshould have become a professional matchmaker, not the manager of amajor shipping company. Even he probably wouldn’t have such alucrative job if not for the Treaty of Iserlohn which had broken thegalactic trading monopoly of Phezzan. With the Iserlohn Corridoropening for trade between the FPA and the Empire, many new shippingcompanies emerged within both sides of the galaxy and Phezzan lostthe prominence it had gained as the only middleman during thewartime.

The trip to the hospital didn’t take long, but toYang it felt like hours, his leg vibrating with impatience. When thetaxi parked on the other side of the street across the hospital, herushed out and almost got ran over by a car. Julian hurriedly paidwith his digital credit card and went after Yang.

Once they entered the reception safely, they gotdirections to the maternity ward, though Yang was too anxious toremember them, so Julian had to grab his sleeve and lead him to theelevator. Inside, Julian pressed the button for the third floor. Yangwas tapping his foot on the floor again.

“Calm down, Professor,” Julian said. “Everythingwill be fine with Miss Frederica.”

“I know, I know,” Yang sighed and ran a handover his brow. “Women are giving birth to the next generations fromthe very beginning of humankind, it’s a completely natural processthat the evolution prepared us for,” he said, as if reciting from abiology book to reassure himself. “Well, actually, it wasn’t alwaysthe case. Did you hear about the cloning practice in the days beforethe Republic formed? When there were shortages of workers, more werecloned, but due to some legal difficulties the practice was bannedand later the technology was lost…” Yang went off on a tangent.The elevator pinged and opened. Julian didn’t interrupt, letting himramble as they walked through the corridors. Talking about historydistracted Yang from worrying.

“It’s here,” Julian said as they reached thedoor numbered 320. Julian knocked two times.

The door opened to reveal Yang’s father-in-law.“Wen-li! You’re finally here! Come in, it just started,” heinvited them in with a smile. He was the only person on the planetthat called Yang by his first name. Even Frederica preferred terms ofendearment.

Frederica was sitting on a special birthing chair,her face scrunched in intense concentration as the doctor wascoaching her. Yang hesitated for a second, but when Frederica smiledat him, he went straight to her side. “Sorry, I’m late,” he saidwith a contrite look.

She grabbed his hand tightly. “Doesn’t matter, thebaby is coming,” she gritted out and grimaced when the nextcontraction twisted up her insides painfully.

“Are you the husband?” the doctor asked. Yangnodded. “You can stay then. There’s too many people in here,” sheaddressed Greenhill and Julian. “Please wait outside.”

The two shuffled out of the room, one morereluctantly than the other. While Greenhill stayed just outside thedoor, awaiting the birth of his grandchild with a calm eagerness,Julian headed to the  lounge. He bought himself an ice tea from avending machine and sat in a plastic chair. As he slowly drank, hewatched the news channel on TV set up in the area. The leader of adangerous radical organization Patriotic Knights Corps was arrested.A new legislation was passed to decrease the fleet’s size along withother reforms of the military. Heinessen Patriots had won theirflyball match yesterday.

Julian’s attention was taken off the news when aslim redhead in tiny jeans shorts walked up to the vending machine.He was furtively admiring her long legs when she suddenly kicked theautomat.

“Dammit!” she cursed and kicked it again.

Julian stood up and came closer. “What’s thematter?”

She gave him a distrustful glare and he couldn’thelp but notice that she had pretty blue eyes. “Nothing.” Thenshe kicked the machine again. “This piece of shit just doesn’t wantto give me my skittles!”

“You could call the support,” Julian suggested,pointing to the phone number glued to the side of the vendingmachine.

“And wait how long? Are you nuts?” she said.

Julian evaluated the situation. The girl’s kickswere too weak to rock the automat enough so that the bag of skittleswould fall down on their own. He took place next to her.

“Wait, if we kick together, it should work.”

She gave him a skeptical look. “Alright,” shesaid, a little doubtful, but willing to try this.

