#just experimenting with the flash format

[redmyeyes]

transience

People always ask where you're from. And they don't trust you when you say, I'm not really from anywhere, even if it's the truth. My brother and I used to have whole conversations with people and pretend we were in the circus, or pretend we were orphans, or just practice European accents on people because there's really no reason not to. You're not hurting anyone and they'll never believe you anyway. This one school, we thought we were only going to for a few weeks but we ended up there for three months and Dean had to fake an Irish accent the whole time.

24-hour gas stations at three a.m. are straight out of a David Lynch movie. One of the weirdest feelings is rocking up in the middle of the night, catching a few hours shut-eye because you're too broke that week for a motel, and then wandering into the lurid candy-brightness in flip-flops and sweats and your hair all fucked up, using the bathroom, and then flashing a peace sign at the bored attendant on your way out. Maybe they're used to it, I don't know. Who else uses a gas station at three a.m.? Dean said those years when I was gone and Dad shipped him off on his own, he didn't use a motel once, that whole first summer.

If you get in legal trouble, no one can really do anything to you unless you go back to that county or city or state. That goes double if you're a minor, as long as you don't go back until you're an adult. If you have a fake ID from a different state and they try to run the numbers, they'll almost always assume it's a problem with their system pulling records from another state and just write it down and let you go. That's why most of our IDs were from California. I don't know if Dad had some kind of grudge against the coast or whatever but it's the only one of the lower 48 we never went to. Why do you think I picked Stanford?

If you don't have a shower for a few days, you can always find a restaurant or gas station bathroom with a locking door. Always leave stuff nice so no one notices.

It's possible to eat well on the road, but you have to really really try. And also have more money than you know what to do with. Why buy gas station produce that'll give you diarrhea nine times out of ten when you can just stock up on jerky that'll last you for months? We always kept emergency rations of jerky and gatorade in the trunk. Gatorade is even more sickly sweet at room temperature, but it never goes bad and it keeps the jerky from sticking in your throat.

Carrying extra water is also a must. A lot of motels use gray water and most people don't know about it. If you shower in that, you'll smell like sewage for days.

Sometimes though. Sometimes you'll be flying down one of those endlessly straight desert roads at 120 mph, with the baked-in heat radiating off the dirt in wavy lines you can actually see, and you've been on the road five hours already with another 300 miles to hit before dark, and you'll look over and your brother will give you this grin and cock his head back, and close his eyes and take his hands off the wheel—

And you'll wake up pre-dawn on the side of the road when the sky's just beginning to turn from deepest black to navy to palest pink on the horizon, and you'll exit the car quiet so your brother doesn't wake up, and stretch and piss into the cold desert air with not even a rabbit watching, and feel like you and him are the only two people left on the planet, and you'll think, I'm from nowhere. I'm from here.

[buffyspeak]

shadowhunters rewatch 2023:

alec and clary not trusting each other in 1.03 vs. alec saving her anyways

[haikyuupaladin]

TLDR; don’t give tumblr money until they start making visible improvements towards accessibility

I’ve seen a few posts around about something people are calling crab day where you’re supposed to gift the crab button to your mutuals to support Tumblr financially. Please don’t participate in this unless Tumblr starts making noticeable improvements towards accessibility between now and then. It’s been 5 months of me trying to get the bare minimum of accessibility for photosensitive users or even just find out who I can talk to to get anywhere, and Tumblr is refusing to make any changes.

@photomatt has doubled down on the suggestion that you should just pay for ad-free or install an ad-blocker instead of listening to any of the suggestions photosensitive users have repeatedly made. Please do not give money to Tumblr until they show a commitment to accessibility because they will continue to ignore our requests if it doesn’t impact them financially.

Some of the requests we’ve made are:

1. Allow us to disable autoplay on browser as well as the app. This is an accessibility feature, not a data-saving feature, and should be treated as such.

2. Include ads in disabling of autoplay, along with other formats that currently get around the autoplay feature. Currently even if you have autoplay disabled you can still end up with flashing lights in your face every few posts from ads.

3. Improve the reporting process for strobing ads. The quick reporting process doesn’t provide good options to ensure the person reviewing the report realizes that it’s being reported for flashing lights so you have to hope they agree it’s either malicious or offensive and don’t just brush you off as abusing the report function. The more complicated reporting process involves getting a screenshot and the link that the ad brings you to, which requires lingering on the ad, which if you’re trying to report the ad for your safety, is dangerous. You can also still get the same ad 10 times a row after reporting it until it’s been reviewed. Which again, presents a danger to users.

4. Add a community label for flashing lights. Flashing lights are commonly untagged or mistagged, even sometimes maliciously. It would be extremely helpful to the photosensitive community to be able to add a warning to a post that doesn’t have one.

I’ve talked a lot about the photosensitive community in this post because that’s what I have personal experience with and what @photomatt has explicitly come out and just said to buy ad-free about, but there are definitely other accessibility issues that need to be addressed as well (like the alt text function needing improvements to make it accessible to users who need it and don’t use screenreaders, or the fact that a lot of tumblr official stuff still doesn’t seem to use the alt text feature themselves). Please feel free to add on accessibility issues I’ve missed in the reblogs.

[azsazz]

Off Grid

Azriel x Reader [Formula One AU]

Summary: Ferrari has signed on rookie driver Dorian Havilliard. Azriel must learn to navigate the 2024 season with a new teammate and his secret relationship, with you, who just so happens to be the team’s media trainer.

Warnings: N/A

Word Count: 2,109

Notes: This one goes out to @moosemahboi for the ask this morning 😏 enjoy 😉 (idk why I can’t tag u but hopefully you see this)

Also, sorry if the formatting looks like shit I’m posting this from my phone. I busted this out so fast tho whoops

_________________________________________

“Azriel, how are you feeling knowing that Ferrari has signed young Dorian Havilliard for the 2024 season?” The reporter asks, sitting eagerly on the edge of his seat. He has his phone out, recording Azriel’s responses. The man has been hanging onto every word Azriel has said; him and the other thirty journalists eager to pester him, all cramped within the small room.

Beside him, Cassian snickers under his breath, all too obviously happy that he’s not the one who must suffer this torturous questioning. Azriel refrains from rolling his eyes at the absurdity of it all. Well, it’s not absurd but it feels like it because it’s been the only question anyone seems to care about right now, they no longer care to ask how the new chassis feels, what his thoughts are about the new Las Vegas race added to the schedule, how he’s projected to be one of the top drivers this season. Was supposed to be one of the top performing drivers of the season. Ever since Ferrari leaked that Dorian Havilliard is making his debut with the team for the first race, it’s been a feeding frenzy for the media, trying to be the first to glean insider information about the fresh meat.

“I think he’ll make a great addition to the team,” is all Azriel offers in response.

He’s hot and sweaty from practice and being blinded by flashes of cameras that don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon isn’t helping his mood in the slightest. It’s the part of his job that he despises the most. All Azriel wants to do is drive, because nothing feels as good as the adrenaline when he’s behind the wheel, but right now all he wants is to go home, not respond to million questions he’s already answered too many times before. And to be honest, he’s kind of pissed about Ferrari signing Dorian Havilliard and nixing Rowan Whitethorn, who has signed on to be McLaren’s first seat after Aedion Ashryver’s accident at the final race of the 2023 season that sent him into early retirement.

There’s a beat of silence, and when it’s clear he has nothing else to say about the matter, someone else pops up from their seat and another question is hurled his way. “And what about your former teammate, Rowan Whitethorn? How is he taking the news of losing his seat to Havilliard?”

The urge to roll his eyes into his fucking skull is so great he almost doesn’t stop it, but the last thing he needs is the team’s media trainer on his case about the appropriate ways to conduct himself during media panels, no matter how pretty she is.

They should be asking this question to Rowan or even Dorian, whenever he begins press for the upcoming season.

“Rowan understands,” he tries to hide the sour tone in his voice. Azriel and Rowan have been driving together for the past three seasons and it’s been one of the best experiences he’s had with a teammate in Formula 1. He knows the constructors are too worried about placing him on the same team as Rhysand or Cassian, who he grew up with at karting school. They’re like brothers and they act like it too, but if they were on the same team the rivalries would feel even more drastic than they already are. “He’s a good driver and talent like his isn’t going away anytime soon.”

Rowan’s new teammate, Hunt Athalar, nods from Azriel’s other side. He and Cassian seem to be enjoying not being pestered with surface-level questions, and Azriel wishes that he was feeling the same.

With a few more unnecessary queries about Dorian, press finally ends. He, Hunt, and Cassian are escorted from the room, the trail of flashes and conversation starting up clinging to his back as he walks.

“Fucking hell,” Azriel mutters to Cassian, who jabs him in the side with a snigger once they’re cleared the room, the door shutting with a loud click behind them. “I hate these interviews.”

“Don’t need to tell me that, mate,” he laughs wholeheartedly, and Azriel glares. “I’m pretty sure everyone can tell. Might want to learn to act like you like it, though. Ferrari won’t keep you if your attitude sucks. But I’m sure that media trainer of yours is about to hunt you down and tell you the same thing.”

Azriel frowns. He thought he’d done a pretty good job at deflecting the questions about his new teammate.

“People like me for me,” Azriel shrugs, defending himself. He’s never been a bullshitter, no matter how badly his team has wanted him to be. This is what the people get, 100% Azriel, take it or leave it. And Ferrari has decided to take it, for the last three seasons. The second half of his sentence is drowned out as Cassian’s snickering becomes full-bodied laughter. “And my trophies speak for themselves.” He doesn’t mean to come off as cocky, but he’d rather be authentically himself than a puppet to the media.

Cassian shakes his head, wiping the nonexistent tears from the corners of his eyes. “No, people like me for me,” he winks at Azriel’s glare. “They like you because you’re a decent driver.”

Azriel’s nose crinkles. “Decent? My car is projected to perform even better than Rhys’ this year!”

They three drivers turn down a hall, nodding to the two Haas drivers they pass: Bron and Hart.

“We’ll see, won’t we, Athalar?” Cassian cranes his neck around Azriel, directing the question to the silent driver on his other side. Hunt and Azriel have never been close, but the angel of McLaren offers a genuine smile in response.

“Should be a good season, boys.” Azriel and Cassian share a look. A perfect media-trained answer, Hunt gave. The other driver turns off down another hall, “See you later.”

“What a weirdo,” Cassian mutters once Hunt has disappeared from sight. “Good luck to Ro, having to deal with that.”

Azriel finally rolls his eyes like he’s been wanting to do since he left the press room. “Yeah, and I’m the asshole.”

Cassian huffs and the pair of drivers stop at the end of the hall where it splits to go to their respective driver rooms.

“I’ll see you later, man.”

“Hopefully in a better mood, Azzy,” Cassian chuckles and dips down the hall before Azriel can toss another glare or remark at him.

Shaking his head, Azriel returns to his driver room. He’s going to grab his things and get the fuck out of here, because relaxing at his hotel sounds much better than waiting around here any longer.

A knock on the door interrupts his actions, and Azriel wonders why the Mother fails to grace him with one sliver of luck today.

“Come in,” he grunts, snagging his water from where he left it on top of the desk.

You enter the room with your phone and clipboard in your hands. You’re typing on your phone, fingers flying across the screen as you reply to another email. The water does nothing to quench Azriel’s suddenly dry throat.

He can’t help the way his eyes drag down your body with your attention on your phone, drinking in the sight of you in your pressed pants and professional button up shirt. There’s a lanyard around your neck with your Ferrari employee access printed on it and he wants to wrap his fist around the strap and—

Wherever his mind was drifting off to is completely shattered by your piercing eyes. He hasn’t had enough time to prepare for your apparent annoyance at his attitude during the press conference. You don’t look happy, and neither is his name as it rolls from your lips in a disappointed manner. “Azriel.” You step further into the room. “What the hell was that out there? You know you can’t—”

Your rant is cut off as Azriel consumes the space between you in two long strides, leaning in to slant his lips over yours, eating up your words. You can’t help but to melt into it a little, a lot when his tongue traces the seam of your lips and you part for him, brushing up against your tongue in a sensual move.

When he straightens, you’re panting and a bit flushed. Arousal burns through your body like petrol on the track, but you steel yourself against that fire in his eyes, all ready to light you up.

“Not even going to say hello before you start in on me?” Azriel asks, licking his lips. Your eyes follow the motion, and he smirks. The way his body is pressed up against yours and the firm grip of his hands on your hips threatens to distract you further, especially when his red racing suit is slung around his waist, leaving him in that tight, black long sleeve that contours around his lithe body perfectly.

“No,” you agree, and he frowns. “I’m upset with you.”

“Was it something I said?” He cringes at his own lame attempt at a joke, ducking from your serious gaze. “‘M sorry, I’m just sick of all the Dorian questions. They’re not asking anything about the season or the car, only how I feel about a rookie taking Rowan’s seat.”

You ache for him, you really do, but things like this happen in the sport and he’s been in it long enough now that Azriel should know better than to act like this. You can admit, Rowan had been an asset to Ferrari and to Azriel, wriggling his way under the stoic driver’s skin like a worm, burrowing deep into his heart.

“Az, you need to stop playing it like Dorian took his seat on purpose,” you console gently, “We both know that it was Rowan’s time, and he couldn’t resist what McLaren might’ve proposed.”

“I know, I know,” Azriel replies unhappily, retreating to perch on the arm of the small couch. He can accept it, but he doesn’t like it, preferring to blame the new driver instead. “I don’t want to deal with that little punk,” he groans, because the thought of putting up with a cocksure rookie tires him. “Coming in here thinking he owns the damn place.”

“Azriel,” you tut, rolling your eyes. You put a hand on your hip. “That was literally you four years ago.”

“It’s different,” he mutters, but you both know that it’s not.

You abandon your phone and clipboard on the desk in the room before standing between his parted thighs and wrapping your arms around his neck. His damp hair is slicked back but a strand falls across his forehead and he looks really good like this, head tilted upwards, gold eyes painted with false innocence.

“Why don’t you, instead of being Dorian’s enemy, you become his ally?” You ask softly, fingering the hairs at the nape of his neck.

“Because that’s not how the team works, baby,” Azriel sighs, enjoying the way you’re scratching his skin. He wants to lean forward and rest his head in the crook of your neck, maybe take a cat nap or nip at the skin there. “We might drive for the same team, but I’m not looking to be the supporting driver.”

Fuck that. There’s no way he’s letting a rookie take his seat when he’s worked his ass off since he received it. He’s been driving for Ferrari since he first got an in the sport, four years ago. He fought tooth and nail to work up from second seat to first, and Azriel will be damned if Dorian rips it from under him in one season.

“Your jealousy is showing,” you tease your boyfriend a little, poking him on the nose. You know you shouldn’t be doing this, hanging all over each other when anyone could walk into the room, but you can’t resist your draw to Azriel. “It’s not as endearing as it is when you’re jealous that I’m talking to one of the engineers.”

“Don’t remind me,” Azriel grunts, eyes hardening a little. “You’re mine and I don’t like to share.”

You snort, “That much is clear, babe,” you step out of his arms and miss the heat of his body already. You collect your things from the desk and return to him for a quick kiss. You shoot him a final knowing look, dodging his attempts at capturing you against his chest again. “Work on it, Azriel. I mean it.”

He salutes you as you open the door to slip out. “Yes ma’am.”

It shuts quietly behind you and Azriel slumps back onto the couch, sighing.

It’s going to be a long season.

_________________________________________

@iambored24601 @secretlyhers @kylaisra @daily-dose-of-sass wasn’t sure but figured u might want to see this one 😅

[lost-in-fiction-like-ur-mom]

Hello there! 👋🏽 If you don’t mind, I was wondering if I could make a request with Tech? With maybe a bookworm reader if that’s okay? I feel like it would be a cute dynamic! Thank you and have a good day! 🙏🙌

Bookworm

Tech x Reader

Summary- You and Tech have a moment alone on The Marauder. What better way to spend it than reading! Accompanied by Tech on his datapad, of course.

A/N- It's totally okay!!! I figured the best format for this kind of request was bullet point- but I am not very good at those. So, i compromised with this! Hope you enjoy, thanks for requesting!

Word Count- 990

Hunter, Omega, Wrecker, and Echo had all left the ship to go look for some dinner. A job you all completed recently left you with some spending money. You figured everyone deserved a real meal for once.

It left you and Tech alone in The Marauder. You could have easily went to hang out at Cid's bar, but you couldn't stand to be around her. You hated the way she poked fun at Tech's goggles.

Only you were allowed to call him 'goggles.'

The thought only temporarily distracted you from your book. You quickly resumed reading, only to realize you had to restart the whole page. This time actually process what you're reading! You thought to yourself.

Grumbling, you squeezed your eyes shut and straightened up in your seat. You happened to take a spot in the co-pilots chair. Tech always sat in the pilots.

"Something the matter?" Tech asks, not looking up from his datapad.

It was sweet, that he noticed your small movements. "Just trying to focus, I lost my place." You finally found a comfortable position, situating your book back in your hands.

"It can help to fidget with one hand, to increase your chances of focus." He informed, per usual.

You smiled up at him, he glanced up from the pad when he felt your gaze on him. He flashed a very brief smile- more of a grin, it was all you needed though.

You listened to him rant about his findings on 'focus' for a few minutes, knowing anyone else would have shut him up by now. Him talking never bored you or made you uncomfortable, despite many others complaining.

"Thank you, Tech." You simply said, returning to your book. He seemed pleased enough and went back to tinkering on his datapad.

A newfound silence came over, you read your book in peace. The story of the thieves with powers fighting the government amused you. What amused you more was the fact you had personally been on more dangerous missions, yet the book still captured you.

It was nice to imagine yourself in their place, even when you wouldn't change what you have for the word.

You'd go on a million death defying missions if it meant you were with Tech.

While you typically could put down over 50 pages in an hour, Tech interrupted you again. Not with any other intentions than to please you.

"Yes?" You responded after he called your name.

He reached in a compartment to the left of the console. A place Tech used to store his latest experiments.

He pulled out a neatly wrapped gift. It had swirls of color on the paper that wrapped it. He said nothing, just handed the rectangular item to you.

"For me?"

"That would be correct."

You tried to fight the corners of your mouth rising, but it was no use. Tech watched you violently, showing little expression.

You gently took the paper off, not wanting to make a mess of his careful work.

You slowly revealed it to be a new book, the fourth book in the series to the one you were just reading.

"Tech, I- I thought it was a limited edition! There was only a hundred made across the galaxy!" You looked in his deep brown eyes.

"Yes, it is." He confirmed.

"H-how did you get it!" You were baffled, the thought he put into your gift- and for no special occasion.

"It was not difficult. I was able to track all the shipping numbers to their respective planets, and when we had a mission on one- I located the book through its buyers." He said, nonchalantly. Like he didn't easily buy one of the most rare books you knew of.

"Why? Did I miss an anniversary?" You were slightly confused on why he gave you the gift. You hoped you weren't supposed to also have a gift prepared.

"Uh, no. You mentioned exactly 129 rotations ago that you wanted the book. I saw no problem in getting it." He remembered...

You were moved to small tears, now flowing down your cheeks.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

"Yes, Tech. Of course I am." You rose to your feet, throwing yourself on him in a big hug. He hugged you back. While he didn't completely understand your acclimation to physical affection- he didn't mind you doing as you pleased to him.

He gently patted your back, and you pulled away. "Thank you, i'm going to have to finish this book quickly now. I can't wait to read it..."

"You are welcome." He responded, you let him be and lifted yourself off of him. He grabbed his datapad and clicked away.

What you didn't know was that sometimes Tech would watch you read. In times like these, when you found yourself sitting or laying next to each other. You reading, him on his datapad.

He would study your face, taking in every expression. He would think about what you were reading- was it sad, happy, thrilling? Feelings were a trivial matter to him, but he was always thinking of ways to make you happy.

He loved it when you read, sometimes out loud to him. It was soothing to hear your voice when he worked on a project or was fixing a part on The Marauder.

The way you tapped your foot, or bounced your leg when you got to a complex part in a book. Or, when you were both laying down together and accidentally hit Tech in shock at a twist in the story. He loved every bit of it.

You turned back to your original book, now more determined than ever to finish it.

You did, however, catch Tech staring this time. You met his gaze, a wide smirk on your face. You couldn't help but giggle briefly. He gave you an odd look, but went back to his datapad. Just as you went back to your book.

A/N- Thank you so much for reading! Requests are about to be open, just one more to fulfill! As always, I am open to constructive criticism.

Tags- (LMK if you want to be tagged as well!) @thethreeeyed-raven @knight-of-flowerss

[inmyfxith]

How they would react if... they realize you're blushing while talking to them

Including -> Neteyam, Lo'ak, Kiri, Neytiri, Jake, Miles Socorro and Aonung

A/N -> I'm not 100% sure about this, feel free to tell me if you like this format, if you have ideas for preferences or if you don't agree with what I wrote here.

If Neteyam notices that you are blushing while talking to him, he may feel flattered and delighted ad he would interpret your reaction as a sign that you are attracted to him or that you enjoy his company. He may flash a warm and friendly smile and try to engage you in further conversation. As a natural charmer and people-pleaser, Neteyam would likely try to put you at ease and make you feel comfortable. He might use his charisma and sense of humor to make you laugh or engage you in lighthearted conversation. He may also try to find common ground and build a deeper connection with you by exploring your interests and sharing his own.

Neteyam and you were sitting by the river, chatting about your interests. As you talked, he noticed that you were blushing and he couldn't help but feel flattered.

"Is everything okay?" Neteyam asked, sensing that you might be feeling a bit nervous.

You nodded, trying to compose yourself. "Yes, I'm fine. It's just that... I don't know. I get a bit nervous when I talk to you. You make me feel... I don't know. It's hard to explain."

Neteyam smiled and reached out to take your hand. "I'm glad you feel that way," he said. "I really enjoy talking to you too. You're so interesting and engaging."

You blushed even more, feeling your face get hot. "Thank you," you said, looking down at your hands.

Neteyam squeezed your hand gently, trying to reassure you. "There's no need to be nervous," he added. "We're just two people having a conversation. And I really like spending time with you.

If Lo’ak notices that you are blushing while talking to him, he would likely feel flattered and delighted by your attraction to him. He might be touched by your shyness and try to make you feel more at ease with kind and understanding words or actions. Alternatively, he may try to lighten the mood with a joke or other form of humor to help you feel more comfortable in the moment.

Lo'ak stood in front of you, his piercing yellow eyes studying your face as you struggled to maintain eye contact. Suddenly, he noticed a faint blush creeping up your cheeks, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

"Hey, what's this?" he asked, reaching out to gently brush his fingers against your cheek. "Are you blushing?"

You nodded, feeling your cheeks grow even hotter. Lo'ak chuckled softly, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

"Well, I must be doing something right," he said, his voice soft and playful. "I didn't know I had that effect on you."

He took a step closer, his hand still resting lightly on your cheek. "You know, you don't have to be shy around me," he said. "I'm here for you, no matter what. And I love you, just the way you are."

You felt your heart swell at his words, and you looked up at him, your eyes shining with emotion.

If Kiri catches you blushing while talking to her, is likely to sense that something is troubling you and may instinctively want to offer her support and understanding. She may also be more inclined to be open and honest about her own feelings towards you, expressing her emotions openly and honestly. Kiri might use a variety of nonverbal cues to show her concern, such as tilting her head, making eye contact, or reaching out to touch you gently. She might also ask open-ended questions or make supportive statements, hoping to encourage you to share your feelings and to feel more at ease.

Kiri's ultimate goal in this situation would be to create a safe and supportive space for you to open up and feel comfortable expressing yourself. As Kiri listens to your feelings and tries to understand your perspective, she may also be more inclined to express her own feelings and emotions openly. This might involve sharing her own experiences or struggles, or simply letting you know how much she cares about you and values your relationship.

Kiri and you were walking through the forest, enjoying each other's company and the beauty of the surroundings. You were lost in conversation, talking about your hopes and dreams for the future, when suddenly you felt a wave of nervousness wash over you. Your cheeks began to burn and you couldn't help but blush.

Kiri noticed your sudden change in demeanor and stopped walking. She looked at you with concern in her eyes. "Are you okay?" she asked, her voice full of kindness and concern.

You took a deep breath and tried to compose yourself. "I-I'm fine," you stammered, hoping that Kiri wouldn't notice your blush.

But Kiri was too perceptive. She reached out and gently touched your cheek, a small smile on her face. "It's okay," she said soothingly. "I can see that something is bothering you. Do you want to talk about it?"

You hesitated for a moment, but then you felt a wave of relief wash over you. Kiri's understanding and supportive nature made it easier for you to open up. You told her about your fears and doubts, and how you sometimes felt like you weren't good enough.

Kiri listened attentively, her eyes filled with understanding and empathy. When you finished speaking, she took your hand in hers and squeezed it gently. "You are amazing," she said softly. "Don't ever forget that. I love you, and I will always be here for you."

You felt a warm feeling spread through your chest, and you knew that Kiri's words were true. She had always been there for you, and you knew that she always would be. You leaned in and kissed her softly on the cheek, feeling grateful and loved.

If Neytiri sees you blushing while talking to her, she might react with surprise or confusion at first. However, she is likely to be pleased and flattered by your response, as it could indicate that you are feeling nervous or self-conscious around her. She might smile and make eye contact with you, trying to gauge your emotions and reassure you that everything is okay.

For example, if you are having a deep and meaningful conversation with Neytiri, and she notices that you are blushing, she might pause for a moment and gently place her hand on yours. She might say something like, "Is everything alright? You seem a bit flustered. You can talk to me about anything." This kind of gentle and caring approach is typical of Neytiri, who is known for her empathy and understanding.

On the other hand, if the conversation is more lighthearted and playful, Neytiri might react by teasing you a bit. She might say something like, "Are you blushing because you like me? That's so cute!" This kind of teasing is meant to be playful and not meant to be taken too seriously. It is just a way for Neytiri to have fun and connect with you on a deeper level.

