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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales: The Treasure of the Lost Lamp Movie Reviewcap! (Patreon Stretch Goal)

Hello all you happy people! And we have a special review today for two reasons. The first is that this is my second patreon stretch goal review, having hit the 15 dollar goal back in march thanks to my wonderful friend Emma, the same patreon whose responsible for the Green Eggs and Ham Reviews, who helped me hit the 15 dollar goal. As a result you fine people are getting three movie reviews each based on a Disney Afternoon Movie with Treasure of the Lost Lamp today, a goofy movie at the end of the motnh for a weeklong tribute to my favorite dogmandadguy. Extremley was going to be part of it but the length of this review convinced me otherwise, but I will be doing it this summer so keep an ear out. If you want to help me hit my next stretch goals do yourselve a favor and zip on over to my patreon YOU CAN FIND MY PATREON HERE. My next stretch goal at “OH Look 20 Dollars” would give everyone patreon and not, a monthly review of Darkwing Duck as decided by my patrons, reviews of BOTH season 2 mini series from Ducktales 87, introducing Fenton to the world and blighting it with Bubba before the 2017 series fixed him, and as a brucey bonus added last month a review of Danny Phantom the Ultimate Enemy. And if that wasn’t enough if you help me get to the goal after that at 25 unlocks another trilogy of disney film reviews, this time for the proud family and recess movie and the best kim possible movie, and dcom period, so the drama as well as Bryan Lee O’ Malley’s two stand alone graphic novels, lost at sea and seconds for you Scottaholics in the audience.

The other reason now the shilling’s done. is that the plan WAS to review this back to back with Treasure of The Found Lamp, to the point the orginal review had a whole thing about that, why it was delayed etc... but now that review’s been scrapped all together as something sudden and wonderful happened. After just kinda giving up someone came through with a translation of Della’s first apperance so presumibly i’ll be doing that as part of the build up to mother’s day, and since I still want ot do maternal instincts too, and already had to let the Floyd Gottfredson birthday special slide away as well... it had to go as I want to leave the only open space on the schedule for the lovely person who found the story for me. But this review is still done, i’m very proud of it so join me under the cut won’t you?

Behind The Scenes: Before I get into it i’d just like to note this article from SyFy Wire. It , along with articles I found via wikipedia citations, was an invaluable resource.

The film was an experiment: It was an experiment to see if one of their tv properties could bring in theatrical money, to see if a movie made on a cheaper budget and still rake in decent money, to see if a film could be made being outsourced to several diffrent places, and to see what one of those places, their recently aquiried french stuido, could handle this kind of work.

The film, if succesful would be the first of Disney’s MovieToons line, a series of films based on their shows. As you can tell by the fact only this movie and Goof Troop happened and the Movie Toons label wasn’t applied to that one it very much failed. While the film was warmly recevied by people who liked the show general audiences didn’t turn out for it. As a result the MovieToons label was scrapped, future projects with it were canceled.. but the stellar work put in by the french stuidio lead to it perserviering for several more decades and lead to them working on the Goofy Movie, which we’ll get to later this month but needless to say was a MUCH bigger hit with a much bigger budget.

As for why the film failed... I have two theories. THe first is that parents were stupid back then and didn’t want to pay to see something on the big screen they could see on tv’s. This is a stupid mentality to me as generally a movie of a tv show puts in a ton of extra effort and usually goes bigger and dosen’t go home. It’s a likely theory given most liscened films of the era didn’t do quite well, with all three hasbro films tanking. And look I get Transformers the Movie is cheesy and killed a lot of people’s childhood toys, but damn if it ain’t aweosme.. and also something I need to cover at some point. Thankfully this died out by later in the 90′s with Rugrats getting a hugely succesful if flawed film, a better sequel and a third one that was also a crossover with the wild thornberries.

And even now in 2020 we’re getting the Loud House and Rise of the TMNT movies sometimes this summer, we were SUPPOSED to have gotten the bobs burgers movie this summer but arne’t because Disney is being a dick about it.

And we got a phineas and ferb movie last year. With this trend hopefully thsi means we’ll get a Ducktales 2017 movie at some point since season 4 left a huge sequel hook laying right there to grab for a feature film. One final note: The film was conceptually thought up as a 5 part serial like “Treasure of the Golden Suns”, “Catch as Cash Can”, “SuperDucktales” and “Time is Money, something that DOES show as the movie weirdly has act breaks. In a feature film. Yup.

The Guest Cast:

I won’t go into the full cast since I’ve sung Alan Young and Russi Taylor’s praises PLENTY on this blog before, and I plan to go into Beakly and Launchpad’s actors when they show up in the pilot movie. But i’d be remiss if i didn’t talk about our three guest actors for our three new parts.

First up is Merlock voiced by legend and if I had a hall of fame, hall of famer Christopher Lloyd.. I need to get me one of those. Lloyd is of course known for playing Doc Brown in back to the future but has done countless other films, voicework, and other good stuff. Among his MASSIVE filmography includes The Back to the Future Trilogy (Already mentioned it but it bears repeating), Star Trek III, Who Framed Roger Rabbit as the pants destroyingly terrifying Judge Doom, The Addams Family duology as fester, a role rip torn would ironcially play for the animated series made to captalize on said movie, Hey Arnold! The Movie, The Oogieloves in The Big Ballon Adventure (Look everybody needs money sometimes okay?), and Art of the Deal: The Movie, which was not, thankfully an ego filating nightmare made by trump himself but a film made by funny or die parodying his terrible book and having Llloyd return as Doc Brown. TV Wise he’s known for Taxi, Back to the Future the Animated Series, Cyberchase and he most recently popped up on Big City Greens. How I missed that ep I.. do know as I haven’t watched season 2. Gonna fix that later this month. Lloyd is utterly awesome, a great guy and thankfully still alive at the time of this writing, so I was happy to have him here.

Less familiar to me but still known is Rip Taylor, a comedian known for his flamboyant unique way of speech and his marvelous mustache. He showed up in things occasionally and always seemed like the nicest guy and his passing in late 2019 truly is sad. He does a terrific job here but more on that in a moment.

Finally we have Richard Libertini, a comedian I never really saw in anything besides this who according to IMDB was most famous for his ablility to do a foreign accent. I REALLY hope all of them aren’t as horribly racist as this one. We’ll.. get to that in a sec as it’s time for the plot!

A Treasure Uncovered:

We open our film gorgeously. The animation is great in the film, having some rough edges I chalk up to the film’s hectic production, the studio being new at working at disney properties, and the film not being meant for HD. That being said a few rough spots here and there aside.. the film looks ungodly gorgeous. Like most theatrical films based on a cartoon it takes an already great style and makes it look great. It feels like a more fluid evolution of the cartoons look and it’s a shame we didn’t get more movies in this style for both this show and others, ESPECIALLY Darkwing Duck. Can you imagine a Darkwing Duck movie with this lush animation? Hopefully we’ll get one eventually.

So our heroes are going to somewhere in the Middle East. That’s.. that’s all wikipedia gives me and all the film gives me. As usual Scrooge is after treasure in this case the Treasure of Collie Baba, the greatest thief there ever was based obviously off Ali Baba from 1001 nights and that one Beastie Boys song.

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It’s here we find the WORST thing about the film, the thing that makes this a hard one to watch depsite otherwise being pretty good, and that makes my skin crawl knowing i’m a white man and a BUNCH of white guys, Ducktales series creator who did the voice casting for this character, the writers who wrote him, the direector disney them fucking selves who thought this was okay.

The film has some horrible steroytping. It starts with a bunch of backgorund guys surronding Scrooge, with crooked teeth and steotypical voices. This on it’s own is odious.

It somehow gets worse. Then we meet one of our antagonists. We meet Dijon.

This Fucking Guy

Djon is horribly offensive reminding me of other such luminaries in being ungodly offensive yet somehow getting put to film as Jar Jar Binks (With all respeect to his poor actor Ahmed Best, this is not his fault), Rob Schinder as a Sterotypically asian preist, Skids and Mudflap, Rob Schinder as a sterotypically mexican bandit, The Whitewashed cast of The Last Airbender, and Rob Schinder as a stereotypically asian preist. What i’m saying is Djon is an AWFUL, horribly offensive character.. and that Rob Schinder should be shot up into space, not to watch cheesy movies, he’s not funny enough for that, but instead to be sent to a satlitie that’s liveable, but also filled to the brim with spring loaded boxing gloves. Just tons of boxing gloves that feel like getting punched by a heavewight boxer all hidden... they could hit his legs, his face, his nuts, his face and his nuts, the point is he’s in constnat pain unless he moves carefully.

And lest you think i’m exaggerating for starters this is his design.

It just screams “vaugely but sterotpyically middle eastern” along with cowardly. The fact he’s also a literal rat is just the icing on the cake made of broken glass, shrapnel and broken DVD’s of Transformers; Revenge of the Fallen. They say if you eat a reveng eof the fallen dvd John Tutoro appears at the foot of your bed and watches you while you sleep.. and by they I mean me. It was a bad bet. I got rid of him with some insese and a bribe of five dollars.

Oh but that’s just design.. when he talks it’s MUCH worse. His voice is like if they took Apu from the simpsons and said “This but MORE offensive”, and his perosnality is WORSE. He’s a thief.. and not in the endearing loveable rogue way but he’s a pick pocket and a running “Gag’ is that he’ll often grab eveyrthing within reahc. As the deisgn shows he’s a coward running at every opportunity. Oh and to top it all off he’s the willing servant of the white coded, given all ducks in this series are white coded and voiced bby white actors, big bad. And the actor is naturally VERY white to make this cocktail of offensivness so complete that if Disney ever got rid of this film I GUARANTEE the republcian party would be running in with accusations of cancel culture gone amok and never shutting up about this like they did the muppets. Which for the record THEY DIDN’T CANCEL THEM, YOUR POINT IS ILLEGITMATE, THEY JUST WANTED TO BE SENSTIVE YOU GHOULS.

I do have a reason for bringing up Disney’s content warnings... most damming of all given just how DEEPLY uncomfortbale this character is.. there isn’t one for this movie. I double checked: There isn’t even wanring notes on the website. It’s just.. on there. And given just how ghastly a sterotype Djon is.. that’s not right. Seriously they DID put them on certain episodes of the show, theyk now this sort of thing is wrong and they done wrong.. but for NO reason they haven’t done so for a film released 31 years ago. Around the same time as the series and just offensive as that show at it’s worst if not more so. This is flatly inexcusable.. par for the course for Disney’s incompetence but still horribly furstrating, disgusting and shameful.. which has been the theme of the last three days really. I expect better because when it comes to putting that warning label on this stuff, they usually are better. First the scheduling mixup and now this. You already do a handful of things wrong Disney why add this to the list?!

It’s just draining not only to run into another Disney Fuckup after a weekend of dealing with one of their worst in recent memory, but just to watch Djon. To see this horrible caractrure saunter onto the screen and go on with his harmful schtick, to see that THIS is what Ducktales 87 reduced non white people to more often than not. It’s remarkable just how throughly and awesomely Frank and Matt completely and totally reversed this. Instead of horrible sterotypes in the reboot, we got TONS of loveable people of color, an endearing latino hero, a smart african american buisness woman who takes no shit but is still a consumate professional, and an egyptian HERO with an intresting story and a strong moral code instead of this horrible reminder that racisim in media was such an afterthought not ONE person brought this up during the scyfy wire stuff or in any inteview i’ve seen. No one cared. Djon was POPULAR enough that he got three episode sin the series. THREE FUCKING EPISODES. This film could be GOOD.. but it’s just so bogged down EVERY FUCKING TIME this artists interpreitation of what Tucker Carlson sees when he looks at a middle eastern person I had to pause to compose myself and had to take a break writing this review to avoid tyiping this in all caps and using the phrase YOU RACIST MOTHERFUCKERS every other sentence. And again i’m white, I get this is second hand offensiveness.. I do... but it dosen’t mean I can’t be offended other white people were so callous about other cultures behaviors this happened.

And what makes me feel worse.. is that I just sorta... never thought about white people voicing non white characters. Things like this I noticed sure, I realize now part of the reason I didn’t like this movie the first time I saw it was this alex jones version of a looney tune, but I do feel shame for not noticing or caring long before this. Sure I loved it when a character of color got played by a person of color.. but I didn’t realize just how deep that problem was and how LONG it went on for before the outcry post george floyd and the call to action lead to most shows still going course correcting. It’s why stuff like this extra botehrs me: because THIS was just as okay at the time. No one blinked twice about this and odds are the creators involved still haven’t. And that.. that’s just terrible and it hurts to think about and I still have most of the movie to go.

The Pyramid of Peril:

So we do get a gorgeous unvewling scene of a box Scrooge found out about from Collie Baba’s horde that should lead them to the treasure. This scene reminds me of Indina Jones.. and I bring this up because the poster was specifically made to mimick an indinia jones poster, to the point of getting drew struzan to do it. THe creator of Ducktales objected..l but I do not get WHY. While I”m not sure if he had yet, Speilberg flat out admits the Carl Barks comics were an inspiration for Indina Jones, with the iconic bolder chase coming from a similar scene in one of Barks Stories. Gotta cover that too. So yeah I don’t get not wanting an indina jones style poster when both were inspiried by the same work and it’s just simple logic and it looks so neat. Thank you.

Scrooge finds seemingly just clothes.. and a map. Jeff Dunham’s Most Racist Puppet reports to his master, Merlock. Merlock is a.. meh villian. Christopher Lloyd does try.. but Lock is your standard evil overlord wants to take over the world type. He dosen’t have much depth, or personality and only his style saves him from dragging the film down along with Dana Carvey’s most racist disguise in master of disguise. He does have a deent shape shifting gimick and being played by Christopher Lloyd means he’s acted TREMENDOUSLY. Alan Young was apparently in awe watching him work and that’s wonderful to hear. The guy did his best. Weirdly Merlock would show up in tons of other works, mostly video games.. but even weirder he NEVER showed up in ducktales 2017. Both Djon and Gene would, Djon thankfully renamed we’ll get to all of that tommorow thank god. I need it after this. But Frank has outright said they didn’t use Merlock because there simply wasn’t anything they could do with him they couldn’t dow ith magica. My likely guess is the might of found a way to revamp him EVENTUALLY, it’s not like radical revamps weren’t there thing come on, they just had way more stories with Magica and didnd’t get around to it before the show was canceled. Just make him some sort of evil god or something. it’s what I might do. There’s a lot of angles with him. Though I would’ve still gotten christopher lloyd back. I mean most of the recasting is good but he’s still alive and deserved a better shot at things.