“On three! Two! One! Now!” Julian counted downand they kicked out together. The vending machine swayed backwards.“Again!” After the second double kick, the skittles were releasedand clattered into the pocket on the bottom of the automat.

“Yes!” the girl exclaimed and scooped hercandies out. She turned to Julian. “Thanks for your help. I’mKaterose.”

“Julian,” he gave his name too. “And it was noproblem.”

Katerose opened the bag and held it out to him.“Want some?”

“Me?” he asked in surprise. “No, thanks.”

She shrugged and popped a few skittles in her mouth.“So, who are you visiting here?” she asked.

Julian blinked, as he didn’t expect she’d stickaround to continue the conversation instead of being on her way. “Afriend’s wife is giving birth and I’m here for moral support. Andyou?”

“My stupid dad busted his arm playing flyball. I’mtaking him home after they finish patching him up,” she saidwithout much concern.

Julian was taken aback by her flippant attitude. Hewanted to ask why she’d talk like that about her own father, but itfelt too early in their acquaintance for such personal questions.Instead, he latched onto the sports part. “He plays flyball?Professional or just for fun?”

“Hmm, that’s actually hard to define…”Katerose replied, only rousing his curiosity. She ate some moreskittles. “I guess it’s both. He’s a professional, but he’s not aplayer. He’s just a coach for the team.”

“A coach? Wait, then how did he break his arm?”

“He was showing his team some move or the otherand screwed up. He’s a total show-off, so he got what he deserved,”she concluded and closed the candy bag.

“Aren’t you a little too harsh?” Julian pointedout. He loved and respected his own father a lot, so someone beingthis rude about their dad grated on his nerves.

Katerose snorted. “No-pe. If you met him, youwould agree with me. Anyway, I gotta go. It was nice talking to you,Julian.” She walked off, giving him a lazy wave over her shoulder.

“Bye,” Julian uttered, waving backautomatically. Despite her attitude, he found her interesting to talkto. Then he realized that he didn’t even get her number or a fullname and with no way to track her, they probably wouldn’t see eachother ever again.

Julian groaned and cradled his head in a palm, thenreturned to wait outside room 320 with General Greenhill.

Meanwhile, Yang also had girl problems of anentirely different kind. Frederica was giving birth and he had tokeep his wits around him, even though on the inside he was freakingout. He occupied himself by wiping her brow and enduring her deathlygrip that had made his hand go numb some time ago.

The doctor was kneeling in front of Frederica.“Push!” she instructed.

His wife screamed and pushed, becoming red in theface from the effort.

“Again!” the doctor ordered.

“I can’t! It hurts too much!” Frederica criedout, sobbing.

“It’ll stop hurting after you push that kid out!”the doctor replied sternly.

“Frederica,” Yang said softly and touched herhot, damp cheek. “Don’t give up, you can do this. I believe in you.You’re so strong. Just a little more,” he encouraged her.

Frederica gave him a trembling little smile and anod, then started pushing with a renewed determination.

When Yang heard the baby’s first cry and the doctorgave him the wrapped newborn, it was one of the happiest moments ofhis life.

“Congratulations, it’s a girl,” the doctor toldhim, correcting Yang’s hold.

The baby was so small and fragile in his arms thathe was afraid he’d do something wrong, but also it awakened in himthe urge to protect her. This was his daughter and he already wantedto give her the stars. “Hello, little one,” he murmured tenderly.

“Hey, let me see her,” Frederica asked, slumpedon the birthing chair. Her expression lit up with love when he gaveher the child. “She’s so beautiful…” Frederica whispered inawe, happy tears glistening in her eyes. Yang discreetly wiped hisown, caused only by the overwhelming happiness of this moment.

“Did you come up with a name?” the doctor askedthem. Yang and Frederica exchanged an unsure look.

“You should name her. You went through so much soshe could be born,” Yang suggested to his wife.

“Actually, I had this idea for a while… What doyou think about Victoria?” she asked.