If Jake notices that you are blushing while talking to him, he may initially interpret it as a sign that you are feeling self-conscious or embarrassed about something. However, if your blushing is persistent and accompanied by other indications of attraction, sustained eye contact, or closeness, Jake may start to pick up on these cues and realize that you are interested in him. In this case, he may respond by becoming more flirtatious or affectionate, or he may simply continue the conversation in an effort to get to know you better. Jake is likely to be respectful and considerate towards you, as he values honesty and direct communication in his relationships.

As Jake and you were having a conversation, he noticed that you kept blushing every time he made a joke or complimented you. At first, he thought it was just because you were feeling nervous, but as the conversation went on, he started to realize that there might be something more to it. Jake couldn't help but feel a little bit flattered and intrigued by your sudden display of shyness. He decided to try to get to the bottom of it by being a little bit more direct and flirty with you.

"Hey, why are you blushing so much?" he asked with a playful smile. "Is it something I said or did?"

You felt your cheeks flush even deeper at his question, and you couldn't help but feel a little bit embarrassed. But at the same time, you couldn't deny the attraction you were feeling towards Jake.

"I-I don't know," you stammered, trying to play it cool. "I guess I just really like talking to you."

Jake's smile widened at your admission, and he couldn't help but feel a little bit pleased with himself.

"Well, I really like talking to you too," he said, leaning a little bit closer. "And I can't help but feel like there's a little bit more to it than that. Do you have a crush on me or something?"

You felt your heart skip a beat at his bold question, and you knew that you couldn't deny your feelings any longer.

"Yes," you said softly, looking up at him with a hopeful expression. "I think I do."

Jake's eyes lit up at your confession, and he couldn't help but feel a little bit giddy at the thought of you being interested in him.

"Well, in that case," he said with a smile, "I think it's time for me to make my move. May I have the pleasure of taking you out on a date sometime?"

----

(if you have a good gif for Miles, please let me know ! I'm unable to find one)

If Miles notices that you are blushing while talking to him, he may feel flattered and delighted by your reaction. He may interpret your blush as a sign of attraction, which could encourage and uplift him. In response, Miles might smile warmly at you and express his happiness through a gentle touch on your hand or face. He may also feel more comfortable and confident expressing his love for you, especially if he senses that you are receptive to his feelings.

Alternatively, Miles might decide to be more cautious or reserved in his approach. He might worry about coming across as too forward or intimidating, and try to be more subtle in his advances toward you. He might take things slowly and try to gauge your feelings before making any bold moves. Miles is likely to be deeply affected by your blush and will try to find ways to show you how much he cares about you.

Miles and you are walking along a beautiful Pandoran beach, enjoying each other's company and the warm sunshine. As you talk, Miles notices that you are starting to blush, and he can't help but feel flattered and pleased by your reaction.

"What's got you blushing like that?" Miles asks, grinning at you.

You look away, feeling a little embarrassed. "I don't know, I guess I just feel nervous around you," they admit.

Miles's face lights up with delight. "Nervous? Why would you be nervous around me?" he asks, reaching out to take your hand. "I'm just a big, goofy monkey boy."

You laugh and look back at him, your eyes sparkling with affection. "That's exactly why I'm nervous," you say, smiling. "I don't want to mess anything up with you."

Miles's heart feels full of warmth and love as he looks at you. He can't believe that someone so amazing and kind could be nervous around him. "You could never mess anything up with me," he says, leaning in to give you a soft, tender kiss. "I love you, and I'm so grateful to have you in my life."

Credit for the pic -> Here

If Aonung notices that you are blushing while talking to him, he may interpret this as a sign that you are interested in him and feel more confident in pursuing a potential relationship. He may attempt to flirt or show his own interest through playful or subtle gestures.

For example, Aonung may make a joking comment in an effort to gauge your reaction and see if you are receptive to his advances. If you seem open to flirting or building a connection, Aonung may continue to try and find common interests or activities to bond over. Alternatively, he may try to spend more time with you and get to know you better through one-on-one conversations or shared activities.

Aonung stood in front of you, his piercing blue eyes fixed on yours as he waited for your response. You couldn't help but feel a flush of warmth spread across your cheeks as you tried to think of something to say.

"Is it hot in here, or is it just you?" Aonung asked with a wink and a smile, his voice laced with playful mischief.

You couldn't help but laugh at his joke, your nerves melting away under the warmth of his gaze. "It's definitely hot in here," you replied, hoping he wouldn't notice your blush.

But Aonung was quick to pick up on your discomfort, and he stepped closer, his hand reaching out to gently brush a stray strand of hair behind your ear. "Don't be nervous, I'm not gonna bite," he said, his voice low and reassuring. "I just wanted to talk to you."

You felt your heart skip a beat at his touch, and you found yourself nodding, suddenly eager to spend more time with Aonung. He grinned in response, and took your hand, leading you towards a quiet corner where you could sit and chat.

As you sat together, talking about your interests and passions, you couldn't help but feel drawn to Aonung's bold and confident personality. He was charming and witty, and you found yourself laughing and smiling as he told you stories of his adventures and exploits.

[adventuringblind]

Heyyyy

Is it possible to have more autistic reader X Oscar like something happens at the race weekend and it's the rest of the grid helping her out as they also try find Oscar. Or anything really.

If not totally fine.

Also LOVE your writing!!!

Grid Panic

Oscar Piastri x Autistic Reader

Genre: hurt/comfort and fluff

Summary: a photographer is taking pictures during a night race and gets in readers face with the flash on. She panics and Oscar is nowhere to be found.

Warnings: cameras and autistic meltdowns

Notes: Okay, so this is MY experience with meltdowns. Please remember that everyone is different and experiences things differently. Also, this is HC format.

Masterlist

Night races are your favorite

The weather is more mild at night

It's easier to hide away from the crowd

The journalists don't spot you as easily

It's perfect

Currently, you're waiting for Oscar to come out of the media pen

Meandering around the paddock with headphones in as you wait

Oscar is protective yes

But not overprotective

He lets you lead the way, and if you get uncomfortable, then he'll step in

He can read your signals like it's clockwork

But he's not here

And a photographer has decided to make you his muse for the moment

He begins snapping shots with the flash on since its dark

You've never been on for bright lights

It's been the cause of many moments spent tucked away under tables and desks

He's saying things to you about smiling for the camera

But your not listening

Desperately trying to shield your face from the onslaught of flashing lights.

You’re lucky that Lewis is walking by

It’s not like you were trying to screech his name

But volume is harder to control when you feel like this

Needless to say it gets his attention

He gets in between you and the photographer

His arm slung around your shoulders protectively

Eventually you register the darkness of the alley between buildings

“Are you alright?”

Everything in you wants to say yes

But the urge to slam yourself into the ground and stay there says otherwise

No words

Just breathe

Physical contact is to much right now

“Can we go to Oscars room?”

You nod yes

Then you’re journeying to the McLaren motor home

You run into Charles on the way

He trails behind you

Mildly panicked because you aren’t speaking

Never a good sign

He waits with you in Oscar’s room

He plays soft piano music to drown out the noises from outside the room

You hide in the corner and curl yourself into a ball

Meanwhile Lewis is running around the paddock

He wishes he hadn’t put his scooter away

He runs into Lando during his search

“Need…Oscar…”

“Why? Am I not good enough for you?”

“Girlfriend is having- a thing.”

“A thing?”

“Ahhhh- what’s it called- a meltdown!”

Lando joins in on the search

At this point it feels like they’ve looked everywhere

Then they see Max

“Max!”

The Dutch does a spin and smiles when he sees them

“Have you seen my teammate?”

“Zak dragged him off somewhere, I think.”

*internal screeching from the two Brits*

“Can’t you show us where they went?”

Max drags the two along

They end up back in front of the McLaren motor home

They head inside with Lando leading them to Oscars room

Charles is watching from outside the door

“Took you long enough.”

They all collectively roll their eyes

The photographer got a warning

The boys (Lewis in particular) fell asleep as soon as they hit their respective beds

Oscar covered you in his jacket and drive you two home

Taking back ways and using the back entrance of the Hotel

He laughs to himself after he manages to get you to fall asleep

It’s a miracle they didn’t send the whole paddock into a panic

You fall asleep knowing your have good friends who can listen to your needs

[stormblessed95]

Watching Are You Sure?! EP 7

A reminder of how I do these reaction posts as I watch things. I just write my reactions and thoughts down literally they happen. Think more of a bullet point format. I'll include links when I can to videos, thanks to the people who twt who upload clips. And at the end, I'll do a better wrap up of all my opinions. I hope everyone enjoyed the show so far!!

Not this show starting off with a mistaken identity trip!! Lol Jimin saying that he only went snowboarding once before and it was with JK. And JK was so confused. You could see him searching the files in his brain lmfao. Jimin's oh wait! I went with your friends 😂😂 okay, just hanging out with JKs friends on your own? It's giving couple. I can't lie. I'm sorry. What in the best friend?! 😂😂 I loved the facial expressions and the way Jimin buried his face into Jungkookie there too

Jimin listening to hate you. And JKs why are you listening to that? Jimin: because I like it 😳 lmao I agree Jimin, it was abrupt 😂😂

Their appreciation for their crew is 😍😍

Jk dozing off to Jimin's softly singing. It's giving the same vibes as that one run episode that he dozed off to Jimin's ASMR. Idk what that's giving exactly.... But it's giving *something* and you know what it is

"this is our last moment of relaxation. I love it" 😭

Not JK just chopping at his hair like that. Oh baby lol don't look at me like this is my fault!! It's okay, fucking up your hair and needing to make it much shorter than originally planned is a life right of passage lol

Not JKs haircut transporting Jimin back in time 10 years 😂😂😂

The staff giggling and immediately taking photos 😂 BTS are their babies lol

Jimin hurting himself and shouting oh shit 😂😂 the subtitles trying to sensor him without bleeping his actual words 😂🤣 subtitles should be accurate above all else people! Cmon! Lol

Jimin moaning and groaning while transferring tubs, sitting on the edge, etc and JK just looks like he is enjoying the show the whole time. There is so much ass on display in the shorts they are wearing in this whole scene. Where is the decorum?! Lol!

Turning off the cameras to shower together before the Jacuzzi. Very innocent, but sounds like it could be so not 🤣😂

JKs faces when trying to handle to cold tub 😂😂

"feel how cold I am" better translated to "just hug me once" and the immediate hug and the hand placement to feel the cold? Yeah okay 🤣

Anyone remember the emojis over the barest slips of tummy during anything? Now they are showing them wash themselves and rub their own muscles in a cold tub and show off flexing to the camera. What the fuck Hybe 🤣🤣🤣

Soundproof Sauna to their matching PJs and eating a whole feast 🥰

The way they giggle together is my favorite thing

JK watching Jimin making his this crab is so good video so endeared 🥰😂😍

Jimin insisted on JK trying the shrimp too because it was so amazing instead of eating the last of the shrimp even though he loved it so much. And JK sharing half his urchin with Jimin because it was so yummy. Cute. They are so precious to each other

Jimin wants seconds, JK says it's a bad idea. They order seconds 😂😂😂

I both love and hate watching them eat. Because I think watching people eat is gross and I stand by that. Lol but they love it so much and look so happy, I also just enjoy seeing them enjoy themselves. It's a complicated mix of emotions I experience 😂

The trend continues of brushing their teeth together. Jimin, the mischief maker, kicks JK during their teeth brushing?? Lol and takes a selfie of them too. Share it please?

"I'm going to pass out after this, especially if we get massages" JK " we are getting massages?!" No lmfao you silly goose, that was 100% Jimin hinting at wanting a massage 😂🤣😂🤣

Not them being super sleepy, yet still annoying each other on purpose by flashing lights at each other 😂

Jimin asking JK if he is too hot, probably knowing already he gets too hot at night. But instead of changing the temperature when he did wake up too hot, knowing Jimin was comfy with how it was, JK just moved to the living room. And Jimin waking him up by so softly petting his head 🥺🥺🥺

Are they advertising sunscreen? Lol it worked. I wanted to go get some 😂😂

Jimin fighting for his LIFE in the shower. Wtf was happening?!! Lmao and JK finishing up his breakfast before going into the bathroom to shower while Jimin was still in the shower it sounded like. Lol ALRIGHT. Hope you both enjoyed said shower I guess 😅😂🤣

Why are we play fighting while getting dressed boys?! Lmao

Jimin starting a pretend photoshoot with the ski jacket and gear. Absolutely, yes please

Jimin is such a good boyfriend bringing JKs jacket back out to him

Jimin just enjoying sitting in the car while JK goes in to order 😂😂 good for him! JK telling him he only ordered food for himself and none for Jimin, only to say "here is our food" when it arrived 😂 what a jokester lol

Jimin feeding Jungkook while he is driving 🥺

Jimin joking about an AYS OST. Please please please give it to us though for real

Singing random love songs for a game! Where JK interrupted Jimin singing the line "the person I love is gone" to sing "I love you" three times lol okay got it

The way JK always stops to just stare at Jimin until he gets his reaction to whatever he is doing or wearing is always so cute. Especially because he always smiles so cutely after Jimin gives him his desired compliment 💜❤️

JK adjusting Jimin's googles for him 🥺

The way that JK checks in on Jimin first to make sure he is actually okay before teasing him about being scared lol it's sweet and cute

The hysterical cut of JK shredding down the slope to Jimin laying in the snow 😂😂😂😂 Jimin and his staff member literally falling over each other 🤣🤣🤣 I'm dying lmao!

Jimin ditching his helmet with how often he falls is stressing me out lmfao he looks gorgeous though!

Skiing would be fun too he says, turning to Jimin with a hopefully sparkle in his eyes that he knows Jimin can't say no to. Camera cuts to them on skis 😂 JK, I love and adore you. Never change

Wrap up thoughts:

They showered/bathed together 3 times in one episode and thats insane. Lmao whatever guys 😂 this was just an excellent episode showcasing their closeness, their intimacy, their silliness, their individuality and their soft spoken nature with each other. It showed the way they consistently consider each other, what the other wants and needs. I don't think I have anything to expand on from what I've already said above. I really loved this episode. Fully plan on the last episode making me cry.

All purple links in my post go back to @dstdes with video clips of the moment being talked about. I did use a few twitter clips as well, sorry. Thanks for reading!

[muddyorbsblr]

this magnetic force of a man

'one look and they'll know' collection masterlist See my full list of works here!

Placement: married era; a few months after 'come on, england'

Summary: A watch party livestream on TikTok catches sight of you and Tom in the VIP tent of the final night of the Eras Tour in London

Pairing: Tom Hiddleston x Reader

Word Count: 2.2k

Warning/s: language; potentially inaccurate depictions of what goes on backstage in a concert; changed lyrics for Lover [let me know if I missed anything!]

Things to be aware of: new & experiment story format in the first part of the chapter; fictional streamer "original character" heavily featured in first part of the chapter

TikTok Livestream of getawayscholar: Eras Tour Wembley N8 Watch Party!

The stream on screen zooms in to the VIP Tent.

"Hold on! Hold the fuck on is that…holy shit we have ex alert in attendance! Friends and others, Tom Hiddleston just walked in to the VIP tent with Y/N H--I didn't even know they were still together damn good for them." getawayscholar applauds on her stream; the chat floods with clapping hands emojis and various hearts.

The stream on screen shows Travis approaching you and Tom, shaking Tom's hand and making you jump for a high five with a jovial smile on his face. The three are talking while they walk to where Travis is seated.

"And they're seated with Travis, holy shit the world is healing."

Paramore's opener set begins. The stream on screen refocuses to the stage for the next 5 songs.

getawayscholar's stream chat floods with messages: "change source stream!" "check VIP tent!" "some shit's going down on VIP go go go!"

New Instagram Live streaming on getawayscholar's big screen shows you and Tom in your own little bubble, dancing with each other to "The Only Exception". You're singing the words to him.

"'Didn't I read somewhere that these two got married?' I don't know about this one yet, guys but if they did ohh my god good for them! Look at these two they look like the definition of in love and unbothered--Hold up what's going on why's Jan in the VIP tent?"

The stream on screen shows Jan talking to Travis and you, looking panicked, making a gesture for you two to follow him to the stage. Tom holds on to your hand as you're leaving. You mouth many words. Visibly "It's okay" and "I love you" before giving him a kiss and running out of the tent with Travis.

"What's going on, y'all? Are we getting Travis on stage again? Maybe for the Lover era this time?!" getawayscholar squeals on her stream, visibly kicking her feet for a few seconds before abruptly stopping. "But hold on, why do they need Y/N H., though?"

The chat pops up with one new message: 'Not sure how accurate it is but I read somewhere that Y/N H. did some work for the TTPD Era stage design? Maybe it's something about the glitch?'

The stream on screen refocuses back to Paramore on the stage for the rest of the opener set. The countdown clock appears on screen. When the clock strikes 00:00, the dancers come out on stage. The show proceeds as scheduled until the end of You Need to Calm Down. Taylor approaches the mic with her guitar and begins her opening remarks.

"What a bittersweet honor it is that I get to say these words for the last time where in Wembley Stadium. London, welcome to the Eras Tour!" The crowd applauds and cheers. getawayscholar applauds from her seat at home. "The last time we were here a few months ago we made some absolutely insane memories on this stage, in this stadium…" The stage screen flashes to Travis walking out in a suit and top hat on Night 3, leading to more cheers. "And I can't wait to make some more with you tonight."

getawayscholar sits up straight, looking excited and panicked. "What does that mean, Taylor?!" she shouts on her stream.

Taylor starts playing Lover, with a longer musical interlude after the first chorus. She starts speaking again while playing the interlude chords.

"Now you all know how sometimes I like to bring out a few special guests up here on stage." The crowd screams and claps. "Well tonight I'd like to bring someone out that has been an absolute delight to have known for the better part of a decade. She's one of the most brilliant minds I'll ever meet in my lifetime, and the only person I know who sleeps about as much as I do. Which according to you all is…next to never." 

"Ohh my god what is happening--" the Instagram Live streamer starts shouting.

"She has made her mark on so much of this tour, from our stage design, the Tortured Poets dress, the reputation bodysuit, the graphics on the screen that are nothing short of breathtaking and sometimes terrifying. I mean, you all said it, not me." The crowd erupts in laughter. "So I'd like you all to help me welcome on to the stage…stage designer, costume designer, graphic designer, fellow mastermind, and a dear personal friend of mine…Y/N Hiddleston."

The crowd from the stream gasps. getawayscholar gasps and squeals in her seat, gripping her chair armrests tight as a platform opens to reveal you rising up to the stage in a navy bodysuit short dress with gold lace detailing, mic in hand. You look to the VIP tent, blowing a kiss to your husband before you start singing.

"We could let our friends crash in the living room This is our place, we've made those calls"

"Did they switch up the lyrics?!" getawayscholar squeals, starting to bounce in her chair.

"And I don't give a damn if everyone who sees you wants you I've loved you eight summers now, honey And I want 'em all"

The stream on screen zooms in to the VIP tent, Tom has made his way to the front, tears in his eyes as he watches you on stage.

"And I'll go where you go We swore to always be this close Forever and ever and oh Take me out, take me home You're my my my lover"

Another extended interlude as you walk over to Taylor and you give each other an embrace, looking like excited childhood friends as you sway side to side before parting ways and walking to opposite sides of the end of the stage. You stop at the edge, facing the VIP tent.

Taylor sings to the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? With every guitar string scar on my hand"

You point towards the VIP tent, right at Tom, before joining Taylor and singing, "I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover" . You both sing the next few lines of the bridge until Taylor stops to give the final line over to you, revealing that this line was also rewritten for the show.

"And at every table…you've saved me a seat. Lover."

The stream on screen changes sources to someone streaming from a much closer angle, the camera zooming in to the detailing on your costume.

"Holy shit this woman is something else. It's the quiet unhinged energy for me and in this household we love Y/N Hiddleston," getawayscholar tells her stream, grabbing a screenshot of the intricate gold lace detailing on your dress, revealing that some portions were made of embroidered lettering that spelled out "I ♥︎ TH".

"Lover" ends and you and Taylor walk towards the center of the end platform, joining hands and raising them in the air before taking a bow.

The stream on screen pans the camera over to the VIP tent, zooming in on Tom applauding with a brilliant smile on his face before pointing at the stage and shouting, "That's my wife!"

Taylor addresses the crowd again. "Now…seeing that this is our last night here in Wembley Stadium, I figured a few more surprises sprinkled in wouldn't hurt." She motions toward you with both arms before the piano for the acoustic section emerges from under the stage and she sits in front of it, both of you nodding at each other before she started playing. The crowd erupts into cheers again as you started singing.

"Combat…I'm ready for combat…"

Overwhelming.

That was the only word you could think of to describe this moment right here, standing on stage with Taylor in the dress you'd worked on for weeks and fully knowing that by now, multiple posts had been made on the details you worked into the lace. Probably even some news articles from various sites, both reputable and otherwise.

You both joined hands, raising them up in the air before you took a bow again, doing a little hair flip when you came back up. The platform then began to descend and Taylor pulled you into an embrace.

"I'm so happy I actually got to share a stage with you," she said excitedly, giving you a squeeze before being whisked off to change into her Fearless era dress. "Drinks after the show?" she called out while she shimmied out of her bodysuit.

"Count on it, Babes," you answered her, shimmying out of your own dress that one of her dancers helped you out of. Once you were back in your regular dress and shrugged your jacket on, you found the crew applauding you and cheering you on. Taylor included.

"You did great, Tater Tot," Travis spoke up. "Now come on I gotta get you back to VIP before your husband gets hounded."

You gave them all a little salute before running out of the prep area, giving the towering hulk of an athlete a pointed look. "For the record, only you and Taylor can call me that and live to tell the tale."

"I know I know," he answered, chuckling as he opened the curtain leading to the VIP tent. Once the thick fabric was put aside, the attendees in the VIP tent greeted you with a relatively quieter round of cheers and applause. They all mostly stepped aside as you made your way through them, revealing your husband at the front of the rows. "There you go, dude. Back in one piece."

Tom met you halfway, pulling you into his arms and lifting you into the air once you got close enough. "That was incredible," he told you, his tone full of wonder. You could feel his heart racing through his shirt. "You are incredible, goddess."

He placed you back on your feet, keeping you in his arms as he rested his forehead on yours. It was only at this moment that you realized he'd walked you into a corner of the section, far enough away from the fleetingly curious onlookers whose collective focus was once again on Taylor and the opening notes of Love Story.

"You have no idea how damn lucky I feel every day that I get to call you my wife," he said softly, just enough for you to hear before he started kissing along the side of your face.

"Really? It wasn't too much?" The magnitude of the gesture was finally really sinking in, your mind going so many places on what you just signed yourself up for. Placing yourself in the crosshairs of the same vitriolic people that were once chomping at the bit nearly a decade ago after knowing relative peace for so long. "I know big gestures aren't really our thing but--"

"It was perfect," he cut you off, pressing a kiss to your lips that had you melting in his arms. "You're perfect. I love you so much."

"I love you, too," you said breathlessly once he broke the kiss. He held your hand and led you back to the front of the tent, positioning himself behind you and letting you relax against him as he held you in his arms for the remainder of the show.

"There's no more surprises for the rest of the night, though, I hope?" he asked, pressing a kiss to the top of your head before holding you a touch tighter. "Because I'm not too open to the idea of letting you out of my arms unless it's to drive us home."

"No more surprises," you reassured him, placing your hand over his. "But I did promise Taylor I'm meeting her for drinks after the show…"

For the most part you kept to your word, there really were no other surprises you had planned for the night, and save for your husband going to grab a snack for the two of you from the catering table, he really didn't let you out of his sight for the following sets. It was only when Taylor stepped out for the acoustic set that you were both slightly taken aback when she chose to address you again.

"Well then…welcome to the acoustic section, everybody." You and the entire crowd began to clap and cheer loudly. "Trying to decide what would be good to do for tonight since it's our last night together and all…But first let's get some choices off the board." Then she faced the VIP tent. "Y/N, Babes…how much trouble would you be in if I play Getaway Car?"

The entire tent burst into laughter as you scrambled to keep a poker face, already anticipating that she'd pull that joke when she mentioned it in your texts the night before. You began to mouth a message back to her. "Taylor no…my husband is right here have mercy on my damn legs."

You broke out into a smile toward the end when she had to shut her eyes and compose herself because her shoulders started shaking from her laughs. "I mean I kind of thought so but it was worth a shot." Then she shrugged and started strumming some chords; the crowd erupted into cheers again when she began to sing.

"The moon is high like your friends were the night that we first met…"

A/N: All cards on the table, I've had this chapter planned for so long but seeing all the happy lil insanities that happened this weekend in Wembley made me decide to put some time aside today and start on this chapter earlier today. I did not, however, expect to be finishing the chapter today as well 😂 And also I figured since I already had the reveal out that the OLTK blorbos are married, I can go ahead and shift some plans around and make some "married era" chapters when the mood strikes and ohh boi howdy did the mood strike today 🫠

'everything' taglist: @simplyholl @loopsisloops @imalovernotahater @coldnique @loz-3 @huntress-artemiss @salempoe @vickie5446 @athalialaufeyson @lokiprompts @kats72 @kikster606 @asgards-princess-of-mischief @lokixryss @thomase1 @mischief2sarawr @lovingchoices14 @lunarnights95 @goblingirlsarah @iamlokisgloriouspurpose @creationsbyme @maple-seed @mjsthrillernp @ladyofthestayingpower @mygfloki @sititran @glitterylokislut @ozymdias @fictive-sl0th  @lokidbadguy @mochie85 @silverfire475 @joyful-enchantress @elizabethmidnight2017 @holdmytesseract @smolvenger @gigglingtiggerv2 @lokidokieokie @lunarnights95 @superficialdomina @kmc1989 @november-rayne @goddessofwonderland @buttercupcookies-blog @peaky-marvel @lokiified @tom-hlover @dryyoursaltyoceantears @herdetectivetheorist

[n3ptoonz]

'Anyone But You'

Pairing: Sub!Zero/GN!Reader (see what I did there)

Fandom: Mortal Kombat 1 (2023)

Warnings/tags: Smut, explicit. Rivals to lovers trope, very story and dialogue driven but there is smut at the end, handjob, Bi Han is a good boy, overstimulation, canon typical violence, Bi Han is a complex man in love, reader is a pyromancer, kinda proofread this took so long to write holy fuck

EDIT: I FREAKING FORGOT i was referencing THIS picture. starts wreaking havoc

Word count: 3.4k

"Just what I needed." Bi Han grumbled, his usual scowl apparent on his face at the sight of you approaching him. He always hated how much you were able to match his skills. Deep down, he might have respected that, but your attitude is what holds him from admitting it.

