#it’s explicitly stated as motherly love multiple times too

[k-dokja]

heyyaaa! Have you read the new chapters of Viral hit? Looks like taehun gonna have some love interest. Her name is Lee sooryeon, runaway fam mom, he met her at this arc. But won't complain since she's hot tho💔 I'm happy for them (jealous inside lmao) Him princess carrying her acck

I’m not up to date at all with VHit so this is a spoiler :)

Edit: K I skimmed some spoilers and that’s literally motherly love from her side, what are you on about lol

[meet-me-in-the-kitchen]

Imagine: The Girl Next Door

prompt from this list

In which Y/N is the sweet girl in the apartment next door, and Harry cares for her too deeply to ignore her cries. apartment au

(“I barely know you but my boyfriend just broke up with me and you heard me crying so you brought over ice cream and movies”)

—

Harry had just moved in to the dinghy flat, approximately six nights ago. Despite being quite friendly, he was also a bit reserved in nature. He was one of those people who were quiet and shy at first glance, and then highly talkative once you got to know them. For these reasons, he hadn’t exactly gotten to know the girl next door, his neighbor.

From his questionable breadth of apartment knowledge, he knew these things about his neighbor: her name was Y/N, as their postman, Peter, had fondly called her while thanking her for some baked goods she had offered him during an early shift, she carried a nice, lavender and homely scent which Harry had grown to like and made him want to ask her what detergent she used, and she really fucking loved to bake, hence the perfectly frosted cupcakes she had offered Peter and the entire two tiered mocha cake she had enthusiastically brought by to welcome Harry with on his first day. She was also very kind, bright, and quite pretty. There was something appealing about her.

He’d find himself clicking open his door to check if ‘any mail had fallen from the mailman’s reach, onto the ground’ conveniently when his next door neighbor was getting ready to go work at the bakery nearby. He’d do it just to catch sight of her, and although he hated small talk, he grew used to her greeting him in the mornings and searched for her bright grin. He’d drop by the bakery she was working at, which just so happened to be by his apartment, and order her contribution to the menu: a flavourful pie, filled with unknown ingredients Y/N would whip up after asking if he had any allergies. There was something about her that genuinely interested Harry.

The way she always had that kind smile on her face, how she held the door open for seniors entering the bakery and greeted every child or baby that wandered into the shop with motherly warmth. She had exceptionally high stamina and a quantity of patience so large, it left him baffled. She would never lose her temper, not once when customers took out their emotions on her in a negative fashion, or behaved poorly. Sometimes, Harry would want to throw his ring clad fists at the bastards who came to watch her perversely, glancing down her top when she set down a tray of fries and a milkshake, and cackling on about her uniform. She wasn’t a pushover, by any means. She was just kind, until they were kind back, and reminded them that she had done nothing to receive any form of hate. For fuck’s sake, there had been a grumpy man who asked the question ‘the coffee here is so expensive. do you take refills?’ everyday for a week, and despite knowing the answer, he’d grumble about it everyday. Secretly, Harry would watch behind his paperback copy of Love Is a Mixtape as she’d swing her hips while walking steadily with grace, as per usual, and grab the man’s empty coffee cup and promise to bring back ‘some water’ with a sly wink. When she’d come back and place the cup in front of him, the man would have by then cracked a small smile of his own, sipping tentatively at the hot coffee as Y/N went on with her day.

There had even been a gang of perverse bastards, and one day they’d come back from a rumble all bruised, and Y/N had fixed them up with a tight smile as she had insisted on them sitting while she brought them some ice packs and a first aid kit. They’d sheepishly apologized for their raunchy behaviour, owing it to some tragic backstory, and she’d softly smiled in her own way, stitching the last stitch and reminding them to respect all men and women. The next time they’d come back, they came with a newfound respect for Y/N, referring to her as their sister and glaring at any rude, old dipshit customer during an extra late night shift, from behind gang necklaces and leather jackets, until they gulped and left her alone.