“It’s a great name.” Yang gently brushed thesoft head of his baby daughter with one finger. “Victoria Yang,”he said, trying out the name. “It sounds good.”

“Our little Victoria,” Frederica said and kissedthe baby on top of her head.

It was a fitting name. After all, her parentsthought she was the greatest achievement of their lives. And in thisworld where the peace and good triumphed, where they never had tofight in bloody battles for freedom, that was more than enough.

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AN: Thanks for reading! Let me know how you liked it :)

[greybat]

Fire & Leeches - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: My Dear

Summary: Modern!AU (with magic.) Xixa is… well, not really enjoying but not hating a night out with Asra at one of Vesuvia’s famed clubs. However, her curiosity and interest become piqued when a particular band takes the stage.

Chapter Summary: The trip to Esotericana concludes with a text. Then Julian gets a surprise at his next show.

Ao3 Link Tumblr Links: Chapter 1 // Chapter 2 // Chapter 3 // Chapter 4 // Chapter 5

Apparently, Julian had his own ideas. His palms brushed the sides of her face, fingers burying into her hair, and tilting Xixa’s face up toward him. The kiss came on fast, but gentle. Soft touch of lips on lips, eyes fluttering shut, heat rising. A trace of neediness slipped into the kiss, drawing the two closer together.

Xixa’s hands trailed up his chest, fingertips lightly skirting the border of his scrub’s low collar and chest. Blearily, through the haze of searing hormones, she knew she wanted more. The witch deepened the kiss, tugging on the collar of his shirt as she leaned up on tiptoe, invading Julian’s mouth with her tongue. Julian groaned, heat sizzling from ear to ear and straight down. His hands slipped down her body, traversing her curves, holding her close.

She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, sinking her teeth into the soft flesh. Xixa cracked her eyes open, enjoying the sight of Julian caught mid-groan and flushed a dark red, before entirely breaking the kiss. As close as she was, she could feel his heart pounding.

His eye remained closed, basking in the heat and the flashes of pleasure streaking down his body. He was completely unprepared for Xixa’s mouth on his neck. His eye snapped open, fingers digging into her hips as her teeth raked across his throat. Erotic heat pounded through his body. Her mouth moved along his neck, hot and slick. Something prodded at the back of his mind, though. Something important. He closed his eye, trying to remember this important thing while Xixa’s lips trailed over his flesh.

An angry buzzing in his pocket reminded him exactly what he’d forgotten.

“Xi-Xixa,” he rasped, through the lust. Xixa paused, humming curiously against his neck. The vibrations sent a jab of delight to his core. “I got to go. Break’s probably almost over.” If not well passed, he mentally added to himself.

“Oh!” Xixa pulled away from his neck all too quickly. A chill lapped at his neck. Her hands were a little slower to part from him, but they drifted away from him. Desire-glazed eyes and pinked cheeks turned up to him, apology creasing Xixa’s brow. “Sorry, I got carried away.”

Julian chuckled, deep in his chest. “It’s my fault for starting something I couldn’t enjoy to the end.”

“Who says there would have been an end?” Xixa narrowed her eyes, challenging his goading grin. She pushed away from the man, sticking her tongue out teasingly. “Maybe, either way, I would have left you blue-balled.”

The blush had just begun to fade before Xixa’s taunting, and tongue, came out. His eye flickered down to her lips, his hormone-drenched mind imagining other uses for that tongue. Especially in the context of being teased mercilessly.

Ugh, if he didn’t get a hold on his libido, he was going to be walking into the workplace with a fevered flush and a boner. Clearing his throat, and covering his mouth with a hand, the flesh of his palm cooling his overheated face. If only slightly. Muffled by his hand, Julian muttered, “Well, maybe next time.”

“Mmm, next time.” Xixa agreed.

“Julian, our manager is asking us where we are.” Muriel’s voice drifted from the other side of the curtain.

