#sort of capturing the panic of feeling out of place in this setting

[cilly-the-writer]

ABANDONED

ABANDONED

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE

the vines have overtaken the cafe shop you once frequented

rust encroaches everywhere the eye can see

the air tastes

like you are lost forever

there is a dryness in your mouth

that you don't think you can ever escape

THIS IS THE GODLESS PLACE

YOU ARE HERE

AND YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE

YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE COME

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE

[beautysamour]

kenji x f!reader

okay so basically, the reader escaped from sector 45 and she ends up at Omega Point. (She has the ability to create force fields) When Kenji finally sees her for the first time and ends up falling for her.

So to sum it all up; Kenji crushing on the reader and trying to not make it obvious but failing.

Thanks!! BTW take your time writing this. Ilysm!!<33

- ❤

Nonsense

✧ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: kenji kishimoto x reader

✧ 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬: kenji kishimoto, castle, adam kent

✧ 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: In which you were able to escape sector 45, but not all the people.

✧ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: some cursing, some spoilers for the first book.

✧ 𝐚/𝐧: implied to be set during the second book. i wasn’t sure if you wanted them to end up together at the end, but if you did— tell me and I’ll write a part two! sorry for the long wait! ilyt ❤️ anon <33

You’re sitting on the floor tucked into one of the corners in your room with the moonlight being your only source of light.

You try to shake away the memory of a kid crying at seeing their dead parents, at the feelings of guilt that had formed in the pit of your stomach for not being able to save them which as a result, hurt the kid more than any kind of physical pain could.

You were no stranger to death, hell, you were one of the people always on the battlefield while you were at sector 45 for you were their “shield and trap” as Kent put it.

You were responsible for shielding the soldiers, to create a barrier around them when multiple enemies surrounded them; often having the attacks reflect back to the enemy. As for being called a trap, you were often ordered to create a barrier around an enemy to contain them in one place.

It was the most frequent solution used for capturing enemies, and knowing that- having those memories only made you feel worse, what good is your gift, as Castle liked to call it, if you couldn’t even protect the people who needed your protection?

What good is it if you used it to protect those loyal to the reestablishment and not innocent civilians?

Looking up at the moon you let out a sigh and pushed yourself up off of the ground. You grabbed the hems of the bedsheets and tugged them upwards as you kicked your shoes off of your feet before collapsing on the bed.

You pulled the sheets over your body and closed your eyes, trying to envision the moon to push out the glimpses of the crying child.

“Good night,” you whispered out to no one in particular. Maybe you subconsciously said it to the kid, as an apology of some sort.

The last thing that was on your mind before the tiredness fully took over was the delusional hope of being able to start over.

✩ ✩

“Life is full of choices, no one ever mentions fear,” Anastasia sang through the television screen in front of you as you ate the last few portions of your breakfast.

“Mama, who’s that,” you heard from behind you, you paused your movements for a second waiting to see how the mom would respond; ready to flee the dining area if necessary.

The mom hushed the child, “A new person, lets not bother them,” the sounds of receding footprints gave you a sense of relief as you refocused on your breakfast and the singing of the cartoon character.

You weren’t worried about being “turned in” or anything of that sort, you doubt that anyone from the Reestablishment was acting as a mole so there would be no one to drag you back to that place.

Suddenly your brain sent panic waves down your spine as a foreboding feeling took over your senses; telling you that there was someone to close for comfort. Out of instinct, a thin force field surrounded your body- if this person meant any harm, they’d have to have a power that allowed them to deactivate yours.

You took in a sharp breath as you heard your last name come from behind you.

A few seconds passed before you took another breath; hoping that the person behind you would think they got the wrong person, but all they did was circle around your table and take a seat in front of you.

“The hell are you doing here,” he said, his tone not allowing you to fool yourself into thinking he’d leave without an answer.

“Kent,” you began, “didn’t expect to see you here,” you said as you gave him a blank stare.

“Yeah,” he scoffed out, “didn’t expect to see you here either,” he straightened his back as he leaned forward on the table between you two, his brows furrowed as he sarcastically tilts his head.

“How did you find this place,” he kept his gaze strictly on yours.

“Oh you know, went for the usual 5 pm scenery walk and found myself here,” the corners of your lips slightly curved up as you gave him a fake innocent smile before you dropped it not a second later, rolling your eyes and you looked away from him.

The man let out a noise akin to a scoff before speaking again, “I’m not here to turn you in, I have no gain in doing that. I just-,”

“Yeah, we’d all be publicly shot by Warner no doubt.”

He let out a sigh this time before speaking once again, “Because I owe you my life,”

“Everyone in the Reestablishment owes me their life,” you cut him off; your tone quickly turning bitter as you thought about what you did for them.

“Because I owe you my life,” he says again, “I won’t make a scene big enough to catch everyone’s attention, but,” he grabbed your arm causing you to snap your head back towards his direction; eyes slightly widening, “we do have to talk.”

You found yourself not being able to speak, your throat drying up as your body felt like it was short circuiting. You looked to where he was grip was on your arm.

You never disabled the force field you put around your body.

“How did you do that.”

He let go of his grip on your arm and stood up, “Like I said, we have to talk.”

✩ ✩

“When you said “we” Kent, I didn’t think you’d mean me, you, and the leaders of Omega Point.”

“Yeah well, better safe than sorry,” Kent pushed you through the door, his hand still wrapped around your wrist to which you try to shove off.

“Again, how the hell can you touch me?!”

He tightened he grip on your wrist, “I’m about to tell you— just stay quiet for a few minutes!”

“I don’t take orders from you anymore, Kent-“

“Uh, hey, can you guys stop shoving each other for a sec?”

You looked at the new person standing next to Castle’ desk. All his clothing pieces were black and subtle fitted around his body to show off his muscles, his hair color the same. Observing him effectively made you stop struggling against Kent’ grip.

“Has the ability to cooperate, check.” The new guy leaned forward reaching a hand out, “Kenji.”

Castle cleared his throat, “So,” he began. You looked at the hand “Kenji” reached out to you with furrowed brows. What was he doing?

Next to you, Kent cringed at the sight before roughly tugging you closer to Castle.

“What brings you here, with her,” Castle gave you a small smile, “She came in yesterday.”

Kent heavily breathed as he tugged you in front of him and threw your wrist out of his hands, “Have you done a background check on her? She’s from Sector 45, a soldier.”

The room was silent for a few moments, your expression blank as you looked at the same expression found on Castle.

Before, you weren’t worried about getting turned in because you didn’t think there were any spies around that would notify your higher ups. Not much changed from then to now, Kent seems quite content with this place. He probably ran away too, so even if he did turn you in, Warner would find him too.

You internally sighed, you didn’t care if you got kicked out of here. You’d find an abandoned place and force yourself to survive, but even with that in mind this place did seem nice. You’d like to stay especially after finding out that not only did you have a “gift” but there were others too?

Seems fun.

Castle pushed his chair out from the desk, standing up to walk around it and sit on the edge— now eye to eye with you.

“She was known as our shield-“

Castle raised a hand, “And trap,” he tilted his head to Kent, “I know, Kent. I also know that she came here asking for refuge and help, the first step to change,” he tilted his head back to you, another small smile on his face, “And that she’s one of us now.”

Skeptical as always, Kent glanced back and forth between you and Castle before averting his gaze to Kenji, who only shrugged and motioned for him to back off and a give you some space ad he was right behind you.

Kent let out a sigh as he took a step back, “And if she’s just on a mission?”

The smile on Castle’ face disappeared as he looked back at him, “If you’re so worried, I can have Kenji look after her.”

Kenji, who was standing at the side this entire conversation, suddenly popped up right next to Castle, “Won’t have to worry about a thing as long as she’s with me.” He gave Kent a fake smile before turning back to Castle seemingly waiting for further orders.

Kent scoffed, “Yeah, ok. As long as someone’s watching her.”

“Wonderful,” Castle replied; his smile returning, “Kenji, go escort Y/N to wherever she’ll be going—“

“Wait,” your gaze jumped to all three of the guys as you take a step back, “So you say that I’m one of you but then you put a cop on me?”

“Sweetheart, I’m not a cop—“

You point a finger at Kent as you keep eye contact with Castle, your temper rising along with the volume of your voice, “Just because he doesn’t trust me? He’s done more harm during his time at the Reestablishment then I ever could!”

Your temper only rises when you feel Kent’ hand on your shoulder, “Calm down—“

You whip your arm back, aggressively pushing his hand off of you, “I already told you Kent,” you bark out, “I don’t take orders from you anymore.”

You scoff at his widened eyes before walking out the room, leaving the three men alone.

“She’s upset.”

“Yeah, thank you Adam,” Kenji said with fake sweetness in his voice, “What would we ever do without you?”

“Shut up.”

“Kenji,” Castle interrupted not looking at either of them but at the door instead, “Go after her, she’s still under your supervision but not for Kent’ reasoning. I need you to help her feel comfortable here, I fear we might’ve given ourselves a bed rep to her.”

Kenji snorted, “Kinda? Alright, well I’ll make sure to keep an eye on her.”

Before Kenji could fully walk past Adam, he called out his name causing Kenji to turn back around, “What?”

He leaned forward reaching a hand out, mocking Kenji’ previous movements, “”Kenji.” What was that about?”

Kenji rolled his eyes before slapping his hand away, “Just proper etiquette, something you aren’t educated on.”

“What—“

“Kenji,” Castle interrupted again, a stifled smile on his face, “Go after her.”

Kenji nodded and turned on his heel, not bothering to say acknowledge Adam on his way out, “I’ll be back later today.”

✩ ✩

You paced around your room mumbling profanities under your breath, “Who does he think he is, he wasn’t even my boss!”

You rubbed the wrist that Kent had his grip on, “The audacity to drag me through these halls and say that I’m a threat. And all I ever did was protect— those fuckers literally called my “shield and—“

“Hey, uh, it’s Kenji,” he knocked on your door, “Want to get something to eat?”

“No,” you yelled back, “I promise you, I’m not a threat.” You took a step getting ready to start pacing around your room again before Kenji continued speaking.

“I’m not here to spy on you, I don’t take orders from Kent either. Just hungry and have no one else to eat with.”

You cursed the part of you that was telling you to go with him, at least you wouldn’t be eating alone having it be a perfect chance for Kent to pop in and try to drag you to Castle’ office again.

With a sigh you give in and open your door revealing Kenji who was leaning against your doorframe, “Oh— hey.”

He pushed himself off the doorframe and cleared his throat, “Almost started to think you were ignoring me.”

Not that he’d care if you were, he was just glad to know that you weren’t resistant to his charms— not that it would matter anyways.

You close the door as you walk out the room. You turned to face Kenji, subconsciously batting your lashes at him, “I mean you are just here to see if I was sent here by the Reestablishment…”

Kenji began to walk, you following right by his side, “I told you already, I’m not going to do that. I don’t take orders from Kent.”

“Castle was the one who really made the order though.”

“Yeah, well, I only follow orders that don’t start with Kent’ opinion.”

You snicker at his words, “Well that’s good to know.”

“So, what’s your thing?” He pivoted into the cafeteria, right on step with your pivot.

“My what?”

“Your thing,” he passed you a tray as you two stepped into the line, “Like Repunzel and her hair, you know?”

“Oh. I can create forcefields.”

“Ohh, so that’s why they call you—“

“Yeah,” you interrupted as you didn’t feel like hearing the nickname right now, “Can use it as to protect and attack, thank you, that’s why they kept me for so long.”

Kenji looked at you as you spoke, noting the way your hair moved as you spoke and the way your eyes looked under the kitchen light.

He was only looking because he was an observant person. That’s all.

It wasn’t until you looked at him with confused eyes that he snapped back into reality. He tried to remember the last thing you said— he swore he was listening— but the way your lips were moving was so distracting, even now as you opened them to start speaking, “Oh, sorry,” Kenji looked away from you, that’s why they kept me for so long, “Do you want to talk about it?”

You shook your head, “It’s fine, there’s far more interesting things to talk about.”

“I’m sure anything would be interesting to listen to as long as it’s coming from you.”

You and the lunch worker in front of you two looked at Kenji with widened eyes. “Thank…you?”

“Kenji,” gasped the worker catching Kenji’ attention, “I knew you were bold but I didn’t think you were that bold, thought you’d just keep staring at her with those puppy eyes! Congrats! I hope it goes well,” the worker says as they fill Kenji’ tray with food.

The worker averted their gaze to you, “Don’t worry miss, he’s a good catch.” The worker sent you a wink before shooing the both of you away.

The both of you awkwardly stood there for a few seconds, Kenji wondering if you’d take all that to heart, and you waiting for him to bring up finding a table.

Finally he did, “Anyways, let’s find a table?”

“Yeah.”

✩ ✩

“You can turn invisible? How did you even figure that out?”

Kenji almost laughed at your curiosity, it was cute,“Well how random was it when you found out you could create force fields?”

“Actually it wasn’t that random, happened while I was trying to protect someone.”

“I see. I found out on a random day during my childhood.”

You raised a brow at his confession, “That’s hilarious.”

The image of a younger Kenji walking through his house, unknowing of the fact that he’s gone invisible, and speaking to one of his parents who would freak out at the fact that they could hear their son but not see him was enough to make you want to laugh.

“Hilarious?” Kenji leaned closer to you as he rested his arms on top of the table, “It was terrifying.”

“I bet it was, especially since you wouldn’t have known how to turn visible again,” you pushed your tray forward finally finishing your food, “So, what movies do you like?”

“Interesting change of topic,” he picked up your tray and set it on top of his, “My personal favorite is Tangled.”

“Shut up, there is no way—“

“I know right! Best piece of fiction in all of literature.” Kenji said cutting you off thinking you were going to agree with him—

“—You like that Anastasia romance knock-off?”

“Excuse me?” Kenji raised an offended brow at you, there is no way you just compared the magnificent romance between Flynn Rider and Rapunzel to that.

“Anastasia is much better.”

“Ok, first of all— you’re wrong— second, did you just call Flynn and Rapunzel’ love story a knock-off?”

You scoffed feeling petty, “Yes. A con man that helps a lost princess get to a destination and they end up falling in love and have a big miscommunication arc but ultimately ends with them getting together? Anastasia and Dimitri are what Flynn and Rapunzel wish they could be.”

Kenji dramatically gasped, “Take that back.”

You turned your head, chin up and eyes closed, “No.”

You stayed like that for a few moments before breaking character, laughing at the fact that you were arguing with someone because of your undying love for another fictional couple.

It didn’t take long for Kenji to break is protective Rapunzel nature, he knew it would break as soon as he heard your laugh.

As much as it made him cringe to admit— not only because you only just met but because he never thought he’d say this— but he liked the sound of your laugh. It sounded like music to his ears, as much as that hurt him to admit this early.

The moment is cut short when a worker yells at you both, “Hey! Lovebirds! It’s dark outside, lunch and dinner both ended already— get a room before you start making out on the table.”

The worker, much grumpier than the other one who served the food, grumbled words that formed sentences saying that “youths are so annoying.” “young love is so outdated.” and “what’s next, he’s gonna buy her flowers and gummy bears too?”

Like before you didn’t think much of it, laughing as you found the misunderstanding funny. You expected Kenji to laugh too, to find the situation funny as well. Instead you were met with the sight of his hand over his mouth trying to cover the rest of his heated face, failing to realize that his ears were also flushed.

You were about to ask if he was ok, but then he picked up the trays and handed them to another worker. His posture stiffened when he got another teasing comment from said worker before walking back to you.

He cleared his throat before speaking, “It is late now, I’ll walk you back to your room.”

You smiled, “Ok, thank you.”

“You know what I just realized,” you say as you walk out the cafeteria.

“Hmm?”

“Kent never told me why he was able to touch me while I had a force field off.”

“Oh, his thing is being able to deactivate others gifts. I know, dick gift.”

You groaned, “What the hell that’s so annoying.”

Kenji chuckled, “Yeah, perfect for a guy like him.”

The rest of the walk back was quiet, Kenji most likely in deep thought, and you who was comfortable with the silence. When you reached your room you didn’t go in right away, you turned to Kenji waiting to see if he said something to say.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I actually look forward to that now.”

He snickered as you gave him a smug smile, he was glad you felt somewhat comfortable with him now, “For the record, Rapunzel and Flynn are not a rip off of your Princess and con man.”

You snorted at the irony, “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“Oh it sure well.”

“Ok, ok. Good night.”

Kenji gave you a smile and a nod before turning around getting ready to walk back to his own quarters, “Wait.”

Kenji turned around immediately, brows raised.

You looked down at your feet suddenly feeling shy, “You’re cute too by the way.”

You didn’t wait for a response, immediately shutting the door and running into the furthest corner in your room— what the hell was that?!

Outside of your room, Kenji stared at your closed door dumbfounded. It’s only when he realizes how creepy it would be to find him standing in front of your room does he snap out of it.

He walks to his own quarters with flushed ears and cheeks.

[journey-to-the-attic]

3rd anni req 5: beel, asmo / photos

ao3 link

note: this one's short n sweet! takes place post-jtta ^^

∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!”

“Huh? What?” Beel jerks upright as Asmo barrels into the kitchen - his spoon clatters to the table in mild panic. “Did something happen?”

“Look at this!” Asmo wails, practically slamming an orange-cased D.D.D. on the table. “You were hiding these this whole time?!”

“Huh?” Beel seems to have already forgotten that he lent it to him. “What?”

Asmo rubs his eyes furiously, sniffs, then asks, “You didn’t even notice?”

“Notice what?” He asks cluelessly, then finally looks down at the screen. “...oh…”

IK’s eyes - very, very close to the camera - stare back up at him. Like an inquisitive sort of little bird.

He pushes away his bowl with one hand and pulls his phone towards himself with the other. He’s cradling it like something precious, wearing the sort of softly awed face you’d use for a baby animal.

Asmo isn’t sure whether or not to laugh. Beel hasn’t even realised there’s more than one picture yet.

He lets him remember to swipe in his own time. Silently, he watches him skim through IK’s little impromptu photoshoot - none of it quite taken seriously, but earnest all the same.

Beel stops on Asmo’s favourite - the one where her face is behind a glass of water, so that it warps in funny places. Maybe it’s because the warping obscures it somewhat, but this is the only one where IK’s wearing a full grin. The other smiles are sweet, but small and a little awkward - this one, for lack of a better word, is just plain joyous.

Asmo takes a look at Beel’s face. He doesn’t feel as silly for bursting into tears now.

Beel has exactly two pre-existing albums - Asmo knows this because he was snooping through them before he spotted the selfies - one for food (dishes he wants to try, promotional restaurant posters, and everything in between), and one for family.

This one is a little more curated than the food album; given his lack of photography ambition, most of Beel’s gallery is filled by courtesy of his brothers messing around, so he’s more selective about which ones to commit to memory. Asmo watches Beel select the entire block of sneaky selfies, and saves them next to a magazine-worthy shot of Belphie staring out into the horizon.

He gets it. He’s feeling sentimental, too.

Beel is quiet for a little while longer. Finally, he says, voice perhaps a touch thicker than usual, “When did she have time to do that?”

Asmo had thought the same thing - which is why he’s already checked the timestamps. It seems IK was making a game of it for a little while, because the pictures come in bursts over a period of about a week. There are twenty-two in total.

Beel doesn’t seem to expect an answer. In fact, he’s already moved on. “I should show Belphie…”

He’s looking at the photo where Belphie’s tousled hair is just about visible in the background - IK’s done her absolute best to capture his sleep-contorted face. Based on the odd angle - and the blurring - she dropped the phone on him immediately after taking the picture.

He scrolls through the whole set one more time, then says affectionately, “I don’t think IK thought I’d find these.

He’s pointed out a certain quirk to her smiles. Asmo nods fondly; yes, that’s definitely the look of an IK who thinks she’s getting away with something. She does the same thing when she thinks Satan hasn’t noticed her drawing lines on his arm during study sessions.

“Gosh, I feel crazy,” Asmo sighs, then abruptly face-plants forward onto the table. “They’re just pictures, but I feel like I’ve just watched her win an award or something.”

“Is that what it is?”

“Maybe? Like, oh, that’s our girl, you know?”

“It’s…” Beel doesn’t finish the thought before moving onto the next. “...hmm. Do you think that’s what having kids is?”

“Having—” Asmo chokes on nothing in particular. “Huh? I’m too young to be a parent! That’s totally not the same thing.”

Beel doesn’t look convinced. “I’ll ask Lucifer.”

“That doesn’t count. He’s old.” He clears his throat and relaxes again. “...it’s a different thing. I don’t think there’s a name for it… I just think it means family.”

Beel smiles. “I think so, too.”