“Oh, I’ve always wanted to open a bakery of my own,” she’d admitted, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, voice soft and all sweet, just like her. “I’m just learning the ropes and taking some classes at uni. and then, one day, maybe.”

All Harry had gotten from her were greetings, and teasing glances once he ordered her pie for the fifth time that day, despite of the feeling in his disapproving stomach, because it was fucking delicious. Other than that, they were practically strangers, neither explicitly familiar with the other. However, the twenty year old young man had gathered something out of character for even the sweet girl next door. He started noticing the bags under her eyes, how her smile wasn’t as frequent and when she did smile it was forced and tight, rather than easy. He had wondered what had happened, but reminded himself it wasn’t his place.

However, after an evening out with his mates, Niall and Zayn, Harry comes back when it’s nearing two A.M., and he’s slightly tipsy from a drink or two, but his alcohol blood ratio had been low enough for him to be designated driver, so, he’s alright. He’s a bit sleepy, yawning ever so often and rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles, tired after avoiding the girls at the bar who tried to get him to comply to them giving them a blowie. All he wanted was a cuddle.

“I’m’na watch a rom-com,” he stated with sleepy conviction, rubbing at his eyes once more. “an’ then, go to bed.”

He grabs the DVD version of He’s Not That Into You (because Netflix was being a shit and trading quality romantic comedy movies for crime shows no one watched), and snuggles into his bed in nothing, but his black boxers. By the time Drew Barrymore is on screen, he’s already in and out of consciousness, but then his ear twitches as he picks up slight snuffling coming from somewhere nearby.

“‘M hallucinating,” he mumbled, moving further back into the warm covers. He shut his eyes.

There were sniffles. And then soft crying. And then sobs.

Harry’s green eyes snapped open once he recalled the apartment they live in had thin walls, and Y/N’s room must have been next to his through the barrier. And if the pang in his chest indicated anything, she was crying and he probably wasn’t going to get much sleep by ignoring it and shutting his eyes. Plus, he’d sort of be a dick if he did so.

He sighs and gets up, throwing on a random jersey he had laying around and some jeans. He’s wondering what could be causing someone as sweet as her to break into cries. He hopes she’s okay, and figures he should give her some time to sort things out. Also, it felt weird of him to show up at her door just to say that he’d listened to her crying, so he decided to stop by the bakery nearby to order something for her.

By the time he gets to the bakery, he startles the elderly woman behind the register, who clutches her heart as she jolts from her slumber.

“Sorry,” he sheepishly apologizes, running a hand through his untamed, messy head of curls. She nods, albeit still a bit alarmed at the stranger who’d come during the night shift.

“Can I please get one of those pies?” He scratched his head, looking inward with a soft, shy expression.

“Sure, just had this one baked, boy,” the woman gestured to a blueberry pie, and Harry shook his head.

“No thank you, do you have one of those which Y/N makes?”

The scowl she gives him leaves him frozen in place, but he quickly relaxes as it dissolved into playful laughter. “I was just teasing, baby... an old woman’s got to have some fun. Y/N’s a sweet girl, ain’t she?”

“Yeah,” Harry smiled to himself. “She is.”

Three minutes later, he’s out with one of Y/N’s mystery pies in a white box, and an insistent subconscious taunting him the whole way up the elevator for going to such great lengths to comfort a cute girl. What’s wrong with you Styles? You hardly know each other and you’re whipped..

He shakes his head and steps into his flat, jogging lightly to grab the DVD version of He’s Just Not That Into You and a tub of ice cream. Once he’s at her flat door, he waits a second and breathes in and out, then raps his knuckles against the hardwood of her door.

A few moments later, the door opens, a very soft looking Y/N blearily looking up at Harry, eyes swollen and bloodshot, teartracks on her pale cheeks, clad in an oversized T-shirt which practically swallows her whole.

“Hi,” she says, wincing at her own voice and how it cracks at the end a little bit. She looks worn out, and his heart breaks for her. He clears his throat.