"Just what you wanted." you said, flashing a shit eating grin at the man in front of you. "Lord Liu Kang sure has his ways of bringing the gang back together."

"Another reason I can't stand him." he said, this time louder and shamelessly. He didn't even care if someone were to hear him nearby.

"What's the assignment for today? He hasn't given us an impossible task in a while-"

"He wants twelve of us to investigate Shang Tsung's laboratory experiments in Outworld and get samples. Problem is, it's heavily guarded by his minion freaks in and outside."

Despite him cutting you off mid-sentence, you just rolled your eyes and looked at the drawing he held up. He didn't make any eye contact with you until you took it from him.

"What are you doing?" he asked, voice filled with growing irritation. "Give it back."

"You weren't holding it right, so instead of asking you to flip it, I just took it. Quit your whining I'll hand it over once I get a good look at them."

He groaned, crossing his arms and waiting for you to finish. You really inspected their faces, impressed with how detailed they were.

"This isn't art class-"

"These are some really well drawn freaks of nature. Whoever did this captured their essence." you said, your tone genuine this time. This took Bi Han aback a bit, but not enough for you to notice. His eyebrows rested from his natural scowl upon hearing your indirect-direct compliment.

It was him who drew those atrocities with the finest ink from his late father's office, but he would never admit that. To be honest, he wasn't too fond of his own work and just passed it off as somebody else's from his clan.

He cleared his throat and took the paper back from your hands, "Yeah, yeah, just be ready to leave by sundown." he said, walking off to talk to the rest of the fighters in the group. When he took the paper, you noticed he had some black ink spots on the tips of his fingers, but you didn't bring it up. He's already constantly on edge so teasing him about something he actually put effort into was out of your forte.

It was nearing sundown and everyone was geared up including you. You grabbed your mask and choice of weapon, quickly putting on the all black uniform given since you all were heading out at night. Heading over to the table with the plans and formatting of the area, you could hear Bi Han discussing what's to come within the next 48 hours.

"This mission is going to be long, so listen closely. When we get there, we are to ambush the entrance to clear it of the guards occupying it. Then we wait to see if any alarms will set off before continuing into the corridor and clearing that too."

You listened to his plan, and to be honest, you didn't quite think going in with an aggressive approach would be effective.

"I feel like we should stakeout the front and sides to see the patrol patterns. If we just go in there setting shit off, surely we'd be fighting off an army of mutations, and who knows how long that would take."

Bi Han slowly raised his head, furrowing his brows. He always hated when you chimed in with something opposing his ideas, even if they almost always made sense.

"It would be easier to take them out when we get there. Plus, look at who we have on the team; our best twelve. I'm sure taking out some mindless freaks won't be hard." he said, glaring at you from the other side of the table. You placed your hands down and leaned forward, refusing to back down simply because he was in "in charge."

"Covering more of the area instead of running in blindly is more effective. We have 48 hours to get this done, what the hell are we storming the place for?"

"Because we have the reinforcements. Are you so incompetent that you question such a basic concept?"

"I think you forget, Bi Han, the last time we attempted to take down a semblance of organized criminals with just a few of us, not twelve--mind you--, a few of our people nearly got rag dolled to death. We had to retreat after taking a beating as soon as we arrived," you said, leaning in closer.

"It's ultimately up to you, but if you so much as get ran at by a gang of lab experiments, I won't be helping you."

Bi Han could only keep glaring at you behind his mask, the cryomancy in his veins creeping up as he gradually gets more aggravated. You were right, and that pissed him off, but he decided to leave that alone so the mission could just start already.

He watched the other members' reaction to you guys' interaction, and it looked like they agreed with you.

"Fine." he grumbled, "We keep watch to catch their patrol patterns, and attack once each group has established such. There's no need to report it since we'll be acting tonight. After that, we meet back here to report what we've found after looking around." he continued, pointing to a section of the laboratory.

"And make sure you take out everything you come across. Let out any prisoners too, but only after the fact so they don't get torn piece by piece by these abominations." you added, seeing Bi Han just nod and fully stand up, finalizing his statements and putting the plans in his pocket.

It didn't take long for you all to surround the general area, getting a closer look where the different parts of the lab would be. Albeit it didn't take forever in a night to get there, you and Bi Han had been bickering the whole time. Sometimes it was playful on your end, other times it was generally just annoying you how mean he was. If not for the rest of your members breaking it up, you'd have been arguing the whole way there.

Everyone else has split up for efficiency purposes...and to get away from you both.

You hid behind a tall bush that was easy to see through, watching for anyone and any thing that came by. Bi Han was nearby doing the same thing. You picked up on a couple of patterns that they patrolled in.

"I wonder if Shang Tsung is in there." you said to yourself, but loud enough for him to hear.

"He doesn't drop by at night. It's the whole reason we came at this time, don't you remember?" he said turning to you, his voice right back to his tone of irritation.

"Do you have to be an asshole all the time?" you turned to him and met his eyes focused on you behind his mask, "I wasn't even talking to you. Plus, I tune you out at any given opportunity."

He didn't respond immediately. Just slowly turned back without another word.

"You know, I'd be more willing to actually listen to you when you aren't calling me a moron."

"Maybe stop being a moron and I'll be a little more nice to you." he quickly replied, remaining away from your gaze.

You rolled your eyes and stood up, tightening the bandages over your knuckles.

"Why the hell do I even try with you? I too wonder just what Lord Liu Kang was thinking to put us together. Figure this shit out on your own." you said, getting low before moving to a different spot.

As Bi Han was about to respond, he noticed a suspiciously placed patch on the grass that you were approaching. In his mind, he figured you saw it already and wasn't going to say anything. You had gotten on his last nerve once again, so why would he help you?

You heard a faint voice calling out in the distance that was gradually coming closer. You looked in that direction since you recognized the voice; it was one of the guys running towards you and Bi Han and waving his arms.

"Trap! It's a trap!" he yelled, but he was still too far to hear. "Retreat!!"

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Before you could even process the sound you were hearing, the surrounding area was set off by mini land mines while the building stayed in tact. You were able to dodge the patch that went off, but the aftershock caused everyone to be blown back a long distance from the laboratory, which eventually knocked you out from impact.

-

"Ugh, where am...I...?" you leaned up, wincing from the pain on your back and legs. The air around you was dusty, hazy, and heavily polluted by whatever the hell was in that debris. You looked around and could really only see the ground and the trees as far as your vision went before it looked light gray again.

You got up with the strength left in your body, aiming to find someone, anyone. Wandering around for so long caused you to have to pay attention to a body wound from the adrenaline dying down. You checked it out and realized it wasn't so bad, so you used pyromancy to close it up for the time being. It hurt like a bitch, but it worked.

You made the emergency call sound for anyone on your team to hear, still nothing. You tried again, only to hear heavy breathing and curses following after it.

"God damn it!" you heard, immediately thinking it had to be...

"Bi Han?" you called out, still holding onto your side while you walked towards the voice with high caution. Silence filled the air. This stubborn fucker...

"I know it's you, hard ass." you said, walking just close enough to see Bi Han leaning on a tree while holding onto his side. You'd be more concerned if he didn't not answer you on purpose.

Upon seeing your face, he was clearly not in the mood for your presence, especially at his most vulnerable state. The man was beaten up and in genuine pain, unable to tend to his own wounds, let alone stand.

Once you stopped in front of him he just looked away. He was embarrassed to say the least. Everyone else is usually hurt and he had to watch over/take care of them. But this time his own rival stood before him, just as beat up but still able to walk around.

"Who were you expecting to be here?" you asked.

"Anyone but you." he replied, clenching his jaw.

"That's no way to talk to someone who could help you. The other members are probably scattered somewhere looking for us and each other, but nowhere to be found." You paused in between sentences to see if he'd have anything to say, but he didn't budge not one bit. You noticed a deep gash on his arm and dried blood around where his ribcage would be under the uniform.

"Let's make this simple. We cut the rivalry bullshit so I can help you, or I can leave you to it while you likely just bleed out. Your call, Grandmaster." you watched his face twitch at the sound of his title. His mask not being on his face freaked you out sometimes since you could fully see his face and every expression on it.

"How could you help me?" he asked, putting emphasis on "you" as if it was impossible. You lifted your shirt halfway to show him the wound you patched up.

"I just sealed this with heat. It still hurts but at least it's not bleeding anymore. For yours it would probably take longer and a little more heat to seal but it's the better option." you said. The look on his face stilled in contemplation. He really couldn't stand the idea of being in debt to you.

"You know what, I can go, don't wanna piss you off-"

"No! Please...I need help. I need your help." he groaned out in pain when he leaned forward in desperation. You kneeled in front of him with a half smile.

"Don't utter a word of this." he said, slowly taking his shirt off to reveal the wound that stained his sculpture of a body. Lord have mercy...

"Wouldn't dream of it..." you said, moving closer next to him and getting to work. "I'll do your arm too."

You watched as he wanted to say something, but simply didn't. Like a lump was caught in his throat.

"You're welcome." you mumbled. You were so focused on his wound while simultaneously keeping your composure, you didn't notice the very, very slight blush forming on his cheeks. The feeling of your hot hands on his cold skin, and the look of pure concentration in your eyes had a different feeling coursing through his body.

He cleared his throat and looked off in the distance, a quiet, but genuine "thank you" finally coming from him.

-

It's been a couple weeks since. Everyone found their way back and managed to heal in due time. Since the mission was nowhere near successful, Liu Kang wanted you all to reside at the Lin Kuei temple to continue with altering plans after getting a thorough rest.

After helping out in the infirmary for a while, you realized Bi Han hadn't shown up so much outside of leading his clan in their daily routines. You left the room and looked around for him everywhere asking if anyone saw him recently. One of his clan members overheard you and let you know he mentioned he wasn't feeling well as of lately, so he's been going straight to his room after their sparring sessions.

You took it upon yourself to make a cup of tea, heating it with your own hands before heading over to his bedroom. The closer you got there, you could hear him talking out loud. He seemed to be babbling something over and over again before he realized he was getting loud. You stood outside his door and eavesdropped carefully, wondering just what the hell he was saying.

"Ah, fuck," he kept repeating everytime he exhaled, which just gradually became raspier and more strained.

After knocking two times it didn't take long for the sound of shuffling and him asking who it was outside of his door at this time to fill your ears. You sheepishly answered back, letting him know you brought tea since you heard he wasn't feeling well.

He quickly opened the door and pulled you in without a thought, closing it behind you before looking at you with an expression you've never seen before. This man looked stressed as all hell, but not the work kind; the faint pink on his face let you know it was a different kind of stress.

"Look what you did to me." he said, pointing to his face which was gradually getting hotter at the sight of you. He took the tea out of your hand and placed it on his dresser before grabbing one of your hands. "You need to fix this."

You couldn't help but smile mischievously at him. He was indirectly begging you to fulfill his needs, but you couldn't let him have it that easily.

"I'm confused, what are you asking of me exactly?" your feigned confusion only riled him up more and he was on the verge of being a sputtering mess.

"You-" he paused. "I...need you. Your touch."

"My touch?" you asked, walking closer to him and feeling his grip loosen just a little bit.

"The heat that comes from your hands. It...felt nice. And the way you looked at me that day has been occupying my mind since."

You tried not to show it on your face how in utter shock you were at his confession. He looked away before speaking again.

"Please." he whispered as he briefly closed his eyes. His quiet plea was louder than anything he's ever said to you in all the time you've known him.

With no time wasted, you grabbed his jaw and kissed him, feeling him stiffen from getting startled before melting into your touch (no pun intended).

Pushing him to sit on the bed, you had never seen a man like him just look so...submissive. And the fact that it was Bi Han, because of you, had you thinking your life was complete.

His bun came undone and let his hair flow free. You softly grabbed the back of his head and massaged his hair, letting him feel the heat emitting from your palms. With the other hand you undid his belt and there it was. His bare body before you, and his dick half flaccid.

One grab at the base nearly made him fall limp. Your warm hands caressing his hair and shaft was likely the trick to make him cum right here right now. It didn't take long for that feeling to swell up inside of him, making him harden way faster than he expected.

"Look at me." you demanded, watching his eyes flutter open. If his cheeks weren't a deep red before, they sure are now. The pace of your hand quickened, but not too much to watch the friction. "You're going to cum when I tell you to. Not beforehand, understood?"

As he nodded you could feel his breath hitching. You never tore your eyes away from his even upon hearing the sound of slick getting louder with every stroke.

"See? I knew you could be a good boy, Bi Han."

He grunted at his senses heightening to the sound of your voice, his name, and being called a good boy all in one. He couldn't hold out for much longer now.

"Please-" he whispered. Nothing like a cold glass of man begging in the afternoon.

"Please what?" you stopped your hand, squeezing around the tip. You reveled in the way it looked like he was about to cry real tears.

"Please- Ah, I'm so close-"

"What do you want me to do about that?"

"Move your hand, fuck-" he started to lose sense of his surroundings as soon as you lightly pulled on his hair. You finally gave in, the look on his face and the utter desperation on display made you hot all over (no pun intended)

You didn't expect a small cracking in his voice to appear. With this you only egged him on further to express just how good you make him feel.

"Cum."

And that is exactly what he did. The moment he started to get loud you covered his mouth with the hand that was in his hair. Did you ever think you'd hear Bi Han whimper and sniffle just from your warm hand gliding up and down his shaft? No, but it made everything that lead up to this point worth it.

You didn't stop stroking. You couldn't stop. His eyebrows were upturned and he looked like the perfect bottom bitch. If you told anybody about this, albeit you wouldn't dare, nobody would believe you. You had the Grandmaster of the Lin fucking Kuei under your palm, literally.

As he kept cumming from overstimulation, ice crept up to his elbows. It's like he lacked control from the amount of pleasure he received. He definitely needed this to say the least.

He finally calmed down, and you slowed your hand to a stop. Luckily he only got it on his abdomen and not his beloved robe otherwise you wouldn't hear the end of it.

You sat next to his tired form, looking at him from the side and tucking his hair behind his ear.

"You really put the 'sub' in Sub Zero." you said, reaching up to have him face you again. Hesitant at first, you leaned in and gave him a peck on the lips to see his reaction. He just stared at you, but this time his face was relaxed, not a frown line to be found. A smidge of a smile on his face.

"You're cleaning this up."

-

a/n: thanks for reading! my asks are open! <3

[yunarim]

hello! If you can, can you write a head cannon(others are fine) with the femperfect who had an ability to neutralize magic with a simple physical contact? Like the magic will automatically disappear once it makes contact with her so she often wears gloves, and I would like to see the overblots reaction(if you can't do all you can just do malleus ^^) thank you!

yuu can neutralize the use of any kind of magic with a touch.

… ✦ characters : overblot squad … ✦ tags : female reader, books 1-7 major spoilers, hurt/comfort, cursing in leona's and vil's parts, mention of blood in leona's part, jp translation terms (dorm leader, VDC), can be read platonically in all of parts except for vil, idia & esp malleus ones (i imply romantic way tho), me experimenting with the format or something … ✦ song : monochrome frame ⏤ kanon wakeshima … ✦ recommended : light mode [ … ✦ ao3 ]

… ✦ Riddle Rosehearts ┆touching . . . neck ⏤ ✧ Her wearing gloves wasn’t exceptional. They all were, and since Yuu didn’t have her specifically designed dorm uniform, indeed, it was quite common for her to wear gloves. 

⏤ ✧ Riddle would often find her look around before washing hands and taking off her gloves.

⏤ ✧ One day he realized he waited for her to do that and observe if she hid something underneath this accessory item but ended up dispelling his own doubts - her hands were just beautiful. 

“Oh, do you eat this with your hands?” She asked at an unbirthday party, glancing at a pink cupcake on the plate before her. 

“Yes, as a rule. If you’re worrying about getting messy, do not fret. The cupcake doesn't crumble, and Trey made sure the cream isn’t too greasy and doesn’t stick to the fingers.”

Yuu smiled, taking off her gloves and wrapping her fingers around a small cupcake. 

“Woah, such a nice taste! Tell Trey he did well.”

Still, he wondered, what was the mystery shrouded in darkness of her gloves. 

⏤ ✧ Yuu was gentle in her actions, she never judged, smiling tenderly and telling him to take his time and not to rush things. 

⏤ ✧ Unlike a certain duo getting on his nerves.

⏤ ✧ Never in his life felt he so powerful, so authoritative, so… valid. 

⏤ ✧ Something underneath was telling him it wasn’t right to throw insults at her and just… yell like he was a little child, not knowing how to handle his own emotions.

⏤ ✧ Yet maybe he was, calling her insolent and foolish. 

⏤ ✧ She was just a magicless human! Why rush to him, tearing her gloves off her hands and screaming something with such an obstinate gaze fixed on him?

“My goodness, Riddle, come to your senses!”

⏤ ✧ Her touch felt so ephemeral and light on his deadly cold skin, and even though his almost devilishly malevolent grin didn’t scare her, Yuu still bit her lip after Riddle’s phrenetic laughter. 

⏤ ✧ A sudden flash of light made him switch his attention to what happened to him just in a mere second. 

The overflowing power that pounded in his vessels with a burning seething abruptly left him in an instant, devastating his mind and body.

He collapsed, exhausted, to the ground, barely finding the strength to raise a pair of bulging eyes to her and exhale brokenly.

“What did you?.. Huh…”

⏤ ✧ He was at loss for words, not even caring about Trey’s concerns at the moment. 

⏤ ✧ Light flickered on where she touched him, and he welcomed the sensation without realizing it.

“You… you do have magic after all?”

⏤ ✧ One little gentle touch, and all of his enormous powers are gone. So simple yet devastating.

“I would call magic not the fact I neutralized you, but rather…”

She embraced him, welcoming into her tender hug and encouraging him to let all his negative emotions free, and he laughed, hiding his teary eyes in her shoulder.

Maybe she was right, and this was her real magic.

… ✦ Leona Kingscholar ┆touching . . . shoulders ⏤ ✧ He wasn’t surprised that Heartslabyul little tyrant or what do they call him even was defeated with the help of Ramshackle dorm girl.

⏤ ✧ Women are strong. And that’s a rule.

⏤ ✧ But one look at Prefect’s hands got him thinking that maybe she was strong another way. Such hands couldn’t bring harm to anyone, he was sure of it.

⏤ ✧ Her rather adamant gaze on him was such an entertaining sight to witness. 

Leona chuckled when she stepped on his tail. She did apologize for her behavior, of course, but he knew from the very beginning that she wasn’t entirely regretting her actions.  

“I’m really sorry,” her voice was firm, steady and solid enough for him to fix his gaze on her a little longer than he thought he would.

“You aren’t, Prefect.”

“Do I know you?” 

She didn’t. Yet he knew her after what happened, his eyes locked on her hands in an examining way. 

⏤ ✧ A little thought of asking Riddle what the hell is wrong with her hands since no trace of magic was found on her. ⏤ ✧ She was just a normal girl minding her business, and it was supposed to be this way.

⏤ ✧ He wasn’t against her planting flowers when he was around since she remained quiet, her head full of worry because of those little accidents he sabotaged with Ruggie’s help. 

He did know he should stay away from her hands. 

Especially in that state when his own looked so rough, long pointed claws clenching in fists and digging into the palms, scarlet blood mixed with viscous ink trickled down his hands.

⏤ ✧ Such a reckless human being, knowing nothing about his disappointment, rushed to him without any doubt. What a joke. 

⏤ ✧ Even hyenas turned against him, and would she even make any difference? Of course not…

⏤ ✧ He was trying to convince himself he stopped for a mere moment because she was a magicless woman. 

And yet somehow she almost grabbed his hand, claiming he was being unreasonable and unstable and some other pathetic bullshit.

He brushed off her hand, knowing it would do something to him. Something he realized he wasn’t so opposed to accepting when she yelled out his name, this time putting both her hands on his shoulders.

“Do this shit once more and you’ll fucking witness my real wrath, Leona, now calm down!!”

He fell into her embrace, her hands still on his shoulders but not gripping them firmly. She sighed in relief, gently stroking his hair, and smiled.

Shit, Leona thought, laughing to himself and almost craving her warm touch, grabbing her hand and squeezing it, while dust accumulated in a sedimenting cloud was dissolving around them, so no one could really see him being suddenly vulnerable.

She was dangerous. And maybe he liked it.

… ✦ Azul Ashengrotto ┆touching . . . cheeks ⏤ ✧ How curious! A supposed-to-be-magicless human performing miracles with just a little touch! 

⏤ ✧ He thought of depriving her of Ramshackle dormitory first, but now, after she bewitched Riddle and even Leona? No, he couldn’t miss such an opportunity to take her powers. 

⏤ ✧ He could have everything one might dream of in at the snap of a finger, and a siren’s voice, a ballerina’s gracefulness, a mind of greatest’ scientists ⏤ one harmless contract, and a wish could be granted. 

⏤ ✧ And yet Yuu. Girl from another dimension with that always gloved hands of hers. She was such an interesting person to observe. 

He gathered information, oh sure he did, he already had two opponents down thanks to her, and he couldn’t afford being another one himself.

“How about your neutralizing powers?”

“Ha, you wish, mind dealing with overblots then?” 

Oh, Yuu was amusing, indeed, but Azul just knew he would deprive her of her ability one day. Sooner or later. 

⏤ ✧ Despite rejecting his offer and agreeing to do an extremely ridiculous task instead of having her ability deprived, he would still find her in Mostro Lounge, her fingers on the glass full of drink he personally made, her lips gently pressing to its corners. 

⏤ ✧ A tender smile spreading on her face was quite distracting, which Azul wouldn’t ever admit, his gaze fixed on her delicate hands. 

⏤ ✧ She was captivating and it was scaring him. 

Ah, really, foolish humans, knowing about his past and making fun of his own intelligence. 

He was working so hard, but one magicless girl suddenly got all the attention and appreciation he always wanted just because she could neutralize magic with a touch?

Azul thought he hated her at the moment ink was splashing everywhere, drops of tar scattered in splatterings, falling on her clothes as well as her hands, ungloved this time.

Mind dealing with overblots… right? 

Part of him wished she would just touch him and they would be over it, but still he hesitated when she approached carefully, no signs of fear in her eyes. She was truly magnificent. 

“Let me handle this responsibility, Azul,” she said, pressing her fingers to his cheek and caressing it. A flash of light turned him back to normal state, the only difference was him crying and leaning to her touch, as if starved for it. “And you please remain the way you are.”

And he will.

… ✦ Jamil Viper ┆touching . . . hands

⏤ ✧ That Ramshackle dorm girl having an ability to neutralize others’ magic with just a one touch has become an axioma by now. 

⏤ ✧ Having any problem with the amount of magic used? Or maybe overused? Then no need to worry, NRC now had Yuu to handle all that.

⏤ ✧ He couldn’t care less about her, but still found himself thinking he felt sorry for her. He didn’t wonder how it felt to be the one everyone relies on when it’s hard, but other times forgot you exist. He knew it by heart.

… Huh. Or maybe not?

“You should give yourself more credit, you’re doing excellent. Always remember it,” she said to him one day, her fingers clasping around his wrist reassuringly.

An electrical impulse ran down his whole hand, a sudden warmth spreading in his vessels.

He chuckled, a small knife cut didn’t bother him at all. Why would she say it so unexpectedly thoughtfully to him when she stayed in Scarabia? 

Everything in his plan was perfect, and yet her words distracted him for a moment. He was too preoccupied with his own feelings and conflicted emotions to handle her… care?

⏤ ✧ No way. It was not her ability he secretly admired for being so helpful. It was her shrewdness and the way she saw people through. 

⏤ ✧ Did she feel he was about to do something malicious and not so praise worthy? Otherwise why would she say such things to him? 

⏤ ✧ There was no way she genuinely cared for his well-being.

He couldn’t remember when was the last time his emotions were so tangled and complicated so that he couldn’t sort them out. Snakes aimed right at her hands she was reaching to him weren’t scary, and even the way he smirked when her attempt to touch him failed didn’t cause her to stop. 

A small part of him wanted her words to be true but he knew all the things she said were a mere mendacity to fool him. 

“You’re not someone else’s shadow, Jamil.”

He pushed her hard enough for her to fall on her knees before him. His anger spread in the ink splashing everywhere, but she remained her gaze fixed on him nevertheless.

He thought that maybe… maybe it was worthy to believe her.

He chuckled when he outstretched his hand to be shaken himself, and Yuu smiled at him, taking his hand in her.

… ✦ Vil Schoenheit ┆touching . . . eyelids

⏤ ✧ Good for Yuu she still managed to control her own psyche by dealing with so many splashes of demolished emotions in such a short amount of time.

⏤ ✧ Still, Ramshackle Prefect was complicated to him. Vil genuinely thought there was something wrong with his sudden desire to take care of her.

⏤ ✧ She was close to being perfect by now, despite having those horrible eye bags appeared because of sleepless nights she took helping Azul with arranging new drinks in the menu and all the times Vil caught her excusing herself during their VDC rehearsals in order to check on Leona or Riddle or whoever she kept an eye on after overblotting.

Yuu was wonderful, truly. But instead of appreciating herself she preferred to praise everyone else.

And Vil wasn’t an exception.

“You’re a lifesaver,” she giggled when he bent towards her face to apply a concealer. “A true hero, really.”

Hero?.. He? Ah, Prefect, what were you saying? 

He sighed, taking her hands in his and asking whether he could take off her gloves or not as she nodded, allowing him to apply a hand cream on her skin. What a pleasant feeling…

“Even if you’re a manager, you’re still our representative. No way you would show up on stage with these eye bags of yours. And what did I tell you about having some sleep before VDC? You really…”

She smiled, saying something about having a bad feeling before going to sleep. How truly discerning she was at that very moment. 