[jedi-lothwolf]

Winter Whumperland Day 1: Santa Claus (Claustrophobe/Panic Attack)

Fandom: Star Wars The Bad Batch

Summary: Echo falls into a hole in a cave while on a mission. Memories of Skako Minor flood his mind.

    Echo had liked small spaces before being captured by the Techno Union. Fives thought he was crazy for it. There was something comforting about small, dark places. Echo never could explain it.

    One wrong step sent him into a panic. 'Watch your step' Tech had said. 'Caves are unpredictable' he said. The cave was dark and cold. Echo would have loved it. He should have.

    Instead he looked around at the small space he found himself in. "Echo!" he heard Wrecker tell out. "You okay!?"

    The clone couldn't find his voice. It caught in the back of his throat and became a sharp breath instead. He looked at the walls of the hole but couldn't find them. He started to slam his hand and scomp into rock. His breathing speed and he wanted to cry.

    It was just a cave. It was just a dark hole in a cave. It was just a memory. It was just cold. It was just him, in a hole, in a cave, his family above him, ready to get him out of there.

    Or was it a pod? Was it just a memory? Was it just a pod he had been trapped in for over a year? Was it just the cold? Was it just him, in a pod, captured by the enemy, his family below him, waiting for him, ready to welcome him home?

    "Echo!" Omega yelled out. But he didn't answer. He just stood there, hyperventilating, terrified of the past. He felt so small and the rock wall felt like it was closing in. He didn't even notice when a set of hands pulled him up from his place in the cave.

    "Echo, breath." Hunter spoke. He looked at Tech for answers.

    "Claustrophobe, likely attributed to his time on Skako Minor. Move." Tech practically kicked Hunter out of the way before kneeling down in front of Echo. "He is having a panic attack. I will deal with it."

    Tech looked at the man in front of him. He felt uneasy but felt the others would be incapable of helping Echo breath calmly. Still, he wondered if he was the best person to take care of him.

    The clone stood in front of his brother. "What you are feeling is scary, but not dangerous. Focus on your breathing not the memory." Echo looked up at him. "You need to breathe slowly." Tech started to slowly to encourage him to do the same.

    Slowly Echo started to breathe earlier. "Can you tell me five things you can see?" Tech asked patiently. Echo looked around.

    "Tech I don't think that's going to he-"

    "Hush" Tech cut off Hunter. "Now tell me five things you see."

    Echo looked around. "There's some, Stalactites, some standing water, bats, yo-you, and the others."

    "Good job. How about four things you hear? Can you do that."

    "Well I hear you" Echo slightly chuckled. He was still so tense. His breathing was slower but still irregular. "There's water dripping into that puddle, the bats, and the humming of the, the light."

    "Good. You are doing good. Now can you tell me three things you can smell?"

    Hunter and Wrecker watched the two. They didn't know that Tech could be so, gentle? Omega stayed near Hunter.

    "It's musky, the cave water, and the cologne Phee gave you." He sort of smiled, "it sort of smells like Kamino."

    Tech smiled softly. "Two things you can feel."

    "The rocks are kind of smooth." Echo reached out to Tech, "and you."

    "One thing you can taste?"

    "The smell of the cave." Echo sighed. He felt safe again. He was just a man, in a cave, with his family.

    "Can I do anything for you?" Tech asked calmly.

    "You already have." Tech helped Echo up. "Thank you Tech."

    "It is no problem. We need to finish the mission now. Do you think you will be alright?"

    "Yeah, I think I will."

[blackjackkent]

Hmm 18, touch prompt but not with Karlach as the dying. Dumb Angst AU brain rot, but what if Hec was dying instead of Karlach?

(Whether it's a total au of her not being the one for the whole game or just a real big "fuck you specifically" from the universe post fixing her heart - I just think it's an interesting thing to think about for a one shot lol)

(Touch prompts)

Anon, this was very feelsy and sad! And of course my immediate instinct was to make it MORE feelsy and sad by saying... what if both at the same time. >:)

Super non-canonical Hector/Karlach feels ahoy:

-----

“...don’t you go before I do,” [he] whispered.  “...I couldn’t abide to be anywhere away from you for a single second,” she whispered back. Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died. - His Dark Materials Book 2 (The Subtle Knife), Philip Pullman

Too many. Too much. 

We fucked up, Karlach thinks. It's a sort of vague thought, heavy with bloodloss. 

“Karlach!” She can hear Hector somewhere in the distance. “Karlach, please!” 

No, not in the distance. He's right beside her, one hand pressed to her cheek, his grey eyes wide with panic. “There's another wave of them coming, Karlach! We need to move… we need to get to higher ground!”

His face is sweat-soaked in the Avernus heat and he is breathing hard - maybe from fear, maybe from exertion. She's finding it hard to focus her eyes on his face.

“Can't move my legs, Soldier,” she says vaguely. “Where's Wyll?” 

“Captured, I think. I saw one of them grab him.” 

She hasn't seen him look so frightened in a long time. Not since Moonrise and the brain, years ago now. He's come so far. She feels a strange, rictus smile touching her lips and sways dizzily. 

“Stop that,” he says fiercely. “Come on, I'll carry you.” He tugs at her arm, pulling it to hang limply over his shoulder. 

For him, and not for herself, she struggles to think, to focus on pulling herself up with her arms into his embrace. He's warm - even in Avernus he's warm, in a different way, like a blanket rather than a bonfire. 

“You should run,” she whispers. “Might still get away… if you get the lead out…” 

He shakes his head. “Not leaving you here,” he mutters hoarsely. “I'm tapped out, but if we can find somewhere safe… I can heal you… “

Empty words. She loves him, so desperately, but she knows what he's capable of. His limited healing magic can't help what's been done to her. Her vision is already dimming at the edges. “Please, Soldier. Fuck, I can't--’

“No!” he snaps. “I'm not leaving you. Now hold on and--”

He's in the process of setting his legs to lift her weight and haul her upwards when it hits him. An arrow, she thinks, but certainly magic-infused, as the impact jolts through his whole body, ripping away flesh along his side. His blood splatters her face. 

His eyes, still locked on hers, go wide, shock giving way to pain in a visible wave. “Oh, no…” he whispers. 

His legs give out from under him and he falls, losing his grip on her and releasing her back into the dirt. 

“Fuck. No-- Soldier…” She fumbles blindly, grabs his hand, pulling it to her chest, turning his fallen body towards her. “Hec-- Hec, look at me. Stay with me…”

“Never leaving…” he whispers. His eyes have gone abruptly glassy. “I… told you I wouldn't…” 

She feels tears - just as hot as everything else in this bloody place - start to burn slow trails down her cheeks. “Damn it…” she whispers. “Fuck. I’m so sorry… I always knew I'd die in this bloody place… but you… I never should've brought you here…”

His eyes have started to drift closed, but he wrenches them open again with visible effort in order to keep his gaze on her face for a few more seconds. “It was… my choice…” 

“You should have lived.” She chokes the words out. Breathing is becoming more difficult. “We both should have lived… so far away from here.”

“I’ll find you…” He drags himself along the ground, closer to her, curling himself against her. His face presses into her neck in a strange, brutal mockery of a thousand nights spent buried in each other's embrace. “I’ll find you… in the Fugue Plane… in Selune’s light… I’ll find you… I swear it…”

She doesn’t have the heart to tell him that she never decided what to believe. “Yeah.”

She can hear the clatter of a cambion platoon on the march, coming closer now. Almost on them. Fuck you. Fuck Zariel. Her engine heart starts to stutter, a last gasping burst of energy. Hector’s breath has shallowed. He isn’t moving now. She can’t see. All that’s left is the press of his lips against her neck, her hand resting on his hip wet with blood. 

“I love you,” she hears him whisper, almost too low to hear.

I’ve been dying to say that, she told him once.

“I love you…” she answers, broken and full of grief, and fades out of the world with that breath, her soul tangled with his in their departure.

[box-architecture]

Jet is in the really weird position of only 'technically' being a hybrid. The only hybrid feature Jet displays is the slight point of their ears. Their parent had been a fairy like Hannah, but genetics are a roll of the dice, and Jet otherwise passes as an ordinary human to most.

Unfortunately, hybrid hunters don't really see it that way.

Sam and Punz end up destroying a pillager base that was used as part of transport for hybrid hunters, and while most of the people there were able to be returned to some sort of family or community, Jet was alone, clinging to Sam's flank that made Punz's throat close painfully.

Dream wakes up, creeper cubs cuddled into his side, rabbit girl curled up by his head, to the sounds of Punz and Sam rummaging through the cupboards trying to figure out what Jet can eat. He feels like he should be more surprised than he is.

Jet spends two weeks in Sam's shadow, following him around and scooting away anxiously when the cubs get too close, too curious. Sam is perfectly happy to cuddle his Treasure and show them his Redstone and set them in his lap while he works!!! But when they manage to build a temporary room for Jet and tuck her in for the night, he frets and worries over how the other kids are feeling about this new addition, how his partners feel, will Jet ever become comfortable with Dream and their kids? Will they have to find someone else to take care of him?

All the uncertainty eats him up until Punz is drawing the curtains around their bed into a makeshift box and holding Sam to keep his anxiety from becoming a full blown panic attack.

Dream quietly tells Honeydew that Daddy was too tired to read her a story for bedtime, and offers his own stories instead, and that is when Honeydew huffs and decides she's had quite enough of all of this nonsense. She gave her newest sibling two weeks to come to her, been very good and didn't overwhelm them like Father asked, and now she was going to take over. Clearly they didn't understand the importance of bedtime stories, if they were tiring Daddy out so much.

Jet ends up being pulled outside by Honeydew the next morning, who leads them and two curious creeper cubs to the field just outside the house, sits them down, and demands they all make flower crowns. The creeper cubs are like 3 and so all they really do is roll around in dandelions (Lute) and sneeze from pollen until they get tired and fall asleep (Joy.) So that leaves Honeydew being very bossy and over explanatory to the most bewildered Jet about how flower crowns work and which dad was which and how bedtimes worked and why Jet needed to stop being so skittish because how were they supposed to play games when Jet wouldn't even look at her??? Honestly.

She demands Jet ask questions and tells them the Rules-

("you can't ask Papa to pick you up if it's a bad pain day. That's rude. And you can't wake up Joy and Lute during their nap times. That's also rude.")

-and makes a shooing motion at Dream when he comes out to see how they're doing. He makes a face. She makes a face back. This goes on for a minute while Jet watches, and Dream becomes significantly less scary.

"Why does he look like that?" Jet asks quietly when Dream goes back inside. Their eyes linger on the grooves deep in his skin, all the way up his arm and neck. Honeydew blinks.

"He got captured. Uncle Techno rescued him." She nods very seriously. "He told me so. He saved him from a bad place, like Daddy and Father saved you. So you can't be rude about it, okay?"

And this makes sense to them both because they're like 10 at most and when Honeydew eventually marches inside with Jet in tow, announcing that Jet wants spaghetti, Jet fidgets and sits by Dream at the dinner table instead of Sam.

"Hi." Jet whispers.

"Hi." Dream whispers back.

"Can I have some?"

"Sure."

And they work their way from there.

Jet ends up losing a lot of their anxiety as they get older and settles on being quiet but calm and introspective. They still have fears and worries, but they're a lot less palpable than Joy's. It helps a lot that Jet doesn't desire to impress so much as they want to just have a nice home, run a good business, make beautiful things. They're not looking to change the world in the way their other siblings crave

Random note: Jet becomes a mannequin more than once because child Honeydew likes to place dress up, and Jet, who hasn't yet discovered their love of colors and textiles, will often critique what they're being dressed with, while Honeydew nods accordingly and changes it up to match what they're saying. Lute is climbing into the jewelry chest because Pretty Shiny and Joy is looking at picture books on the bed while occasionally being draped in fabrics

[littleroaes]

do you want somebody? (like I want somebody), l.jy

inspired by newjeans, ditto

Y/n watch the world through a grainy display. Interact and touch it without emotions attached. And as she goes through her coming of age as a third person, Juyeon, a new student, takes interest in her own corner of this vast Earth. The boy sees past her difficulties with the world he loves, as he decides to win her heart either way. Instead of words, he pass notes onto her locker, draws on chalkboards and read Opera Omnia in the strangest corners of the school. The feeling she can't quite grasp, she tries to convey it in an unconventional sort of way.

PAIRING ⏵ ( 3rd pov, she/ her ) juyeon x fem!reader

GENRE ⏵ fluff, soft angst, high school!au, autumn setting, takes place in the 90s(90s!au ?), mutual pining, quoting juyeon; "isn't it true love if you can love just because of their existence?", strangers to pining to lovers, classmates to lovers, makoto shinkai and studio ghibli type of love <3, juyeon is sweet caring and every cell is made out of love!!!!

WARNINGS ⏵ none major, y/n has a panic attack but its not detailed, proofread twice but probably something i missed!

WORD COUNT ⏵ 15.6 k

It is finally here!! Despite only being a month(even less counting with my request), it feels like forever since I uploaded a fic. It has been recorded as the hottest summer since(idk how many years), so we'll have to pretend it's sweater weather.

PLAYLIST Spotify version

TAGGING @blue-rainydays (you rly dont have to read it if you dont feel like it

like and reblog are highly encouraged!

HE HOLDS THE BASKETBALL WITH GRAY SPOTS AND WORN OFF COLOR BETWEEN HIS PALMS.

The moment it lands in his hands, he looks up the boring white wall. Juyeon stands still even when the wind brushes past his hair and his classmates bicker over who won this round. Up in a single window on the fourth floor stands a girl. Her back is before the schoolyard and her own front is directed at the hidden classroom. Though, he sees how she does a slight turn around the room as if following something, and in her hands is a camcorder. 

The guys quieten and look over at Juyeon with hands in their pockets. Once again, she holds the camcorder with two hands, slowly letting the lens pan the room. Juyeon listens as shoes scrape against the gravel covered concrete. 

“Who is that?” Juyeon asks. 

His friend glance at Juyeon’s eyes before following the invisible line to its final target. Then, he too sees the girl in the open window. The guys behind them have started to play again and are unaware of the contrast in atmosphere between the two halves of the concrete. 

“Y/n? She’s in our class.” His friends push stones and gravel away to create a circle. 

“I didn’t see her.” Juyeon frowns, still with the girl in the center of his rectangular vision. 

“She’s shy,” He looks at Juyeon’s side, “I’ve never heard her talk. She’s often in the janitor’s room.” 

Finally, Juyeon seems to let go of her figure centered in a window. He too has his hands in his pockets. All gravel has pushed up against the sides and formed some sort of mountain chain. He tilts his head as he looks at the guy's line in the gravel. His friend examines Juyeon's face, how the dark pupils seemingly concentrate at nothing and lips being the calmest entity on the yard. 

“It’s confusing to talk to her, she doesn’t look you in the eye or do any sort of motions when you ask her something.” He lose interests in Juyeon’s profile, “I’ve just assumed she’s disinterested in others.” 

The creation on the ground is done and Juyeon’s friend adverts from it. His eyes are back at Juyeon and then,  the basketball game some meters away. A long shadow follows his friend. His back faces Juyeon and he looks behind him to ask;

“Are you playing too?” 

Juyeon nods, still hands in their pockets. All those shadows work as a reflection of the real world and his friend's long mirror joins the other ones. They’re all captured between worn white lines. Juyeon turns one last time towards the window. Where it once was a person, is now only an empty spot without any sort of life. He takes his hands out from the khaki trousers and runs up to the white lined rectangle. 

-

As days pass, he inspects how the green trees turn yellow at its edges. Juyeon sits on a bench between two trees and outlines the once fully bloomed flowers wither in its body before it settles to the ground. Mid September comes around, and when he takes his bicycle out with brushes and paper, he notices how those yellow edges on his paintings don't match the fully brown ones before him. It is now a sea of withered bodies under the once so colorful tree. 

Juyeon, as one season dies and another comes to life, starts to settle his old body in this new world. Friends come around quickly and he has built a net of four other people. He takes the same road to and home from school, enamored by the change in scenery each day. Sometimes his group of friends take their bikes down to the center. It is an eccentric sort of sentiment, to have these two lives of his cross. How the square houses no more than two floors tightly knit together, contrasts to the nearly terrific thin, but tall towers decorate the skyline.  

Even when Juyeon goes through life like this, he has taken interest in the girl at the corner window. She sits furthest in the classroom, surrounded by walls, ones he can’t and can see. Often she has that camcorder to her. Juyeon, despite all things in his new life, spends a lot of time, in-between life events, to observe Y/n in her camcorder. How she pierce through the lens to another world, like reality is somehow desaturated and drear. She smiles throughout short sequences every now and then. Like the pure scenery he sees from a third perspective, is just a background to a complex foreground subject that reaches out to her. Y/n takes a step backwards for everytime the subject moves out of focus.  

During lectures and breaks outside or in the hallway, he sees her without the camcorder. She lets her notebook reach the outer corners of her vision. While that, her pen moves one row after the other down the page. Her figure in the hallways are near impossible to make out between the students, lockers and extended walls. Instead, Juyeon needs to drift out of conversations, scan the room and its hidden corners to find her up against it. 

The sun is setting, but her hair falls before her eyes. Their classmate one row behind reaches out their hand in faith. Tell each of them words of affirmation and wonder if they want to go to the city center, but he notices how she quickly rushes out of the classroom before their classmate comes up to her. 

When they eat lunch, he notices that she eats everything separately. She starts with soup, then side dishes and lastly the rice. When they get mandarin, she gently pulls from the high point and drags one petal down, then another. Y/n continuously opens it like a flower until it’s fully bloomed and the fruit is right in center. 

-

In the last days of September when the downfall won’t stop, Juyeon is in the library. One hears how the rain plummets to the windows and the light gets blurred by the thick layers of rain clouds. He stands in between the maze of shelves and titles. With cautious steps followed each row to find the spine he needs. For their studies of literature, various texts and writing, he searches for a specific title about literature history. At the fourth row, slightly more to the left, Juyeon finds the right green spine and reaches for it. 

As he pulls it towards him, he feels another force coming from the other side. Juyeon lets go of the spine and watches the empty room between book and shelf. In that small space, he finds another pair of eyes. They look at him before disappearing and only the navy blue of their skirt is to see. Despite only intertwining worlds for a second or two, Juyeon immediately recognizes those pairs of eyes. 

He doesn’t say anything when he reaches for the spine again. Instead he pushes it further away from him until the shelf ends and the green book disappears from his sight. He hears how it plummets to the ground in the dead library. Then, he walks away. Juyeon sees himself in third person pulling on his strings to turn around when the shelf ends. But he takes each step with his head in just one single direction, which allows the girl on the other side with the green book in her hands to see his disappearance. 

-

The class is all together in the P.E hall. Juyeon together with the other boys runs after the basketball. The hall goes a few meters underground, therefore the ceiling is of wuthering heights. Their shoes make these high pitch noises when they push off the floor to get to the basket. All together with the cheers from five guys when one throws the ball into the net, or groups of kids in corners along the walls that talk about taking the bike to the city. 

Juyeon high fives his friend and gets a clap on the shoulder from another guy in white tracksuit. The ball slows in speed as it rolls further from the net. Juyeon sees how the boys slowly split into smaller groupings and finds their own part of the hall. In the corner furthest away from the door and close to the net, his new friends stand and wave at him. Juyeon smiles. Before he crosses the room, his head turns behind him. His leg that’s extended towards that corner has stopped and his posture falls. Up on a platform, one meter higher than the basket net, is Y/n with her camcorder again. She stands up on the platform like a pedestal. Somehow he waits for the hall lamps to go out and a sharp point to drain her in the limelight . Despite being the protagonist of this room, no one else seems to notice her presence. 

Her hands guide the camcorder over the floor. Face covered by the camera as she holds the viewfinder to her left eye. Juyeon stares right into the lens when it passes him. By pure assumption, he thinks the camera will pass him like it does for every other student. His posture turns stale when it doesn’t. The camcorder focused on him, just like he is enamored by her center position in this vast space. Though Juyeon doesn’t look away, he seeks for life in that lens. Her hands finally fall down and he, without any larger ambitions, holds eye contact with her. 

A spark in his heart and across the room. He feels the window break the sunlight and a sudden rainbow appears across the painted white lines. But this moment doesn’t last long. Like the spark in his heart that came washing down on him in a second, she turns her back and disappears out the door, out of view. The stage up on the wall is now empty.  

-

The world painted by the author fades in and out of view as Juyeon reads. It’s raining during the break, he’s inside the school library again. He sits on the floor beside a chair. All clouds are tightly knitted together, therefore that no light can escape it. But even through that, the window over him cast a light in-form of the frame over the wooden floor. Juyeon listens to how voices and single sounds travel through the small space. In the other end of the library sits a call of girls conversing over life after school and dreams far away from the place they’re in now. When they laugh, it becomes the loudest sound in the library. Right after, a crack in the wood aligned after each other moves throughout every corner, just as the laugh fades. 