At the reminder of work, Julian pulled the curtain aside. He pinned Muriel with a look, though his companion didn’t shift under the gaze. “Why didn’t you get me earlier?”

“It sounded like you were enjoying yourself.” Muriel shrugged and started for the door.

Julian trailed after Muriel, face burning. “You heard that?”

Xixa couldn’t hear anything else as the bell on the door jingled. The front door shut with a muted ‘thock,’ quiet descended on her shop. She watched the two jog down the street, in the direction of the hospital. Julian flustered and growing redder in the face, while Muriel seemed unperturbed.

Once they were out of sight, Xixa’s hands pressed to the sides of her face as the last hour played over in her mind. A flush crept up her body as she paced back and forth. What was she doing? She was supposed to be working! He was supposed to be working! Her heart pattered roughly against her sternum. But, damn, if that hadn’t felt good. Her fingers lightly touched her lips just as her phone roused her from her reverie

Grabbing her phone from her pocket, Xixa’s eyes flickered over the screen. ‘1 New Text’ it read. Narrowing her eyes against hope, she tapped the notification. After she scanned the text, a laugh bubbled out of her throat.

Julian:

To avoid further confusion, I’m txting you now... whil getting yelled @ by my manager. I rlly shouldn’t be doing this. Hope to hear back.

Xixa couldn’t help her smile as she re-read the text. She could imagine the redhead, sitting at a table, trying to sneakily type up that hasty text while a supervisor marched, back and forth, before him. Well, if he was taking that much of a risk to text her, the least she could do was be prompt with a reply. While chewing on the inside of her cheek, Xixa got to work replying.

x x x

Julian ran his hand through his hair, irritably glancing at the door to the dressing room. She was supposed to be here half an hour ago, but still hadn’t shown up. Concern nipped at his thoughts, through the frustration and annoyance. Making his thirtieth pace of the room, he grumbled, “Where’s Portia?”

From a chair, Muriel didn’t even glance up from his book. “She texted to say she was going to be late.”

“The show’s about to start.” Julian nearly hissed in frustration. His little sister taking off before a show was never an issue before. Out of irritation, he snatched his phone from the vanity table and jabbed at it. Even if Portia hadn’t texted him with an ETA, maybe Xixa had finally replied. She hadn’t said anything for awhile that day.

“Are you still texting that girl?” Valerius grinned, though it was anything but good-humored, “I’m surprised you stuck with her this long, she must be a good fu-”

Julian had Valerius caught up by his collar before either even knew what was happening. A hot flare of almost painful anger ached down Julian’s body, his fists tightening. Valerius stared up at him, wide-eyed surprise turning into a determined scowl. His hands came to grasp Julian’s wrists, nose wrinkled with disgust. Muriel turned another page, not even deigning the scene with a look.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Portia burst into their dressing room, words of apologies falling from her lips.

Julian pushed Valerius away, turning his gaze on his little sister. He stalked closer, ire evident in his body posture. “The show’s about to start! Where were you?”

Portia stared up at her brother, a smug grin on her lips as her eyes flickered to the door. Julian followed her gaze, his eye widening slightly. A thrill shot down his spine. “Xixa! What are you doing here?”

“You’re welcome.” Portia purred as she passed by him, patting him on the shoulder.

“Portia came to get me. Said it was a matter of life and death.” Xixa had her arms crossed and leaned against the door’s frame. Obviously, no one was dying. In fact, the witch figured this was a scheme of Portia’s by the time they got halfway to the Rowdy Raven pub.

“You should see how he fawns over his phone when you message him,” piped Portia from the vanity table, where she applied eyeliner. She made a face in the mirror, watching her brother and Xixa in the reflection, “It’s positively sickening. The rest of us can’t stand it anymore! One of us’ll kill him if we have to go through a show like that.”

“Portia,” Julian hissed, a flush prickling across his face. His stomach was quivering with delight, but his sister's comments dampened the heat. What would Xixa think of him?

