#me turning on the public access test station

[columboscreens]

[buttacake80]

To my Asian, European, African, and Canadian friends...do y'all wanna know how the United States found itself under a fascist, Hitler-loving dictator named Donald Trump?

In another post, I started my timeline in 1980. The year I was born. But, it was also a turning point in US politics.

First, let me share my credentials.

- Bachelors of Arts - History

- Juris Doctor - Public Interest Law (Critical Race Theory)

- Masters of Philosophy (research degree) - Sociology (Race, Ethnicity, Conflict)

Just recently, we buried President Jimmy Carter, who was the president, when I was born. Jimmy was from Georgia, like my grandmother, and he came from a Southern Baptist background. Southern Baptists are known for being very conservative Christians who did not support abortion.

Jimmy, despite that background, actually supported LGBTQ rights by lifting a federal ban. He supported Roe v. Wade which protected access to abortion. And, he established the federal Department of Education.

However, Jimmy had an antagonistic relationship with Congress, and that alienated several Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, who was the brother of John F. Kennedy, a president who was assassinated.

The Kennedy family has an established name brand due to JFK and Robert F Kennedy (another brother and JFK's attorney general who was also assassinated). Ted was the younger, drunken brother who caused the accidental death of a college friend.

In 1980, Ted challenged Jimmy for the presidency even though they were both Democrats. Jimmy has the incumbent shouldn't have faced a challenge from his own party, but he had just been that bad.

So, this internal strife weakened the Democratic Party entering the 1980 election. In that same year, Jimmy boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Russia due to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan. Furthermore, there was a recession.

The Republican Party nominee was a former Hollywood actor turned politician named Ronald Reagan. Ronald was the governor of California and was trailing Jimmy in the polls until a presidential debate in which Ronald used his acting skills to make Jimmy seem incompetent.

Ronald believed in "trickle down economics." He believed that if the wealthiest people were taxed less, then they would spend more, thus boosting the economy and allowing prosperity to "trickle down" to the working & Middle class.

He also believed in increased military spending as this was the height of the Cold War with Russia. My own parents voted for Reagan because my dad was in the military.

Instead of trickling down, the wealthy just grew wealthier. Republicans continued to lower taxes for these individuals and businesses, so the money never trickled down. Social services were underfunded & unemployment increased. Reagan's response was to blame Black "welfare mothers" for abusing the system.

Republicans latch onto this. They implement work requirements for government assistance and make it harder for folks to pull out of poverty. As a result, a wealth gap separated white folk from the rest. White folk felt their hard earned money was supporting lazy white & Black folk, so they continued to constrict welfare programs.

[Section added] During Reagan's term, an unknown illness is killing young, gay Black & Latino men. It's AIDs. Reagan deemed it a gay disease that only affects gay people, so no funding is allocated to study this disease. It's viewed as retribution for their homosexua lifestyle. However, overtime, they learn about HIV once non-gay men were infected. Children die from the disease because blood is not tested for it, so some are born from it through their mothers while others were given transfusions.

Under Reagan, the Fairness Doctrine ends. Under this doctrine, news agencies had to report both sides of an issue. Because of this, television stations can now present one side. Fox News opens as a conservative network.

Ronald is well-loved by white folk. He gets elected to two terms. By the end of his term, the economy has recovered, and white folk are prospering. Then, his VP, George H.W. Bush, is elected.

Under George I, the Cold War ends, but we have the Gulf War in Kuwait. He signs trade agreements that result in several American companies, namely the auto industry, to shutter their doors and build factories overseas. This is due to a change in tariffs!

Millions of Americans lose their jobs as factories close. Detroit, as the leading auto manufacturer city, is devastated. Back in the 90s, Detroit was the 4th largest US city after Chicago. These factory closures hit the Midwest, especially hard.

This makes Bush unpopular. He is challenged by a young, charismatic Democrat named Bill Clinton.

Bill was a southerner like Jimmy, but Bill was a very well-known ladies' man. Bill appeals to Black Americans, though, and that allows him to defeat George.

Bill continues expanding trade agreements. He's a fiscal conservative despite being a Democrat, and under Bill, military spending is reduced.

[Section added] The rise of AIDs leads to further hate directed at the LGBTQ. During the 90s, several queer people are murdered. One such kid was Matthew Shepard. A college kid in Wyoming, he is beaten by a gang of white men. His family was terrorized so much, that they couldn't bury him because of fears his grave would be desecrated.

[A white woman Bishop in DC invites Shepard's parents to bury him in their graveyard. That Bishop is Marian Edgar Budde, the same Bishop who gave Trump his inaugural sermon this past week. She pleaded for Trump to have mercy on the queer community because she was the Bishop who buried Shepard!]

Bill is a popular president. The economy is booming, but he's still a lady's man, and he gets in trouble with a college intern.

This scandal adversely impacts the last few years in office so much so that his VP, Al Gore, loses the presidency to George W. Bush.

George Bush won the Electoral College while Al Gore won the popular vote. There was such a tiny margin that there were numerous recounts because of faulty ballots (hanging chads). Eventually, the Supreme Court intervenes and tells them to stop the count and certify George as president.

George II is the son of George I.

George II is a popular Texan with swagger. He wants to build up the military once again.

Clinton left a surplus of money, so what did George II do? He implemented tax cuts for the wealthy. That damned "trickle down economics" again. The wealthy get wealthier, increasing the wealth gap between white folks and everybody else.

They cut taxes while cutting social services. One of his biggest "achievements" was a restructuring of our educational system called "No Child Left Behind."

NCLB emphasizes test scores. School administrations are penalized if they don't meet these standards. They lost funding, so electives such as home economics, art, Music, etc are trimmed to make room for these test standards. By this time, my dad has retired from the military and is a school principal, and I remember the stress of trying to meet these standards.

These standards emphasize STEM at the expense of liberal arts. This is happening just as the internet becomes available to all.

Amazon opens as an online used book store. Facebook is started as a college message board. There's a tech boom, so everyone is being pushed into tech fields. Liberal arts education was devalued.

During his term, 9-11 happens. We declare war on Afghanistan. Islamophobia spikes. Fox News helps drive this narrative. Christianity is now being pushed into schools, whereas schools were previously secular.

[Section added] In 2004, the assault rifle ban was lifted. Now we are seeing a dramatic spike in school shootings. The Far Right embraces the expansion of the 2nd Amendment.

Then, we go to war in Iraq.

We aren't quite sure why we're at war with Iraq. We overthrow Suddam Hussein (from the Gulf War). George declares victory, then terminates the Iraqi Army.

This triggers an insurrection. Massive casualties are coming out of Iraq. The war in Afghanistan is overshadowed.

George serves two terms, but his VP is so unpopular that he doesn't run for president. Instead, the Republican nominee is John McCain.

Two Democrats fight for the nomination. Hillary Clinton, the wife of Bill, and Barack Obama.

Barack was a young, biracial Senator from Illinois. I attended law school in Illinois, and one of my classmates had been his legislative aide. I met Barack twice while a student. The first time, he had come to campus to propose a college-savings account. After his press conference, I latched onto his arm and refused to let go until he heard me, and I explained that his proposal was unrealistic because it assumed that a single mother would have the resources to save for an education when it was more likely her money would go towards groceries & rent or other immediate needs. (Fast forward two-three years, and the dude is repeating my line during the State of the Union! I had changed his mind!)

Barack beats Hillary for the nomination. He defeats McCain and is sworn in as the 1st black (not Black) president.

Obama is popular and well-loved by most Americans. Under his tenure, gay marriage is legalized.

Fox News triples down on their hatred.

Their network booms. They push Islamophobia 24/7. Highlight the fact that Obama's father was Muslim and that his middle name was Hussein.

Older Americans are watching program after program of this negativity. A movement starts called the Tea Party movement, which positions itself as a fiscally conservative movement. A bankrupt slumlord with a reality TV show gains popularity with these folks.

I wrote my master's dissertation on the Tea Party movement. It's called "Jesus and the White Man."

Donald Trump

Donald latches onto the Islamaphobia. He calls Barack by his middle name and questions his birth certificate. Donald grows popular with older Americans.

At the end of Obama's term, the son of VP Biden dies. This devastated Biden. He had lost his infant daughter & first wife in a car accident. He decides not to run for president.

Obama supports Hillary.

It is now Hillary v. Trump.

Trump pushes misogyny and Islamaphobia. Hillary is Bill's wife and a woman. She is the most qualified presidential candidate to ever run (at that time).

During Obama's last year in office, Justice Antonin Scalia* dies. Obama has the privilege to nominate that next Justice, but Mitch McConnell stalls through the election.

But older white Americans were barely okay with a black president. They were not about to let a woman serve as President. At the same time, an organization called Cambridge Analytica began to fine-tune an ultra conservative agenda.

With the help of Russian intelligence, they use Facebook ads to try to persuade voters to support Trump. They succeeded with white folk, but they did not succeed with the Black vote.

Russians used African bot farms in order to try to persuade Black Americans to support Trump. We rejected him at 90%.

Donald wins the Electoral College but not the popular vote.

Donald is a corrupt and ineffectual president. He tried to bribe foreign leaders and shared US intelligence with Russia.

However, as a populist, he latches onto the Christian Right. He nominates 3 Supreme Court Justices who lie during their confirmation hearings. These Justices will ultimately vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The Christian Right love this. But then COVID hits and the incompetence of Donald leads to millions of deaths. These Christian folk refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks.

Donald is an unpopular president and ranks as the worst president of all time.

Biden challenges him and wins.

Donald refuses to accept that he lost, so he organized an attempted coup. January 6th.

He's impeached. Twice.

McConnell refuses to take the step to have him permanently barred from office.

Biden takes office when COVID is still rampant. The Christian Right continue to push their agenda, seeking to remove protections for the LGBTQI.

Right wing media generates a lot of money. Podcasters jump on the bandwagon. Red pill content spills into the mainstream.

Kids who were isolated during COVID are now at home watching Joe Rogan & Theo Von. They spend hours upon hours on TikTok.

But unbeknownst to these kids is the history of Russian interference.

Schools emphasize STEM. They don't emphasize liberal arts or social sciences such as history or literature. The literacy rate plummeted to an all-time low. The average white American's reading level is at the 4th grade. They aren't able to engage in critical thinking.

They don't know the history of the Spanish Influenza. They don't know the history of a trade war that triggered the Great Depression. They don't know that our government has imprisoned citizens in internment camps. They don't know Hitler's rise to power.

In fact, Fox News frequently features individuals who deny the Holocaust.

Russia move their troll farms from Facebook to TikTok, where the algorithm serves as an echo chamber. Uneducated, illiterate folks gobble up 30-second videos but can't be arsed to watch anything over 5 minutes so complex issues are stripped down to sound bites.

The algorithm pushed right-wing fascist talking points. They rehabbed Donald while shifting Gen Z to the far right. They do not know how to verify information for themselves, so they gobble up misinformation and disinformation.

If a TikTok creator has millions of followers with thousands of views and likes, these kids assume that that info is factual. They do not vet shit for themselves.

Russia pushed anti-American propaganda that posed as pro-American talking points. Pushed isolationism. Pushed anti-democratic rhetoric. In fact, one of their greatest accomplishments is convincing Gen Z and uneducated, white Millennials into thinking we aren't a democracy.

We are a fucking Democratic Republic. Our constitution begins with: "We the people".

So, because of TikTok, Trump won.

That's why Biden was pushing for it to be banned before the election. The algorithm was being corrupted. But folks couldn't part from their addiction.

Folks who had been anti-Trump just 5 years ago are suddenly Trump supporters. They were brainwashed.

So, how did we get here?

We got here because most Americans are fucking STUPID.

[free-for-all-fics]

Quick random thought/Prompt about The Recruiter from Squid Game. Pls tag me if you’re inspired by this and I’d love to read it! 🔴🔺🟥

You’re a foreign exchange student or otherwise a foreigner (American, Canadian, European, whatever kind of foreigner you want to imagine) who is living in South Korea to study abroad. You speak Korean fluently or close enough to fluently so there’s little to no language barrier and you can get around. Everything is going well for you. College is great, your friends are awesome, you keep in contact with your family back home. But then something unexpected and out of your control happens that leaves you without anywhere to live. For whatever reason, living in a dorm on college campus is not an option for you and/or you lose access to your apartment. Your friends try to help you by giving you money and offering to let you couch surf at their places for a while, but they can’t offer their own places to you for very long nor indefinitely, only temporarily for whatever reasons they have. You’re either too proud or too embarrassed or a combination of both to call your family to ask them for money because you know they’ll probably just worry and say it’s a sign and push for you to come home prematurely and finish college in a local university or online, even if they were initially supportive of your decision to study abroad in South Korea. It’s dangerous for a woman to walk or travel alone, and yet you moved to a different country where you don’t know anybody. But you know most parents just naturally worry about their children all the time, even in adulthood. It’s not just yours.

Though it’s extremely difficult, you learn to adapt and find ways to get by for a while so you can still work and attend college by using public transport like the subway and taxis to get to your university and back, and utilize public places and services to do your laundry, take showers, get food, etc. You’re just a woman with just one suitcase or one duffle bag and a backpack. You’re practically living a nomadic-esque life on the streets or under a bridge when you’re not attending your college classes, moving from place to place to evade police and thieves and such. Or maybe you’re eventually caught sleeping in your workplace after hours and get fired as a result because the money you’ve saved up plus the money you make from your now former job isn’t enough for a new apartment at the moment. Whatever the circumstances for your misfortunes are, you end up hanging out and sleeping in Tapgol Park most of the time when you’re not attending school. You don’t tell your friends about your living situation because you don’t want to burden them. They’ve already helped you enough and you don’t want them to worry, so you lie and say you’ve found a place to stay.

One day, The Recruiter approaches you in Tapgol Park after your classes are over and holds out a bread roll and a lottery ticket, asking you to pick one or the other. He speaks to you in English, no doubt noticing you’re not a native Korean. He’s not the first person to do this to you and he won’t be the last. You’re used to it. When you speak to him in practically fluent Korean instead of English, his surprise quickly turns back to his original expression of mostly neutral with just a touch of smugness. It’s so quick that if you blinked, you would’ve missed it.

(Maybe unbeknownst to you, this isn’t the first time he’s seen you. Maybe he’s seen you around Jonggak Station or other Korean subway stations without you ever noticing him and has been keeping tabs on you ever since even though he doesn’t intend on recruiting you for the games. No matter what line you use to ride the subway, he’s conveniently where you are or going the same way you are. While he’s a stranger to you, he knows all about you. Maybe he speaks English to secretly test you to see if he can use the potential language barrier against you to gaslight and manipulate you by acting as your friendly and helpful Korean “translator” so you’ll heavily rely on him for help, but that Plan A backfires when he realizes how knowledgeable and proficient you are in the language, so he thinks to himself how he’ll have to come up with a Plan B. He knows based on his research, you’re a college student who studied Korean, but he underestimated you and how far along you got in your studies.)

He keeps his hands with the bread and lottery ticket outstretched towards you, repeating his request for you to pick one - the bread or the lottery - in Korean this time. You look between the two for a few seconds and, you’re not sure why but, instead of picking either, you look back up at him and ask if you can pick a third option instead. The heat from the sun beating down on you must be getting to you and fogging your brain for you to be feeling this extremely bold. You feel like you have nothing to lose today because, when he looks at you in confusion and asks what you mean by that, you just say, “I pick you,” and grab him by his tie to pull him down to your level and in for a kiss. You’re not sure what fucking demon or spirit possessed you or what the hell you were thinking when you did it. Call it an impulsive decision or whatever, but you don’t have time to question your sanity before you feel him kissing you back. He even drops what he’s holding to wrap his arms around your waist, hips, or neck and keep you in place as he pulls you closer. Wait, what? He’s actually kissing you back and seems really into it. Okay. An unexpected reaction from him. You weren’t expecting him to reciprocate, let alone this enthusiastically. You were half expecting him to push you away and ask what the hell you thought you were doing since, you know, you kinda assaulted him. But he doesn’t seem to mind or care that much about your assault. Okay. Maybe you can work with this. The first thing you noticed about him was that he was incredibly tall and handsome, after all. The light from the sun shining behind him made him look heavenly. Almost like an angel.

He surprises you again when he offers his house for you to live in while you study, claiming that it’s too big and there’s too many rooms for just him. You know your survival instincts are screaming at you to say no and politely turn him down because hello?? You just met this guy and know nothing about him. You know his offer sounds too good to be true and that there’s bound to be some catch. Nobody does something as generous as opening their house to a stranger without expecting something in return. He doesn’t seem like the kind of man to just let you freeload off of him out of the goodness of his heart. You know damn well he seems like an angel but could be a devil in disguise. But you also know you’re desperate and can’t keep going on like how you have been. You have a feeling he knows that too. Whatever. That’s a problem for future you. Current you needs a place to stay. Whatever the price is for having a roof over your head, a warm bed to sleep in, and meals in your stomach that aren’t just cheap convenience store food, you’ll pay it.

He takes you home with him and you’re not ready for how lavish his place is. It has everything you could dream of and more. It even has more than one level and an elevator. Though all of the black furniture, flooring, and decor in his house is a little intimidating and off-putting, you admit it is stylishly done even if it reminds you too much of the inside of a coffin or death. But he’s right. It is too big for just him. But he doesn’t even have any pets. Why not? He clearly has the space and money for them. Does he not like animals? It must be a pain in the ass to clean and maintain his house, unless he has people who do it for him. Is that what he wants you to do? Act as his maid to earn your bed and meals? Or does he want something else from you? The thought that he wants sexual favors from you as payment crossed your mind when he first offered to let you stay with him, but that didn’t creep you out or deter you from accepting as much as you thought it would. If that’s the case, you think exactly like you did before: He’s tall and he’s handsome. He looks to be in his late thirties at least. Maybe even his early or mid forties. Even if he’s so many years older than you, you look at him and think he’s almost got a DILF thing going on, even though he doesn’t have kids. He looks like he works out and you think he probably has got amazing arms and shoulder muscles despite his suit making him look deceptively slender.

Does he reveal his unhinged side like what we saw in Season 2 or does he keep up the polite facade we saw in season 1? Or maybe you’re in a Jekyll and Hyde situation where he treats you like a princess and fucks you like a whore or vice versa and treats you like a whore but fucks you like a princess. Maybe he can flip flop between his two personas at any given moment and it sometimes feels like you’re tiptoeing around glass or dealing with an unpredictable ticking time bomb and you have to think carefully about how you’re gonna get through these outbursts and moods of his relatively unscathed. He loves games of all kinds, especially the ones with high risks and high rewards. And he wants to play with you. He has so many fun toys he could use on you. Toys for him could mean actual sex toys or literal weapons.