“I heard you crying..”

“Oh,” she sniffles, eyes widening apologetically. “Did I wake you? I’m so sorry.. I know it’s late, I’ll try to keep it down—“

“Stop,” he raised a hand in order to put an end to her rambling. He stretched forward the box cradled in his arms carefully. She quizzically looks down, mouth forming an ‘o’ as she realizes what it is. “‘M not a dick. I just thought I’d check in on you, make sure you were okay an’ all that.”

He wants to hit himself, multiple times with increasing ferocity, because the sentence he’d practiced in his head the entire elevator ride up seemed quite broken and blunt and awkward, but Y/N seems to be fine with it, because her blank expression morphs into a small smile which does reach her eyes in that way, and he’s relieved he hasn’t made things worse.

“You’re sweet,” she bites her lip, and a rush of warmth spreads throughout his chest like a splash of tea on a crisp linen tablecloth. She pulls the door handle so it is left ajar, and nods him in.

“Come inside,” she insists, taking the box from him and opening it as they make their way into her home, peering in and smiling softly in amusement. And fuck, he wants to scream because how does she look so pretty when it’s so late in the night that it’s early in the morning, even as she’s been crying?

“Is this one of my pies?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I didn’t want to get something you wouldn’t like, which might’ve made you a bit more sad, and all I like to eat are your pies.”

The sentence makes her cheeks warm a bit, when she just begins to comprehend just how considerate he’s being, and how amazing he looks under the kitchen light, sheepish and a bit nervous, all curls and green eyes and long arms, clutching a tub of ice cream and a romantic comedy CD in his left arm. She raises her eyebrow to the paraphernalia in his arm.

“Ice cream goes well with pie, and makes you feel better when you’re sad. Romantic comedies also help,” he explains, and she can’t help, but think of how whichever girl he’d court would be so, so lucky. And tears spring to her eyes as she once again assesses her situation.

“Did I do something wrong? ‘M sorry,” he’s alarmed, to say the least, apologizing and looking at her with a tender expression although he’s confused on what, exactly, he should be doing. He isn’t exactly comforting girls left and right. She blinks back the tears and laughs breathily, waving him off.

“‘M fine. C’mon, living room’s here.”

“You know,” he begins experimentally, watching her face in a careful way. “Strangers happen to be very good listeners.”

“Do they?” She entertains the thought playfully.

“Yes,” he nods with a very serious look on his face, one that gets a slight giggle out of her. “You see, strangers don’t happen to run their mouths much or judge you like they know the situation. They listen and take your side, no matter what.”

She blows a breath out of her mouth tentatively, and he regrets opening his mouth.

“If you don’t want to—“

“No, it’s not that,” she sighs. “My boyfriend... my ex-boyfriend, as of today, was just a total dick. He would constantly pick fights, emotionally blackmail me into giving him money. I wasn’t really anything to him, you know? I was just.. a booty call. My friends told me not to get with him, but I ignored all of the red flags, because I thought I was ready to be in a relationship. He just ended up making me feel like this insignificant, tiny speck. It took me so long to realize it wasn’t right,” she sniffed, laughing a bit, bitterly and in disbelief. “The asshole was cheating on me this entire time, and that’s low. I’ve never..”

Harry’s jaw is ticking, locked tightly as he intently listens to Y/N speak, fingers clenched into fists. Men like this disgusted him. He remembered his sister coming home, locked in her room for hours on end crying for some bastard who had treated her like dirt at the bottom of his soles. And as tears trickle down her cheeks, Harry realized there’s a pain in his own heart and he doesn’t like to see his bright, witty Y/N so sad. Her tears had apparently stirred a creature hiding and watching from the corner anxiously, inspecting the new stranger in their home before moving forward and rubbing his furry, whiskered face firmly against her stomach, an act of solidarity and companionship.

“It’s like.. I know, he was a jerk, but it’s deeper than that. Does love even exists, and am I worthy of it?” She whispered. “And then the fact he cheated on me. Am I not enough?”