So Merlock sends Djonn to go with scrooge as his guide to find the treasure, as there’s something of imense power within it. And I gotta ask WHY does Merlock need a minon. No really. This isn’t a situation like reboot magica where he’s trapped in another realm. He can shapeshift into any animal. We only see him use falcon, rat, cockroach and bear but theoritically he can become anything and bear alone is still a LOT. Why does he need this sterotype even other sterytopes ar eashamed of? The film dosen’t NEED Djonn. Just let Christopher Lloyd monologue and leave this post 911 propogranda cartoon at home.

So our heroes nad rejected jar jar prototype head into the desert, and seemingly find nothing before finding a small pyramid all while Merlock follows desecretley as a mighty hawk.

Scrooge makes the boys and Djon dig... because they clearly forgot the “work hard” part of his ethos.

Our heroes unveil the pyramid... and while Merlock SAYS he searched the desert and I get it’s hard to see thourgh all of that.. the dude is immortal, had decades to search and had Mickey Rooney there on standby to force him to go comb the desert. I have an artist rendering of that hang on

So our heroes enter the pyramid and it goes.. really how you’d expect: there’s a bunch of traps our brave explorers have to pass, the boys minintpret a juinor woodchuck saying about loosing your marbles to mean using the ones they actually have which geninely comes in handy as they trip the traps and Rob SChinder as a carrot stumbles into one. Also launchpad is wearing a hawaiin shirt and shades. This has no baring on the plot, but it does bring the movie up a notch in my book and I question why the reboot never used this outfit. Then again they also never properly used Donald’s Quack Pack Outfit (Which bad show or not, is objectively awesome), or his Quack Shot Indiana Jones Riff Outfit, so it’s not like there isn’t a presdecnt for not giving a character a cool costume change from a previous medium. I really should do a top 12 missed opportunities list for the 2017 cartoon.. the ideas for stuff are really piling up.

OUr heroes eventually find the treasure which has insidiously clever security the more I think about it: at first I thought it had none, just a pit with some... scorpions? I mean their supposed to be but they look like they crawled out of the same stygian hole in the sky Doofus crawled out of. And if your asking me “wait which Doofus” the answer is both. Both these abominations crawled out of a stygian hole in the sky.

But the treasure is on a platform surrounded by scoprions with the only way out being the trap filled way they came in. Unless someone comes in with a full team and a bunch of lootin sacks, they aren’t getting out with EVERYTHING. They can steal SOME of the treasure but there’s no way to get any signifigant portion... and the team thing itself is an issue, something Collie defintely predicted being a thief himself: while some thieves can work well as a team, hence why we have four oceans movies 3/4 damn good, and for the record 12 is the bad one, 8 is how you do a soft reboot and a female led reboot right, a good chunk of professional crooks will turn on each other or try and swinldle... and tha’ts dangerous in a trap filled temple but hey some criminals ain’t so smart. If they all were Rudy Gulliani wouldn’t have two razzies for preparing to pull his pants down, and have waved his phone around on tv like a dare for future adminstrations to arrest the shit out of him would he?

But Scrooge has his family so they get loading. But not before Webby finds the lamp. Not knowing about it Scrooge has no intrest in it, but Webby does. We also get a really simple but hilarious gag where SCrooge dickers over the idea for a second.. before Webby picks up a Jeweled tiara to possibly take instead. The best gags to me are often the ones that just let the character’s perosnalities take the lead and bounce off each other. It’s why when I reviewed the four lilo and stitch crossovers recently I harped on character interaction as their biggest weakness: it’s what MAKES a good work for me. It’s why my faviorite comics and shows often follow a loveable group of disfunctional misfits. I like a group of big personalities who despite in theory should NOT be able to work making it work anyway. And it’s honeslty what’s made Scrooge last so long: Scrooge on his OWN is awesome.. but iwth the boys, donald, and in the case of this series and the reivival Webby and Launchpad, with people to bounce off of who he contrasts heavily with, from Launchapd’s buffonery to Webby’s inehrent sweetness in both versions, to the boys genuine honesty and sense of adventure.... it makes him truly stand out. He’s a great character on his own, don’t get me wrong.. but it’s the people around him that give him chances to show WHY. A good character on it’s own is fine and dandy.. a good character with other good characters around them is where it gets truly special.

Merlock naturally bursts in and in a VERY Black Heron move needlesly outs what micheal bay sees when he closes his eyes as a bad guy... no really he grabs the guy with his talons as he captures the treasure and reveals he’s a bad guy. I don’t even get why keep Djonn alive. He’s done all Merlock possibly could’ve needed and Merlock is ruthless... this makes no sense and only happens because they need Djonn for later in the plot.

Our heroes barely escape, rafting out on the platform itself in a thrilling sequence.. but it’s the one right after that catches my attention. Scrooge utterly defeated, having searched for this treasure for forty years and unresponsive to everyone else. The anmation, coupled with the incomprable Alan young’s acting makes this the highlight of the film for me. Beneath the armor of wealth and skill.. is only a poor old man who just lost something he’s been chasing after most of his life. Scrooge tries his hardest not to be vunerable and both shows and the original comics all use that so when he truly is devistated like this, and i’ts belivible since this treasure is a personal goal of his and as someone who has had things that they seek out specifically, loosing them always hurts. It hurts to ALMOST reach a goal only to have it crumble out under you

But while this alone is good.. what’s next makes it great. Webby sweetly offers up the lamp. Scrooge turns it down, and her genuine gesture reinvgorates him and reminds us of who he is “I’ll find it if it takes another 40 years”> Scrooge may be bitter, mean and selfish a lot of the time.. but deep down, he’s a good man and one who will not give up, and a momentary setback can only stop him so long as long as he has his family to remind him of who he truly is.. and what’s truly important. It’s genuinely sweet and to me is also a reminder of why 87 Webby is a good character: Shes’ not perfect, her main personality trait is often Girl Sterotype”.. but she’s a genuinely sweet small child with a huge heart. It’s telling that while 17′ Webby is almost completely diffren,t and far better, that heart remains her biggest strength. Sure her reboot self could kill a man nad no one would ever find the body, but it’s her heart and empathy that makes that possible and makes her Webby. That inherent loving nature is what makes Webby webby wether she’s a toddler having a tea party or a tween getting ready to intergoate a guy with a meat tenderizer while saying ‘Cute girl stuff”.

Gene Genie Let’s Himself Go:

It’s a few days later and this is the point where it REALLY becomes obvious this was written as a bunch of episodes. Though to the film’s credit while it does ake this feel like a compliation movie as a result... it dosen’t hamper the film’s quality, condiment from Rush Limbaghs’ hot dog stand does that just fine, but once you notice it it’s impossible to unotice it. Weirdly though it seems chunked up into four episodes rather than the usual five, likely cutting down an episode, though I can’t see where they cut out material frankly if they did and i’ts just as likely they woudl’ve had to make one to fill in the space.

So Scrooge is in a mood, being grumpy with his secretary Mrs. Featherly, quackfaster in all but name, and having to be sent home. So while Duckworth goes to fetch him Webby polishes her treasure at long last readying for a tea party, something the boys roundly reject because their sexist little twits and swo were the writers or executies who assumed all little boys act the same. It’s easily my biggest pet peeve with the series as a whole: anytime this crops up with the boys it turns them into the worst dicks imaginable. It’s telling this, being mean about her wantin ga tea party with her surrogate brothersi s TAME. Normally they’ll say she can’t do things because she’s a girl or mock her hobies outright instead of just be mildly dickish. And while she dosen’t look much younger Webby is VERY CLEARLY, in this series anyway, supposed to be say 5 or 6 to the boys 8-10. 7 at most. SHe’s a small child and while it is realistic for older kids to bully younger ones, it’s not fun to watch. It’s why I get annoyed at all the big sibling bully characters.. some work, but most aren’t fun to watch because there’s nothing funny or intresting about it. It’s the same deal here.

Thankfully that quickly goes away as the lamp moves when Webby rubs it and does so again to prove it did move. Huey finishes it and we’re introduced to Gene, the best part of the film. Gene is a Genie and he takes a second to dart around before messing with the appliances in the kitchen, as he was last around during the time 1001 Nights Came About. Cleverly though, and so we thankfully don’t have 80 dozen fishout of water jokes that have already been done before. As you can probably guess i’m not a huge fan of time travel fish out of water stuff. Now from another dimensoin or planet, i’m on board with with Star Vs, Steven Universe and Sym-Bionic Titan being great examples of this, as is the comic resident alien. (Despite having the wonderous Alan Tuduk the show sounds way more mean spirited and misses the entire point of the comic as given by the author in the credits, i.e. that the alien is supposed to NOT be a threat and just be gently waiting for a ride) The inverse is also good with Amphbia and owl house, taking a human and plopping them into our world. But time travel stuff just usually runs the same beats of “look at the shiny thing” and what not. The only time i’ve sene something SIMILAR work is with thor where their society is SIMILAR to vikings time but still it’s own thing.. it also gave us a classic gag in..

So yeah i’m glad they dropped this and instead had a clever way around it: Gene reads the encylopedia at the mansion. Granted it’s Scrooge so I don’t know how current it is and given this came out in 1990 thus HOW racist it is. It’s not a questoin of IF it was, but how much.

But having caught up the kids confront him with the fact he has to grant wishes. This lamp runs on what I now realize are Aladdin rules: Whoever currently holds the Lamp is the Genie’s master, they only get three wishes, and that dosen’t reset if it changes hands. The only big diffrence from the usual is Gene dosen’t have to TELL them about the wishes like Genie did, and Gene very begrudginly agrees to it. He also seem’s phsyically pained when doing so.

So since all 12 know about him, each of the kids gets a wish though it seems unfair with HDL. Their one person, they shoudln’t get 9 wishes just because their brain is spread out over three bodies.

This film continues the weird simliarties to Aladdin by attaching rules though they instead come up as a result of our heroes talking rather than the Genie just flat out tleling them: both share the “you can’t wish for more wishes” thing, a common rule in these stories and usually only broken nowadays as a clever twist as the rule is SO common place, not having it is a twist. But it is there for a reason: to limit the sheer power of a reality warping wish. The wishes can also only go so far. In a nice line, when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests wishing for peace one earth, Gene says “No pipe dreams’ He can’t bend people or reality on THAT scale. He can bend reality as we find out, but it’s smaller scales like turning someone’s possesions over ot someone else, warping the bin into a castle, or bringing inanitamte objects to limited life. Still HUGE feats worth of a genie, so Gene’s power isn’t so nerfed it’s unusuable, but it does explain why his evil pervious ownder Merlock, more ont hat in a bit too, didn’t just wish to have eternal dominon over the earth or something. Gene can do just about anything but he can’t change the world on a fundemental level.

And I do LIKE having rules in wished based stories like this, I chalk it up to growing up with Fairly Odd Parents... though they eventually went too far in the oppsoitie direction, pulling rules out of their ass to suit the episode, instead of simply having some very standard, very understandable rules that still pose challenges but don’t outright cheat so the episode can happen.

So Webby does her first wish.. and wishes for a Baby Elephant, something Gene is against as he prefers they keep the wishes small: otherwise he gets found out, and the fight over him begins. So one of the boys wishes him away. Or Webby does. Point is it’s gone though not before Beakly sees it and Scrooge smells something is up. Our heroes try to hide gene, but gene thankfully simply dresses up like a modern kid and thus is able to pass as a friend of there staying for the night.

So with the rules established and what not the kids find a clever solution: they simply go a ways away from the mansion into the woods, far enough from town to avoid any suspcion, and same iwth the mansion and just wish for all kinds of stuff: a giant bunch of ice cream toys, standard kid wish fufillment but it’s nice... in part because the kids treat Gene like one of them. Wihle they STARTED asking him about the wishes, this starts the bonding process. Soon he will be part of the hive mind.. SOON.

Until then though after using another wish to make scrooge not mad at them for coming home late and missing dinner, that night we find out Gene’s backstory.... and it’s an utter tearjerker. As it turns out Merlock wants him back because he’s Gene’s former master and as you’d guess.. it was NOT a happy existnace, used contstnatly to do horrible things with no power to stop himself. Pompeii and Atlantis were both directly Merlock’s fault and it was only Collie Baba stealing the lamp that put an end to his hell. He also answers the two obvious questions botht he audeiince and the boys have: How the hell is Merlock still alive and shoudln’t he be out of wishes then? The first is simple. Unlike pretty much every DBZ Villian whose WANTED to do so, Merlock wished for immortality first chance he got, taking the Zamasu route instead and thus leaving him free.

As for the wishes thing it turns out his amulet, in adition to shapeshifting, also gives him extra wishes becuase fuck it.

But the boys sweetly offer to protect him.

The next day, Apu’s Cousin let’s Merlock know the maps in the mansion and Merlock has him help sneak in with Merlock taking rat form. This backfires as Mrs. Beakley notices the form and chases after him with a broom

Meanwhile Webby has her tea party with Gene after he and the boys played cops and robbers earlier, and he’s bored.. though nicely not because it’s a girly thing, but because the stuffed animals aren’t alive and she naively has him fix that. This leads to

Which sadly is jsut scrooge vs a duck toy but admit it, you want that movie for Disney Plus yesterday. Call Charles Band Disney. CALL CHARLES BAND!

Whelp Scrooge Still Sucks:

Scrooge takes for a turn for the obnoxious in the next part, but i’ts fine by me as it’s part of the plot. Naturally this reinactment of Cult of Chucky has lead to Scrooge finding out about the Genie. To his credit, Scrooge is tactical about his wishes. As said by the Duck himself “I could wish for a diamond, no the world’s biggest dimaond, no ten world’s biggest diamond, no a diamond mind, no the MINING INDUSTRY!”

The sheer power this gives him is TERRIFYING, both because of his status.. and because unlike the kids who all wished for simple kid stuff and used up their wishes quickly, he both gets how much he can do with this and could conquer the world economy if he truly wanted to.

