#they're going to eat this episode up
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sailingfireshipz · 1 month ago
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Happy Stellaride Day to allllll that celebrate. May we be blessed with Epic Stellaride content. I'm talking worried wife Stella, bad ass investigative Stellaride, my wife my wife Severide! I need an i love you a you got this AND a hot & heavy makeout session amongst other things.
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*Updated
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magentagalaxies · 5 months ago
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sometimes being the director of the buddy cole documentary is an emotional rollercoaster for reasons entirely unrelated to actual controversy with the character
basically. this morning paramount took down the comedy central website and made every link redirect to paramount plus (which i do not have). previously you could find clips from every time buddy cole was a correspondent on the colbert report for free on the comedy central website, but not only are those free clips no longer up, paramount plus doesn't even have the colbert report.
so even if this craven attempt to get people to pay ransom subscribe to their streaming service worked, they didn't even take the clips with them!!!
so i was in mourning for a solid few hours this morning bc like if i'd known this was going to happen i would have at least screen-recorded each of the segments even if it meant the audio sync was a little off. but i had no idea this was going to happen and now yet another piece of buddy cole media was lost forever. and i'm used to having gaps in my timeline. stuff like scottland and the lowest show i've only been able to watch bc bellini happened to have a dvd he could digitize. and stuff like the buddy cole funny or die clips, out on the edge, and the ctv royal wedding special i may never see. but when something like this happens in real time after i've already dedicated myself to preserving and documenting the works of buddy cole, it really stings
i know i shouldn't feel like i somehow "failed buddy" for not preserving these episodes. i had no idea comedy central's parent company was going to throw out so much of their content, we're just in a literal hellscape with regards to how corporations value art. but i can't help but feel a little protective of buddy - not protective in terms of controversy, per se, controversy is a natural reaction to everything scott does with buddy cole and i don't always have to agree with everything the character stands for. i've already gotten a taste of being in my own buddy cole controversy, and it was horrible but it also felt like this is what's supposed to happen because we're now able to have this conversation. but being completely forgotten? that doesn't feel natural one bit even though it keeps happening to so much of this character's timeline.
anyway, i pasted the links into the wayback machine and even tho it could load the interface it couldn't load the videos. i found a record of each episode on the internet archive but they're all chopped into 1-2 minute clips, there's an option to "borrow" full episodes and have them mail you a flashdrive but i have no idea how that works and if i'd then be allowed to copy the episodes onto my own computer. i eventually found the colbert report is still available to purchase on itunes for $1.99 per episode - i'd need four specific episodes so that would be more like $8, which isn't too bad, but still stings just on principle. plus, what if that iTunes interface goes down someday? the only colbert report dvds are "best of" and even if i think buddy cole is the best part of anything he's in, the people making the dvds probably don't.
#itunes also only has colbert report episodes from 2012-2014 which is fine for my purposes since this is all 2014#but like that means several seasons of this show are just lost altogether#and ik it's like ''who tf watches episodes of late night shows from more than a few weeks ago anyway''#but like they're still worth preserving as a historical artifact of the way comedy dealt with the news at the time#like john oliver recently bought the rights to his own back catalogue of last week tonight#and has been releasing them onto youtube one season at a time and i've been eating those up bc they're so fascinating#even if they're not ''current''#i also had to check if ''the president show'' suffered the same fate bc that was a comedy central original#and despite its gimmicky premise it's genuinely one of the best trump satires i've ever seen bc it reaches beyond the obvious joke#and actually tries to understand why people would fall for this guy's scams while satirizing the man himself#that one made the jump to paramount plus at least. which i guess is a win even if it means i'll probably be unable to watch it#but god i fucking hate our current media landscape and how easy it is for a show to disappear completely#and i think the worst part of seeing it happen to a buddy cole thing is knowing i'm probably the only one who noticed or cared#i'm the only one going down this buddy cole rabbit hole so to most viewers any buddy media outside kith might as well not exist#and in my doc i'm trying to justify that it's all worth something. from the iconic kith sketches to the comedy central guest spots#to the bizarre low-budget webseries scott filmed with his brother#it's all buddy to me. but in fifty years? maybe none of it will be.
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moe-broey · 2 years ago
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I'm def losing the plot now but like. Picked up PMD2 bc the suggestion of remakes actually deeply infuriated me and I was sooooo fuckibg mad about it until I was like. Oh. I can just. Play PMD2. Like. I can Do That. And I think what I realized picking it up again is like. PMD forces you to take things slowly. It makes you sit with characters. With their feelings. With your own feelings. It reminds you again and again that even the littlest most seemingly mundane moments are so so sooo important. Each moment becomes a cherished memory. Of someone you loved dearly. Someone who loved you. Someone you lost. You knew you would be lost. You did it anyway. You were set on it before, with someone you loved, who loved you, and a mutual understanding you have nothing to lose. Let this fallen husk of a world be undone, unmade. For a tomorrow that you'll never see. For a world you'll never be a part of. You don't know that, now, though. Now that you have everything to lose. Now that someone else is losing you. You chose it again. For a better tomorrow, and now, for a world that welcomed you in with warmth and life. For someone you loved. Who loved you so, so much. For a whole world that loved you, that you loved too.
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facetsofthecloset · 1 year ago
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Ok this is so weird to me, I stg I learned about this rhubarb and this EXACT sound file of it growing ON TUMBLR some years ago but with a post that had a MUCH different tone
it was basically just “hey guys, did you know you can grow rhubarb super fast if you put it in the dark? it grows so fast you can hear it! here’s the audio! neat huh?” and everyone was like “oh yeah! neat!”
and now there’s this post that’s like “oh my god guys, did you know there’s EVIL rhubarb that grows in the DARK, like some kind of bogeyman vegetable?! it’s HORRIFYING” and everyone is like “AHHHHH IT’S EVIL!!!”
i’m not saying it’s bad i’m just saying it’s really funny having seen both posts and how it exactly demonstrates how framing and word choice can cause the EXACT SAME THING to give people VERY different reactions
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would-you-punt-them · 1 month ago
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By the way, here's a quick update on what's been going down on the worst part of the internet this week:
Five days ago, Rosanna Pansino made a video where she opened up a package of Lunchly taken straight off the store shelf (2 months before its expiration date), and found that the cheese was absolutely festering with mould.
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Not only is this absolutely disgusting, but, as Pansino points out in her video, they're selling this to kids. The young kids opening up and eating this might not know what mould looks like, and therefore won't recognise this for what it is.
A source associated with MrBeast told Newsweek to "consider the context and the source", essentially accusing Pansino of faking the video. She responded by posting the full unedited video of her opening the box.
And while officially representatives for MrBeast, KSI and Logan Paul declined to comment, two days ago Logan Paul dropped an episode of his podcast guest-starring KSI where they kinda-but-not-really responded to the video/tweets in passing, implying that Pansino was clout-chasing.
But over the past week more people have been posting their own videos of finding mould in Lunchly.
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shantechni · 6 months ago
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Gonna attempt to post something today, just a simple clip or two. Hopefully.
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featherymainffins · 8 months ago
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Binge-reading Dungeon Meshi because it's the only thing standing between me and suicide ngl.