⏤ ✧ He couldn’t be a hero, at least her hero, when he chuckled so maliciously at her attempt to reach for him. Now no one could, he was fairest of them all, outshining especially her.  

⏤ ✧ He applied a curse on her which restrained her from touching him ever so slightly, and that would be it until he willingly allowed it. He believed in his strong volition, but still…

“Every hero has their moment when they have a whole world turned against them, Vil,” she said demandingly, almost choking on the dark fog coming off from Vil’s body. “And since when do you act as if you’re such a mediocre character! Where’s Vil who would step on everyone and slay as a fucking queen you really are!!”

He laughed genuinely at her wording, not noticing her getting up from her knees after being blown away with the magic wave he created, and pulled him closer by a translucent veil, pressing a gentle kiss on his eyelids.

“I would prefer cheek instead, thank you,” he chuckled, light sparklets surrounding him. “You ruined my makeup.”

“You also ruined a whole stage, but okay.”

… ✦ Idia Shroud ┆touching . . . forehead

⏤ ✧ The one who Idia wanted to avoid the most was none other than Ramshackle Prefect.

⏤ ✧ All eyes were on her by now, and that meant he would rather die than talk to her.

⏤ ✧ If not only the whole STYX demanded him to get in touch with her in order to get the data regarding her ability, gather info on how her powers work, otherwise she would be taken by force and…

⏤ ✧ He DIDN’T want all of those at all!! She already swept every SSR character off their feet already, and now interacting with him? What the hell!

⏤ ✧ Ugh, not him actually spotting her trying to beat the boss in a PSP game. Where in the world did she find a working PSP even? 

⏤ ✧ Her fingers were clicking furiously on the buttons… those were the hands that dealt with five overblots? Unbelievable.

⏤ ✧ Unbelievably pretty⏤ WHAAH he didn’t want to even think about her that way what the!!

⏤ ✧ Idia was avoiding her like the plague. Even after all things happening at STYX he still preferred to listen to others’ complaints and oh whatsoever important rather than facing her, but his responsibilities came first above everything.

And when he thought it would be hard to convince her to do some tests in order to analyze the data received from them she willingly agreed, smiling at him like it was nothing.

“Okay, but help me with beating that boss later,” she sighed, rubbing her temples with her fingers. Idia wondered whether her ability was helping her herself. “I’m going crazy right here.”

“U-ugh, f-fine… It’s not even t-that hard tho…”

“It is!” She protested, turning to him and witnessing pinkish hue flaming on his hair. “It’s just you’re too good. I admire you for that.”

⏤ ✧ Nononono he wouldn’t fall into that trap, he already heard enough about her being so unnecessarily nice!!

⏤ ✧ Shit. He fell, and fell hard.

Why would deny her touch when he would make her try doing it at least? He had cool armor, he was floating midair. She couldn’t even hear him properly when Vil appeared before her, covering her with his back and demanding her stay behind. 

It was normal for him to behave that way. Covering himself in a darkness where nobody could reach for him, and yet Yuu could somehow. He jolted for a second when she yelled at him, telling Vil to step aside. 

She still couldn’t touch him. He wanted to believe that no one could, but somehow the image of her fingers clicking on a game console popped up in his mind, causing his heart to skip a beat shamelessly. He was so pathetic and⏤

“I thought you would help me beat the boss, Idia, not me helping you beat the shit out of yourself!!” 

She was insane for asking Epel to take the chariot and fly over to him, then leaning towards him and trying to touch him. She grabbed his armor, hissing under her breaths while he wasn’t getting her actions at all, trying to cover himself from her. From the rest of the world.

“Fine then! If you’re the final boss I should beat, then so be it!”

No, why was her face being so close to his, that’s bad!! 

His mind blew completely after Yuu pressed her lips to his bare forehead and threw him onto the chariot.

“Did I manage? Will you help me now then? Hehe.”

“Sh-shut up!!”

“Make me.”

Note: never ever piss Yuu off again. (Well maybe just a little because she was so hot ahem⏤)

… ✦ Malleus Draconia ┆touching . . . lips

⏤ ✧ Yuu was a rather peculiar child of man. Wielding no magic powers, and yet Malleus felt something in her from the very beginning. 

⏤ ✧ First he observed her when she was busy renovating the Ramshackle garden, she seemed so peaceful and collected, humming something under her breath.

⏤ ✧ He would bring her flowers every night without her noticing only to find her bringing blankets and a container with a hot tea in it and spending a whole night waiting for something… or rather someone to come.

⏤ ✧ “A stranger who brings me bouquets every night, please let me know you’re here. It’s quite cold outside.” She said one night, her gaze fixed on green sparkletts floating around her. 

⏤ ✧ Next day he appeared before her, placing a flower crown he made on her head. Small gypsophila flowers intertwined with scarlet zinnias, decorating her delicate image.

⏤ ✧ “Ah really, why would you appear only now. With such a pleasant gesture even! Wait for a moment then.”

She gathered some flowers she had grown by herself, then took her gloves off and did another flower crown for him personally. Something fluttered in his chest the moment she touched his horns, smiling softly, and laughed with her clear sweet voice, recoiling after decorating his head with a flower crown.

His heart was pounding in his chest, his whole body shuddered at her touch, and in that moment he knew he was close to making a deal with the devil so that the lingering feeling of her fingers would never leave him.

“Would you mind teaching me how to make those? I guess I’m pretty bad…”

He chuckled, admitting he never felt something so pleasant and light before, as if her whole body was radiating something celestial, her hands feeling absolutely pristine and divine.

⏤ ✧ Every night they met she would tell him stories about what happened to her. So many students overblotting, and yet… The way she stuttered for a moment every time she mentioned overblots was confusing to him as if she wasn’t telling something really important. 

⏤ ✧ He wanted to trust her nevertheless. She was tender in the way she looked at him, glimpses of happiness blossoming in her eyes every time he appeared in the garden, welcoming her gently. 

⏤ ✧ He craved her touch, the image of her putting a flower crown on his head still lingered in his mind, never fading nor dissolving, remaining the most precious memory of her.

“You never fail to impress me, child of man,” he said once during VDC right after Vil overblotted and he arrived.

“How come, Tsunotarou?” he laughed at how astonished others were at you calling him by that silly nickname. 

“Witnessing you have no fear towards me is truly a blessing.”

She smiled at him then, her cheeks slightly dusted with a beautiful pinkish hue. 

“Having you as my dearest friend is a blessing too!”

⏤ ✧ Friend…?

⏤ ✧ Right, friend. And what friends are needed for? 

⏤ ✧ Apparently, Malleus thought Yuu would be delighted to see him putting everyone in a sleeping state. If he can’t be someone even dearer to her, then he would be her most devoted guardian.

⏤ ✧ She resembled a fairy, telling him about her tremendous adventures, so it would be natural for him to tell her a fairy tale in return.

“Do not resist the temptation, child of man.”

His voice, so alluring and somnolent, enveloped her, her eyelids feeling leaden. He was standing right in front of her, looking at how her body trembled under his enticing enchantment. He knew by now he shouldn’t touch her, even though her eyes told him otherwise, begging to lean to her.

“Although it would be interesting to fall under your spell and feel that divine feeling, please allow me to grant you with a happy ending you truly deserve.”

“You… never asked me… what kind of ending I truly want…” Her voice was fading, and she could barely stand at that moment, but Malleus knew.

If she takes one step closer, that would be the end for him. 

So she did, thorns enveloping her, but she managed to grab Malleus by his clothes somehow, her face being extremely close to his, his astonished gaze fixed on her, blurry and sorrowful.

“Perhaps a true love kiss would wake you up from this dream, Malleus.”

She pressed her lips to his, tenderly whispering those words and smiling through the kiss when a bright light surrounded them. 

Malleus picked up her exhausted body, oblivious to the dissipation of his own magic, and looked at her worriedly, ignoring the slowly awakening students.

“Ugh… don’t underestimate me. You still haven’t taught me how to make pretty flower crowns.”

And she was right. “Indeed. That’s the least I can do for showing me the ending I truly do adore.”

⏤ ☆ notes : omg thx for requesting!! i got carried away in malleus part (a little bit.... kinda... forgive me for that) but still i hope you like it! ~

⏤ ☆ tag list : @isacoremeow

© yushiiae 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝. 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭, 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲, 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐲, 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐨𝐰𝐧.

[crimsonstonetranslations]

Shinrei Tantei Yakumo Another Files - The Dead’s Wish - file 03

Shinrei Tantei Yakumo novel translation

Another Files - The Dead’s Wish

( file 01 | file 02 ) file 03 - the spirit's wish

- 1

- With full concentration, Sakamoto Eiji stared intently at his editing work across the computer screen.

He was in the movie circle’s room at the clubroom building. It had been a tradition of the movie circle Eiji was in to showcase the film they made in the campus festival.

This time, Eiji as a fourth year student had been appointed as the director and was producing a horror film. The story told of a group of men and women—four people in total—who had gone to an abandoned hospital for a test of courage and had accidentally encountered something not of this world. It had been filmed through a camera held by one of the cast members to give the composition a documentary feel.

Although some had mockingly pointed out that similar works had existed before, Eiji didn’t think that was the case. This was his own original work. He too acknowledged that there had been films with a similar format. However, Eiji hadn’t come up with his idea from watching those. Hence, those people had no reason to mock or complain about it. Besides, Eiji felt very confident about his work this time.

He hadn’t secured a job and would likely end up unemployed once he graduated from the university. His friends would have been panicking in such a situation, but Eiji was different. He was confident that his work would win if showcased at the student film festival. If that were the case, surely film companies wouldn’t turn their backs on Eiji. He would be entrusted to direct a major film and his name would rise to fame.

Afterwards, it wouldn’t be so bad if he were to get caught in a romantic encounter with a popular actress. As Eiji was smiling to himself, his junior, Daichi, who was assisting his editing said, “Feels like something strange got caught on camera just now.”

Daichi was a third year student, but he hadn’t joined the movie circle right as he entered the university. He had only become a member roughly half a year prior. Apparently he had been aiming for film-related jobs, so he wanted to obtain some kind of award or achievement in the movie circle.

No new students had joined the circle this year, so Daichi became the target of being ordered around. “What something?” Eiji asked back as he glanced behind at Daichi.

“I think I saw some kind of noise...” “It’s just your imagination.”

A mere dogsbody like you shouldn’t talk so much, Eiji swore in silence before resuming his editing. The monitor flashed a scene of four people—the men and women as they arrived at the hospital—walking as they gleefully conversed with one another. 

Even so, only three people had been captured by the camera. The other person had been holding the camera to record his friends. A warm scene unfitting for a horror film, but this would only add to the richness of the film.

It would help intensify the terrors that they were about to experience. Ssshhh.

Noise suddenly appeared on the monitor. Eiji rewound the video slightly to examine the scene once again.

A noise was indeed present. “What is this?”

Clicking his tongue, Eiji momentarily paused the video. The footage was now unusable because of this noise. He had no choice but to do a retake. But if he were to do that now, the film wouldn’t make it in time for the campus festival.

“So there was noise after all,” said Daichi arrogantly. “You weren’t talking about this scene earlier, though?”

“Well, that’s true...” ”Geez.”

Eiji grew annoyed, but a brilliant idea suddenly appeared in his mind. He didn’t have to retake the scene. Simply treat this noise as intentional. Pretend that the camera hadn’t functioned properly due to a spiritual presence.

“This isn’t so bad,” said Eiji. Daichi tilted his head dumbfoundedly. “What isn’t?”

“So, it’s as if we purposely added the noise to add to the film’s atmosphere,” Eiji explained. The presence of the noise would make the film more real, adding to its terrifying feel. He could add more noise into other scenes as well.

Who would’ve thought he could come up with something like this. He really was a genius after all. Yet after hearing his explanation, Daichi still didn’t fully understand and his dumbfounded look remained.

That was just the person he was. After all, he had joined the circle solely to get achievements. He couldn’t see the potential like Eiji could. If people like him grew in numbers, perhaps the term Yutori Seidai[1] would be used more commonly.

Eiji gave up elaborating any further and went back to editing. However, as he watched the subsequent footage, Eiji couldn’t believe his eyes.

His monitor became pitch black, before repeatedly playing a scene he didn’t remember shooting. It wasn’t shot at a hospital either, but instead showed a railway crossing that seemed to be one near the campus.

“W-what is this…?” said Eiji unknowingly. “I wonder what...” asked Daichi, tilting his head.

“I don’t recall shooting any footage like this. What’s the scene after this?” urged Eiji. “E-even if you ask me, I don’t know,” said Daichi fearfully.

Had someone shot this footage and overwritten his own? What a horrible joke. All his hard work had turned to dust. “Hey, do something!” Eiji yelled, when the lights suddenly went out.

“What? What happened?” Even the computer monitor was shut off. Perhaps the fuse had gone out.

“Daichi, go check it out.” What awful timing at a crucial time like this. How incredibly annoying.

“Y-yes,” answered Daichi before tripping on something with an ‘ouch’ as he walked away. Amidst the darkness, the phone on the table began to vibrate from an incoming call.

The screen displayed ‘restricted’. Although suspicious, Eiji answered the call.

“Hello?” Clanging sounds could be heard from the other side of the call, together with the alarm sound signifying a train crossing.

“Hello? Who is this?” called Eiji. Suddenly, the sounds of the train crossing stopped.

<H…help me…> The terrifying voice that came out of nowhere made Eiji reflexively throw his phone away.

It had been a woman’s whimper. Eiji held his breath and looked at his phone that had fallen on the floor. He had no intention in the slightest to pick it up.

He hoped the lights would come back soon, but there was no sign of that happening. As time passed, his anxiety grew ever increasingly, and his heart wouldn’t calm down.

Eiji put all his concentration into his trembling throat and yelled, “Oi! Daichi! How is it?” Yet there was no answer.

What is he doing? Eiji converted his fear into anger towards Daichi to hold himself together.

But—the next second, something touched his nape. Something cold.

I mustn’t look—he should’ve thought, but for some reason, Eiji turned his head as if drawn by something. An eerily pale hand with prominent, dark veins.

It was that of a woman. The hand curled around his neck.

“Stop! S-stop it!” Eiji screamed through tears. The hand violently strangled his neck with no mercy. Until Eiji finally couldn’t let out a sound anymore.

His vision blurred— Between his wavering consciousness, Eiji could hear the voice of a woman.

Help me. -

2 -

“A cursed video?” said Haruka in surprise. She thought it was some kind of joke as the choice of words made it sound like the title of a horror film. However, Fujimoto Asami, who sat across from her, didn’t look like she was joking.

Her widened eyes signified the terrified look on her face. Haruka was swallowed by the intensity of it, the chatter of the bustling cafeteria as lunch hour approached felt like they were drifting away.

“That’s right. It has to be a cursed video,” said Asami again, gritting her teeth. Asami, a student from the same seminar as Haruka, had reached out to her to discuss something.

As the campus festival drew near, Haruka had thought it was probably to discuss romance or the like, so she had casually agreed. Yet, the words that had come out of Asami’s mouth had been entirely unexpected to her.

“I’m saying, it has to be a cursed video. Right?” said Asami, turning to the female student sitting beside her. It was Haruka’s first time meeting her. She was Asami’s friend, Natsuki. Since earlier, Natsuki had kept looking down and had a gloomy aura completely opposite of Asami.

In confusion, Natsuki responded, “Y-yes. I think so as well.” The two seemed convinced, but Haruka still didn’t understand.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Haruka. “This—”

Asami took out a transparent plastic box from her bag. Inside was some kind of DVD or Blu-ray disc. “What’s this?”

“I'm telling you, this is the cursed video,” said Asami, annoyed. “Ah, I see,” replied Haruka vaguely.

“What’s with that anticlimactic reaction?” said Asami with an exasperated tone, but it couldn’t be helped that Haruka reacted that way. She couldn’t immediately believe the existence of a cursed video, and besides, she didn’t understand what Asami was trying to get across.

Even so, Asami was normally a composed person. To become impatient and irritable like this, something serious had to have happened. “Could you please explain what’s actually going on?” Haruka asked Asami in a pleading tone.

Asami seemed to have realised that she had jumped into things. She then drew a long breath and said, “Actually, there’s an upperclassman in my circle called Sakamoto-san…” “What circle are you in?”

“The movie circle.” “Eh?” blurted Haruka in surprise.

“Do you really have to be that surprised?” asked Asami, and Haruka hurriedly shook her head. Haruka had misunderstood for a second. Asami was a member of the movie circle. While Yakumo was a member of the Movie Research Circle.

The university was filled with circles and associations that shared similar names. She had heard before that there were even five different snowboarding circles. “Sorry. So, what does the movie circle do?”

“We produce films.” “I see.”

If their activities were producing films instead of watching and critiquing them, then their circle was vastly different from the Movie Research Circle where Yakumo was. Well, Haruka wasn’t certain whether Yakumo even watched films, let alone critiqued them. “Then, recently we’ve been shooting a film to be showcased at the campus festival.”

“Amazing. Is Asami directing?” “No. The director is the upperclassman I mentioned earlier, Sakamoto-san. I merely helped with the audio recording and made some appearances in the film.”

“You’re in the film!?” “There’s no need to talk about that,” Asami immediately responded, sounding irritated.

Indeed, Haruka was getting sidetracked. “Apologies, please continue.” “Anyway, when we examined the footage we shot, something strange was captured on camera.”

“Something strange?” “Yes. I can’t put it into words very well, but it was really terrifying...”

“Terrifying?” “From what I heard, Sakamoto-san first saw it while editing. Afterwards, the lights suddenly went out and a female ghost appeared...”

Listening to the story thus far, Haruka finally understood what Asami wanted to discuss. For some reason, rumours had gone around that Haruka was knowledgeable about the supernatural.

Thanks to that, people had often approached her to consult about anything spiritual. Asami had to be one of them as well. It was true that Haruka had experienced a number of spiritual phenomena and had been a witness to the closure of those incidents. However, that was about as far as her involvement had gone.

The true person behind the closure of said cases was Saitou Yakumo. She had tried to clarify many times, but in the end they would always say, “In that case, Haruka, please ask for that person’s help.”

She could simply refuse them, but Haruka was weak to being pleaded to and it had become a bad habit of hers. In the end, she’d easily make promises to them. “Sakamoto-san became terrified and stopped coming to the circle ever since. Other members had mixed reactions, but the other day we decided to actually watch this DVD—” Asami continued her story with no regard for Haruka’s feelings.

“Uh-huh.” “Then—strange images that were never recorded appeared. That wouldn’t be a problem by itself, but the lights suddenly went out and everything became pitch black…and afterwards...” said Asami, giving a pause.

While it was mere seconds in reality, Haruka felt like it lasted for eternity. “In the room, a female ghost...” said Asami, covering her face with both hands.

She must be recalling that very scene. In that position, what sounded like sobs could be heard from Asami. The weather wasn’t cold, yet her body was shivering slightly.

It must’ve been a terrifying experience for her. “Are you alright?” consoled Haruka, placing a hand on Asami’s shoulder.

“This has to be a cursed video. I’m begging…please help me...” Asami lowered her hands and gazed towards Haruka.

Her eyes were wet from the tears that welled out of fear. Haruka turned to look at Natsuki. She looked terrified as well.

Yakumo wouldn’t be pleased, but Haruka wouldn’t be so cruel as to abandon them, having been met with such expressions. -

3 -

“Yakumo-kun, this is terrible, terrible—” Haruka roughly opened the door to the Movie Research Circle clubroom.

“What are you, Hachibee?” said Yakumo. He sat on his usual spot with a displeased look and stared at Haruka with languid eyes, as if freshly awakened. “Hachibee?” Haruka asked in return.

Yakumo ran a hand through his tangled hair and let out a long sigh. “The character that appeared in the period drama Mitokoumon. One that made a ruckus saying ‘terrible, terrible’ whilst bringing about trouble.” “Aah.”

Having mentioned that, such a character probably did exist. “You bring nothing but trouble and are good for nothing; truly just like Hachibee.”

“Ugh,” Haruka groaned. Though annoyed, it was true that she was good for nothing, so she couldn’t deny that fact.

“Stop getting into unnecessary trouble, quickly get rid of it,” said Yakumo, swaying his hand as if shooing her away. “Even if you say that…”

Lethargically, Haruka sat on the chair in front of Yakumo. She couldn't simply ignore Asami and her friend just like that.

“Besides, you’re getting in too much trouble recently.” “It’s not like I enjoy getting myself involved in trouble.”

“I don’t think that was the case.” “Eh?”

“This is the third time this week, you know. Impossible for this much trouble to come on its own if it wasn’t for you gathering them.” Yakumo lifted three of his fingers and aimed it at Haruka.

It was true that Haruka had brought in quite the amount of trouble recently. If Yakumo were to run a business as a detective specialising in spiritual cases, then she would have become a reliable assistant bringing in new cases. Unfortunately, Yakumo was merely a university student.

His displeasure over being brought two, three cases a week was perfectly understandable. Haruka understood that, but it was in her character not to sit still and ignore others in struggle.

“At least listen to the story first, can’t you?” Haruka observed Yakumo’s face.

Yakumo withdrew his body backwards as if evading her and clicked his tongue. While a little forceful, Haruka took that as an agreement and began explaining.

“There’s a cursed video—” said Haruka. Yakumo instantly shook his head from disbelief. “Are you stupid?”

“Why am I suddenly getting called stupid?” “This isn’t a horror movie, do you really think something as suspicious as a cursed video truly existed?”

Yakumo’s reaction couldn’t be helped. Haruka didn’t believe it at first either. But— “This is true. Watching this video would make a ghost appear. My friend became terrified at the thought that something might happen after...” Haruka placed the encased DVD lent by Asami on the table.

After glaring at the aforementioned DVD as if spotting a cockroach, Yakumo threw a condescending look at Haruka. “Have you watched the contents of this DVD?”

“Not yet,” Haruka shook her head. She came here right after hearing Asami’s story, so there was no way she had already watched it.

“So it isn’t confirmed whether a ghost would truly appear upon watching this.” “That is true…”

“If you haven’t confirmed it, then you shouldn’t have been able to conclude its certainty.” “Well, I guess so...”

“Even if the ghost were to appear as we watched it, we don’t know what kind of curse it is.” “What do you mean?” Haruka tilted her head.

“You don’t even know such a thing?” “Yeah.”

“Turns out the word stupid isn’t even enough to describe you,” Propping his chin with one hand, Yakumo threw a condescending gaze at Haruka. Even being looked at in such a manner wouldn’t make her understand what she did not.

“What are you trying to say?” “Has anyone who saw the ghost met with any danger?”

“That…” Apparently the upperclassman named Sakamoto had stopped coming to the circle, but that was all. She hadn’t heard of anything else.

“Nothing happened, yet they believed this video was cursed? Don’t you think they were rushing to that conclusion?” Yakumo was right.

The ghost had merely appeared and nothing else had happened. “But, if we waited for something to actually happen, wouldn’t it be too late?”

Putting off handling certain issues may only cause the situation to become more serious. Such an example would be stalker murder cases that happened as of late.

Haruka often heard of devastating cases in which the victim had already made a report to the police, yet the police had taken no action, getting the victim killed in the end. As Haruka made that argument, Yakumo’s expression grew visibly displeased.

“You’re trying to say this ghost might curse someone to death, is that it?” said Yakumo, his tone full of hostility. “Perhaps something like that will happen.”

“All this time, what have you seen?” asked Yakumo, clicking his tongue. “What do you mean?”

“Ghosts cursing humans to death? It’s impossible,” Yakumo firmly denied. That was true.

Panic had made Haruka forget an important point. Although currently concealed with a black contact lens, Yakumo’s left eye was actually a bright shade of red.

It wasn’t just red in colour, the eye allowed him to see the spirits of the dead—in other words, ghosts. Yakumo had solved a myriad of spiritual cases by putting that ability into use. Yakumo, who had always been able to see ghosts, defined them as clusters of feelings of people who had passed, according to his own experience.

Because of that, he didn’t think ghosts were capable of exerting physical influence. Ghosts cursing humans to their deaths was something that could never possibly happen.

Even though Haruka had witnessed that fact firsthand, she had gotten shaken from having seen Asami so deeply frightened. “So this isn’t a cursed video?”

“It would be right to think that way.” Yakumo folded his arms and nodded firmly.

He must’ve been trying to say not to overreact just because a ghost had appeared. Coming from Yakumo’s perspective who had always been able to see ghosts, it wasn’t hard to see why he would think so. “But…in that case, what should be done?”

Judging from Asami’s terrified state, she probably wouldn’t be convinced even if Haruka tried to explain. “That isn’t my problem,” said Yakumo without a care.

Against such indifference, Haruka had nothing to reply. She wasn’t confident about it, but there seemed to be no other option than to explain things to Asami. -

4 -

Having been kicked from Yakumo’s room, Haruka tried to contact Asami. However, only the dialling tone could be heard; no one was picking up, nor was there any reply from the answering machine.

She had no choice but to leave a message with the subject of wanting to discuss the spiritual phenomenon. After sending the message, a thought came to her mind.

She might not be Yakumo, but she wouldn’t be able to explain things to Asami without knowing the contents of this DVD. Haruka decided to pay a visit to the campus library.

In the library there were booths with DVD players in them. She planned to watch it there. Haruka could’ve just watched it at home, but Asami might get in touch with her, so it would be better for her to stay around the campus area. Furthermore, while Yakumo had said there wasn’t any curse, she still didn’t want to watch it alone in an enclosed room.

There had to be other people in the library, so she didn’t need to be scared. Luckily, a booth in the corner was unoccupied.

Haruka sat on the chair within the booth. The monitor was a mere seventeen inches, but that shouldn’t be a problem as she just wanted to check the contents. Haruka plugged the earphones into her ears and placed the DVD on the tray before pressing the play button.

The first image displayed was of the students preparing for their shoot in the vicinity of an abandoned building. A man who appeared to be the director spewed out instructions one after another with an arrogant tone. This person had to be the movie circle’s upperclassman, Sakamoto.