He looks up from the novel that has become nothing more than lines of alphabetic shattered pieces. And the moment his eyes come to lay on the real world, a sort of notion near him from all sides, that can’t be described in this dimension. The high shelves create a sort of tunnel vision that leads straight to a table, furthest down the library. Everything around him seems to point at the same spot and he follows each line, until they all connect in a sort of flower.  He sees, at the center of his vision, the girl from each preceding day. Once again, she holds her camera before her eyes, creating a sort of distance between them. 

In a library where complete silence is regarded, everyone you don’t hold close to heart is two meters away. He finds himself longing to get closer. To discover what is behind that built up wall and what, through the lens of the world, she sees. The world he has come to adore and draw every detail of, is it like in her lens? Or an ever changing filter, to become imagined and upside down, flipped onto itself by creativity. 

As he stares into the lens five meters away, he feels a presence on his shoulder. A warm sensation that spreads over his blazer and down to his hands on the book cover. Juyeon looks up to see his friends. They ask him to play a game in the other room. Without standing up or closing the book, he says yes and the group starts walking. Juyeon takes his eyes off their backs and turns his head back to the scene from before, where no one is anymore. The table  and its chair is as neatly placed and dust free like it has never been used. All windows are closed and each wall isolates them from each side, but he nevertheless feels a cold breeze take him at that moment. 

As the lecture has come to an end and school has come to its final minute. Juyeon sits back to back with the row of lockers. In his hands are a notebook with a stack of orange notes. He sees Y/n stand in the middle of the perfect rectangle that frames the outside world. As it is raining, she holds her unfolded umbrella, as the ceiling is still protecting her. People walk past her gray silhouette without as much of a glance to the left. It is almost like she is waiting when she stands there so calmly, he thinks. 

Finally, she walks. Juyeon watches as her figure comes upon the asphalt and completely disappears over the curve. When she is gone and he is left to his own thoughts, he looks down at the stack of orange paper. Juyeon take his pen and writes a one word message with a smiley face, the last line kind of curved off in the wrong direction. To walk up and follow the endless row of lockers until he stops in front of the one Y/n just stood in front of. He reaches out to the metal and holds the glue side towards it, but stops when he thinks of the people passing by tomorrow. Juyeon senses she might feel uneasy by the sudden acknowledgement towards her existence. Instead he pushes the thin piece of paper between the space of the rectangular door and its frame. 

-

The lower half of the wall is painted in a lively green color. Juyeon walks beside it and stares at the point where the colorless material meets the earthly line. Voices from kids his age fill the corridor before they fly out the open window. He greets two girls walking hand in hand on the opposite side of the room, then he turns left. ‘Classroom 72’ says the rectangle, it reaches out from the flat wall over the door opening. 

Juyeon stands in the frame cornered by the dark wood. Out over the classroom with their usual organized patterns and dim windows stands a girl. She is certainly alive, but the room is still like a patch of nature without human civilization. To think about when this space is packed with kids, how one shouts words to another in the far corner, or yellow post-it notes that travel through each small hand until it lands in the bin by the teachers desk. He stares at it and finds a new way to look at the room thought to be familiar. 

Y/n sees him in the opening, but turns to the chalkboard like he was never there. Another group of students pass classroom 72 to get to their own. She has a rectangular black eraser with a chalk smudged fabric at the bottom. With slow circular movements, she picks up the white chalk from yesterday’s lecture. He looks at her features clearly when the autumn sun directs towards their window and creates a sort of backdrop over her. Somehow, while her body stands before him, the owner of it seems to be away. 

Juyeon leaves his books on the desk closest to the door, he then walks up to the chalkboard. To the left corner of the green rectangle lays another eraser which he picks up. Juyeon starts to smudge out the white letters and shortenings of yesterday’s schedule. The word lunch and ‘12:25’ that stands after it turns to a white spot on the green background, then a slightly darker green, lastly, it’s like it was never there. He looks over towards Y/n, more than a meter away from him. White chalk smudges out over the edges. 

He notices how it’s her arm closest to him that holds the eraser. A very minor smile forms on his lips. It doesn’t make sense how the fact that she’s left handed sends the autumn air cast its leaves over his heart. The math formulas and words with three lines under take him closer to her side. Juyeon stands just a meter away, still smudges out the white chalk. Without even a side glance to her right, he picks up the chalk and starts to draw in between the spaces. Y/n takes notice how the boy beside her does the opposite of their assigned tasks. With smooth lines and faint sound of when he reaches a corner of his drawing. It is now a simple stick figure in the form of a robot with a happy face. Y/n looks at the drawing and then up at Juyeon who has now moved back to the far left corner of the board. The atmosphere hasn’t changed and his demeanor like no one is there, let her inspect his drawing and the guy two meters away. 

Juyeon continuously circles at the upper corner of the board. Soon there is nothing left to clean on this side. He doesn’t hear anything from the right side of the room, though a warm, focused sensation on his right face. The green chalkboard stares back at him as he forces his eyes on that single spot at the center of his vision. Juyeon then perceives a faint scratch of chalk against the flat surface. A white blur comes from all directions towards that center spot. He listens attentively how the chalk moves vertical or diagonally, then when it leaves the surface, just to come back with a clean sound. 

When no more scratches can be heard, Juyeon cautiously turns his head to the right.  Y/n is now even further away, but on the neck of his robot sits a detailed, little bow. Not like the ones you see men wear on the red carpet, rather what you put around a present. It adds a sort of charm, personality to his happy robot. 

Juyeon walks up to it again and starts to draw a bouquet in the robot's right hand. A person can probably barely make out what it is, it looks nearly like matches. He tries to curve the line in some sort of pattern to reflect a rose, but he tilts his head and scrunches his nose. At some point, the robot holds a bouquet of sticks with ambiguous round ends. Juyeon walks away again and starts to organize the bunt of papers on the teachers desk. Once again, he hears strokes of another chalk. Juyeon’s heart seems to be hit right by the sunlight that comes through the window. 

But the classroom that has been so silent changes in a second when their classmates come through the door. Juyeon looks up from the paper stack and sees group after group come through the rectangle frame to take their seats. Girls hold each other hand in hand and the guys throw their textbook onto their desks. Juyeon also took notice how Y/n threw her chalk away and ran down to the far left corner before the cabinet. With her head one level above the desk surface, he stares at her. 

Juyeon, before going to take his own seat, looks at the chalkboard. The spot where his robot has the bow and its flowers is like the scene from before . He wonders if she quickly erased her own drawing. But then, Juyeon walks closer to it and notices how the bouquet all of a sudden doesn’t seem ambiguous, rather very clear in its message. The stems of the flowers reach out and form detailed petals, and it all is wrapped neatly in a paper of sorts. Juyeon returns to his seat in the second row. With his head falling to rest at his palms, he smiles while silently admires the drawing. 

It’s raining again. It has for the past two days. Somehow Juyeon finds himself staring at the ceiling above his bed. He has one hand over his chest and the other behind his head, and so he lays every morning and dawn. The figure of Y/n and her black umbrella in the pouring rain has played in his mind these past nights. 

Juyeon focuses on the center of his palm where it meets his heart. There is nothing different in his heart today, it beats like it always has. Continuously source his body life. He rather has a change in mind. Something pulls and preys on his consciousness, he seeks understanding. The girl in her own world fascinates his mind.  In a way, she is a bit like a dream. 

A magical sort of moment comes into his life when she interchanges with it. Juyeon takes a breath as another wind crashes at the walls. There is magic in daily life too and how each person he passes possesses a desire and will of its own. But the girl turns the world he knows on its head, reinventing it. 

He holds a note close to his heart. One that sat on his locker when he walked out from the last lesson. To see if the surroundings have anything to confess, but it was silent as always between the walls of the hallways. It is a note with a lot of space left to be used, her ‘hello’ is incredibly small. Beside it, there’s a small cluster of flowers. As he lays in bed, he tries to figure out what it means. It’s form and texture, will he be able to figure out its species? With the signs left for him, he searches through magazines about the world’s flowers. 

-

At dawn in the autumn season, the two of them stand once again alone in the classroom. The sun uncover itself from the night sky and beams weakly at Earth. A small space between the door and the wall gives the world a chance to see the room. But even when so invited, the scratch of a chalk against the matte board is the only thing to saturate the school. 

Juyeon has drawn a robot again. He outlined the reference from his memories, but the stomach is a bit longer than the previous and his legs are a bit shorter. But nonetheless, Y/n took a brief look, between the passing minutes to see what he did at the classroom front. Juyeon was drawing a tie on its thin neck in intensive habit. A chair pushed backwards and someone took heel to toe steps towards the spot he was standing in. All that seemed to produce some sort of dim filter over the drawing. 

Now, in the single light at dawn piercing through the looking glass, they both stand with a meter gap. Y/n reaches out for a second chalk and start drawing a stick figure beside his own. As his robot has a school tie, her own figure has a bow around the much more precise neck and a skirt that flares out above the knees. Juyeon observe how she fill in each detail, smile as she doesn’t seem to bother his attentive eyes. When she backs away to see it without idealization, the two figures face each other while smiling. The scenery narrates a gift of acceptance. Juyeon focuses on the right arm of her drawing that doesn’t face down, rather waves to the one on the other side. 

He turns to her profile again. Catch her side face existing in a calm, edging on emotionless. As she stands like that, he thinks to himself that Y/n parallels a red light in the ever changing traffic. To receive a white block at the center of his vision to tell her someone has received her call from the other side of the ocean. Juyeon takes up his chalk again and draws his robot, this time with a blazer. The robot's right arm is awkwardly placed horizontally from the body. As if it's to grab onto something. 

With an anatomy not ideal, he hopes for her to read the words behind his drawing while falling back into place. A wave brings relief over his heart and he breathes when she leans forward, in the precise spot under the first two figures, to draw again. Her hair covers whatever she's drawing. Though, eventually, she too returns to the place from before. The two of them stare while their shoulders beg to brush against the other. The drawings that reach out one of their hands towards the other. Y/n has connected the small hand of her own character to Juyeon’s that abruptly ends in s sharp lift of the chalk. .

As their imaginative selves have taken the other’s hand, Juyeon senses how she slowly lets the camcorder fall from her face. And he wonders if she feels the same. A person without words to express, and their secrets that hides. He wonders if she’ll ever open up that part of herself. In contrast to the silent and motionless room, Y/n walks away. Her mind without a reach is focused on certain point, and while getting there, she passes Juyeon’s desk at the front. Y/n stops at the side of his desk and her vision deviates from that past point. 

Juyeon observes when her body is permanent like winter. Eyes specified and motionless onto his desk. Her hair starts to fall before her view, but she doesn’t take any effort to push it back behind her ears. Rather Y/n secure the object to her vision, to never let it go. Juyeon walks closer to her, still there is a meter between them. But he clearly sees the object that has taken her attention. His clock, upside down on the desk closest to the chalkboard. Throughout the six hours of school, Juyeon usually takes it off twice, sometimes three if the basketball match turns vivid. He looks at the clock and then  back to Y/n’s side profile. 

By an interchangeable sort of manner, she goes between the two viewpoints. Turn and shake on this scene to comprehend what enchants her about the writs band at the gray tables mit. Juyeon looks at the clock again, and notice the number 284 engraved at the circle's zero. The three number digit is incredibly small, barely beyond 5 millimeters. As he stands there, the meter between them becomes two and Y/n before the board again. Juyeon adverts from his clock and looks up to where the morning sun has laid its wings. It  spreads over the wall and the crown sort of ends where her shoulder overlaps. To remain in the spot he was in, he looks at how her shoulder twitches and finally she backs away. 

As some sort of halo, three digit numbers stand above Juyeon and Y/n’s characters. Over his awkward robot stands 284, the number on his clock. Her own halo is the number 220. Additionally, beside her figure says a date in small font. 

February 20th. 

Juyeon dissects and tries to see behind the two numbers on the board, but in no way are they willing to reveal the far side of themselves. In an eccentric progression, the entire room directs towards that drawing like a bullseye. Or, aside from Y/n. She stands with her back against the board and faces him and the inanimate objects surrounding them, waiting for a notion. But a passing breeze flies by him, and in autumn when leaves hold themselves by a single thread to the stem, nothing seems to be picked up.

A classmate comes through the door, breaking that space they’ve created. The moment a second student takes out their chair. Juyeon sees how she picks up the eraser and their drawing fades from the board, away from existence. 

Classes move with the sun over the open sky and Juyeon spends time in the library. His spot under the window is empty and the sun casts itself over it, like in limelight. But Juyeon takes a left turn and walks to the furthest corner of the library. At the bottom of a shelf, covered in dust, stands an entire row of wine red spines. The spines, each one 5 cm wide, represent an entire encyclopedia. The clock moves another centimeter and hits an even number, at the same moment, he takes the first book up and turns the page to the index. His attentive eyes move over the sentences. Each word has him bringing the page closer to him and after one paragraph, he is just down 3 centimeters. 

Time seems to stop for him as he reads through each book, but nonetheless. At ten minutes until the next lecture, Juyeon is on book number eight and has found interest in an article covering one page. With a simple title, Amicable Numbers, he sits on the floor in criss-cross position, stops to move his eyes like it’s a sort of panorama. 

Amicable numbers, or Friendly Numbers, are natural numbers that are related by the sum of their proper divisors. Each sum adds up to the opposite number. 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55 and 110 are 220 proper divisors, and add up to 284. The same progression happens for 284. 

Juyeon slowly lets the heavy cover fall towards the other side. The book weighs heavy on his lap when he continues to sit on the floor. He stares at a dim spot between the titles and falls into wonder about the ‘between’ he has discovered. The 284 under his watch and the 220, February 20th? When falling back towards the floor, Juyeon thinks it may be her birthday. In either way, Y/n stared at the numbers like it was something of importance, that it represented something more in this universe without solution. Somehow she has drawn a final equal sign at the end of earth and finds herself breathing gently while looking at it. Juyeon sits there to understand it, but he can’t quite get a perspective on it. 

Juyeon is indoors this break too. Like spaces between words, the doors work just like it to the green lines. The lamps down the narrow lane do not work, instead he lets the white- edging on blue light fade the walls. Each step comes back at him from all sides while he walks past a second door. Worn down by time and use of space. His ears have gotten used to the silence, therefore, he turns when the sound of footsteps doesn’t line up with his own. The entire lane without lights falls dead again as the two stop. Juyeon’s posture is alleviated when the green lines take his eyes to Y/n three meters away. 

“It’s just you.” He smiles. Juyeon sees how her camcorder is fully opened and four of her fingers sit between the band. It has fallen to below her hip and is covered by the pleats of her skirt. 

Despite the open space between the two of them, she smiles weakly and he receives it. Y/n looks to ground after that single interaction and begins feeling the worn out details on the surface of her camcorder. 

He can’t read what goes through her mind as she stares there. Unable to overlap instances, but enough to see each other from the horizon. He thinks of the book from the library and her annotation on the chalkboard. A part of his heart betrays his mind to stand with his back towards the outside and fall into deeper fascination. 

“Is the janitor’s closet here?” 

Y/n deviates her eyes from the ground and back towards him. His face contrasts with the scene behind him, it can’t be captured by the digital. She walks towards him, and continues past his shoulder. Juyeon follows her figure and how she comes to a stop at another door one space before them. Y/n opens it and walks in. He stands there, in the same space, as if waiting for an invitation  or a call. But he realizes there is none and even him, walks past the frame and into the room. 

A place without AC and lockers half the students size, together with the yellow walls create a contrasting atmosphere to the corridor. He looks at the window gaping down at him. The white curtains block nearly nothing and he stares at the memories of cloudless days these walls tell. He breaks free from them and watches Y/n who sits at the sofa right under the window. The camcorder lens is directed at him like the protagonist of a movie and she moves over the room like it’s his set. 

Juyeon smiles again and comes to think of the numbers. He wants to ask her about the book he took from the furthest shelf in the library. If his hypothesis of her mind is correct. But the space between them has seemed to shorten each yesterday and he thread the new line with slow steps. While he stands in the autumn light and room with too little air, he takes out his backpack and the library book. The page from before is tagged with a small purple note and he opens up the binder. Y/n sees reality through the display, and falls into wonder over his grainy silhouette. He takes a single breath and begins reading the mathematical complexions and editions like lyrics. 

Y/n never takes down the lens or press stop, i instead his melody transcends time and space in this secluded corner of the world. He names the two numbers and their connection, Euler's rules for the bond and their place in the universe. Even when Juyeon comes to the end of Euler’s last sentence, she holds the display still and stares at it like something more will come out of it. Juyeon smiles again and folds the book so that it penetrates the atmosphere he just built. 

He takes a seat one meter away, “Was I right?” 

Y/n looks at how the book disappears behind the fabric of his bag. She too eventually nods and smiles. 

“We’re amicable then.” His head falls back and his eyes are upon the ceiling, “I’ll not forget that.” Juyeon says much lower and closes his eyes. 

When he lies there, one meter from her own existence, she finds it difficult to make out this venture. Juyeon has his eyes closed and both of his hands on the front of the book he just read, it all over his chest. She pulls the strings of her own back and holds her face in a sort of diagonal line. Her nose reaches for the even warmer air in the highest corners of the room. Reality edges on being a dream and when she looks at his fluttering eyelashes, she wants to memorize them like a formula. 

With eyes closed, only ambiguous sounds paint the reality before him. He hears paper irregularly fold itself on an unsecured surface, a pen that nearly punctures the fragile surface and how the right side of the sofa begins tilting. Juyeon opens his eyes again and sees her figure a step closer than when he closed them. To look down between the empty spot beside him and her hand brushing against his blazer. Y/n’s view is rather limited, only on the spot around his pocket. She takes the orange post-it note, written 284 on it, and attaches it gently to the spot of his blazer. Y/n herself take distance from him again, look at the square paper and its bent corners. If the windows would fly open and a wind come crashing, the frail evidence of their connection vanishes. 

The note bunt lies beside her left arm. Juyeon sees it, looks at the paper on his clothing and back at Y/n won’t bridge eyes and lean any forward. Without falling into the ocean of his thoughts and drowning in contemplation before breathing, he takes the note and starts writing himself. 220 he writes, over and over again. Each one, he plaster on opposite sides of her blazer. When Y/n looks at her shoulder, chest, stomach or arm, traces of him are splattered all over her existence. To see him again, beaming like the row of streetlights during night, she feels a warm sensation push out the autumn season. 

Her hair falls before her face, powerless to read her emotions. But right after, she reaches for the pen and paper to write 284 again. She attaches it to the lower part of his blazer. Now Y/n sit on her knees and the white fabric of her blouse covers whatever scenery was before him. The clothes that have been confined in her presence and absorbed her scent is so close that he feels it working like perfume on him. Rose color taints his face and he refuses to look up. 

At the top of the world, Y/n writes 1.618 on another note and places it on his shoulder. Now covered in five different notes with all unique numbers, she falls down to earth again, closer than ever to him. Andromeda and the Milky Way will once the day comes, in a  million years collide and become a galactic spectacle, Juyeon feels his body want to lean forward and discover  every part of the girl in front of him. But he forces himself to sit in the space he has always been in, to appreciate her diviness from afar and wait for the full moon to leave its sign.

-

Those clouds that are heavy with rain  cover the lucent sun that shines on Earth.  The weather that has fallen, follows the slight curve of the asphalt and connects into puddles. Juyeon and his friends adverts from their lockers with umbrellas, backpacks and light pushes from the other’s elbow. When he stands side by side with his friend and sees the downpour framed between the double doors. Juyeon looks down on his blazer and sees the patterns of square notes. He doesn’t stay in place, rather continues in those conversations while moving one note after the other higher up on his blazer. 

They stand by the framed rain, at the edge of where the downpour starts. One after the other opens up their umbrellas. They form a sort of flower induced in fabric. How each petal sometimes touches the other. It moves forward like a lively creature, when one steps down the stairs and the other trains after. Juyeon stands last in the train and before his shoe overflows with water he hears a thud from behind. When he looks back, he sees Y/n who stands in the left corner of the hallway. She isn’t covered by the locker, but she presses onto it like she wishes it did. In front of her lies a book. 

He hesitates at the edge of the school and stares at her. Above the book are her hands that have her fingers desperately scratch on her palms. Her head moves the left corner of her view frame. Those constant actions make it hard for her hair to stay in one place and they fall to cover her face. But by those short moments when one strand lands on the other side, he sees her bitten lips and worried eyes. 

“Juyeon?” 