#it at least gave me the single molecule of mental energy required to force myself to eat at least one slice of bread#because it's like the physical energy is there sure but mentally I'm like 'noooooo I don't want to eat anything i hate food#all food tastes bad and i hate life and i want to eat nothing at all and furthermore i need to lose weight so i should starve myself'#I'm thinking that it might actually make me last until I either convince the crisis center that I'm for fucking real for real#or until my appointment with the school counselor. which idk when would be because i was supposed to go on the#2nd of April but i guess there might be holidays because he called me when i was atva lecture but i couldn't take it#because i had a lecture and he hasn't called since but I'm assuming#that hell call again and that he wants to let me know that the date is impossible#but I want to like wait and see what he says. and if he goes like 'oh actually im on a long vacay now goodbye forever'#or whatever I'll just go '...slay' and ride my ass to the hospital tomorrow.#show up at the crisis centre looking exactly like the patients with chronic pain who report pain 7 while looking unphased#like 'hello i am an active danger to myself I can't get out of bed most days; i need 16 hours of sleep to function for 4 hours#my meds have stopped working I haven't eaten anything but exactly 2 pancakes and a slice of bread in the past 4 days#and i exhibit a strong refusal to change this marked by thoughts present in people affected by eating disorders. no activity#feels fun anymore and they were marked by a strong sense of anxiety a few days ago but now i just feel nothing at all.#at this point I'm not even refusing to do any of my hobbies because im increasingly afraid of failure and its#consequences while being hunted for sport by anxiety from the opposite end telling me that i need to finish 50 masterpieces#immediately or nobody will ever like me again and they'll all see me for the talentless fraud i am. at this point i just don't care.#i don't do anything because i feel sluggish and my body is heavy and I'm so so tired and I'm tired of being awake and I can't think straight#also i think i might be going into a psychotic episode again.'#they're gonna tell me to get the fuck out of their faces anyway but it's worth a try.#like idk i feel like they might kinda listen because yesterday I guess they wouldn't have but today i have stopped caring about cars#and looking both ways. which is like. not a good sign probably. also yesterday i was still somewhat able to talk to people#even though i was in a very irritated and drained out state but today I'm feeling like if anyone even fucking attempts to talk to me#or if i hear any loud fucking sound at all I'm just gonna punch myself in the head until the pain drowns out all the sound
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sunnywalnut · 3 months ago
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No but I'm still looking for the Denny's that is still in the middle of nowhere
having cis guy friends is so funny like youll ask if they wanna hang out and theyll send you to the dark woods
#no joke#my brother. fresh out of the house. 19#years old. rolls up to our house right after midnight with a car full of teenagers. tells me and my little sister to get in.#obviously we're asking questions. where are we going. how long are we going to be gone. what are we doing. why are all these people in here.#and a big ol barn that quite literally looks like it's from a Scooby Doo snapshot. it's falling apart#the whole shebang#he answers NONE of them.#so we get in the back seat. I'm being gay with my friend at the time. and we're chilling listening to tunes on the radio.#except now they're talking about a Denny's. i look to the front seat where my brother is driving and he pulls up pictures on his phone#of the inside of somebody's. house. What?#and if that wasn't weird enough. we had already driven 20 minutes off a sideroad into the middle of nowhere. nothing but grass#and a big ol barn/farmhouse that looks like it came straight out of a Scooby Doo snapshot. it's dark as hell out. the lone building appearin#blue in the dark. with a single orange lantern lit hanging from the top. i look to my brother who has never lead me astray before.#and I feel like i am part of Scooby Doo. five teenagers in a car. in the middle of the night. wondering where the hell Denny's went.#now finally my brother has some wits to him. and we take a tight u turn and turn ourselves around. good. shows over right? WRONG.#this bitch pulls up YET ANOTHER place on his phone and starts driving 15 MINUTES UP ONTO A DIRT ROAD AND KEEPS DRIVING.#we're going to a haunted bridge boys!#in the middle of the night! at like 3am! the witching hour! great plan broski. sounds awesome. good thinking there.#we get to this haunted bridge. and this mf is barely 5ft across. but the water below is dark and murky and my lil sis INSISTS she sees a#dude down below. so I'm silently freaking out because what the hell do i say to that. she's like. 13. i tell her it'll be okay. because#that's what big/middle bros do. we drive over the bridge. nothing happens. cue relaxation. my brother is audibly disappointed#“well that was useless” bro you almost took us to Denny's in some cannibalistic farmdudes basement. i think I'll take the barely haunted#bridge. my brother. who still wants to show us an adventure. and probably save face in front of his friends. flips us around yet again and#starts heading off into a whole NEW direction. towards the World's Largest Gas Station!#it is like 4am by now. we're hungry. we're cramping. losing our marbles with exhaustion. and still processing our latest episode with the#Mystery Machine. so fine. I'm taking a nap. just don't get us killed in the long run.#we survived. btw. if that wasn't obvious. and we did actually make it to The World's Biggest Gas Station. and it was pretty fun.#as far as gas stations go at least. i got some honey sticks and a lollipop in the shape of a bear. i don't really like honey. but it wascute#there were walls FILLED with stuffed animals.a whole clothing department. a candy shop. and even a full fledged restaurant on the other side#i think there were even two levels to it? i can't remember. but anyways. we eat. we leave. we survive. end of story.
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choso-is-bbg · 5 months ago
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𝐆𝐎𝐉𝐎'𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐆𝐔𝐘...
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gojo's the type of guy who always presses your face in his chest everytime he hugs you. without miss, every single time, he suffocates you subtly and you can hear his chest rumbling as he chuckles at you and kisses the top of your head.
gojo's the type of guy takes unflattering pictures of you when he catches you off guard. he has pictures of you mid sneeze, pictures of you sleeping with your mouth open and drool dribbling down your chin, unflattering angles. he has them all, all for himself to gawk at when you're not with him.
gojo's the type of guy who snatches a piece of your food everytime you go out to eat with him or if you order takeout with him. even if it's a home cooked meal, he always snatched something off your plate. justifying his actions by claiming that you're food could be poisoned and he's just looking out for you.
gojo's the type of guy who calls you all the cringy nicknames he knows. baby? babe? sweetheart? darling? forget all of those. he's calling you his pookie bear, schnookums, schmoopsie, all of those cringe unique ones just to annoy you
gojo's the type of guy who bite your nose at random times when you're alone. you could comfortably cuddling with him telling you about your day and he just decides to lean in and take a bite of your nose just because he can
gojo's the type of guy who laughs at you when something embarrassing happens to you. you fall down on the slippery stairs or floor, he's quick to laugh before helping you up. you stutter while talking to him, you're never living that down. he corrects you with the wrong pronunciation everytime you correct yourself.
gojo's the type of guy who offers you his sweets everytime he buys some. he wouldn't normally share his kikufuku with just anyone, but you're special, he wants yo share everything with you.
gojo's the type of guy who plays music on the speaker and pulls you up to dance with him. only in your pyjamas as you sway from the living to the kitchen and back with just his hand on your waist and his other holding your other hand and laughing.
gojo's the type of guy who watches all your favourite shows with you, even if they're corny and don't make any sense, he's there to watch all the episodes with you. it's the least he can do since you put up with his shit 24/7.
gojo's the type of guy who takes you out on fancy dates when he can. getting you a cute dress before all this, making sure they have you're favourite foods and drinks and spoiling you rotten. he's happy he finally has something to share his money with.