The obnoxious part comes in as he treats Gene as not a person, figuring he’s just there and forces him into the lamp despite the kids protests after Gene grants his first wish: Collie Baba’s treasure. It also dosen’t feel like the wishing nor him using the lamp to get the tresure back goes against his hard work ethos: for the former while he is getting all this magically, he’s still having ot use his wits to get the most out of it, and he did earn the lamp itself square. For the latter, he already earned the treasure square too and had it stolen. He’s onlyg etting back what’s by all rights HIS. Granted he plans on giving most of it up for a tax break but still it’s his by right.

However the reason his assholery works is twofold: first it’s Scrooge. While he’s not a TERRIBLE person, in the comcis and this cartoon he isn’t a GOOD person either. He DOES have a good heart and will usually do the right thing, but his first instnct is always to get more money and to be a cantakerous old bastard to eveyrone and everything. While he’s subtly grew out of “I hate eveyrone and everyone hates me” as his guiding principal, it’s still his defualt reaction to most situations. But he first relents by letting Gene attend the party, part of why the Collie Baba thing stung so bad was that he’s told the historical society he’d get the treasure for years only to come back empty handed, if shrunken. But he still manages to have a good time while Asok and Merlock infiltrate.. well I’mRunningOutofINsultingNIcknamesCanYouTell steals the silverware. Yes... that.. that really happens.

Look we’re almost done, i’m almost free of this racist mummies curse. Let’s continue. Gene sees melock and freaks and drags SCrooge with him and while at First Scrooge is cranky...

No but now I want a Donkey Kong Country crossover too dammmit. And to talk about those games. Another thing for the list. But Scrooge is righ tot be a bit surly...

Okay now your just pushing it. As Gene whisked him away without telling him anything other than vauge worries... but then he gets a full idea of why Gene’s so terrified when Merlock shapeshifts into a bear and starts breaking the door down. Eh, could be worse.

Gene shrinks them to escape and Merlock leaves thinking they fled but leaves Skids Minus Mudflap to go look for them. Scrooge sneaks out but bumps into a cart running from the photo you see when you look up stereotype on google. I mean I assume.. let’s try it.

Huh you know I HOPED but I never expected...

So Google Proving My Point plans to give his lamp to the master because of his weird Torgo-Esque obession with helping a man who clearly wants to murder him but takes his sweet time doing so because plot, and Gene figuring this COULDN’T POSSIBLY go as bad as Melock getting him urges the dummy to keep him and make his own wishes.

This goes about as well as you’d expect....

Wiped Out With A Wish:

Scrooge returns home to find Watto has wished to take his poessions, fortune, everything and Scrooge gets thrown in jail for breaking into his own house. We get two great moments back to back. The first is Scrooge lamenting loosing his fortune in jail, and realizing the sheer power and risk of the lamp, especially since he worked hard to earn it, every bit of it.. and Sam Wilson’s 70′s Backstory came in and took it all in an instant.

The second is Scrooge’s family coming for him, including Launchpad , Beakly and Webby obviously and bailing him out. Though Beakly is UNGOLDLY annoying in this scene, sobbing hysterically and adding nothing and it’s not nearly as funny as the film thinks. Turns out Goliath getting buried wrapped in chains threw them out.

Scrooge takes a bit to rebound from all this.. but eventually realizes something: he knows the security of the bin inside and out. He had it put in after all. So it’d be easy enough to break in. So they gotta break in to break out the lamp, undo this nightmare, and END THIS MOVIE. Seriously this review has taken two days as is I do NOT want to miss my invincible review.

So they break into the bin, and it’s a tightly paced Scene, scrooge going in one way while the kids go the other and we even get a nice callback as the marbels come in handy to get past one of the traps. It’s just a good scene. it’s only real flaw is that Launchapd just sorta disappears as does Duckworth despite the fact their in a plane, and the bin later gets turned into a floating castle. Kinda a plot hole to not have Launchpad crash in to save htem just saying.

Scrooge eventually does get to Djonn, whose been ignoring the imminent threat of Merlock while Gene sweats it out... and this backfires horribly as Merlock hitched a ride as a roach (Though there was a hilarious scene of him getting fried constnatly by lasers when Louie went through a laser hallway, as while Louie had the directions, it dind’t take into account passengers on your head.

So Merlock remanifests in full gets the Lamp and unleashes his wrath on Tin Tin in the Congo and turns him into a wild pig.

Not you sweetie. He then forces Gene to turn the castle into a fortress and float it back to his home in parts unknown. It’s a DAMN cool scene with impressive and horrifiing animation as the bin melts and crumbles into thte castle and the kids barely make it up the stares as they shift and disolve. Really top notch stuff.

Scrooge stands up to Merlock... and this naturally goes poorlyw ith Gene begging Merlock not to respond.. and Merlock having him blow scrooge off the top of the forgtess storm eagle style, though scrooge understands. And this is the true reason why scrooge being a dick didn’t bother me so much. Because it helps create a great contrast between him and Merlock. Both thought of Gene as a tool rather than a person.. but Scrooge grew to realize he was wrong and what he was dealing with wasn’t some magical goodies creator.. but a child forced to constantly grant wishes, in sheer agony to do so no less, likely so sick of it because again and again and again people used him as a slave to get what they wanted and to hell with what Gene wanted. He realized he was terrible for making this poor boy into his slave simply because that’s his job. In contrast Merlock could give no shits and is a malevolent monster who glefully uses Gene despite the pain the wishes put him through and his protests. It’s why Gene is the best part.. he’s athroughly likeable, throughly inncoent character with tons of personality and a truly tragic and horrifying backstory and Rip Taylor acts the hell out of every scene with the guy.

Thankfully the marbles come in handy one last time and Huey, Dewey or Louie snipes the lamp away and a struggle for it insues between Scrooge and Merloc mid air. it’s fucking awesome.. and it get sbetter in how scroogewins. He simply gets rid of Merlock’s amulet, taking it then throwing it. Grante dhe COULD’EVE used it for unimited wishes.. but it was too risky to do that and as we’ll see in the ending , Scrooge realized the Lamp was too powerful to keep around for much longer and too much of a tempting target for his rogues.. not that we see them this movie as the crew wanted it to bea ccesaible and thus kept hte cast to the main cast from season 1 and just made new vilians and a new supporting character, but still.

He does use his second wish though to undue the damage Merlock had done and the bin and clan mcduck are returned to duckburg in good condition.

Time for our ending, which is genuinely and wholly touching. With the lamp too dangerous to use Scrooge considers just sending it to the earth’s core, which horrifies the kids as it’d mean Gene would be trapped there forever... if the molten lava iddn’t just outright destory the lamp and probably kill him. But Scrooge.. isn’t the bastard he likes to potray himself as. Instead he makes Gene into a real boy. He gives the poor kid HIS wish, which designrates the lamp and undoes all the spells... so Merlock is PROBABLY dead but he does return for some games so maybe not?

And so we end on two things: Gene happily playing cops and robbers with the boys finally free.. and Birth of A Nation grabbing all the loot he can in his patns and running off. Ha ha ha thank god i’m done with this prick. And no I will not be looking at his ducktales episodes unless I have to.

Final Thoughts:

This movie is OKAY. It has a solid plot, gene is a wonderful chacter, the animatoin is pretty prettay pretty good, and the voice acting as usual is excellent, with Rip Taylor being the standout.

But as my paragraphs of rage shoud’ve made Clear Djonn is just BAD. Easily the worst character i’ve encountered in my year of reviewing and some of the worst writing i’ve ran into. And that writing includes a goblin man voyerstically forcing two teenagers to make out, making jokes about santa renaming himself Clem the sceneafter he tearfully confessed to letting the elves and ms. claus die, accidental transphobia via the u-men, and Bryan Lee O malley thinking we needed more than one volume of Julie Powers being around. This was disgusting, even by 1990 standards and especially by 2021 standards and it drags the film down considerably. Without it the film is okay.. with it the film is just VERY hard to watch any time he pops up. He made getting through the movie a nightmare and while I pause a lot becaue it’s a bad habbit I did so more simply because as I said earlier in the review I could not stand him.

It makes it a hard film to recommend. If you can stomach the racisim, then it might be worth it, but be aware of what your putting up with going in. But if you can’t.. there’s no shame in that, it’s carbombya levels of bad. Which yes was a real fictoinal country. It was so bad Casey Casem quit transformers over it. True story. So yeah, it’s an okay film, on par with the series at it’s best for the most part.. but Djonn just spoils it for me.

If you liked this review, like it, share it around that sort of thing and if you want MORE disney movie reviews, in addiiton to the goofy movie one later this month, if you help me hit my 25 dollar stretch goal on patroen.com/popculturebuffet, i’ll do reviews of the Recess, Proud Family and Kim Possible MOvies (Well so the drama anyway), so help me out would you and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

#ducktales #ducktales treasure of the lost lamp #ducktales 87 #scrooge mcduck #rip taylor #christopher lloyd #launchpad mcquack #webby vanderquack #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #duckworth #bentina beakley #merlock #djon #faris djinn #movies #disney plus #disney

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writing-the-end · 4 years ago

Text

LoL Chapter 27- Hermits

Masterpost

A Wizard Hermits tale (AU, designs, ideas belongs to @theguardiansofredland)

Its not often the hermits get a chance to all be together. And while they know battles lie ahead of them, they take this moment to enjoy being a family again.

______________________________________

Etho appears beside TFC, causing the mineral mage to sputter out the coffee he was sipping. “I caught sight of xB a few islands down!”

The hermits murmur with excitement and follow Etho to the shoreline. Sure enough, xB is hauling Hypno and Beef onto the warm sand. Hypno thumps his hand against his head, an attempt to escape his clogged ears which only fails for him. “Can’t we take a sky turtle next time?”

“But it’s more fun to swim!” xB chuckles, and with a flick of his finned ears and his grey tail he runs to hug the hermits. “It’s so good to be back, guys! I can’t remember the last time all of us were on the island together.”

“You guys said something about taking back Lairyon?” Beef raises an eyebrow, looking over at Doc. “This isn’t your rebellious phase coming back, is it?”

“We’ll explain everything on the way. TFC has a lot to tell.” Etho wraps his arms around Hypno and xB, before disappearing into their shared shadow.

The kipling laughs, shaking his head and looking around the island. “Some things never change. I see you haven’t fixed the hole in False’s forge either.”

The hermits laugh, the entire group filled with life as they return to the guild hall. Joe and Cleo regale the missing hermits with the story of their victory at the Chimaera’s Championship. Their battles and challenges in the arena, facing off against the best guilds and winning the cup. They also tell Hypno, xB, and Beef about the heist, the discovery.

“Why am I not surprised?” Hypno hums, tapping his fingers against the wood of the table that he sits down at. TFC pats the boys on the head, grabbing at Beef’s face and tapping his finger on a scar he sees. Beef shrinks away, concerned for a second, but the guildmaster only chuckles in response.

“I can’t wait to hear that story. It’s good to have you guys back.” TFC pats him on the back. “Treat you to a pint of beer next time we go to town.”

“Let’s hear about this big job you’ve got planned for us first.” xB raises an eyebrow. In response, TFC rolls out his map.

The paper has changed since they first decided to go after Dolios and his creepy crystals. If there’s one thing an outlaw guild knows how to do, it’s to find new jobs through the grapevine. “Dolios has these tales silenced. I’ve heard of at least six other guilds being attacked or wiped out by unknown magic. Unfortunately, we’re too late to help them.” Team ZIT glance at one another, but focus on the here and now. “But there are places we can make a difference, as well as get information and better ourselves as a group.”

TFC motions to the Evernight forest. “An old friend of mine said there has been stories of familiars and companion animals going missing. No trace of where they went, except for a few patches of charred grass.”

“Charred, or drained?” Mumbo muses. To anyone, that sounds like the signs of a dragon ravaging Foresta, but after Mumbo’s duel with a draconic mage he knows dragons aren’t that dastardly. Nothing is as dastardly as Dolios.

TFC grins, the newest member and the guildmaster sharing a knowing glint. “There’s also Shellor- which, I believe one of our hermits here knows quite intimately.” Etho gives a two fingered salute, rocking on the back legs of his chair until they fall out from under him, dumping him on the floor. Doc, Beef, and BDubs laugh at him. “There’s a few spies who’ve seen things Dolios has done, but the hard part will be earning their trust.”

“Hmm, yeah. I don’t think I really left Shellor on a good note.” Etho grimaces.

“That’ll be you, Keralis, and Grian’s problem. Meanwhile, we also need some help in the magical beings department. And if there’s one group that has mysterious, arcane magic on lock, it’s-”

“The fae!” Stress slams down her hands, a bright smile on her face. Iskall jolts upright and nearly hits the table again on the way down. “But where will we go? The fjords? The mountains? Heartbreak Trench?”

“The flowerfruit fields. While you’re there, you and BDubs can gather ingredients that we’ve been running low on.” TFC glances at the map, running a finger over the lime green patch on the map. “We do have two confirmed crystal sightings, as well as Gildara. Edenswell seems to be falling ill to dark magic, and there’s reasonable belief that Dolios isn’t getting these massive rocks from nowhere- he’s using gems from the mines.”

Heads peek over one another in an attempt to see the map. The charcoal diamonds and swirls. Gildara still sits untouched, and every hermit looks at one another. Do any of them want to return to the beginning of this all? Even to put an end to the dark magic plaguing the land, the memories of what they saw, what they experienced, still remain.

Except for those that weren’t there. “I don’t think I’d mind checking out this hokey little town you guys keep talking about.” Beef grins, glancing over at Hypno and Wels. “We’ll have that place brimming with flaxen fields and green gardens all over again.”

TFC grins, dipping his head in thanks to the returning hermits. He leans back, looking at the filled guild hall. “It’s been so long since we’ve all been together. If only it were on good terms.”

“It feels good to return home.” xB ruffles his hair with a scaled hand, looking around for a second, then returning to speaking. “Even if it’s just for a short time, we should enjoy everyone being together again.”

“What I’m hearing is we need to have our signature hermit celebrations.” Tango’s face splits into a devious smile. All around him, other hermits get a similar smirk on their face. Before TFC can agree to the idea, the hermits are gone. Cleo rushes to her wrecked pirate ship, hefting kegs of ale with the aid of Stress. Wels commandeers False’s forge to begin baking his favorite sweets, while Mumbo, Grian, and Iskall work together to fix the pennants, lanterns, and flags that decorate the guild hall in a myriad of colors.