Haruka spotted Asami’s figure in the middle of reading the script. Moments later, the scene changed.

This one captured a man and two women, one Asami and the other Natsuki. “Ready, action!” said a man’s voice who was probably Sakamoto’s.

Along with that, Asami, Natsuki, and the man began to walk whilst conversing. The hand holding the camera followed after them. The image was shaky and difficult to watch, to the point that it made Haruka feel nauseous.

“W-what on earth?!” shouted Asami in surprise as she pointed at the stained walls of the hospital. Her acting couldn’t remotely be considered good, even if to put it nicely.

“What? What is it?!” The man holding the camera responded, and ran towards the spot Asami had pointed to zoom in closer. A cursed straw doll laid there, its body punctured with a long nail.

The group screamed in unison. Haruka was merely watching the footage, yet her head hurt for some reason.

Apparently the concept of the story had been that one of the four people happened to be filming with a camera on his hand. However, their acting had been way too obvious, rendering it unentertaining to watch. On top of that, the zoom in had been too intentional and over exaggerated that Haruka ended up laughing.

Perhaps the footage had been shaken on purpose to make it feel more realistic. Even so, the shaking had been over the top as if shot whilst riding a jet coaster, that any viewer would be nauseous. Haruka was relieved at the fact that she was watching with a small monitor. If it had been a large one, she might not be able to stand watching it.

More importantly, she felt like she had watched a similar film before. A horror film with a documentary style just like this one had gained popularity a while back, and it was as if this film was trying to copy it.

Haruka wanted to click the pause button, but she shook her head and reconsidered. She wasn’t watching to enjoy the film’s content. Rather, she did so to confirm the spiritual phenomenon.

Afterwards, Haruka regained her focus and a few scenes continued with a similar pattern. As she began to think the film was going to end just like that, noise suddenly appeared on the monitor.

Straightening her back, Haruka intently watched the monitor. The noise gradually spread larger, until the monitor eventually hissed like a sandstorm.

Moments as she thought the display would remain in that state, the noise vanished. A railway crossing appeared on the monitor.

Clang, clang— Sounds of the railway crossing echoed through.

The flashing red light warning the incoming train stirred up her anxiety. The railway crossing scene continued for some time before the monitor suddenly went black.

Haruka thought the film was over, but that wasn’t it. The blackness slowly thinned out over time.

Not long after, something emerged amidst the darkness. A human figure.

It seemed to be a woman dressed in white. The woman laid in a place that looked like a coffin.

She had a youthful appearance. Her eyes were closed, unmoving. While she had a thin layer of makeup on, one could tell she was extremely pale underneath.

Is she dead? As Haruka questioned that fact, the scene changed once more.

This time it depicted a street. People came and went throughout the nighttime crowd. What is this?

The scene switched yet again, now displaying the same railway crossing as earlier. Clang, clang—sounded the alarm.

Alongside the flashing warning light, a woman’s face appeared on and off across the entire monitor. The monitor returned to black.

Is it over? Haruka thought before a voice could be heard. “Help me...”

At the sound of a woman’s hoarse voice, something cold ran through Haruka’s back.  “Hyaa!” yelped Haruka as she stood up. The earphones on her ears slipped out and fell.

Her heartbeat went through the roof. Sweat dribbled on her forehead, and she struggled to breathe.

Haruka understood then. It wasn’t surprising that Asami had declared this to be a cursed video upon watching, as it was indeed that terrifying. Even so—

No ghost had appeared as Asami had claimed. Maybe they had been mistaken after all?

As Haruka was about to take the DVD out of the tray, something cold touched her nape. It was different from the wind. Almost like something was actually touching her.

Haruka wanted to turn around when a voice could be heard in her ear. “Please...stop it already...”

Haruka briefly thought the voice came from the DVD. However, her earphones had come off when she had stood up earlier. She glanced at her surroundings, but there was no one in sight.

Was that a ghost just now? Confused and scared, Haruka could only stand still in place.

- 5

- Haruka returned home with a heavy heart.

She couldn’t get the video she had just watched out of her thoughts. Its contents were incomprehensible, but that only made it plague her mind further.

After seeing the video, she had tried to contact Yakumo, yet her call hadn’t gone through. She had also tried to visit the Movie Research Circle clubroom, but Yakumo hadn’t been there. Even if they had met, chances were she’d only be treated as a troublemaker and chased away. Despite that, Haruka was certain her fears would’ve diminished by speaking to Yakumo.

By hearing a logical explanation, her thoughts would become organised, and just by talking to Yakumo, her feelings would grow lighter. How miraculous, even though she was convinced she would only be mocked upon.

There was no use having those thoughts now. She would visit Yakumo again tomorrow and ask him to watch this video footage. If Yakumo were to declare that she had been mistaken, she would be relieved.

Haruka headed for the bathroom for a change of atmosphere. After taking a shower and a hot bath, that scene would surely leave her mind. Unfortunately, her expectations were entirely wrong.

While washing her hair, she felt a hand reaching for her from behind. Even whilst submerged in the tub, she ended up sensing a person’s reflection on the mirror.

Being inside a cramped, closed area while defenceless made her anxious. In the end, Haruka escaped and ran out of the bathroom.

And even as she was drying her hair after a change of clothes, she was constantly worrying about her back. Asami must have felt the same.

Haruka turned the television to a louder volume than usual. She had just sat down on the bed when her phone rang. It was from Asami—

“Hello?” As soon as she picked up the call, Haruka could hear Asami’s gut-wrenching cries. <Help me!>

“What’s wrong?” <It really was a curse after all. Haruka, please do something!>

Asami’s voice was clearly trembling from fear. “Hold on. Keep yourself together. What happened?”

<Sakamoto-san...he...> “What about him?”

<H-he disappeared!> said Asami between sobs. “Disappeared? What do you mean?”

If Haruka were to panic herself, she wouldn’t be able to grasp the situation. She tried her best to question her calmly. <I’m telling you, Sakamoto-san disappeared,> said Asami restlessly.

“He wasn’t locking himself in his room out of fear of ghosts?” Asami had explained so at first.

<That was what I thought. But I was wrong. We went to his place together earlier, yet his house was unlocked...then, we couldn’t find him anywhere...> “Maybe he was just away for the moment?”

<His wallet and phone were left inside the room!> If that were the case, rather than being away, people would be led to believe that he had disappeared.

Not only had his door been unlocked, his phone and wallet had been left inside the room; however clumsy a person could be, it was abnormal. Despite that, it felt exaggerated to claim that he had disappeared due to a curse solely based on this much information.

“Perhaps he was only out for a short while and would come back soon?” suggested Haruka, but even she felt she was pushing that theory. Unsurprisingly, Asami denied in an instant. <That’s not it!>

“But…” <We waited for an hour in his room, but he never returned!>

Things were only getting stranger. “Then, police...”

<I had the same thought initially, that’s why I went home first. But it’s right there!> “What is?”

<That ghost. It stood in front of my house and stared intently across my window. Sakamoto-san must’ve been dragged by that ghost as well,> said Asami hurriedly. It appeared that Asami had panicked because the ghost had appeared in front of her house after Sakamoto’s disappearance.

She must’ve thought that she was about to be taken away next. “Anyway, contact the police first. I’ll quickly head over there too,” Haruka briefly said before she ended the call, put a jacket on, and left the house.

She knew she couldn’t do much even by going there. Nevertheless, she could at least calm Asami down. Besides, rather than trembling by herself at a time like this, her feelings should improve with the company of another.

The last time Haruka had visited Asami’s place had nearly been a year ago. Even so, she still roughly remembered the location. Her body shivered from the cold night air as she rushed towards Asami’s place.

Asami’s apartment was situated in the inner parts of a quiet road. The structure was rather old and while it used an automatic lock, the building had no security cameras. Haruka pressed the doorbell to Asami’s place through the intercom at the building’s entrance.

Yet there was no answer. Strange.

Haruka contacted Asami with her phone. Somehow, a cell phone ring could be heard from within the bushes in front of the apartment. What’s the meaning of this?

Haruka approached the bushes to find that a phone was dropped there. Once Haruka ended her call, the ringing of the phone within the bushes stopped as well. This is Asami’s phone.

Haruka crouched to pick it up. She recognised the model. There was no mistaking it, it belonged to Asami.

That meant something had happened to Asami. Haruka stood dumbfounded when something suddenly touched her nape. The cold sensation froze her back.

I mustn’t look. She repeated that sentence over and over in her mind, yet her body moved on her own.

Slowly, she turned to see the face of a deathly pale woman standing there. The same woman from the cursed video. “Aaah!” Haruka screamed as she fell to a sitting position, and the woman disappeared as if melting into the darkness.

There was no mistaking it anymore, the video was indeed cursed. Haruka gathered all her concentration on her trembling hands to contact Yakumo on her phone.

The dialling tone felt like an eternity. <What business do you have calling this late into the night?>

His tone was annoyed and displeased, yet tears of relief welled in Haruka’s eyes. “Yakumo-kun. Please, help me—” said Haruka, forcing out her voice.

- 6

- Haruka stood in front of the apartment entrance and stared emptily in the direction of Asami's room.

Afterwards, Yakumo had asked her to contact Gotou. Gotou was a police detective from the Unsolved Cases Special Investigations Division. One of the few people who knew about Yakumo’s ability, his assistance had contributed to the resolution of many cases.

Right now, Gotou and his partner Ishii were in the middle of investigating Asami’s room. Haruka hoped she had gotten worried over nothing and Asami would come out whilst saying, “What is it?”

However, the phone that had fallen in the bushes made that outcome unlikely. “Are you alright?” a voice suddenly spoke.

Haruka turned to find Yakumo there. Yakumo ran a hand through his messy head of hair with an annoyed look on his face, yet Haruka felt relieved from the bottom of her heart simply by seeing the face of the approaching man.

So much, that she felt like hugging Yakumo and sobbing to her heart’s content. Yet if she were to do that, she felt that Yakumo would mock her relentlessly, calling her ‘disgusting’ among other insults, so Haruka simply nodded. “Yes,”

“Tell me what happened,” said Yakumo with an unusually serious expression. Could it be that he regretted not properly listening to Haruka’s story earlier that day?

Truthfully, Haruka felt remorseful as well. She hadn’t fully believed Asami when she had all that talk about a cursed video. As a result, she hadn’t been too insistent in asking Yakumo for help.

Either way, there was no point to continue wallowing in regret. Haruka explained in detail all that she knew, including the contents of the DVD.

When she was finished, Yakumo reached for his chin and mumbled, “I see.” “Did you get anything?” asked Haruka.

Yakumo immediately frowned. “You keep saying that as your second sentence.” “Because...”

“Didn’t I always tell you not to rush into conclusions?” Precisely as he said.

Yakumo had emphasised that countless times. Haruka reflected on herself as well, but having little understanding of the situation had always made her anxious. “Could this really be the curse of the video…?” said Haruka without realising.

Oh no—Haruka thought as soon as the words left her mouth. Yakumo had just said not to rush into conclusions. And yet, Yakumo’s words weren’t what she expected.

“In a way, perhaps it could be considered a curse.” “What do you mean?” replied Haruka when Gotou and Ishii emerged from the apartment building entrance.

“Hey,” greeted Gotou as he casually waved his hand. Meanwhile, Ishii ran towards them like an excited puppy whilst calling out, “Haruka-chan—”

And then fell. “What are you even doing?” said Gotou, lightly bumping Ishii’s head before approaching.

Ishii patted his knees before following his superior. “So, how was it?” asked Yakumo.

“It was nothing.” “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“You’re noisy.” “Isn’t Gotou-san the one being noisy?”

“What did you say?!” As Yakumo and Gotou began their usual bickering, Ishii hurriedly mediated to stop them.

“You should just be quiet,” cursed Gotou, letting out his emotions on Ishii by landing a punch on his head. This too had been a routine for them.

Haruka felt relieved, but they wouldn’t make any progress by quarrelling here. “What about Asami?” asked Haruka again.

“About that...” said Gotou, stroking the thin layer of beard on his face. “She wasn’t in the room.” “N-no way…”

It took everything from Haruka not to break down at that moment. “Were there any signs of her room being ransacked?” Yakumo asked Gotou.

“None. Her room was neat. Furthermore, the door was unlocked and the lights were still on.” “Is that so...” murmured Yakumo, his gaze trailing into the air.

“Was Asami perhaps taken away by someone?” The situation was overly strange for her to have simply gone outside. Harika didn’t want to believe it either, but she presented it as a possibility.

“The circumstances are unusual, but I think that possibility is unlikely,” interrupted Ishii. “How so?”

“Haruka-chan, from your story earlier, she was terrified, right?” “Yes.”

“If that were the case, she should’ve locked the door.” “Maybe the culprit has a duplicate of the key.”

“Even so, if she was terrified, she should’ve had the door chain lock attached as well.” “Fair point.”

“There were no signs of damage on the chain lock, so we can conclude that she had opened the door out of her own will,” Ishii seamlessly explained as he adjusted his silver framed glasses with the tip of his finger. Haruka understood what Ishii was trying to say. Despite that, she still couldn’t accept it.

“But wouldn’t it be strange for Asami to leave without locking the door? The lights were on too, right?” “Well, yes. That was the case...”

“Besides, her phone fell in the bushes. That is clearly strange,” Ishii began to panic. “That’s true...”

He made a gesture of wiping his sweat. “Could this be the work of a ghost?” asked Haruka.

Ishii’s face instantly grew tense. “G-ghost?” “Yes. Maybe the ghost took away Asa—”

“That’s impossible,” Yakumo denied before Haruka could finish her sentence. Haruka knew what Yakumo was about to say.

Yakumo defined ghosts as clusters of emotions of the dead, incapable of exerting physical influence on the living. From Yakumo’s perspective, there was no way a ghost could have abducted a human.

Even so, Haruka hadn’t brought up that idea without consideration. She had suspected a certain possibility.

“But it’s possible that the ghost could’ve possessed Asami and led her somewhere outside of her own will, right?” So far, Haruka had witnessed a number of people getting possessed by ghosts.

Whilst possessed, their bodies would be manipulated beyond their will and they might act in unexpected ways. If this phenomenon had been a possession, it would explain the strangeness of the current situation.

What does Yakumo-kun think about this? Haruka turned towards Yakumo.

“I can’t deny that as a possibility,” said Yakumo, showing his approval for the time being. And yet, he seemed to be considering something else in his mind— -

7 -

“Would it really be alright for us to watch it?” asked Haruka reluctantly. The next day, Yakumo told Haruka that he wanted to see the cursed video. Hence, they went to the booth at the library together.

“Why are you asking that?” Yakumo gave his usual unenergetic look towards Haruka.

Why? Well, that’s— “Because, you might get cursed from watching it…”

“You’re still saying that nonsense?” “Nonsense...”

“This isn’t a horror film, there’s no way we’d be cursed just by watching a video.” “But, Asami’s whereabouts are still unknown...”

To this point, Asami was yet to be found. Apparently Gotou and Ishii were conducting a search, so she could only wait and leave it in their hands. Even so, if Asami’s disappearance had something to do with this video’s curse, they would likely have a hard time finding Asami.

“As for that, you yourself stated a different possibility last night, didn’t you. Have you forgotten?” He was referring to Asami going someplace else beyond her will due to being possessed.

Of course Haruka remembered. However— “That’s just one possibility...”

“I know. That’s why I need to watch the video to confirm a few things,” said Yakumo, ending their conversation. He popped open the DVD player tray and placed the disc there. The sight of the DVD being swallowed by the tray accompanied by mechanical noises felt terrifying to Haruka.

The play button was pressed and the video began. “This is utterly terrible...” said Yakumo, mixed in between sighs as soon as the scene started.

“Terrible in what way?” Haruka tried to ask casually. “The composition’s all over the place. They intended to make it feel like a documentary, but the footage was shaking excessively.”

“That’s true.” “Not to mention despite being university students, their acting was pathetic. The dialogue was hopeless. Like this, you’d be better off watching a broadcast test footage.”

Yakumo’s opinion was harsh, but Haruka had no intention of blaming him. That was because Haruka shared more or less the same opinion.

The monitor momentarily displayed some noise before the problematic scene appeared. An image of the railway crossing, the warning light that flashed red in unison with the clanging sound.

The scene then transitioned to the corpse-like woman’s face, then the bustling city at night, before returning to the railway crossing scene. As the monitor turned to black, a woman’s voice saying “Help me...” could be heard.

The video was undoubtedly terrifying no matter how many times one watched it. Once, Haruka had watched a French short film titled An Andalusian Dog.

The film had no clear storyline, mainly displaying a series of shocking, mysterious imagery. Ants crowding on the palm of one’s hand, an eyeball being sliced with a straight razor, a severed hand being poked around with a stick. Similar to when she had watched that film, her entire body felt uncomfortable right now.

After watching it once, Haruka thought they were finally done with, yet Yakumo replayed the same part over and over again instead. Perhaps he had discovered something.

“I see—” muttered Yakumo after they had finished watching the video. He placed a hand on his pointed chin. His face remained composed as usual.

“How is it?” asked Haruka, expressing the mysterious feeling wallowing within her. “A decent video.”

“Yes?” Yakumo’s reply was far beyond what Haruka had expected, throwing her off in confusion.

“I’m saying, it looked significantly more polished than the one made by the movie circle members.” “Polished?”

“That’s right. The composition was great, even the colours were well put together. Whoever produced it had a keen sense for this sort of thing. Most importantly, the video had a powerful message.” Yakumo repeatedly nodded in approval.

His manner of speech was as if appraising a work of art. From Haruka’s perspective, the composition and colours of the film had been extremely terrifying.

Even so, if the intention was to make the audience feel that way, then the video had succeeded in that regard. At the very least, the array of footage carried more appeal than ones Sakamoto and the rest had taken.

However— “There was a message?”

To Haruka, the video merely seemed like putting pieces of different scenes together. “There was. A very powerful one at that.”

“I don’t think there was though…” “That’s because you didn’t watch it properly.”

“I watched it properly, though,” replied Haruka in annoyance. When she had watched it for the first time, there were parts that had left her shocked, but this time around she had been watching more closely.

“If you did, you should’ve known, right?” “I’m asking because I don’t,” Haruka kicked the floor out of frustration.

“To think that you’d gotten accepted in this university with that level of concentration.” “Thank you for the wonderful praise. Rather than that, tell me then, what sort of message was in that video?”

“See it for yourself,” said Yakumo curtly, before removing the DVD from the tray and handing it over to Haruka. Yakumo must have implied for Haruka to keep rewatching the film until she finally understood.

Obviously, Haruka didn’t dare to do that. “No way,” Haruka firmly refused despite accepting the DVD handed over by Yakumo.

“To think you could be my assistant, being like that.” “I never intended to be your assistant. Besides, if I’m your assistant, I should be getting my share as well,” highlighted Haruka.

Yakumo flashed a smile. “What kind of reason is that?” “What do you mean?”

Haruka didn’t feel like she had said anything strange. “You wanted a share, but how much was the reward for this request in the first place?”

“That’s...” “Thanks to you, I’m practically forced to work all the time. Save the talk about rewards and the like for when you’ve managed to find a request that actually pays.”

Precisely. The majority of requests Haruka brought over to Yakumo had no compensation in return.

“Isn’t it fine? After all, it’s not like you’re running a business as a private detective.” “Exactly. I’m merely a university student. That’s why you’re only troubling me by bringing in problems like this.“

“S-sorry...” Haruka could only apologise. Yakumo had a point. Continuously bringing in requests that gave nothing in return wasn’t an example to be followed.

“Well, anyway. Rather than that, let’s go—” said Yakumo as he stood up and ruffled his dishevelled hair. “Go? Where to?”

“To investigate, obviously.” Eyes filled with mockery, Yakumo’s gaze stung.

Haruka questioned what she had done to deserve such a condescending look. Haruka knew they were going to investigate, but where? In the end, she didn’t complain.

Yakumo was finally willing to take action. There was no benefit in ruining his mood. -

8 -

Haruka and Yakumo went to the campus cafeteria. Earlier, they had visited the movie circle and asked Natsuki’s help to gather the people who had watched the video at the cafeteria.

Aside from Natsuki, two guys called Seiichi and Daichi came to attend the meeting. Seiichi was the other person who had appeared in the video alongside Asami and Natsuki. Meanwhile, Daichi was the assistant director who had been with Sakamoto when Sakamoto had been editing the video.

The person who had been recording with the camera was someone named Kentarou, but they hadn’t been able to contact him. Normally they wouldn’t have been bothered, but with the current situation, that fact turned increasingly worrisome.

“Apologies for troubling you all to come over.” As everyone else sat around the table, Yakumo was the sole person standing, speaking as he cast a gaze across everyone.

All eyes on the table were directed towards Yakumo. Who are you? That same question repeatedly surfaced and subsided. Yakumo, as if sensing that fact, smiled before he continued. “The truth is, I have ties with people from the temple, so I’m fairly knowledgeable about supernatural related incidents. Perhaps I could be of help to all of you for this case,” he said politely.

To Haruka, who was more familiar with Yakumo, that mannerism was clearly unnatural. Yet with it he seemed to have gained the trust of those who had only just met him. “Is it true that Sakamoto and Fujimoto’s whereabouts are unknown?” Seiichi was the first to open his mouth.

“Indeed. It is true that the two are unreachable as of now,” answered Yakumo carefully. “That’s why I’ve been saying I hated the idea,” added Seiichi, sounding fed up.

“About what exactly?” Yakumo continued the question without breaking his smile.

“The hospital that was our shooting location. There have always been rumours that there’s something there.” “By something, were you referring to ghosts?”

“Yes. Apparently the hospital director there used to be a maniac who performed human experimentation. The entire thing had been exposed and the hospital went bankrupt in the end.” “Is that so,” Yakumo responded in agreement, but Haruka knew for certain—deep inside, Yakumo didn’t believe it.

Haruka too felt suspicious about Seiichi’s story. Secretly performed human experimentation was a downright ridiculous story. Even if that had been true, then it should’ve become a major news story, yet she didn’t recall hearing such kind of news.

It was more likely an urban legend one would often find in a city or area. “Such a terrifying scene even appeared in the footage we shot; truly awful.”

Seiichi’s face was as if implying this was the end of the world. “Who chose the shooting location?” asked Yakumo, and Daichi raised his hand slightly.

“You were the one who chose it?” Seiichi threw a blaming look at Daichi. “No, not like that. Sakamoto-san asked me to look for places for the shooting location, so I gave him several options. And that place was among the options I proposed—” Daichi explained before dropping his gaze.

Perhaps he felt responsible. However, if Sakamoto had been the one who made the final decision, he shouldn’t have to feel so guilty. Piecing their stories together so far—putting aside the part about human experimentation—the problem seemed to lie on the abandoned hospital that had been chosen as the shooting location, and thus the cursed video had emerged.

Even without human experimentation in the equation, hospitals were places where many people had passed away. It wouldn’t be strange for spiritual phenomena to occur while shooting footage in such a location.

“Was there nothing strange during the shooting?” asked Yakumo. The three exchanged glances and nodded.

Haruka sensed something was off here. Such a video had emerged as a result. It would be strange for nothing to have happened during the shoot.

“By the way, who was the first to review the resulting footage?” asked Yakumo. Daichi raised his hand once again. “I was present when Sakamoto-san was editing, and I suppose that was the first time that we saw the footage.”

“From what I heard, Sakamoto-san had seen a ghost then. Did you see one as well?” “No. The lights had gone out, so I went outside as I thought the fuse had blown. That was when I heard Sakamoto-san scream…”

“That means, you didn’t see it?” “I didn’t see it very clearly. But...I think there was a woman standing there when I returned to the clubroom.”

He didn’t firmly state that he had seen one, but he had seen something that could possibly be a ghost. “I see. Then, did you see one?” said Yakumo, facing Seiichi. 

“I didn’t…” Seiichi frowned. “Did you watch the video alone?”

“No. Sakamoto told me that he wanted me to watch it. So I watched it with Sakamoto.” “Did the ghost appear then?”

“No. The video was terrifying, but that was all.” Seiichi didn’t look too scared, but it might have been because he hadn’t seen the ghost.

“How about you?” asked Yakumo, this time turning towards Natsuki. “I also…didn’t see any ghosts.”

“You watched the footage, right?” “Yes.”

“Who did you watch it with?” “With Asami, just the two of us,” replied Natsuki, and Yakumo made a face as if surprised by it.

Rather than a spontaneous reaction, Yakumo seemed to have displayed that look on purpose to add emphasis. “Didn’t Asami-san see a ghost?” said Yakumo, asking Haruka for clarification.

“That was what I heard,” replied Haruka. Yakumo nodded in satisfaction at Haruka’s reply and faced Natsuki once more. “Why was Asami the only one who saw a ghost?”

“About that...Asami had watched it ahead of me. Sakamoto-san had passed the video to her…Then, because there had been a strange scene, Asami had said she wanted to watch it with me.” In other words, it was possible that the ghost had appeared while Asami was watching alone, yet when she had watched it with Natsuki afterwards, nothing had appeared. Asami had seen a ghost, yet Natsuki hadn’t.

The story made sense, but— Natsuki was clearly behaving strangely.

She was tense, as if afraid of something. “Was your story the truth?” asked Yakumo, folding his arms while narrowing his eyes.

“Yes,” replied Natsuki before lowering her head. Haruka thought Yakumo would pressure Natsuki with more questions, yet unexpectedly, Yakumo easily backed off and simply responded, “I see.”

Was Natsuki’s unnatural behaviour merely Haruka’s own misconception? While Haruka was deep in her thoughts, Yakumo spoke. “The information you all gave is incredibly helpful—” before directly walking out of the cafeteria.

Even though he had claimed he might be of help. The people he had left behind after his half baked effort became dumbfounded. Haruka intended to leave after giving a polite thank you in Yakumo’s stead, but Seiichi called out to her.

“So, what should we do now?” Well, it was natural for them to think that way.

“If we manage to discover something, I’ll reach out to you all.” “Do you know how to contact us?”