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asahicore · 1 month ago
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fast forward - pjs
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pairing. jay x fem!reader
synopsis. After yet another romantic disappointment in the form of one Jake Sim, you go to the well you’ve always believed to grant wishes and ask for your one and true love to appear. That night, you go to sleep in your bed but wake up in a strange house. When you head downstairs, you find a man washing the dishes and telling you your favorite meal is waiting on the table for you. You’ve spent hours glaring at the back of that head, you could recognize it anywhere—it belongs to none other than Park Jongseong, your high school sworn enemy... and future husband, or so it seems.
genre+warnings. high school au, the type of e2l where they never really hated each other to begin with, they act like they're academic rivals even though they're not particularly academically gifted, jay has a thing about german the language, sunoo and kazuha besties, heeseung is a loser, jake and sunghoon are assholes sorry, ive liz is german, 02z get into a white-boy locker-room fight, attempts at banter etc, they're a little bit silly
word count. 26.6k
a/n. had the idea for this listening to fast forward by somi LAST SUMMER... and only wrote it this summer and only posting it now <3 i hope u guys enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed writing it !!!!! jay is an absolute cutie here pls love him as much as i do.... as always let me know what u think and remember to vote for @zreamy president in the upcoming elections, shes the only one i trust to beta-read and hence to run a country <3 no it doesnt matter that shes scottish put this woman in the white house
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There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.
Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.
You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.
Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied. 
Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.
There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.
You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade. 
“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face. 
You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around. 
“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”
The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”
One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”
“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson. 
You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.
Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.
You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.
“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”
As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.
And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.
“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.
Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.
But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.
You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.
“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.
Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.
For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice. 
You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.
But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot. 
You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.
“And that’s your business, because…?”
You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”
You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”
He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.” 
This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”
You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?
“I’m sorry?”
He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”
You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”
“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves. 
Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue. 
Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.
Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.
Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”
So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”
“I don’t-”
“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”
“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”
“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.
“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”
“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”
“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”
“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”
“At least you’re self-aware.”
The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.
“What are you-”
“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”
The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”
“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”
You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?
“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”
“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.
Then you see it.
Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.
The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.
Your heart sinks to your stomach.
You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice. 
Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone. 
“Y/N-” 
Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone. 
The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.
Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic. 
Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.
You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.  
But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked. 
You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”
Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”
When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.
You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.
--
For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.
Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers. 
The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe. 
The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.
It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.
A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.
You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.
Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there? 
You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.
Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right? 
You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist. 
The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie. 
Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”
Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.
It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of “Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”
Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.
“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”
Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey. 
“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?
“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”
He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.
When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.
You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other. 
Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.
You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”
He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”
The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”
You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.” 
So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder. 
“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.
Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.
Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.
“This is so good,” you mumble.
Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”
You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.
“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”
You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?
But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”
Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else. 
“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.
He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.
But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.
As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.
“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.
“Hm?”
He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”
“No. I have… things on my mind.”
He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”
You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you. 
You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie. 
A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.
“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.
It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.
“Yeah.”
He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.
“...Jong?” you try.
“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.
You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.
“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.
“Will you be here in the morning?”
“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”
“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”
You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”
You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”
“I love you, Y/N.”
“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.
--
Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.
They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.
“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.
“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”
“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.
Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”
“Exactly!”
“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”
Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”
You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”
Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.
“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”
“Nowhere. Go on.”
“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”
“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.
“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”
Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.
“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”
“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”
“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.
“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.
“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.
“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.
“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”
You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”
“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.
“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”
Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”
“None taken.”
“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.
“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”
Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”
“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.
You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair. 
“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.
“She had a dream that she m—”
“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.
Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.
“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.
“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.
For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.
“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.
“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class. 
The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.
--
It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.
Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.
There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.
Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.
Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.
But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.
Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.
It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.
He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.
He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”
And your friends wondered why you hated him?
“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”
When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile. 
“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.
You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”
He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”
“No. Stop.”
“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”
This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.
Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up. 
If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.
At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.
Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding. 
“Jong, your textbook.”
He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.
“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.
“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”
“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.
He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”
Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.
Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?
You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.
He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.
You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.
--
As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.
Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life. 
“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”
You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.
“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom. 
“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.
And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.
You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.
“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”
He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you. 
So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together. 
Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.
He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.
For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”
--
you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined
kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start
you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that
sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being
you he’s not just another person!
sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings
you i hate u
kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason
you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try
--
“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”
The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”
“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.
“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.
Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”
You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”
He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.
You frown. “I don’t hate you.”
“Oh? That’s a recent development.”
“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.
His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”
“Back to hating.”
“Let’s start the assignment.”
You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.
Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”
“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble. 
He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”
“That’s not—”
“Let’s just focus on this.”
His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.
He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”
“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.
“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.
“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.
“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”
“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?” 
He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”
“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”
“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.
So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.
--
But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.
Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.
You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.
He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology. 
Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.
“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”
“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”
“Love? I know.”
“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.
“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.
“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.
“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.
“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.
“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.
“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.
“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.
“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.
“I never—When?!”
She shrugs. “The other day.”
You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.
“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.
“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.
In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”
Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”
“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.
You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”
They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.
“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.
You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”
Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”
You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.
No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”
“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.
“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.
“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.
“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.
“Aren’t you cold?”
Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.
“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.
“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.
“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”
“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”
You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”
He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.
You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”
“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.
“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
--
sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier
kazuha WHAAAAT
you KIM SUNOO.
kazuha WHEN?????
sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol
you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass
kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml
you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED
sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart
you were* and no we weren’t
sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his
kazuha sunoo…?
sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him
you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting
sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it
you …
sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of
kazuha cuuuute
you i resent these accusations.
sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will
kazuha ???
you SUNOO?
sunoo WHAT
--
Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.
Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.
You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.
Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you. 
Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”
Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”
Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”
That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.
The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that. 
Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.
He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”
“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.
You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.
“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.
He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight. 
Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple. 
It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them. 
He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”
But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”
Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”
You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.
He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”
Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”
“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.
“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”
“Y/N…”
“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.
The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.
--
jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension
you you idiot what did your parents say?
jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month
you boo-hoo
jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…
you … are you feeling better?
jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)
you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?
jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay
you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up
jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon
you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!
jong :) see you tomorrow pretty 
 --
The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.
You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.
His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.
Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.
In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily. 
In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?
A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.
College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.
May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.” 
Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.
In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.
But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…��� you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”
Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”
You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.
As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.
You smile. “Never.”
So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.” 
It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.
It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.
But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.
You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.
I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting. 
But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.
You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?
“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.
“Give me five minutes!” you call back.
You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.
--
A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.
He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says. 
He’s still Jong.
You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside. 
It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.
When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.  
Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.
He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.
So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.
When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.
In any case, he’s hiding something.
The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.
Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is. 
Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely. 
It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile. 
Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?
Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.
--
From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.
With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year. 
Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.
But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. 
He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.
But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.
I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.
Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.
But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.
Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really. 
But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.
Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness? 
And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you. 
Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.
I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on… 
I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.
(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)
Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now? 
Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.
Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?
Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.
He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.
You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.
The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.
You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement. 
In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.
You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.
On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does. 
Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.
All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.
Until you didn’t.
It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.
He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.
So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.
Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.
And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley. 
Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence. 
He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.
You said so yourself.
He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.
Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.
And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.
When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.
But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?
You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore. 
So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you. 
He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?
--
It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.
Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.
Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles. 
You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.
When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.
“Did you guys sit next to each other?”
You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”
He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”
You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.
When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.
Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”
You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”
“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”
“Now?”
He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”
And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.
“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.
“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.
His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”
He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this? 
“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes. 
But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”
The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”
“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”
“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.
“Really.”
Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.
Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”
Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming. 
“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks. 
“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.
“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”
“I think I did, too.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”
Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.
He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”
Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.
Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now. 
“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”
“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”
You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”
“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”
You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”
He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”
“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.
“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”
“Fifty years, huh?”
He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”
There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.
--
The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls. 
The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.
You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?
It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway. 
Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.
You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.
“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.
You smile. “I am.”
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springseasonie · 1 year ago
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I'm a Mouse, Duh! | LJN + NJM (M)
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Roommate Jeno x fem reader x roommate Jaemin, Halloween party trope, pure filth
Summary: Nomin in police costumes and Y/N in a "mouse" costume (it's literally just lingerie). Will they fuck? Keep reading to find out! (the answer is yes) (the title is a mean girls reference if you didn't notice btw)
Warnings: sexual content, dom Jeno, dom Jaemin, oral (fem and male receiving), Eifel tower 😖, spiting, cum eating, ass eating, butt stuff (it's my first time writing this don't judge too hard), double penetration, slight crying kink
Word count: 8,3k
Song recs: needs by tinashe
A/N: the drought is over!!! I have posted. This is my kinktober thing bcs I've been too busy with life so I hope y'all like this even though it's a bit rushed. This can kinda be like a "the walls are thin" special episode if you will. Also tysm for 800 followers (even though I'm barely posting). Feedback is loved and appreciated 🤍🤍
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"Can you please hurry up? The party started an hour ago," Jaemin yelled from the living room.
"Don't rush me. You want me to look nice right? Be patient," you yelled back, applying the red lipstick carefully. You checked your hair in the mirror one last time, fixing your lashes as you leaned into your vanity.
"I'm sure you look fine. Hurry, I want to get there before they run out of beer," Jeno yelled.
"Gosh, I'm coming," you said, grabbing your bag. You opened your room door, heels clicking as you walked out the both of them sitting on the couch. You stared at them, face contorting in confusion. "Cops? Really?"
They turned to you, staring at you for a little longer than they should've. Your outfit was definitely something beyond scandalous. Lace lingerie, fishnets, heels, and a headband. Jaemin swallowed hard, eyes scraping every inch of your body. The obscene 'costume' hugged your body like it was made for you. And your lips looked great in red. He always loved the color on you. Jeno didn't hide his emotions like Jaemin did though. He was always shameless. Letting you know how good you look even on days where you weren't very dressed up. Jeno had always been attracted to you. Both of them were, making being roommates with them very hard at times.
"That's your costume," Jaemin questioned, eyes scanning you once again stopping at your cleavage.
"Yes it is."
"And what are you supposed to be," Jeno continued.
"I'm a mouse," you said, pouting at the headband. "Duh."
Jeno chuckled at your answer, raking his hands through his hair as he stared at you. "If I were to guess, I'd probably say playboy model."
"Ha ha very funny," you mumbled. "Anyway, I'm ready. Are you both going to keep sitting there staring or do you wanna go?"
"Yeah, the party, right." Jaemin pulled out his phone, ordering Uber for the three of you. You all walk outside, standing in front of your apartment. Tonight, the biggest frat of your university was going to throw a Halloween party. They're known for having the best parties, so this one shouldn't be short of excitement. You were hoping and praying to get laid tonight after a 4 month dry spell. You needed action, no matter where you got it from.
Hopefully, your dream could come true. It shouldn't be that hard right? After all, it was Halloween.
-
You definitely were not gonna get laid tonight. Half of the frat is already piss drunk, the sports bros are hooking up or going home early, all the hot guys are with their girlfriends. It looked like luck was in fact not on your side. In moments like these you would nuzzle into one of your friends arms and complain but they were all off doing whatever for the night. Now it was just you and the red solo cup full of various alcoholic beverages mixed together. The drink was rancid, but it would have you loose in no time to help you get comfortable.
Funny thing about it was you'd probably never be comfortable. You definitely did not have the most outrageous outfit in the house, but the eyes that lingered on you made you feel like you did. This costume was completely out of your norm. Every other Halloween, Jeno and Jaemin would dress up as something funny, but this time you wanted to take a bit of a break. Now that break is costing you foot pain, forcing you to stand in the corner in 5 inch heels for an hour and a half.
You stopped your drink, trying your best to avoid the gaze of the men who migrated around the house. But there was one gaze you couldn't shake no matter how much you tried. Jaemin watched you from the other side, eyes scanning your body like they did hours prior. He was so attracted to you it made him crazy. This was probably the first time he felt like he needed you. There were times where he walked in on you accidentally, saw you in underwear, but nothing could compare to this.
You stood there, gorgeous as ever, in the sexiest clothes ever, tiny bits of skin peeking through the lace making his mind wild. And now that he had just the right amount of alcohol in his system, he could finally do something about it.
You didn't notice Jaemin walking towards you, so when you heard him speak, you jumped a bit.
"Y/N," he said, making you turn around.
"God, you scared me," you laughed. You watched him lean on the wall, one hand on his cup and the other in his pocket. His eyes hung low, lips curved into a smile as he stared at you.
"Ah, sorry. Didn't mean to." Jaemin sipped his drink, licking his lips as he continued to look at your cleavage. "I didn't tell you earlier but… you look great tonight."
The way his eyes went from your lips to your chest didn't go unnoticed. "You didn't have to tell me, you've been staring since we got here," you say. You thought that would probably throw him off his game but to your surprise, all he did was grin and laugh.
"So you noticed?"
"Of course I noticed. Everyone's been staring at me. Am I that naked," you question.
"Do you feel naked?"
"I do when you look at me like that," you laugh. Jaemin's eyes were always the thing that told you the most. He could've lied and said you look ridiculous but his expressions never lie. He didn't know, but you always felt vulnerable under his stare. Like he could do anything and everything. And you would definitely let him.
"If you wanna fuck me, just say so," you joke. You brought the cup to your lips, drinking the party battery acid. Your eyes were locked on his, the tension between you both becoming thicker and thicker by the second. For a minute, you forgot that you were in a room full of people because all you wanted to do was rip that costume off him and give him what he was begging for.
Jaemin watched you as you pulled the cup away from your lips, lipstick staining the plastic. A drop of the liquid remained on your lip, the sight making Jaemin swallow hard. All he could think about was that pretty lipstick being in places it shouldn't be. Jaemin reached up, tilting your chin to him softly as he took his thumb and wiped the drop.