Tango snaps his fingers, and a small flame dances at his fingertips, jumping from his nails to the wicks of the lanterns. He ducks out of the way just in time to avoid being smacked in the face by a massive fish, tossed from the sea by xB and grabbed by Grian midair. The whirlpool mage disappears back underwater, back to hunting in the realm he was born in.

The sun begins to inch towards the western horizon, turning the sky ablaze in a mosaic of pinks, oranges, yellows, and reds. A blue flag flutters against the ancient oak tree, catching on a branch. BDubs reaches out from his seat near the food platters, hardly even glancing away from the fresh baked goods, and with a flick of his wrist the branch bends away and the flag flies free again.

False appears beside Wels, grabbing a brownie from the hot pan and sticking her tongue out at him as she passes. When Wels objects she’s quick to retort. “You used my forge. It’s rental payment, paladin.”

Beef sets out plates, which are promptly ignored once Impulse and Zedaph have finished cooking the tuna xB caught. Music swells from a music box the creation of Ren, with the help of Mumbo, the upbeat songs written and composed with Joe and requests from the other hermits for their favorite tunes.

The music thrums against the low roar of talking, the sound only broken by the common lilt of laughter. Hermits tell their stories, whether they be heard for the thousandth time or a new tale to tell. Beef causes Hypno to flush as he recounts the prank he pulled on the dream mage. Hypno turns bright red, quiet voice cracking over the tale. “I smelled like centaur shit for a week! It was awful, I’ll tell you that.”

A raucous laugh erupts from that table, overshadowing the story of Mumbo’s duel to xB. “I swear on my life, I thought she was gonna swallow me whole. Or burn me like coal.” Mumbo shakes his head. “I don’t think I ever want to go up against a draconic mage ever again in my life.”

“I’m surprised a kipling, a draconic mage, and a desert wizard were one team. That’s a strange group. I don’t think I’ve even met each of the others.” xB takes a bite of his fish, marinated in fresh fruits that Cub plucked from nearby islands. “But I’m sure that kipling gave you guys a run for your money. That magic she had… it’s rare beyond imagination. In kipling legend, it means a legendary hero is about to arise.”

“He definitely kicked Ren’s ass. I don’t think I ever saw so much water moved at once.” Mumbo shakes his head, and stuffs a red jelly tart into his mouth.

Keralis stands, tossing his woven hat from the brown curls of his hair, and inviting himself onto the open floor. “I love this song! Come on, my wonderful friends, let’s dance!”

The setting sun casts a golden glow, bouncing off verdant leaves, twisting along the waves of the Ashioll sea. Laughter and music dance in the gilded light, playing in the curls of Zedaph’s hair as he joins Keralis. The two bumble around, drunk from Cleo’s ale but enjoying themselves immensely.

Only one hermit wasn’t taking part in the festivities. Atop the canopy that protects the guild hall below, Xisuma watches as the stars appear in the sky. For a few moments in the day, the void and the sun share the space above. And he always thinks of the one person he knows he should forget by now. But he would’ve loved this, even if he’s constantly worrying about being caught doing something wrong.

“Hey X, you gonna mope up there all day or join us?” Jevin grins below, one hand placed on his hip and the other waving Xisuma down. “Just because you’re a void mage doesn’t mean you have to a-void everything!”

Xisuma rolls his eyes, but smiles beneath his mask. “After that terrible pun, how can I say no?”

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pretzcl · 5 years ago

Text

— the last dance

summary | He was the Sun, you were the Moon and all your little stars were slowly aligning. But the Sun and the Moon aren’t destined to be together, no they’re set apart worlds away. When texts become one word, calls left to voicemail and promises made to remain the centre of each other’s universe start to fickle. You suppose if you don’t have your best friend to talk to, you can spend the night in solitude talking to the moon.

{mutual pining au, opposites attract au}

pairing: best friend!donghyuck x fem!reader word count: 11k genre: angst warnings: the story often switches between yn’s perspective and a third person perspective so just be wary of that along with, the flashbacks. also, could i have gotten more cliché with the title?

You sit up in your bed and sigh. Wind breezes from the open window, gliding in swirls around your hair and nose, cooling the sleek metal of the mobile you hold in your hands. The blaring of an electronic xylophone jarred you out of the peaceful unconsciousness and hauled you into a room cloaked by the thick velvet curtain of night.

“Hey, this is Lee Donghyuck. I can’t answer the phone right now. But I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” The audio message fades into the chilly silence.

Brows crinkled, you bury your grumbles in your hands. The skin of your forehead bundles in lines as you squeezed your eyelids shut. Not because you’re wincing at the illumination from your phone in the stark darkness like you wish you were. No, you’re wincing back the tears brimming at the clumps of your wet lashes.

Blots gushing at your lashes blur the brightly lit-up phone screen with the shadows. The mobile slips from your fingers and drops onto the quilted blanket with a soft thud. The satin of your pyjama sleeve is smooth underneath your eyes as you dab the dampness away. While you run a hand through your unruly locks, wheedling yourself into false composure.

But the deep blue billows rolling around in your heaving chest, crash against you causing you to collapse over. Hurt crawls itself from the pit of your stomach and scavenges up your throat in an uproar of silent screams. The rumples of the white sheets crease under your hands behind you in search of a pillow to clutch against your chest and stifle your cries.

The front you lugged throughout the weeks of saying you’re ‘fine’, adding to the tedious misuse of the phrase, leaks in streams down your cheeks. Each bead bears a drop of the rippling weight from your stomach. The frontage caves down into crumbles like that of the white sheets lolling over your body, that had tucked you into the abyss of dreams. You wish you had prolonged your visit in its blissful peace.

One last tear escapes. It trickles along one of the moist trails tracing down the red blotches tinted on your cheeks. The desolate teardrop breaks off the tip of your chin with a soft plop. Though, your stare is vacantly placed at your open window.

Doesn’t he miss the little adventures you had together? Raiding the candy aisle with trolleys basketing the sugariest cereals and ice creams for your movie nights. Swinging side by side, under the golden maple leaves hanging by a thread onto a hunkering tree, dizzying in the elation of euphoria. Heart’s content with soaking up each other’s presence in the comfortable silence until one of you burst into a dancing fit.

Aren’t classes excruciatingly slow with loneliness sitting beside him in a room full of poorly acquainted peers and a wretched old man in suspenders making stiff gestures to a chalkboard?

Isn’t it oppressive plodding through hectic corridors, alone, to a locker abandoned of a someone bouncing at your arrival?

You swallow hard. Doesn’t he… miss you?

A grey banner pops at the top of your phone screen. A gleam glosses over your eyes as you click into the notification and open iMessage. Maybe the midnight's air has been hazing over your mind, clogging your better judgement.

[2:39 PM]:

fullsun: busy rn

The glassy gleam shatters at the realisation. He doesn’t.

A humourless chuckle passes your lips as it dawns on you. That’s one more word you normally receive in a text from him. But it gets caught in your throat after you send, “oh sorry ttyl then :)”, and you bawl into your hands for the second time tonight.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Tired commuters stand patiently, glued to their phones, wedged against each other at the station. The local bus arrives, and the crowd huddled together in a surge through the slid open doors.

Haechan spots an empty seat in the far corner. Holding the strap of his gym bag slung over his shoulder he hustles towards the single seat. In his peripheral, a stalky figure guns for the same seat as him, but he slings his bag down on the top it and lunges into the stiff cushion.

He peers back to see his opponent and is met with the glower of a middle age businessman. The sheen of sweat glinting underneath scraggles of oily hair and patches of stubble on his sallow face convinces Haechan, the businessman isn’t going home to much.

The man took out a handkerchief from his unironed suit pocket and wipes a thick layer of sweat coating his neck. The white cloth immediately becomes limpid. Haechan edges away in his seat. He can imagine him perfectly, hunching over a keyboard surrounded by empty cups of noodles and beer cans, all alone in his cramped apartment.

The businessman mutters something about kids having it easy with no respect these days.

“Thank God. I got this seat,” Haechan yawns loudly enough for the businessman to overhear. “I got up at five and practised at six, then went to school and practised during lunch break, and then practised again after school from three to five this afternoon,” Haechan presses to himself. Haechan shoots a look at the businessman. “And I’m the one who has it easy,” he murmurs.

The bitter glower on the stony businessman’s face cements.

A buzz silently vibrates up Haechan’s thigh. He promptly slips his fingers into the pocket of his grey slacks and pulls out his cell phone. The screen displays a caller id saved as “coffeehead” sequenced by a blue heart emojis.

Haechan shuts his eyes closed as he breathes out, “Don’t answer it, Haechan. Don’t. answer.”

He averts his gaze to the window, looking beyond the claustrophobic confines of public transport. The frame of unrelenting blackness shadowing over the never-ending line of tall industrial buildings fails to capture his attention. Drifting back down to the quiet rattling held in his hands. He nibbles the flesh of his bottom lip with his brows knitted together at his thumb hovering over the green icon.

Haechan pronounces a sigh. Waiting for the muted buzzing from his lap to finally cease in his anticipating fingers, he tenses. An imperceptible pressure lurks over his shoulder. He snaps his head and is faced with a hovering form.

The towering business glares down at the seated boy with a scowl plastered over his greasy face.

“Enjoying the ride, Sir?” asks Haechan mockingly through a Cheshire Cat grin. “Seated,” he sniggers under his breath. The upper lip of the businessman curls into a scowl as dirty as the chewed gum stuck underneath the bus seats. Though, the lour on the face of the vexed businessman is unheeded by the boy leant against the train window.

A message appears across the locked screensaver of a full moon above a white gazebo.

‘Missed call from Y/N’

Ignoring the heaviness lodged in his chest he swipes the notification away before idly drawing a frowny sun in the condensation of the window.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

The moon sails through the ribbons of black clouds swirling through the sprinkles of glitter. Its fluorescence cascades through the windows of your home and bleeds silver into the leaden bedroom. The side of your face trailed in damp streams glistens under the lustre beams. Wiping the wells of dewy crystal, you slide off your bed.

Cautious of your roommates sleeping down the hallway, you tentatively inch towards the window on tiptoes. You sweep what feels like a sweatshirt underneath your toes to the side and resume to treading along the wooden panels with your hands stretched out in front of you.

Palms land flat on the windowsill, brisk underneath your fingers, lifting you up so your back is against the wall and your feet plant on the wall parallel.

The frosty window supports your head tilted upwards. Your gaze transfixed to the great luminous pearl rose in the inky sea. Bathing under the moonlight shower. Completely, entranced by its ethereal glory that you’ve forgotten your cries in the crumples of your bedsheets.

With an index finger, you idly circle the outline of the moon in the condensation, albeit releasing a low sigh.

—flashback

“I was thinking on Saturday you could sleepover and that way I get to take your measurements and see what looks best on you. And then we also get to celebrate your 3rd streak of scoring the lead role in the school play with a movie night… And you’re not listening to me,” you finished flatly. Your head rolled towards the boy beside you. His fray of muted hazels bounced with each clunk over a speed hump.

Lee Donghyuck, or what you like to call him, Haechan. A little nickname you coined together back in the fifth grade during one recess where Donghyuck was teaching you some basic Korean vocabulary for fun. Hae literally means ‘Sun’ while Chan means ‘to be filled with’ and in your little solar system he shone the brightest, so it felt fitting as an eleven-year-old. And it kinda just stuck as he grew more and more into the nickname. People in one way or another that met him felt gravitated to him. He had people orbiting around him; few so close it burned them, most set so far away in the cold, longing for the warmth of being closer. The lucky ones were in the perfect distance to bathe in his radiance. And you? Well, you were a strange, little moon with no planet to orbit around, spinning around on your own, in the opposite direction as everyone else. But somehow, even though you were neither big enough nor close enough to form part of his System, he found you important enough.

“I am listening to you and it sounds fun. I’m just-,” Haechan began before leaning closer to the window. His parted lips hovered over the glass with his hands covering the sides of his mouth. He puffed a few breaths.

The exhale reveals itself onto the window in a pressed cloud.

Detaching his nose pressed to the glass, Haechan nodded, pleased with himself.

“Ok continue,” he said, drawing a smiley-faced sun in the condensation.

“You’re going to be 80, riding in the pensioner seat and still be doing that,” you noted through a small smirk.

The circle of the sun began to vanish against the glass, but you followed the mellow rays flaring from the band. The faint beams led you on a trail from the pretty slope of his nose, along the sharp line of his jaw, and up to the gem under his eye. It’s a little mole. You like to believe it’s a speck from the Sun that had fallen and landed on his left cheek. So, wherever he walks he sets the pathway ablaze with dazzling oranges, brightening up the entire room because he holds a piece of the sun.

“And you’re going to be dead before 80,” quipped Haechan. Never mind, you would much rather believe it’s sun cancer.

“Probably,” you hummed. Your stare grazed the bus seat in front you, knocking the heel of your shoe leather heel back into the foot of your own seat. A clank with each knock at the sturdy metal. You waited for a few seconds to pass by. Once the imaginary timer rang you turned to face Haechan, a flash of mischief flickered in your hues. “But I’m not dead yet so I can still do this.” You lurched your torso over him. An outstretched arm lunged across his white buttoned up shirt. The slickness of the brisk glass is swiped by your hand and you wiped the smiley sun off.

“Hey!” yelped Haechan, loudly enough that a handful passengers turned around. But since you were a pair of high school students, the adults huff in annoyance, then returned to their devices.

Jaw hung wide open. He gaped at the cleared window. Not unusual for a drama kid to react so theatrically. “How dare you,” he rasped.

You rubbed your wet palm against the rigid cotton of your plaid skirt.

“Anyways… on for Saturday?”

“Oh.” The side of his face slightly hollowed as he bit the inside of his cheek. “I can’t…” said Haechan glumly. “I’m busy on Saturday. What about Sunday?”

“I can’t. I have to work the register at the fabric shop,” you mimicked the glum tone of his voice.

“Oh,” he repeated. A hand rustled the nutty blonde at the side of his head. His lips pulled at one side in a lopsided grimace as his eyebrows furrowed together. “Um what about…” he faltered, nibbling on his bottom lip.