To break apart from what’s behind him, he sees his friends in the rain half turned. Their eyes on his silhouette are cloudy like the weather, drained in confusion over what has draped over his mind. Another friend group walks past them, out in the pouring rain. Finally he looks back again to see Y/n in the same place as before and takes a step back into the school. 

“It’s something important, I’ll catch you guys later!” He sort of waves his hand before he runs up to the lockers again. Even then his friends stay in that puddle for a bit until they turn their backs on school and continue up over the asphalt. 

Other students he faces on the way back make room for him. He stops when  in front of her figure. Conversations become clear and then fade before another one enters as they stand there. Juyeon eyes her attentively, shoulder pressing further into the locker and her head lowers all the more to the ground. When her blazer trashes and pushes, the notes from before hold onto the fabric. Juyeon sees it and presses it onto the blazer again, then takes his umbrella to the side. Right side of the hallway can only perceive a piece of their person when the umbrella embraces them. 

Juyeon looks over her sunken body that still forcefully tries to press the world out of it. A small corner under a pair of stairs. He takes the arm of her blazer and draws it gently towards his own body. In that moment, Y/n looks through the hair that has fallen over her face. Juyeon doesn’t look at her, rather has his eyes on that spot under the stairs. 

“Come.” He whispers and Y/n nods. With slow steps they push close to the lockers to let the other students pass. Juyeon fixates on the fact that Y/n is beside him and lockers and not the other way, or how the stairs are just a few meters further away. Though, when he feels a faint pull on his own blazer, Juyeon swears the rain stops for a moment and the clouds drift apart to shine a light on  his heart. When finally under the staircase he sees the ocean of people drain out in the rain. There's some significant space between the ocean and the two of them, but he wonders if the constant conversations and endless shrill sounds of wet shoes and floor continues to suffocate her mind. 

Y/n, who, like the crowd, slowly drains of whatever’s left as her heart falls into normal motion. Despite her eyelids feeling all heavier and body leans onto the wall for support, she sees his hands contract. She pays attention to how he first opens his hand, wide and welcoming, until they close again, a kind of insecure motion. Tired, she lifts her head to watch his side. Juyeon watches how the rain drenches and fights umbrellas before he takes a small step to her side and lifts his hand to Y/n’s. For the first time in his life, his body connects with Y/n’s and a warm feeling in this autumn weather spreads over him. 

Y/n experience how the world contracts on itself and becomes this fixed point in the universe. The wind becomes non-existent and words are background music to whatever she lays her eyes on. She hears how the world becomes muted when a warm sensation comes over her ears. By the calmness created in this corner of the school, she looks to the side again and sees Juyeon still face to face with the world outside.  

The two of them stand like that while the school empties out the last students. Juyeon looks down at Y/n everytime an autumn breeze comes through the door and Y/n, when she senses he is somewhere else. The muted world confine her like a mother’s hug and she lets herself drown it. But despite the safeness and organized thoughts, everytime Y/n looks up at him she has this sensation that pushes her chest. It somehow penetrates her skin and bone, floods out in her blood and pulls her heart. Y/n looks at him and wonders if it is a good or a bad feeling. 

When the hallway, abandoned and drained of life, Juyeon loosens his hands gently. He says quietly;

“It’s safe to go.” 

He looks down at the place where her hands hold the fabric of his blazer. Somehow, she seems to struggle a bit. Juyeon notices how she opens her mouth, but closes it again and takes a breath. 

“Can we go together?” Her words are barely over a whisper but it somehow took his breath away. 

“Yes.” He answers just as quietly and smiles before they start to walk out. Each step they take colors by the rain covered floor, and they both continue the pattern. Juyeon feels how she lets go of his jacket and bends to her right to put away her book. At the edge before the rain, he once again opens the umbrella and holds it over their heads. Juyeon knows she won’t go first, so without any sort of restraint he takes a step out in the rain. 

The rain that plummets towards the umbrella creates a sound similar to a second hand on a clock, soothes their minds. He stares at the cracks in the road and muted trees, streetlights that aren't on, tight alleyways between the low houses. When they’ve walked for some time, Juyeon falls into a world of his own. He didn’t talk so as not to force her to interact with him, but now nature has genuinely enchanted him to grow without words. 

A hazy filter that covers his square vision fades from him when he feels a push on his umbrella. Juyeon looks to his left where Y/n gently tugs at the handle over his hand. Now none of the rain reaches his shoulder, but with hesitation, he moves it closer to her again. Y/n, again takes the handle and refuses to let go of it. A faded sort of confusion has become a third person that was two. As one desperately reads their actions, and the other bears frustration that can’t be detected when trying to convey. 

“It’ll get wet.” Y/n finally says and looks at the post-it note furthest away from his chest. Aside from the fact that his navy blazer is even darker on that part, but the 284 in black ink has sort of melted. Nature is in grief over the loss of her leaves and now sheds tears down the Earth. Tears that smudge all over the world like makeup. Juyeon turns towards Y/n who has moved her notes further up her blouse, right beside her tie. Affection and care is beyond these numbers in a way he can’t comprehend, but he smiles either way and turns to the discolord note again. With a new found affection for it he moves it further up too. 

“Can you write a new one?” Juyeon asks gently. 

Y/n who secures the 220 note of her own on the blazer looks up at him. Eyes that are focused at some point further down the road, his side profile where every feature resembles a sort of perfect ruby, his eyes in the color of a tree in rain. She lets out a sound that should resemble a ‘what?’. Though, Juyeon turns to her immediately and asks gently again. 

“Can you write a new one for me?” And points at the orange note. 

Y/n looks at him, his eyes crystal clear. Fast she focuses attention on the note and smiles. Despite the autumn weather and downpour that pushes all its force onto them. A soft streamline warmth goes through her and wraps around her heart. Somehow it isn’t holding a tight grip on her throat, rather sympathizes along the mind and whispers to open her walls up so that she can finally breathe. It is a euphoric kind of feeling that makes her want to smile. And so she does and nods as an answer to his question. 

It has been raining for days on end. Juyeon has looked out the window everyday and listened to how it crashes onto his roof. But today on one Friday afternoon, when school ends and kids eagerly rush out from the double doors. The clouds decide to reveal the main star of this corner of the universe, and let it shine brightly on Earth. All bicycles stand one after another to create an endless line of colors and thin structures. Juyeon stands in the center of all directions and sees how kids go up to take their bikes. But quickly, he turns away from that sight and searches the rigid edges and sharp angles of the school yard. He reaches onto his toes and bends his knees to find her silhouette obscured at the edges. 

At last, he sees a lonely figure under the roof where the school building folds into a corner. How two friends arm in arm walk past her and Y/n pushes herself even higher up against the wall so there is a two meter space between them. East from that center spot, he leaves it. Y/n also has her camera, panning the entire scenery with a smile she only has while filming. The lens lands on Juyeon and he sees how her entire person stops for a bit. He stares into the lens, waves and smiles. Under the complex silver camcorder, she reflects the expression. This camcorder somehow works as a middleman and he winks, visualizing it transferring to the grainy rectangular screen. 

Juyeon comes up to the white wall and he, too, leans on the uneven material. “Would you be okay with bicycling down the city with me?” He asks without superficial sentences. 

She thinks of the past day, and all other moments they share together. Again, her body seems to create this quick invisible stream that flies past her. Juyeon waits for her at the finish line, even when the season changes and everyone has gone home. No one is there to see her draw a period at the end of her sentence, just Juyeon. 

“Okay.” She says weakly and looks up at him with a smile. Y/n can’t quite read what he feels when looking at her at this moment, but his smile becomes even wider. That is a good thing she knows, therefore she wants him to smile like that forever. . 

The cycle leans to the right and Juyeon’s leg holds the weight up. At the front of the steering is a basket attached in which he puts his bag. Juyeon’s head leans over his shoulder. On the furthest part of his cycle, she sits with a backpack close to her stomach, and at the same time tighten a helmet. Y/n lifts her chin up so as to not pinch the skin between her neck and head. While doing that, her eyebrows and eyes interlock while her lips stay serene. He discerns each feature of her face. 

“Do you always have that with you?” He asks and Y/n looks at him with creased eyebrows.  

“I’ve never seen you ride a bike before.” 

“I can’t.” Y/n falls back into her monotone voice and rigid demeanor, “Helmet reduces risk of head injury by over 50%, serious injury by 70% and severe traumatic brain injury by 74%.” 

Y/n stares at the houses behind Juyeon while her arms shove the canvas fabric of her backpack against her stomach.. From the perspective of the people who pass, Y/n appear to be bound with ropes to Juyeon’s cycle, though in fact, it is her nature. Juyeon still smiles, leans his weight onto the steering. 

“Do you judge me that I do not have a helmet?” He asks in which Y/n only shrugs her shoulders and tilts her head so that one strand falls before her eyes. 

“I believe in free will.” She says objectively. 

A cluster of rocks flies two meters away from the cycle line when he takes off. Juyeon feels a weak force of her pulling on his blazer. 

They follow a single road that divides into two. All houses become sharper and higher as trees become all the more scarce. They see how the sky opens up before them and two trees fade to the side of their viewpoint to reveal a skyline with traits of an incoming wave. When they stop at the circle of all the buildings, Juyeon asks Y/n if it’s fine. She nods without a second thought. At every corner, shop or billboard, Juyeon leans down to ask if it’s fine. Even when Y/n walks slower and takes longer to answer his questions, she insists on going. 

When the blue sky has turned pink, the two come out in the heart of the spending district. Square screens with colorful advertisements on glass estates that reflects whatever comes at them. The whole city seems to impend on the two of them as they walk the green light. As they hold their head high to see the point where the skyscrapers are swallowed by the sky, a wave of people come right at them. The moment Y/n feel the heat of people coming past her and conversations so loud that she can’t discern the sound of green lights. Y/n falls onto Juyeon’s side. Hold his school blazer, hide her face behind his shoulder, walk so closely that she becomes aware of his trousers, rough against her legs. 

Juyeon construes her desperation to not just move out the way, but disappear.  In such wise, he let her solace behind him and peek over all heads to see where the ocean hits shore. He can’t find an end to the wall of people that has surrounded them. To escape the spot they stand on he too smallens himself to push through bodies and bodies of Seoul. Juyeon has a hard time even turning his head right, instead, he wishes for that faint pull on his blazer to never let go. 

After a minute, he stands on the other side of the line. Juyeon is in front of a restaurant where warm orange light illuminates his left side. Though, he perceives quickly that there is just him here. To face the crowd once again, and look at it from above. Juyeon’s heart races the moment his thoughts come crashing down on him. A new person passes him every second, the light has turned green again and he sees hopeless reflection in the puddle beneath him. The moment the surface bursts from someone's shoe, he doesn’t take another second to look at the broken mirror, instead walks straight into the overcrowded line again. 

Again he feels not only the city, but every person impending on him, swallowing him until there is  nothing left to do than reach out for air. Juyeon frantically turns his head and body, he apologizes when he walks into someone without making eye contact. His blazer is folded in the wrong places, shoes are wet from the rain puddles, his bag is nearly more like a backpack. In a spot right where the entire Seoul surrounds him, he feels their eyes and turns around to face them all. Juyeon shouts Y/n’s name and perceives the eye of passing strangers, how each one shortly speculates on his messed up appearance and desperate eyes, before going back to their own lifes. Once again, he shouts her name. His body reaches some sort of emptiness. The drain right under him has water from puddles all over the city falling into it and he too feels like it’s slowly taking every part of him. 

Though, the green light takes a step down and turns red, only people’s backs are visible as they continue life down a different alleyway. And Juyeon can swear that his heart does such a motion that it nearly hurts in his chest. He breathes out and can feel his legs go out the moment he does. At a white wall on the store filled street, she sits hunched over her own self as if protecting it from the people passing. There is a plant beside her and an alleyway some meters away. The doors from the closest clothing store opens and he sees people coming out and eyeing her figure. 

Before another car runs over the horizontal lines, Juyeon leaves and runs up to her. Somehow, she appears smaller than before. The lines of her blazer drapes her like in a blanket and her hair falls over knees and arms near a curtain. The two are furthest into the building on the busy street. Contrast clearly against the loud conversations and constant movement, they’re perfectly still. Juyeon stands right before her feet, he is not even certain that Y/n is aware of his person being here. 

With that, he slowly bends his knees to come in the same height as her. Knees brush against his chin and gently he places his hand on the end of her shoe. Juyeon’s hand lies like a feather on top of her black shoes. The touch is barely sensible but enough to create a warmth and Y/n peaks through the strands of hair that cover her face. Juyeon can’t quite make sense of what lies behind those blinds. The evening has crept up on Seoul and none of the million streetlights and store signs pierce through her side. But it doesn’t change his perception, instead Juyeon reaches out for the arm of her blazer and pulls it gently towards his warmth. 

He whispers, “Do you want to hide beside me?” 

Y/n nods. He stands up again while still holding the blue fabric. Y/n slowly follows his motions, the moment she is up, she moves to his side to stand in the same position as when they were crossing the street. Streetlights show the way out of the center and Juyeon leads as Y/n faces the ground. 

-

When he thinks of how he could feel her breathe from behind and pull on his clothing, the current situation seems rather depressing. Instead of a slight pull on his jacket to indicate her existence, he looks behind every now and then to see her face completely mirror the passing ground. Her hands grab onto the space of the bicycle she’s not sitting on and her backpack depends on her weak shoulders. By the impending asphalt they travel by, Juyeon discerns small circles and by the time they’ve reached the alleys of warm colored trees, it’s raining again. 

As the complexes get all tighter and shorter, more bricks, cats run past them to hide under wood. Juyeon regards a hasty, dejected part of his heart. A part that has developed during the moment he sat himself on the cycle and just growed larger the further they’ve gotten. The girl behind him looks just like the dying leaves on the passing trees. He stays quiet because there is nothing to say, or he does it because he knows their perception of the world runs like parallel lines. Either way, Juyeon takes all slower and slower steps on the pedals as he needs to break their silence. 

“I don’t know where your house is?” Juyeon leans back and speaks composedly. Their blazers are a shade darker than before and water from their hair runs down on their shirts. He whispers again and hopes she will answer. Finally she points weakly to the right where a brick and concrete house with a balcony continues. The moment she points, he takes force again. But Juyeon quickly slows down when they pass door after door. He waits for a sign from her and if he wasn’t attentive at the moment, he wouldn’t have heard the quiet russells of her backpack. 

Juyeon fully stops the bike and his feet fall right on a puddle. Water converts from the spot she steps down into. Her hair covers whatever her face is telling and juyeon grabs the steering a bit tighter. Aside from the constant rain, there is complete silence between them. Y/n stands there, a meter away, like it is a responsibility. How her hands grab the straps of her back pack and rain soaked hair covers her existence. 

“Thanks…” Y/n whispers with a voice devoid of any personality. 

In one way, he answers her and the figure of a drained uniform moves step after step closer to a door on the left. Until she disappears behind it and he is left staring at the same spot she once stood in. How the coldness of the rain finally hits him, and a shiver starts 

at the top of his shoulder, down to the hand on the steering. The earth looks so much colder all of a sudden and he can no longer see the beauty of the pink flower petals beside the door. Juyeon bites his lip and turns his bicycle the other way. 

He doesn’t jump back up onto the cycle, rather, continues to let the cracks in the road take him home. This moment, he thinks, reminds him of a scene from childhood. When during an autumn morning, walk out alone between the trees and high grass while his parents were asleep. At the entrance of the forest, he met a creature different from himself. A deer. Juyeon with the lowest part of his jeans in puddles from the night rain and fleece going well past his hands, stands still while sharing its space. The deer doesn’t move, rather, looks at him too. And how the world moves slower for just this moment and the magical creature takes a step closer. Juyeon reached out his hand and the deer eventually sniffed it. The morning silence made him feel like it was just the two of them in this world. But in a second it shatters. When a toy car falls out of his left pocket and plummets right onto a moss covered stone. The deer, frightened and looks at him with eyes that makes him feel like a traitor and before being able to beg for forgiveness, it’s already gone. 

The teacher is talking and points at white chalk structure on the green board, but Juyeon tilts his head onto his palm. He stares at a spot in this space that is now empty. That chair, furthest into the classroom. And as another day passes he does the same. Juyeon keeps turning to the places wherein his memories, Y/n are in. But before his heart races, it falters since there is no one to reciprocate it. 

It’s Wednesday right after lunch, five days after Juyeon asked Y/n to follow him down the city center. Juyeon sits alone on that sofa in the janitor’s room. His head faces the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, cracks and bits of dry paint. Nauseousness makes a sort of impression on his heart when he looks at the four walls on all sides. His body has a sort of hyper sensibility in contrast. One that has him tremor his leg and itch deep into the skin beside his nails. 

The skyscrapers he passed everyday, people that were a part of his daily routine and stores with neon signs where his friends would meet on Saturday evening. It is all so beautiful to him, but crawls like nightmares over Y/n’s mind.  Everytime he closes his eyes, he sees that scene of her body desperately saving itself and how the world that have raised him like a mother, performs the very reasons to be alive- grip onto her limbs to kick and scream at her contracting conception. 

His head adverts from the ceiling to lay on its side. To look at the now empty seat that triggers memories. He’s a stranger to being alone. To always be surrounded by life and its consciousness, he thinks it must kind of protect him from something else threading this world, Juyeon feels the inanimate objects descend onto him. 

While he feels like that, a sort of curiosity blooms like spring within him. Juyeon turns to her empty seat again and pictures her figure in constant desolation. How she seems natural and drawn to tunnel vision and cubicle spaces without undertone of life. Juyeon knits his eyebrows and stares at the bulb again. How come she who detaches the world in her camcorder and isolates herself in rooms without personalities, went on and on in the overcrowded city center. 

A ache in his heart sources the nauseous to drown his mind once again. He thinks of the walls that have comforted her, held her because she doesn’t know who else will do. The clock moves forward another minute and before it strikes 13:15, he walks up to take a hatched A4 paper and a line pencil, broken at the top. He sort of draws in all his thoughts to a timeless collection, but walks up again to find an eraser. Where his thoughts write themselves as Russian novels, he needs to shorten them to a modern short story. With concise word choice and covered sentences that deviate from the point, he folds over the letter. 

In the same spot he stood three days ago, Juyeon now sees himself again. Between the edge of the asphalt and platform to her door, is an expanse of grass. He guides his bicycle up to it and bends down the support with his feet. When he walks up onto the platform, his figure sways a bit to the left. Juyeon’s eyes focus on the gap where the stone meets the door, then slowly make its way towards the door handle. Feet lift up and down from the platform like it will somehow open the door and he scratches his nape like someone will come from behind and open. After a minute, he imagines the flower pot beside him breathing and living so he does the same. Right at that moment, Juyeon reaches out his hand to knock on the door,  and at the same time, his left leg directs to a spot, away from the door. 

For a brief time, his ambiance stands static against time and he contends whether to leave this platform. As the passing stream behind him takes a single leaf down the drain, he takes a step down. And when he is fully out of the atmosphere of the door, it opens. Y/n’s home stands wide for him in a second. Juyeon, uncomfortable by the pure display of someone’s life, is rigid at every part of his body. A meter before him, through the angle of being two steps below them, stands a woman in his own parents' age. 

As expected by life. Time has affected her essence, with each year, spread out to the edges of her person. But like Earth with her ever changing nature and folds from tectonic plates. She is ever so beautiful. Juyeon won’t say anything and the woman smiles as another second passes without him moving. Her sudden change in expression drives the earth another step around its axis and he can feel spring go right through him. 

“Is there something to help with?” She asks. 

Finally he orders his limbs in a sort of acceptable pattern and his posture in a way he’d seen male leads do when waiting for their bride to walk down the aisle. Before he answers, Juyeon coughs lightly and looks on the grass and platform. The woman again smiles at his flustered state. 

“It’s your daughter, Mrs.y/l/n.” He coughs again. She holds a hand on the door frame and looks up at his face. From her angle he positions right where the sun would be. 

“I wanted to know if she’s okay?.” He looks down and sees her eyes go a bit bigger. 

“You’re a friend of Y/n?” 

It’s quiet. “ I moved here recently.” Juyeon points towards an ambiguous spot behind him, “We’ve been hanging out for a week.” 

Her smile becomes even more evident and he can’t help but mirror it. Each time she asks him something or smiles at him, his shoulders loosens a bit and he becomes the one self he sees in the puddle reflection. Juyeon finds no gap between their question and answers to take up his folded letter. And by the moment at the edge of their small talk, the mother asks him; 

“Please come in, don’t stand in the rain.” She walks to the side, and now the whole hallway down to the last window stands before him. Juyeon hesitates; 

“Are you sure? Is Y/n okay with that?” 