Your stomach erupted in butterflies, heat spreading between your legs when he maintained eye contact. You didn't mean to, but you leaned into his touch, slightly gasping when he continued staring at you.
"Should I fuck you," he said out right.
Your heart beat sped up immediately, this sudden surge of confidence in him making you go crazy. That's when you noticed how close you both were. Jaemin's face was hovering right above yours, one more step and he would be kissing you. His lips looked so soft and inviting, so why not make it happen. You glanced at his lips then looked back at his eyes slowly getting sucked into his little game.
"Is this part of your whole police bit? Interrogating me like this,' you joke, trying to take some edge off the moment. "Are you going to arrest me if I don't answer?"
Jaemin didn't answer, just grinned. You always had a way of getting out of something and that something just so happened to be the sexual tension that's been brewing between the both of you for the longest. You couldn't deny that he looked good in the costume. And you always had a thing for men in uniform.
But instead of making a move, Jaemin simply backed away from you, eyeing you up and down. "I'm not doing this here," he mumbled, licking his lips.
"Do it," you said. "Do whatever you want." You swallowed hard, watching Jaemin watch you. You wanted him to just grab you and take you right here in the corner of the room. No one would notice anyway. Everyone was either high, drunk or in their own world.
Jaemin chuckled, licking his lips. "I'll see you later okay. Don't get too drunk." And with that he walked away, leaving you hot and needy.
-
Your body moved to the music, surrounded on all sides by people who also danced, talked and laughed. So far it's been a blast. Nothing crazy has happened except for some guy fighting another guy for scaring him too badly, two freshmans getting caught in a bedroom together, a girl projectile vomiting all over the living room. But other than that, it's been a smooth night.
You keep thinking about how you talked earlier with Jaemin. His sly look, the confidence in his eyes, the way he towered over you. God, he was so enticing.
You kept sipping your drink, the liquid falling into your stomach and heating your body at the same time when you felt someone come up behind you. They held your hips, body swaying with yours. "I thought you would never come back," you said, leaning into their body.
"I haven't seen you all night."
You looked behind you, only to see Jeno staring at you with his signature smile. "I thought you were Jaem," you said, turning around fully. You wrapped your arms around his neck as he continued to hold your waist, body dancing with yours to the music.
"Why are you always looking for him and not me," he whined playfully.
You laughed, fingers playing in his hair. You felt his hands tense and tighten on your hips, fingers slightly pressing into your sides. This is the closest you've probably ever been to him. Due to the nature of your outfit, it felt like his hands were on your skin, making your body heat up a little too fast. You tried to push the thoughts of his hands ripping off the outfit, forcing you down to your knees, swirling your cup of liquid behind his head. You took your arm from behind him, sipping it slowly.
"Gosh what made you think this costume was a good idea," he groaned, his cute grin making you giggle.
"Why didn't you and Jaem tell me you guys were gonna be cops? I could've been a cop too," you laugh.
"No one likes female cops."
"Not true. You haven't seen me as a female cop yet." The funny thing is that he did it last year. Except you bought a proper cop costume instead of a 'sexy' one. "Besides, I like this one. It was cheap."
"Clearly," he chuckled. His laugh was deep, radiating through your entire chest. That's when you noticed he wasn't even looking in your direction. Jeno was looking directly at your cleavage as your chest was pressed right against his. He slid his hands down your hips and behind, palms loosely cupping your ass. "What were you looking to achieve wearing this Y/N? Because whatever it was, it might be working."
You reached back, moving his hands back to your hips. "I'm trying to get laid, and I'm trying to do it with anyone that's not you."
Jeno raised a brow, giving you a dry laugh. "You're the only woman I know who wouldn't take the easy route."
"And what do you mean by that?"
"I mean," he leaned into your ear, lips brushing against the edge,"what kind of woman wouldn't wanna fuck two guys who clearly wanna fuck her and happens to live with?"
Jenos hands snakes back to your ass, gripping it hard. Your brows furrowed as you looked up at him, who remained as calm and collected as he did earlier. God it made you crazy. You were already wet from the interaction with Jaemin earlier, this one with Jeno just making you soaked.
"You're so rough, don't manhandle me," you whined, chest slightly pushing against his.
"Don't pretend you don't like it rough. 'Harder, faster'," he mocked. You've been a little less discreet than you would've liked in the past, leading to weeks and weeks of bullying by the two. "Your taste in men is horrible. If you have to keep telling them what to do, they're horrible."
"And if I fuck you and Jaem, what would that make me," you ask, tilting your head.
"Smart."
You laugh, taking another big sip from your cup. All Jeno could think about was how close you were to him. How close he is to ripping your lack of real clothes off. He just wanted you to admit that you've been thinking about it too, but he's fine if you didn't. He enjoyed the chase. He watched you place the cup on the coffee table that's next to you, fully immersing yourself in the conversation you were having with him. But Jeno wishes he could immerse himself the same as you. The way you look at him, the way you let your fingers graze his arms. You had no idea.
"Do you like the police costumes," Jeno asked you, content expression on his face.
You nod, moving your arms from around his neck and placing them on his shoulders. "Of course I do. You look hot," you complimented, grazing your fingers down his arms.
"Hot enough for you to fuck?"
You gave him a soft laugh, rolling your eyes. "Keep asking and it'll never happen."
"So you've considered."
You shook your head, avoiding the obvious answer but he knew you better than that. You thought about fucking him and Jaemin almost everyday. The thought of them bending you over, fist in your hair as they took you from behind plagued your once sane mind more times than you would like to admit. The feeling of their rough strong hands on your body, forcing you into any position possible. You couldn't help it. Living in such close quarters with them gave you the privileges of seeing things other women would kill to see. The Halloween costumes made it so much worse, the want for them to dominate you stronger than ever. Maybe you had a thing for power, but whatever it was was turning you into the most horny woman where you stood.
"Don't lie to me," he said quietly. Jeno gave you a smug smile as he leaned into your ear. "Instead of trying to fuck one of these losers, all you have to do is say the word and we'll be out of here."
A shiver ran down your spine feeling his breath on your ear. You needed him badly. You needed Jaemin badly, and you just knew you had to take the opportunity, but not without teasing him so much. Just before you spoke, you felt someone press against your back, whoever it was was not breathing into your neck.
"You guys are having fun without me?"
You gulped, Jaemin's deep whisper traveling right between your legs. Jeno moved his hands to your hips allowing Jaemin to place his own hands on your waist. His fingers played with the thin fabric, nails threatening to tip the thread with every pass. Jaemin pressed his semi hard cock in your ass while Jeno pressed his to your front, sending you into a spiral. You were forcefully sandwiched between your roommates, the air getting thick around you as people began to stare at the three of you.
"Guys people are starting to stare," you say, looking down to avoid eye contact with Jeno.
"And? They're just waiting for us to fuck you right in the middle of this floor. And I bet you're waiting for it too," Jaemin says in your ear, chuckling when you arched your ass on him. For a second it felt like no one was in the room. The music muffled in your ears, the faint feeling of jaemin's lips on your neck and Jeno's lips grazing against your lighting a fire in your chest.
"Stop teasing," you exhale.
"Do you want it as much as we want it," Jeno questioned, biting his lip as he stared at yours.