“What’s Mr Hyuck up to on Saturday?” you asked.

His sun-kissed face pinched.

“I have to go my auntie’s anniversary party,” he grumbled in the rest of his palm hoisted on the narrow bus window sill.

Your head cocked slightly to the side, “and that sucks because?” Your brow furrowed over your narrowed eyes, fixed on the boy whose gaze wandered off. Something was tugging down on a thread sewn to the corner of his lips. Immediately, you wanted your sewing scissors to snip the thread, unstitching the sullen frown knitted on his face.

He sighed. “It sucks because I was going to ask out Soo-Ah but I found this morning she just started dating Felix”. Absentmindedly, his fingers traced along letters scratched into the window pane. ‘IT’S RAINING HERE TOO’. The words murmured through your mind as you struggled to ignore the knots tied in your stomach at the mention of her name.

Yun Soo-ah. Her name falls prettily off the tongue like rich silk cascading from the waist of a luxurious ball gown. Her raven ribbons pour over her porcelain shoulders, floating an elegant fragrance of jasmine as she minced the school hallways. Thin lashes sweep over her sparkling almond eyes, twinkling specks of glitter from the contact lenses she bought from Etude house. If pearls had a voice, it would sound like her tinkling laughter she covers with a dainty hand. She seats with her legs neatly crossed to the side at the bench, by the marble water fountain near the Geography classrooms.

The bench where all the popular kids sit; Jeno, Ha-Yoon, Jaemin, Ae-cha and… Haechan. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. He’s sunshine but he’s not just your sunshine. Sunshine isn’t an abstract painting of a peculiar composition of angry geometry and contrasting colours, only to be appreciated by acquired tastes. No. Everyone appreciates the beauty of the abundance of bright rays that paints the monotone world into a metropolis of glorious hues.

Although a spot reserved on the bench for someone had people squinting from their seats to make sure their vision isn’t tricking them.

Yours.

Not that you earned it. How does anyone earn the privilege of sitting at a bench more overrated than the tv series Riverdale? I guess being attractive can get you to three seasons and apparently, a bench by a cherub fountain obscured by veils of moss.

Truthfully, the only reason you had a seat saved with your name is that you have a free get-to-hang-out-with-the-popular-kids-because-Haechan-is-one-and-he’s-too-attached-to-his-first-best-friend-that-has-been-in-his-class-ever-since-Kindergarten-to-let-her-sit-in-the-library-all-by-herself-when-there’s-a-seat-right-here-!! pass.

Jeno, Jaemin, Soo-ah and the rest of the Scooby Doo gang are all nice. Nice in the simplest form of enjoyment. All their conversations sounded the exact same. If you closed your eyes each of their voices would merge into whirs of white noise. You had efficiently narrowed the subjects of their babbling into three categories: how much school sucks, parties and sports. 2 of which you have no interest in, which left school uncrossed but whining about that surprise pop quiz, was only a topic of choice for lunchtime banter that lasted so long before someone brought up sports or parties again.

Though, you all shared something in common apart from breathing. Haechan. They gave up their vacant seat at their pretentious bench to accommodate for your 50 shades grunge. Even if, your matte black Doc Martens clashed with their matching Adidas Superstars. Never addressing the elephant in the room in spite of her electric dyed hair and leather studded jacket. All to make sure the Sun continues to shine brightly.

Unfortunately, you never seemed to share anything else in common with them. You were a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit no matter how hard you all tried wedging you in and that was ok. People don’t always click, to be honest, you really liked Haechan’s friends especially Soo-ah, but it was evident there wasn’t much to go beyond friendly waving at one another in the school corridors. Not long after you began to evade the pause of awkward silence that ensued over the bench at your arrival. As much as Haechan liked to dispute, he shone brightly without you, happy with them and you were happy for him.

He would never admit it, but he was looking out for that little girl. The little girl who sobbed on the bus ride from the first day of school because it was a long way from home by herself. But that little girl grew up into someone who likes the solace of being alone. She likes being lost in the cluster of dreams and unexplored ideas swirling in her mind. She likes the purring of a sewing machine nuzzling beneath her hands rather than the droning of a person. She likes watching from the sidelines over being caught in the whirlwind of being in the present.

In the corner of the library, you found a place to fit your puzzle piece. Enshrouded by the tall shelves encasing Science Fiction books from the reaches of sunlight. Sketching fashion illustrations into your leather covered Visual Arts book. Far, far away from any interminable discussions.

After all, you were the only one who got to bask in the sunset. Your favourite part of the day. His radiance melts into dawn; cheerful smile softens to a small tug of the lips, doe eyes taper lowly with the fade of the blue sky, ripples of laughter soothe to content hums and sighs.

The orbit slows down, and gravity pulls you two together.

“Well, I’m sorry you have to go alone,” you consoled. He sighed once more. “At least, you don’t have to endure the emotional torment of a fifty-year-old woman because the store doesn’t stock the fabrics she likes,” you poked lightly.

One of the thread sears in frayed halves, loosening a corner of his rosy lips into a quirk.

“Honestly, I haven’t felt anything ever since she berated me for not giving her a 10% discount she didn’t earn,” you ranted monotonously. “And then proceeded to demand to see the manager”.

The threads spilled from his lips onto coils on the ground as his lips stretch into a grin. “That does suck.”

“Not as much as going stag,” you lowly singsong.

Sirens set off, flashes of vigilant red burn brightly in your mind shouting, “Too soon” on repeat. How insensitive are you? The stoplight reds shrieked at you. He floated around Soo-ah plastered with the universal goofy face teenage boys make when they like someone. Don’t make him sulky because she doesn’t realise, she holds the most irreplaceable orb in her dainty hands.

You were about to blubber apologies when he joked, “See. This is a prime example of why you don’t have any friends.” A breath hitched in your throat released.

“What do you mean? I have Renjun,” you state, a little too proudly.

“The kid who believes in ghosts?” A questioning look drew on his face in cynicism.

“And aliens,” you added promptly. Ignoring the eyebrow, he mockingly raised you continued, “He has some compelling theories. Not that you would understand.”

“And what, the Earth’s flat?” he sassed, waving jazz hands up in the air.

“This is the type of thinking that’s going to get you killed in an apocalypse,” you chastised, nose upturned to his supercilious gaze.

The shrug of his shoulder must have tripped his round doe eyes because the chocolate chips vanished into the milky white like a reflex. He’s so delicious, you thought as you watch the sunlight glazed over his face in drips of golden honey straight from the comb. That day you wrote down his gorgeous eye roll in a blank space of the list of things you loved about the Sun.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

The clouds once wisps of paper white have matted in thick, scratchy grey wool. A spurt of wind squeezes from the bus doors sliding close and is fleeting against Haechan’s back. Silently cursing the thin fabric of his pressed white shirt as cold slithers down his exposed neck, he treads the pathway.

The soil shielded by spouts of fresh grass emitted a pale musk, whisking a warning to quicken his pace, in the humid air. The scowl on Haechan’s face resembles one of the businessmen when the thought of the blue plaid fabric left in its stand by the front door taunts him. He digs an arm in his bag for the slumped material limp over his school books and heaves a sleeve through the opening. The jacket is thick and grey like the clouds hovering low in the sky awash in charcoal. Hastily, he pulls the hood over his flattened hair sprinkled in tiny dewdrops and zips the jacket to his chin. The jacket fails to instantly envelop his body in comforting warmth rather, attaching onto his torso pointlessly. The warmth clings to the lining to the jacket, reluctant to relieve the shivering of Haechan’s form, until he paces further along the sidewalk.

She wouldn’t have forgotten her umbrella. She wouldn’t have let him forget his.

His legs trace the familiar path towards a convenience store tucked in the corner of the intersection, but his mind fogs with wistful thoughts.

If only I told her, maybe it would have been different.

The white light of the mercury lamp glinted off the cell phone that he held in his hand.

It’s too late to tell her now.

Ruefully, he jostles open the glass door plastered in colourful advertisements for discounted food. A bell chimes at his entrance and heat from the vents of a rickety air conditioner immediately greets him with a hug of a doting mother. The unbothered store clerk’s head slumps in the palm of his pudgy hand, his cheek cushioning under his eye as he idly flicks through a magazine.

Haechan noses towards the narrow aisle of snack foods. A rainbow of shiny packaging blurs in his peripheral. Chocolates, crisps, Cup of Noodles, sodas, more crisps and finally, biscuits.

He holds up two slim rectangular boxes, in bold white letters “Pocky” printed in the centre, one red and the ladder pink. His hands shift, as to weigh both options in each hand, in a sedulous survey.

Eyebrows scrunched together creasing a slight line in his forehead. “Strawberry or chocolate?”

— flashback

Y/n’s impatience filled her with a suppressed urge to tap her foot as she waited for Haechan to decide which Pocky flavours he wanted.

“You always do this,” she huffed with her hands on her hips. The set of bangles embellished in faux diamonds reflected the fluorescent ceiling lights.

“It always a hard decision,” Haechan huffed back. “Do I feel like the original, Chocolate?” He lifts the small red box up in the air disregarding the way Y/N’s eyes glazed over with a look that states, ‘He’s got to be kidding me.’ “Or… Do I feel like, spicing it up a little bit, with Strawberry?” He then shifts his hands like a balance scale, holding the pink box up.

Y/N’s glossy red lips pressed together in a firm line, but the ends twitched and Haechan was pretty sure she was fighting off a smile. Haechan has seen her wear the same red lipstick a million times before, but for some reason noticing it that day made his mouth go dry.

“You’re unbelievable,” she chuckled and revealed her teeth that shone white against the bold lipstick. She slipped the Strawberry flavoured Pocky from Haechan’s grasp and back into the colourful assortment on the shelf. “You always end up getting disappointed with strawberry,” she said before walking off.

Unknowingly, a smile softened his face.

The click-clack of her leather boots on the grimy tiles jingled the chain latched to her skirt. She’s the last person you would want to be trapped in a horror movie with, Haechan thought. You might as well scream at an axe murderer if you were to be stuck with Y/N and her orchestra. Though, the thoughts vanished within the air that her arms swayed in, followed by the light swishes of her plaid skirt. Casually she sashayed away, weaving around the corner of a narrow aisle. It was spellbinding. So much so, that Haechan couldn’t shift a glance away like she was the Moon turning pirouettes beneath the Heavens, for no applause.

People were mistaken, the Moon didn’t droop low in the waning darkness, casting striking metallic over the land. The Moon hummed quietly, swept above from Earth, glowing the iridescence of a pearl. It drew the curtain of silver, shone against her buttermilk complexion behind her ear. Revealing the milky way copied in her eyes. The night fluttered over her eyes in ink dipped feathers, batting gently together with each blink.

Y/n glided her finger over the magazines propped in the rack, matching the glossiness of the covers with her nail polish. One piqued her interest, its cover was of a model in a dress like a pastry made out of pink ribbons and frills, lots of frills. A fashion magazine, she claimed she never had enough of them, and it was simply impossible to have too much inspiration. She flipped halfway through the magazine, almost expectant of what she was going to see, and her eyes instantly trained on the page.

Ethereal. At the time, Haechan didn’t know why the word she used, a thousand times about a heavenly themed fashion show in Rome, came to his mind. He didn’t know why his feet suddenly felt lighter with each step closer to her as if he was floating on air. What was he going to do when finally closed the space between both of her, he didn’t know. Tease her? Hug her? Hold her? Kiss-

Smack!

Guess he didn’t know there was a shelf in from of him either.

“Hyuck! Are you ok?” Blackness clouded his sight, but he heard her voice clearly. She was close.

Pain rushed to the veins pulsing hot blood to his forehead. His hand flew to the side of his head in a vain attempt to soothe the throbbing ache, wincing contact of his own skin.

The black clouds parted and revealed Y/N’s face constrained into a dozen lines. The tiny creases scrunched in her nose matched the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, furrowed by her chalky eyebrows. Her mouth twitched in different directions to keep her lips stuck together in a firm line.

“Geez. Some friend you are,” he deadpanned at his very unsympathetic best friend.

“How do you walk into a shelf? It was right in front of you!” she gibed.

“It was not right in front of me!” It most certainly was right in front of him.

She didn’t respond but held her sides as though she had a stomach ache. He studied her face. The subtle upward quirk of her red lips told him she was smothering her chortles. She then pointed feebly with a shaking finger at the shelf Haechan walked straight into, corrupting in a fit of mocking yet, hearty guffaws.

Haechan laughed too, despite nursing where a sickly purple welt would stain.

She exhaled a loud sigh to conclude the end of her outburst in the cramp convenience store. How she didn’t break a rib in the midst of her uncontrollable convulsions left Haechan in complete wonder. He had opened his mouth to jibe back as they normally would, being friends for so long, but he stood with a small gape gracing his cinnamon features. Y/n gently wiped her the corner of her eyes as the last giggle escaped from her mouth. Perhaps the tug on his bounded heart had strings to his tongue.

A spark lit the warm umber of his hues.

Y/n’s laugh sets Haechan’s body on fire but, softly, like that of a cozy bonfire. One where you crisp marshmallows into a golden auburn and then, plunge into your mouth before it drooped into a glump of pillowy sugar. She would laugh free-spiritedly, unafraid of the joy to riddle her face like dandelions scattered in a meadow field. Yet, explosive like the blissful moment when you hold someone’s hand counting down to a firework. Her weak knees would buckle at the sudden euphoria and she would hobble over the floor, giggling through her nose.

The spark ruefully dimmed at the sad realisation she doesn’t laugh like that anymore. Not even then, it was still contained. There were no adorable little snorts that intermission her hearty chortles. Y/n claimed her laugh was obnoxious, boisterous albeit Haechan thought she couldn’t be more wrong. Though, it wasn’t delicate laughter that ripples like tinkling bells in the cafeteria. But he didn’t want a public declaration of ladylikeness so obviously forced, making him doubt what he said was actually funny. What did he want?

Y/N returned to the magazine stand.

“So… Are you doing anything on Saturday?”

“Thought we had this conversation on the bus,” she replied flatly, too concentrated on finding the place she left off in the magazine.

“We did,” he swung back and forth on his toes. “But…” he drew out, perking Y/N’s attention from the pages of the fashion magazine opened in her manicured hands. “You never said if you were busy on Saturday.”