“I can see where that’d get exhausting,” teased Xixa, as she maneuvered further into the room after closing the door. Julian threw her a look of mock betrayal. She neared Julian, a wry grin twitching across her lips. Something about that blushing face awoken a mischievous teasing beast in the witch. “Plus, I get to see how well your performance holds up when I’m completely sober.”

Julian tossed Xixa a curious, uncomprehending look. “I thought you said you were listening to our music at home?”

“Who said I was talking about the music?” Xixa’s voice dropped low as she leaned toward him. It took the man a half-beat to realize what she was implying. His face burned with embarrassing realization.

From across the room, Valerius groaned with disgust and covered his eyes. “Can you not?”

“Is that jealousy I hear, Val?” Portia taunted - without missing a beat - as she flipped her hair up, into a messy pony tail.

The man wrinkled his nose and drew back in his chair, as if Portia’s words burned. His voice was laden with absolute disgust as he sputtered, “Jealousy of what?”

Julian sidled behind Xixa, arms snaking around her and leaning down until his chin rested on her shoulder. “Of our love, of course. Isn’t that right, my dear?”

As Xixa’s brain scrabbled to understand what was going on, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment and her stomach knotted with uncertainty. Wasn’t that a bit too much of a proclamation? Sure, she and Julian had fun, but love? Tension eked into her shoulder blades at the sudden thought.

Before Xixa – or anyone – could say another thing, someone knocked on the dressing room door: “Five minutes, eff & ell.”

xxx

After Julian escorted Xixa to a table, near the stage, he swept down to land a quick kiss on her cheek before heading back stage. The sounds of the Rowdy Raven swept over Xixa as she sat down. Her thoughts were swirling around what just happened.

Love? Xixa brushed her fingertips against her cheek. She could still feel his warm lips pressed to her skin. He melted her insides and she quite enjoyed feeling the inner heat was mutual. Could she love Julian? She had spent a long time with Asra, maybe even considered a relationship with him, if he stuck around long enough to talk. Apprehension fingered through her thoughts as she focused on her emotions surrounding Julian.

He was corny and sweet, as demonstrated by his texted compliments and flirtations. A bit over-dramatic, but in a way that softened her heart with fondness. He had a sense of compassion, since he – prematurely – rushed to her aid in the alleyway of the Garden. As Xixa’s thoughts mulled Julian’s character, she found herself smiling slightly. Well, at the very least, she was very fond of him…

The temptation to pull out her tarot deck and ask the cards if she was overreacting fluttered through her mind.

“Xixa! What a surprise to see you here!”

[how2to18]

IS THERE ANY TIME of life more racked by yearning and uncertainty than college? Not, at least, in R. O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries, a debut novel that cannily blurs the line between campus novel and cult lit. As Kwon depicts them, those aching years are a time for confronting the fuzziness of one’s beliefs, for wrestling with the problem of who we want to be.

Even those of us who matriculated with less drama than Kwon’s characters will likely find something familiar in their desire for self-coherence. Mine surged forth sophomore year, when a misguided professor invited me to a kind of undergrad conservative indoctrination seminar in Savannah, Georgia. At school in Chicago, I’d often felt adrift, just another lonely skeptic avoiding the riskiness of belief. Here, though, among true foils, I watched a new, confident version of myself come into view.

I scoffed at the tenets of limited government and made vaguely accurate Rousseau references. What I said was scattershot, but I felt like I had principles. And, I think, the same was true of my foes. In our mutual antagonism, we gave one another the feeling that we knew what we were talking about. Leveling identical charges of naïveté and muddled thought, we made ourselves make sense. There was nothing better than our own certainty.

Certainty’s pull is something Kwon’s novel illuminates well. Already the recipient of significant attention, The Incendiaries touches on a cluster of issues that seem ripped from the headlines. Religious extremism, race, college rape, casual misogyny, North Korea, and abortion are all here in just over 200 pages. The sheer density of hot-button concerns could easily feel sensational, but the text’s immediacy feels effortless and necessary.