"Yes."
A wicked smile you couldn't see spread on Jaemin's face hearing your words. "This is gonna be a long night then."
-
The Uber ride consisted of nothing but kissing and touching. You were squeezed between the two men, their hands all over your body not giving a second to breathe. You find yourself kissing both of them at the same time, one or the other pulling you away when they feel they've been left out.
Jaemin's soft touch contrasted how strong his kisses were, his hand resting gently on the back of your neck as he kissed you. He wanted you to feel how much he wanted you, not just know. Jaemin didn't hide how horny he was for you due to the number of drinks he consumed at the party. He palmed himself, his cock straining against the pants of the costume.
Beside you, Jeno kissed neck, holding your waist tight he was pressed against you, sandwiching your body between the both of them. The scene was something straight out of a movie. The three of you are unable to keep your hands to yourselves as your driver tries his best to not watch in the front of the car.
You were in a complete daze, Jeno grabbing your chin gently, turning you to him. You moaned on his lips softly, turning your body to him. Jeno's hands went from your waist to your chest, gripping your breast generously. Jaemin kissed your neck down to your shoulder, his big strong hands making their way between your legs. You gasped softly feeling his thumbs rub your inner thighs dangerously close to your soaking heat.
"Fuck," you whispered, brows furrowing as you felt his thumb graze your clothed clit.
"It would only take me a second to rip this shit fabric off you," he whispered low enough so the driver couldn't hear. "Is that what you want?"
You nodded, gulping as Jeno's hands rubbed up your thighs. "Be patient, pretty. We're almost home," Jeno whispered, kissing the corner of your mouth. You wish you could calm down, but the way jeno's hands sooth you as Jaemin keeps rubbing his thumb dangerously close to your clit makes you feel insane.
You kissed Jeno, hand on his neck as he wanted into his mouth. Jaemin began stroking his thumb softly against your clit, his lips on the back of your neck. Jeno bit your lip softly, kissing you once more as you began to quietly moan. Your hips moved on their own, slightly beginning to grind on his thumb.
"You're such a cute whore, putting on a show for everyone," Jaemin whispered.
"Are you gonna punish me officer?"
Your lips curled into a smile hearing Jaemin's soft laughter. You thought he would be put off by the sentence but instead he whispered something else that made your thoughts run.
"The costume came with handcuffs. You wanna put them to use?"
You nodded, heart beating fast in your chest. Jeno took your chin between his fingers, kissing you softly, his tongue making its way into your mouth. Jeno wrapped his hand around your neck, squeezing it lightly making you moan softly into his mouth.
"U-uh, w-we arrived at your location," said the driver, who was silent the whole ride.
Jeno planted one more kiss on your lips softly, before turning to speak. "Thanks for the ride." The three of you got out of the car, Jeno stopping before walking to the entrance of your shared apartment.
"Mark is your name right?"
"Uh-huh," the driver said, nodding awkwardly.
"Thanks for the ride Mark, I'll give you a hefty tip."
The driver nodded and drove off, the deep red on his cheeks completely noticeable. Jeno walked back to you and Jaemin, who were already eating each other's faces in front of the door. "You two look like 2 drunk sorority girls," he laughed, pulling you away from the other male.
"Well, I'm trying to fuck like a drunk sorority girl so let's go inside," you said, closing your eyes as Jeno kissed your neck. The male chuckled and pulled you into the building followed by Jaemin. The elevator ride up was just as eventful as the car ride, hands and mouths all over you. The ding of the elevator snapped you out of whatever trance they had you in, but not them. They pulled you down the hall and to the door of your apartment, Jaemin's hand fumbling as he put the code into the door.
In the blink of an eye, the three of you were inside and the door was shut. Both of their hands were all over your body, not even giving you a chance to breathe. Jaemin grabbed your face, kissing you roughly. "Fuck I've been waiting for this all night," he mumbled.
"C-can we get to my bedroom at least," you said.
The both of them chuckled at your sudden flustered expression, following you to your room. Once again they didn't even give you time to breathe before they were all over your body. Jaemin pulled you to him, lips on yours as his hands gripped your waist. His hands moved to your tiny shorts, unbuttoning and unzipping the fabric. You kicked your heels off, height shifting but still keeping your lips on his. That's when you feel Jeno come up behind you, pressing himself on your body as he groped your breast from behind, kissing your neck softly.
Jaemin tugs your shorts down letting the fabric fall to the floor. You step out of the shorts, moaning softly when you feel Jeno's hand slip between your legs, cupping your clothed heat.
"Bet you've been thinking about this all night," he whispered in your ear.
You nodded, brows furrowing as Jaemin begins to kiss your neck. "Just fuck me already," you whined softly.
"You're desperate aren't you," Jaemin mumbled, chuckling as he undid the buttons of your body suit. The male pulled the fabric up your body, his fingertips grazing your bare skin lighting a fire in your belly. Jeno wasted no time getting his hand back between your legs, finding that you were wearing nothing but a thong with your tights.
"Jesus, you really were just trying to get fucked tonight weren't you." You closed your eyes, letting your head fall on Jaemin's shoulder taking in the feeling of Jeno rubbing your clothed clit. He smirked to himself watching you push onto his hand as he kept going. "What do you want right now, hm?"
"Anything," you said breathlessly. "Please.."
"Isn't that cute," Jaemin mumbled, chuckling softly. "But are you gonna be a good girl for the rest of the night?"
You groaned softly, rolling your eyes. "Please just fuck me," you whined.
"You didn't answer his question," Jeno chimed, fingers playing with your fishnets.
You wanted to say something else, but you realized they had the upper hand at the moment. You needed to have sex badly, and was so desperate to get something out of someone. And as much as it pained you to not pick a fight with them m, you obliged not just for your own sanity, but also because the thought of them telling you what to do was fucking hot.
"I'll be a good girl," you said reluctantly.
"Good," Jaemin smirked. "Get on your knees."
Both of their eyes never left you as you dropped to the ground slowly. Their bodies towered over you in the most degrading way and you loved it. You move your hands towards Jaemin's belt, undoing it all while staring up at him. His eyes were glued on you, along with Jeno's, who was undoing his belt and unzipping his pants. You tugged his pants down, allowing his hard on to spring free from the confines of the fabric.
"Shit," you whispered to yourself, staring at the size of him.
You look to your left to see Jeno was just a big, a gulp moving down your throat.
"What? You're scared," Jaemin mocked.
"Don't tell me you're a quitter Y/N," Jeno taunts, "we barely got started."
"Shut up," you grumbled. Your face grew hot, breath a little shallow as you wrapped your hand around the base of Jeno's cock, stroking it slowly as you turned to Jaemin's. Jaemin's heavily lidded eyes lingered on you, watching you as you licked the tip of his cock, staring at him with those big eyes he loved so much.
You wrapped your mouth around his head, sucking and bobbing your head slowly. The way he looked at you lit a fire in you, the fire traveling to your stomach and even lower, making you press your legs together. You lifted your mouth off him, wrapping your hand around his shaft as you turned to Jeno.