Y/n cocked her head at Haechan with quizzical look pinched on her face possibly, contemplating on how she should approach answering him. A second or so went by while Y/n eyed Haechan. He batted his lashes over his doe eyes, that were bigger and browner than before, a small smile curled at the end of his lips.

“I’m not,” she said in a questioning tone.

“Great!” he exclaimed. He swung a tanned arm around her shoulders, “So that means you can be my plus-one at the party.”

The wide grin sported on his stretched lips made Y/n’s hand twitch by her side. Her fingers curled, resisting the nerve itching to slap the shit-eating look right off his caramel face. Instead, fumed a steady exhale from her nose and she returned to her magazine.

She licked her finger and turned a page. The page dived and slid into the other pages as she stated, “So can Jaemin.”

“He’s busy,” he replied quickly like playing a game of Snap and shooting your hand to slam at the deck before processing the cards that have been placed.

“Jeno?” she raised an eyebrow over her magazine.

“Also, busy.” Haechan knew for certain the only thing Jeno would be busy with, was playing Overwatch but he slammed his hand on the deck anyways.

Y/n eyebrows scrunched upwards together and a ‘hmm’ withdrew from her lopsided pressed lips. “What about-”

“Everyone’s busy,” Haechan sharply cut her off. He was really terrible at this game of Snap.

“Well, I don’t want to come if I’m your last choice,” she disclosed as she flicked another page from the magazine.

Haechan’s whole face screwed up. “You were just listing off people, so you didn’t have to go!” he huffed in boiling frustration.

Y/n shrugged, her only interest tended to a model who cast a faraway gaze in a gown that folded over like aluminium foil.

Haechan’s frustration was as short-lived as a flash storm because his attention whisked away to a strand of Y/n’s platinum hair that flowed in a stream by the side of her face. His hand reaches towards the blonde ribbon poured by her cheek. The wispiness of the stray hair graced the tips of his fingers about to tuck the lock behind her ear.

“What are you doing?” Y/N asked curtly, shooting the boy a cold stare and the wisps were merely fleeting against his fingertips.

“Your hair it’s-,” not sure how to finish the question, he leant closer to her. The ice rimed on her face melted, the sceptical squint of her eyes rounded into a mixture of shock at the feeling of wisps being swept along her cheek and behind her pierced ear.

The realisation of what Haechan had done, piled down on him like in those cartoons where a barrel of bricks clunk over a character in a heavy downpour. Before the bricks knock him unconscious and collapsed on the floor as a halo of stars circled above his head, he instinctively jabbed his index finger outwards. The fullness of Y/n’s cheek indented around his finger and triggered a twitch of her eye. Humoured by the irritation pooled in her eyes, he poked the soft flesh again, watching a scowl twist itself onto her mouth. She hissed, “You better stop that, or I will eat your firstborn.”

“See, that threat was scary before you used it on me 500 times,” he jested, relieved he played off whatever that was.

“Haechan I swear, you better stop-” her face scrunched up at the contact on his finger pressing into her cheek another time.

“Only if you agree to come with me,” he singsonged, a fleer curving his face.

She rolled her head back hurling a groan from the depths of her chest, stomping her foot.

“Come on, please. Don’t make me go by myself,” needled Haechan.

“What’s so wrong about going alone?” she asked but the exasperation trickling in her voice insinuated she wasn’t interested in an answer.

So, he replied to her question with another question, “What’s so bad about being with people?” The indignation of how he huffed back caught him off guard, and the way Y/N’s eyes widened for a split second, told him she was too.

They both emptied a sigh. Their eyes were on one another, not saying a word but thinking the same thing, “Have we always been so different?”

Y/n lashes fluttered over her eyes as her stare faltered to the floor. She lifted her head up to the ceiling, her attention shifted to the ceiling fan wheeling in bumpy coils. His eyes followed the tracings of where her gaze had been and stopped at the stuttering fan as well.

They stood less than a hand’s reach away but the ground under their feet felt as if a whole universe separated them.

Spaced out, a voice pulls Haechan back, “I don’t have a dress.”

“Huh?” Unable to have coined the words said to him to make any sense.

“I don’t have a dress,” Y/N repeated, still looking at the ceiling.

“You’re coming?” he asked dumbfounded turning to face her.

“Yeah,” she sighed.

“You don’t have to,” Haechan said feeling slightly deflated. The heaviness of his heart sunk in his stomach. Anchored at the thought of her only coming out of obligation.

“I want to,” she reassured him. The ceiling had finally released her gaze and she gently smiled at him albeit, it seemed unsure. “But you’re sharing those because I don’t want to pay for my own,” she chimed motioning to the Pocky box in his hand with a bright grin stretched on her lips.

— end of flashback

A touch of a smile wisps his lips. Chocolate, it is.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Most nights, darkness is absolute, scattered stars wrung in the sky like Christmas lights low on batteries, flickering their last breaths. The approaching of midnight preys on the awakening of the pale moon. It covers the moon with a velvet black blindfold before engulfing the orb. The moon on most nights wanes into nothing more than a dwindled strand of silver string.

But tonight, isn’t like most nights.

The moon rose from beneath the shadowy depths it had been buried under for far too many nights. Tonight, the moon doesn’t want to be hidden. And it won’t be hidden. Not behind the creeping grey clouds lurking thugly as if they owned the expanse of the sky. Not behind the black silhouettes of slender hands clawing high into the night to spill the moonlight into creaks of streams. No, tonight the Moon, the rightful ruler of the night banishes the measly grey wool of its kingdom and the trees are set free of their curse. Sat on a crisp white cushioned throne, the moon listens to you. A hum of acknowledges lowly breathes through sleeping leaves. The breeze arrives at your body propped on the window sill like wave uncurling onto the shore. So alleviated by the night’s serenity, your eyes are closed, and you inhale a deep breath of the brisk air. Your head rolls back as the coolness fills your lungs and seeps into your veins. The chill soothes down your body as taking a sip from a steamy tea would relieve others.

Midnight washes over your body.

The waves immersing your body freezes at the touch of your skin. Your eyes snap open wide at the unfamiliar chillness piecing into the air. Thorns stick up at the back of your neck. A boa constrictor coil tightens around your heart beating rapidly against your chest. It’s quiet but suddenly you’re conscious of your own breathing and your sense of hearing heightens.

The grass in your backyard has yet to be cut. It’s long and unruly, much like your hair at this very moment. However, your thoughts aren’t on your unkempt locks as you skittishly dart your glances over your garden, hissing with crickets and spotted with fluffy dandelions. Towering up above it all was a mighty elm. A voice is rationalising your terrified stricken mind, suggesting it could be the flapping of bird wings, or heavy gates shuffling in the wind. Surely, there must be a reasonable explanation but that doesn’t stop your body from twitching, desperately wanting to flee to your bed and hide under the sheets like a child. Your ears prick at an unsettling sound, it’s clearer this time. A bush crouching insignificantly by the elm tree shakes. Eyes glued to the dark silhouette of leaves rustling hazardously, you’re unable to detach your body, glued to the window sill. For a split second, the fear wracking your body pauses as you think the bush jitters like its leaves are being tickled and its wiggling under the sensation. The bush shakes off its final rustle and you could almost laugh the breath hitched in your throat. A ginger cat springs from the bush shadowed from the tree hunkering above it.

The neighbour’s cat, you sigh. The mangy little thing often, trotted alongside ever since you moved here, accompanying you on the last ten steps home every day from school. Tail held high, its feline pride bottled up inside the purr as he beckons for his reward for being such a lovely escort. Which he would shortly receive, after a much-deserved eyeball roll and leaning down you would press a kiss on his fluffy kitty head.

He trots tentative steps towards you. His soft teal eyes meet yours. Somehow, the night is captured in the blue of his eyes and it transcends you back to the tranquillity tranced by the moonlight. Suddenly, he breaks eye contact and scampers away into the shadows. But the moon’s lustres fill his departure with a feeling as soft the silken ginger of his fur rubbing up against your legs.

— flashback

The tepid milky liquid ran smoothly down your throat. Having sat by your sewing machine in a forgotten coffee mug, it had long since devoid of any warmth. Your fingers curled around the ceramic, frowning at how the heat barely spread through your hands. The last sip of what would be your fifth cup of espresso slushed in your mouth as you pondered to yourself, “How long has it been?” The bitterness in the lustrous texture is drowned by the lukewarmness albeit, a tang lingered on your tongue. You haven’t quite grown accustomed to the bitter taste richly engrained in coffee but a self-induced caffeinated high was the only way you were going to finish sewing in time for Haechan’s aunt's party. Besides, Anna Wintour wouldn’t down a Coca Cola straight from the can, that seemed as much as a mix-match as animal print and polka dots.

You drew your lower lip between your teeth, there was something not quite right. Attaching the bodice to the skirt of the dress had you anticipating the sense of accomplishment that would have overcome you with a sigh of contentment. Yet, the completed garment looked more like a dead piece of fabric, hung limply over the table as if the sewing machine was a fox biting into the flesh of its prey’s neck. The crystal blue satin was supposed to make you feel stunning and wearing what you had thought of as a small dead animal surprisingly, convinced you weren’t exactly going to feel like a dazzling star against the night sky.

After mulling over what could possibly be missing; sequins, frills, embroidery, ribbons? You decided that perhaps looking at it from a new perspective would help solve the case of: is it in need of sprinkling some sparkly sequins or spicing it up with trendy floral embroidery. Or maybe floral prints embroidered out of sequins? Best of both worlds, isn’t that what Hannah Montana was always preaching about? Another cup of coffee was surely needed or else you might have started singing, “You get the limo out front~”.

You pushed the chair from under you by swinging your feet from in front of you. In a series of clumsy movements, you managed to plunge towards your wardrobe, fling the doors of your closet wide open, one arm reached inside and then, awkwardly wrapped it around Belle. You clambered across your room back to your makeshift fashion studio corner and placed Belle in front of the standing mirror. Belle, short for Annabelle, is your trusty tailor dummy. Belle and you have been together from designing Haechan’s costumes from when he starred in the elementary school plays, all the fashion terrorism in between, to scratching up an A-line dress under 2 days.

With delicate hands, you sifted the dress over the top of your mannequin. Wary of any possible loose stitches, you gently tugged and padded the sides of the dress down. A flake of your nail polish chipped onto your tongue while you examined the dress from a few steps back. Tilting your head to the side, you slowly removed your finger from your mouth, scraping tiny flakes off your nail. You felt the corners of your eyes wrinkle as a smile curled your face and bubbled out a titter. Moments ago you were convinced the dress was so flat of life but there you stood peering into your reflection in the mirror, imagining yourself waltzing down a staircase. At the bottom of the flight of stairs would be Haechan enchanted by how resplendent you would look in the glorious light blue dress. Too overjoyed by your little fantasies twirling in your mind, you had to shake yourself out of your daze because you needed to the hem of the dress.

Upon returning into your bedroom, you winced at the sip of your freshly brewed espresso. It was piping hot and overly bitter though, it was much preferred over the old bath water from the last cup. Nonetheless, it was a source of caffeine so you planned to drink it like a mum unwinding herself with a bottle of red wine. Looking up from the mug wrapped in both your hands, your face squeezed into an expression of perplexion. Startled, you stood frozen in the doorway of your room. Your whole body stiffened in a pose of one of Medusa’s victims at the sight in front you of you. Panic struck over your limbs. Mouth hung agape, you could have sworn you left Belle in front of the mirror and not by the bedroom door. Your heart pounded rapidly against your chest when you remembered you were home alone since your parents were out of town for a business trip. The house was empty, swallowed by the silence it heightened your consciousness of your own breathing.

In some part of your brain, probably the rational part that seemed to be missing at the moment, you knew you should have knew returned Belle and hemmed your dress, spending the last night as a mature and productive teenager. Although, would a mature and productive teenager even be up at that hour? Anyways, you released a shriek from your gut and sprinted to the living room, stumbling down a flight of stairs. Logic was overruled by fear and fight to flight. And even though you knew you probably overreacting, you were certain you did not move Belle an inch from the mirror!

Fled from the haunted mannequin and the entire second story of your home, you sped dialled the top caller ID saved on your phone. “Please pick up. Please pick up. Please pick up,” you whispered to yourself like an eerie broken record player with the phone pressed to your ear. The hushed chants soon interrupted by a voice thick with sleep.

“It’s 1am,” Haechan groaned at the end of the line.

You chewed the flesh of your bottom lip suddenly rethinking your choice of calling him in the middle of a school night, in the midst of your episode of freak encounters.

“I know but could you come over?” you asked through a grimace like you bit into a lemon.

“It’s 1am!” Had you not been so focused monitoring the staircase of a moving mannequin you would have rolled your eyes. Like he was actually whisked away to the call of slumber when the raucous clicking and gunshots were so obviously heard in the background. Before you could call him out for playing OverWatch on a school night at 1am, he simply said, “Yeah sure but why though?”

A few seconds at the end of your line were silent, debating on how you should phrase that your tailor dummy could very well be cursed. “I think Belle moved on her own,” you said through the same ‘this lemon is so sour’ expression from earlier.

“Ooh Annabelle, told you she’s creepy,” Haechan joked, however, there was a lot of truth to it. The first time you showcased your favourite birthday present to your best friend, Haechan declared it to be named after the notorious demonic doll.

But with Belle living up to her legacy you frantically started to whisper, “No Haechan, I’m serious. When I left the room to get coffee she was in front of the mirror but when I came back she was near the door.”

“Maybe you should call Renjun to come over instead and then maybe he can bring his Ouija board to speak to it,” he jested.

“Not funny.” The last thing you had wanted in your home, which had already been inhabiting a haunted mannequin was an Ouija board. But it was kinda funny.

“Okay, I’m out the door. See you in 5. I mean.... if you don’t die until then.”

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Haechan tugged on the ends of a long scrap of fabric, squeezing it tightly apart in each hand. “Okay I think we’re safe now,” said Haechan dusting his hands together.

“I don’t know Hyuck maybe we could just sleep in the lounge room,” Y/n suggested from the doorway of her bedroom.

“What do you mean I just-,” he dramatically waved his hands at the wardrobe doors bounded at the handles with the blue satin. “It’s locked up!”

“You locked it up with fabric!” She flung her hands in the air, pointing towards the wardrobe as well.

“It’s not even real, you crackhead!”