That… “Ah, right. Natsuki-san, could we exchange phone numbers?” said Haruka to Natsuki, and once they had exchanged their contact information, Haruka then chased after Yakumo.

- 9

- “So, have you found something?”

Haruka expressed her question as she finally managed to catch up to Yakumo after having left the cafeteria. Yakumo glanced at Haruka. “The big picture, pretty much,” said Yakumo nonchalantly.

“What do you know so far?” “I can’t say for now.”

Yakumo often responded like this. It wasn’t to purposely mess around nor to appear cool. Yakumo merely didn’t want to say anything unnecessary before acquiring concrete evidence.

That way, he tried not to create assumptions. “Just a hint wouldn’t hurt, right?”

“This isn’t a quiz show.” “Well, that’s true.”

“Even if this was a quiz, I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t be able to solve it with your abilities.” A ruthless comment, as usual.

“Yes, yes, I’m dumb after all.” “So you are aware.”

“Ugh!” Haruka felt her anger boiling, yet she would only be reciprocated a hundred times over if she tried to get back at him. 

“Well, if you listened to their stories, you’d understand that there were certain rules in place,” said Yakumo, spreading his arms jokingly. “Rules...”

“Yes. All of them watched that cursed video. Yet some saw a ghost and some didn’t. Think about why that was the case. You should arrive at the answer.” Sakamoto and Asami had seen a ghost. While Daichi had seen something that had seemed like a ghost—his response had been vague.

On the other hand, Seiichi and Natsuki hadn’t seen a ghost. Then, Sakamoto and Asami, who had seen a ghost, had gone missing.

As Yakumo had pointed out, there appeared to be some sort of rule. Even so, Haruka couldn’t grasp what that rule was no matter how hard she tried to think. Before long, they had reached the Movie Research Circle clubroom where Yakumo stayed.

They opened the door to find Gotou and Ishii inside. “Gotou-san. Ishii-san. What’s the matter?” Haruka exclaimed.

Gotou, who had been chewing on his cigarette, asked back. “You’re asking what’s the matter?” Hearing that, Haruka realised the stupidity of her question.

Last night, she had contacted Gotou and Ishii and had requested their assistance to investigate Asami and Sakamoto. “Sorry. I reflexively...”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy just being able to meet Haruka-chan like this,” said Ishii to Haruka, puffing his chest. Gotou jabbed him immediately. “Stop grinning.”

”Whatever you say, but could you stop trespassing into people’s rooms without permission? Not exactly the sort of thing the police should have done,” said Yakumo lazily as he sat down on his usual chair. “Ha? We’re investigating your request, you know! Besides, what trespassing? The one who didn’t lock the door was at fault!” stressed Gotou, slamming his fists on the table with every emphasis of his words.

“What a messed up reason. Gotou-san’s thought process has become like a criminal’s.” “What did you say?!” Gotou stood up while raising his shoulders.

“Now, now,” Ishii tried to calm him down, only to get hit on the head. “Also, smoking is prohibited on these premises,” said Yakumo, pointing at Gotou’s cigarette.

After all it took for Ishii to stop Gotou, Yakumo nonchalantly said something that could raise Gotou’s anger all over again. Well, that sort of thing was typical of Yakumo. Gotou clicked his tongue. “I didn’t light it up,” he said, putting away his cigarette.

“So—did you two find out anything?” Yakumo spoke after everyone was seated and the situation had settled down. Haruka thought Gotou would explain, but apparently he felt it was troublesome and gave a sign towards Ishii with a gesture from his chin. Ishii responded, “Y-yes,” and hurriedly took out his notes before he began.

“Sakamoto Eiji-san and Fujimoto Asami-san’s status are still unknown. We’ve explained the situation to their parents and requested them to fill up a missing person report to be handed over to us,” Ishii said lightly. Haruka’s feelings grew heavy upon hearing the words ’missing person report’.

Those words were proof that the situation had gotten serious. “Are there any leads?”

“As of now, we don’t have any notable information from witnesses. If only there were security cameras, we could have investigated from there. Unfortunately, neither Sakamoto-san and Fujimoto-san’s premises had any security cameras installed.” “Is that so...” said Haruka in disappointment.

If they had footage from security cameras, perhaps they would have an easier time finding leads to Asami and Sakamoto’s whereabouts. “What about fingerprints?” asked Yakumo, propping his chin on one hand.

“We’ve gathered those, but the two seemed to have friends over frequently, so it was difficult to identify ones belonging to them...” Ishii adjusted his silver-framed glasses with the tip of his finger.

Even if they had lived alone, if their friends had gone in and out often, it wouldn’t be surprising for fingerprints not belonging to the resident to be discovered. “Did the two of them ever get into some kind of trouble?” Yakumo asked a completely different question.

“We’ve questioned a number of people, but there’s still little information, so we haven’t discovered anything of the sorts...” “In the end, you didn’t manage to find anything, huh,” said Yakumo, stretching his body.

Ishii lowered his head and spoke. “Apologies.” To Haruka, it wasn’t necessary for Ishii to apologise over that. But it couldn't be helped as Ishii had a habit of apologising.

“Then, what about your end?” Gotou asked Yakumo whilst leaning over. Yakumo grinned boldly in return. “Well, I more or less know the overall picture,” he said calmly.

“What did you say? Explain at once!” Gotou exclaimed, his voice loud as if urging Yakumo. “I can hear you without you yelling like that,” Yakumo plugged his ears with his fingers, signalling that Gotou was noisy.

“Enough nonsense, quickly say it.” “I refuse.”

“W-What?” “I’m saying I don’t want to.”

“You little—what kind of attitude is that? After all we did because you asked for our help!” An infuriated Gotou grasped onto Yakumo’s shirt collar.

Despite that, Yakumo’s eyes remain composed and unfaltering. “Ishii-san, please arrest this person for charges of threat and violence.”

The conversation was suddenly thrown at Ishii, leaving him dumbfounded. “No, that...” he uttered in confusion. “Just try me if you dare!” yelled Gotou.

“Why are you being so arrogant?” “What?”

“Besides, it’s the police’s duty to maintain public safety. Yet you were acting like I owe you by asking for help?” “Ugh...”

Gotou seemed to have run out of words against Yakumo’s logically sound argument. And yet, refusing to admit defeat, he cursed, “Shut up,” and released Yakumo. Irritated, Gotou reflexively reached out for his box of cigarettes, but Yakumo immediately said, “No smoking,” and he halted his movement.

“Enough with the banter. Let’s get to the main topic,” said Yakumo, clapping his hand together. Haruka felt the atmosphere in the room tense up immediately. Gotou and Ishii seemed to feel the same way; the two stared at Yakumo with a stiffened expression.

After a pause, Yakumo turned to Haruka, “Take that out—” “That is what?”

Even if suddenly told like that, she didn’t know what it meant. “You really are an imbecile.”

“What does that mean?” “Go look it up in a dictionary if you want to know.”

“Ugh.” “I’m talking about the cursed video.” said Yakumo in disbelief.

Why can’t you just mention the item directly in the first place—thought Haruka in displeasure whilst taking out the DVD from her bag. “What is this?” asked Gotou.

“I told you about it yesterday, right? This is the aforementioned cursed video.” As soon as Yakumo said that, Ishii instantly screamed, “Eeek!” jumping out of his chair.

The next second, Gotou jabbed him and yelled, “Shut up!” causing Ishii to return to his chair dejectedly. “What did you say this was?” asked Gotou, picking up said DVD and observing it closely.

“A woman’s face appeared around the second half of this video. She might have passed away from an accident or the like. I’d like for you to try and identify that woman.” So that was how it was.

If they managed to discover the ghost’s identity, they’d be able to crack the mystery of this case. “Easy for you to say. How long do you think it takes to identify a person based on face alone?”

Gotou’s argument was spot on. To identify a person just by their face was extremely difficult to do.

“There is other information as well. It’s likely that she died near a railway crossing.” “Railway crossing?”

Gotou, who hadn’t watched the video, didn’t understand. Meanwhile, Haruka knew what he meant. In that video, the scene of a railway crossing repeatedly played. It appeared that the woman had tried to hint at the location of her death through that scene.

“Also, that woman’s name is Kana.” “Eh?” Haruka stood up in surprise.

How could Yakumo have known the name of the woman in that video? Her name shouldn’t have appeared anywhere. Haruka questioned that fact, yet Yakumo simply gave her a vague answer, “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Perhaps Yakumo had seen through the whole truth at this point, yet on the other hand, Haruka felt the mystery had only gone deeper. “What are we going to do after this?” Haruka asked Yakumo after Gotou and Ishii had gone home.

Sakamoto and Asami’s whereabouts were still unknown, and Haruka couldn’t even see any lead towards solving the case. Were the video truly imbued by a power of some sort, then Haruka who had watched it could fall into harm as well.

She had only just realised the fact and the thought made her shiver. “Actually, I intended to do this after further investigation, but we don’t have time.”

“What do you mean?” “Exactly as said. If things are left as they are, the two missing people might die.”

Haruka held her breath at the unexpected words coming from Yakumo. “C-can’t we prevent that from happening?”

“We’re making a move to prevent it, aren’t we?” “Ah, right...”

“That’s why, there’s something I want you to do,” said Yakumo, his lips forming a smile. Yet his eyes weren’t laughing at all.

Haruka felt an awfully terrible premonition— -

10 -

Haruka returned to the campus cafeteria. As she sat on one table, a woman approached her with hesitant steps.

It was Natsuki. Their meeting was no coincidence.

More precisely, Haruka had contacted her asking to meet. “Sorry for the suddenness,” said Haruka as she stood up.

“Not at all,” Natsuki replied weakly. Since their first meeting, Haruka had the impression that Natsuki was an incredibly fragile and seemingly unhappy woman.

Haruka ushered Natsuki to take a seat before returning to her own. “So, what do you want to talk about?” said Natsuki.

She appeared anxious, glancing at her surroundings several times. As if she didn’t want to be seen together with Haruka. “Truth is, I wanted to ask you about the cursed video.”

“I’ve told you what I know.” Natsuki’s voice became weaker than before.

Yakumo had requested Haruka to hear the story from Natsuki one more time. And it appeared that Yakumo’s calculation in choosing Natsuki as a target hadn’t been mistaken. “It’s nothing serious. I just wanted to confirm something,” said Haruka in a fabricated cheerful tone.

“About what?” said Natsuki, staring at Haruka. Natsuki gave her approval, but Haruka could clearly tell that she didn’t want Haruka to ask questions that pry too deeply.

Haruka felt sorry for her, but she couldn’t back down. “Natsuki-san, could it be that you actually know the identity of the woman in the video?”

As soon as Haruka said that, Natsuki’s face turned glum. Bingo!

So Yakumo’s prediction was right. “I don’t know,” Natsuki shook her head.

“Really?” “Yes.”

“That woman’s name is Kana-san. So? Do you remember now?” Haruka observed Natsuki’s face.

“How did you know Kana’s name?” Natsuki’s eyes widened as if they were about to pop out. As it turned out, she wasn’t very good at lying. Her words just now were the same as admitting that she knew about her.

“So you do know her. Right?” Haruka emphasised the fact. Natsuki lowered her head without answering and went silent for some time.

She seemed to be putting her thoughts together as to how she should respond. Or she could be firming her resolve to say what she knew. Natsuki lifted her face and firmly said, “I don’t know.”

Her expression was filled with determination, as if her weak impression from earlier had been a mere illusion. “Eh?”

“I’m saying, I don’t know,” said Natsuki once more. “But you know her name.”

“My friend has the same name, so I thought you were talking about that friend of mine earlier, but I was mistaken.” Haruka didn’t know what had changed Natsuki, but her resolve was unwavering to the point that there was no room to break through.

“But...” “Is that all you wanted to talk about?” asked Natsuki.

“Ah, that...” Natsuki’s reaction had been utterly unexpected, Haruka had trouble answering.

“In that case, I’m going now,” said Natsuki firmly before she stood up and walked away. Haruka could only watch her in silence.

Just what sort of transformation had occurred within Natsuki? Why did she act hardened all of a sudden? Haruka tried to find a reason, but she couldn’t find one. As if something that she had nearly managed to grasp had slipped through the cracks of her hand.

Amidst her confusion, her phone rang. It was Yakumo—

“Hello?” <How was it?> asked Yakumo directly.

“It didn’t work out...” said Haruka, disappointed. <Did she say she didn’t know?>

“Yes. But there’s no mistaking that she knows something. I tried to pry further, but she immediately rejected it...” Haruka thought she was about to get scolded by Yakumo for failing to gain information.

To her surprise, Yakumo said, <I thought as much,> as if he had known the outcome from the start. Haruka felt dissatisfied as it was like she was being played with on the palm of Yakumo’s hands.

“Hey, did you know from the start that Natsuki-san would refuse to answer the question?” <I had thought that such an outcome was a possibility.>

To Haruka, Yakumo seemed to be making excuses to evade the question. Yakumo must be the type that wouldn’t get discovered even if he were to cheat. Well, not that Haruka knew whether Yakumo was the type to cheat—

“So, what now?” <I’d like for you to contact someone. Afterwards, we’ll meet up.>

The person he wanted to contact must be Makoto, a newspaper journalist. During the previous case, intel from Makoto had been the key to resolve the mystery. This time too, that had to be the case. “Who should I contact, and for what?” asked Haruka, and Yakumo elaborated his plan.

“Why do we have to do something like that?” said Haruka, unable to hide her surprise upon hearing Yakumo’s explanation. Even so, Yakumo dodged it with his favourite line, <You’ll find out soon enough—>

Haruka felt dissatisfied over a number of things, but Yakumo wouldn’t say a word even if Haruka cornered him with questions. Haruka could only respond with, “Understood.”

Yakumo hung up the call after briefly stating the location and timing of their meetup. Haruka’s back grew heavy.

As the person who brought this problem in the first place, she was in no position to complain. Still, she didn’t like being toyed around like this. However, would they be able to find Sakamoto and Asami’s whereabouts with this? While questioning that fact, Haruka stood up from her chair.

- 11

- “Woah...” Haruka reflexively exclaimed at the sight of the building.

This was the abandoned hospital that had become the shooting location. It was situated at the base of a small mountain, with no other buildings surrounding it. The building had four stories, with a portion of the walls already crumbled down, and the window panes broken. Its condition was comparable to buildings in war torn locations that she had seen in the news.

Could it be that the cursed video had something to do with what had unfolded in this place—if one were to think that, the building would appear like it was emanating a dark aura. According to Seiichi, there had long since been rumours about this place being haunted.

Putting aside whether the whole thing about human experimentation had been true, something had to have happened here. This was a place no human should enter. And yet, they had made this place their shooting location. As a result, the cursed video was born; it made sense to think about it that way. Why did Yakumo ask them to gather at a place like this? Not to mention after contacting that person—

“Yakumo-kun,” Haruka called out as she set foot in an area covered by weeds. However, there was no reply.

Has he not reached yet? Yakumo was logical when it came to solving the mystery of a case, yet for all else, he was rather lenient, including when it came to time. Well, that was typical of Yakumo, you could even say it was part of his charm.

Even so, Haruka felt uncomfortable having to wait alone at a place like this. Haruka continued walking and as she arrived at the hospital entrance, she shouted once more, “Hey! Yakumo-kun! You’re not here yet?”

As she thought, still no reply. I have no choice but to wait.

Just as she had that thought, she felt like she saw something move behind the entrance door. That wasn’t all, she also sensed that someone was watching her. Haruka then peered inside.

No light shone through and it was pitch black. Almost as if the opposite end was connected to another world. She briefly tried to adjust her eyes, yet nothing but darkness could be seen.

Perhaps I was mistaken. Haruka exhaled and turned her back to the entrance door.

The cursed video seemed to have caused her to overreact. She needed to calm herself down a little. Haruka tried to take long, deep breaths, but it didn’t help rid her of her restlessness.

Suddenly, footsteps could be heard on the ground. Haruka’s shoulders jolted and she wanted to turn. Unfortunately for her, something was pulled over her head at that instant.

It appeared to be some kind of cloth bag. What?

She wanted to take it off, yet her hands were already restrained behind her back. “L-let go!” Haruka yelled with all her might. Mind-numbing fear invaded her, destroying her sense of reasoning. With great struggle, she twisted her body in an attempt to escape the hands that had captured her.

However, it was futile. Her opponent was much stronger and just like that, she was dragged away.

“Help me! Yakumo-kun!” Haruka screamed in desperation. Perhaps she was already dragged all the way into the hospital building. If this continued, she would get dragged somewhere where her screams wouldn’t be heard.

Haruka resisted once again, but the more she did, her muscles grew exhausted and she ran out of strength. Her legs could no longer hold and she ended up being carried while dragged away. Something dark gradually spread within Haruka’s heart. It was probably despair.

Please! Yakumo-kun! Haruka could only pray.

Unfortunately, her prayers weren’t answered. As they descended something that felt like a ramp, she finally felt the hand that had been restraining her release.

Just as she thought that she was freed at last, Haruka was shoved, falling towards the concrete floor reeking of dust. With great difficulty, Haruka tried to crawl to her escape, but her hair was yanked and she was dragged once again.

Her hands were pulled behind her, tied with something that seemed to be a rope. At this stage, she couldn’t make an escape anymore.

It’s impossible now, she thought. Instinctively, her tear glands came loose and tears began to fall.

Never would she have dreamed that one day she’d be tied up like this without knowing anything. Am I going to be killed? If only I had known, I would’ve done many more things. There are people I wanted to see. Things I wanted to talk about.

Yakumo-kun. Haruka called out to that name in her heart.

“That’s enough.” The voice of salvation.

The voice Haruka had been waiting for from the depths of her heart. Yakumo’s voice.

The person who had tied Haruka up went and ran. “Gotou-san! Ishii-san! Don’t let that person escape!” yelled Yakumo.

“Wait!” “Let go! Damn it!”

“Stop resisting!” Groans and brawling noises could be heard.

Haruka, whose face was covered by a cloth bag, had no clue on what was going on. Moments later, with the sound of Gotou screaming, “Take this!” the atmosphere went silent.

“Are you alright?” Yakumo’s voice whispered.

Slowly, Haruka straightened her body and nodded. Then, the bag covering her face was removed. What came to her sight was Yakumo’s face.

“This isn’t a dream, right…?” said Haruka with a sob. Yakumo’s lips formed a little smile and replied, “Yes.”

If only she wasn’t tied up, perhaps Haruka would already be hugging Yakumo by now. “I wanted to come earlier, but ended up being rather late. I’m sorry.” Yakumo said in an unusually gentle voice as he placed a hand on Haruka’s head.

That gesture made Haruka’s heart, once closed up and frozen from fear, overtaken with relief that her tears began to flow once more. I was able to meet Yakumo.

“I’m going to untie the rope now,” said Yakumo before turning to Haruka’s back and removing the rope. Once her hands were freed, Haruka immediately felt fatigue all over her body. She finally had a chance to examine her surroundings.

Haruka turned to find people she recognised, Gotou and Ishii. They were standing at a distance from each other. On the bottom of their feet, a man was lying down with a bleeding nose. He must have gotten punched by Gotou.

There was no mistaking it, that person had to be the one who had assaulted Haruka. Haruka recognised the man’s face. He was—

“That’s right. He’s the mastermind behind this case,” said Yakumo, as if reading Haruka’s thoughts. -

12 -

“What’s the meaning of this?” Haruka approached Yakumo as she stood up.

Lying there was Daichi, a member of the movie circle that they had met at the campus cafeteria. Truth to be told, Haruka didn’t know much about him. Hence, she didn’t understand why he had attacked her at all. On top of that, Yakumo had said he was the mastermind of this case. In other words, not just the cursed video, he also had an involvement in Sakamoto and Asami’s disappearance.

“To explain that, we first need to clarify who the person in the cursed video was.” Yakumo slowly walked and stopped in front of Daichi.

Looking at Daichi from above, his gaze was incredibly cold that it scared Haruka, who was merely a witness. “Who?” asked Haruka.

Yakumo turned towards Ishii and said in a low voice, “Please.” Ishii nodded firmly before turning to Haruka.

“The woman in that video was Sawaki Kana-san.” Hearing the name, Haruka turned in Yakumo’s direction.

Kana had been the name of the woman Yakumo had requested for Ishii and Gotou to investigate. The question that had been on her mind back then resurfaced. “How did you know her name?”

“I told you, didn’t I? The video had a powerful message,” said Yakumo as if the answer was obvious, yet Haruka didn’t understand at all. Haruka emphasised that fact, and Yakumo sighed with an exaggerated gesture of disbelief before saying, “There was a noise that frequently appeared in that video, right?”

“Yes.” “You wouldn’t be able to tell from watching it casually, but with closer inspection, whenever the noise appeared, a set of letters briefly flashed on screen.”

Haruka didn’t realise that at all. Now that she thought about it, Yakumo had inspected the video several times. As it turned out, he had done so to confirm the letters that had flashed on screen.

“So the letters that appeared spelled Kana?” “Yes. Simply put, it was subliminal stimuli capable of engaging with one’s subconsciousness.”

“Is that so…” Yakumo must have felt something was off after watching it once. Hence, he had it replayed several times and had managed to discover the hidden letters.

“Kana-san passed away in the fall of last year,” interrupted Ishii. “Passed away...”

Haruka could imagine that was the case from the flow of the conversation, but upon being presented by the reality of it, her head began to hurt. Ishii took out his memo and began reading, “The cause of death was alcohol poisoning. Someone made a report of a woman lying on the street, but when the ambulance came she was pronounced dead on the scene.”

“How could that be…?” “That day, Kana-san attended her campus circle meeting and drank. Afterwards, the other circle members wanted to go for a second round, but Kana-san chose to go home. However, she collapsed on the way,” said Ishii with a pensive look on his face.

“Is that so...” “She collapsed alone on an empty street, so she wasn’t discovered in time. A really tragic accident.”

“I’ve said this many times, but the video had a powerful message—” said Yakumo calmly. “The railway crossing, alarm sounds, red warning lights. All of these indicated the location where Kana-san had passed.” “I see...”

“Besides that, Kana-san’s name was embedded through subliminal stimuli, and an image of her body was displayed. These carried a message: remember her death.” So that was how it was.

When Haruka had seen it for the first time, she merely thought it had been a series of terrifying images, but the video turned out to have a clear message. She understood that now, yet at the same time, something didn’t make sense to her.

“Don’t tell me, the video wasn’t cursed, but deliberately made by someone?” asked Haruka, to which Yakumo responded with a nod. “That’s right. The person who made it was none other than—him.”

Yakumo pointed at Daichi who was lying on the ground. “Why?” Haruka couldn’t understand why Daichi would do such a thing.

“Out of revenge,” said Yakumo, closing his eyes solemnly. “Revenge?”

“Yes. It’s a possibility that he and Kana-san were lovers.” Yakumo looked at Daichi once again.

“How do you know that?” “I said it was a possibility. Nothing more than my own assumption. Well, not that I don’t have any basis for it. According to Gotou-san’s investigation, they both came from the same high school. Perhaps they had been in a relationship since way back.”

“But, just based on that…” “Of course, I couldn’t draw a conclusion just based on that. However, if their relationship weren’t that close, he wouldn’t have gone as far as planning an entire act of revenge, right?” said Yakumo smoothly.

He had a look on his face as if he had known everything, yet Haruka still didn’t understand. “How could making that video become an act of revenge?”

“Not just the video. He was also the one who abducted Sakamoto-san and Fujimoto-san.” “Why did he abduct them?” asked Haruka.

Yakumo shuffled his hair in annoyance. “I think it’s about time that you speak for yourself. You’ve woken up, right?” said Yakumo, and Daichi slowly stood up. He didn’t try to run nor resist.

Perhaps he had already given up. “What…tragic accident….?” Daichi spoke, forcing his voice out.

The hoarseness in his voice, as if at the edge between life and death, carried with them an intense feeling of vengeance. “Eh?”

“Kana was murdered,” Daichi opened his eyes wide and stared at Haruka. His eyes glinted like that of a ferocious beast intimidating its opponent.

“But, just now...” As Haruka said that, Daichi immediately cut her off, “Wrong! Kana couldn’t drink alcohol. Yet Sakamoto and the others forced Kana to drink during the campus festival afterparty. In the end, they went for a second round and abandoned Kana, so heavily drunk that she couldn’t walk by herself, all alone.”

“T-that’s…” Haruka reflexively covered her mouth with her hand. She had often heard stories of university students getting drunk and even developing alcohol poisoning.

If those involved had drank out of their own volition, they had it coming for themselves. But it would be a much bigger problem if it had happened out of being forced to drink. New regulations have been made recently, and establishments also began having signs recommending not to drink too much in a short period of time and not to force oneself to drink.

Despite those efforts, it didn’t mean that instances of people drinking excessive amounts of alcohol become completely eradicated. Had Kana been one such victim?

Besides, if she really had been abandoned after being forced to drink, that would have been the same as murder, as Daichi had claimed. By law, the offenders should have been prosecuted for charges of causing death by negligence in duty of care.

“Kana was passionate about film and wanted to work in the film industry later on. And those people...took her dream away…” said Daichi. Tears dripped from his eyes. Judging from his reaction, Yakumo’s prediction seemed to be on the mark. Daichi and Kana had a special relationship going on.

Regardless of what sort of relationship, the two must have thought that their time together would continue on forever. Yet one day, their dreams were destroyed without warning—

“That night, amidst her drifting consciousness, Kana called me. I couldn’t decipher what she was saying at all because the railway crossing sounds were incredibly noisy. I asked her where she was, but she didn’t answer…Carrying my phone with me, I frantically searched everywhere I could. But I couldn’t find her...all the while I could hear Kana’s breaths getting weaker and weaker. Do you know how helpless I felt, unable to do anything as I listened to Kana’s final moments before she died?” spilled Daichi as he wailed. Sobbing, shoulders trembling, he wept without wiping away his tears.

Haruka was at a loss for words. She couldn’t find anything to say to Daichi.

“Please tell me one thing,” said Yakumo, watching the crying Daichi from above. Daichi looked up with tear filled eyes.

“What made you choose to go on such a roundabout method like this?“ Yakumo’s question made sense.