Whatever happens after that is up to you.

Whether or not you know about his darker side and/or the games and what he actually does for work to make his money and sustain his luxurious way of living, imagine he never kills himself while playing Russian Roulette with Gi-hun. Imagine sometime in the future, you’re married and have a child together. When your child is born, a lot of color is added to the house. Toys, your child’s room, picture books, their clothing, etc. is colorful because you and he both know that babies need a lot of color and other visual stimuli to aid in their development. You’ve watched him read to your baby and point to the pictures to teach them basic nouns like animal or object names or hold up paper ddakji tiles and flash cards of different shapes in front of them to teach them what colors and shapes are. A red circle, a blue square, a green triangle, a yellow star, a purple umbrella, etc. He maintains his love of games too, but the ones he plays with your child are obviously normal, child-friendly and age-appropriate games from both your home country and Korea, like Gong-gi.

“My turn!” Your child grabs the colorful plastic stones in their small fist and throws one in the air as they try to catch the others.

“What would my father say?” Your husband asks you as he sits across from them on the floor.

“That you’re building a very solid friendship with your child.”

He may or may not have told you about his past and how his father really died.

“No, darling. You've dropped a stone so you have to start over.”

“No!” Your child loves that word ever since they learned it. You’ve been trying to break them out of that habit, but it’s still funny sometimes.

“Don't be so mean. Let them continue from the stage they were at.”

He playfully glares at you. “It won't be very helpful later on if we don't teach our child how to lose.”

“Go ahead and cry, darling. Make Appa feel guilty.”

“Don’t encourage them!”

“Oh, hurry up, Appa! It's your turn!”

He takes the stones in his hand and throws them down on the floor, throws one in the air, then picks up one at a time to start the game anew. Both you and your child watch in awe as he clears all of the stages effortlessly, even the flip at the end. He’d never admit it out loud, but he loves the sparkle in your child’s eyes as they watch him like he’s a superhero or something.

Throughout the years you’ve known him, you’ve never, ever, ever seen your husband cry. Not once. Not even on your wedding day or when your child was born and he held them for the first time or on their 100th day celebration. But then, when your child is three years old, he lays out a fountain pen, a bill of 50,000 won from his briefcase, and their favorite toy in front of them. He wants to see which one they will pick. When you ask what he’s doing, he tells you that a lot of Korean people do this with their toddlers. It represents what you'll value most when you grow up. The fountain pen is intelligence, the money is, well, money, and the toy is fun. He says he’s just doing it out of curiosity and boredom. It’s interesting for him to see which one your child will pick anyway. You watch as your child just sits there and stares at the items. He sits across from them and waits patiently. They crawl towards the objects, he holds his breath, and they push everything aside and push themselves up on their feet so they can waddle right into his arms instead. He didn't realize that he was one of the choices. And that’s the first, and possibly the only time you see your husband cry. Through his tears, he makes a teasing comment to you about how your child definitely takes after you because, like you, when he gave them a choice, they instead picked a different option that he never even considered.

[mandana-the-service-pup]

We’re home.

Mandana fussed a lot while I was doing the breathing test. I was having tachycardia & high blood pressure during the test and she had to stay across the room while I sat in a glass closet of sorts. She was ok in the very beginning but the test lasted a while and the tech was very animated in coaching me through the test. All she did was whine but she got progressively louder as the test went on and it wasn’t appropriate. The tech didn’t seem to mind but i apologized anyways and explained she is still in training and that it’s not something we’ve worked on yet.

We’ve done training exercises like that at home but I’ve yet to practice outside or in public access mostly bc I’m so worried about strange dogs/people coming up to her when I’m not close by. I’m going to have to find some acceptable locations to practice because it’s been an issue twice now.

Other than that she was awesome. I expected the 6-minute walk to be in a long hallway but actually we just took laps around the nurses station so lots of sharp turns and people walking out in front of us. Mandanas heeling was great and she even did some nice medical alerts which seemed to impress the tech.

My meeting with the Pulmonologist is next week. Idk what the testing will show. I was wearing my continuous oxymeter but I don’t know the exact timestamp during each part of the test. There was definitely some oxygen and heart rate problems before and after the appointment but at least during the 6-minute walk it looks like it might have settled down for a moment so idk if they actually caught anything. Wouldn’t that be frustrating. To go through all that and then they catch the one part of the day when I’m fine 🫥

[iviarellereads]

Fugitive Telemetry, Chapter 2

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Murderbot Diaries, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

In which someone makes unlikely allies.

Station Security were unhappy with Murderbot's presence in Preservation, when they first learned about it. Indah in particular wanted MB sent away. Mensah refused, Indah called MB a weapon, and Mensah reminded her, cold and angry, that MB is a person. Even when Indah regained her composure after the wave of fear, Mensah told her not to talk and make it worse. She agreed to forget what was just said, despite Pin-Lee's hiss of protest, and start negotiating how to agree that MB stayed.

MB was given two restrictions, the first of which is not accessing non-public systems without permission, including other bots.(1) MB is still unhappy with the situation, but it's not like Preservation's systems are top of any line anyway.

When the call came in about the murder, Mensah asked if this was the GrayCris attack they'd been preparing for. MB said maybe, and Mensah half hoped it was, so they could get it over with.(2)

Now, MB stands over a dead human, with Tech Tural and two others. It's set up a bit of a surveillance network with its drones, particularly following Mensah back to her office. Tural says they still don't have an ID, but DNA testing didn't turn up any results in the database, so the deceased isn't related to 85% of Preservation residents. At Indah's and MB's stares, Tural clarifies that the body scan should help more.

Indah looks at MB as if to ask what it's got for this. MB asks Tural if they've done a forensic sweep, and apparently those are correct keywords,(3) because they confirm it, and say they'll send the report when it's ready. MB asks for the raw data, and at Indah's confirmation that this is okay, Tural sends it. MB runs a quick analysis, and determines that someone used a cleaning field after the murder, because there aren't many DNA samples on the victim's clothes. Tural and Indah are both a bit surprised when MB relates this, and sends them its version of a report.

While they examine that, MB leans down to examine the wound at the base of the deceased's skull, which may be the cause of death. It's certainly deep, but there's not enough blood or brain matter around to suggest they were killed here. This was a dump site. Indah already knew that, though, and dismisses it.

Indah tells Tural they need to search for cleaning field doodads that fit the criteria, especially if they can fit in a pocket or bag. Tural suggests the clothing is distinct enough to offer some information, but MB is quite familiar with the materials, as it's just recycler fabric from the Corp Rim, very like what it's wearing. Tural takes a sample anyway, but Indah frowns and says then the clothes might indicate origin, or might have been changed to blend in.

Tural's analysis of the fabric comes back, confirming it's from a recycler. They suggest it could have come from a store, like MB's, but MB says it could also be from a transport, as some of them have quite fancy recyclers. Indah asks if the clothes are at all helpful. MB says the deceased might have wanted to look like a visitor to Preservation. If you're worried you're being followed, you can either try to fade into a crowd, or make yourself stand out and look unafraid. Privately, MB thinks it could never pull off the latter, but a human with normal human body language could.

The StatSec pair look thoughtful, and Tural suggests they see if Medical can tell if the deceased's skin or hair colour was changed recently. Indah admits she wouldn't think twice about a visitor who looked like this. MB says they'd also need a bag, to indicate having somewhere to go,(4) but there's none here. Indah says StatSec will keep an eye out, and orders a search of adjacent areas for any sort of travel bag left unattended.

Indah then gets a message indicating Pathology is ready, and need the area cleared. Tural takes the broken feed interface to analyse, and Indah tells MB they'll call if it's needed.

I know a “fuck off” when I hear one. So I fucked off.

=====

(1) We don't get the second in this chapter, you didn't miss anything. (2) I certainly can't imagine living in that kind of fear, day in and day out. (3) Chalk one up for the crime serials. (4) Funny how much of MB's experience from going rogue is coming in handy. Almost as if this series was planned out or something. And on that note, did you see anything in this chapter to indicate what might be coming up?

[seat-safety-switch]

I’ve always wanted to get my ham radio license. There’s so much romance in the concept of amateur radio: repeatedly stating your callsign, keeping a little logbook of who you’ve talked to and from where, and participating in riveting political discussions with folks who haven’t gotten outside since 1978. So basically the same as the internet, except The Government makes you pass a morse-code test before they’ll let you ham it up.

One of the most appealing aspects, other than the potential to purchase and maintain a whole new genre of unreliable, complex hardware with reams and reams of jargon, is the concept of the perfect antenna. Now, we actually already know what the perfect antenna is. One of those self-sustaining EternalMinds® down at Facebook Research got bored for a couple milliseconds, boiled a bit of coolant in its vast reservoirs, and machine-learned itself how to create this antenna that looks like a Christmas tree drawn by a toddler on LSD that is better than everything else in existence. Still, we ignore it, and plod on, because it’s still fun working out the daily sudoku in the free transit papers even if the guy next to you on the train has solved it that morning.

Personally, I was mostly a fan of how the antenna regulations let me enforce my will upon others. You see, access to radio technology is a federally-controlled right. In the same way that you can’t go cut down the local public-access television station’s antenna because you don’t like that the hot goth girl on the call-in show keeps turning you down, so too can’t you touch the boiling-hot black mass that I’ve bolted loosely to what’s left of the roof of my house.

It supercedes any other level of government, whether actual or – in the case of my homeowners’ association – imagined. If someone tells you to take down your six meter tall antenna from behind your house, you can tell them to fuck right off, or they should expect a bunch of Predator drones to systematically cram Hellfire missiles up their butts by nightfall. And that’s the way government should work - for the assholes, by the assholes, in the assholes.

Now if only I could get the Department of Transportation interested in mandating access to racetracks, we’d really be getting somewhere.

[96thdayofrage]

How lawmakers block progress and maintain oppressive policies

Many lawmakers, especially in the South, fought to maintain the nation’s founding principles of white supremacy.

In Alabama’s Dallas County, more than half the population was Black in 1961 but fewer than one in 100 Black citizens were registered to vote due to daunting poll taxes and other measures meant to disenfranchise Black voters. 

Across the South, registrars could selectively ask Black voters to read part of the Constitution, then decide whether the text had been read to their liking, said Carol Anderson, an African American studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

As such, they had enormous power to block people from voting, Anderson said.

A modest civil rights act passed in 1957 had enabled the Justice Department to sue states for voting rights violations but put the onus on people whose rights had been violated, requiring them to challenge systems designed to keep them down, Anderson said. By 1963, a federal report examining 100 counties in eight Southern states found that Blacks remained substantially underrepresented at the polls.

Selma, the seat of Dallas County, became an important battleground as tensions escalated. A local judge stifled demonstrations by declaring public gatherings of more than two people illegal, drawing a visit from Martin Luther King Jr. and thrusting Selma into the national spotlight.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Southern legislators repeatedly derailed civil rights-related proposals while chairing key committees, said David Bateman, an associate professor of government at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. 

“Their control over these committees allowed them to gate-keep the agenda,” Bateman said.

Images of officers attacking voting rights activists – including then 25-year-old activist John Lewis – on a Selma bridge with clubs and tear gas in March 1965 helped sway public support. Days after the so-called “Bloody Sunday” incident, President Lyndon Johnson pressed lawmakers to pass broad voting rights legislation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests and other discriminatory practices while requiring federal approval of proposed voting-eligibility standards before states could implement them.

Today, Bateman said, as increasing voting restrictions continue to disproportionately affect people of color, “there’s every reason to believe voter disenfranchisement campaigns will persist.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 reversed a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act, allowing states to alter voting rules before obtaining federal consent. This summer, the court issued a ruling that disqualifies votes cast in the wrong precinct and only allows family members or caregivers to turn in another person’s ballot.

At least 18 states have enacted laws making voting harder this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. In Montana, legislators abolished Election Day registration. Florida curtailed after-hours drop boxes.

Georgia shortened absentee ballot request periods, criminalized providing food and water to queued-up voters and made opening polls optional on Sundays, traditionally a day when the Black vote spikes as congregants vote after church. 

“We still have not dealt with anti-Blackness in this society,” said Anderson, of Emory University. “We’re really looking at the same pattern, the same rhymes.”

In September, Democrats introduced an elections and voting rights bill that would expand early voting options, identification requirements and access to mail-in ballots while allowing Election Day registration.

Police have long upheld racist laws, often with violence

As Blacks demanded equality during the civil rights movement, they faced hostility not just from fellow civilians but from those entrusted to protect and to serve.

In 1961, Freedom Rides occurred throughout the South as activists challenged Southern non-compliance with a Supreme Court decision ruling that declared segregated bus travel unconstitutional. The campaign met with often ugly resistance: In Birmingham, riders were attacked by a Ku Klux Klan mob, reportedly with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains.

Within the mob was an FBI informant who told the agency of the impending attack, but the agency did nothing, reluctant to expose its mole. Two decades later, a U.S. District Court judge excoriated the FBI for its inaction.

“The FBI was passively complicit,” said Diane McWhorter, author of “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.”

The attack occurred with the blessing of Alabama public safety commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, who told Klan leaders that police would wait 15 minutes before stepping in.

Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., said he sees the links between the police violence of Birmingham and “Bloody Sunday” and the tanks, tear gas and rubber bullets employed at today’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

“We have John Lewis and others marching on that bridge protesting police brutality, and they get attacked and beat up by police,” said Butler, author of the book “Chokehold; Policing Black Men.” “And last summer, throughout the country there were marches on police brutality – and at these marches, police attacked the people protesting police brutality. The parallels are clear.”

People of color continue to be disproportionately affected by fatal police shootings, with significantly higher death rates than whites over the previous five years, researchers at Yale University in Connecticut and the University of Pennsylvania reported last year. “So it’s unclear whether change is actually occurring,” Butler said.

Critics note the police presence and brutality faced by Black Lives Matter protesters during the unrest following Floyd’s murder – the open-source database Bellingcat found more than 1,000 incidents of police violence – in contrast with the relatively unprepared force that was unable to stop hordes of mostly white Donald Trump supporters from breaching perimeter fencing and entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“There has never been a time when policing of public speech hasn’t been racially biased,” said Justin Hansford, executive director of Howard University’s Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center in Washington, D.C. “With the civil rights-era protests, most people understood that they were standing up for core American principles as opposed to Jan. 6, where they were trying to stop people’s votes from being counted.”

A USA TODAY analysis of arrests linked to the insurrection found that 43 of 324 people arrested were either first responders or military veterans; at least four current and three former police officers now face federal charges.

Education leaders have maneuvered to keep segregation, hide racist history

Education leaders have also at times sought to stall progress.

Two years after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision ruling segregated schools unconstitutional, Virginia Rep. Howard Smith took the floor to address his colleagues.

There, he introduced a document signed by 82 representatives and 19 senators, all from former Confederate states. The so-called Southern Manifesto called for resisting desegregation and blasted the Brown decision as an abuse of judicial power violating states’ rights.

The gesture demonstrated how deep resistance to desegregation ran in the South. The next year, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus summoned the National Guard to prevent nine Black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High, in defiance of a federal order.

“After the ruling comes down, you have massive resistance in the South,” said Sonya Ramsey, an associate history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “You have school boards saying they’re not going to do it. You have government officials saying they’re not going to do it. That’s a system.”

Resistance came in many forms, she said, from committees formed to study the matter in perpetuity to policies that allowed whites, but not Blacks, to transfer schools. 

Some institutional leaders did make positive strides, Ramsey noted, even if for economic reasons. While many Southern cities resisted desegregation efforts, officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, eager to promote the area as a progressive business climate, constructed a districtwide busing plan designed to have schools reflect the community with the help of Black and white families and local leaders.

But institutional ills continue, Ramsey and others say – in charter schools now struggling with diversity, in faulty school funding formulas and in ongoing debates about what students should be taught about slavery and racism. Bills limiting how educators can teach about racism have been introduced this year in at least 28 states.

A 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center study of educational standards in 15 states found none addressed slavery’s justification in white-supremacist ideology nor its integral part in the economy; furthermore, the report noted, a separate survey found just 8% of high school seniors identified slavery as the Civil War’s cause.

“It’s fear of the unknown and of disruption,” said Donnor, of William & Mary. “And seeing that the status quo is no longer acceptable. One of the major parallels is in the hostility of the pushback. If you peel back the layers, you can see the similarities.”

News media shapes how Americans view race

The news media has throughout the nation’s history helped Americans understand racial issues – for better or worse. 

In 1962, after James Meredith tested federal law to become the first Black student admitted to the formerly all-white University of Mississippi, the station manager of Jackson’s WLBT decried the decision on-air, saying states should make their own admission decisions.

Station officials strongly supported segregation, rebuffing calls for opposing views, avoiding civil rights coverage and notoriously blaming technical problems for interruption of a 1955 “Today Show” interview of attorney Thurgood Marshall. Ultimately, after repeated complaints to the Federal Communications Commission and a crucial federal court decision affirming public input in FCC hearings, the station lost its license.

“These are the stories we weren’t taught in journalism school,” said Joseph Torres, co-author of “News For All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.” “They (civil rights groups) were saying, it’s a public airwave, and it’s not being fair to the Black community.”

Black media stepped up to offer different perspectives of mainstream narratives or provide coverage that wasn’t otherwise there. When 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955 by two men who would ultimately be acquitted by an all-white jury, Jet magazine published a photo of Till’s mutilated body that helped kickstart the civil rights movement.

While some white-owned media such as Mississippi’s Delta Democrat Times and Lexington Advertiser condemned segregation and violence, others such as Jackson’s Clarion-Ledger held to the status quo. Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY, purchased the newspaper in 1982.

“Had the Clarion-Ledger taken a leadership position denouncing atrocities going on in front of their faces, the state would be farther along in terms of getting past some of the pain,” said Mississippi Public Broadcasting executive editor Ronnie Agnew, who served as the newspaper’s executive editor until 2011.

In 1968, the landmark Kerner Commission, appointed to investigate the unrest that had exploded in national riots, faulted the media in addition to longstanding racism and economic inequalities. “The press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men's eyes and white perspective," the commission’s final report read.