Again she eyes him in a way to ask him where he comes from. Juyeon reads something sincere from her pupil out to the brown color. He wonders when he looks at him like this, in what order of people have come to this house at the side of the road. If, to count up all the numbers of people that have stood on the platform like he does now and get to surround themself with their life. In what place would he land? Number seven, twenty fifth or fourteenth. In his mind complexion, the furthest part of him works like a voice in whisper, asking if he may be the first to visit for Y/n. 

“She’s in her room, as long as we’re quiet it’s okay.” She says sincerely and Juyeon nods. To step in and feel the wind stop brushing up against his back, it feels at peace. On the black carpet under the door, he places his shoes and follows the mother down the two walls. To the left is the kitchen area. A rectangular table in the midst of all pans, towels and carpets. She takes out a chair and reaches out her hand towards the one right in front. 

“Sit.” 

Juyeon thanks her before accommodate. Y/n’s mother works as a foreground to the windows behind her and the trees they frame. Each wall has a row of postcards and under the windows stands flower pots with lamps double its length. On the table stands an empty mug and a candle nearly burnt all the way down. So much that it has dropped and hardened on the table surface. 

“Is she okay, then?” Juyeon leans forward, eyes wide and with glitter at the edges. 

The woman’s smile and fond look turns to a disheartened mothers one quickly after he asks it. She starts holding the cup and smiles weakly again. 

“It used to be worse.” The mother sighs, “She wants to be alone when it gets overwhelming.” “She knows what stresses her so it doesn’t happen much anymore.” She looks at a door to the left, which he assumes is Y/n’s room. 

“I’m sorry I can’t let you in.” She says. 

“Oh, it’s okay, I didn’t expect to see her.” 

“Then why are you here?” 

He coughs and starts searching his pockets, “I wanted to leave this.” He hands her the letter, “I think I did some wrongs, I just want to reassure her.” 

She takes it, “What do you do together?” 

“We’re in the library or janitor’s room often. I think she likes it when I read to her so I search up books with topics that I think might interest her and read them out loud. She gives me post-it notes too so I try to write some back.” Juyeon takes out the 284 note from his blazer and shows it to the mother. 

Each stroke of the black ink on the orange paper is written in fine thought. The letters that barely take up a twelfth of the square and a period at the end, no matter what she writes. The mother turns away from the note and observes the boy she has before her. Somehow he has landed in her house, it gets absurd and entangled when she tries to figure out how. But nonetheless another human being sits here in sincere patience for her daughter. Those ideas he voiced before, using words like “I think” and “try”. She falls into a sort of trance of intrigue of his seemingly confused state of what is the right way to approach this person, and at the same time innocent passion to find out. 

“I’ll make sure she gets it.” The mother says as she breaks off from looking at the young boy. In attentive fashion she leans the letter onto the depressing candle. Juyeon stares at the rectangular piece of paper in the middle of the empty table. It makes itself at home in her house and he feels a bit of relief wash over him the longer he stares at it. 

“Thank you.” Juyeon stands up and bows. 

Y/n’s mother also rises from the chair to bow. He walks out of the kitchen and disappears behind the wall. Short after, she hears the front door open and slowly closes, just the sound of one metal falling into place with another. She is left alone like before he came into their lives, and she stares down at the little letter. Though he’s not here anymore, a part of him has sunken into the walls of their home and she breathes out like something heavy has fallen off her chest. The first time a person her daughter’s age came to their home was on a usual Wednesday afternoon, right after work. 

She reaches her hand out for the center of the door and knocks gently three times. Shortly after, she opens it and peaks between the fifteen centimeter opening and then pulls it all the way to reveal her daughter on the floor. Y/n sits with her legs up to her chin and hugs them at the same time. She can’t fully perceive her face, solely her side profile. In which, it is illuminated by the square TV over a VHS player. To focus on the screen, she sees a scenery way too familiar. Despite having about twenty VHS on the floor beside her, her mother can only name about five different places that seem to be the same clip over and over. But each tape has its number and there seems to be a shift in scenario from each one, invisible to her mothers eye. 

“Are you comfortable eating in the kitchen?” Her mother’s voice is quiet and light, tender and sympathetic. 

Y/n shakes her head and falls even deeper behind her knees. She has spent the last days in the same uniform she came home in. The scene before her is devoid of any color and she sighs in a way that only she herself can hear. 

“Okay.” Her mother acknowledges, “I’ll come back.” 

Her mother walks in again and places a white plate beside her daughter. In addition to the plate, Juyeon’s letter is neatly placed above it. Her mother leaves the room and when Y/n hears the door lock with the frame, she turns to the plate. The letter folded neatly and placed in the limelight, she picks it up. To separate the glue from the paper, she folds it open and reads the letter. 

this is juyeon

I had fun Friday, but honestly, I think I like it the most in the janitor’s room or the library. I like the stores but it’s even better when you give me post-it notes. I’m not a great reader, teachers always said I had too little expression, but I enjoy reading for you. When I think of the short time we’ve had together, those are the moments that come to mind. I can’t really recall your voice or say confidently which eye color you have, light brown? But you describe nature in numbers and when I look at a tree, I think of that formula you told me. I don’t know why you see five hundred in blue, but every time I see it, I see it in that color. 

I should be straightforward. I don’t think you need to change because I like how you give me a new way to look at the world. 

sorry for making things complex and illogical : )

A sort of silence walks around the room. Even when she folds the square paper to its original form, it is ever present. A sensation so hard that it falls out like light between the crack of one's door. She must grab the center of her chest, push whatever’s begging to come out into her isolated heart. Y/n’s breath becomes even more prominent. Dreams start to affect reality and she sits there in silence for a while. Face the world with her hidden colors and different angles. 

“Mother…” 

She squints her eyes and looks at the silhouette between the frames. 

“Yes.” 

“Where is the tape recorder?” Y/n asks. Her mother points at an ambiguous spot in the dark. But she eventually finds the black recorder and the tape material. To close the door and leave her mother to ask the moon about the shift in person. 

The moon stands at the top of Earth and shines on its surface. Y/n leans on her single window and stares at it like it is just the two of them in this current world. The rain has moved over her hometown as it has followed the wind to the southern part of the country. Without the rows of streetlights, the night sky is decorated with faint circles of light. Fades into different colors in a way that you forget they’re larger than the celestial they stand on. 

Y/n sits at the end of her bed. The single window opens up before it and the moon shines its light over her bed, in which the sheet reflects it back in a sort of white-lavender magic. She has finally taken off her white blouse and navy skirt, folded neatly at the top of her chair. Instead she has a white dress that ruffles at the wrists and follows no lines of her own body. As she sits there together with the moonlight, she has a notebook in her lap. While writing and erasing words she continuously pulls back the front pieces of her hair behind her ear as they fall in front of the pages. 

Once the moon has moved another hour, its reflection is up against Y/n’s wall. She straightens her back to look honestly at the paper she has covered. It nearly feels like another hour moves by before she lays the notebook on her pillow and reaches behind her to take up the tape recorder. Y/n takes the end of the rectangular box close to her lips and pushes down the button on its side. It makes a sound that is perceived as deafening in her timeless room. 

A second goes by and another one just like it. Instead of looking at the words she just has written, she stares at the moon like it's watching her. There is something very vulnerable sitting on her bed, in her room and with a recorder. Every leaf on the tree outside, the moon, its stars, her chair and the camcorder on her desk. Everything with its 3 dimensions perceive a drastic change in her heart. Somehow, it feels extremely frightening growing leaves and sprouts during the second half of the year, when everything else is slowly dying.  

At the center of the entrance, Juyeon doesn’t take another step forward. He watches the backs of his classmates continue into the school, while he fades from them. To stand still in the hallway where each one goes through their changes, Juyeon is standing hard-set to the wet floor and wrapped in other dimensions than the one stands on. At the front of the locker that’s been vacant of life, stands a girl in her usual presence. Like time has refused to move during these past days. Y/n closes her locker and just guides a passing look over the hallway, they meet eye contact. 

As they stand face to face towards each other, Juyeon perceives how colors fill his vision and rush against his heart. A girl seemingly devoid of happiness, like the rain clouds bringing life to the ones around it. Students walk right through the invisible wire, though, it feels a bit like radio silence. Her expression has fallen into a neutral and perceiving nature. There is nothing to judge in her demeanor as her hands can grab onto her backpack or her feet kick in the front door. 

A sudden spark between the stations and a jump from either side to the other. He receives a call back from the opposite side of the earth and Y/n stars walking towards him. The radio signal figures its way into his heart and wraps around his mind. Juyeon, similar to the broken TV at home, is adamant on the single position he is in, unable to comprehend what the other ways to go exist. Finally, she comes up before him. 

The feeling of air loss becomes all frequent as his heartbeat pulsates in an unusual rhythm . His hand hangs from its side, the right twitches as he becomes aware of it just simply being on his side, awkwardly, without purpose. After all, the hallway is nearly empty, and the last of their classmates walk into the classroom. In that moment, when one steps their heel onto the cold hard floor, Y/n brings out a cassette tape. With one hand on the backpack strap and the other holding the cassette tape, halfway left until she meets his life. Juyeon looks at her with big eyes and slowly closes what’s left between them. When he holds it in his hands, Y/n moves to the left, changes directions and her back disappears behind the classroom door. 

-

Juyeon turns to see the end of the classroom throughout the lectures. But Y/n passes him like she has never had an affect on his life. The tape that fits in his palm holds answers to the insecurities that have been eating him from the inside. At his usual spot under the window in the library, he looks up and down the room before pressing play on the player. 

It is all quiet at first. He senses a faint sound of leaves being taken by a wind and an owl two trees away.

It’s Y/n…, she coughs. 

I want to say thank you. Her voice shakes, I don’t understand why you’re being so nice to me. I think about it a lot… and I still don’t understand. …You’re the first person I want to be around, but I don’t want to bother you, so I try to be… 

There’s silence again. 

I- sometimes it feels like you’re reading my mind, but I can’t even understand what your facial expression means. I try to be more like you, but I can’t do that, I’m sorry…But I think I’m relieved you understand… 

She breathes as if she’s about to say something more, but it abruptly stops before any words are left spoken. The recording is over and Juyeon taps play again as if hoping something else will come out if it. Instead he falls back and looks at the ceiling. To be left in the ame position and have your heart running like you’ve passed half the globe in just 5 minutes. Juyeon closes his eyes to feel that warmth escape his chest and drown his body. 

Without exchanging words, they walk again along the asphalt. Let each crack in the road guide them home. Y/n won’t acknowledge his existence when she lets go of the door to her home. A familiar surrounding opens up before him, but a sort of new found appreciation and excitement blossoms between his heart as Y/n herself lets him into her world. Her mother sits on the same chair as she did when they talked, and he bows as far as his back allows him to. Neither daughter or mother does any sort of audible affirmation of the scene in their kitchen. Rather, mother’s eyes won’t close and Y/n awkwardly shifts in the same spot until she grabs onto Juyeon’s blazer and opens the door to her own room. 

They sit here, on her carpet in the middle of her room. Y/n observe the boy before her. When he holds his head low and falls deep into his own world, she gets a chance to look at him without distractions. To pick apart his devine features honestly and ask questions without fear of judgment. However, Juyeon notices in the background how no movements seem to come from Y/n’s hand and he then looks up to see her gazing at him in a sort of overwhelming way. 

“Do I have something on my face?” He asks and takes up his left hand to his lips. 

Despite Juyeon now preceding how her arm moves forward and naturally fragrant when she comes closer, Y/n continues dissecting. When she bends a centimeter to see his face from a lower angle, his posture trunks rigid and he doesn’t blink as if she will do something unprecedented if he does. It’s something intimidating with how she leans on her hands to support her weight as she comprehends every hidden feature or flaw on his face. 

“I don’t understand you.” Y/n finally says without expressions and falls back onto her spot. 

“I don’t either.” Juyeon smiles before he looks back on his poetry book. Each sentence adds onto the other and builds a sort of wall. He treasures each word like the stroke of one's brush and back away to see the complete painting. Though, as he falls in love with the words on the paper, he takes interest in how Y/n still hasn’t moved. Juyeon looks up again and sees her face staring at the same features as before. Dissecting and annotating. 

His curiosity leads him into a well of deep fascination. A person who twitches when one's skin comes too close to hers and escapes into an uncertain point when eye contact becomes too overbearing. Somehow sits before him, closer than ever, with hands on the floor like she’s never going to let go. His eyes close and he imagines Y/n counting his fluttering eyelashes. And memorize them like a math equation. 

Eventually, like everything else, she falls back to the place she came from. A gap wider than before has occurred between them, but no wind or coldness force itself the protective layer they’ve created. Juyeon doesn’t look back down to his poems, instead waits for her. After some passing seconds, Y/n looks down towards her hatched notebook before he pushes it towards him. 

A rectangular sheet of paper, covered in rows of numbers and symbols. He sees short key words with arrows pointing towards a formula running ten centimeters of the paper. He connects number 284 with his clock, but 4, 8 and 10? Y/n have quietly observed him when playing basketball, drawing or calculating. How many times he blows on a spoon of hot soup, pushes his locker or shakes his rain-covered umbrella.  It is all detailed in her book that she takes whatever she goes. 

His birthday at the top of the page, equal sign after equal sign down to the formula 3 x 7 = 21. Description of clouds during a free spring in the clear blue background. A single circle connected with a line towards the 21. Annotated in yellow with an extra note about clouds edging on pastel. The circle at the bottom of the page, chasing its diviness. 

“But it doesn’t make sense.” Y/n says quietly and stares at her complex row of mathematical poetry. 

“Does it have to?” Juyeon tilts his head and Y/n looks up at him again. Her eyebrows are knitted and her lips sealed as ever, “Does it have to make sense?” 

Juyeon can repeat his questions infinitely, but she will not fully receive the purpose of his question. In which he catches up to his own self and the divider of the world they live in. To look at her with a new perspective on the world, Juyeon picks up the bundle of orange post-it-notes. On each one, he draws circles with bent edges and unsymmetrical halves. Either way, he pulls each one off and attaches it against her blazer.  The circle in perfect nature and worshiped figure. He sees her in it. Sculpted by nature and perfect in its way of life. 

Y/n looks down at the ten different circles on her blazer and then back up at Juyeon, “I don’t understand it either, I just like your existence.” 

Y/n smiles just faintly. 

The puddles from yesterday’s rain have created a pattern over the rooftop. Juyeon stands five meters away from the stairs and leans on the metal railing. As it is break time, he watches his classmates occupate themselves at every corner of the dry ground. An incoming wind takes friction against him and disappears  between the layers of his clothes. He pushes his arms closer against each other and his silhouette falls in height. Since the morning, Juyeon has realized that even autumn’s soon passing him by. 

As the changing season moves along, he feels his own heart transform. To look back on the past months, he sees himself in a sort of continuous evolution. He feels another wind take on him and he sees Y/n in the mirage of his memories. Each step in the transformation, she stands at the opposite corner of the room or right beside him. He thinks of her camcorder covering half of her face to the day they sat on the floor of her room. Y/n too, seems to have been ever changing this time too. 

Since the day she confessed she couldn’t understand him, she has been carrying that notebook. Juyeon takes notice of how when he mentions something in passing, Y/n takes up the book to annotate it. And for each time they meet eyes, cross paths in the hallway or make eye contact in the classroom. Her eyes seem brighter. He looks at his world and wonders why it feels different, he blames the dead leaves and colder weather. But Juyeon starts to think that maybe Y/n has discovered something new, loosened the routines she worshiped. 

When he thinks about her, the door from behind opens. The weather storm around his ears and he looks back to see the person in the door frame. She lets the door fall to the closed space and the whole building surrounds the two. All hair strands fall before her face, covering whatever emotion for him. Her hand moves up to her right side and brushes away beside her ear. Y/n smiles as brightly as a person like her does and walks forward. Beside him on the railing, they stand together and look out over the changing landscape. 

“You’re not cold?” Juyeon looks at her and she shakes her head. Like always, they make room for each other to speak or nature to voice its thoughts. 

“I’ve figured it out.” Y/n smiles and takes up the notebook he has seen everyday. When she looks up at him with one page open.  Juyeon gently leans forward and observes the wall of numbers, to nearly create some sort of mathematical painting. 

She starts to describe the number and their sentences, how each one affects the other. Soon it all starts falling like a domino. Her words come out faster and with no sort of adjustment in language. Each formula becomes blurrier than the other, and before she is on the last equal sign, Juyeon has given up trying to dissect the words she’s speaking, rather look at her features glistening while describing. Even without summer sun, her face emits a warmth, golden light. 

Y/n talks about longitude and latitude, his birthday, bicycle, address, carbon and Earth’s birth. He can’t count them all, but all his parts are intertwined with the universe in a sixteen part formula, in which it all ends with his existence, the exact coordinate and exact time. 

Even when there are no words left to say, he admires her calm features that lingers over the A4 paper. She looks at it with a sort of gentleness only spring and a small village 3 miles outside the city center has. Juyeon’s hair falls before his eyes, but he doesn’t bother to correct it. All the words he can’t fully grasp, it becomes a parentheses, as the scenery behind it pierce through the curtains and reveals itself for him. As she holds the equation close to her heart, and he doesn’t ask her why since, he knows she too loves his existence.

BONUS

At the end of a long day, Juyeon lies in his bed with the ceiling like constellation above him. Right before the two parted ways, Y/n gave him a cassette tape. He has them all stacked against each other on the rectangular night stand. At number 11, he can no longer fit his lamp, it stands below his bed. To press 'play' and pull the sound close to his essence. His world does another year and his heart compress. It's just three words in her voice, but it sends Earth colliding. Juyeon lies there as the sun moves over the sky, to press the 'play' button over and over again.

© littleroaes, written and all

A/N: if anyone made it down here, i really want to say thank you for reading. Im not confident in this fic, i really love it, but im not sure it turned out good enough. thats all, thank you again!

[centrally-unplanned]

Thoughts ahoy, and spoilers:

I think it is often challenging in Sci Fi+ stories to make interior character arcs match their setting in fantasticality. The default state is that its a fantastical setting & conflict, but the emotions are people emotions, which makes sense, its people reading the story. (Or something fully alien as a contrast). Su's arc really does a good job of pushing that boundary as far as it can go without breaking it. Her forced mind-meld, quasi-hostile subconscious, and self-destructive levels of regret over her past actions are in the end yeah relatable, right, people definitely get trapped in cycles of guilt. But her mind still feels alien, the slipping between identities, both as independent entities and as love/hate dyads towards each other, is depicted with bracing detail without it ever/rarely being "two minds in one body" which would just be two people and a plot device. One of peak moments of craft for a writer is capturing an emotion in a way that the audience has never seen before while still fully impacting them, making them see it in just a tiny bit of a new way, and I think Su's cursed existence reaches that peak.

On the other hand, look me in eyes and tell me that, if none of the time loop murder mystery timey wimey ball stuff happened, and Su just visited Samium, had her last hope destroyed, and left the Sanctuary like normal, how her arc would be different at all. There are few nods to ideas like the loops letting time help her heal, etc, but its very minor and its not really evident in practice. Its a big problem, the story is like split in two, and those halves don't talk much to each other. The reality is that the large majority of Su's arc happens in flashback; we are seeing her at her culmination, and its a culmination that is occurring completely independently of the events at hand. And additionally besides Ran no one knows or ever learns about her true "identity", so the events with other people lack pathways beyond the illustrative to really impact her. She even, at the end of the loop-plot when Ran dies, dismisses the plot as irrelevant herself! Little on the nose there.

I enjoy how "in too deep" Ran is; she is from page 1 at least 50% ~done with this entire "resurrect Utsushikome" crusade, and is totally done by the end, but she can't just say that. She started it! And Su now completely buys into it. So you just...shoulder on, absolutely mood

It says a loooot about me that I instinctively see Kuroka as male, and struggled a bit to shake that. Their despondent struggle with a sort of society-wide devaluation, of needing to earn every scrap of affection and "place" and it being always contingent, it resonated with me quite strongly in the Deep Ways.

Oh previously I criticized the story for self-sabotaging its "moments" for the sake of drip-feed pacing, so I just want to note that Fang's death fucked, that is how you do a moment! Spend an entire chapter building up his affable superiority, given him multiple bluff check wins in a row, all timed for what seems like the resolution of a big plot moment that had a ton of build up. Spend all that, set him up to give a classic Poirotan reveal speech, and then JFK the fucker right in the temple; back and to the left baby. I felt the panic as the group just exploded, real win. This is similarly done with Kam's Determinator arc later, even if that gets a bit more stretched out. When the author wants to commit to the bit they know how, definitely hope more of those moments are given space in future books.