Why had Daichi gone about shooting a cursed video with a message, then had it shown to Sakamoto and the rest? “I wanted them to remember Kana, reflect on themselves, and suffer because of it...” Daichi dropped his shoulders listlessly.

So that was how it was. Daichi’s goal was to make them feel remorse by reminding them of their actions through that video.

And yet— “If so, why did you abduct Sakamoto-san and Asami?” asked Haruka.

Daichi’s actions contradicted his words. “Those people still didn’t remember anything even after watching that video. They acted as if those things never happened. So...” Daichi curled his fists tightly.

Hearing his words, Haruka recalled the time when Asami had first approached her to discuss this case. Asami had been terrified and had felt creeped out, but she hadn’t realised the hidden message within the video.

If she had realised it, then she shouldn’t have discussed it with Haruka. While the problem lied in Daichi who wanted to seek revenge, when thinking about Sakamoto and Asami who refused to look back even though someone had died because of their actions…Haruka grew chills until her back froze.

Could humans really become so indifferent towards other people as to reach such a point? Haruka felt like she would never be able to comprehend it.

Even so— “Even if that were the case, I still think it’s wrong for you to kill them,” stressed Haruka.

Yakumo shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t go on killing them on your own,” he said. However, from the flow of the conversation, Haruka felt it was understandable for her to interpret things that way.

“So, where are they?” asked Yakumo. Daichi pointed at a metal door across the corridor.

“Gotou-san,” called Yakumo, and Gotou replied, “On it,” before moving to remove the plank holding the door and forcefully opening it. Lying there were Sakamoto and Asami.

The two were in a state of being restrained; both were tied up with ropes with their mouths gagged up. Their bodies weren’t moving and their condition appeared concerning. Gotou quickly came closer to check on them.

“It’s alright. They’re merely passed out,” said Gotou, lifting his thumb. Haruka felt relieved, but on the other hand, she didn’t understand.

“Why did you lock them up in a place like this?” “You wanted them to understand—don’t you?” Yakumo glanced at Daichi, and Daichi nodded.

“Wanted them to understand?” “Yes. He wanted them to know how it feels like awaiting death in the darkness, all alone, unable to move their bodies.”

“Is that so—” Haruka bit her lips and hung her head.

Daichi’s actions were unforgivable, but that didn’t mean Haruka couldn’t understand his feelings of wanting the two to experience Kana’s suffering even if just a bit. “There is one thing I have to tell you,” said Yakumo to Daichi in a formal tone.

“Eh?” With a surprised look on his face, Daichi turned towards Yakumo. “Ishii-san,” Yakumo gave a sign to Ishii to take something out, and Ishii took out an IC recorder from his pocket.

Yakumo took the IC recorder from Ishii and handed it to Daichi. Daichi was left dumbfounded.

Yakumo began to explain, “There was a strange audio interweaving with the noise in that video. This is the result of extracting that audio with the help of a mixer.” Confused, Daichi pressed the play button on the IC recorder.

Amidst the static noise akin to pouring rain, a woman’s voice could be heard. <Daichi. Please...stop it already.>

Haruka remembered that voice. The same voice she had heard when she had watched the cursed video in the library.

“This is Kana-san’s wish.” “I…” Daichi’s voice choked.

“There’s one more message from Kana-san. Don’t forget about me, okay?—was what she said.” As soon as Yakumo finished his sentence, Daichi wept as he clutched the IC recorder. The sound of his cries felt like they could chip at the spirits of anyone who heard it.

- 13

- Haruka stood in front of the abandoned hospital, watching as a patrol car and an ambulance drove away.

The patrol car took Daichi with them. While the ambulance carried Sakamoto and Asami who had been rescued. Luckily, while their conditions were weakened, their lives weren’t threatened.

With this, it’s all over, Haruka thought, before realising there were more things left unanswered. “Hey, how did you know to suspect Daichi-san?”

She had no idea since when had Yakumo begun suspecting Daichi. “Simple enough. When Sakamoto-san and Fujimoto-san were abducted, their doors were unlocked. Why was that so?”

“Why?” “Because they had opened it willingly. Someone they knew came to visit, so they opened the door and invited the person inside.”

“What do you mean?” “When Fujimoto-san called you that night, she was shaken because of the ghost problem and Sakamoto-san’s disappearance. She must have had her guard up, so strangers or other people unaware of the situation wouldn’t be allowed inside.”

“I see. Meanwhile, Daichi-san was in the same circle and knew about the spiritual phenomenon.” “Pretty much. Well, not that I had known from the start that he was the culprit, but I had already suspected that the culprit had to be someone from within the circle. That was the reason why I had them gathered at that time.”

He must have been referring to their gathering in the campus cafeteria. “So, Daichi-san was acting suspicious by then?”

“That’s right. When talking about whether he had seen a ghost or not, his answer was vague. Said answer was only told after he had deliberated what kind of answer would be able to fool us.” So that was how it was.

Haruka was nearly convinced, but there was something else she didn’t understand. “So the ghost was Kana-san after all?”

“No.” “But Sakamoto-san and Asami saw a ghost.”

“Someone else was pretending to be a ghost.” “Pretending to be a ghost?”

“Don’t you know?” “I don’t know at all,” said Haruka firmly.

“Don’t boast about something like that,” scolded Yakumo. “Who did I ask you to deliver a message to?” “Natsuki-san.”

Before going to the abandoned hospital, she had sent a message to Natsuki per Yakumo’s instructions, saying, <We found a clue that may lead to Sakamoto-san and Asami’s whereabouts, so we’re heading to the location where the video was shot.> “As a result, he attacked you.”

“By that, you mean…” “Yes. He and Natsuki-san were working together.”

“Why?” “We better ask the person directly. You’re there, right?” Yakumo called.

Natsuki slowly walked out from behind the hospital building. Her face was pale and she looked exhausted. “We were friends...” said Natsuki weakly.

“Natsuki-san.” “Kana was my closest friend. I too attended the same event that night. Sakamoto-san and Asami forced Kana to drink sake…I saw it happen, yet I couldn’t stop them...”

Natsuki closed her eyes shut in frustration. The anger building up within her seemed to be directed at herself.

“Even when we were about to go for a second round, I wanted to go home with Kana because I saw that she couldn’t stand properly anymore, yet Sakamoto-san insisted on leaving her be, and we left her...” “Don’t blame yourself like that,” said Haruka, placing her hand on Natsuki’s shoulder.

“How can I not blame myself? That was why, to redeem myself, I told Daichi-kun the truth.” “Afterwards, the two of you orchestrated this plan,” said Yakumo, and Natsuki nodded in return.

Haruka understood the gist of the events that had followed without further explanation. The ghost that had shown itself to Sakamoto and Asami had been Natsuki pretending to be one. With those methods, they had tried to remind Sakamoto and Asami about their mistakes.

Natsuki, who had panicked after seeing the message from Haruka, had discussed it with Daichi. Daichi had then attacked Haruka to prevent their plans from getting discovered. They hadn’t intended to kill, but perhaps they had wanted to lock Haruka in the same place until Sakamoto and Asami repented.

“What are you going to do after this?” asked Yakumo. Natsuki lifted her face. She had a refreshing expression, as if all her doubts had vanished.

“I was wrong. This method will never be able to redeem my mistake. Of course, I’m going to confess about what I have done, and about the events of that day to the police.” “If that’s the conclusion you’ve reached—” said Yakumo.

Natsuki bowed deeply to Yakumo before walking away. This time, everything is truly over—or so Haruka thought, but she reconsidered.

To Daichi nor Natsuki, nothing was over yet. Haruka, too, as someone who had been involved, needed to witness this case to the end. That was how she felt. Yakumo slowly walked away.

Haruka followed after him when a question suddenly appeared in her mind. “Hey. Why did Kana-san call Daichi-san on the brink of her death?”

Her life had been in danger. Why hadn’t she thought of calling an ambulance? “When humans realise they’re at death’s door, they may have the desire to be rescued, but at the same time, they wish to rely on those dear to them.”

“I suppose you’re right...” Even when she had been attacked by Daichi, within her heart, Haruka hadn’t been thinking about contacting the police nor an ambulance, instead seeking help from someone else.

Her face heated up at the memory. “What are you spacing out for? Come on, let’s go.”

Disregarding Haruka’s feelings, Yakumo briskly walked away. “Wait for me!”

Haruka could only bury her feelings and ran after Yakumo. -

Translation Notes [1] Yutori Seidai (ゆとり世代）’Laid back generation’, a term to describe the Japanese people who went to elementary and middle school between the 1980s and early 2000s, in which the education at that time focused on creative development and self learning, such that the generation was claimed to be less competitive.

[cultivating-saplings]

In honour of 4/13x15 I'm posting (a very slightly edited version of) the paper I wrote on the Unofficial Homestuck Collection for one of my classes last term. The language/tone is a bit more academic than what I would usually put up on here, but it's exam season so... 

Don’t Turn Your Back on the Body:

The Resurrection of Homestuck After the Death of Flash

Digital media is, broadly speaking, very difficult to preserve. The rapid pace of technological development means that obsolescence and decay present a consistent threat to the availability of natively digital works. Most computers produced in 2023 no longer have built in CD drives, and I feel fairly confident in asserting that none are being produced with floppy disk readers outside of hobbyist spaces. Issues with the accessibility of physically stored digital media can be mitigated (at least for now) by the use of external readers, but the preservation of fully digital media, born and hosted in its entirety on the Internet, is a different beast entirely.

This is, in part, an issue of pure volume; no one organization could ever hope to archive the vast amounts of stuff that the Internet is constantly producing, let alone organize it into a resource that could be used effectively. Like Borges’ cartographers who created “a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire,” to fully archive the Internet would be to replicate it in its entirety. Thus scope becomes a central question of fully digital archiving. 

The Internet Archive, which also operates the Wayback Machine, answers that question with a resounding and all-encompassing ‘yes’ — their stated goal is to “provide Universal Access to All Knowledge,” but even this comes with caveats. The organization freely permits members of the public to upload files to the archive and save pages on the Wayback Machine, but the work carried out by its official volunteers is more curated, and prioritizes webpages which have been identified as particularly important.

The Internet Archive is very effective within its own space, yes, but it has its limits. When the piece of work you are trying to archive is composed of not just static text and images, but longform animations and complex browser-based games, where do you put it? What do you do when the software necessary to access these elements of the work has been taken offline? And what happens if the people who were supposed to safeguard it fail to do so?

These were the issues that the fans of Homestuck faced in 2020 as the impending deactivation of Flash loomed on the horizon.

But first, before I properly explain what the Unofficial Homestuck Collection really is and why it is so effective as a digital archive, let me tell you about Homestuck. 

Frustrated with the poorly implemented official preservation of the comic, and with a lot of free time on his hands, one fan began the Unofficial Homestuck Collection as a personal project during lockdown, during the “depths of 2020.” As the project changed hands and more fans became involved over the following years, its true scope came into focus: the Collection would preserve not only Homestuck itself, in its entirety and with its Flash-dependent pages intact, but also as much of its contextual material as possible, thus making it a prime example of the effectiveness of fan-driven digital archiving and preservation. Because the people who created the Collection are long standing fans of Homestuck, they know which pieces of peripheral material will provide the context the comic demands. The Collection preserves Homestuck as a text in a way that would be impossible in an analogue format, creating an archive both of the work and of the experience of reading it in a serialized format.

Andrew Hussie began* Homestuck on April 13th of 2009, and published it serially on mspaintadventures.com, his personal website at the time, until its conclusion on April 13th, 2016. Prior to beginning Homestuck, Hussie had been publishing short webcomics and pieces of fiction for several years on his older website, Team Special Olympics, since 2004, which had gained him a small but very loyal following. This following was centered mostly around the forum attached to the TSO website, which hosted the first of Hussie’s ‘MS Paint Adventures,’ Jailbreak, in September of 2006. Jailbreak was a short comic which Hussie produced as a collaborative writing game on these forums, in the style of early text adventures.

Beginning with the prompt, “You wake up locked in a deserted jail cell, completely alone. There is nothing at all in your cell, useful or otherwise,” Hussie then wrote the rest of the comic according to the first comment posted after every page. This, perhaps predictably, resulted in a barely coherent mess of a story.

Following the conclusion of Jailbreak after a short 134 pages, Hussie would produce two more comics prior to beginning Homestuck: the unfinished Bard Quest (June-July 2007) and Problem Sleuth (March 2008-April 2009), which was his longest work so far at the time of its conclusion. Problem Sleuth in particular represented a substantial increase in production quality and general coherency over Jailbreak, as Hussie gained experience using the MSPA forums as tools for collaborative storytelling, reigning in the meandering narrative by allowing himself to be more selective about which forum responses he followed.

Hussie would continue this more controlled style of forum collaboration throughout the first three Acts of Homestuck, which followed a much more focused story than any of his prior work, thanks to his decision to use reader input only in specific parts of the comic. In the introduction to the print edition of the first Act, Hussie described his own role during the production of these first Acts as “dungeon master, a game engine responding to input, and an improv comic all in one.” During the process of writing Act 4, Hussie stopped taking prompts from readers entirely, and would construct the rest of the comic ostensibly as its sole author.

‘Okay,’ you might now be thinking, ‘you’ve given me the context, but what the hell is Homestuck? And what’s it about?’ Well, to wildly oversimplify a very complex piece of media, Homestuck is a webcomic about four young online friends who play a video game that causes the end of their universe and grants them the power to create a new one as they see fit. It is a story about growing up and realizing you’ve been forever changed by your experiences, a story about leaving behind the life you knew and constructing a new one. It is also a story about time travel and paradoxes, genetics and cloning, a large number of aliens, a possibly larger number of puppets (at least one of which is sentient), and an unfortunate amount of clowns. 

This story slowly unfolds over the course of 8126 pages, 817,929 words, and 166 animated panels, 95 of which contained some degree of interactivity and all of which total over four hours in length. Most of the comic’s pages consist of a main image, usually a short looping gif, accompanied by a text description or dialogue, which is almost always written in the format and style of online chat-logs between characters. As mentioned previously, however, these simpler gif-and-description pages are interspersed with longer videos, animated in Flash and soundtracked by one of Hussie’s several collaborators.

The first of these animated panels was uploaded a few weeks into Homestuck’s publication — an animated opening title-card for the comic, scored ominously with sounds of howling wind and windchimes. This first Flash panel was relatively simple, but the next would introduce a bespoke soundtrack (“Harlequin” by Mark Hadley), and the third would include simple interactivity. These soundtracked animations and interactive segments increased in scope and complexity over the course of the comic’s run; the final animated page in the comic, “[S] Collide,” comes in at nearly twenty minutes in length, and some of the larger interactive segments can take upwards of two hours to fully explore. 

While some of the later interactive pages were developed in an engine based on HTML5, most of Homestuck would be built using Adobe Flash, and would depend on the program for basic functionality. This would prove disastrous for the comic’s long term preservation. Flash was very popular, and had become ubiquitous by the early 2010s, but it had security issues which were easy to exploit, its range was fairly limited in terms of what kinds of animations it could produce, and, as its most fatal flaw, it couldn’t run on mobile. Thus with the expanding use of smartphones and tablets, Flash became less and less practical as a tool for web developers, and Adobe began slowly preparing to kill it. On December 31st, 2020, Adobe sent Flash off to the farm where it could frolic and play in the digital sunshine, leaving many online communities facing a crisis. How do you preserve a text when its foundations have crumbled?

With Homestuck using Flash in such an integral way, the issue of preservation was an important one. After the finale, Hussie would post some short post-credits stories to Snapchat from October 2016 to August 2017, as well as a longer epilogue in April 2019, before stepping away from any formal involvement with the comic in 2020. In 2018, Hussie had given the distribution rights for Homestuck to VIZ Media, which primarily handled the English-language publication of several manga series, and had left the rights to the IP and the freedom to produce new work to former collaborators. Thus it was VIZ who took on the task of officially preserving Homestuck against the death of Flash.

To say their efforts were unsatisfactory would, I think, be paying them too great a compliment. The complex and highly detailed Flash animations were replaced with embedded YouTube links to low-quality screen-captures of the originals. The hours-long walkaround games were not translated at all, replaced with ‘choose your own adventure’ style pages of text and links. The official version of Homestuck as it currently exists fails to capture a lot of what made the comic work, because it removes a lot of the gamified elements of the comic that are so integral to its storytelling.

There are many snapshots of the website from before the walkaround games were taken down on the Wayback Machine, but the Flash emulator that archive.org uses is very inconsistent, frequently becoming stuck on looping loading screens or failing to process assets correctly. While the dubious preservation of the long Flash animations is a real issue on its own, the lack of any attempt to replicate the format of these longform games represents the loss of something essential to the comic. Homestuck is, throughout the whole of its story, intertwined with the visual and cultural language of video games. The loss of the complex interactivity of these panels fundamentally changes how the reader is permitted to engage with them and, by extension, with Homestuck’s narrative as a whole. The official version of Homestuck that exists online is no longer complete. 

This incredibly poor preservation was the impetus behind the creation of the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. In its most basic form, the Collection is simply a preserved and restored version of Homestuck, intact and in high quality, accessible through a downloadable client, rather than online — reducing the Collection down to this basic description does it a disservice. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection includes not just Homestuck, but all of Hussie’s prior work: Jailbreak, Bard Quest, and Problem Sleuth are in there, but so are the full contents of his first website, Team Special Olympics, alongside archived versions of his now-deleted accounts on various social media platforms, and copies of threads from the MSPA forums that he would later reference in the main comic. The Collection also includes material that Hussie released alongside Homestuck, like the in-fiction blog of one of the main characters, various short comics written by guest authors, and a full episode of an in-universe childrens’ cartoon.

These peripheral materials are interesting and provide context for some of the more obscure references throughout Homestuck, but many of them were not produced until well into the comic’s run, and assume an audience that is caught up with the most recent update, making them dangerously full of spoilers for the unaware new reader. This issue is solved by the appropriately named ‘new reader mode.’ One of a variety of useful accessibility tools included in the Collection, the new reader mode tracks which page a user has reached, and implements a universal spoiler cloak over the whole program, hiding all materials that were released after their most recent page’s publication. This tool is what transforms the Unofficial Homestuck Collection from an archive of a text, into an archive of an experience.

De Kosnik argues that fan-driven archiving serves as a way for fans to mediate their own temporal experience of a text, describing websites hosting fanworks as mechanisms which “maintain the possibility of individuals joining fandoms… long after a media text has ceased to air.” While De Kosnik’s focus is on archives of fanworks and their function in ongoing fan spaces, I would argue that this framework, which centers the impact of serialization on the dynamics of fan communities, fits extremely well when applied to the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. Homestuck was published serially over the course of seven years, accompanied by blog posts, side comics, music, and other pieces of peripheral media that were released in tandem with the comic itself.

Updates were highly anticipated events, and fan communities were structured around them — one user on Tumblr found an unlisted part of the MSPA forums where Hussie posted new pages before they were published, and this “MSPA Prophet” became a fixture of the fandom for their ability to predict when the next update would come. The event that was an update (or upd8, after the typing style of a popular character) was a central aspect of the experience of reading Homestuck during its publication, and it is one that is very difficult to recover now that the comic exists as a static, completed work. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection, through its new reader mode, functions as a solution to that absence. It does more than safeguard the reader against unwanted spoilers: it temporarily transforms Homestuck back into an incomplete text. 

Homestuck makes use of the assumed preexisting knowledge of the reader, and their “intuitive familiarity” with various types of digital media and culture, especially ones which are inherently participatory. The story’s use of narrative motifs and referential easter-eggs allows Homestuck to function, in Hussie’s own words, as “both a story and a puzzle,” but that “There [are] a range of ways to interface with it[…] Failing to grasp everything shouldn’t preclude basic enjoyment, nor is it a symptom of failure by either the reader or the story.” In the most frequent example of repeated symbology in Homestuck, Hussie peppers the text with references to the number ‘413,’ simplified from April 13th, the day the comic began.

The story follows four friends who are all thirteen years old, many of the songs on the comic’s soundtrack are exactly four minutes and thirteen seconds long, and the timestamps on chat-logs show that characters frequently begin important conversations at precisely 4:13, to name just a few of the number’s appearances. The combination of puzzle and story in Homestuck extends beyond these kinds of motifs, however, and into the way Hussie employs referential humour.

Some of these references are fairly easy to catch; in Act 4, one of the main characters is gifted the Warhammer of Zillyhoo — a brightly coloured weapon which originally appeared in Problem Sleuth. Others, however, are much more obscure. The older brother of another main character runs a business creating bizarre, semi-ironic puppet pornography. Most of the audience read this as an absurdist joke about the internet’s love for offputting porn; the subset of fans who had been following Hussie for several years, or those who looked into Hussie’s early activity on the MSPA forums, however, would find themselves with new understanding of a long-running joke. This element of the experience of reading Homestuck is something that the Unofficial Homestuck Collection not only preserves, but makes readily accessible to the comic’s readers in a way that would not have been possible during the comic’s publication.

On a purely theoretical basis, I would argue that the Unofficial Homestuck Collection is valuable not just in the context of contemporary fan activity, but as a potentially valuable resource for future research. Homestuck is a foundational piece of the current cultural landscape, its influences permeating both digital and analog media in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways.

Undertale, titan of online culture that it is, was created by Toby Fox, who was the composer behind a large amount of the music in Homestuck and was, during the game’s production, living in Andrew Hussie’s basement. Tamsyn Muir, author of the Locked Tomb tetralogy, began her writing career as a prominent figure in the Homestuck fandom on Tumblr and Archive of Our Own. Although the reach of her original work has thoroughly outgrown her fandom roots, Muir includes sly references to Homestuck in several places in her books. Hell, one of the animators working on Bluey, a cartoon aimed at very young children, included references to Homestuck in the backgrounds of episodes they worked on, as easter-eggs for the benefit of parents in the know. All of this is to say that Homestuck has its hooks deep within the culture of the Internet, and its impacts will, I think, be felt for a long time yet.

The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is certainly not immune to digital decay or link rot, but it is resistant to them, since it is hosted on a large and well established website (GitHub), and, once downloaded, can be accessed without an internet connection, and shared freely. For the hypothetical future researcher, the Collection contains resources to mitigate the frustration of trying to hunt down pieces of contextual or peripheral material by packaging them with the text itself — it functions like a sourcebook. 

Bibliography

Bamboshu, and GiovanH. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection. 2020. https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/ 

De Kosnik, Abigail. Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10248.001.0001.

Glaser, Tim. “Homestuck as a Game: A Webcomic between Playful Participation, Digital Technostalgia, and Irritating Inventory Systems.” In Comics and Videogames. Edited by Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein, and Jan-Noel Thon. 96–112. Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003035466-8.

Hussie, Andrew. Homestuck. MS Paint Adventures, 2009-2016. https://homestuck.com. 

Nakhaie, FS. “Reproduce and Adapt: Homestuck in Print and Digital (Re)Incarnations.” Convergence, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221141961.

Read MS Paint Adventures. “Statistics.” Last modified April 7, 2018. http://readmspa.org/stats/.

Veale, Kevin. “‘Friendship Isn’t an Emotion Fucknuts’: Manipulating Affective Materiality to Shape the Experience of Homestuck’s Story.” Convergence 25, no. 5-6 (2019): 1027–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517714954. 

[lindasims2]

Free doesn't mean quality part2 / Бесплатно не значит качественно ч2

This time we'll talk about large texture sizes. The reason for the pink blinking is the huge textures that the authors load. На этот раз мы поговорим о больших размерах текстур. Причина розового мигания — огромные текстуры, которые загружают авторы.

For example, I took a popular kiosk selling gadgets from the author @jacobaoconnor original The archive is called "DR_Handhelds_JAO" what could be wrong? everything is simple - inside there are large textures in large quantities. This loads up your game during the loading process, loads up your TEXTURE memory and you get "pink flashing". (when I looked at this collection in SimPe, even my program froze a little on the textures)

Для примера я взял популярный киоск по продаже гаджетов от автора @jacobaoconnor original. Архив называется "DR_Handhelds_JAO" что может быть не так? все просто - внутри находятся большие текстуры в большом количестве. Это нагружает вашу игру в процессе загрузки, нагружает вашу ТЕКСТУРНУЮ память и вы получаете "розовое мигание". (когда я смотрела эту коллекцию в SimPe даже моя программа немного подвисала на текстурах)

It was enough to make 1024x1024, why upload this image format? If your small details lose clarity, don't care! The appearance of the model will not lose its meaning, it will remain playable, no one will look at the letters or small circles under a microscope. Make textures no larger than 1024x1024! This way you will protect yourself and those who download your work. This applies to all creators. Достаточно было сделать 1024х1024, зачем загружать такой формат картинки? Если ваши мелкие детали потеряют четкость - наплевать! Внешний вид модели не потеряет свой смысл, он останется играбельным, никто не будет рассматривать под микроскопом буквы или маленькие кружочки. Делайте текстуры не больше чем 1024х1024! Так вы обезопасите себя и тех, кто загружает ваши работы. Это относиться ко всем создателям.

For example, you downloaded this kiosk set, placed it on the lot, then applied 4096-sized wallpaper to the walls and placed a bunch of 2048x2048 decor, your memory will fill up faster and you will receive a pink flashing immediately or after some time in the game. Why load the game just like that? Many people do not know about textures that affect the game, they go to reinstall, look for methods that will help them get rid of the “pink blinking”, but the SOLUTION LIES on the surface - do not use such items in the game, change the textures if you have little experience in SimPe, ask the authors to make a FIX with a smaller texture format. Authors who make such texture formats - fix your works, do not make such textures in your objects.

К примеру, вы скачали этот набор киоска, разместили его на участке, затем нанесли на стены обои размером в 4096 и разместили кучу декора 2048х2048, ваша память наполниться быстрее и вы получите розовое мигание сразу либо через некоторое время игры. Зачем нагружать игру просто так. Многие не знают о текстурах которые влияют на игру, идут переустанавливать, ищут методы которые помогут избавиться им от "розового мигания", а РЕШЕНИЕ ЛЕЖИТ на поверхности - не используйте такие предметы в игре, измените текстуры если у вас есть небольшой опыт в работе SimPe, просите авторов сделать ФИКС с меньшим форматом текстур. Авторы которые делают такие форматы текстур - сделайте фикс своих работ, не делайте такие текстуры в своих предметах.