“They made it absolutely clear that the white press had done a terrible job of covering civil rights,” said Craig Flournoy, a journalism professor at the University of Minnesota who has critiqued the Los Angeles Times’ “incendiary” coverage of the 1965 Watts riots, for which the newspaper won a Pulitzer.

Flournoy said the Times relied heavily on white police and white elected officials for material. In one particularly egregious example, he said the newspaper, having no Black reporters on staff, sent a young Black advertising staffer into Watts to dictate dispatches by payphone, but his notes were repurposed into sensational stories that exaggerated the supposed Black threat.

[prettywordsyouleft]

MonX Hospital | Changkyun

Pairing: Im Changkyun x reader

Genre: lab technician – hospital au / romance / strangers to lovers

Warnings: medical terms, and the word “blood” is used a lot, considering Changkyun’s profession, illness.

Word count: 4417

Index: Shownu | Wonho | Minhyuk | Kihyun | Hyungwon | Jooheon | Changkyun

Turning around to the next tray of samples to check, Changkyun stopped for a moment after reading the name on the adjoining paperwork. Working at MonX Hospital as a Laboratory Technician meant he could process samples from the same patients at least twice within his working week. It shouldn’t stand out as anything important to him, yet when he saw your name for the eighth time in the past two weeks, Changkyun found himself a little stunned. There were several other technicians in this department who could have processed your blood work but it seemed to always end up in his batches.

“Everything alright?” his co-worker Bora questioned and Changkyun snapped out of his thoughts, however, his brows remained furrowed.

“Yeah, I’m just getting familiar with this patient’s blood samples.”

Bora grinned. “That sometimes happens. I like to think of it as a sense of fate for a technician to see the same person’s samples during their stay. It’s a pleasure to watch as things improve for the patient through their continued testing.”

As Changkyun waited for the results from the automatic analyser to be transferred to the computer he was monitoring, he didn’t hold the same optimism as Bora did. He had been steadily watching the decline in your numbers over the past two weeks. And when the results appeared, his shoulders dropped.

“There’s an abnormality in these results,” he murmured, and Bora swivelled her chair around so she could see the screen. As a technologist, she was more experienced in looking at results such as these. Still, Changkyun could tell the levels to your iron and blood oxygen count were low.

You would no doubt need a transfusion today.

“Just remember that doing these tests are what will help this patient get the right treatment for a quick recovery.”

Changkyun nodded softly. However, your results bothered him for the rest of the morning and he even spent some time staring at a sample under the microscope just to find exactly where the abnormality was. He was invested for some reason and hoped he could find a way to see your numbers improving each second day instead of dropping.

Resigned, he stepped out for a coffee break in the hospital’s public cafeteria, watching as a patient rested her head against a windowpane. She looked far too pale to be away from her room, though she smiled when the sun danced over her skin.

He couldn’t help himself and sat at the table next to her. “Are you here for the sun?”

“After being locked up in this place for two weeks, I’ve finally found a spot where I can get direct sunlight. It’s too nice a weather lately to be cooped up inside so this is my happy medium.”

“I hate to break it to you but you know you can’t absorb vitamin D through a windowpane, right?”

The patient looked at him with a heavy pout which made him regret speaking the fact out loud. “Really? Is it only if I go outside? I’m not allowed out though…”

“Sorry,” he said apologetically. “I once was stuck inside recovering from a really bad virus and used to sit by the window every day until my father, who is a scientist, told me otherwise.”

Peering at his badge, she nodded. “I guess it’s now a bit of a like father like son moment then. He broke your heart and now you’re breaking mine, Im Changkyun.”

Changkyun cringed and waved a hand in dismissal. “I really didn’t mean-”

“It’s fine, I’m teasing you. Are you a doctor?”

“No, I work in the lab.”

“Doing what?”

“Running tests on the samples we receive.”

“Like blood tests?” she asked and Changkyun nodded. She then smiled warmly. “Maybe you’ll have come across mine.”

“Maybe.”

“If you can figure out what’s wrong with me, I’d ask you out on a date, you know.”

Changkyun, having taken a sip from the coffee mug, spluttered it everywhere. “Wh-what?!”

“I’m kidding, of course,” she remarked, looking back outside. “The doctors keep saying that monitoring my blood samples will find the answer to why I’m so sick but all that keeps happening is-”

“Y/N!” a voice called out and Changkyun let go of the mug he was holding, gaping at the patient now being fussed over by a distraught relative, the wheelchair she was sitting in now being wheeled away.

Your wheelchair.

It was you, the person he had been staring at under a microscope all morning long. Well, your blood sample at least. He couldn’t believe that the mystery in the lab had appeared in front of him right now. It was his first time meeting a patient in the flesh like this.

“Wait!” he called out fruitlessly and you turned back, shifting around to grin at him.

“I hope you can find what’s wrong with me, Mr Technician! If you do, I’ll go on a date with you!”

Glancing down at the coffee starting to run off the side of the table and then at your departure, he groaned, reaching out for a stack of napkins to clean up his mess.

Changkyun was hopeful this wouldn’t be the last time he saw you outside of the laboratory.

His daily trips for the rest of the week to the cafeteria didn’t bring you back into his presence. Your samples hadn’t been as regular as before and when you did turn up in his batches on Thursday, he smiled when he saw he had predicted right. Your iron and blood levels had rapidly increased, indicating you had received transfusions of both. You would no doubt be feeling a bit better after receiving the treatment, though he couldn’t be sure since you hadn’t returned to the cafeteria since that day. Had his pointing out about the sun having no effect stopped you? Or was it the relative who acted as if you were too fragile to be around others that had prohibited your return?

It was strange. He had never found himself so interested in another human before like this. You weren’t someone who matched his typical type in women, but Changkyun couldn’t deny you captivated him either.

Was it the added bonus that he had seen what your cells looked like up close? Shuddering with the rather creepy thought, Changkyun tried to forget about you. He knew he couldn’t, though. He was too invested in helping find a reason for your illness, as a professional of course.

“It’s not because of the date offer,” he mumbled to himself, ears growing hot despite his outspoken stance.

Though, he wondered if you actually had meant it since you mentioned it twice.

Another two weeks went by and by that time, your samples were almost back to how they had been before the transfusions. The doctors hadn’t figured out anything, he concluded. And every time he ran the automated analyser or looked at a sample on a slide, Changkyun couldn’t figure what was causing your cells to be abnormal. Even after talking with a pathologist for better understanding, there was little to go on aside from having a type of anaemia. But even the more experienced people couldn’t decide on which type it was.

You were a mystery to everyone.

And strangely, he missed you.

“I know you’ve worked extra today, but reckon you could go pick up some samples for me? Dora fell down a set of stairs an hour ago and is in orthopaedics so can’t collect the samples from wards fifteen and sixteen that we need to test tonight.”

Changkyun nodded at Bora. “I can do that.”

“Good, after you fetch them you can go home.”

“How kind of you to let me go like that,” he cheekily replied and Bora laughed.

“Well, I could make you stay on even longer and-”

“Ten hours is enough!” he chimed, diving to door to the department. “I’ll get the samples and then get out of here.”

“Less talk, more movement, Changkyun!”

He chuckled as he headed to the elevators in the lobby to take up to the floor needed. He thanked the nurse after retrieving the samples from ward sixteen, heading across the foyer to the opposite ward. Whistling softly as he walked to the nurse’s station, Changkyun glanced lazily around the ward, skidding to a stop when he noticed your name on the wall. Blinking rapidly, he went towards the door when a nurse caught his attention.

“Are you here to collect the samples?”

“Uh, yeah,” he distractedly answered, smiling weakly. Tearing his eyes reluctantly from your door, he followed the nurse to her station and waited for the package. Changkyun went to walk off, only retracing his steps back to the nurse. “Is room three allowed visitors?”

“Miss L/N?” she spoke and he nodded. “She has restricted access at the moment due to a family request.”

“Ah, that answers that then,” he murmured and then smiled back at the nurse. Thanking her, he then headed back down the hallway, his feet dragging outside your door. He craned his neck as if that would gain him better access to seeing you again. Your blinds were shut and only a small window in the door allowed him a brief look into your space. Sighing, he began to move again when he spotted you coming back into the wardroom.

You were walking this time, albeit with the help of an IV stand. You grinned. “Well if it isn’t Mr Technician.”

“Changkyun,” he corrected awkwardly and clamped his eyes shut. “I mean, please call me Changkyun.”

“Are we one a first name basis now?” you wondered with an animated smile. “I guess you already know mine. Sorry about the other week. My Aunt is a bit over the top. I’m all the family she has left so me being sick has sent her into a perpetual meltdown.”

“It’s fine, though I did wonder if you went in search of other places around the hospital for vitamin D.”

“Do you know, they’re supplementing it through this bad boy to me,” you mentioned, patting the IV machine. “Along with a multitude of other things.”

“Still no definite answer to what’s going on?” he asked and you gave him a wry smile.

“That would be too easy, now wouldn’t it? Every day they propose something else, and then take it back. I wonder how hard medical school must be if they can’t seem to collectively come up with an answer.”

“I don’t blame you for being frustrated.”

You shrugged and then pointed at him. “What about you? How’re my samples looking?”

“I’m struggling to figure out the abnormally. My whole team has looked at it and have suggested a few things but equally can’t come to a conclusion.”

You giggled. “I feel so exposed. Everyone gets a look at me under a microscope except me.”

“Maybe one day you could too,” Changkyun blurted out without much thought, scrunching his face up in realisation. “Uh, I mean not many people would-”

“Can I? Would I be allowed to?!” you wondered, stepping closer to him with a bright expression. You seemed hopeful and who was he to knock you down for that. Changkyun was nodding before he even realised it.

“Sure. I’ll make sure you can.”

You grinned, patting his arm as you passed him to go towards your room. “Sounds like it’s a date.”

It took a lot of convincing and doing the dirty jobs around the lab for an entire week before Bora agreed to let you look at your own blood sample. Bora gave Changkyun a pointed look. “You’re invested in this case, you know.”

“I know.”

“Did you seek the patient out first or-”

“We met by chance, I swear. I’m not going to go against professional conduct and privacy clauses. Further, if you hadn’t of sent me to go retrieve those samples-”

“Okay, blame me, it’s my fault!” she concluded with a shake of her head, a loose grin spreading out her lips. “You’re lucky I’m a hopeless romantic, Changkyun.”

“Wait, I wasn’t, I’m not…” Flustered with his supervisor’s reaction to his request, he fanned a hand at his face, trying to express that it wasn’t anything like that. Bora didn’t buy it and when Changkyun went to collect you for the scheduled visit, he felt hot under his collar.

Why was his good deed being taken as anything more than that?

However, when he reached your room, he stopped in the doorway, finding you out of your pyjamas and in a floral dress instead. You spun around, carefree.

“What are-- I mean… Woah.”

“Thank you,” you said with a broad smile. “I hoped you’d like it.”

“Why did you get dressed up?” he asked hastily, glancing down at his usual work attire and lab coat.

You giggled. “You look handsome for our date too.”

“Oh, this isn’t a date.”

“Didn’t you offer me to come with you to the lab?”

“Yes, but-”

“And didn’t I agree and say it’s a date?”

He nodded quickly. “You keep joking around with that and-”

“Hospital life is boring, let me enjoy experiences like this, hm?” you pleaded and Changkyun bit at his bottom lip before nodding again, holding out his arm for you to take. You were delighted by his chivalry and swooped in around it, clasping his lower arm gently. And you practically skipped at his side all the way to the lab.

You were gracious during the visit. You complimented his team and made them smile, everyone becoming more comfortable with the idea of a patient in the lab. You asked questions and Bora was in her element answering them for you. You were engrossed by the process of their work and by the time Changkyun took you to the back office where he had set up a microscope for today out of the way from the rest of his team, you were buzzing.

“This is amazing. You do so much here!” you breathed, taking a seat next to him in awe. “I’ll never complain about getting another blood test taken again.”

Changkyun looked at your bruised skin around the underside of an elbow and instinctively reached out to run his fingers over it. “You’ve had so many.”

“Those aren’t even the places they get it from me right now,” you lamented, patting his hand gently all the same. “I’m okay if it means I’m helping you all find whatever it is you can in my samples to help me get better.”

“Speaking of samples, should we look at yours now?” he asked after a visible swallow, reaching forward to the equipment and turning it on. He looked through the ocular lens and fiddled with the machine until he was satisfied with the setup. Changkyun then gestured for you to take a look.

You turned timid as you did so, quietly staring into it.

“This is your most recent sample,” he told you and you didn’t answer. Feeling more confident than you in the situation, Changkyun expertly changed settings of the magnification for you and then took the slide out and replaced it with another. “This is a healthy blood sample. Can you see the difference?”

“Kind of. Can you swap them a couple of times so I can get a better understanding?” you asked quietly and he did that for you, hearing you sigh when you were looking at your own again. “So this is why I’m sick?”

“It indicates you have an abnormal cell structure right now, yeah.”

Lifting your eyes from the lens, you glanced curiously at Changkyun. “Are you allowed to show me the other blood sample like this? I mean, I get seeing mine, but another patient-”

“It’s mine,” he confessed with a short laugh. “So you don’t have to worry about any privacy clause.”

“You drew your own blood just to show me this sample?”

“Well, it made sense to have a second slide. In experiments, we always have a control slide when presenting variables and-”

Your lips cut off his explanation then, pressing softly into his. Before he could truly register that you had kissed him, you pulled away, covering your mouth with a hand.

“I uh, I was touched, that’s all,” you quickly told him, turning away from him to recover. Changkyun cleared his throat noisily and then stood up.

“Is there a reason why you’re not allowed to go outside?”

Frowning at his random question, you nodded. “Too many people are out there.”

“Tomorrow at lunchtime, don’t make plans,” he announced and you eyed him carefully. Changkyun, emboldened with your kiss, smiled warmly at you. “I know where you can get direct sunlight without anyone bothering you.”

Admittedly, it had taken Changkyun all this time to find a place where you could access the sun without technically leaving the hospital grounds or leaning out a window to do so. He hadn’t at first understood why he started searching, ruling it down to his logical side needing to find an answer to the question proposed in his mind. But as he helped you up the final metal stairs to the rooftop, Changkyun knew the reason he had searched for this was because he liked you.

A whole lot.

“Wow,” you breathed at the view when you came to a stop at his side, squinting under the bright midday sun. “It’s beautiful up here.”

“I checked with your doctor and also with some medical studies and its safe for twenty minutes for us to just sit here and soak in the sun,” he said and you grinned, going over to the bench on the rooftop and sat down.

You then removed your cardigan and offered your arms out to the light. “Heavenly.”

“I thought you might like this.”

“I should have kissed you sooner if it would lead to this,” you teased as he sat down beside you. “I also have a regret from yesterday’s visit.”

“You do?”

Nodding, you scooted around and promptly laid your head in his lap, dangling your arms and legs out to the warmth from above. You peeked through an eye at his evident surprise from your move and giggled. “You blocked the sun from that side.”

“Oh, so this is merely strategic?”

“And more comfortable,” you admitted, nestling into his thigh some.

Changkyun smiled. “What was your regret?”

“You’ll think I’m mad.”

“Well, you’re certainly not normal,” he quipped and you whined outlandishly. Chuckling, he found himself brushing your hair away from your face so the sun could reach that too. You stilled, looking up at him.

“I like you.”

“I like you too,” he admitted with a shy smile, your own splitting your lips until you were grinning giddily.

“Would you like me even if I wasn’t sick? I’m sure as a medical professional you probably find what you see under the microscope more fascinating than my actual form but-”

“No, it’s not like that at all,” he cut in, still smoothing your hair back from your face. “I like you. Not your illness, not what I see from my work. I can’t deny that I’m invested in seeing the changes to your tests, but that’s just because I saw them before I met you in person. I was invested before I found you trying to soak in sun through a window.”

“Don’t remind me of that embarrassing moment,” you exclaimed, mortified. Throwing a hand over your face to hide your emotions, Changkyun pried it away and held it instead. Your expression evened out and you started to smile again. “You knew my name before you knew me. And you knew a lot more too, I guess.”

“I’d rather get to know you like this though.”

“Me too.”

You sat up suddenly, almost bashing into Changkyun’s chin in the process. Sheepishly flashing him an apologetic smile, you held up your index finger. “That’s right, the regret!”

“You mean not telling me how you felt yesterday wasn’t the regret?”

“I’m pretty sure when I kissed you, it showed you,” you countered and Changkyun rubbed at his neck with his other hand awkwardly. You then looked at him and grinned. “I wanted to wear that!”

“What?”

“Your lab coat!” you explained, tugging at the sleeve of it. “I was in the lab and I didn’t once put one on!”

“Well, you looked so pretty in your dress, why cover it up?”

“Because! Oh, you won’t understand because playing dress-up as a doctor isn’t fun like it is for everyone else who isn’t in the health sector professionally.”

“I’m not a doctor,” he reminded and you rolled your eyes.

“Still, you get to wear a white coat of importance! Let me try it on now.”

“What about the sun?” he asked and you stood up, bouncing around impatiently, almost pulling it off of him when he shrugged it down his shoulders. Slipping it on, you giggled triumphantly and spun around in it. Of course, it was too big and made your child-like request even more obvious. He laughed heartily then, the magic of the moment making his heart soar further for you.

You were right. For him, the lab coat was simply part of his work attire, nothing more. He saw no joy or importance in wearing it since he did so every workday. However, watching you enjoy it made it feel special.

Until you stumbled in your excitement, reaching for your head as you continued to lose your balance. Changkyun lurched towards you, catching you before the ground did. “Y/N, are you okay?”

“Just a little dizzy. I guess I went too far.”

“Let’s get you back to your room and get a nurse check your stats, hm?” he offered and you didn’t argue, leaning into his side as he helped you back down the stairs. Once back in your ward, you slipped off his coat and climbed under the blankets, smiling weakly.

The transformation bothered him. Upstairs you were carefree and empowered. Now back under your stark white sheets, you looked weak and tiny. Changkyun blinked back his emotions.

You smiled sadly. “Looks like reality came back for us. Go do amazing things, Changkyun. You’re the one with the power to do so. I’m back where I belong now too.”

He was determined to find a way to make you better again.

“I’ve got it!”

“You have?!” Bora asked immediately, scooting backwards to his station and taking a look at his findings. She grinned. “You bloody have too.”