“Hey,” he stops her, damning it all to hell and placing his hand firmly on top of hers, gazing into her eyes importantly. “This girl I know is pretty special. She works at a bakery and plans on one day opening her own, gives grumpy old men coffee until they’re smiling, and fixes gang members up when they’re hurt. She’s also very kind, and makes the best pies, and has such a big heart that she cries even for total dicks who hurt her.”

“You’re not an insignificant speck, Y/N,” he stated quietly, but with strong conviction. “Neither are you unworthy of love or less in any category. You’re amazing, and it sounds like this guy was lessening your happiness, rather than accelerating it. You can be happy on your own for a bit, never forget that.”

“Thank you,” she cried, basically flinging herself at his warm chest, and he’s rigid and tense for a while, unsure of where to place his hands. Then, he relaxes, arms swinging around her waist, one palm at her back, gently hushing her. She smells of lavender and home.

“So...” he trails off, arm still holding her to where she’s content, snuggling against his chest. “He’s Not That Into You doesn’t seem like a very good idea, right now.”

She bubbles with laughter, eyes crinkling at the corners at Harry’s remark.

“It so is,” she protests playfully. “Hand over that tub of ice cream, mister.”

He obliges and they both lay back on the couch, warm and happy and definitely not on the verge of tears. She’s snuggled into his chest, and his eyes are slowly blinking, about to shut for an indefinite amount of time when he finally falls asleep. He’s staying awake for her laughs and small smiles and the little exhales through her nose whenever something hilarious happened in the movie.

“You have a cat?” He asks with a yawn, fighting sleep. She nods.

“His name is Balthazar.”

“Balthazar?”

“Balthazar.”

The cat with the powerful name let out an almighty meow, thinking he had been summoned before disappointedly settling on Harry’s stomach.

He held her closer, warm and content with getting the proper dosage of cuddles tonight, just about to fall asleep as the bar owner in the movie realized he was in love with the woman.

“Can I crash here tonight?” He asks, voice mufffled and raspier with sleep. “I don’t wanna impose.”

“I barely know you, but I broke up with my dick of a boyfriend and cried like I was in some chick flick movie, and you brought me pie, ice cream, and films. So, yes, you can crash here tonight, Harry,” she confirms firmly, dropping her hand to his head of curls, tracing patterns and scratching gently at his scalp while he makes a grunting house, because that’s all he really needs to hear, and falls against her chest, hugging her like a very large teddy bear, basking in their shared body heat and how very soft and comfy she was and falling asleep very quickly.

—

MASTERLIST | Requests are open!

[kbreenreads]

Week 1 Activity - Favorite Picture Book

One of my all-time favorite picture books is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Published in 1964, The Giving Tree tells the story of the relationship between a boy and a tree throughout several stages of the boy’s life. When the boy is young, he spends most of his days with the tree; doing things such as gathering her leaves, climbing her trunk, and eating her apples. As the boy grows older, he visits the tree less and less. Whenever the boy does come back to visit the tree, she continuously gives up parts of herself for the boy (apples so he can make money, branches so he can build a house, her trunk so he can build a boat to sail away) in order to make him happy. When the tree is finally nothing but a stump, the boy, who is now an old man, returns to the tree for the last time. She explains that she has nothing left to give him, but he expresses that he doesn’t need much, just a place to sit and rest. As a stump, she is able to provide him this final thing, “And the tree was happy.”

Even as a young child, I found this story quite moving and a bit sad, though I wasn’t sure why at the time. Re-reading it now, I ask myself questions such as: Was the relationship between the boy and the tree unhealthy? Was the boy selfish? Was the tree too giving? Honestly, I’m not sure how to answer these questions, and I can understand how this story might be interpreted in multiple ways. I suppose what continues to make this story feel so powerful as I read it today is the way in which it explores the passage of time. It expresses how as children, we are content with the simple things in life, much like the boy is content with spending his days playing with the tree. However, as we grow older, the pressures of adulthood kick in and we strive for more, therefore losing the love of these simple pleasures. It isn’t until the end of the boy’s life that he rediscovers this love, wanting nothing more from the tree but a place to sit and rest. 