Set at fictional Edwards College, an elite school on the banks of the Hudson (think Bard except it’s Princeton), The Incendiaries breaks with much college fiction to portray campus life as inseparable from the world outside the gates. Neither sanctuary nor club, the lush Edwards campus doesn’t let its students escape from anything. This is true, too, of Jejah, the Christian cult that claims one of the book’s protagonists. For Jejah’s devotees, faith in a deity is no more or less fraught than faith in others, or oneself.

Like many stories of faith lost and pursued, Kwon’s hinges on a crisis. In the novel’s opening pages, we learn that an Edwards student named Phoebe has done something strange and awful: “Buildings fell. People died.” In other words, we see from the start where things are headed. What remains to be discovered is why.

This is a question not just for us, but also for Kwon’s central narrator, Will, an ex-Evangelical Christian who saved souls before losing faith and fleeing to a new life at Edwards. At school, Will learns to pass for preppy, though not well enough to avoid being singled out by Phoebe as a fellow misfit. Phoebe, gifted with the ability to put others at ease, makes friends easily even as she privately flounders under a double burden of guilt and loss.

The only daughter of long-separated Korean immigrant parents, she mourns a mother she believes died thinking her a disappointment. Still reeling from her death, Phoebe courts self-annihilation during her first months at Edwards. Walking home from the hospital after a particularly bad night, she remembers her mother protecting child-Phoebe’s body with sunscreen and wide-brimmed hats: “Such pains she’d taken, for the little I’d since become.”

The pace in these early chapters is unhurried, the writing careful and evocative, as though the characters are attempting not so much to remember as to conjure their pasts. Doing so isn’t mere nostalgia — it’s an attempt to pinpoint the moments when things went wrong, when they saw only what they wanted to see. Recalling the heady early days of his relationship with Phoebe, Will seasons even his most exuberant memories with a note of caution: “If I could be anyone, I’d ask to be the Will rushing to see more, again, of Phoebe […] The suck and howl of a siren pierced the cold, and the fall wind smelled of reasons to live.”

As they reflect on their relationship in alternating flashbacks (Phoebe’s mysteriously nested inside Will’s), Will and Phoebe both admit to keeping secrets. They’re so good at being what they think other people want that they don’t know how to stop even when they want to. When Phoebe starts attending what seems to be a kind of Christian support group run by John Leal, a charismatic and mysterious man who claims to have survived imprisonment in a North Korean gulag, Will is baffled by her credulousness even as he’s certain he can unmask John as the same kind of self-aggrandizing faux-Jesus-warrior that he used to be. Will admits early on that he blames himself for having been unable to save Phoebe, but as we learn more about Phoebe we come to question how well he ever knew her.

But as Phoebe is to Will, so Will is to the reader. He’s charming but a little distant, slipping in and out of focus, his passionate self-reflection alternately earnest and performative. What we know of Phoebe is always mediated by Will, but it’s Will who remains the most inscrutable. At one point, during a summer internship in Beijing, Will spies a girl on the street buying a snack and, seeing something that intrigues him, trails her. Is his impulse curious? Protective? Predatory? We never know. The girl, sensing she’s being followed, flees in obvious and understandable terror. Instead of leaving her alone, Will becomes determined to explain that he doesn’t mean her harm, literally chasing her until she dives behind a door. Kwon ends the scene here, a move that, like so much in The Incendiaries, brilliantly turns an apparent moment of revealing self-reflection into another layer of uncertainty.