You licked up the base of his cock all the way to his tip, making the man scrunch his brows. He bit his lip, watching you close your eyes as you started to suck him off with a bit more vigor, hand moving on Jaemin at the same pace. Everything about this looked like it jumped straight out of a porno. You're still in half of your costume, Jaemin and Jeno dressed like cops with their pants to their ankles, both their cocks in your mouth.
"Good girl, keep going just like that," Jeno mumbled, hand stroking the back of your head.
The praise went right to your head and your cunt making you squeeze your legs tight. The way Jeno looked at you made you feel like he was about to eat you alive, and that's all you wanted. You pulled off of him, breathing heavily trying to catch your breath. Your hand stroked him fast as you turned to Jaemin, giving his neglected cock your attention.
You stuck your tongue out, tapping the tip on the wet muscle in the most teasing way possible. Jaemin watched you in awe as you kissed his tip softly, opening your mouth wide to take him. Jaemin licked his lips, enjoying watching you.
"Take all of it."
And you did, sinking lower and lower until all you could do was splutter around him, gagging as he hit the back of your throat. Jaemin took the back of your head, pushing you until your nose touched his skin. Eyes screwed shut, trying to be the best girl you possibly could below both of these men making you go crazy.
"Good girl," Jaemin cooed. "Take it like the slut you are."
Jaemin took his hand off your head, allowing you to rise from him. You coughed, heaving as you tried to get oxygen in your lungs but even that couldn't stop you from spitting on his cock and taking him in your mouth again. You bobbed your head, hand pumping Jeno at the same pace you had no idea how you looked but it couldn't have been anything short from a mess.
However, to the men standing above you, you looked like a wet dream. On your knees, hands on both of them, tears straining your face, drool falling from your pretty lips.
"Fuck, just look at her," Jeno grunted, thrusting into your hand slowly as you stroked him. You stopped bobbing your head, pulling his cock out your mouth and turned back to Jeno. They were both so close and you could tell. You could feel it in the way they were talking, breathing, thrusting in your mouth or hands. Jeno raked his hand through his hair, throwing his head back at the feeling of you deepthroating him, a loud groan leaving his lips.
"I'm so fucking close," Jeno moaned, the sound of his voice making you weak.
"C'mon baby, make us cum." Jaemin breathing heavily along with the male across from him, watching you with focused eyes as you removed Jeno from your mouth, not just stroking them in your hands quickly.
Looking up at them, your doe eyes shifted rapidly between them, wanting them to cum badly. "Please," you spoke with a breathy moan, voice raspy. "Cum on my fucking face."
Your voice sent them both over the edge, the pressure building up in both of them resulting in your cum landing all over your face. You stuck your tongue out, catching both of their seed swallowing and sticking it out again to show them.
"Good girl," Jaemin praised. "such a good girl. Stand up for me pretty."
You did as you were told, letting go of their cocks as you rose to your feet, knees sore from being on them too long. Jaemin pulled you to him, lips crashing on yours. Behind you, you felt Jeno's hand snake underneath you, popping the buttons of the body suit. You moaned softly, feeling his hands pull the fabric up your stomach. He traced his fingers on your ass, giving you neck slow wet kisses.
You pulled away from Jaemin, reaching back for Jeno as you felt his fingers graze your inner thighs once more.
"I let me taste you," he said, ensuing an enthusiastic nod from you. Jeno took you, sitting you on the edge of your bed followed by him sinking to his knees right in front of you. You thought about this happening more times than you'd like to admit. But now here he is, spreading your legs wide for him, eyes unable to look away from your soaked thong and slick thighs. You were a mess and don't even know.
"Fuck," Jaemin breathed. "You like being on your knees that much?" Jaemin sat next to you, stroking his semi soft cock as he watched Jeno tease you.
Jeno kissed your inner thighs, tongue grinding along your skin licking your arousal. His eyes never left yours. They pierced into yours as if they could read every thought you had at the moment. A shiver ran through your spine as you circled his tongue on your clothes clit, hand reaching up and pulling the thong against the sensitive bud.
"Perfect little pussy just for me," he mumbled to himself, pushing the fabric aside.
"God we should've done this a long time ago," Jaemin mumbled.
Jeno gave you clit one lick, making your body shudder, a sigh falling from your lips. He did it again, this time harder and longer. Jeno wrapped his arms around the underside of your legs, placing soft kisses on your cunt. Jaemin turned your head to him, locking lips with you as Jeno began to eat you out with vigorous tongue moving all over.
Jaemin kissed you deeper, tongue exploring your mouth as his hand kept pumping his cock. Jaemin pulled away, smirking to himself as he looked at your cum covered face. "So fucking pretty," he mumbled, kissing the corner of your mouth.
Your moans grew, panting heavily as Jeno sucked your clit, flicking his tongue on the bud. Looking down at him, you couldn't help but get even more turned on. His mouth was covered in your slick, tongue moving inside you like crazy. Your hips began to move on its own, grinding on his face. You always loved his nose, especially right now. His nose continued to stimulate the swollen bud as he licked at your entrance.
"Fuck Jeno, oh my God," you whimpered, pleasure amplified by Jaemin's lips on your neck.
"Is this pretty pussy gonna cum for me," he mumbled, flicking his tongue on your clit fast. Jeno removed his arm from around your leg, hand immediately making its way in-between your legs. In the blink of an eye, his fingers were inside you, fingering you hard and fast.
"Jeno, fuck just like that," you whimpered, body starting to shake from the intense pleasure. He never took his eyes off you, lips wrapping around your clit once again, sucking it hard.
"F-fuck, you're gonna make me cum." You ran your hand through his hair, gripping it tight as you pulled his face closer to your body. Just as you felt yourself about to cum, Jaemin took your chin, kissing you messily. You moaned loudly into the other male's mouth, sucking his tongue as you whined, feeling yourself cum around Jeno's fingers.
You sat there panting as Jaemin cupped your face, trying to catch your breath and whatever piece of mind was still there as Jeno moved his fingers from inside you.
"You did so good Y/N," Jeno praised, standing up between your legs. "Open your mouth for me."
You did, dropping your jaw on command. No man has ever been able to dominate you in the way that these two have, but you love it. You were fuzzy, completely fucked out. You just wanted to be a good girl for them. Jeno looked down at you, taking in the absolute mess that you were and reveled in it. The amount of times he's jerked off to this couldn't compare to being here at the moment. You were a tease and knew it. He couldn't wait to wreck you.
Jaemin watched Jeno grab your jaw and spit in your mouth, sticking his fingers coated in your cum down your throat right after. Almost like you've done this a thousand times more, you sucked his fingers, staring up at him with begging eyes.
"Fuck if I knew you were like this I would've fucked you a long time ago," Jaemin mumbled. You pulled off his fingers, nothing but a string of saliva connecting your bodies till it broke.
"I need both of you inside me," you said, face hot at the thought.
"At the same time," Jaemin questioned. Both of the men glanced at each other, silently communicating.
You nodded, gulping as you stared at them with desperate eyes. "Please.."
Jeno sighed, laughing softly to your begging. He began to unbutton his shirt, the sight of his fingers moving setting your body on fire. "God, I love it when you beg."