Y/n scrunched her nose and crossed her arms over chest.

“Fine!” he huffed. Haechan walked over to her desk and made an apparent gesture of placing his hands on the chair. Before he pulled the chair from underneath the desk he turned his face to mock Y/n with a fleer. The chair bumped against one of the legs of the table and he noticed something light shuffle off the edge of the desk. He continued to drag the chair along the carpet and stopped in front of the wardrobe then, lodged it under the bounded handles creating somewhat of a barricade against the door.

“Better?” he smiled tauntingly.

“Whatever. I’m going to grab extra blankets.”

He watched her plaid purple pyjamas meld into the dimness of the hallway. Light footsteps echoed off the walls in the corridors, leaving him alone in her bedroom with the image of her scrunched-up face in his mind. He shook his head, chuckling at how she arched her eyebrows at him, gruffly crossing her arms. “What has gotten into me?” he sighed. It’s not the first time he has seen her pout and dig in her heels in the ground, seeming that he takes pride in ruffling her feathers as a joke. But tonight made him feel like the joke was on him. That his feelings were playing a silly prank on him. The week before, he was fascinated by the glossy red moving with each word she spoke passionately about the illustrations she was working on. A day ago, he caught himself hypnotised by how she walked down an aisle in a convenience store. On the first step upon entering her bedroom, his eyes caught of the beautiful blue dress clothed on the mannequin, instantly imagining Y/N adorned in the materialised diamonds.

A fleck of white glinted in the corner of his eye, slicing him away from the internal battles, that were his thoughts. Upon stepping closer, he recognised it was a sheet of paper that fell to the ground when he bumped the chair into the legs of the desk. Crouching down on the balls of his feet, he picked up the paper half expecting it to be a design y/n sketched during class. Briefly, he scanned the paper held in hands, his brows knitted together, registering what he had thought was going to be a drawing of dress, was a letter. At the top of the letter was an emblem, similar to the emblem to the school Haechan and yn go to but this one had scissors and measuring tape. His eyes started to anxiously search for an answer to what this letter could possibly be until he stopped at a sentence in bold.

‘We are happy to inform you that the Paris Institute of Fashion has accepted your application for admission.” He got his answer; an acceptance letter, and a lump in his throat.

A soft thud lifted Haechan’s downturned stare to a pile of quilted blanket unfolding at sock-clad feet. He met Y/n’s widened eyes with an empty stare, watching how her irises flickered from his face to the letter held in his hands. The drawn down corners of his lower lip quivered as the words merely whispered from his mouth, “When were you going to tell me?”

Y/n began to shake the head fervently, stuttering, “I- I don’t know…” Her voice faltered as she cast her gaze to her feet, feeling guilt under the scrutiny of his emotionless stare.

“You don’t know when you were going to tell me?” his chest rising from the slumped posture of shoulders. “Was it when you’re halfway across the world?” he sniped.

The sudden rise in the volume of his voice had y/n immediately grinding her teeth. “Why were you snooping through my stuff!” she retaliated, deflecting his interrogation and sitting him down at the turned detective’s table.

Haechan jaw jutted forward a couple times before he spluttered back, “I wasn’t!” He shot back defensively, “I dropped it when I was moving the chair and I went to pick it up!”

“You didn’t have to read it!” she retorted, marching over to him and snatching the letter from his grip.

“Seriously? ” he asked incredulously, only to be answered with a cold stare hardened on her face. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I said I don’t know,” she exasperated. The iciness sharpened on her face melted slowly into weariness.

Haechan gulped dryly, his throat hoarse from shouting. In preparation for an answer, he knows will make his heart drop deeper into his heaved chest, “Do you want to go?”

“Yes.”

The single syllable penetrated through the room, deafening silence between them, so blaring that it echoed through Haechan mind. A roll of film played on the fastest speed in his mind of their little adventures from when they were six and would swing side by side, under that enormous maple tree at the local park. To walking side by side on the first day of high school with their timetables opened, as they tried to find which classes they shared. To earlier that morning, sitting side by side on the bus ride to school, sharing earphones, listening to a playlist they made together on a sleepover a week ago. He swallowed hard. Wouldn’t she miss being side by side?

“It’s late and we should go to bed,” she said trailing back to pick up the pile of blankets dropped in the middle of the doorway. She glanced back to him, “Are you going to help me?”

Air escaping from beneath the sheets as the thick quilt sunk on top of the bed was the only intermission of silence within the bedroom. Haechan gruffly reached for a pillow and settled it in the middle of the bed. He picked up another one and aligned it with the other one, not once making eye contact with the girl tugging the quilt at the top corners of the bed.

“I don’t want the first thing I see tomorrow morning to be your face,” Haechan said. Answering the quizzical look he knew was ridden all over her face when he placed yet, another pillow down the centre of the bed.

“Oh really,” she replied, picking up a frilly cushion from the floor. “Well I guess soon enough I won’t have to see your face for any longer,” she hummed, adding the cushion on top of the Great Pillow War of Y/n’s Bed.

“Ha! You really think I’m going to let you live across the world and not facetime you every day. Y/n, you poor delusional girl,” he shook his head in faux dismay.

“Threat or a promise?” she grinned.

“Both,” he grinned back.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Donghyuck walks through the unlocked front door to his home, juggling his opened packet of Pocky and his house keys in one hand. A series of gunshots and yelling resound from the living room, far from the seductive call of a siren but Donghyuck blindly follows anyways.

“How was vocal practice?” Johnny, his older brother, asks. Not looking up from the television screen as his thumbs hammer into the controller gripped in his hands.

“Usual,” Donghyuck says, with a mouth full of chocolate flavoured Pocky. Chocolate never did seem to disappoint.

“So how’s y/n?” The mention of her name takes him back for a second especially, out of Johnny’s mouth. He never really express any sort of opinion of her, Donghyuck at times, even forgot the two knew of each other.

“Good I guess,” he replies nonchalantly, walking over to grab the spare console controller on the coffee table.

“You guess?” Donghyuck could see his Johnny’s forehead conjugate from the corner of his eyes.

“I haven’t been talking to her lately,” Donghyuck said, with an insouciant shrug, finally logging into his game profile.

“Shouldn’t you?” Johnny prods when Donghyuck doesn’t expand on his vague reply.

“Shouldn’t you mind your own business?” The television screen pauses and the leather of the couch stifles a groan as Johnny shifts himself to look at the younger boy. Johnny frowned at him. It’s not the response Donghyuck thought he would receive, rather something quick-witted and sharp-tongued for him to rebuttal. Until a sudden, unwanted realisation quickly washes over him of whom he was talking to or more accurately, who he wasn’t talking to. “I’ve just been busy lately,” the nonchalance in his voice receding.

Although he knows it wasn’t satisfactory enough of an answer and he is proved correct when Johnny begins, “The Donghyuck and Y/n I know used to have phone calls at 4am. You’ve both have never been too busy for one another.” Johnny noticed by the end of his sentence, Donghyuck’s entire expression dulled. His doe eyes saddened into sullen brown hues reminding, the older brother of the scene where Bambi loses his mother.

“Listen, I don’t want to go all big brother on you,” Johnny gently starts upon Donghyuck falling silent. “But should we talk about why you’re ignoring your best friend?”

“Because…” he mumbles, not sure if he can confide to his older brother about this or his feelings in general. Then, Johnny leans towards him, waiting for him to continue with gentle eyes and it’s enough to convince him. “Because,” he breathes. “I heard her mother tell mum she was thinking of moving back home because being the institute has been hard. I’m scared if I talk to her I’ll end up convincing her to come back home… To me.”

Johnny leans back into his spot, drawing out a ‘hmm’ through pursed lips. The younger doe-eyed boy awaits him like a patient when they just gave their symptoms to a doctor.

“Do you remember the first time you went to that drama camp for summer,” Johnny perks up.

“Yeah,” Donghyuck answers though, not completely sure why the summer camp he went to when he was nine could correlate to his medical evaluation.

“Do you remember the third night?”

“Kind of.”

“Well, you called mum in the middle of the night crying to go home,” recounts Johnny. “And do you remember why?”

“Because I didn’t know anyone and everyone else seemed better than me,” Haechan recalls in a small voice.

“But who reminded you that you were just as talented as the other kids?”

“Y/n.”

Clear memories flood through his mind so vividly. He remembers how he had woken up the camp supervisor and begged in fury of briny tears bursting from his bloodshot eyes, to call his mother. The first three days of drama camp were utterly terribly; all the other kids had their own friendship circles they formed when they were five and were all fiercely competitive for that lead role. It was the first time, Haechan had ever felt left out and doubted his own talent, he had always been the centre of everyone’s attention. And then, over his ferocious wails, he heard a familiar, squeaky little voice. He remembers, her softly coaxing him over the phone for almost an hour. Gently persuading him to stay at the drama camp because if anyone deserved the main role it was him and soon enough, no one would be able to resist his bright charm.

“This was the first summer you two had spent separated and you were y/n’s only friend at the time. Don’t you think she would have wanted to tell you to come back home… to her?” Johnny asks looking deep into Donghyuck’s eyes. “She’s always been your no. 1 supporter, from making your costumes, running lines with you, being the first one to celebrate when you get a role. It’s time for you to help her shine.”

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

An array of warm amber creaks from under the horizon. The Sun not quite ready, to come around like a young child on the swings who's been told it’s time to go home. It’s nearing dawn, close to early morning, you know because you can’t hear the whir of machinery yet, and the world is as silent as if it ended in the night. The moon, however, is gracefully returning to its depths as it unwinds less and less from the magical pearl and into a swindle of a luminous strand.

— flashback

Snip. Snip. Snip. A loose strand of blue thread drifted to the floor. You edged backwards from your full-length mirror to get a clearer view of yourself in the a-line dress. In the reflection, you observed the small, smile curve closer and closer to your hands cupping the side of your cheeks. It was exactly how you imagined in your head. An elegant, crystal blue dress, that flattered your body in classic lines with a lovely sweetheart neckline and flowed to just below your knees. A very girlish giggle bubbled from your mouth and rippled in your bedroom as you began to twirl in your beautiful, blue dress. The soft, satin swirled around you, its sheen twinkling the lights from the ceilings so magically. You would have kept spinning had you not have heard a car from outside your window, whom you assumed to be your best friend pulling into your driveway. Frantically, you spritzed an expensive floral perfume you brought a while ago but hadn’t worn since it smelled like your hard-earnt money draining from your pockets.

“Honey! Haechan is here,” your mother called from downstairs.

“Okay!” you yelled back, rushing over to collect your nude purse.

You inhaled a deep breath before taking your first step down the stairs. Second step. It wasn’t like you haven’t spent a night out with Haechan before. Fifth step. He has been your date to prom and formals every year, this wasn’t any different. Eleventh step. He wanted to ask out Soo-ah, you were the back-up plan. Thirteenth step. He was the most beautiful thing you have ever laid eyes on.

At the bottom of the flight of stairs awaited Haechan dressed in a black tuxedo with his hands clasped together in front of him. The white of his button-up shirt was crisp against his sunkissed, tanned skin. The bowtie sprouting from his collar had you shaking your head with a grin plastering itself across your face. He peered up you, with those big, brown doe eyes through his tousled, hazel locks framing his brows. His blissful gaze followed you down the last set of steps. You caught a glimpse of a tentative smile crept along his rosy lips as he caught onto what you were chuckling about. Until, you were distracted by your mother smiling, all too knowingly, from behind Donghyuck and you shooed her away.

“This is the first time I’m tied my own bowtie,” he confessed, scratching the back of his neck.

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Hey, for a first attempt this is pretty good,” he remarked, tilting his chin up as you began to loop the bow tie.

“Mhm. Keep telling yourself that, loser,” you smirked.

“Whatever, you ready to go, low-budget Cinderella?”

You heard your mother sigh in defeat from the kitchen.

“Hyuck are you sure we’re allowed to go back here right now?” you questioned in a hushed voice from behind Donghyuck, humming a tune to himself. Five minutes before you were naively following Haechan into the midst of the starry night, the invitation proposed by the sun-kissed boy to sneak off from the party to the gardens under the night sky sounded thrilling. As the sappy love songs blasting from the party slowly reduced to vibrations on the pavement, the straps of your stilettos began to pinch, dig and chafe against your heels and the thought of sitting down filled you with much more of a rush of exhilaration.

“We’re here,” Haechan announced, looking beyond and over his shoulder you saw it too.

A white gazebo was illuminated by veils of fairy lights, lit up like fireflies. A row white rose bushes encircled the gazebo, in their freshly trimmed glory. The gazebo stood virtuously against the painted black sky like some kind of answer.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Wonderstruck glittered in Y/n’s eyes. Haechan thought the sparkle in her eyes challenged the twinkling of the fairy lights wrapped around the gazebo, no the expanse of the night sky. Her celestial eyes shone so brightly, he found himself staring at her from aside in complete awe of her. He swore he never felt this way before. Feeling like he could lose himself in the constellation of someone’s eyes, let alone his best friend’s. A feeling so gradual like the morning sky, fading into the inky abyss of the night. Till it was washing over his body like tidal waves crashing into the stoic rocks on the shore. It drowned his lungs, weighed down his stomach and yet, he was floating all at once.

He didn’t allow the better judgment of his mind to dictate of his mind and would have refrained him from placing his hand in her delicates ones and escorting her into the gazebo.

“Haechan,” she whispered. The lustre beams poured gently over her and Haechan drank in the sight of an angel before him. Blue had never looked more ethereal, slipped onto her shoulders, peppering her body with soft, sensual kisses he longed to do in that very moment.

“Dance with me,” he breathes. “Dance with me.”

His hands found themselves around her waist and whisked her into the middle of the gazebo floor. A puff of wind swept through her silky hair, leaving him breathless.

“We can’t hear the music from here,” she giggled. It was soft, so soft. But the epiphany that his favourite song would soon be only a memory, sank his already hurting heart.

He slipped a hand into the back pocket of his trousers, revealing earphones and his phone. He doesn’t allow her to question him instead, he gently placed an earphone in her ear and his own ear and pressed play.

Her arms found home around his neck and they swayed in each other’s embrace to the melody quietly strumming in their ears. If it weren’t for her arms wrapped around him, he would have fallen apart. Falling deeper for those heavenly eyes was overwhelmingly crushing so he tucked his forehead onto hers and closed his eyes.