Though this book is short and easy to read, it manages to express a very profound message - making it one of my personal favorite children’s books.

Evaluation of The Giving Tree

Characters

This story follows two major characters: the boy and the tree. As the story progresses, we see the boy grow at a very rapid pace. We first see him as a young boy who is content with spending his days gathering the tree’s leaves to make into crowns or climbing the tree’s branches. We then briefly see him as a teenager who is perhaps experiencing his first serious relationship (I’ll touch on this again later when I talk about the book’s illustrations), then as a young adult who wants money, then as a middle-age adult who wants a house, then as an older adult who wants to escape from everything, then finally as an elderly man who simply wants a place to sit and rest. Though the boy ages very quickly throughout the story, the things that he wants the most at each age we see him at are believable and true to real life. This is why I feel that this story is just as much a book for adults as it is for children, as the adults reading it will be able to relate to the boy as he grows older. While the boy rapidly ages throughout the story, the tree remains the same (personality-wise) throughout. She serves as a sort of motherly figure to the boy in the sense that she gives to him unconditionally.  However, she does not seem to understand that the boy has aged every time she sees him, as she continues to ask him to “come and play”, even when he is an old man. Because of this childish innocence she holds throughout the story, I think that the children reading it will actually relate to her more so than the boy.

Theme

As I discussed in my original post on this book, I interpret The Giving Tree’s theme to be about growing up, and what we may lose in the process. However, I don’t feel that this theme was presented in a heavy-handed way by Silverstein. A child reading this story will see the boy growing up and growing apart from the tree, then finally finding his way back to her in the end. Though both the boy and the tree end the story in a physically rougher state than they started it in, they end it together, making it a happy (yet bittersweet) ending. Growing older is a very complex and emotional topic, yet I believe Silverstein manages to capture it in a way that is simple enough for young readers to comprehend.

Repetition

One line that is consistently repeated throughout this story (five times total) is “And the tree was happy.” This line usually follows a point in the story where the tree gives something to the boy. In the beginning it is simply her company, but then it evolves to her apples, then branches, then finally her entire trunk. At this point in the story “And the tree was happy…” is followed by, “but not really.” The twist on this repeated line signals to young readers that this is a turning point for the tree, showing that she has perhaps given away too much of herself and sacrificed her own happiness in an attempt to give the boy some. However, once the boy returns to the tree (now a stump) as an old man, the story concludes with the line “And the tree was happy”, showing that all is well.  

Predictability

As the boy grows up, the story follows a familiar structure: the boy visits the tree, she asks him to come and play, he states that he is too big, busy, old, etc. to play and asks her for something else, she gives up part of herself to help him get what he needs, and the boy leaves. This familiar structure continues until the end of the story, when the tree apologizes and states that she has nothing left to give the boy. This change-up in structure again signals a turning point in the story to young readers. Rather than the boy once again taking something from the tree like he has done throughout most of the story, he is back to simply being content with her presence, just as he was when he was young.

Artwork

There are a few instances in this story where the artwork shows us more than the text tells. One that stands out to me is the illustration that accompanies the line “And the boy grew older” on page 10. In this picture, we see two pairs of legs resting in the shade of the tree, along with an additional heart carved into the tree’s trunk reading “Me + Y.I”. (Note: prior to this, there was a heart carved into the tree’s trunk that reads “Me + T”, which is assumed to have been carved by the boy as a child with the “T” standing for “tree”). This illustration on page 10 shows us that the boy has entered his first relationship, even though this event is not explicitly stated in the text. One detail that I really love is how the two hearts remain in the illustrations throughout the story, until the boy cuts down the tree’s trunk, which removes the “Me + Y.I.” heart from the tree. However, even when the tree is just a stump at the end of the story, the “Me + T” heart remains.