Okay, a big critique on this one - the story is branded as a murder mystery, very aggressively so (including 4th-wall-ish breaking fair play whodunnit rules), but it really isn't? There was even stuff like one chapter even had a poll asking who did a killing, quite cool! But there are so many structural problems that kill interest in that concept. Motives is the biggest one; none of students have any pre-established motives or even depth of character to support the idea that they would be at all involved in these harebrained schemes. Characters are debating whether or not Ophelia killed Yantho, and if Seth is collaborating with the Order to betray them for idk money?? and it all falls totally flat. None of these characters would do any of these things, because they are just normal students. (Lilith is the only one that somewhat works, as her sheer weirdness begged for a cause) And the Order's motives are simply cartoonish. We get stacked revelations one after another- oh they have a gun that stop time, tell your friends! Oh now entropy is conscious yeah I know entropy never came up before none of the students study this but trust me bro. Oh wait one time we made babies with space implants and just kept killing them, baby after baby, so now we might be cursed, and so on. If this was a story about the Order, maybe this could work? But in the end it isn't - its about Su, and she doesn't care about any this. Su has no interest in a time gun unless she can use it to off herself, Ran's only interest in entropic gods is so she can judge them as cheap plot devices in her genre fiction, Kam's problem of being a bootlicking blabbermouth (affectionate) will not be solved by her eating space babies - for one, she's vegan. Its a tonal break from how grounded the story was and fails to connect. By the end the story itself is self-aware of this fact, making fun of how convoluted the solutions are - which is funny, those scenes work! But that is a trick you can play in a real murder mystery when you have given the audience solid fair-play tricks beforehand to solve, and its like a change of pace. If you make a joke of the one big time you give out any true answers...well then the whole thing was a joke. So why all the time spent on it? (I understand that some of these things might "connect back" in Book 2, and to that I say Book 1 is almost 3000 pages. You can't stretch your foreshadowing that far at this quantity)

I liked the fact that Director & Playwright are quasi-real characters representing the culprits of the Time Loop just fine! Yeah its meta you have seen before but you've seen everything before, I think it added a bunch of humor and fun change-ups of the narrative style.

Alright long enough already overall I enjoyed it a lot. Its emotional peaks were very strong, its world-building is top notch, and I like a lot of the characterization. It definitely has weaknesses that could be deal breakers for some, and that is fair - but if they aren't for you, I can recommend giving it a go.

Finished Novel 1 of A Flower That Bloomed Nowhere!

...There's a second one! I didn't know that! Fuck meeeeeee

[cyborg-franky]

Hey Franky! I was wondering if you could write something capturing Ace’s reaction to the reader confessing to him that they’re in love with him?

Here <3

Ace stared at you, eyes wide and mouth open.

All you could hear was the pulse thumping in your ears and the splashing of booze from Ace’s tilted mug hitting the deck.

The mug tilted more, nearly emptying all the contents from it before he realised and stood up straight.

You could see the blush that danced on his freckled cheeks as he gave a few slow blinks.

He was still processing your confession as he leaned on the table, setting down the mug and running a hand through his hair.

The confusion had turned into a sort of panic you mused as he gripped the edge of the table he was perched on.

“Wh-what? I don’t think I heard that right..” He said with an awkward laugh, still unable to meet your gaze, instead he stared down at his boots.

“I said I love you.” You repeated and took a breath to steady your nerves, you weren’t sure how he was going to react but this wasn’t one of your guesses..

“Why?” He asked, finally pulling his gaze up, his eyes meeting yours as you fidgeted in place from the intense and questioning look he was giving you.

“Why do I love you?” You asked, a little taken aback yourself.

“Yeah, I’m not worth it, I’m not worth someone like you loving me..” He scuffed his boot against the planks, trying to anchor himself as he poured out his feelings.

“I love you for so many reasons Ace, just because you can’t see them doesn't mean you don't have many wonderful things about you, so much to love in fact!” You said and stepped between his legs.

Cupping his cheeks and making him look up, you smiled softly and felt his hands reach yours, holding them against his face, you could feel the uncertain tremble.

“You really love me? No matter what?” Ace’s voice was so soft, so unsure, and you weren't used to it.

“Yes, I love you enough for both of us.” 

You could see the tears gathering in his eyes before he closed them, pulling you into a hug, his face against you as he held you so tightly.

“I love you too.”

[crumbledcastle28]

Din Djarin: Blood

Summary: Din Djarin x fem!reader

Summary: Din had never been so scared in his life, until he held your bleeding form in his hands. And it was all his fault.

Warnings: canon typical violence, Din gets sort of a panic attack, he also kills a lot of people, bleeding, blood on his helmet, shooting, but a happy ending (with lots of smooching).

A/N: this is definitely inspired by the scene at the very beginning of The Force Awakens, and Din has lost Grogu, so I guess this is technically set after Season 2. If you don’t feel you can handle blood and gore, please don’t partake. I would never want anyone to be uncomfortable. Thank you :)

If you’d like to leave a like, reblog, comment, or an ask, I would love to hear your thoughts <3

Din Masterlist

Din never really had a problem dealing with blood, especially when it came to his own.

He was basically forced to grow up with it, learning how to fight and survive through the Mandalorian culture. Weapons and battle were part of his religion, and he never knew any other way. He didn’t have the option to learn any other way. He learned how to put his fears and anxieties to the side, and his prime focus was always getting the job done. No matter what.

If he bled, he bled.

That is, until he met you.

When he met you, he slowly realized that….maybe, jobs and credits weren’t everything. His attachment to you as a person overpowered any desire for a reputation, or more money, or even to expand his beskar armor.

He learned that, at the end of the day, material things were expendable. You, however, were not.

You were incredibly, incredibly, important to him. So much it was scary. You stuck with him during the moments when he learned Grogu’s real name, and freed villages from the Empire’s rule. You even helped persuade him to go back for the kid in the first place. You helped him keep Grogu safe for months, and send him off for better training.

You were the only constant in his life.

And when Din had to deal with the loss of the kid, and the gaping hole that was left behind, you were the only one who even came close to filling the void left in Din’s heart.

He loved the kid, he really did, but what he felt for you was…different. Different in a way that was hard to explain, especially for a man like Din who never had to rely on his words. It happened gradually, but after the kid left, it became apparent to him that he…

…he loved you too. He loved you like a wife. And seeing you bleed was as if he was the one being drained from the inside out, not you. It hurt him deeply.

Especially when it was his fault. All his fault.

He was the reason that you were now taken from him. If he had just paid a bit more attention and actually listened to your warnings over the comm link, he would have found you before the Empire did. He would have stopped this from happening, and things would have been different.

But he didn’t. He let the red color under his vision and his past grievances with the Empire drown his thoughts away from you, and now you were captured. Taken.

And Din was done waiting. He was done taking hit after hit. It was time for him to hit the Empire back.

Hard.

He barely waited a few hours before his plan to get you back was put into motion. He knew exactly how to get to the Cruiser where you were kept, and the new ship that you and him had bought together was even more classified than the Crest. This allowed him to have even more of a chance to sneak on and off the Cruiser without being caught.

He treated his own wounds, got some med pacs and food ready for your return, and took off to get you.

He wasn’t going to leave you behind. Not now, not ever.

In classic Din fashion, however, your rescue did not go as planned in the slightest.

He planned to just sneak on to the ship, get you, and get out. He couldn’t afford to be spotted by Stormtroopers or commanders, especially due to the fact that he was vastly outnumbered and still healing from his own wounds.

But, just his luck, he snuck around a hallway at the exact wrong time, and the red tone and blaring alarms of the Imperial ship gave away his exact position almost immediately.

Great.

He felt himself start to get overwhelmed and the panic in his belly started to rise up into his brain, making it foggy. The Empire would know he was here for you, they would lock you down even harder than they had before, and they would end up hurting you more than they already had, just to get under his skin. Just to make him hurt.

He had to force himself to breathe and hold onto the wall for stability.

Come on, he thought to himself. You won’t get Y/N if you just stand here and hide, like a coward. You will never get to feel her touch against your helmet ever again, or hear her groggily voice in the morning. Her laugh will never echo through the ship ever again, and you will be completely alone, just like before.

She will never know how I feel about her, Din thought, if I just stand here and do nothing.

He straightened up, cracked his neck, and said to himself, I’ve got this.

I’m going to get her back.

He took the blaster out of his belt, pulled the beskar spear out off of his back, and raced down the hall.

~~*~~

Din stopped keeping track of how many troopers he took down after the first 10. He let his body go on autopilot, and he used the image of you alone in some disgusting cell to motivate him. He shot anyone who came in his way, even if they were trying to surrender, and finally made it to your holding chamber after only a few minutes.

He could tell it was yours by how many troopers there were patrolling the doors. The flashing red and alarms were still going off, meaning that you had to know someone was on the ship who wasn’t supposed to be.

It’s me Y/N, he thought. I’m coming.

With one final kick of adrenaline, he stormed the guards and took them down one by one.

His mind was in such a haze that he barely remembered what he was doing until he was done. He remembered feeling a bruise begin to form on his chest from the frequent blaster shots he took, and maybe a cut or two on his back from lucky shots by Stormtroopers, but hearing your scream from the inside of the cell made his stomach drop to the floor.

He had one more trooper to go, and he held him in a choke with his spear until he heard his neck snap, letting the body drop to the floor in front of him.

He turned around as quick as he could, and hacked into the cell, getting it open straight away. He stormed into the cell, pointed his gun at anything that moved, and took out two more troopers.

He finally had the chance to recollect himself, taking a few deep breaths and checking to make sure the room was clear, before he spotted your chained body on the cold, metal floor.

His blaster and spear hit the ground immediately, and he fell to his knees beside you.

“Y/N,” he whispered. “Oh Y/N.”

You were laying on your back, and your hands were trapped in chains connected to the wall. You had bruises littered around your face, and your breaths were quick and panicked.

But you were alive.

“Come on Y/N,” he said, and moved his arms underneath you. “It’s me. I’ve got you.”

The distant look in your beautiful eyes started to face, and you made eye-contact with his visor.

“Din?” you whispered, and a choked sob escaped from Din’s lips.

“Yes. Yes it’s me,” he said. “I’m here.”

“I knew I—” you began, and wiped your right hand over his helmet, “I knew I’d see you again.”

Din’s lips curved into a smile, but they soon dropped open at what you really wiped on his helmet.

Blood.

Your blood.

Any breath that Din could breathe was knocked out of his lungs, and he searched your body for where the vibrant red was flowing.

“Y/N— you’re, you’re hurt,” he said. “Where? Tell me where.”

“My…my stomach,” you said. “The troopers. It was the troopers. They knew you were coming.”

Din gently moved your forearms from where they were pressing against your abdomen, and his helmet fell against your forehead at the sight.

They did cut you. Badly. And it was all over your arms and the floor.

“This is all my fault Y/N, all of it,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

The streak of blood across his helmet was bright against the grey of the beskar, and you felt your eyes begin to flutter.

“No Din no,” you said. “I’ll be fine. We just gotta get out of here.”

Din drew in a harsh breath, before nodding against your forehead and lifting you into his arms. He tore the metal restraints on your wrists completely in half, and threw them across the room.

“Stay close to me,” he whispered against you, and carried you bridal style out of the cell, making sure your head was pressed against his chest. He had his arms completely wrapped around you, holding you so tight he was sure he left bruises, but he took off towards his ship as quick as he could.

He had never been so scared in his life, holding your shaking and bleeding body against his own, and he blocked every shot and knife that was thrown at you with his armor.

All he wanted was to get back to the ship. It didn’t matter how many people would track him, or if they knew that the two of you were “working together.”

None of it mattered. None of it even crossed his mind.

All he saw was you.

~~*~~

You had to have blacked out on the way back to the ship, because all you remembered was Din’s cool beskar against your fingertips and his whispers over the loud alarms. You remembered hearing the fear in his voice, and desperately wanting it to go away.

Your Mandalorian had been through enough already, and he deserved none of it.

You fluttered your eyes back open once the doors to the ship, your ship, opened back up, and Din was running as fast as he could to get inside.

“Alright. It’s alright,” he said with you still in his arms. You could still feel the sticky blood from your stomach on your shirt and all over his armor.

“We made it,” he said, and shut the doors. He continued to hold you with one arm as he set the ship into hyperdrive, and before you knew it, you heard the familiar groans of the ship taking off.

A faint smile came to your face, and the pain subsided for a moment.

“We need bacta,” Din said, and set you down delicately on the floor. He raced back to the pilot’s chair, and got out seemingly every ointment and spray imaginable.

“Just keep your pretty eyes open for me, ok?” he mumbled, and you nodded with another smile.

“I’m here,” you said, and Din set down the supplies next to you with a huff.

“Ok, now I just have to…” he began, and hovered his hands over your stomach. “Holy shit.”

Din could now see just how much blood you were losing from the blade, and his hands began to shake even more. He didn’t even know where to begin.

“Din—”

“I don’t…what do I—“

“Breathe.”

You held your hands against his helmet once again, and ran your knuckles over where his cheeks would be. His rapid breaths were loud under the modulator.

“I can’t lose you,” he sobbed. “I can’t.”

“You won’t Din,” you responded. “You aren’t. I just need some help.”

You somehow found the strength to smile at him, and Din felt the tears start to drip down his cheeks and into his mouth. His heart rate lowered at bit at your bright expression, filled with hope, and Din sniffled.

“Ok,” he said. “Ok.”

And he proceeded to wrap your stomach. He had to make it tighter than usual to stop the bleeding, and your groans and gasps of pain sent even more cracks down his heart. He let you grab onto his shoulder for some relief, and he wiped as many tears of pain from your face as he could, whispering sweet nothings as he did.

“You’re almost there,” he said during the final wrap. “Almost.”

He tied the wrappings together on your stomach, cut off the extra fabric, and gently set his hands on your cut.

“Good,” he whispered. “Good cyar’ika, you did it.”

You took some final deep breaths and rubbed your face, trying to get any extra snot or blood off of you, and Din brought your body closer to his. His arms were still wrapped around you, trying to keep your body off of the floor.

You both just sat in silence for a few moments, trying to recollect yourselves. All Din wanted to do was just sit and listen to you breathe. He wanted to feel the air enter your lungs, and your heartbeat against his palm.

You were alive.

“Din,” you finally spoke up. “Thank you.”

You smiled at him again, wrapping your arm around the back of his neck, and brought his helmet to your forehead once again.

“Why are you thanking me?” he asked. “I’m the reason you’re hurt. I’m the reason you got captured. I constantly have your life in danger.”

“Din,” you said, “please. Please stop.”

“I don’t think you understand Y/N,” he said, and placed his own hands on your face. It took you a second to realize that they were bare, free from their leather cage.

Din’s bare hands were touching you. The hands you so desperately wanted to hold. You could feel their warmth on your face, and you shut your eyes to bask in the feeling.

“I can’t lose you,” he said. “I can’t. I can’t do it. All I’ve ever had is you. All I could ever want is you. And ever since the kid…”

“Shhh,” you whispered against him. “I know. I know.”

“You’re the only thing I have,” he said. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t leave you Din,” you said, and brought his bare hand to your lips to press a firm kiss.

“Because I…love you.”

Your tear-stained eyes met his underneath his visor, and Din felt his heart explode with relief, so much so his body almost collapsed in on itself. His own eyes closed out of joy, and a flood of emotions that he had been burying down finally escaped their hold.

Love. Happiness. Deserving. Bliss.

He was so happy.

He opened his eyes again, and dropped his hands from your face.

Your eyebrows wrinkled in confusion when his hands left your body. They were soft and warm, and perfectly Din. It was finally a real touch from him, and you didn’t want it to end.

“Din, what—”

“Shh cyare,” he said. “Let me do this.”

His arms gently slipped from underneath your body, making sure your stomach was elevated and wrapped tightly. He then curved his thumbs underneath his helmet, and slowly raised it over his head.

Your eyes filled with more tears, and your hands covered your mouth in shock.

He was really doing this. He was really going to show you his face, the thing you daydreamed and fantasized about since the moment you met him. It felt absolutely surreal.

The first thing you noticed once the helmet hit the floor was his hair. It was long and brown, with perfect curls. Some parts were even golden. It looked soft and bouncy, perfect for running your nails through.

You then let your eyes trail down to his forehead and facial structure, and his slightly curved nose had to have been the most attractive thing you had ever seen. His facial hair and slight mustache was perfect for him, and his soft eyes complimented everything just right.

He had to be an angel, or some sort of ethereal being.

Your Din. Your Mandalorian. This was the real him.

A sob escaped your mouth, and a tear dripped down his face as well. His straight teeth and dimples were now showing as well, and you couldn’t help running your hand over his cheek. The scruff was soft and slightly pointy, but your hand tingled at the feeling.

“Keep doing that,” he mumbled, and he let his eyes shut as you traced the curves and contours of his face. Everything about him was soft, but manly. He had definitely seen battle, with little scars along his neck and jaw to prove it, but everything about it was him. Even his deep breaths against your palms on his face sent chills down your forearms. It was intoxicating.

You wanted to stare at him forever.

You finally cleared your throat and pushed away the soft hair on his forehead.

“Din?” you asked, and a giddy laugh of excitement escaped your mouth.

“Y/N?” he responded, chuckling deeply. His voice without the modulator was similar, but infinitely better.

“Kiss me.”

And he did.

He pressed his flush lips against yours passionately, wrapping his arms around your body once again. You scrapped your nails up his scalp, letting them sit on the back of his head so they could massage the hair there.

It was so soft.

He started to move his lips against yours, and you molded your own into him, letting him take the lead. You were pumped with so much adrenaline and dopamine that you were surprised you were even thinking straight.

All you could hear were his deep breaths into your mouth, and all you could feel was his soft hands over your body. He made sure to keep his hands off of your wound, keeping them along your hips and up towards your neck, and you just couldn’t take your hands off of his face. His hair was destined to be a mess after you pulled away.

If you ever pulled away.

It was becoming more and more passionate, so much so that the struggle to breathe was almost too much to bear, and the rocking of your bodies against each other was becoming too addictive. You couldn’t take your hands off of him.

You finally pried your lips from his, and opened your eyes to see a flushed and sweating Din.

“You’re beautiful Din,” you said. “Maker you’re gorgeous.”

Din’s skin flushed a deeper red, and his smile was so wonderful you almost started crying again.

“I love you too Y/N. I wanted you to see my face to prove it.”

You smiled once again, so big your cheeks were hurting, and you kissed him harder than you had before.

“I love you.”

“I love you,” he said, and your laugh echoed along the walls of the ship once again.

And it would never leave.

Tag list: (I apologize if your tag isn’t working or if I missed you!! Please feel free to ask to be added. I’d love to have you :))

@leahkenobi @burned-dorito @tiredbuthappy @em---r @just-a-sewer-goblin @punkiwki @martinsmomo @leisureaurora @letaliabane @cathenan @big-ol-boat @jezebel1945 @niiight-dreamerr @caffeinatedfestivalsheep @call-me-doll-face @yelyahcardella @letskeepthislo-ki @misspearly1 @petals-opento-the-moon @homespun-desperation @cheesecakeinthecorridor @writerlyhabits

[littleoanh]

Hi I wanted to request a fluff for inui x freader

Reader is a bimbo and has known inui for a long time and always follows him while inui protects her and beats up other guys that look at her.

Smut can be added too lol

A/N: Hi my darling, daushu! Oooh, I haven’t written Inui’s character yet. Hopefully I capture his character well. Enjoy!

Can’t Fight This Feeling

Characters: Seishu Inui x bimbo!Reader

Warnings: Fluff, very brief manga spoiler, a bit of violence (Inui’s punching and fighting other guys), childhood friends to lovers, kissing and smut (slight nipple play, oral, unprotected sex, overstimulated, Inui calling reader 'baby', and sort of creampie)

Special Thanks: EB for proofreading and being my beta reader.

Like, reblogging, and kind comments are appreciated.

“Inupi!” You happily rush into D&D Motor, the bike shop where Inui and Draken owned together. Inui looks up to find you wearing a short skirt that barely covers and a tight tank top with your breasts practically spilling out. “Look, look, look!” You show off your newly set of long bright pink matte nails with bunny art designs. “Isn’t it soooo cute?” 

Your bubbly smile always warms Inui’s chest, his dark emerald eyes wanders from your outfit to your dangerously long nails. His expression remains neutral even though he is actually worried. You might accidentally hurt yourself with those long nails, you have always been clumsy since you two were kids.

“Why do you need your nails to be so long?” Inui questions while staring at the cute bunny design, it reminds him of you. Innocent and naïve.

“You don’t like it?” Your eyes start to glisten with tears, Inui panics slightly, not wanting to be the cause for your tears.

“It’s not that I don’t … I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.” Your tears instinctively dried up knowing he is worried about your wellbeing. That’s how Inui is and you adore him for that.