“Pathology needs to get onto this right away and then the doctors will act upon it, right?” he asked, hope building within his chest. She nodded once and he sent the files through to the team, marching out of the department and over to pathology to follow up.

It hadn’t been easy, and after being in the hospital for over three months now, Changkyun wished he had been able to source the correct abnormality in your tests faster. However, the main thing was they had a definite answer now. You had an autoimmune disease that had triggered the mysterious illness. And whilst knowing that didn’t mean you would get better and be healthier than before, it did give answers. And answers could lead to the right medication to support your health to improve and to help you live with your condition.

Answers meant discharging once better as well.

You stood in the doorway of the department, grinning brightly at Bora who welcomed you in. Changkyun hadn’t seen you yet, still focused on his work. But he stirred as soon as he heard your voice.

“Sorry to interrupt,” you said, looking around the department until you caught his gaze. You slowly grinned. “I just happened to be discharged today and I need to thank the technician who found the answer for my diagnosis.”

He didn’t care about the rest of his team jeering at him right now, getting up from his seat and approaching you. Of course, you already knew of his findings since your treatment began three weeks ago. However, you attempted to keep a straight face as Changkyun stopped in front of you.

“You see, when I was terribly sick, I ran into a lab technician who I told I’d go on a date with him if he helped me get better. I’m here to collect on that date.”

“I thought you were joking,” he murmured and you grinned.

“Oh no, if anything, I asked for the date because you were handsome, not holding onto any hope that you would actually help find the reason for my illness.” You wrapped your arms around his neck and Changkyun walked you out into the hallway, closing the door and the deafening noise out behind him.

He leaned in closer. “Well, I guess I do deserve a reward for my hard work.”

“When can you leave?”

“I think I have some extra hours up my sleeve that I can use to leave work now.”

“Oh good because I want to go on a very long date with you.”

“How long?”

“How much time can you give me?”

Changkyun’s lips were so close to yours now, he merely hummed and you shivered with delight. “How about as long as you want.”

“I’ll be greedy, you know. I’ll want all of your time.”

“I have to work,” he mentioned sadly and you nodded.

“And I have a lot of therapy to attend.”

“But outside of those hours?” he wondered and you pressed into him, kissing him with demand.

It wasn’t his first or even his second kiss with you. And Changkyun knew it wouldn’t be his last either. However, it was one he knew he’d remember forever, the way you tasted so sweet from pure happiness to be leaving the hospital and with him as well.

Finally, you stepped back just enough to catch your breath and answered. “Outside of work and therapy, I hope you can give me all your time. I don’t want to stop repaying you for the rest of my life.”

“Can I ask a question?” he breathed and you nodded. “Did you really mean it about wanting to date me from the first day you saw me?”

“Now that would be telling.”

“So it was a joke!” he whined and you giggled, stepping up on your toes to kiss him again.

“No, I did think you were handsome. I just didn’t believe I’d get this lucky. A cure and a boyfriend. What more could a girl ask for?”

_________________

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[oliviajames1122]

When it comes to online dating scams, there are a few things to keep in mind

When would it be a good idea for me to book my MOT? It's an inquiry numerous UK drivers pose to each year and one made significantly seriously confounding by the 2020 check mot history expansion. Assuming your expiry date transformed, you most likely saw the expanded interest among October and January. This implied numerous drivers battled to book a space without a second to spare in 2020 and 2021.

Anyway, how might you try not to be gotten out this year? Is there one more expansion for 2022? Also, when would it be a good idea for you to book your MOT to guarantee your vehicle is protected and street legitimate? We answer these inquiries and more in this article.

Summary

The 2020 MOT expansion added a half year to the expiry date of numerous UK vehicles and vans. While there is no such arrangement for 2022, the expansion will in any case influence drivers this year. An excess of MOTs and absence of accessibility at test stations imply that numerous drivers will battle to book their test without a second to spare. This implies that booking your check mot status ahead of time or moving the expiry date prior in the year may be a superior choice.

What Was the MOT Extension?

In the event that you've neglected, the MOT augmentation added a half year to the expiry date of each and every vehicle with a MOT due between April first and August first 2020. It was gotten during the main public lockdown and afterward was intended to restrict our social contact before very long.

5.5 million UK drivers exploited the check mot augmentation. As per the DVSA, this intended that there were 79% less MOTs in April 2020 (versus 2019) and a stunning half more in December 2020 (versus 2019).

Is There Another MOT Extension For 2022?

No, there are no designs for another mot history augmentation. In any event, during the second and third public lockdowns, drivers were as yet urged to book and go to their MOTs to the surprise of no one.

Since every one of the limitations has been facilitated and life is fully recovering, there's no requirement for more interruption.

My MOT Was Due During the Extension Period - Should I Book Before the 2020 or 2021 Expiry Date?

You ought to book your MOT as long as a month (less a day) prior to the 2022 expiry date. Assuming you exploited the MOT augmentation by any means during 2021, that is presently the expiry date for your vehicle. It won't ever return to the first expiry date except if you book a MOT prior in the year.

What Problems Did the MOT Extension Cause?

Not only do drivers now have to remember a new expiry date, but it also created some big logistical nightmares for garages and test stations. These will continue to affect everyone in 2022.

Backlog of MOTs

5.5 million Is a great deal of MOT tests? That is an immense test in itself, yet drivers who didn't have to utilize the MOT expansion actually need tests among October and January. Goodness and there are a lot of new vehicles turning 3 years of age that need their most memorable tests as well?

Furthermore, that implies there was a major scramble for MOT spaces in 2020 and 2021. We foresee a similar rush will occur in 2022 too.

Lack of Availability at Test Stations

Despite the fact that more drivers required a test in the final part of 2020, there weren't additional analyzers accessible to finish them. The MOT expansion implied that test places were truly calm among April and July 2020/21 and full to blasting among October and January.

This implied a few drivers found it extremely challenging to book their MOT without a second to spare.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fighting fiber was the right's dumbest self-own

With the deplatforming of forums where trumpists and right-wing figures congregate, there's a lot of chatter about whether and when private entities have the right to remove speech, and what obligations come with scale.

The most important - and overlooked - area of this discourse is the role that monopoly plays, and the role that anti-monopoly enforcement could play.

In short, the fact that being removed from Twitter and the app stores and Facebook and Amazon is so devastating is best addressed by weakening those companies by spreading out our digital life onto lots of platforms.

Not by strengthening them by giving them formal duties to either carry or remove speech based on its content. These duties will justify all kinds of anticompetitive activity, because only a very profitable company can afford to fulfil them.

It also turns the same companies that failed horribly to craft and uphold moderation standards into private-sector arms of powerful state actors (like domestic surveillance agencies) who defend their right to monopolize the digital sphere as necessary for national security.

(recall that the Pentagon intervened in the DoJ's breakup of AT&T in the 1950s, successfully arguing for a stay of execution on the grounds that the Korean War could not be effectively persecuted without AT&T's help - the company stayed intact for 30 years after that)

Competition in the platforms is important, but it's not the whole story. The First Amendment was drafted for newspapers, and most contemporary communications law comes from broadcast and cable regulation. The internet is not a newspaper or a TV station, after all.

The discussion of the difference between the American revolutionary era (or the heyday of broadcast TV) and the present moment focuses on technology, but there's a much more important difference to take account of: the presence or absence of a public sphere.

The First Amendment contemplates both a diversity of speech forums (newspapers, cafes, halls) alongside of public spaces that are *truly* public, owned by the people through their governments and tightly bound by 1A as to when and whether rules about speech can be enforced.

So if the Masonic Lodge won't let you give a speech from its stage, and the cafe throws you out for arguing, and the newspaper won't let you publish an op-ed, you can stand outside of those establishments with a sign or a bullhorn, leafleting and speaking your piece.

The government can still restrict your speech on the public sidewalk or in a public park, but not according to its content - only according to "time and manner" (for example, enforcing a noise ordinance after 9PM or ticketing you for blocking traffic).

The biggest difference between a world where we are locked indoors and connect to one another via the internet and the world we left behind is that there are *no public spaces* on the internet.

If a cafe kicks you out for your speech, you can picket the public right of way out front. If Twitter kicks you out for your views, you have no constitutionally guaranteed right to stand at its digital threshold and tell everyone who enters or leaves that you got a raw deal.

Now, the state provision of digital services isn't an unmitigated good. US governments at all levels have proven themselves to be utterly surveillance-addled, in thrall to the fallacy that spying on everyone will make us all safer.

But surveillance fears aren't why we lack democratically controlled tech. For that, you can thank the same right wingers who are so exorcised about deplatforming today, who, for a decade, have been the useful idiots of telcoms monopolists in the fight over public broadband.

American cable and telco monopolists have divided up the country so that the best most of us can hope for is a duopoly, while many others are burdened with monopoly carriers, and millions live in broadband deserts with no high-speed internet at all.

The poorer you are, the more your broadband costs and the worse it is. The more rural you are, the worse your broadband is and the more it costs. Homeowners with good broadband see their assets appreciate. If your home is outside a monopolist's profit zone, its price drops.

The internet barons like it that way. When Frontier went bankrupt last year, we got to see its internal docs. Guess what? If you have no choice other than Frontier, it treats you as an "asset" because you will pay more for worse service.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

Frontier cares about its share price (its execs are mostly paid in stock, not cash), and share prices are rigged by influential analysts who downrank any company that makes a capitol expenditure that takes more than five years to pay off.

That's why Frontier decided to walk away from the $800,000,000 in profits it would realize on a ten-year investment in fiber for three million households who currently make do with Frontier's failing copper network, which often consists of wires draped over trees.

We've been here before. For decades, you had to live in an urban, affluent area to get electricity; your country cousins burned coal for dinner and used oil-lamps to read by. The New Deal electrified the nation, extending universal service regardless of the business-case.

Electricity became a human right, and the US government extended it across the nation (though structural racism meant that it arrived late for majority Black settlements).

Long before covid, underserved towns realized that their very existence depended on decent broadband.

The initial experiments with municipal fiber were incredible, jaw-dropping successes. Towns that invested in fiber saw a vast expansion of job opportunities, access to global information and services, and new blood from telecommuters who relocated from big cities.

The telcos fucking hated this. How can you sell flaky access to copper wires draped over shrubs for $80/month when the city is wiring people up to networks that are *1,000-100,000 times faster* at a lower price?

In a competitive market, companies would have improved service and lowered prices to compete. Luckily (for monopolists), there's a cheaper solution: buy off state legislatures so they pass laws banning municipal broadband.

These laws were promulgated to GOP-dominated statehouses across the country, passed by right wing lawmakers who told their constituents they were "keeping government out of the internet."

This is a line that their footsoldiers dutifully parroted during the Obama years, then signed up to Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's order that reversed a late-term-Obama FCC order banning state laws that interfered with municipal fiber project.

Unfortunately (for the right), reality has a well-known left-wing bias. 700+ US towns and cities have municipal fiber. They are the only Americans who consistently express satisfaction with their ISPs. Most of these towns vote Republican!

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Woe betide the rural "red" town that lacks municipal fiber. These have been mostly abandoned by cable companies, so their cable/DSL duopoly has become a DSL monopoly, with prices rising and quality of service falling.

https://ilsr.org/monopoly-networks/

Which brings me back to the First Amendment and public sidewalks. All those people who are trying to find a way to support the "free market*" and also justify demanding that dominant platforms be ordered to carry their speech are living in a hell of their own making.

* Adam Smith popularized the term "free markets" to describe markets free from "rentiers" who collect money without adding value...such as cable monopolists. He *definitely* didn't mean "markets free from government regulation."

Because here's the thing: your ISP - and Twitter, and Facebook, and Amazon - is a private company. It is not subject to the First Amendment. It can have any rules it wants about which lawful speech it will tolerate. It can sling your ass out the door on a whim.

You know who's bound by the First Amendment? You know who can't suppress your speech based on its content? You know who has to answer public records requests about why you got booted out of its service?

Your local government.

If you had a $70/month, 100GB fiber in your rural house, you could run a kickass P2P messaging server, and while you'd be right to worry about (covert, illegal) government surveillance (use encryption, kids) on that line, you would 100% have recourse if you got booted off.

It's not an automatic home run. The First Amendment has exceptions, even beyond "time and manner," and has been substantially eroded by GW Bush and his successors, in the name of fighting terror, animal rights activists and water defenders.

But a lawsuit against your town council for nuking your Turner Diaries fanfic server is a hell of a lot more likely to succeed than griping about Twitter mods failing to grasp the "irony" in your Auschwitz jokes.

The right's war on municipal broadband was its biggest self-own of the 2010s. And while it's not true that "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged," it might be true that "a municipal broadband activist is a conservative who's been kicked off Twitter."

And this is one of those causes (like shutting down private prisons, or opposing foreign wars of aggression) where a substantial slice of the left and the right can come together (at the most local of levels!) to really Get Shit Done.

Because the other great victims of America's monopolized broadband are people of color, poor people and working class people (often the same people). They live with digital redlining, where they pay 2X for 1/100th the speeds of their affluent neighbors a block away.

They're the ones whose kids are doing homework in Taco Bell parking lots (and getting flunked on their tests because creepy remote proctoring services penalize them for taking their tests in a beat up hatchback and not a private room).

The ones who can't videoconference with dying relatives in ICUs or doctors for telemed consults. Who can't apply for work-at-home jobs, or just play games and watch movies and upload their fun Tiktoks and Youtube videos.

The current system serves about 300 senior execs at telco monopolists, and a few thousand investors, and savagely fucks over everyone else. Even rich people in big cities usually can't buy fiber at any price.

It's time for our four decade Atlas Shrugged LARP to end. It's time for a bipartisan fiber consensus.

Image: Olaus Linn (modified) https://thenounproject.com/term/tin-can-phone/15140/

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

[pinkhairedlily]

Chapter 1 - Student Council President Sakura

SCPS AO3 | PREVIOUS CHAPTER

Sasuke’s first year was rather uneventful. He wasn’t in the same class as Naruto and Sakura, and thank God he wasn’t because from what he heard in the hallway and in the classroom during breaks, they were described as having uncontrollable bursts of energy. The other likable, the other a menace to mankind. He kept to himself most of the time, never went to class late, recited perfectly, ranked first on all tests. When there were group works, he would submit a finished output before they could even hold a meeting. He didn’t bother with his classmates’ workarounds – hanging out in cafes just to discuss menial matters or having sleepovers as an excuse to make a move. He didn’t have the energy to bother. And so from orphan genius, he became the stuck-up genius. That was okay with him. He had been called worse names before.

He didn’t know when it exactly started, but the yard behind the library had turned into his refuge. No one really visited it because of the tall piles of recycled materials, but there was a small clearing hidden by thick vines and untended trees. There, Sasuke found small minutes of peace.

Past the shrubbery and the foliage and the fence, one can see the lake behind the school. It was deep and wide enough that dragonboat teams would practice in it during summer. Couples would frequent it after school hours and think no one can see the kisses, the hand-holding, the hugs. Beyond the lake was a museum he frequented when he was a child, and then the city center wherein all roads connected to the train station. One can get on it, travel for three stations, and disembark on the fourth. It usually took thirty minutes if one strictly walked on the streets, but Sasuke would cut across the mini-bamboo forest in that area, emerge behind the bakery, still have the time to buy his favorite cream puffs, walk past two houses, and arrive at their family house. It was closed since then, the sales proceedings wrapping up after months. It would take another three years for the trust fund to be entirely turned over to him. By that time, he would be safely out of the clutches of his memories.

His exclusive space and time for musings was suddenly cut off in the middle of the school year when Naruto accidentally stumbled upon him eating an egg sandwich for lunch. Sasuke heard distant screams from the usual troublemakers and saw the silent plea on Naruto’s face. It wasn’t hard to know who they were looking for. He angled his head towards the blonde who was sweaty, had cuts on his arms, and twigs on his hair. Naruto flashed him an apologetic grin and crawled to his side.

“They said my laughter was annoying.” Naruto fixed his almost tattered clothes and laid on the grass. “Quite an oasis you have here.”

Sasuke sighed, too defeated right now to muster a retort. He fished another sandwich from his pocket and gave it to Naruto. “Eat.”

“Grumpy! You are a lifesaver!” He grinned sheepishly and ravaged the food in big bites.

“Keep your voice down, will you?” Sasuke snapped. “By the loudness of it, one won’t need a tracker to find you.” He opened his water bottle for a drink but that too was stolen by a choking Naruto.

“Sorry about that. I’ll pay you when my stipend arrives.”

“Never mind that.”

Finally full, Naruto went back to lying on the grass and closed his eyes for a quick nap. Sasuke saw the bruises on his knuckles and smirked. This kid can fight.

So he is on scholarship too.

“Uchiha Sasuke. That’s your name, right?” Naruto still had his eyes closed, enjoying the light breeze, and the silence that ensued when the troublemakers left the area.

“What about it?” He was waiting for the patronizing statements or the pity looks.

“We’re the same,” Naruto muttered, kind of like a matter-of-fact. “You just had the better side of the coin. Wished I had the board scholarship, but I’m bad at studying.”

The board scholarship was inevitable. Albeit being public in a sense, it was awarded to him as some sort of posthumous act because his father was a member. It was an open secret among the school officials, but he wasn’t sure if the students caught up on it yet. He wondered what common denominator tied him to Naruto. “So what do you have then?”

Naruto opened one eye and smirk. “Are you interested in knowing me?”

The school bells rang. Time’s up for lunch break and Sasuke’s impulsive interrogation. Looking back, he felt some kind of humiliation because he was explicitly giving interest in someone else’s life, however minute it was.

------------------------------

His peaceful abode didn’t revert back to the way it was. Naruto had invaded it as his hiding place from the bullies. He would come sometimes with an onigiri or a sandwich but most of the time, empty-handed. Before Sasuke could pick up on their previous conversation, the blonde would fall asleep, or at least pretend to. Absent parents then, he thought, noting the absence of prepared lunch and frequent convenience store purchases. Like him. He confirmed this the following day when he heard the bullies attacking him on the hallway.

“You should die, orphan kid. No one would miss you anyway.” A bald student aimed to kick him on the stomach, but Naruto blocked this with his arms. There was a reserved glare in his eyes, but before he could return the attack, two other kids forced his arms to open and give access to the target point. Sasuke found his feet walking briskly towards the scene, his hands ready to grab Naruto’s collar to safety.

“Sakura!” Students yelled out in confusion. A pink flash in his periphery.