“Haechan, promise me something,” Y/n whispered against his chest. He hummed into her hair. “Promise me we’ll still be best friends. Promise me you’ll be my home. Promise me you’ll always be the centre of my universe. My FullSun.” How could he possibly deny her of her one request when he saw skies of stars copied into the softened swirl of the gaze, looking right up at him from under her thickly shadowed eyelashes.

“I promise.”

That night was the sweetest song, Haechan had ever heard. The humming of the black, the stars were a choir; they were lights that sang a symphony of infinite patterns. Then, the unexpected rain fell, cascading from the rim of the gazebo like a waterfall, as if gravity is soft music from the Earth, a sweet beckoning serenade. And they danced and danced in each other’s arms, slowly to��the sweetest serenade gifted from the night sky.

— end of flashback

Your finger traces the trails of a desolate rain drop streaming down the chill window. The chorus of rain courses through your body in the gentlest way like nature was humming through your body. The moon had long departed, the Sun is hidden by matted wool of leaden clouds, and you hear your dormmates waking up in the rooms next to yours. As you close your eyes, you feel the heady pull of your dreams, beckoning you back into bed after your long night of solitude, talking to the moon. You turn begrudgingly to the light switch and flick it, immediately the room is immersed in that unnatural electric glow, and you find yourself absentmindedly staring at your phone sunk in the crumples of white sheets of your bed, waiting.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

Haechan stares out his bedroom window. The earlier conversation with his older brother, Johnny, echoes in whispers at the back of his mind. His damp eyes follow a drop of rain trickling down his window pane and he can’t explain why it steadies his heart. Why the gentle pitter-patter soothes a calmness over his mind, like a soothing melody, a sweet serenade. Watching rain roll down the window, he spots in the reflection of the glass his cell phone laying on his bed.

Promises aren’t made to be broken.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

“Haechan?”

“It’s raining.”

“It’s raining here, too.”

#neowritingsnet #lee donghyuck #nct haechan #nct writings #nct fic #nct oneshots #nct angst #haechan oneshots #haechan scenarios #haechan imagines #haechan angst #haechan fluff #haechan fics #haechan x reader #haechan oneshot

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topazpearl · 7 years ago

Text

A Charitable Risk

Hello I wrote a fic that I’ve had in my head for literally years and im posting it now cause im excited about it. (i submitted it to my friend to beta read and she accidentally posted it so thats why you’re seeing it twice)

Rating: General, post-series

Length: 2,251

“Can you even imagine..?” Ms. Margaret said, covering her mouth in awe.

Nana had stars in her eyes. “You could make so many dresses… shirts.. anything!”

Husky and Cooro stood outside the mass of women, only catching glances of the object of adoration. Cooro’s curiosity got the better of him and he went into the crowd. Husky grimaced, but didn’t follow; he would’ve only gone in if somebody paid him. Cooro picked up Nana’s familiar voice. “The price though…” she said dejectedly.

“Yes… I suppose that’s expected,” Margaret said.

Finally getting to the shop window, Cooro gawked at the machine too, oblivious to some stares from older ladies.

“It’s a sewing machine,” Nana said to him. “It makes the needle go way faster than a hand can, so you can make a lot of clothes really fast!”

“Whoa…” Cooro said as the crowd cleared enough that Husky felt comfortable coming over.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Nana said.

“Like you’d be able to afford it,” Husky scoffed after giving the machine a good look over.

Nana huffed. “I…I know that!”

“Clothes hand-stitched are made with more love anyhow,” Margaret cooed, gently moving Nana away from the window to continue their shopping, though sparing one last glance at the machine.

Husky followed, since another wave of women were coming to awe. “The stuff girls are willing to spend money on…”

“If they saved enough, they could buy it, right?” Cooro said behind him.

“Yeah, but that money is needed for food, next winter’s stock, Mr. Harden and Ms. Margaret have taxes they need to pay. I will admit it’s an interesting machine, but there are more important things. Besides, it’s so big and bulky. Nana couldn’t carry that thing around if…” Husky trailed off. ‘If we leave,’ he thought.

“But y’know…” Cooro said, “we’ve already been staying with Mr. Harden and Ms. Margaret for a year now, and they’ve said they’re happy to have us.”

Husky furrowed his brow. Their group had talked about leaving off and on for months, but for whatever reasons, they had continued to stay. Harden had been ordered another big smithing job from the military, and they had helped. Or when winter came and it was a place to wait it out. They were getting quite comfortable here. Husky wouldn’t point it out, but he could sense Harden and Margaret had become like parents to the others. As for him… well, the two adults were very nice (he’d never admit that Ms. Margaret had earned a spot on his very short “Bearable Women” list), but his mom would always be his mom.

Husky shot a glance at Margaret; she had revealed to be a +anima in the past to them a while back, which had made her and Nana grow incredibly close. It seemed like they were in safe, warm hands…

“Do you really think we could..?” Husky responded in a low voice, looking at the ground. His anxiety just wouldn’t let him say yes. It’d been a miracle the nearby town hadn’t found out they were +anima yet. But what if they did? Surely it was inevitable with people like Cooro and Senri in their group. Would they force Mr. harden and Ms. Margaret to kick them out? His thoughts were so heavy he almost missed Cooro’s answer.

“We won’t know until we try,” the boy smiled.

“We’re home,” Margaret called as she and the kids entered the house.

Harden and Senri paused their work, peering into the room. “Hello,” the older man said.

“Mr. Harden, Senri!” Nana piped up. “You wouldn’t believe what we saw in town today!”

“Hmm? What?” the man said, leaning on the door frame separating the house from his workshop.

“There was a machine that would do sewing for you! They say you can make clothes almost seven times as fast!” The girl’s face lit up just talking about it.

Harden looked at Margaret, who stopped putting groceries away to slightly smile. “Yes, it looked amazing,” she said.

“I had heard rumors of such a machine being patented. Looks like it’s official,” Harden said, crossing his arms.

“I wish I had one,” Nana groaned. “But it’s… super expensive.”

“You’d be able to get more work,” Harden said to Margaret.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes soft and wistful. “I could even have time to make some of the ideas I’ve had for clothes…”

“Right?” Nana piped in. “I’d be able to have more than just a couple dresses at a time.”

Margaret could feel Harden’s thoughtful gaze on her. “Like we said, we wouldn’t be able to afford it. We’ve gotten by without one all this time, after all,” she smiled, though showing disappointment on her face. “Come on Nana, let’s go get firewood for dinner.” She lead the girl out back. Despite the woman’s attempt to change the conversation, Nana still continued to gush about the sewing machine, her voice muffled outside the house.

Husky sighed, slightly annoyed the topic was brought up again, though he hadn’t considered what Harden had said, about Ms. Margaret making more money.

Cooro and Harden exchanged a look. “Come in here, boys,” Harden said, motioning into his workshop.

The air was still light with spring, though the streets were starting to become shaded by new leaves. Senri and Nana were alone running errands. Out of the corner of his eye, Senri saw a stack of golden jars on a vendor’s table. He stopped and picked one up, inspecting the sweet syrup inside.

Nana took notice. “Oh! That’s probably some of the first honey of the season. I know we still have some, but it might be nice to buy a small fresh batch. I know you like it.”

Senri closed his eye in thought. He shook his head after a moment, and put the honey jar back on the table.

“Oh,” Nana blinked. “You sure?”

Senri nodded, looking at her.

“Alright… I suppose it might be better in a few months anyway,” she said, continuing down the street.

“it’s soooo hoooot,” Cooro whined as the kids sat in the shade. It wasn’t even noon yet, but the air was already incredibly heavy with humidity. Husky knew if he wasn’t careful his pale skin would completely fry today in the summer sun.

“Ooh!” Cooro said excitedly. “The sweets shop has ice cream now! We should get some!”

“No,” Husky said before anyone else could agree.

“Ah..” Cooro fumbled a bit. “C’mon Husky just this once would be ok, right?” he said.

“He can do what he wants with his money, Husky,” Nana piped in. “That sounds really good actually.” Her eyes kinda glazed over thinking about the cold treat.

“Because,” Husky said, his voice like daggers, giving Cooro a wide-eyed glare, “it’ll only cool you off for a few minutes, and then you’ll be hot again.”

Nana was about to object, but Cooro gave a small sigh, “Yeah.”

Nana stared at him incredulously for a second. Cooro? Being this easily convinced not to have food?? What? “Cooro, are you feeling ok?” she said, rushing at the boy and putting a hand on his forehead. “Is the heat getting to you? Are you dizzy?”

“No, Nana I’m fine,” Cooro laughed, leaning away.

“But you never say no to food..!” she said, still not completely believing him.

“He’s just finally starting to listen to me,” Husky said, standing up. “Let’s just go swimming in the river again. It’s free.”

Cooro followed. “You should get me some fish to make up for it. Or crawdads!” he smiled.

“…Fine.” Husky did his best to ignore Nana’s burning stare on the back of his head.

Autumn leaves blew across the ground as Cooro, Husky, and Senri walked to meet up with Mr. Harden in town. They moved quickly, anxious to ditch the large sums of money they were carrying hidden in their bags. Husky felt it the most. He still couldn’t quite believe they were doing this. As they approached to pass the jewelry shop, a place Husky was all too familiar with, he tried to create tunnel vision for himself. But his heart and eyes failed him, as a huge blue jewel centerpiece caught his attention. It was pretty high quality, Husky could tell just by looking at it. He loved the cut, too. Even in the cold, dreary light it shined bright-

“Husky? What’s up?” Cooro’s voice broke his trance. The crow +anima came back to him, standing still in front of the shop’s window.

“Nothing,” Husky lied, glancing away from the jewel’s high ticket price. Now he was extremely aware of the saved money in his bag. He just stared at the ground in conflicted thought. ‘I can actually afford it. When am I even going to have this much money again?’

Cooro and Senri glanced between the jewels in the glass case and Husky’s face.

“Husky… Mr. Harden’s waiting for us,” Cooro said in an uncharacteristically small voice.

“I-I know, I’m-“ Husky looked at his friends’ uneasy faces, and sighed. He could not believe he was doing this. “I’m coming.” He forced himself to walk away, one foot in front of the other. The tension broken, Senri and Cooro followed, smiling at him.

“Shut up,” Husky growled.

“We didn’t say anything Husky.”

“I swear to God Cooro if you don’t take that down I’m gonna throw it in the fireplace,” Husky frowned, his bangs flipping around as Cooro’s wings stirred the air in the house.

“Aw but it’s a tradition Husky,” Cooro said from the ceiling.

“I don’t care, I’m not kissing anyone in this house.”

“Husky’s a Grinch,” Nana said from the kitchen.

“You get stuck under that thing and see how you like it,” Husky scowled.

Ms. Margaret came over, wiping her hands on her apron. “Nobody’s going to force you to do anything,” she assured. “Besides, you can avoid it all together if you want.” Husky still stared at the mistletoe as if it was going to sting him.

Cooro landed on the floor, wings splayed excitedly behind him. “Is dinner ready yet?”

“Yes,” Margaret smiled.

“Yeah!”

After everyone had stuffed their faces, Nana leaned forward in her chair and said, “Can we open presents now?”

“Of course,” Margaret said, and Harden added with a nod. Cooro rushed to the Christmas tree with a cheer, as if he hadn’t just filled his gut to the brim with food. The others followed. After they had opened all the presents under the tree and wrapping paper strew the floor, Margaret leaned back in her chair. “I guess we should start cleaning this mess up.”

The boys exchanged knowing glances, and Harden’s mustache bristled with a smile. “There’s one more,” he said.

Harden and Senri went into his workshop, and came back out carrying a big box. Cooro’s smile broadened as Margaret raised a hand to her mouth. “Oh my goodness!”

“Wh-what did you get?” Nana exclaimed, coming over to the box.

“Open it and find out,” Husky said, his face showing the faintest of smiles.

“It’s for both of you ladies,” Harden said. The two females looked at each other before unwrapping the brown paper, their hearts beating in excited curiosity. Margaret cut open the simple box. She and Nana gasped, seeing the shiny sewing machine and cabinet stand inside.

Nana’s hands flew to her mouth, eyes already becoming watery. “Oh my gosh! You guys..! You guys!” she said, looking at her friends, her voice high and muffled.

“Merry Christmas Nana, Ms. Margaret,” Cooro beamed.

“Merry Christmas,” Senri smiled.

Tears streamed down Nana’s face as she hugged each one of them, even Husky.

“Alright, alright, yeah, Merry Christmas,” Husky said, lightly patting her.

Margaret continued to stare at the sewing machine in shock and awe. “Harden…”

“The boys and I saved up all year for it,” Harden smiled, returning Nana’s hug.

“Thank you so much! Thank you!” Nana said, trying to wipe tears off her face. She eagerly removed the rest of the box, revealing the machine in its full glory.

“You’re welcome,” Harden and Cooro chimed.

“Th-thank you… all of you,” Margaret smiled at Harden and the boys. “You didn’t have to do this.” Husky fiddled with his hair, becoming flustered by the girls’ gratitude.

“We wanted to,” Cooro said. “You obviously really wanted it.”

Nana looked up from the instruction manual she was now reading. “It explains why you guys never bought anything for yourselves all year. I never thought it’d be for this…” She glanced around at the other gifts strewn around the room. She had been satisfied with what she had made for the boys for Christmas, and they said they liked it, but it all felt unequal now.

“I’m going to make you all something with this,” Nana said to the guys. “Something really special. Anything you want! In repayment for this…”

“Really?” Gooro gasped. Senri blinked in surprise.

“You don’t need to do that,”Harden replied. “This was a gift.”

“You already make most of our clothes anyway,” Husky mumbled.

“I..I want to,” Nana said firmly.

“I’ll help her,” Margaret said, a same firmness in her usually soft eyes. “It’s the least we can do. You boys worked so hard for this.” Nana nodded with Margaret’s statement.

Harden sighed and crossed his arms. “Well alright. There’s probably no use trying to stop you gals anyway.”

“I see no better way to make first use of this machine,” Ms. Margaret smiled at Nana. “Right?”

“Yeah,” the girl said, smiling too.

#plus anima #+anima (manga)#cooro #husky (anima)#husky #senri #nana alba #fanfic #my writing

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