“Oh! Don’t worry, I promise I’ll be careful.” You smile while propping yourself on the counter while swinging your legs, Inui can easily see your pink thong underneath your skirt. “Are you almost on your lunch break?” 

“Not yet, Draken is out at the moment. Once he’s back, we can grab lunch.” He goes back into working on a bike. 

You watch Inui concentrate, you have always found him handsome and sweet. When Inui and Koko went their separate ways, you chose to follow Inui as he has always been protective of you and never criticized you for anything.

You notice his sunflower blonde hair is covering his eyes. You dig into your purse to find something to help pull his hair out of the way. You find your glitter butterfly hair pins and hop off the counter to approach him. You kneel down beside him to tuck his sunflower blonde hair strands back.

“Hm?” His eyes are now focused on you.

“Oh, sorry!” You didn’t mean to break his concentration. “Your hair looks like it’s blocking your view and I wanted to help.” He sees your glitter butterfly hair pins in your delicate hands, although he rather not have butterfly pins in his hair but he appreciates how thoughtful you are. “Can I?”

“Yeah.” Inui said softly, letting you put your glitter butterfly pins in his hair. You gently sweep your fingers in his hair and place the pins. He takes a whiff of your sweet perfume he always liked on you. The front door swings open, the bell alerting someone is coming into the shop. Inui abruptly stands up to shield you from prying eyes. He can’t stand it when guys stare at you, hunger in their eyes.

“Hey.” It was just Draken, Inui lets his guards down.

“Oh hi, Draken!” You stand up and wave cheerfully, Draken is used to women wearing clothes like yours and he is able to maintain eye contact. Hence why Inui trusts him.

“Hi [Y/n], here to take Inui out for lunch?” 

“Yeah! Is that okay?” You ask him for permission, he smiles.

“Yeah, that’s fine. Have fun you two.” You happily bounce in excitement, making your breasts jiggle and Inui tries not to get hard from that. Inui washes his hand before taking off with you, he doesn’t want to dirty you with his oil hands. 

“Bye bye, Draken. We’ll be right back!” You sweetly wave before walking out the shop with Inui.

He always walks by the curbside to protect you from incoming cars or bikes. Especially since you are wearing high heels. On multiple occasions, he has witnessed you almost falling into traffic and it had been one of his greatest fears.

“I’m really excited to try this place! I heard it has so many yummy dishes-” You accidentally roll your ankle and almost fall into someone. Inui quick reflexes catch you before you crash. “Oh whoopsie! Sorry about that.”

“You okay there, girlie?” A creeper is leering at you up and down, checking out your tight and skimpy outfit.

“Yes-” Inui interrupts by shoving the creeper’s face into a shop window.

“She’s fine.” Inui’s voice got deeper, “I suggest you keep your eyes off of her, asshole.” 

“What is your problem?! I wasn’t doing-” 

“Inupi.” Inui catches your worriedness, then he lets go of the creeper and pulls you along to keep moving. “Inupi, are you mad at me? I’m sorry for not watching where I was going.” He runs his hand through his hair roughly.

“No,” He watches his tone with you, “I’m not mad at you.” His dark emerald eyes stares worrying into yours, “Is your ankle okay?” You softly smile.

“Yes, my ankle is fine. Thank you.” He nods slightly.

You two made it to the restaurant and were able to have a peaceful lunch on the patio until someone decided to spill their water on you. Water droplets can be seen trailing down your cleavage.  

“Oops, sorry about that.” This creep doesn’t even pretend to hide that he did it on purpose. His eyes are focused on your chest. His friends can be heard in the back, snickering. “Here let me help you with that.” He has a napkin and is about to touch you, but Inui didn’t hesitate to punch the guy.

“Don’t you dare lay your filthy hands on her.” Inui glares down at the fallen creeper.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, Scar Face?” The creeper’s friends are ganging up on him.

“Inupi …” You are getting scared, Inui will not allow to have anyone to come near you. He easily knocks those guys out, making sure they are not disturbing the other patrons at the restaurant. They scramble off, leaving you two alone and Inui looks back to see the top part of your tank is see through. Inui unbuttons his shirt to take it off and extends it out to you.

“Sorry, I know my shirt isn’t exactly nice … but wear this temporarily.” 

“Um,” You couldn’t stop staring at Inui’s nice lean body, “won’t you get cold?”

“Don’t worry about me, just please wear it.” Inui pleads. You take his shirt and he helps you button up before you two head back to D&D Motors, Draken is surprised to see Inui shirtless.

“Did something happen?” Draken asks as Inui brushes past him along with you.

“Just dealing with assholes.” Inui takes you upstairs to his living space,

 Draken shakes his head. He knows Inui beats up guys who dares to look at you or even breathes in your direction. You two made it to his room and he closed the door behind you. He doesn’t say anything but you can feel the tension in the air and you can’t help but to start sniffing.

Inui turns back to you, wondering why you are crying. “What’s wrong?” 

“I’m-I’m sorry, Inupi.” You couldn’t stop the tears, rolling down your face. “You’re always getting into fights because of me. I don’t know why you want to be friends with me when all I ever do … is trouble you. You must be annoyed or-or hate me.” His eyes widened then comes over to you to gently wipe your tears away with his rough thumbs. 

“[Y/n], I could never hate you, or find you annoying or think you cause me any trouble.” He talks softly to you, trying to calm you down. “I’m always getting into fights because I want to protect you.”

“Bu-but why?” Your big doe eyes look at him in bewilderment. His lips break into a gentle small smile, how have you not known his feelings for you?

“Because I like you, [Y/n].” He directly confesses, “I always have.”

“You … you do?” Your heart is beating at a blistering pace, you have always liked Inui too since you two were kids. But you always thought he only liked you as a friend. Inui leans in close to your face, searching in your eyes as though he is asking for your permission. You close your eyes, giving him consent. He softly presses his lips on yours, he has been yearning to taste you for so long. You whimper when he pulls away, your eyes are glossy, “Inui …” You cup his handsome face, wanting to kiss him more.

“Seishu … please call me Seishu.” He leans into your heartwarming touch, wanting to hear you to call him by his first name. 

“Seishu.”

Inui captures your lips again but it is more aggressive, not wanting to hold anything back. He lightly pushes you back to have you on his bed, trapping you in between his arms. Never breaking the steamy kiss, his tongue swipe across your bottom lip. Your pretty moan gives him the chance to play with your tongue. He easily dominates yours, it is exhilarating and nearly taking your breath away. It feels so good to kiss him, you wish this would have happened sooner. Your small hands roam on his lean half naked body, wanting to feel his warmth. Inui moves his kisses down to your neck, nipping your plush skin while unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt.

“Mmm, Seishu please.” Hearing you beg drives him wild. 

Inui roughly pulls your tank down, revealing your tits and sucks on your nipple, while his other hand squeezes and plays with your other nipple. Your pussy starts to get wet and your clit is feeling achy. You begin to squirm from his electric touch as he makes his way down to your short skirt. Seeing that pink thong of yours made his cock throb. His dark emerald eyes look up, once again silently asking for consent. You buck your hips up, Inui places his arm across your abdomen to hold you in place. He slides your pink thong to the side, seeing how wet your pussy is and takes a dive.

He groans on how heavenly and sweet you taste, he needs more. Inui spread your legs wider to gain more access to your divine nectar. “Mmm, Sei-Seishu!” You cry out, he continues to groan and licks your fluttering hole enthusiastically. He sticks two fingers into your wet hole and to have his warm tongue focus on your clit. Inui aggressively laps it, making you uncontrollably writhe and then he sucks on it hard. You let out an undignified scream, not caring if Draken hears you. “Fuck, I-I’m gonna cum! I’m gonna cum!”  

“Cum.” His sultry voice commands and the way his fingers make the ‘come hither’ motion releases the pressure in your abdomen and your gummy walls almost pushing his fingers out. Your juices leak out of your drenched pussy, Inui slurps it all up not wasting one drop of it. His cock is aching to feel your soaking wet cunt, he unbuttons his pants and grabs his long cock out, stroking it against your saturated entrance. “Need to be inside of you. Now.” 

“Please, please stick your cock inside! Please, please please!” Your cute needy voice and feverish gaze unleashes his animalistic side. He pushes his tip in without hesitation, feeling the deliciously burn from the stretch making you gasp. “So-so big!”

“You’re doing so well. Just a little bit more.” Seishu coos softly, trying to penetrate more. “I promise I will make you feel so good, baby.” The way he is calling you baby and praising you, you are able to relax and feel his cock almost kissing your cervix. You feel so full of his cock, his hand softly caresses your cheek, whispering sweet nothings in your ear. “Is it okay to move, baby?” You nodded.

Inui starts thrusting slowly, having you get used to his long cock. You feel every inch of his dick and hearing the lewd sounds of your pussy juices turns the both of you on even more. He lifts one of your legs up to place it over his shoulder to get in deeper.

“Oh god, fuck Seishu! So-so deep! You’re so deep!” You throw your head back as Inui thrusts harder and harder. His tip hits your cervix and makes you cry from this intense pleasure.

“[Y/n], baby, you’re hugging my cock so hard.” He leans down to give you sloppy kisses and jack hammering your pussy savagely. More squelching and skin slapping sounds fill the air. Your pussy clenching onto his cock tightly, making his rhythm even more chaotic. “I can feel you about to cum again,” his dark emerald eyes passionately stare into yours, “Look at me when you cum.” You nod, “Cum. Hard.” You didn’t hold back, you tried your best to look at him but the fervid pleasure felt too good. Your eyes are rolling back, your body and legs are convulsing. 

Inui feels he is about to cum soon, pumping his cock rapidly and making you overstimulated. “Too-too much! Sei-Seishuuuu!” 

“Just a bit more.” He grunts, your tears are dripping from your eyes and eyeliner is running down on your cute face. Inui loves how fucked out you looked pushing his climax, he pulls his cock out and shoots his hot thick ropes of cum on your clit while groaning. The way he painted your pussy looked like a masterpiece to him. His now warm thick cum gradually drips down on your pussy. He uses his cock to push his cum inside of your warm gummy walls.  

You both are panting, trying to catch your breath and Inui laid down next to you. Feeling your body heats. “Seishu.” You manage to call out his name, he turns to you and makes eye contact. “I like you too.” His lips break into a big smile and chuckles.

“Good, I was hoping you do.” He cups your cheek and kisses your swollen lips. 

[End]

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[garmgeyr]

”The lone wolf alone again,” came the grizzled bartender’s answer, tinged by a wry smile. He’d already started picking through the spread of bottles, garnishes, syrups, and liqueurs that littered the bar and some parts of the guest-side countertop before his peacock-colored companion had even turned over the stage, unable to resist the urge to create. Drinksmiths existed in just about every corner of Penacony, for every bar - and there were many - needed one or two good ones. It was not a particularly in-demand job, nor one that required any more skill than its counterpart in reality, but there were few among them who could stand to rival Gallagher. After all, few so blatantly disregarded the precise and measured in favor of eyeballed guesstimates and gut feelings. His concoctions built themselves out of stories and emotions, and whether or not they tasted objectively good mattered little compared to how they made a guest feel.

One bottle, then another, and then a glass - Gallagher found what he was looking for in his disorganized array of ingredients with a speed that suggested one of two things: either there was some method to his madness, or he’d simply picked things at random. Each held equal possibility for a man who barely managed to fasten all the buttons of his shirt before clocking in to work.

”Folks these days love happy endings,” he murmured to the tall, fluted glass as he filled it with a white, marshmallowy fluff. “This new spin on the Brother Hanu series is more optimistic than the original. He might not have any of his friends by his side, but he’s still alive. Heh.”

The look in his eye as he glanced up at Aventurine, as always, seemed to be hinting at some hidden irony. Then he reached for a silver measuring cup - decidedly not to be used for any sort of measurements - and looked away. Haphazardly, he began to add pumps of neon syrups, so bright they nearly seemed to glow, and spun a tale that reached far back in Brother Hanu’s canon:

— Shopkeeper Leaf had been preparing for this day. Boss Stone had come to Dreamville on his tip and had captured Brother Hanu, which sent the citizens of Dreamville into a panic. What were they to do without their leader and guardian? Clockie, too, had been captured and sealed away, along with each of the branch heads, so there was no way for anyone to reach Brother Hanu. Not even Professor Owl. So Dreamville, left undefended, became Shopkeeper Leaf’s golden egg in negotiations with Boss Stone.

Brother Hanu had convinced Boss Stone that he was utterly helpless without his weapons, so the crocodiles threw him into a dark, empty abyss and shackled him to the big, heavy monument that sat in the middle like a pin holding the whole place down. Brother Hanu was used to working alone, of course, and he tried at first to break the chains with his own strength, to no avail. Then he tried toppling the monument and releasing the memoria it had pinned down, and that didn’t work either. Then he tried crying out with a terrifying, wolfish howl, but no one heard him.

It was then that he noticed a pinprick of light far up overhead. At first, he’d thought it had been a star, or a very small moon in the endlessly black sky, but then he realized it was some kind of hole in the memoria. This space had been built by the special bricks and gems gathered by the Origami Birds, but Boss Stone was no architect. Of course he’d built his prison poorly. 

In a stroke of inspiration, Brother Hanu pulled off the white band around his hat, cut open his palm, and inked a message onto the fabric. Then he set about making a slingshot from the monument, the chains, and his tie. He folded the message into a little airplane and tried three times to shoot it through the hole. Only on the fourth did it finally disappear through the pinprick of light. He could only wait and hope that someone would see it. Someone who wasn’t Boss Stone.

Gallagher set a glass full of rosy pink, like fluffy clouds at sunset, on the coaster in front of Aventurine. A little blue balloon sat at the top, clinging to the gilded lip. When prodded, it would burst into a rainfall of ink that would rush downward into the clouds, snuffing out the sunset.

”Since this story is supposed to have a happy ending, Brother Hanu’s message made it into the hands of some heroes from beyond the stars,” Gallagher continued, crossing his arms to wait for his guest to notice the glittering silver that would trail down into the ink and brighten it like a galaxy. The first notes would be bitter, heavy with trepidation, then in a sudden, surging flash, rise into cloying sweetness.

“When they arrived, they pushed Boss Stone back out of Dreamville, not with force, but with charisma. They made friends everywhere they went, and in the end struck a deal that satisfied everyone.”

The smile on Gallagher’s face was perhaps more ironic than the last, and he tilted his head to gauge a reaction. “What d’you think?”

frame story

comm. ABUNDANCE⠀∶⠀hanu adventure.

[nightfurylover31]

Could a Sonic Forces event have happened in Sonic Boom? 

More specifically, the part with Sonic being captured for six months?

Now you're all probably think this is a crazy theory. "Sonic Boom's too funny and lighthearted. There's no way that could happen." But what if it did? My evidence? Sonic himself.

One of this Sonic's most notable traits is his overuse of sports tape. But what if it's not just for looks? As we see in Forces, both Sonic's wrists and ankles are bound together. More than likely, he was stuck that way the whole time.

While we see nothing in the game, what if there was some scarring or chaffed skin that never healed properly? Sonic could use the sports tape to hide the scars. Maybe there's even some medication or support for those injuries under those wrappings. Of course, Sonic would never admit to any sort of weakness like this, so he goes overboard in hiding it.

Another example is Sonic HATES being confined. First instance is the second issue of the Sonic Boom comics. Sonic gets stuck in a very small cage it doesn't take long for him to start having a panic attack, which I mentioned before.

He's completely oblivious to the conversation his friends are having, just muttering how he needs to go fast. he even resorts to spinning around in the cage. Once he's free, he just runs around like crazy. Excited to be free again. He doesn't even realize he destroyed Eggman's mech in his spree. Even when all's said and done, he still hops around for a while. Once Sonic settles down, he admits he doesn't remember his little episode, something Tails was concerned about.

Kind of sounds like someone with PTSD. Having suffered from something traumatic, then going though another similar incident would set anybody off.

There's also the episode "Lair On Lockdown." When the team gets stuck in Eggman's lair for 48 hours after an attack gone wrong. So they have to wait two days.

It only takes him seconds for him to freak out and start Spin Dashing the forcefield. Sure, it's a large room Sonic trapped in, but he's still trapped. Desperate to get out. We know he's impatient, but he sounds more panicked than angry here.

There's also Sonic's shack. A running joke is that it's a pretty run down place. But maybe that's on purpose. It's wide open, with no door and windows on all sides.

So even though Sonic has a place to live, he's not trapped in any way. This could be because he doesn't want to feel confined.

Even if it's not Sonic Forces, something could have happened to him in the past that left him traumatized, and even injured, from being stuck in small spaces for extended periods.

[cornflakegetmilking]

Bittersweet Cravings

Warning: this fic contains possesion, alot of killing, oh also some saucy moments

Sauce Warning - Sauceless

Chapter 4: Beneath You

Flakes sat on the desk in the trophy room still in disbelief about the situation they were in. They looked up seeing Jack sitting on his chair with a smug grin as he looked down at them. They would be furious right now if it werent for the fact they still in shock.

"S-so what?! Im now like some sort of property to you?!" They managed to finally speak up.

"Well i wouldn't say property but more as my living trophy! It's not often you see a shapeshifter!" He placed his palm under his chin still observing them, amused by their reactions and expressions as he usually saw the quiet and calm side of Flakes.

"Yeah cuz most of us are dead! While half of us still alive ones are hiding away from any civilization! Of course we're not oftenly seen!" They yelled only to receive a chuckle.

"And yet here's one right in front of me! Say can you tell me if all shapeshifters are this small? Or is it just you?" He teased and received a glare.

He was like a child who had just gotten a toy they had wanted for a long time. He was excited, amused and fascinated in this moment.

"C-can you please take this seriously for a second?! Why capture me? Why didn't you kill me like every other shapeshifters faith? How did you even find out i was a shapeshifter in the fist place-" They were cut off rudely by Jack pressing their lips together to shut them up.

He seem agitated but somehow still had a smile on his face.

"You talk too much for someone who's under my control..." He chuckled before letting go. "But I'm in a good mood so ill answer your questions! It's the least i can do after capturing you! Now first of all i didn't kill you because i would prefer you alive, just the mere sight of you makes people's skin crawl and i love that scare factor you give on others. Not only that but your shape-shifting abilities would be some use to me, sure i have a lot of men under my control but their power is ehhh... its not the best! But you on the other hand? Ohoho you're a killing machine!"

"Please don't call me that..." Flakes cringed a bit.

"And about me finding out you were a shapeshifter? Well it wasn't hard to find out! I had a book about all sorts of magical entities and after studying about your kind it was only a matter of observing you closely! Also you were pretty gullible and clumsy enough to believe all the things i say to get your little ewrs twitching!" He grinned.

Flakes pouted and touched their ears in embarrassment.

"Stupid ears..." They muttered.

"Oh also crystal ball! It was easy to track you down with it once i found you suspicious!" He held the ball proudly in his hands that showed an image of Flakes in the moment.

Flakes covered their body immediately after hearing this, feeling an immediate lack of privacy as their face went red in embarrassment.

"I think i saw you shapeshift at least 3 or 4 times this week? Also you have a lot of splotch marks on your furless skin!" He quietly laughed watching their facial expression of horror as they felt violated.

He's seen them nude?! They thought in panic and shock.

"I-im sorry- I- You stalked me?!" They barked.

"Well of course! How else was i supposed to be extra sure you were a shapeshifter?" He snickered as he got up to set the crystal ball away on his bookshelf of other magical items.

Flakes was fully enraged as they let out a growl and tried to pounce towards him to scratch him on his face only for him to move out the way quickly, making them slam face first onto the shelves instead.

"O-owww!!!" They whimpered holding onto their nose as they fell to the floor in pain, checking if their nose was broken or bleeding after the impact. Only for their arm to be grabbed harshly and pulled towards Jack's face in an intimidating matter.

"Well someone's being a bit feisty now huh?" He gripped tighter making Flakes let out a inhuman cry in pain. "I'd break your arm or throw you against the wall right now... but as i said i need you alive and whole..."

With that he lets go, dropping them to the floor. Flakes scooched away, trembling in fear and pain as they rubbed their arm in agony. Jack's eyes looked at the pained expression on their face before looking at their collar that seemed to shake a bit making him sigh and bend down to pick them up genty and set them on his chair for them to be comfortable. He caressed their cheek while a look disgust formed on his face as he did so.

"I didn't hurt you too much did i?" His voice was soft and gentle...

Flakes looked at him and frowned, they could see right through him, his lies and his acts... but despite everything they were still were an idiot in love... letting him pretend just to feel something.

"Im fine... you didn't break my bones, don't worry..." They responded with a sigh.