She kicked the attacking student on the back with such force that reeled him forward to the ground, definitely knocking a tooth out and him unconscious. She planted both of her feet on his prone body and glared at his backup. “Bullying has no space in this school. Let go of him or I’ll tell the faculty to raise your disciplinary actions to suspension.” She was assertive, her every step unwavering in front of crisis.

Sasuke briefly wondered if she wouldn’t get disciplinary action as well for kicking a student. Well, she could frame it as self-defense. As if on cue with his thoughts, several teachers came to the scene and took the bullies to the faculty room, including Sakura.

“It wasn’t her fault,” Naruto yelled. He was supported with muffled agreements from other witnesses.

“Don’t worry about me. What’s important is you’re safe,” she flashed him a wink and waved goodbye. Sasuke can only see Naruto’s back, but he guessed the blonde dude was smiling from ear to ear and probably blushing. He also saw that she limped. Quite devious of her to distract everyone with that smile and that cherry pink hair in a ponytail.

------------------------------

Naruto was whistling when he joined Sasuke behind the library the next day. He didn’t have a sandwich or onigiri with him, but he had a bento lunch box. He must have seen Sasuke’s slight quick eyebrow raise because he immediately boasted about it.

“Sakura gave this to me!” Naruto showed it around like it was a product advertisement. “She said she made it herself! I feel loved.” He then hugged it like a child would a prized teddy bear.

“Wow, that escalated quickly.” Sasuke was feeling snarky. He continued munching on his sandwich. For today, it was tuna and cheese flavor.

“I might have a crush on her! The way she kicked that bully to the ground was such a sight to see. I think all of us in our class already admire her.” Sasuke didn’t reply. She was the hot topic in his classroom, along the halls, and at the school gates. Everyone was gushing about her bravery and her contrasting personality from her feminine looks, as if strength and beauty was so sparingly exclusive.

“Maybe she felt sorry for you.”

“Would take her kind of pity any other day.” Naruto opened the bento lunch box, the aroma arresting the two boys’ senses. Rice seasoned with shiso, karaage chicken, a small piece of salmon, lettuce wrap, tamagoyaki, and potato salad. How she fit them all inside a small container was a mystery, but it was an amazing food presentation that even Sasuke’s mouth instinctively watered at the sight.

“She wasn’t overbearing at all. She just greeted me this morning while introducing herself, handed me a bento box and left in time for the school bell. As if I didn’t know her already.” Naruto brought the bento box closer to his nose and made a loud sniffing noise. “Maybe she likes me?”

Sasuke grimaced outwardly. “Get lost. She likes everyone.”

Naruto laughed. “That’s true. That’s true. She’s the kind of person that everyone wants and wants everyone. Since you’re letting me share your hideout, want to share this box?”

Sasuke fished out some tamagoyaki slices and karaage and directly placed them in his mouth. He stared at Naruto, expecting him to get angry but the blonde was happily devouring the dishes as well. They both nodded in approval of the taste. For a moment, they tasted again the joy of homemade cooking. Two orphans in a secluded area, hiding from the realities of the world, comforted by the works from the distant hands of a stranger.

That afternoon, Sasuke went back to that hideout, not wanting to go home with his classmate. His attention perked up when he heard some heavy footfalls near the area.

“Kakashi-sensei?” The voice was familiar. He heard it several times already, but he can’t connect a face. “You don’t have to do this really. It’s quite embarrassing.”

“Well, who was stupid enough to physically fight bullies in school and in plain sight? Look at your leg. You cannot even walk.”

It was her and Hatake Kakashi, the handsome Math teacher who loved reading on his free time, the teacher with sleek silver hair, the teacher all female students liked. Of course.

“It’s amazing how you noticed it, Sensei.”

“I’m your homeroom teacher, Sakura. Of course, I’ll notice the welfare of my students. You should have called in sick. Now, will you let me bring you to the school clinic?”

“Sorry about that, Kakashi-sensei.”

It wasn’t the voice of an inconvenienced student. It was the giddy voice of a girl with a budding crush. Their comfort stranger being comforted by another stranger.

------------------------------

The bullies went back to school after a month of suspension, just in time for the final exams before the winter vacation. Sasuke noticed that the bullies didn’t touch him even though he was an orphan himself. Acting with this knowledge, he started not to mind the greetings of Naruto whenever he would pass by his classroom. He would even sometimes walk with him in the hallways, earning weird looks from his schoolmates, because why would the stuck-up genius hang out with bully-magnet Naruto?

One caught on their weird connection. The two of them were walking towards the cafeteria when they passed by Sakura. Sasuke noticed she was no longer limping. She spent the whole month with a bandage around her ankle, and students would gush in concern over her. He found it comedic that they only showed this empathy when the bandage was visible and not immediately after that encounter when she was obviously in pain. It was brief but their gazes locked with each other, and she flashed him a smile. Naruto was too busy ranting on making up for extra classes so he didn’t notice her. Was the smile intended for him? Sasuke quickly shrugged this off, remembering Naruto’s comment about her being wanted by everyone, and also his incidental eavesdropping on her and Kakashi.

The annual cultural festival soon came around. This was one activity he was actually waiting for – he would skip and spend the whole week holed up in his apartment, but fate apparently wanted a different scenario. Naruto was their year’s head errand boy. Under him were other errand volunteers. When Sasuke saw the head coordinator for their batch, he understood the reason why. Haruno Sakura tied a red ribbon around her forehead and directed instructions to everyone.

He was too late when he realized this. “Uchiha Sasuke!” She knew his name, dammit.

She was dressed down to a white shirt two sizes too big for her with sleeves rolled up and jogging pants under her skirt. She handed him a hammer and pointed to the structure they were building. “Uchiha Sasuke, that’s your name, right? I’m pretty sure you heard me loud and clear.”

He grunted to himself and took the hammer from her hand. “I’m not deaf.”

“You just need to secure those two wood pillars on this scaffolding. More hands, the better, the faster.” He didn’t know if she was talking to him or to her companions. It didn’t actually bother her if there wasn’t any response. She continued pounding on the nail, pausing for a few seconds and looked at him. “You know how to use the hammer, right?”

You’re amazingly burdensome, Sasuke thought. He sighed, dejected at this sudden turn of events, and hammered his frustrations away. They continued to work in silence, well at least he was quiet. Every now and then, she would give instructions from her position, keeping everyone in check and in track of the year’s progress. It was in the middle of this particular moment that she missed and hammered her own finger. Sasuke waited for her to yell in pain, wince, or withdraw her hand from the task, but she continued as if nothing happened.

Sasuke pounded the last nail in its place, finishing his part before anyone else. He turned to Sakura’s side and saw that she was still working, rather slowly, and she was hiding the finger she hit. He pushed her away the second she paused for a break and ignored the hushed protests.

“That’s my part, Sasuke. Why are you working on it?”

He quickly finished attaching the remaining wood pillars, took both of their hammers, and returned them to the toolbox. He was eager to be rid of this task, but there was something tricky he needed to do.

“I guess I should thank you,” Sakura said, shyness somehow showing through her usual energetic demeanor.

He grabbed her hand and placed a few band-aids on her palm. Before she could say anything and demand more work from him, he quickly walked away.

“I’ll beat you in the exam ranking though!” She shouted after Sasuke, a statement which made him smile.

That was how he would describe his first year of high school and the start of his unintended relationships.

AO3 LINK | NEXT CHAPTER | CHAPTER 2

[bexterbex]

A Soul to Mend His Own | Ch. 20

(This will be my generic gif if I don’t find one I like for the chapter, but seriously does anyone have the Supreme Council gifs? They would be most helpful.)

Warning, if it hasn’t been obvious in the movies there is Nazi symbolism within the First Order. I will expand on this much more throughout the story. If this is something that bothers you, please just exit the story. The author does not condone any Nazi ideals, this is just for fictional uses only.

A Kylo Ren x Modern! Reader in a soulmate au with some canon divergence. —————————————SLOWBURN————————————–

He is already the Supreme leader, searching the universe to find you, his Empress. Your name on his wrist has been the only constant in his life, while you have doubts about his existence and his acceptance of you. He isn’t in the database and why did the name Kylo Ren cover Ben Solo?

MASTERLIST

Chapter 20: Healthy and Happy?

A/N: The men's video Personal Hygiene for soldiers U.S. Army does contain brief nudity. It is age-restricted on youtube. Watch at your own risk. Also, there is some outdated info in the women's one on feminine hygiene, just ignore the powdering of the pad and the discussion of douching.

“Shall we start with a difficult topic and work our way to something easier,” asked Dr. Dabrini.

The three Earth Health officials nodded in agreement.

“Now understand that when we talk about the reproductive health of your planet that the First Order understands that civilians are not soldiers. They do not necessarily have to abide by the same rules. As is such there are things they will have to abide by like STD testing,” said a First Order doctor.

“So the two-child policy will not take effect on this planet,” asked the WHO director.

“Not unless absolutely necessary. If we get those who do not wish to have children on birth control it will help any unwanted children from being born. Now we are not saying that birth control will be mandatory but we would like it highly encouraged among the sexually active and potentially sexually active fertile population. Children are a precious resource when properly taken care of,” said Dr. Koroban.

“And this birth control is regulated how,” asked the director of the CDC.

“The First Order issues standard implants, different and more effective than the ones you have available to your population. Currently, it has had no pregnancies during its implementation the First Order has been using it for the last 10 years,” said Dr. Koroban.

“So this is something you want all our women to commit to, willingly and not mandated,” asked the CDC director.

“Yes, it would be free and available to all those who want it. We highly encourage the use of this to control any unnecessary population. We will not budge on the STD testing. Now we understand the majority of your population already participates in monogamous relationships, we would like to encourage this as much as possible to again reduce the population and the chances of STDs spreading,” said Dr. Dabrini.

The health officials seemed to take this in. You were unsure about how they wanted to proceed with the First Order’s recommendations. The three officials turned to each other and started discussing the outcomes. You just sat back and waited for the deliberation to end.

“We would like the narrative to be that women may choose to take the contraceptives. We agree with the STD testing and the emphasis on monogamous relationships. The two-child policy will not be accepted outside of China, unfortunately. So this is something you will have to encourage but not mandate,” said the Surgeon General.

“Good, is there anything else on reproductive health that you would like to discuss,” asked Dr. Dabrini.

“Will the First Order provide medical treatments for STDs and STIs,” asked the CDC director.

“Yes, we provided all needed medical care to our citizens regardless of the situation,” replied Dr. Koroban.

“Is that everything,” you ask the health officials who nod in response.

“Next is dietary needs. The First Order is used to providing meals to all its personnel. We understand that this most likely not agreeable for the civilian population. We have considered rations like during your war times, something that allows the civilian some freedom but allows us to ensure they have a healthy diet,” said Dr. Dabrini.

“We understand how meals work in the military. I know that no citizen will like having their diet fully controlled by any government. You will have to find another solution, I believe there may be riots around civilians not being able to have a choice in the matter,” said the CDC director.

“I see. How have your current healthy eating campaigns gone? As I understand it a large portion of the U.S. population is obese, whereas there are many countries where large portions of the population are malnourished,” asked Dr. Koroban. “They have not gone as well as hoped. What you pointed out is correct. That the health campaigns that they have seemingly failed in the U.S. but in countries with high populations of malnourishment we are not able to distribute food and water in the quantities necessary for good public health,” said the WHO director.

“Well you might not be able to provide food and water to these areas but the First Order can. Would you be opposed to us regulating food in those areas and in areas where food and water are available to have a reeducation on what to properly eat and drink,” asked Dr. Koroban.

You could see the health officials were a mix of stunned and confused by this question. You wondered if they were really going to deny food to those who need it.

“Might I suggest that this be a route that we take. Surely those who need food will receive it and those who need to be re-educated and informed on healthy eating will do so. It would be better for the overall health of the planet that this would happen. We may want to focus on those who need food first. This would have an overall positive impact on those who question the First Order’s motives as they are providing for the needy first. I may also suggest that any food given to those who need it may be foods found here on earth as I am sure they will be more comfortable with it,” you said trying to ease the unease in the room.

The three health officials began discussing again. The Surgeon General asked, “Is there anything in the dietary aspect that will be absolutely mandated?”

“Yes, currently all personnel and citizens of the First Order are required to take a multivitamin supplement, but of course that is adjusted region by region. For example vitamin D absolutely mandatory in the diet of anyone on board one of our ships as they will not receive any vitamin D from any star, like your sun,” said Dr. Koroban.

“So you would like to require a multivitamin to all citizens? Will you be transparent as to what is in them or are they just supposed to blindly take them,” asked the Surgeon General.

This time General Pryde spoke up, “No I believe we will have testing at every facility so each individual citizen receives a multivitamin that is adapted to their needs. The First Order prides itself on our personnel and citizens being the most knowledgeable in the galaxy. At any one of our data terminals, you may access what the First Order requires of its citizens and why. We like our citizens to be informed.”

“How will you test at each facility? Tests take at least a week to receive results,” asked the CDC director.

“Yes, well our military is not the only thing the First Order is more advanced in. Our blood tests take a matter of minutes. So by the time an individual is done with their health check-up, we shall know what pill to give them. We also have the ability to synthesize the pills at every station. The First Order is prepared and efficient,” said Dr. Dabrini.

You could see the health officials were now struggling to keep up with the First Order’s advancements and policies.

“Do you agree with giving out a simple multivitamin to every citizen? To benefit all citizens,” you ask them.

“Yes, I think that is something we can agree on,” said the Surgeon General.

“Good, why don’t we wrap it up there for the morning. I can help prepare a public relations campaign on hygiene before the day is over. Something along the lines of daily showering and handwashing, for now, to get things started. This is something the general public can improve upon greatly,” you said to the committee who all agreed with you.

“I may be of some assistance my lady, with what the Supreme Leader has me looking for in the Library of Congress. I have run across some things in my search that may be deemed useful to you in your endeavors.”

“Yes, if you could take me there that would be great,” you then followed the general our of the White House and into a shuttle that took you to the library.

You were immediately met with two librarians. One took the general to where he needed for his project and the other asked you about yours.

“I would like to see what videos and other documentation you have on proper hygiene. Only things within the last century preferably. If it’s old but still useful I would still like to see it, this lieutenant is assisting me,” you told her.

She set you up at a research table with a computer. You and Mitaka were there for what seemed to be a few hours before you had narrowed it down to a handful of instructional videos and posters:

‘Health: Your Cleanliness (1953)’ ‘Coronavirus | Vintage Hand washing steps from 1961'

And two vintage military documentaries that would be aimed well at adults:

Strictly Personal - War Department official training film U.S. Army Pictorial Services 1945. (For women.)

Personal Hygiene for soldiers U.S. Army (for men.)

These would be a great start along with some posters you found. Overall you might need to develop a few more posters, but for now, this would be your basis. You glanced at the clock and saw that it was going on 2 o’clock. You just remembered that you needed to message Kylo for your late lunch. Hopefully, he would be proud of the work you had just accomplished.

[drivingsideways]

WIP Wednesday

So @rain-hat​ said I should post a bit from the latest fic so she can read it (properly formatted and not in a chat window, I think??), so here’s a bit from an as yet untitled fic set post-canon verse TKEM, featuring our favourite cop-who-got-a-different-life and also orphan-who-got-a-different-life thanks to Lee Gon being a total ass. 

The White Lily Orphanage isn’t a state organization, instead it’s run by the nuns from the Sisters of the St.Paul of Chartres Convent, one of the earliest established Catholic orders in the Kingdom. It’s not a large home- they have the ability to take in around twenty children at a time, though at the moment they have only half the number. The youngest right now is a three year old ball of sunshine, Jia and the oldest is the lanky fourteen year old Jihun. Hyeon-Min has been attending Mass at the church attached to the convent with eomma since- well, since he was ten.

(God sent Prince Buyeong to us, eomma had said, having found God via the kindness of a stranger, we must be grateful.

Hyeon-min had accepted her explanation then, and now, twenty years later, he doesn’t feel the need to tarnish her faith with his cynicism. He maybe agnostic about God, but he knows that the sisters are kind, that they try to do their best by their young charges, and that’s enough.

He knows enough about the world that he believes that one of its rules should be to pass on the kindness of strangers.)

He parks his bike and grabs his gym bag with the change of clothes, noting a rather beaten up looking sedan in the parking lot. Perhaps there were some potential adopters visiting today, not a very frequent occurrence.

The rates of adoptions in Corea were low, compared to the number of children who needed families. Usually, children who lost their parents were taken in by grandparents, if they were still alive, or the parents’ siblings, if they were not. The ones who ended up in the system- they were truly society’s rejects, the ones who had no one left who cared about them; a patrilineal society obsessed with bloodlines didn’t see them as anything but an inconvenience, or a shameful secret. That their own king was an orphan was not a hypocrisy; Lee Gon was king first, orphan second.

The slack with respect to the less nobly orphaned was picked up by religious or charitable trusts, and only a little by the government. The rules governing adoption were prohibitive- Seo Ryeong had told him about the circles that eomeonim and she had to run to officially take Gyeong-ah into the family. At some point, it had come down to bribery. She’d been tight-lipped and her eyes had glinted in fury, when she’d told him,  though it had already been far enough in the past that Gyeong-ah no longer woke up crying from nightmares, and didn’t stuff her food down at each meal as though she didn’t know when she’d next get one, or try to take as little room as possible in their already tiny apartment.

Gyeong-ah usually accompanies him on these visits too, though she couldn’t make it today.

“LET ME SLEEP” she’d texted in all caps, “I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE FOR AT LEAST 24 HRS HYUNGNIM” .

He figured that meant she’d drop by when he wasn’t around.

 Jia-ya is the first one to spot him when he enters the common room, which is where the kids are normally, at this hour. She runs toward him, almost tripping on her toes, with her hands already raised high above her head. He drops the bag on the floor and swings her up, twirling her around, while she squeals delightedly. When he lowers her, she throws her arms around his neck, placing a candy-sticky kiss on his cheek.

“Hyungnim, where were you??” she demands. “You’ve gone so long that Chia forgot you”.

Chia is her favourite toy- a rather ratty looking cloth panda.

“Sorry Jia-ya” he says, “I had a lot of work”

She pouts. “Have you got chocolate?”

“Mmmhmm” he replies, nodding, “But let’s share with everyone later, ok?”

He puts her down on the floor, and turns to the others who’ve come up, all grinning, except Jihun, who’s trying to look unconcerned, remaining where he’s seated at one of the two computers, headphones in, fingers flying rapidly over the keyboard.