Look at the example, there are practically no differences. Don't load your items with large pictures, this will fill up the texture memory. If you have read this post and want to protect yourself from such large files, the only solution is: a) download from trusted authors, b) look at your download folder for file sizes, open them in SimPe and check the texture size, c) delete such files in which you see textures larger than 1024x1024 (these are 2048 and 4096).

Посмотрите на пример, практически никаких отличий нет. Не нагружайте свои предметы большими картинками, это приведет к заполнению текстурной памяти. Если вы прочитали этот пост и хотите обезопасить себя от таких больших файлов - единственное решение это: а) качать у проверенных авторов, б) посмотреть свою папку загрузки по размерам файлов, открыть их в SimPe и проверить размер текстур, в) удалить такие файлы в которых вы видите текстуры больше чем 1024х1024 (это 2048 и 4096).

I looked through the work of @deedee-sims and found an accessory with a 1024x2048 texture "DeeDee-4t2RoughStoneEarrings", the CAS of accessories is already freezing, and if the load is such textures from sims4… Just correct your work. The rest of DeeDee's works have small textures, so you don't have to worry, these earrings were the only ones that had such a large picture format. Я просмотрела работы @deedee-sims и нашла аксессуар с текстурой 1024х2048 "DeeDee-4t2RoughStoneEarrings", CAS аксессуаров и так зависает, а если нагрузка такими текстурами из sims4... Просто, исправьте свою работу. Остальные работы DeeDee имеют маленькие текстуры, по этому можете не волноваться, эти серьги были единственными которые имели такой большой формат картинки.

One more point for authors who make items in The Sims 2 - do not make soap images in a large format, this will not improve the item, but will kill the game. Using the example of a picture with a green soapy branch, you could make it 256x256 or 512x512.

Еще один момент для авторов которые делают предметы в симс2 - не делайте мыльные изображения большим форматом, это не улучшит предмет, но забьет игру. На примере картинке с мыльной зеленой ветке вы бы могли сделать ее 256х256 или 512х512.

Большой формат текстур был найден: @jacobaoconnor here (large textures in the kiosk, didn’t look at the rest) @deedee-sims here (only earrings, other accessories are ok) decor "Natasha Savchenko" (all decor with large textures) fakebloood here "FakeBlood_4t2_AnyeRaskaSet" (there may be more items, I only came across this set) @riekus13 here "R13_TS2HPShops" (I found large textures only in this set, I didn’t look at the rest)

[the-random-phan]

Dead (name)

Summary:

Short drabble about trans masc Danny's experiences.

Muscle memory from years of sleepovers and movie nights at Sam's led Danny towards the downstairs bathroom, and he shut himself inside. He locked the door, ensuring his privacy. With that privacy, Danny sat on the toilet and shucked off his shirt- then rolled his binder up to his armpits. He sighed with relief, as it finally felt like he could breathe. Binders and recently cracked ribs didn’t match well, it turned out. Super healing or no.

Word Count: 1,449

Ao3

(I recommend reading on Ao3 for the proper formatting)

“Hey glowstick! Dim the lights, please.”

Danny’s head snapped up at Sam’s comment. Ah, right.

He, Sam, and Tucker were in Sam’s basement theater, about to start a movie. Tucker manned the popcorn machine, and Sam stood near the light switch- which she’d just turned off. The room was dark. Mostly.

“Sorry.” Danny replied from the couch. Between one breath and the next he turned from ghost form to human. His glow vanished, leaving the room in shadows lit only by the projector screen.

“Thank-you.” Sam left the switch to sit next to him, getting cozy with her purple blanket.

“Make way!” Tucker exclaimed, armed with the popcorn bowl. He plopped down between them and promptly laid his head in Sam’s lap, and his legs in Danny’s.

Sam huffed.

“You should change your name to Trucker, not Tucker. Forcing your way in like that.”

“I don’t hear any complaints.” A grinning Tucker shimmied, making himself comfortable between them.

“I literally just compla-”

“Shhh! The move is starting.” Tucker said and pressed start. Sam shook her head but smiled, and turned her attention to the movie.

Danny remained quiet, watching their interaction with a smile. He was content to be the third, for now. He automatically grabbed an extra blanket and threw it over Tucker’s legs, tucking it in around him.

“Thanks, man.” Said Tucker around a mouthful of popcorn.

Danny laughed.

“No prob.” He rested one hand on Tucker’s calf and the other in the popcorn bowl. The opening credits began and he settled in for the movie.

~~

“Now that’s a girl’s locker room.” Tucker snickered at the scene.

Sam and Danny rolled their eyes.

“Girl’s locker rooms really aren’t as exciting as you think, Tuck.” Memories of covering his eyes and ducking into the bathroom stalls to change flashed in front of Danny’s eyes.

“How would you know?” Tucker retorted.

Danny didn’t deign that with a response, and turned his attention back to the movie.

“Oh.” Tucker laughed quietly, awkwardly, and then the scene changed and the moment was forgotten.

~~

They got through the first half hour before Danny felt a tinge in his ribs. He ignored it for a while, but the pain was constant. He shifted in his seat but was unable to get comfortable. Until he could ignore it no longer.

“Bathroom break. Be right back.” Danny said in a hushed voice and stood, dumping Tucker’s legs out of his lap. Prompting a startled squawk.

“Want us to pause the movie?” Sam turned to see him standing. Tucker watched as well.

“Nah.” Danny waved them off.

“I’ll be back soon. Just fill me in when I get back.” Not wanting to interrupt further, Danny quickly made his exit. Just as he’d asked, the movie continued to play as he left.

The stairs felt like a special kind of hell as Danny ascended them. He pressed a hand against his chest and tried to ignore the sharp ache, just putting one foot in front of the other.

Muscle memory from years of sleepovers and movie nights led him towards the downstairs bathroom, and he shut himself inside. He locked the door, ensuring his privacy.

With that privacy, Danny sat on the toilet and shucked off his shirt- then rolled his binder up to his armpits.

He sighed with relief, as it finally felt like he could breathe. Binders and recently cracked ribs didn’t match well, it turned out. Super healing or no.

Danny rested his head in his hands, eyes closed so he didn’t have to look. He took a moment to just breathe- in, and out.

He should have taken a binder break earlier, really. He’d been wearing it for… thirteen hours, now? Eight if he didn’t count time in his ghost form. Which he didn’t, usually. Because that form didn’t need a binder. A blessing and a curse, all in one. His top surgery fund was abysmally small.

A few minutes passed, and Danny figured it was time to go back to the movie. He didn’t want to miss too much.

Danny pulled his binder back down and it was then that he realized the fatal flaw in his plan. His chest ached even more now, and the pain clogged his throat.

“Shit.” He cursed quietly.

He’d come right to Sam’s after ghost hunting, and his backpack had been blasted to bits by Box Ghost. With it, his spare bra- the one he kept just in case this sort of thing happened.

Unable to stand the pain, Danny shucked the binder off onto the floor. He took a deep breath, enjoying the freedom but finding himself shivering.

He abhorred not wearing anything for his… chest. Being trans made him self-conscious enough, he didn't need it accentuated. But he also didn’t have a choice. Reluctantly, he picked his t-shirt back up off the floor and put it on. A glance down made him cringe.

Part of Danny thought maybe he could ask to borrow one of Sam’s bras. But another part shrunk away from the idea of saying the word out loud, and making his ‘issue’ known. Plus, Sam always wore the expensive, custom-fit kind. A far cry from the ten dollar two-packs he picked up at walmart. He didn’t even know if hers would fit.

With gritted teeth, Danny stuffed the binder in his pocket and washed his hands. He left the bathroom with his arms crossed in front of his chest; trying (and failing) to look casual. The last thing he needed right now was the run into Sam’s mom, so he hastened his steps.

Danny returned to the basement and found the most important people in the world his friends still laying on the couch.

Tucker had shifted in his absence, knees bent and legs tucked up. From his slow heartbeat and slower breaths, Danny could tell without even seeing his eyes that Tucker was asleep. His head still rested in Sam’s lap, and she had an idle hand in his hair.

“Everything good?” Sam asked in a hushed tone, noticing Danny’s entrance right away. He’d been gone for a while.

Danny’s reply was quick- he didn’t want her to worry. Or to look at him.

“Fine.” He sat back down on the couch, distanced by Tucker’s folded legs. Danny took his blanket and tucked it under either arm, tight around his chest. He kept his arms folded.

“Hm.” Sam frowned.

“Well, I saved you the last of the popcorn. Want it?” Sam wasn’t done yet, it seemed. Danny glanced over to see the bowl with just a handful or two left. He debated- he really wanted popcorn. But he also didn’t want to lift his arms to take the bowl from her.

“No thanks.” He said politely.

Sam dropped it, thankfully- attention turned back to the movie. He caught her sideways glance but pretended not to notice.

~~

“Hey Danny?” Tucker asked.

“What?” Danny laid out the blanket on the top of the Ops Center. There was a meteor shower tonight, and they’d gone up there to watch it. Sam sat down on the blanket and began to dole out their orders from Nasty Burger.

“Why are you always in ghost form nowadays when we hang out?” Tucker sat down next to Sam.

Danny froze, teeth clenched. He forced out a breath.

“Yeah, I noticed that too.” Sam added, chewing on a fry.

“It’s been like a week since we’ve seen Fenton anywhere but school.”

Danny’s plan on just shrugging and saying ‘idk’ went out the window with that statement. And with Sam and Tucker’s stares.

They weren’t judgemental, of course. They’d never judge him, not about this. But Danny couldn’t help feeling that way. And it made him quiet.

The two must have noticed his discomfort with the question and he saw them exchange looks, silently communicating.

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to.” Said Sam.

“Yeah- I was just curious. No pressure, man.” Tucker added.

A weight lifted from Danny’s chest. He took his seat on the blanket between them.

“Nah, it’s fine.” He scratched the back of his neck- a familiar gesture.

“It’s just more comfortable, I guess?”

Danny paused, debating how much he really wanted to say.

“...Helps with my dysphoria, and all that.” He said quietly.

“Ah, gotcha.” Tucker nodded immediately in understanding. For which Danny was immensely grateful.

Sam piped up as well with her own support.

“You look happier. Even if you also look, y’know, dead.”

“Thanks, Sam.” Danny said dryly.

“I do mean it though. You seem more comfortable” She bumped her shoulder against his.

Tucker piped up with a snicker.

“Yeah, you’re positively glowing.” “Tucker.” They groaned in unison.

[dearestgojo]

Feel It

Aki x Camgirl reader

A/n: This is for my Cyberpunk Collab. Set in a futuristic future where everyone has an sd slot behind their ears.

Warnings: 18+. Camgirl reader. Aki and reader are friends. Technology that allows you to feel what is happening. Handjob. Oral m receiving. Cowgirl. Riding. Praise (good boy). Dubcon/noncon (Aki watching reader's content without her being aware). Mentions of drugs. There's a death but it's a background character. Mentions of addiction. Reader has blue nips and nip piercings. "Creampie".

Wc: 3.5k | CSM Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Aki is tired. Absolutely and utterly tired. 

The weight of the day pushes down on his shoulders, the pressure digging into his shoulder blades. His own skin irritates him as he moves past the threshold of his apartment, taking off his shoes, and placing them neatly near the entry, before dragging his feet further in. He shakes his work jacket and tie off, throwing them over the back of his couch to use tomorrow, pulling out the half-empty box of cigarettes, and heading out towards the balcony.

The city buzzes with life, screens flashing all around him, the low buzz of the vehicles traveling up from down below along with the voices of people. Bright lights block out the shining stars above, the moon itself barely visible through the tall buildings and outshined by the city lights. 

Sighing heavily, he releases the smoke, watching as it curls into the air. He reaches up to let his hair loose, ready to finish the cigarette and shower, his hand sliding against the two slots found at the nape of his neck behind his ear. Two-inch-sized slots made for small chips that could range from any type of content, from information to drugs-more commonly known as vds- to the life of someone. All of these had different formats and uses; anything information related would appear on the thin lens that covered the eyes as if on a computer without hindering one's sight. And vds would mess with the nervous system once they were slipped in allowing the person to experience a high without the need for physical drugs. The idea had been to prevent overdoses and addiction, but when people started becoming addicted to them they were pulled from the market, yet you could find a few dealers selling them and people still entering a coma-like state caused by overuse. But vds also weren't the only thing people got addicted to.

Today, for example, Aki had seen a man's dead body pulled from his single-room apartment, his skin dyed with the blue-green side effect of chrome addiction, where his body mods were attached, and his room riddled with hundreds of momentos of the old ones. Aki thought they should consider themselves to have found him dead and not entering cyberpsychosis. There had also been a woman who was found out on the streets delirious, not able to tell if she was living her own life or a braindance. With his line of work, Aki had a first view of just how dangerous things had become, but there were people he wanted to protect.

And as if sensing his state of mind, in the corner of his screen on the lens, he gets a small phone icon with your name on the side. Aki answers promptly, twisting the cigarette on the ashtray he set up outside, before walking back in, "Hello?"

"Oh good, you answered, I thought you might still be at work, with the cyberpsycho thing going on right now," you reply, the sound of the news traveling through the phone.

Aki shakes his head, "No, I left just as they got the call, Himeno's there though. Why are you calling though?" He glances at the clock on the nightstand beside his bed, kicking his shoes off. It's seven thirty on a Friday night, and he never stayed late on Fridays, never wanting to miss the one thing he looked forward to every week. The one guilty pleasure that he never told anyone about. Not even you, fearing it would ruin the friendship you two had built.

He hadn't meant to come across it, never thought he'd indulge in such pleasures, but he had been pent up for several weeks. And working late hours six days a week didn't allow him to find a hook-up, and Himeno, who he'd had a previous agreement with, had just been promoted. Which meant their arrangement had recently ended. Normal porn was not enough to subside the need for release, and the stress of it was starting to affect him at work. And then Kishibe approached him teasing him for letting his needs affect his work ethic, before handing him a small piece of paper with the name of a device, where he could buy it, the price, a website, and a username. 

Aki had thrown the piece of paper into his bedside drawer, not seeing why he would need it. Thinking he'd come across something sooner or later that would help him destress. That was until he blew up on one of the newer hires, and he found himself at a sex shop store and taking a small box home, that contained a fleshlight, a chip, instructions, and a headset that curved over the back of his head and rested on his ears. He then decide to explore the site Kishibe had given him, slipped the chip in, and created an account. Searched the username, and stopped breathing.

You covered the entirety of his view. Your soft smile was staring back at him while you spoke cliche lines and moved sensually before his eyes. Until that moment, Aki had no idea this was the side job you were always referring to that left you good money. His stomach had twisted, and he had half a mind to call Kishibe and give him an earful, but the man hadn't known that Aki knew you. The older man didn't know that the girl on the screen, that was settling on all fours and resting her head on his thigh as her hand glided up his cock, had been Aki's childhood friend and crush.

He had logged out rather quickly and shoved everything he had bought under his bed. His cheeks burning and the image of you in pink lingerie and knee-highs burned into his brain. An image he still saw every time he saw or heard you speak. A picture that was so engraved in his mind that he came back a week later. An image he could see clearly right now as you spoke to him.

"I was calling to see if I had left my bracelet there, I kind of needed it this weekend."

Aki glances around him, spotting a small golden chain hanging over the edge of one of his bedroom lamps. "Can't say that I have," he replies, "Why do you need it? Have a date or something?" He can already hear the excuse you'd use, the bracelet you were speaking of was a gift from one of your viewers. Specifically a gift from him. A gift he liked to see you wear in your videos.

"Mmh, something like that. If you find it please let me know," he glances at the clock, ten till eight, "I have some things to do."

Aki hums, settling on his bed, and reaching into the drawer by his bed, "Okay. Call me if you need anything."

Your voice comes through the other side, sweet and melodic, "I will. I really have to go now. Bye, I'll see you soon."

The call ends, and Aki checks his clock once more before pulling up the site Kishibe had given him, logging in, and clicking on your user name. He reaches back, sliding his hair to the side, slowly slipping in the chip, that connects to the fleshlight that rests near his thigh. He starts to settle on the bed, pulling off his clothes until he is bare and sliding the headset resting on his ears, and the minutes slowly tick by. He grabs the toy and his bottle of lube, applying a small amount to it, a part of the routine he started all those weeks ago when he first discovered you did this.

The display on his lens changes; your username, and a countdown appear. Along with instructions to slide the fleshlight down his length. He isn't hard yet, cock flaccid in his hand as he slides the toy down his length, a hiss escaping his lips from the coolness of the lube. 

The screen switches again, and you appear in front of him. Hair curled and clipped out of your face by two gold hair clips, your make-up freshly done, and in a navy blue lingerie set a black belt garter. Your breasts are accentuated and brought out by the push-up bra, drawing Aki's attention away from your smiling face, the melodious sound of your voice helping relax into his mattress. 

"Hi, I'm so happy to be seeing you again. It's been a while," you jut your lip out, sliding your hand up his thighs. You do this all the time, make it feel as if it's only you and whoever is on the other side of the screen, never acknowledging that it's you and hundreds of others, "I've missed you." Aki feels his heart hammering against his ribs, the inside of his mouth filling with salvia. "Before you get started though, I'd like to remind you to make sure your device is compatible with mine. You can find this information in the right top left corner." 

Aki doesn't bother checking, knowing that the device worked well with whatever one you had, though how he was able to feel every touch still confused him. His blue eyes focused on you and the hand running up his thigh, and the background behind you. He wonders if you're recording this in the extra room of your apartment you keep closed and if all it actually looks like this inside, or if you have some type of filter to keep your location hidden. Though it wouldn't be hard for someone who frequents your lives to recognize you out on the street with your face fully visible. It wouldn't be hard for one of your viewers to start harassing you if they recognize you. The thought makes Aki's stomach burn and twist, but all of that anger and thoughts are pushed to the back of his head when the feeling of your hand wraps around the base of his cock, a moan falling from his lips., hips moving up into the fleshlight. You've barely done anything and he's growing hard, dick stiffening inside the toy as the sensation of your soft touches travels up his spine. He looks down to watch your hand glide up and down his length, hand twisting, the tips of your fingers barely touching. He twitches in your hand, a giggle falling from your lips.

"Wow, someone's eager today. Be a good boy for me and I'll give you a special treat. Just a couple of more minutes and we can get started," your eyes fall out of focus, glancing beyond him, probably at the screen to your equipment. The tip of your tongue pokes out between your lips, weight shifting so your legs rest between his, pressed together tightly. Your hand continues to move along his dick, fingers paying extra close attention to the head, "Okay, it looks like we can get started. I have a special treat planned for you today, but you have to be good, like really good, in order to get it. Can you do that for me?"

Aki's head moves up and down, a strangled "Yes," falling from his lips, watching a bright smile spread on your lips.

"Okay good," you huff, the warmth of your hand leaving his member, reaching behind you to undo the hooks of your bra, giggling as the straps fall off your shoulders, "I also have a surprise for you." 

Aki's eyes are glued to your breasts, the cold of your room causing your nipples to harden and draw his attention to the small rod sticking out of either one. More importantly to their new color. Highlighting the silver of your new piercings is a halo of dark blue, that sticks out against your skin. The color darkens closer to the center of the areola, and a lighter blue on the outside. You press your arms together, pushing your boobs against one another and out further, forcing him to focus on the hard blue buds. 

Aki wonders when you had time to do this. When between coming over to his house, going to work, and filming throughout the week, did you find time to dye and pierce your pretty little nipples? The inside of his mouth waters as he thinks that you've been hanging around him like this and he hadn't even noticed. 

"I hope you like it," you pout, running your hands down from your neck to play with your breasts. God, he wishes he could wrap his lips around the perked buds and get a taste of you. But technology could only allow him so much, such as feeling your wet hot cunt wrapped around him, and the feather touches on his chest when you bounced on the toy that allowed him to feel you. 

You lean forward, reaching behind you to slide your hand on his cock, grinning down at him, "Want to get a closer look?" Your breasts are mere inches from his face, the hard buds almost brushing on the bridge of his nose. He swallows down hard as he stares at them, running his tongue on his bottom lip, whimpering when you pinch the head of his cock. "You know I thought it would hurt more when they did it, but I barely felt anything, just a small pinch like that," you giggle, sitting back up, settling back between his legs on your stomach. Your hand reaches up to touch his dick again, pushing against the head with your thumb, pulling him toward your mouth. 

You run your tongue from the base up to the head, hand following behind. Lips wrapping around the head while your hand falls back down and up, the tip of your tongue licking at his slit. A low hum vibrates from the back of your tongue, sending small jolts down his length. You pull back smiling, your eyes glazed over and filled with lust.

"I wish you were here," you sigh, tilting your head down to take one of his balls in your lips, sucking gently on, Aki letting out a broken moan as your warm tongue licks at it."That way I could see how hard you really are and feel your big fat cock stretch my little cunt and mouth for real. Lick your big cum filled balls," you giggle, licking your way back up and pushing him fully into your hot mouth with no warning.

Aki cries out, eyes squeezed shut, feeling the head of his cock bump against the back of your throat. You gag around him, the corners of your eyes stained with tears before you pull back until only the head is between your lips. You take in a deep breath and push your head down again, slowly setting a rhythm that feels like his fucking your throat.

The fleshlight around his cock moves to the movements of your mouth and constricts around the girth when you hollow your cheeks. Warmth spreads along the length of his dick while he receives a virtual blowjob from you, broken whimpers falling from his lips, not expecting it to feel so real. His precum is spread along the shaft whenever your pullback, a string of spit connected to your lips, a loud slurp echoing in his ears as his chest rises and falls. You grin up at him, head resting on his thigh, your hand gliding up and down. 

"I didn't expect you to be this hard," you giggle, your eyes teary and lips swollen. You stick out your tongue and tap the tip against it three times before taking him back into your mouth, your hands resting on his thighs. The inside of your mouth is warm and slick, spit coating the corners of your lips. Your teeth graze his shaft as you move your head up and down. He feels you gag every so often, salvia spilling from the corners of your mouth, and breathing growing heavier. The muscles of his stomach become taunt, his release curling and growing in the pit of his belly.

He lets out whimpers and moans, that echo off the walls of his bedroom, and travel down the hall. If he didn't live alone or occupy the middle room, he'd make an effort to be quieter. He doesn't think he'd succeed with the feeling of your warm mouth wrapped around him, the tip hitting the back of your throat, but he'd still make an effort to keep the embarrassing moans down. 

You pull off of him with a pop, a whine falling from his lips. He was close to cumming, close to falling apart at the seams when you stopped. A string of spit connecting your lips to his swollen cock. You're smiling at him as you come back up, resting on your knees, slurping the string into your mouth, "So good for me, such a good boy." 

He swallows down when you rest your thighs on either side of him, his hands automatically moving to rest on your thighs. Aki's still unaccustomed to the warmth under his palms, the feel of your soft skin. It's as if he were actually in the room with you, and not all by himself in his one-bedroom apartment, neon city lights reflected on the sheen that coated his chest.  

You reach behind you, hand wrapping around his cock, and gliding the head along your wet folds. Aki hisses, cock pulsing inside the fleshlight, and he looks up at your lust-filled gaze, your lip caught between your teeth. 

"You've been such a good boy for me tonight. Letting me lick your big fat cock. I think you deserve a special treat." You lean forward, your lips inches away from his, he can feel the warmth of your breath when you whisper, "How about I let you cum in me?"

He knows it's fake. He knows that no matter what happened, even if you had pulled the dildo on your side at the last second, he would have ended up cumming inside the fleshlight. But hearing you say it. Hearing you give him permission to release inside of you has him growing harder, abs tensing underneath your touch, that isn't actually there, and his breath hitching.

You both let out moans when you sink down, your thighs splayed out on top of his, knees bent back making your feet rest near his knees. "So big," you mutter, out of breath, chest rising and falling, "want to feel you cum in me."

"Want to come in you," Aki mumbles into the empty room, wishing you were here in flesh and bone. The warm feeling of the fleshlight couldn't compare to what your actual cunt would feel like. He wanted to be able to feel your actual hot wet cunt wrapped around him and not a simulation of what you supposedly feel like.

Allowing yourself a moment to adjust before you start to move your hips up a down, pace slow and steady at first. You pause and circle your hips every so often, your clit rubbing against his navel. Your hands glide down your body, playing with your pierced nipples for a moment before one hand comes down to rest on his chest while the other circles your swollen clit. 

"Feel so, good. Goin' to cum soon," you breathe out, looking down at him while your hips move up and down, "Come with me, please. Come in me."

His hips start to thrust up into the fleshlight in sync with your movements. Feeling the toy clench around him. The sound of your wet cunt fills his ears as he moves up into the toy. Both of you chasing your releases now. 

Aki comes first, releasing into the fleshlight. His entire body shaking as spurt and spurt of his semen fill the toy - it'd worry about the hassle of cleaning it later - curses and your name falling from your lips. You follow after, your hips never stop moving, and pornographic moans fall from your lips before you collapse on top.

Your body feels warm on top of his, piercings pressed against his chest cool. The weight of your body brings him a sort of comfort when he starts to feel guilty as the fleshlight pulses around him, his cum falling out from the edges. A few minutes pass before you sit back up, pulling out the simulation of his dick on your side.

You smile at the screen, running your tongue over your swollen bottom lip, "Thank you for joining me today. I hope we can see each other at the same time next week." 

The stream ends and Aki is left laying on his bed, chest rising and falling as he stares up at the ceiling. The guilt starts to settle in his stomach. There would be a day when he would have to tell you that he knew about your side job. That he had seen a part of you that you hadn't meant for him to see, and had enjoyed watching you. But that wasn't today, or tomorrow, or the day after. In fact, he didn't know when that day would be, but just as he had discovered yours, you would discover his.

© Copyright 2023. Dearestgojo. All rights reserved.

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