"Good... i wouldn't want to break you so quickly..." He checked their arm for a quick second for any bruises or damages before pulling away and opening his drawer to dig through and look for something.

"What are you doing now?" They asked anxiously.

" About your claws... since you tried to scratch me..." He glared at them for a while before looking back in the drawer.

Flakes looked at them worried and held their own hands and poked at their own nails.

"W-what about them?" They frowned.

"Well i don't want you getting any other ideas again..." He pulled out a pair of nail clippers and put his hand out, asking for their hand.

Flakes frowned more as they looked at his hand. They've always loved their claws and made sure to maintain them but now they were being taken away.

"B-but-" They wanted to complain but was cut off once again.

"You tried to scratch me didn't you? This is your punishment... maybe in time when they grow back I'll let you keep them... But as of now i need them off..." He looked at them sternly.

Flakes paused but nodded in sadness as they hesitantly placed their hand on his. Jack smiled and gently pressed his thumb on their knuckles and massaged them as if trying to soothe them while he started to trim down their once sharp nails. However it wasn't helping much as they watched their nails get clipped one by one they couldn't help but let out whines and whimpers as a few tears brimmed out their eyes. It felt like their dignity was being taken away. Jack noticed and let out an annoyed sigh so he wiped their tears off with his stained thumb.

"Shhhh it's okay. They'll grow back anyways okay? What do i have to do to rid of this negativity you feel right now?" He was forced to do something to make them feel better or else their capture would be all for nothing... he didn't admit it but he did keep the man's words in mind.

Flakes seemed upset still and didn't know how to respond so Jack groaned as he decided to think of something by himself. So he cups their cheeks and pets them in hopes that would soothe them even just a bit. It seemed to have work cause they finally stopped whimpering and started cooing in his hold, their ears twitching happily in his touch. Jack couldn't help but look away in disgust as he continued petting them.

"T-that feels nice..." They cooed softly.

"Yeah yeah you better be enjoying it you lil freak..." He then finally let's go and dusts his hands on his suit. "Feel better?"

"Uh... yeah i guess..." Flakes blushed, a bit surprised from the petting as they touched their own cheeks.

"Good. Now that you seem calm we can finally talk about what's next for you!" He held them by the scruff to make them sit on his desk so he could go back to his seat.

"W-what? What do you mean?" They asked genuinely confused.

"Patience! Let me talk for a minute here! You already did alot of talking in the past few minutes!" He growled a bit but continued. "Now you're gonna live with me for now on!" He was cut off making him pout in annoyance.

"What?! Why?!" They got their lips pressed shut again by his fingers.

"Cmon can't you be quiet for a second here and let me finish?!" He yelled making Flakes finally go quiet as he lets go of their lips. "Thank you! Ugh! Now as i was saying! You're living with me for now on so no other hunter decides to hunt you down! Since a part of your true form is exposed you could become an easy target for them! Since aparently your species is that terrifying to the point that everyone wants to kill you!" He laughed a bit in disbelief. "I personally don't see why!"

Flakes raised their hand wanting to ask a question which Jack rolled his eyes to.

"What now?" He groaned

"Why not just let me use my human form completely?" They asked straight forward not wanting to agitate Jack any more.

"Well i done want people thinking i just have some low life human next to me! I want them to know i have a rare powerful magical beast! Its bragging rights! And even if you kept your human form I'm pretty sure you already exposed your identity to the rest of the bakers out there!" He chuckled as Flakes frowned as if the realization just dawned on them. "Now i also don't feel like having to look through my crystal ball all the time just to see what you're up to! So to make it easier for me you'll be living with me! And don't worry about your stuff i already got my other servants to go get them for me!"

Once again Flakes raised their hand.

"You can talk now! Im done!" He groaned once more as he rubbed the brdige of his nose.

"Okay so uh- I'm not gonna ask about the whole sending your servants to get my stuff bizz since you already explained about the creepy stalking me thing. S-so i just got one question and that's... what makes you think I'll even stay with you at your place?!" They glared at him waiting for a response.

"Well you don't really have a choice! Unless you want to choke yourself with your collar be my guest!" He chuckled.

"Fuck..." Is all they could say.

"Also you clearly like the idea of staying with me anyways since your ears are twitching." He grinned wide.

"DAMN EARS!!!"

To Be Continue

[childe-the-harbinger]

heyoo! can i request raiden ei and yae miko (seperate) x mermaid!reader who got captured by fishermen and or pirates?

Being saved by them as a mermaid

Gender neutral fluff

Raiden - you get captured by fishermen

Yae - you get captured by pirates

Thanks for the request!<3

Raiden Ei

Though you were a mermaid, you enjoyed back-floating while relaxing in the warmth of the sun and the coldness of the water. It was so peaceful and calming, that was until a small fishing boat started behind you.

Since your eyes were closed and your eyes were underwater, you didn’t notice until you had already been captured by the people in the fishing boat.

“Woah, look at this one, how much do you think it’ll sell for?” One fisherman asked another as they were putting rope in your mouth to make sure you couldn’t talk.

They talked for a few minutes about how much you may be sold for and how they’d be “set for life”

You tried squirming to get to the edge of the fishing boat, hoping to fall backwards, back into the water, but both the men came over and tied your arms to eachother so you couldn’t get away.

They started admiring the scales on your tail, even trying to pluck them off just for their own admiration.

They seemed so ecstatic about their find, until suddenly, it had started storming. It wasn’t a light sprinkle, but rather a downpour.

The rain had given you extra energy to try and escape again. You were breaking the rope around your hands while there was lighting surrounding the fishing boat, making the two fishermen panic, holding onto each other out of fear.

Eventually, the lightning had hit the fishermen’s boat, causing it to break immediately. You were able to get off the ropes around your arms underwater with the help of surrounding coral. With your arms freed, you got rid of the rope that was keeping you mouth from closing.

Since you were currently swimming the waters of Inazuma, you could only assume the storm was the work of the Electro Archon.

You had only heard stories of her from the fish of Watatsumi, but you never knew she actually existed, you had only assumed they were fictional, since you don’t go on the lands of any nation.

All that you knew was that the Electro Archon was watching over you in that moment, which gave you a feeling of security.

Just before you knew it, the storms above you had quelled and disappeared.

Yae Miko

You were actively swimming around the waters of Narukami island at night. You were admiring how the land looked. You had wished you had the power to traverse the lands and take in the beauty of it all.

You were fairly exhausted from your day. You had visited Watatsumi island. You had been there to see some old friends. Today was your swim back, which took a lot of effort and time.

Before you knew it, you had fallen asleep near the surface of the water, which put you in danger.

Some pirates were on patrol due to their captain’s orders. They said that there were sightings of a mermaid by the citizens and it was all the gossip on the streets of Inazuma city and Ritou. They had gone on a journey just to find said mermaid.

They sailed by, almost passing you, but one lowly pirate spotted you and informed others. They turned the ship around and the captain ordered the pirates to get you. The pirates weren’t exactly aware why the captain wanted to see the mermaid so bad, but it wasn’t their place to ask why.

They captured you and put you in a water barrel, lid on, but one thing they missed was making sure nobody saw.

In the meantime, a certain fox envoy saw the entire situation unfold and took it upon herself to find out the details. Maybe she could make a light novel based upon the experience. She was begging for something to bring her out of writers block and this was her perfect opportunity.

She obviously couldn’t just go onto the pirates ship, so she had to think of something to do to distract the pirates, and thats when it came to her.

She ordered the shrine maidens to leave the Grand Shrine. As soon as they left, she preformed a ritual of sorts. Said ritual would light up the sky, enough for it to look like the sun was out.

As soon as she saw the pirates bring the mermaid , she had just finished up. She made sure the ritual finished as soon as the mermaid was brought on board so the pirates could assume she was bad luck.

Just as soon as the captain put the lid on the barrel that they kept you in, the sky lit up, making it possible to see their ship in the ocean. With the Sakoku Decree going on, they couldn’t risk having their boat be seen. They could get in serious trouble by the commissions. The ship plunged into chaos, causing a pirate to knock the barrel holding the mermaid off the edge and into the ocean.

———

Once the morning came, you couldn’t recall any of the events that unfolded the night before. All you knew was that you were protected.

[kuroopaisen]

takes one to know one || fushiguro megumi

➵ megumi just wants to buy some flowers from the nice stall attendant he definitely doesn’t have a crush on in peace. gojou has other plans.  

wc: 2.4k

warnings: gn!reader, incoherent chaos

a/n: gracie dearest this one’s for you :( you are so sweet and so lovely to me and i’m so, so glad we met in this hellscape (i would personally like to thank psycho-pass for existing) i hope i did your boy well! 

By the time he arrives at Jujutsu Tech, Megumi knows the flowers are a mistake.

“For me?” Gojou gasps, hands clasped and mouth agape in perhaps his most punchable smile. “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”

Megumi’s fist tightens around the handle of his bouquet. Today, it’s lilacs, irises and white lilies. It’s also much bigger than usual – too big to inconspicuously leave on someone’s fence or place in the school gardens.

“You can have them if you want,” he murmurs. What else is he supposed to do with them?

The delight on Gojou’s face collapses into a precarious mix of genuine confusion and insatiable curiosity. “Hah? They’re not for anyone?”

“No,” Megumi says. And if they were, I wouldn’t tell you. Although he doesn’t say that last part. Gojou would perceive it as a challenge, and the less he knew about Megumi’s private life, the better.

“So…” A grin splits Gojou’s face. “The person you bought them from must be special, then.” 

Megumi freezes for just a second. But he knows a second is enough for Gojou to glean all the information he needs.  

“Ah,” Gojou hums. “I see.”

“No, you don’t,” Megumi mumbles, well-aware of the heat rising in his cheeks.

“But why would you go out of your way to buy a bouquet of flowers, hm?” Gojou grins, shit-eating grin back on his face. “They don’t hand these out for free, you know.”

Megumi’s grip is so firm he’s scared he’ll crush the stems.

Although, he still doesn’t know what he’s going to do with them. It doesn’t feel right to throw them out – not when you’d spent time putting it together – but he wasn’t about to revamp his room with a distinctly floral accent.

Is it against social protocol to give the flowers back to you? Not now, of course, but maybe on his evening walk… or tomorrow morning…

He still doesn’t know why he didn’t just walk past you that first day.

But something about the way you were gazing out into the street, eyes wide and hopeful as you watched people ignore you on their daily commute… something about that drew him in.

And once he’d bought something from you once – just a small flower, one he didn’t know the name of, but seemed appropriate behind a cute girl’s ear – he couldn’t very well start ignoring you.

Not when your smile is so bright, your eyes sparkling with gratitude whenever he takes whatever floral arrangement you’ve lovingly bundled together out of your hands.

But now he’s paying the price – in more ways than one.

✧ ✧ ✧

Your flower stall is just a few feet away from one of the trendiest cafes in this area of Tokyo, and whoever oversees your little operation is obviously trying to capitalise on that. Setting up so early must be an attempt to catch the rush of bleary-eyed corporate workers craving their necessary morning coffee.

What use an office worker has for flowers, Megumi doesn’t know. But he has a feeling that you’d probably say something along the lines of “it’ll help brighten the place up.”

As usual, you’re waiting there patiently, eyes hopefully scanning the streets for any potential customers. Your face positively lights up when you finally catch sight of him – something that still makes Megumi nearly trip over his own feet.

“Good morning!” You call out, waving to him.

Megumi raises a hand in response, shuffling towards you with all the embarrassment of a high schooler on their way to their first date.

“Can I interest you in a floral arrangement on this fine Saturday morning?” You grin, eyes twinkling as you make your marketing pitch.

“Sure,” Megumi sighs, scanning the vast array of flowers currently on display. He’s getting better at picking them out, but he still can’t name any of them on sight.

You wait patiently, hands folded on the counter. If you think he’s an idiot, you keep it to yourself.

“Those ones,” he says, pointing at a group of blue heart-shaped flowers.

“The morning glories?” You ask reflexively, reaching over to pluck a bunch out of their display.

“Yeah,” Megumi shrugs. He has no idea what a morning glory is. The term sounds like something Gojou and Yuji would snicker at.

“They’re gorgeous,” you smile, taking a moment to admire them.

“Yeah,” Megumi says again.

Flowers aren’t really his thing; God help him if he was ever asked what his favourite kind was. But there’s no point in saying any of that – not when he’s already spent an embarrassing amount of money at this one stall.

“You’re keeping the business afloat, you know,” you giggle, as if reading his mind.

Megumi blinks at you. “Really?”

“Mhm,” you nod. “It wouldn’t be amiss to say you’re our most important patron.” You beam at him, same sparkle in your eyes as always.

He’d be furious, if you weren’t so nice.

How is he supposed to focus when you’re looking at him like that? How’s he supposed to ask who ‘we’ is? A business partner? A partner partner?

But you look so young. You can’t possibly be running a business. But you might have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Or both. Or a partner of an otherwise non-binary gender.

Too many questions, no social capacity to ask them.

“So,” Megumi begins, his voice calm and composed as ever. His mind, however, is scrambling around like a fast-food joint at rush hour, trying to string together a sentence that’s not only coherent but also fascinating.

“How old are you?”

Whoops.

It’s the forbidden question. Or, at least, that’s what people always say. People, in this case, is Gojou. It usually is.

You seem unbothered. “I turn seventeen this year.”

Was it only a forbidden question for people who’re older? But in that case, surely knowing someone’s age was pertinent for the whole ‘respect’ thing. Maybe Gojou just didn’t think he should ever ask anyone’s age because then he’s not beholden to honorifics.

But Megumi can’t imagine him using them properly anyway.

That’s not the point. The point is that you’re the same age as him. You weren’t somehow twenty-seven with a baby face.

“Oh,” Megumi nods. “Me too.”

The smile you give him is almost unbearable. How is it even more of a smile than your usual smile? That doesn’t make any sense.

There’s a certain excitement bubbling in his gut that he doesn’t recognise or like.

Wait, if you’re his age, then…

“Do you not go to school on Saturdays?” He asks.

Is this conversation too dry? He’s not sure. He doesn’t usually make an effort at this sort of thing.

“My school doesn’t have classes on Saturday mornings,” you smile, meticulously wrapping brown paper around the stems of a set of particularly bright morning glories. You always do it so delicately; where on earth do you find the patience?

There’s something… graceful, about how you go about it. Sure, it’s your job, but Megumi still enjoys watching you work because—

“Hello there!”

Megumi knows that voice.

Oh no.

“Hello!” You fold your hands in front of you and give your new customer a bow. But your usual smile has been replaced with an expression of middling confusion as you look him up and down.

Megumi doesn’t need to turn around to know who’s standing behind him.

“Who’d’ve thought there’d be so many kinds of flowers in bloom, huh?” Gojou grins, slinging a lanky arm around Megumi’s shoulders.

Megumi glances to the side.

A pair of startingly blue eyes peek at him from behind black shades.

“What are you doing here?” He asks through gritted teeth.

“Oh, I thought I’d just come out for a morning stroll,” Gojou sighs, gesturing to the sky. “Don’t you think it’s gorgeous?”

Megumi’s ready to commit a murder.

“And look at all these flowers!” Gojou exclaims, bending down to peer at some asters closely. “Did you grow them all yourself?”

“Of course not,” you laugh. “I just sell them.”

Jealous maybe isn’t the right word. But there is a twisting in Megumi’s gut upon the realisation that within minutes of meeting you, Gojou had made you laugh. Megumi, on the other hand, was yet to do that.

“Well, either way, my student is a big fan,” Gojou smirks, shaking Megumi’s shoulder. Megumi’s soul is currently leaving his body.

“I was just telling him that he’s our most valued customer,” you smile, tilting your head at the pair of them.

“Ah, is that so?” Gojou grins. It’s amazing, really, how he manages to capture all the terror of the apocalypse in one smile. “I never really took him as a flower guy.”

“Everyone’s a flower guy, sir,” you tsk, shaking your head. “Even you.”

Gojou places an affronted hand on his chest. “So quick to make assumptions!”

“Not at all,” you smile. “You’d be surprised by what our customer base looks like.”

“You don’t say,” Gojou grins, turning to Megumi.

Megumi considers the consequences of punching Gojou right in the nether regions. He doubts he’d be punished for it by the higher ups; if anything, he’ll probably be rewarded. Maybe even pushed up a grade for his invaluable service.

“Fushiguro!”

Oh no.

Megumi’s eyes widen ever so slightly. His head whips round to Gojou. His teacher is already looking straight at him.

“Ah,” Gojou grins. “I told Yuji to meet me here this morning.” The glint in his eyes strikes terror right through Megumi’s departing soul.

Sure enough, Itadori barrels his way towards them, damn near colliding against Megumi with a ‘thump’.

Megumi can do something but stare into the abyss, hoping, wishing, praying this is just a nightmare.

Unfortunately, it’s not.

You give the newest addition to this strange little posse a customary bow. “Good morning!”

Itadori beams at you, his entire face lighting up. “Good morning!”

A strange panic starts to rise from Megumi’s gut. If he thought about it, you and Itadori would get along well. Too well.

Thoughts of you and Itadori walking hand in hand down the street as you laugh, Itadori offering you his coat on a clod morning as you blush, Itadori walking you home, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully as you lean towards him and –

Megumi blinks the thoughts away. What is wrong with him today?

You and Itadori have just met. And what was it to Megumi anyway? It’s not like he—

“Megumi?” Itadori tilts his head at him.

Megumi stares back blankly. “Hm?”

“I wanted to know how you found this place,” Itadori asks, voice bright but with the uncertain quality inherent to repeating oneself.

“Oh,” Megumi murmurs. “Well, I…”

In truth, he doesn’t remember. He just saw you one morning and decided to approach. He still doesn’t know why. But he doesn’t regret it.

“I roped him in with my charm,” you piqued up, picking up the lull in conversation.

Try as he might, Megumi just can’t concentrate. Itadori’s pressed against him, Gojou’s still got his arm slung around his shoulder, and—

“Ah, Nobara’s here!” Gojou beams, waving a hand over his head.

“What are you doing here of all places?” Nobara frowns, raising an eyebrow at Megumi. “I wouldn’t have taken this as your sort of scene.”

If there’s a hell, Megumi’s sure it’s this.

Conversation is bubbling around him but none of it is registering in his mind, he can see Nobara’s dissatisfied look as she takes in the situation at hand but he doesn’t have the energy to retort, Gojou is playing with the petals of one of the display flowers but Megumi knows he’s not going to buy it and—

“Hey, Megumi?”

He snaps back to reality at the sound of your voice, gentle and concerned.

“Are you alright?” You ask, tilting your head to the side. It’s as if you’re completely ignoring the rabble, as if you see him and only him.

Next to him Gojou, Yuji and Nobara watch with rapt attention.

“Yeah,” he lies. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

You frown at you look at him. Something flashes in your eyes and you suddenly duck beneath your countertop.

Megumi and his gaggle of fools blink in surprise.

In a moment you hop back up, something purple bundled up in your hands. “Here,” you smile, handing it out to him, “this is supposed to help you sleep.”

One whiff and he knows it’s lavender.

“How much?” Megumi asks.

You shake your head. “Oh, no. It’s on me.”

Megumi’s heart flutters as you smile. Despite the chaos going on around him, despite the fact that he knows he’s going to be mocked for this for weeks to come, he’s grateful.

Somehow.

“Sorry about this…” he mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck.

“It’s fine,” you giggle, shaking your head.

Megumi feels Gojou chuckle quietly, his chest rattling. Itadori is unusually quiet and Nobara seems moments away from a laughing fit.

“I should go,” Megumi says quickly and suddenly. He doesn’t give you time to respond, zipping down the street as fast as his feet can carry him. He needs a shower and then a run and then he needs to beat a training dummy up and then—

“Wait, Megumi!”

He freezes in his tracks. That’s… your voice.

And around his wrist is… is…

He turns to look at you over his shoulder, eyes darting for where you hand wraps around his wrist. Why is his heart racing so absurdly fast? Why does it feel like his head’s about to explode? You’re just holding his wrist. You’re not even touching his skin. Not that it matters—

“Will I see you tomorrow?” You ask, not quite able to meet his gaze.

It brings him back to the moment.

“Of course,” Megumi answers reflexively.

You finally lift your eyes up. They seem to be sparkling. “I look forward to it.”

Before he even has time to process it you’ve let him go and trotted back to your stall, tending to your flowers as if nothing’d happened.

This has been too much embarrassment for one day. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on and he’s not sure he wants to know. But man, he needs at least several hours alone to process everything.

As Megumi shuffles away, Gojou bounds after him, still grinning like a fool.

“So, Megumi’s got himself a—”

Megumi elbows him in the stomach before Gojou even has a chance to finish his sentence.