“Hey everyone” he says, reaching out to ruffle a head, tweak a chin. “Ready for a game?”

They’ve got a small basketball court at the back, not professional, by any means, but enough for the kids to work out some of their energy. For soccer, and other games, Gyeong-ah and he take them to a nearby sports club. Ryeong-ah had been the one who worked out a deal with the local residents association that owned the club when she’d made Assemblywoman; it was her constituency after all, and she had cultivated her relationships at local level, as much as she had in the higher echelons. Thanks to (former) Assemblywoman Koo, the kids now had access on alternate Sundays to the club. Luckily, the Sisters of St.Paul of Chartres weren’t too strict about preserving the holiness of the  Sabbath rest; as long as the kids attended Mass in the morning, the rest of the day could be spent as they wished. Today is a Sunday when they don’t have access to the sports club, so Hyeon-Min’s plans are adjusted accordingly- a game, then lunch with everyone, and then piling them all into the small van the orphanage has and taking them for ice cream, before he has to drop back at the station, just to check in on Woo Ji-hyun and Bo-Young who have the day shift today.

“Where’s Sister Lee?” he asks, and twelve-year old Su-bin pipes up “She has a visitor today” and her twin, Yun-seo adds, “He’s a handsome oppa”.

“Is he now?’ Hyeon-min grins down at her.

“Not as cool as you, hyungnim” she assures him earnestly.

“Drop the flattery” he tells her seriously, “You’re not getting an extra scoop later. Everyone go on and get changed.”

The twins and the others- Ming-yu, Jun-ho, Min-su, Seong-min, Min-ji and Eun-ji- dart off.

He picks up his bag again, heading off to the guest room to get changed, calling “Jihun-a, c’mon, let’s go” only to get a shoulder lifted in a shrug, Jihun not even bothering to look at him.

Well, he thought, that was new.

He didn’t press him, confident that Jihun would find his way out later. The problem, perhaps, was that Jihun was a few years older than the others, almost fifteen, ready for high school. The next oldest were the twins, at twelve, and the others fell between nine and eleven, except Jia, who was everybody’s darling at three.

Jihun was preparing to write the same scholarship exam that Hyeon-Min had taken all those years ago, to get into CNA. His grades at the local public school were pretty good, and he excelled especially at art- but it was a tough school to get into, given the sheer number of candidates applying, even more than when Hyeon-Min and Ryeong-ah had given the test.

Hyeon-min thought he could recognize in Jihun the same kind of hunger that he’d seen in Ryeong-ah, all those years ago. And just like all those years ago, one part of him was amazed, and proud; another was just scared for Jihun, for what the world might do to him, outside of the safety of this place. He tried to shrug the fear off- what use could it be to Jihun- and had begun helping him prepare for the test, instead.

Perhaps Jihun was upset because he hadn’t been able to come by for three weeks, although he’d spoken to him a few times on the phone and had checked in with Sister Lee as well.

When he changes into his shorts and t-shirt and comes back to check in, Jihun’s disappeared. Perhaps he’d changed his mind and decided to join the game, after all.

He’s about to duck out of the room, when Sister Lee comes in accompanied by a young man- the “handsome oppa” of Yun-seo’s description, clearly.

“Ah, Inspector Kang” she says, giving him her usual warm smile. “Good morning. You finally have a day off, I see.”

“Good morning, Sister Lee” he greets her, bowing.

She turns to the man with her.

“This is Senior Inspector Kang Hyeon-min from Busan PD” she says, and the man gives him a strangely assessing look, and bows. He’s fair, slightly shorter than Hyeon-Min, a dark eyes and a sharp nose in a square-jawed face. The glasses and the clothes- a light blue button down shirt that’s unbuttoned at the collar over khaki slacks,  give him the look of a librarian on vacation. He’s probably a few years younger than Hyeon-Min.

“I’m Kim Jun-Yeong” he says, bowing toward Hyeon-Min.

“Mr.Kim teaches art at the school” she says, meaning the local public school all the kids here attend. “He came by to talk about Jihun.”

“Is something the matter?” Hyeon-min asks, immediately. “Is Jihun in trouble?”

“Nothing like that” Mr.Kim says, with a smile. “In fact, I came by to chat with Sister Lee about Jihun’s future plans. He told me that he was preparing for admission at CNA.”

Hyeon-Min nods. “I’m trying to help out” he says. “When I can.”

“Inspector Kang has been a huge support to the children here for years” Sister Lee says, giving him another warm smile. “And since he’s a CNA alumnus himself, he’s probably the best suited to help Jihun ace the exam.”

“Yes, of course”, Mr.Kim says, adding, “Jihun-a has told me a lot about you already, Senior Inspector Kang.”

“Oh” says Hyeon-Min, politely, “He’s never mentioned you to me.”

Something wry passes over Mr. Kim’s face at that, and it makes Hyeon-min feel a little silly.

“Mr. Kim is of the opinion that Jihun should perhaps try for an art school later” Sister Lee says, “And finish high school at some school less demanding than CNA, Kang-ssi”.

“Did Jihun-a say that’s what he wants to do?” Hyeon-min asks, stunned. Jihun had never mentioned it to him.

There’s an awkward silence.

“He did seem open to the idea” Mr.Kim says, sounding a little apologetic. “He started asking me about art schools and scholarships a while ago. I didn’t know then that you were already preparing him for the CNA entrance.”

‘But” says Hyeon-min, feeling like the rug had been pulled from under his feet.

Sister Lee says, thoughtfully, “Perhaps he was uncomfortable bringing it up with me or you, Kang-ssi.”

“We never forced him”, Hyeon-min feels compelled to protest.

“Jihun-a admires you a lot, Kang-ssi” Mr.Kim murmurs, “It is but natural he would want to follow in your footsteps.”

Hyeon-min looks at him and meets that calmly assessing look again.

“Did he ask you to meet Sister Lee and talk about this?”

“No” says Mr.Kim, “He didn’t. In fact, I think he was a little upset when he saw me today.”

Well, that explained earlier, Hyeon-Min realizes.

“Will you—” starts Sister Lee, nodding toward back, from where they can already here the shouts of the children.

“Yes” Hyeon-Min answers. “I’ll have a chat with him.”

“Good” she says, smiling again at him. “I’ll talk to him later as well.”

She turns to the teacher.

“Mr.Kim, I really appreciate your dropping by. It’s not often we get teachers who are so concerned with the well-being of our students.”

Mr.Kim says, quietly, “I was brought up in a home too- not as good as this one” he adds. “I know what it’s like.”

Oh.

Well, now, Hyeon-Min feels like a total piece of shit.

“Thank you, Kim-ssi” he says, and tries to infuse it with something more than stiff formality.

Mr.Kim gives him a short nod.

“I’d better head over before the fighting starts” Hyeon-min says, giving Sister Lee a smile. “I’ll see you at lunch, Sister Lee.”

They part ways, and when Hyeon-min reaches the court just in time to stop Min-ji from punching Eun-ji in the face, he sees that Jihun is there as well, but sitting on the side-lines, playing with Jia, although he’s changed into game clothes as well.

He darts a glance at Hyeon-min and then quickly looks away, flushing.

Hyeon-min jogs up to him.

“Get in” he says, clapping him on the back, “So I don’t have to keep the peace all by myself”

Jihun looks up at him, uncertain, as though he’d expected Hyeon-min to be- angry- with him.

“Jihun-a” he says, holding out a hand toward him, “ C’mon.”

Jihun takes his hand and lets himself be hauled up, and Hyeon-min even manages to get a one-armed hug in before he scampers off, suddenly cheerful.

 It’s a good game, and after, as they’re all chattering at the lunch table, Gyeong-ah comes in and plonks herself down opposite the twins, and they stuff themselves to the gills before piling into the van.

Gyeong-ah’s driving, and as they pull out of the gate, Hyeon-min notices a black Hummer parked in the alley, five cars away,  the glasses shaded so dark, he can’t see inside.

He has an idle moment of wondering what a car like that was doing in the neighbourhood but is distracted by Jia-ya climbing into his lap to tell him all about Chia’s adventures in the place she calls “Funderland” (like Wonderland, but fun, she insists).

 On the way back, Gyeong-ah drives again, and this time the kids are mostly in a food coma, some of them burping softly, sprawling on the seats, so he gets a chance to talk to Jihun, settling beside him, right at the back.

“So” he says, “art school, huh?”

Jihun glances at him quickly and then away, head bent.

“Do you know which ones you’re interested in?”

Jihun looks up then.

“You’re not angry?” he asks, uncertainty writ large on his young face.

“Just surprised” Hyeon-min admits. “Why didn’t you ever tell me or Sister Lee? You know we wouldn’t have stopped you.”

He shrugs, looking away.

“Everyone’s expecting me to become the first CNA graduate from the home” he says, softly. “All these years”.

“Nobody wants you to be anything other than happy, Jihun-a” Hyeon-min contradicts him, gently. “I’m sorry if I ever gave you any other idea.”

Jihun turns to him.

“I did think I wanted that too” he says, candidly. “But then—I don’t know, hyungnim, frankly, it sounds like an awful place in other ways.”

“Who’ve you been talking to?” Hyeon-min asks, surprised, because he’d never said anything to Jihun about it other than good things about the academics, and the opportunities it would open up for him.

Jihun gives him a pitying look.

“Hyungnim” he says, “You know the internet is a thing right? Or was it not a thing when you were young?”

“Hey” he says, “I’m thirty-one, not a dinosaur.”

Jihun looks unconvinced.

“Student forums” he says, helpfully. “And even Mr.Kim—”

“Mr.Kim went to CNA?” Hyeon-min asks, surprised again.

“No” says Jihun, “But I think he knows people. He’s a teacher, right, he knows this stuff.”

“Hmm” says Hyeon-min, miffed.

Jihun eyes him again. “Are you angry I didn’t tell you, but I told Mr.Kim?”

Wow, Hyeon-min thinks, dissected by a fourteen-year old, wonderful.

“Don’t give me your backchat, Jihun-a” he says, and Jihun grins at him.

Hyeon-min diverts the talk into the art schools he’s interested in, and they spend the rest of the ride like that.

 Later, before Gyeong-ah and he head off, they have a talk with Sister Lee.

Sister Lee Jeong-hui- or “Dragon Lady” as Gyeong-ah liked to call her- was a petite woman with delicate wrists, and long fingered hands that poked out of the sleeves of her habit. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she’d joined the Order, not as a young girl, but in her mid-thirties, after making a name for herself as a labour rights lawyer, working up north, in the mining communities. She’d moved to Busan when her health took a downturn- her asthma was something terrible- and she’d been shunted around the diocese until ending up at the orphanage ten years ago. She’d taken one look at the lackadaisical administration of the Orphanage- then run by Sister Pa, who was already in her seventies, taken a deep breath, and got to work. She’d transformed the place, scrounging funding wherever she could- sometimes by just persistently annoying the powers that be- and was currently in a long drawn out battle with the Bishop of the Diocese over her demand that they expand their current home to start a support home for single mothers- the people most likely to abandon their children, for lack of resources and societal stigma.

They talk about her latest efforts in that direction, after Hyeon-min tells her about his conversation with Jihun.

“Thank you Inspector Kang” she says, softly, “I hope you’re not too disappointed.”

“Of course not” he says, staunchly, though perhaps he was, a little. “Jihun’s going to be great at whatever he does.”

“Yes” she agrees, a fond smile transforming her rather grave face into loveliness. “He’s a blessed child”.

“Anyway” she says, sighing, “Perhaps it’s just as well. Even with a scholarship, funding for other expenses would have always been a tension. This way, we have some time to prepare before he goes to art school.”

Gyeong-ah says, “What did the Welfare Association say?”

When the Diocese had hummed-and-hawed about the home for women, Sister Lee had turned elsewhere.

Sister Lee makes a rather un-saintly face. “That government policy doesn’t include- and you won’t believe this, or perhaps you will- doesn’t include subsidizing and rewarding irresponsible behaviour”.

“I thought Ryeong-ah said they had a specific budget for women’s welfare” Gyeong-ah says, hotly. “They can’t deny it only to some women, can they? Plus it’s a discretionary budget.”

Sister Lee sighs. “Child, I don’t know if I have the energy to fight that battle right now. If we had someone on the Committee there- but it’s all bureaucrats who think of it as a sinecure position really…”

She shrugs, and pats Gyeong-ah’s shoulder, comforting.

“I’m not giving up, Seo-Gyeong” she says, “Not yet.”

They bid her goodbye.

 As she puts on her helmet and climbs onto the bike, Gyeong-ah says, abruptly, “Sometimes I’m so angry with unnie for what she did- because she fucked up her chance to help people like Sister Lee, who really need her”.

“ Song & Kim will get her out” he says, “Right?”

“But what about after?” she argues, putting her hand on his shoulder. “Her political career is probably over.”

“It’s never over with Ryeong-ah” he reminds her, belting his own helmet, and adjusting the strap of his gym bag over his jacket.

As they drive out of the gate, he sees that the Hummer isn’t there anymore.

[satotakeru14]

Terrified pt.3

Hello everyone!

So here is the last part, writing this fan fiction has tested my limits in writing and i am feeling great that i have been able to challenge my limits. I don’t know how good i am at writing but i am happy that i gave it a try this way i won’t regret it.  I don’t know if i would be able to write any other fan fiction after this one as i have been busy with college work ( reason of late update, Sorry!) But i will try to write if i get any great ideas or even if anyone of you could suggest me something. I have one in mind of Playful kiss ( Itazura na kiss ) that i might write and publish it in coming few days, If you would like that then please let me know!

This part shows encounter with the stalker and i was confused when writing the fight scene because it proved to be quite difficult, so if anyone of you could provide me with pointers which i may have missed or could have been written better it will be helpful!

It had been a week since the apartment incident and so far there was no sign of Tazawa anywhere. Police had searched every possible location and inquired everyone who had been in contact with him. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the earth.    

In the starting, Tendo had been on edge regarding Sakura's safety and had not left her alone. For Sakura it was like their roles had been changed, now whenever possible , Tendo Sensei was on her tail following her. At first, it was cute and quite refreshing but as days passed on Sakura had been agitated from it. She was not sure whether she should cry in pleasure or scream her head off. Dealing with this new side of Tendo Sensei was becoming quite difficult. Mainly she was worried for him because he was stressed and that could be seen in his action. She was worried that he might fall ill like this. Talking with Ryuoko had helped her ease down her worries for him. Sakura was now more relaxed because there was no incident after the apartment break-in. She truly wanted to believe that Tazawa might have come to his senses and left her for good this time. However, Tendo was not quite sure of it. He believed that if he lets his guard down Tazawa might attack again.

Sakura lay awake now in Tendo sensei's bed as she recalled the last week. She had moved into his apartment and his bedroom, neither of them willing to sleep in different rooms for both had been shaken up to core to leave each other. Sakura wasn't willing to leave the comfort of Tendo sensei and Tendo not willing to leave her on her own.  After finishing her daily routine, she made her way towards the kitchen to make breakfast, yesterday she had returned home with Doctor Kisugi. Sensei had a night shift and had only returned early this morning around sunrise, he had a late shift today so she made him some food and left in on the table for him to eat when he wakes up. After finishing up she went into the bedroom to check on him once before leaving for the work. She bent forward and kissed him on his forehead, immediately sensing her movement he grabbed her jacket-clad arm stopping her. " Are you leaving for work? Wait for me I will drop you" he was about to get up when she stopped him " Sensei sleep, I will go with Doctor Kisugi, he promised that he will take me with him, don't worry and go to sleep, you need it" He looked at her face for a minute and contemplating whether he should get up or not and when Sakura ran a hand through his hair he heaved a sigh and finally realizing that he truly was tired. He let himself fall back in bed with a groan and muttered to her text him or call him when she reaches the hospital safely, and just like that, he was asleep again. Sakura gave him a loving gaze and got up to leave.  Walk with Doctor Kisugi brought her previous memories of how he had agreed to be with her and keep her safe, she felt warm and happy because of it. She truly was happy as to how her life had turned out to be, she became a nurse and more importantly, she got friends and a loving boyfriend, she could not possibly ask for anything more.Her thoughts were cut short when they arrived at the hospital and Sakura was glad to be in a familiar environment as throughout the walk to the hospital she couldn't shake the feeling of as if something terrible is going to happen."Okay, Sakura, I will leave you from here I have surgery scheduled" Doctor Kisugi gave her a warm smile and departed. She smiled and made her way to the nursing station. It was around noon when she was making her daily rounds the feeling of uneasiness again quipped her mind, she shook her head to stop herself from overthinking. She must have spaced out while walking because when she came out of it she was on the 7th floor which was rarely used. She once again scolded herself mentally for always spacing out so much. She turned and instantly went pale in fear because there stood Tazawa with a look of a pure maniac. She knew her possibility of getting to the elevator was low because he was standing right in front of it. Her eyes darted towards the washroom which was the only option she could think of right now, she just had to create a distraction to give her enough time to get away from him and hopefully call someone. She looked at the trolley with medical supplies and grabbing whatever she could she started throwing at him and when she had nothing left she pushed the trolley at him which had managed to throw him off guard and fall on to the floor. She rushed in the washroom locking it and pushing whatever she could find to secure the entrance and with trembling hands, she pulled out her phone and dialed Sensei's number. "Sakura? Where are-"before he could finish she interrupted him" Tazawa-7th floor" she gasped for air and continued" I am in a locked washroom and he is outside" as soon as she finished there was banging on the door and she was not sure how long the door could hold."Sensei please hurry...I-I am scared" she cried out as the banging only grew louder"I am on my way" He hung up and was already on run, as he made his way through hospital lobby everyone was stunned at his expression, no one had seen this side of Doctor Tendo, He was no longer in control, His face had an expression of both anger and fear. He pulled out his pager to inform security, and they were on their way. The hinges on the door had started giving out. There was a loud thud and she saw Tazawa making his way towards her, he was quick and before she could register what had happened he had cornered her and pulling onto her hair making her scalp ache, with another hand he held her hands and whispered in her ear " Think you could have gotten away from me? I know you like me so stop playing so hard and come with me" he then turned her face to kiss her but before he could kiss her she managed to twist her head and screamed loudly in his ear. He immediately released her and reeled back from her. Recovering from the shock he slapped her across the face and making her fall down in the process. She landed on her hip and hit her back on the wall behind her. She raised her head and saw him towering over her. Searching for something in her pocket, she came in contact with a cold metal object, she pulled out the surgical knife she had managed to grab from the trolley and held it tightly in her hand. She knew she had no chance to stand against Tazawa but at least she could buy herself some time. As soon as he bent down to grab her again, she took advantage of her small frame and twisted out of his reach enough to stab him in his side. He fell back on his side in shock and cradled his side. Without wasting a second, she was on her feet and out of the washroom. She collided with someone and was about to fall when a set of arms broke her fall. She looked up to see Tendo looking down at her worried and his eyes searching over for any injuries and when he saw blood on her hand he was alarmed and Sakura calmed him down by telling him it was not hers. No longer able to hold herself she started crying and Tendo pulled her into her tight hug and murmuring into her ears that she was safe now. 