In such passages, The Incendiaries flips a convention of the religious conversion narrative on its head. Telling a story of faith gained or lost is traditionally a way of reconciling a riven life, of making consistent what defies consistency. In one of the most classic examples, John Henry Newman’s 1864 autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (literally translated as “A Defense of His Life”), Newman describes his scandalous conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism as a realization of his true self evoked by reading the Catholic proclivities of his childhood as omens. Only when he finally comes to the moment of conversion — the moment, in other words, that requires him to own what he was in order to ground his transformation into something else — does he flinch: “I feel overcome with the difficulty of satisfying myself in my account of it, and have recoiled from doing so […] For who can know himself, and the multitude of subtle influences which act upon him?”

Describing the actual threshold of conversion would require Newman to admit momentarily that he hasn’t always been who he is, and so instead he invokes the distortions of memory to render it unseeable. Doubt becomes a bandage, a way of obscuring and attempting to heal the most profound of inconsistencies so that the coherence of faith and life he desperately desires can be maintained.

The self-account that grapples with a painful revelation is key to conversion narratives like Newman’s. It’s essential, too, to the contemporary memoir genre that, even as it avoids pat conclusions, it often frames the storytelling act as therapeutic. For Kwon’s characters, though, divulging hurts doesn’t guarantee anything. Even the faults they admitted freely and soberly can be used against them. In The Incendiaries, telling one’s story to others never heals old wounds, it only rips them open.

This is true not only for Will and Phoebe, but also for the novel’s secondary characters. One of Phoebe’s tactics for fitting in is allowing others to unburden themselves to her. When she first meets Julian Noh, a campus bon vivant who becomes a friend, Phoebe deflects his questions about her by telling him that she wants to know all his secrets. Months later, trust gained, he finally lets his habitual playfulness drop and confesses that his traditional Korean parents have rejected him for being gay. The confession isn’t salutary, though. It’s a source of shame laughingly diminished as soon as it’s made. Likewise, when their mutual friend Liesl publicly accuses a popular student of rape, speaking out only brings more pain. John Leal, too, uses coerced confessions to exert control over his disciples, then makes these forced revelations a pretext for supposedly curative punishment. Self-doubt in the hands of others is a weapon.

Yet none of these characters stop wanting things to make sense or trying to align who they want to be with who they are. This desire is at the core of Phoebe’s pursuit of faith and her attachment to John. Trying to make Will understand, she speaks of a rift at the core of her identity: “People tell me I’m the whitest Asian girl they’ve met. I think they figure it’s a compliment. I’ve heard it as one. Will, I used to take pride in knowing so little about what I’m from. John Leal calls it a kind of self-hatred, and it is. He’s right. I don’t want to be this kind of person.”

We understand Phoebe’s yearning to reclaim this part of herself, to separate who she is from the perceptions and desires others have imposed on her. Will, inadvertently underlining the point, fixates on her wanting to go to Seoul with John even though she declined to accompany him to Beijing. We may know the terrible thing Phoebe will do in the name of her faith, but that doesn’t make her conversion’s motivations less poignant or, in their own way, logical. For Phoebe, faith means not having to cover up or hate what she sees as her sins and failures. As she tells Will, “To recall those I’ve hurt, to catalog the times I’ve failed, is also to learn how to forgive. Each loss includes its redress; each evil, its pardon.”

Phoebe’s God is an always-present interlocutor who, in knowing what she is and does, makes her cohere, hurts and all. This is part of what makes her conversion so frustrating to Will, who is always seeking and never finding the audience he craves. His own loss of faith arrives when he asks God for a sign and is met with silence. When he loses God, he loses certainty. When he loses Phoebe, he loses his ability to be a person she could love.

Thus, a novel about a former believer’s attempt to understand a former agnostic becomes a more familiar but no less powerful story of how we use others — God included — to make sense of ourselves. This may seem strange territory for a campus novel, but in another way it’s just right. For many of us, college is the first experience that offers the terrifying opportunity for self-reinvention. It’s a seminal crucible in which we see ourselves reflected in the gaze of people we envy or hate or want or even maybe love. It’s when we may first catch sight of, if only briefly, a version of ourselves we might be able to live with.

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Anna E. Clark is an assistant professor of 19th-century literature at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.

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