She vaguely remembered security pushing out Tazawa in a stretcher, and giving statements to officers about what happened. Once Tendo saw that she was drained he had intervened and told them she would give any other statements after she had recovered. She stood up shakily from her chair, but her vision had started getting blurry and before she knew her legs gave out, the last thing she remembered was the warmth of a body holding her up. She woke up to someone caressing her hair, turning her head to the side she saw  Tendo Sensei."Hey, How are you feeling?" Confused at first she tried to remember what happened and the memories started rushing in and fear started setting in. Realizing where her thoughts had started to go Tendo took hold of her shoulders"It's over, he won't come back, I promise you" Removing hair from her face he gave her a soft gaze" He was taken for a test and they diagnosed him with a personality disorder, they will likely keep him under restrain during his treatment."She started relaxing but groaned in pain." You might experience pain from the bruises from where he grabbed you and hit you, otherwise there is no serious injury" he told her calmly but inside he was gnawing in worry over how she was in pain. " Rest for now, I will watch over you, you will be released by tomorrow morning" Following morning, they had returned to their home after taking a detour at the police station where they learned that Tazawa had managed to grab an extra medical gown and Id from an intern to access all parts of the hospital. He had managed to follow Sakura but was not able to do anything without alarming someone, so finally, when he got a chance at the deserted floor he took it. He had been hiding from public's eye and had studied the hospital security hours and schedules of medical staff. After returning home, Tendo helped her settle down on the couch and went to make some food for them to eat while watching movies. Tendo had taken the day off to be with her during her recovery and to keep her company. They were both now free from any worries and only wanted to enjoy their rare free time together. Snuggling with Sakura, he had shifted his hands inside her top to rub her lower waist to provide her comfort. She had fallen asleep halfway through the movie and Tendo no longer interested in the movie gazed down at her lovingly. He truly could have a good rest now without constant worrying over her and could give her the space she needed, he knew she did not like the over-protectiveness but did not say anything to keep his worries at bay. Last week had been strenuous for both of them and he wanted nothing but to take a vacation over the weekend and take her away from all this. Picking her up in his arms he took her to his bedroom and snuggled with her on the bed while keeping an arm over her small frame. He went to sleep with a smile on his face for the first time in a week.

PS:- As always be kind and helpful to others!💜

Love yourself!

[go-redgirl]

Eli Steele: De Blasio's shameful racial profiling of Asian students

I was setting up my camera to film a rally on the steps of Tweed Courthouse in lower Manhattan when a disheveled middle-aged man clutching an odd assortment of papers to his chest stopped and stared at the gathering of parents and community leaders. 

They were there to protest Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ongoing attack on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), the sole gateway to one of New York’s nine specialized high schools. Their hand-drawn signs read, "Stop picking on Asian kids!" "Fix failing schools!" and "Keep the test!" The disheveled man began to yell aggressively and I turned, to lipread him: "You Asians take all the spots at these schools! Only eight blacks got into Stuyvesant High, only eight! You gotta give us blacks a chance, that’s all we’re asking for, man!" I turned my camera to capture him but he saw me and fled.

Later, as I reflected on this incident, I thought of that frosty November morning in 2013 when I waited outside a Brooklyn voting center for the de Blasio family to arrive and cast the votes that helped elect the father mayor of New York City. I was filming my documentary on multiracial Americans, "How Jack Became Black."  There was an excitement in the air as people around me praised de Blasio’s multiracial family. 

They believed such a man was a harbinger of better racial relations and they loved his campaign stance against racial profiling. They could not have predicted that de Blasio would leave office eight years later as one of America’s most egregious racial profilers.

Why had de Blasio and his education administration racially profiled Asian children? Was it because these youths took the American dream seriously and burned the midnight oil? Was it because their parents — many of them immigrants and impoverished — squeezed every penny to see that their children were prepared to take the test? Or was it simply that they were different, Asian and an unpreferred minority?

If 54 percent of the 4,262 eighth graders that passed the SHSAT had been black instead of Asian, there is very little doubt that de Blasio would not have charged the test as "structurally racist." In fact, he likely would have praised the test.

Wai Wah, the charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York, and her friend, George Lee, showed me the tweet sent by de Blasio’s education chancellor, Meisha Potter, after the students received their test results. Potter found it "unacceptable" that so few blacks were admitted to specialized high schools and said that it was "past time for our students to be fairly represented." The implication was the test was racist. FLORIDA WILL REQUIRE SCHOOLS TO TEACH CIVICS AND ‘EVILS OF COMMUNISM��

Wai Wah and George pointed out that Potter failed to congratulate the students who had studied for years and passed the exam. They also noted that Potter had neglected to pay respect to the other 19,266 students who similarly sacrificed but did not pass the test. The only thing that mattered to Potter was "our students," a label that included only Blacks and Hispanics.

Potter was only following the path forged by de Blasio, who spoke of the need to "redistribute wealth." Like previous educators, she ignored the reality of favoring equity over merit, a reality that cost many black and Hispanic neighborhoods its gifted and talented programs over the past several decades. When blacks and Hispanics had access to these programs, they took the same test that de Blasio disparaged as racist and dominated Brooklyn Tech from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Not one of these bureaucrats from de Blasio and Potter to the previous education chancellor, Richard Carranza, asked the obvious question: why had "too many" Asians passed the test?

Asking such a question would have forced de Blasio to examine what influences and behaviors made certain students successful. He would have quickly discovered that there was nothing "Asian" about their successes — after all, far more Asians failed the test than those who passed. He would have also discovered that it was their steadfast belief in the American Dream that drove them to take chances on their talents, a path followed by countless successful Americans.

Also, to look at the humanity of these Asians would have forced de Blasio to look at the root causes driving the terrible inequities that plague the nation’s largest public school system. Instead, it was easier for him to racially profile and scapegoat Asians for these inequities.

The racial biases of de Blasio and the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) establishment, rarely got much attention in the press. These folks promoted equity to the level of a top societal moral virtue where representation by race trumped merit. Having lowered themselves down to the inhuman level of race, they see race in everything and therein lies their bias, a bias that extended beyond Asians to blacks and Hispanics.

Rather than empower these demographics with the tools of equality by strengthening the schools, de Blasio believed he could racially engineer blacks and Hispanics to parity at the expense of Asians. That is how little faith he had in these demographics to agent their own fates. At the same time, de Blasio derived enormous political capital for appearing to champion the downtrodden while conveniently ignoring the long history of horrific oppression suffered by many Asian communities in America. It was this bias that allowed de Blasio to racially profile an entire class of people for the way they looked.

I thought about how this ugliness was taking place in 2021 as I traveled to the far end of the Brooklyn borough to visit the Ni family. Sam, an immigrant shop owner, welcomed me into a home that married the American Dream with cultural memories of the China that Sam and his wife left behind. I asked their children, Zoe, a seventh-grader studying for the SHSAT, and Leo, a ninth-grader at Hunter College High School, what they thought of all this anti-Asian discrimination — a Brooklyn educator had recently called the people like them "yellow folks."

After several shy answers, Zoe answered with the truth ignored by many educators: "People aren’t numbers. There are real people in these statistics. There are real people who are losing out on opportunities. And it is upsetting to me to know the reason is merely race."

Sam, a reflective and thoughtful man, revealed later that he had heard of Martin Luther King’s dream in China and that is part of why he came to America. Through a translator, he said, "In China’s cultural revolution, students were classified as ‘being of red five category’ or ‘being of Black five category.’ Why? It’s not anything to do with the individual student, but with his family background, with other external factors. In New York, even the entire United States, education, concerning race matters, it’s actually like China’s Cultural Revolution, not looking at the student himself, on who studies well and who doesn’t, but throwing up a mess of race and family background identity, to judge what kind of person you are. I think this is going backward in history."

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Sam also had words for leaders like de Blasio: "What they want is to use their views to remake and control the world as they want, and not let us free people, competing freely, under a system of equal opportunity, create a brilliantly multi-colored world. So what they are doing, to take their ideas to control the world, that's, in a certain sense, actually very much like communism, totalitarian communism."

Sam revealed to me that he had recently thought of immigrating to another country. He left the paralyzing class divisions of China only to find his children on the wrong side of racial divisions in America. But then he seemed to let that thought die down — at least in America he has the unbridled right to fight the injustices affecting his kids and he has fought.

As I rode back into Manhattan, I thought of what George Lee told me on the issue of representation. He blamed the ongoing racial divisions on critical race theory that, for him, was a "political ideology of race war, racial hatred." He wondered out loud how one Asian could represent another Asian, or a black another black, for that matter. He explained that nobody looks like him or thinks like him so how can he represent another Asian? He then continued, "If an Asian gets into Harvard, does that Asian take courses on behalf of an Asian who did not get in?" He looked at me with the twinkle in the eye that one often has when revealing a racial absurdity: "There is no such thing as representation by race. This whole language of representation is basically saying that Asians or whites or blacks are mutually substitutable."

That was the very thing that de Blasio fought against when he campaigned for Mayor of New York. He knew the evil of racial profiling was that people were not seen as individuals but as members of a race. He had heard blacks complain that they should not fall under suspicion because they were black and lived in high crime neighborhoods. They protested that it was unfair and that they were more than their race. Yet de Blasio betrayed this lesson in humanity when he racially profiled the Asians his entire time in office, leaving many black and Hispanic students worse off than when he took office.

In many ways, the disheveled man who yelled at the Asians at the rally was a sad symbol of de Blasio’s education legacy. That man had been poisoned in the mind to believe that Asians somehow had monopolized all the power and that is why he demanded that they give blacks a chance. But there is nothing the Asians can give him. There is nothing a race can give. Only the individual can give or take. That man will sadly never rise above his current station as long as he thinks that way. And that is why de Blasio failed so miserably on his campaign promise to uplift the schools. Eli Steele is a documentary filmmaker and writer. His latest film is "What Killed Michael Brown?" Twitter: @Hebro_Steele

[imagine-that-one-thing]

Her Majesty. || 5

Against All Odds.

The morning of the Royal Ascot has been nothing short of chaotic, between dress changes and carriage rotations, everyone has been a mess, especially Harry. Every year, the Royal Ascot tests his abilities and how well he can handle change. He hates the Royal Ascot, and he has reason to hate it so much. With every public outing there are revised plans that he has to go through, he has to know every entry, every exit, every underground area, he has to know every plan like the back of his hand. He has to be on high alert and if one plan changes even slightly, they all change and it sends security into a whirlwind of anxiousness. Every minute of the event is generally planned, from when and where the carriages arrive, to how long we spend greeting people. 

Over 300,000 people make the annual visit to Berkshire during Royal Ascot week, that is over 300,000 people Harry has the privilege of scanning and observing, it is much harder to take note of things when there are too many people to have to notice. But, every year, Harry manages and the rest of security manage to make things work. 

I shuffle out of my bedroom and I glance to my left where Harry is standing, like he always is, his hands behind his back, his lips pressed into a fine line, and his clothing attire being of which he always sports to events— suit and tie. 

He stares at me and smirks softly, “You look beautiful, as always,” He whispers sweetly, causing the butterflies in the pit of my stomach to arise. “Absolutely beautiful,” He adds, his hand grazing the edge of my white Reiss Peacock dress.

I nod my head, giving him a meagre smile as my maids step out of my bedroom, not giving me a chance to speak to Harry or to steal a kiss from him. 

Harry escorts me down the stairs and when I reach the bottom. I frown for a moment, unsure of why my Prince is not waiting for me. I gaze over at Harry and he smirks, continuing to walk with me across the marble flooring and through the palace to the exit door. 

Harry and I step outside into the cool air of the morning summer, there’s barely a cloud in the sky, the birds are chirping—  it is the perfect day for the Royal Ascot. “Why are you smirking? Where is Henry?” I softly question, curious as to where my fake boyfriend is. A real gentleman and Prince would have been waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs instead of having my bodyguard escort me down. 

Harry holds his composure, continuing to silently escort me along the path of the gardens before we stop in the private driveway. I stand for a minute, my head cocking to the side as I stand before Henry, my Father and what I presume to be a thoroughbred. 

Harry unlinks his arm from mine and resumes his position behind me. “Good morning, Princess,” Henry greets, his hand holding a lead rope as the horse stands tall, not moving in the slightest. 

“Good morning,” I respond, “Why is there a horse right here?” I challenge my Father. I don’t suspect that now is the perfect time to want to play with horses. 

My father smiles broadly and places his hand gingerly on the horse, petting it ever so delicately, “Prince Henry bought you a horse, how thoughtful.” 

“You bought me a horse?” I question, gazing towards the prince. 

I hear Harry stifle a laugh from behind me, “How thoughtful,” Harry pipes in as I stare at the two men in front of me, hopeful this is a joke. 

I may be royal, but I do not do horses. I am not an equestrian. It is a royal tradition for royals to learn how to ride, however, I am the exception to the rule. Growing up, my parents’ would put me on horses, I could ride around accompanied by a parent, but to ride alone, I could never do it. I never trusted the horses enough to be able to saddle one up and go for a leisurely ride on my own. After the first few panic attacks and fits, my mother convinced my father to let it go and to allow me to stick to things that were more up my alley. I am the only royal who cannot ride a horse, everyone else is well trained, which means I tend to watch the polo matches from the sidelines while my father participates. Every now and again, the King and Queen will ride around Windsor Castle estate, but I do not participate in their morning rides. 

My mother loves horses, when she does not have royal duties, she can usually be found at the stables watching her horses train or she is participating in the training herself. 

“Father, you know I do not ride,” I inform my father who is conscious of my lack of riding abilities. 

“You will have to learn, a Queen must know how to ride, come here and take the lead rope, we can walk her to the stables.” 

My heart begins to beat fast at the simple idea of stepping any closer to the horse who is far from a Shetland pony. 

“Your Royal Highness, Princess Anastasia needs to be heading towards the procession, as do you, you are presenting the winning trophies in the King's Stand Stakes, don’t forget,” Harry informs the King of the fact he is currently cutting that fine line and about to ruin the schedules that have been set. 

For once, Harry’s set times are a blessing in disguise. 

My Father looks down at his watch and nods his head, “Take Anastasia and Henry,” My father instructs, taking the lead rope from Henry and beginning to walk the horse himself. 

Henry steps closer to me with a bright smile, he takes my hand as he glares towards Harry. For a moment, I hold my breath, feeling the overpowering testosterone rising between the three of us. Harry doesn’t say a word, instead, he gestures his hand for us to walk in front of him.

My heels sound against the concrete as we make our way towards the white horses and carriages that will accompany us to the track promptly by 2 pm. Each day of the week begins with the Royal Procession, when The King, Queen and accompanying Members of the Royal Family arrive along the track in horse-drawn landaus. We then spend the day watching the races from the Royal Enclosure. It’s always intriguing to walk alongside the carriages and to see who is riding with who. Most of the time, the lineup is picked for media attention, hence why my father ordered for Henry to be in the carriage with me, usually, I sit alone and across from me is usually a royal couple. 

I mentally roll my eyes when we stop at the second Royal Carriage that is accompanied by Annabel, Duchess of Wessex, and Prince Louis. 

Prince Louis and I grew up together, we always played on the grounds of the palace and we’d spend hours chasing each other around the gardens. We always kept security on their toes, and things didn’t change until he met his duchess. She holds no high title by blood but she tries to act like her title is rightfully hers. She’s what I like to call a stuck up royal. She and I have never seen eye to eye since the moment we met, and we probably never will see eye to eye until the day we die. 

I stand politely, awaiting for Prince Henry to assist me with stepping up into the carriage, but he forgets his manners and etiquette and instead hops up himself, taking a seat as if I am not standing here. Without sounding too much like a princess, I am baffled and quite appalled by his lack of nobility. The lady ALWAYS enters the carriage first, there is no exception, it is common cutesy. 

“Princess,” Harry offers his hand, offering me a sweet smile. I press my hand in his and he assists with getting me in the carriage, of course, without the help of Henry who is too busy adjusting his tophat. Harry nods his head towards Louis and his partner before he impolitely places an umbrella in the lap of Henry, “Hold this for Princess Anastasia.” Harry instructs before closing the carriage door, leaving Henry irritated. 

Prince Louis is kind enough to introduce himself to Henry, taking control of the situation and calming Henry by taking the Umbrella and placing it to rest against the carriage door.

♔

I’m not much of a fan of the horse races in the aspect of having to be a Royal and treat this as an event, there are eyes always on me and I still have to act in a certain manner. I can thank Queen Anne for turning horse races into a royal activity. Ascot Racecourse was founded in 1711 by Queen Anne and ever since has been a major event that royals attend. 

The Royal enclosure, however, is quite lovely. The Royal Enclosure was built in 1822 when King George IV commissioned a two-storey stand to be built with the surrounding lawn. This was designated an exclusive area with access strictly by invitation of the King. To this day, membership to the Royal Enclosure continues to be by invitation only. Every individual who has a membership and will be in the Enclosure is monitored and a background check is thoroughly run. Harry knows of every person who will be in the enclosure and he has to watch their behaviour. He hates it just as much as he hates being out in the public areas, but the good thing is that being invited to the Royal Enclosure is hard. To get in without a direct invitation, one must sign up, which is easy, but what the hard part is providing letters of recommendation from two existing Royal Enclosure members who have themselves been members in good standing for a minimum of four years— this is where Harry’s job gets a little easier, for the most part, new entries don’t happen often. The only thing Harry enjoys about this event has nothing to do with the horses, he isn’t formally allowed to bet since he is on duty, but he likes to bet on the colour of Her Majesty’s hat. It is a tradition that people bet on what colour they believe my mother will wear, and it is such a big deal that not even I know what colour my mother’s hat is until I see her in the morning and sometimes she will change hats before arriving at the venue. 

Henry stands beside me, rambling on about his knowledge of horses and trainers, and I cock my head to the side with a meagre smirk, keen to put his expertise to the test. “Well, bet on a horse,” I motion towards the betting stations set up. If he is so great with horses and knows the trainers, he will be able to pick a winning horse. 

Henry nods his head and lifts his shoulders into a shrug confidentially, almost as if he is shrugging me off, “How much are you betting?” 

I grow withdrawn for a moment, unsure of how much to bet, I am not much of a better, to be quite honest, Harry and I place very diminutive bets between us just as jokes, we tend to bet on the horse with the least odds and chuckle to ourselves when they are the last to finish— we like to take a chance on the least favourite of odds. “What? Too scared to bet? I’ll give you money to bet.” Henry nudges me and I find him to be a bit arrogant and not playful. 

I offer him a polite smile, “Two-thousand,” I respond, “How about you?” I challenge. 

Henry adjusts his suit jacket and scoffs, “Twenty-thousand, go big or go home, sweetheart,” Henry uses a condescending and impudent tone with me. I don’t need to turn around to know Harry is far from impressed and more than likely has his fist curled into a ball, angered by the tone that has been used on me. 

I gesture towards the betting station and I allow Henry to wander off while I stand in the same position. I clear my throat as Harry steps closer, closing the small gap behind me. “Are you betting?” I question softly as I glance over my shoulder. 

“Mhm,” Harry hums, “I love you,” he manages to whisper just for us to hear as nobody is around us. 

I smile to myself and I turn around to face him and I mouth I love you back to him as I point towards the betting station. We both walk towards the betting station and Henry steps closer to me with a smug grin, his ticket in his hand. “So, which horse are you betting on?” 

I shrug my shoulders, unsure of which horse to pick as I have said, I have always betted for the fun of it and chosen the least likely to win horse. As Henry continues to stare at me with that self-righteous grin that irritates me, I turn to Harry, “Suggestions?” 

Harry narrows his eyes on me and I bite my lip— I have stepped out of line— I was not meant to turn to him and bring him into this. Harry shakes his head, “I cannot participate.” His participation in betting is meant to be kept between him and me. 

“Of course you can, mate, it’s jus’ for fun,” Henry pipes in, pressing his hand to Harry’s shoulder as if they are best mates. 

Harry eyes Henry, his jaw clenching at the touch of Henry but Harry holds his composure and forces a small smile as he clears his throat, “If I was to bet, I would try my luck with horse number eight.” Harry informs me. 

I glance at the odds and I take a chance on what Harry suggests, Afterall, it doesn’t really matter if I win or lose, this is all for entertainment and an endeavour to hopefully kill Henry’s ego. 

“Well, place yourself a bet,” Henry signals between Harry and the betting station as I step to the side, managing to take Harry’s side. 

“Put me down for one-hundred pounds on horse eight, please,” Harry instructs as he continues to keep his eyes shifting, still doing his job and not letting his guard down. 

Henry laughs, “That all? The Palace not pay you well?” Henry questions and I shake my head at him, disappointed. 

A prince should not act in such manner nor should a prince ever speak down to someone, especially when it comes to wealth. It is none of Henry’s business how much Harry earns or cares to spend. I am not sure what has gotten into Henry, but he is lacking royal etiquette and he is lacking human decency. My Father would be appalled to know the man he chose to be my boyfriend, the man he wants to see as the King beside me, is currently being condescending not just to myself but to others as well. 

Harry clears his throat before raising a brow, “Make that ten-thousand,” Harry ups his bet, taking us all by surprise, especially me. 

The lady holds the ticket out and Harry gestures for me to take it, he can’t step any closer than he already is, if he does, he breaches his defences and he puts me at risk because his back will be entirely turned and he no longer has a view of everyone. I take the ticket between my fingers and I smile towards Henry, “Well, may the best horse win, let’s go get our spot,” I smile, ready to finally take a moment to sit down for a moment while they prepare for the last race of the day. 

I sit and watch as the horses are walked along the track, making their way to the gates where they will be tested with how well they handle the commotion of everything. 

Moments later, all horses are situated and the gates open; the horses are off and the crowd cheers.

The horses reach the last three- hundred meters and I watch in awe as the horses compete, two of them neck and neck as the finish line gets closer and closer. I bite my lip nervously, my foot tapping as the excitement and joy flow through my veins, I can hear the enthusiasm of others getting louder, cheers exasperating as the horses continue to run. 

I glance over at Harry as he is standing beside me, his lips curving up into a grin as he takes a moment to watch the race, catching the last few moments. I look back to the track and I am left stunned, jaw-dropped, you could say. The two horses that were neck and neck have fallen behind and a new leader takes over the position of first place. I gasp, my heart beats faster while the horse Harry and I picked takes the lead and puts a fair distance between the other horses. 

“Oh, my,” I breathe out while Henry attempts to cheer his horse that is struggling to keep its position of fourth place. 

I do my best to hold my composure as our horse reaches the finish line.

Harry picked the winning horse, he put Henry to shame and managed to kill his high strung ego. 

“You won,” I happily exclaim, nudging Harry as he stands, looking unamused due to his job, but deep down, I know very well and good he is pleased with himself. 

Harry shakes his head, “I believe it is you who won, you have the ticket,” Harry winks just as Henry throws his ticket up in the air dramatically. 

“Bloody horse,” Henry utters with a huff. “And it was a Filly I lost to.”

I smile graciously and tenderly nudge Henry in a playful manner, “Look’s like the best horse won, huh,” I chuckle, “It’s okay, what happens on the track, stays on the track. Even if you did lose to a girl.” 

Henry glares at me and I notice his jaw clench, and it is in this moment I realise he isn’t being playful and that he is taking this seriously. He shakes his head at me and steps away, “Henry,” I call but he ignores me, he hurries away and loses himself in the crowd of others before I can manage to bat an eye. 

I look towards Harry, unsure of what just happened. Harry doesn’t say a word, instead, he stays in bodyguard mode, simply watching the people around us and keeping a close eye on the particular small crowd in front of us on the track. 

I am unsure whether I am meant to chase after Henry or whether I am meant to let him go. I am not one to chase, especially when I am not in love with the man and by the looks of things and by how he is acting today, he isn’t remotely in love nor interested in me. He is self-absorbed and he has shone an unsatisfactory light on himself in public. With so many eyes being on us, there has to be at least one person who saw what happened and is willing to report it to the media. This isn’t the kind of publicity that we want or need. 

I gaze towards Harry, looking for some sort of guidance. I see Harry roll his eyes before he sighs heavily, “Do I really have to do damage control?” He questions and I nod my head, narrowing my eyes onto him. I can tell he doesn’t want to do damage control, he couldn’t care less about Henry and he hates the fact that Henry is currently on his service as well. Harry tilts his head to his left shoulder slightly, “Horse Boy has galloped off, trotting south of my location.”

I raise a brow at the code-name selected for Henry, I am well-aware Harry had to have chosen it. The alternative names given are used over secure networks so that bodyguards can ensure that he will be able to move the royal family members in and out of specific locations. Code-names change on a basis so that nobody catches who is linked to each name. “Horse boy, really?” I challenge Harry.

Harry lifts his shoulders into a small shrug, doing his best to conceal the smirk painting across his lips, “Let’s go. He is heading to the stables.” Harry instructs, gesturing for me to head in the same direction that Henry took off running in. I pick up the umbrella that we have been carrying around all day before I make my way along the path of Harry’s directions. 

Harry and I attempt to locate Henry, but it is a struggle when I am stopped every few steps to talk to other royals on their way out or to simply smile for a camera. The last race has ended, which means everyone is beginning to make their way out, just as I should be, but instead, Harry and I are trying to get to the stables to where Harry assumes Henry has run off too. 

It is beyond me on how my father managed to pick such an ill-fitting prince to be my partner. I am starting to wish I had of had my say and picked myself, better still, I should have come clean about the relationship between Harry and I. But, at the end of the day, I know that our relationship will not be accepted. If only people placed their bets on us, even with the odds against us, instead, people prefer to place their bets on the more superior. I always go against the odds but right now, the odds are against me, therefore, I am against myself. 

I feel a droplet of rain grace my skin, I look up and notice the ominous clouds forming over us, making their way across the sky in a swift manner. I open my umbrella and I step off the gravel path. I walk along the grass, attempting to reach the very edge of the fence where horses are just now starting to make their way to the stables. 

I carry the umbrella over my head, the rain coming down heavily, patting the umbrella brutally but creating a moderately calming tone. If I had been told that my day would have ended in a Prince acting like a child and running off, leaving me in the rain unsure of where he is, I would have laughed. I never expected to see a grown man throw a temper tantrum, especially in public. 

I welcome a hand press over mine, “Allow me,” Harry instructs, taking the umbrella from my hand. Harry holds the umbrella over me while he stands in the rain and the umbrella shields me from the intense rain.

I turn to face him, “Stand under it with me.”

Harry shakes his head, “I’m not allowed. I will hold the umbrella. A Princess does not hold her own umbrella… Your Prince should be holding it.” 

“He is,” I respond with a small wink before I turn back around and continue walking, the rain coming down heavily on us while we make our way closer to where the horses are stationed and unwinding before they will be transported to their stables.

I glance around, disappointed that the man who is intended to be my boyfriend appears to have disappeared and left me in the downpour to combat the media and the crowds on my own. He was here to serve as a purpose, not only to show his presence as my boyfriend to everyone who wasn’t at the garden party but to also draw attention to a new budding romance that could turn into more. My father needs the media to spark its attention towards us— the monarch is ready to change— my father wants to hand over the reins and pass down the crown but he can’t do so unless the public is on his side and approve of not only me as the queen but my partner. 

“I’m sorry, Anastasia,” Harry distracts me from my thoughts as I observe the horses from a distance being walked around.

I turn to gaze at Harry, facing him as he continues to keep me dry from the rain, meanwhile, he’s wholly soaked. “Why are you sorry?” 

“I’m sorry your Prince left you.” Harry appears sincere and genuine with his apology. 

He and I both know that I am the one who will have to deal with the backlash of whatever Henry has caused on today’s outing. 

I lift my shoulders into a shrug. I don’t have words to say. This isn’t Harry’s fault. This is all my fault. I truly have nobody to blame besides myself. I am the one who is being held to high standards thanks to a monarchy. 

“Why do you look so sad?” 

I look at Harry as he continues to stand in the pouring rain while holding an umbrella over me like a true gentleman, “The odds are against me; the odds are against us, Harry.” 

“It will be okay, Anna.” 

I shake my head, “This is my fault. We don’t know where he went, he could be doing more damage. I-I, I am sorry I didn’t just tell everyone about us.”

“Shh,” Harry hushes me immediately, “We will figure it out. Henry will be fine, right now isn’t the place for this discussion, we are being watched.” Harry informs me and I heavily sigh. 

The worst thing about having my boyfriend as my bodyguard is that sometimes when he is on duty he has to stay strictly as my bodyguard and can’t step into boyfriend mode. 

“I’d like to go home, please,” I inform Harry and he nods his head. 

Harry takes his phone out and makes the calls he needs to in order to assure everything is in order for me to leave promptly and without issues.

Harry escorts me to a blacked-out car with his head of security waiting by the car with an umbrella. Whenever the head of security is waiting for me, it means Harry is handing me off.  

“Matthew will take you to the Palace,” Harry informs me as I step under the head of security’s umbrella, allowing Harry to finally hold the umbrella over his own head despite the fact he is already soaked, his hair is damp and droplets are falling from his soft curls, his white shirt has become slightly see-through I can see the slight outline of his abs as the shirt clings to his body. 

“Why?” 

“You’re right, she does ask a lot of questions,” Matthew chuckles, “He needs to go find Henry, Plus, you said you preferred my service better, I am not as stiff as Harry,” Matthew lightens the mood with a small joke, finally forcing a small chuckle to escape my lips. 

“Finally, she smiles,” Harry grins, “I will come past your wing when I get done.”

I nod my head and I quickly look around to make sure nobody is around to be able to hear me speak. “I love you,” I softly whisper.

“I love you, too,” Harry responds before pressing a kiss to my cheek. “Get in the car. Let’s get you home safely and without a big exit like the garden party.” Harry opens the door, returning to bodyguard mode and gesturing for me to get in the car. 

I get into the car with ease and I rest back against the leather seats, glad to finally be closer to getting home. Today has been long and tiring. 

I view Harry and Matthew talk outside and I watch them intently for a moment, curious as to what they are discussing. I can only assume most of their conversation right now will be revolved around finding Henry. Having a Royal on the loose is not something anybody wants. What I don’t understand is why Henry is so short-fused and why he felt the need to run off like a child who was told he couldn’t have the last slice of pizza. 

As Matthew gets in the driver’s seat of the car, I watch Harry walk off into the distance before the car begins to move. I stare out the window, watching the droplets of rain slide down. 

I lean my head against the window and close my eyes for a moment but I am quickly distracted by the sound of Matthew’s voice. “He loves you, you know?” 

“Harry?” I question, “Did he put you up to this conversation that is about to take place?” 

Matthew chuckles as he looks in his rearview mirror at me, “Am I talking to the Princess or?”

“This is off the record. I am off royal duty.” I respond, assuring Matthew that whatever is said in the car will stay in the car. 

For the most part, conversations between Harry and Matthew are generally off the record. Sometimes they are the only times I get to feel the sense of normality. Everyone else treats me like a princess and always wants to discuss politics, royal duties etc. 

“He’d do anything for you, all you have to do is say the word.” 

“I know,” I nod, “I didn’t think the first public outing would turn out like this. I thought it would be easy to have a fake boyfriend and to let this ride out until I can figure things out. This will be my Dad’s last year as King, what am I meant to do?”

Matthew clears his throat and grows quiet for a moment, his eyes focusing on the wet road as he again begins to drive. “Would you like my honest response?” 

“Have you ever known me to want you to sugarcoat?”

“Anastasia, he wants to marry you, you know that, right?” 

I roll my eyes and scoff, “Yeah, okay.” I know Harry has mentioned it before, but that is only because we learned of the news that they want me to be married before taking over the throne.

“I am serious, he genuinely wants to marry you.”

“Well, he has yet to get on one knee with a ring,” I respond, “I wish things were easier.” 

“Well, things could be easier if you would let Harry handle it. He knows what he is doing, Annastasia, he can handle what he is getting into.” Matthew responds and before I can respond, the phone rings and he answers it, leaving me in the backseat while he drives and continues his phone call. 

♔

The moment I enter the palace, my world is turned upside down and my Father pounces on me like a lion on its weak prey. I can only thank Henry for this. That asshole. 

My father is a great man, for the most part, but when he is angry, he is furious. He can’t always control his temper and that is something the public does not know. The public only see the lower side of his temper, they see the relatively calm and collected King. Me, on the other hand, I get to witness the King at his full capacity of anger and it is far from fun. My father can be relentless, he is like a dog with a bone, which is why he is so good at making foreign deals and running a monarchy, he does not take no for an answer, nor does he take shit from people. Of course, he handles himself in a royal matter but with a hint of dominance. 

My father wastes no time with laying into me, “How many stunts do you anticipate to pull off?” My father questions, his eyes narrowed to crinkled slits, his crimson with fury as he stares me down.

My lips screw into irritation and I take a moment to come to terms with the fact that the King is yelling at me in front of the staff just as I have managed to walk into the palace. “What?” 

“First your stunt at the garden party and now this? Anastasia, I expected more from you.”

“Excuse me? My stunt at the garden party?” I challenge with a raised brow. 

Surely my father cannot be serious right now. 

“You had to be rushed away from fainting at the announcement, I had to do damage control. Then today Henry pulls this stunt all because of you? Why were you so rude to him? He bought you a horse and you thank him by being rude? I raised you better.” 

My brows bump together in a scowl, my body stiffening at the words my father speaks. 

Me? Rude? I think he has me mistaken for Henry. 

I would like to know how this has become my fault. I never wanted Henry as my boyfriend, to begin with, and I never wanted to parade him in public. 

“Do you think I faked fainting, Father? Have you scooped that low? Is the monarch rules so important to you that you are willing to accuse me of such a thing?

“You’re the one who has forced me to this extent. You wouldn’t pick a partner.” 

“Well, you picked an utter asshole to be a partner. Excuse me, I am going to bed before this turns into more of an argument.” I step around my father and begin to make my way to the staircase. 

“We will finish this in the morning,” My Father sneers, “What are you all staring at? Get to work,” He grumbles towards the staff that has gathered near and around us. 

I ignore everything and I make my way up the stairs and to my wing where I shut the door and ignore all the commotion of what is going on. 

♔

I hear the sound of the secret door rattling while I am half asleep, and for a split second, I panic, but quickly come to the realisation it is likely Harry. 

I hold my breath as the door opens and he steps into my room. He is still in his damp clothes, his hair is a mess and I can see he is exhausted. I sit upon my elbows and take a better look at him. His pant legs have grass stains and his button-up is ripped on one of the sleeves. 

Harry shakes his head instantly, “Don’t ask,” Harry mutters, stepping closer and leaning down to kiss my cheek. “Jus’ came to check on you. Heard your Father was quite angry.”

“You already heard about that?” I softly ask.

Harry nods, “The Palace talks quickly, it was the first thing I heard about when I got in the car.”

“Well, I am glad to have amused you and the palace staff.”

Harry sighs, “I didn’t mean it like that. I have some work to do, I will see you in the morning.”

“You’re not staying?” I question. 

Harry shakes his head, “I have more work to do, I am soaked and need to change. Goodnight,” he leans down and kisses my forehead.

Harry walks towards the secret door and I stop him for a moment, “Harry, can I ask something personal?” 

Harry hums his response and turns to look at me, awaiting my question. “Why were you so confident in betting so much money on a horse?” 

Harry grins for a moment and he lifts his shoulders into a meagre shrug, “Sometimes it is good to go against the odds, my darling.”

“I don’t understand.” 

“It is my horse. The odds were mostly against her, but I had faith in her and the jokey, sometimes all it takes is a little faith. I knew what my horse was capable of, others didn’t.” Harry informs me, “Just like I know what we are capable of, others aren’t. I need to go, I love you.” Harry leaves before I can muster up the right words to say. 

The odds are against us but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s willing to take a chance on us, so why can’t I swallow everything and take a chance, too?