You turned your head, Jaemin already out of his shirt. He removed his shoes, kicking his pants and boxers off his ankles. His hands then tugged on your bodysuit taking the sheer fabric off of you as lifted your arms. Then went your bra, Jaemin sliding it off your shoulders kissing the back of your neck softly. He took his shirt, wiping the cum that covered your face off, making you sigh in relief.
"Face down ass up," Jaemin said, tone more assertive than before.
You did as you were told, arching your ass in the air watching them watch you. Their eyes burned holes in your skin, smiles taunting you as you let them feel up your body.
"Where's your lube," Jeno questioned, raising a brow.
"Third drawer."
But before Jeno even pulled it out, Jaemin had already decided he was ready. You sighed softly, feeling his soft lips on the plush of your ass, his hands kneading your body like a stress ball. Jaemin never realized how unintentionally rough he was, how strong he was and it annoyed you except for this time. Your already sensitive cunt grew even more aroused as he squeezed harder. Jaemin smacked your ass hard, making your body jump.
"Has anyone ever eaten your ass before," he asked, his voice sounding darling from behind you.
Your face goes hot, gulping as you shake your head "no."
"There's a first time for everything."
The sensation that went through your body when his tongue touched your asshole was unexpected. Maybe you were simply too horny to function, but it actually felt good. Jaemin licked your backend again, this time starting from your pussy. Unintentionally, you pushed against his face more earning a hard smack on your ass once again.
"Fuck," you whispered, brows scrunched together. His tongue swirled around the tight muscle, eliciting yet another whine from your lips. Jeno stroked his cock, watching the both of you, precum already dripping. Jaemin was as hard as a brick, precum leaking down his tip as buried his face in your body. "J-Jaemin, this feels so good."
"Yeah?" He chuckled darkly, staring at you like you were his prey. He felt your body tremble in his hands when you felt his spit slide down your ass without warning. Jaemin rubbed the pad of his thumb on your puckered hole as he reached over to grab the lube. With one hand he opened it, squeezing its contents on your body. "You sure you want this," he asked, lids heavy with desire.
"Y-yes."
Jaemin took his finger, rubbing the lube a bit more before you gasped softly, feeling his finger move past the tight muscle. The deeper and deeper he pushed his finger, the harder your hands gripped the cover of your bed. The feeling was new, completely foreign and it would definitely take time before you got used to it. Your eyes were screw shut, the discomfort of him thrusting his finger in and out of you making your back hunch and whine tiredly.
"I know it feels strange but you'll start feeling good, I promise," he said softly.
And he was right, because after some time, that fire in your belly started to come back making you pant softly against your pillow. Your body becomes more relaxed, your brain adjusting the prior discomfort to pleasure. But you wanted more, needed more.
"A-add another finger," you mumbled, making Jeno bite his lip as he watched you.
Jaemin smirked, doing as you said. You gave him the reaction he expected. He loved your pretty sounds so much they gave him goosebumps. You were right around his fingers, the pressure making his cock leak. He popped the cap of the lube open, adding more.
"You're doing so well baby. Does it feel good," he said, voice sultry and sweet.
"Mhm." You could barely form real sentences, your brain too fogged in pleasure. You found yourself arching into his fingers more and more as he fingered you slowly. Jaemin's other hand massages your ass, adding more to the pleasure swimming all over your body. The room was silent with sounds of heavy breathing and the sound of Jaemin's fingers slipping in and out of you. That was until he slipped another finger in you without warning, making you whine loudly.
"F-fuck, it's too much," you whined.
"If you can't take three fingers, you can't take my cock," he said smoothly. "Don't tell me you're quitting Y/N."
"N-no," you managed to get out.
"Good," he mumbled. "Do you think you can take Jeno and my fingers at the same time?"
You nodded, gulping hard at the image you created in your head. "Yeah," you answered breathlessly. You lifted your body weakly, letting out a tiny whine as Jaemin pulled out his fingers. Jeno climbed underneath you, his head plopping down on your pink pillow. His hands ran up and down your sides, trying to soothe your sensitive body.
"God you're so pretty," he mumbled, staring at you from below. You hadn't seen yourself since you got out of the car, but you could only assume he was lying. Your lipstick was probably smudged everywhere, mascara running along your cheeks. You were anything but pretty, but his words still made you blush. "I would put a condom on, but I have no idea where you keep those."
"I don't have any," you said blankly, just now realizing your lack of protection. "But… I don't mind. As long as it's okay with you guys."
Jeno didn't say a word, only giving you a look like he's been dreaming of this moment. He thought about it all the time, fucking you nice and raw. The thought of having your tight cunt around him was about to make him spiral. Jeno took his cock, rubbing the tip along your slit slowly.
He grinned, watching your brows knit at the feeling. "You want me to fill you up real bad don't you," he taunted, rubbing your clit softly.
"Yes, I want you to stretch me. Please," you whined, begging for him with a hot face. You let out a breathy moan, feeling his tip slowly enter you. Jeno let your hips do the rest of the work, groaning when you fully sat on his cock. "Jeno, you're so big," you moaned, mindlessly beginning to grind on him. Your hands curled on his chest, the stretch he was giving you overstimulating your senses but you couldn't help yourself.
Suddenly, you felt two strong hands grab your hips and still them. "You're so eager you can't even wait," Jaemin said with a small laugh. He kneeled behind you, forcefully pushing your body down against Jeno, making you arch your back. That's when Jeno wrapped his arms around you keeping you still as Jaemin added more lube. You shivered feeling the cold substance on your skin, hissing as his fingers filled your asshole once again.
Your body is on fire, Jeno filling your pussy while Jaemin plays with your ass. The vulnerability of the position, the way both of their eyes burned into you as you laid there weak and unable to have a single coherent thought only turned you on even more. Jeamin pumped his fingers in you while Jeno thrusted in you slowly, the discomfort beginning to melt away as time passed. His dick was painfully hard, wanting to do nothing but ravage your body.
"You think you're ready," he said, chuckling when seeing your fucked out expression.
"Y-yes, fuck me please."
Jaemin moved closer to you, pulling his fingers out at you smoothly. Picking up the lube, he added a generous amount. You bite your lip hard looking, Jeno unwrapping his arms from around you allows you to look over your shoulder. Jaemin pressed the head of his cock against your hole, his eyes droopy in lust. Jaemin pushed the head of his cock into you, the stretch making you screw your eyes shut, nails digging into Jeno's chest.
"I love first timers," Jaemin groaned. His brows furrowed deep, gripping your hips. Very slowly, he fills you, the tightness making the three of you moan. You were in a daze, body gone completely limp and weak. You never felt so full in your life and you loved every second of it. The only thing you could do was take deep breaths, as Jaemin bottomed out inside of you. Tears pricked the edges of your eyes as you let your face fall into the crook of Jeno's neck.
"You're doing so good baby," Jeno whispered in your ear, his hands traveling to your ass, squeezing your body hard.
The action made you clench, giving both men a chill up their spines. "Fuck," you whimpered softly. "So full..t-too much.."
"Shh baby you can do it," he moaned softly, hips starting to rock into yours slowly. "Take it Y/N. Be a good girl and take it."
With every rock of his hips, it caused your body to move also, adding a slight bounce on Jeno's cock. You couldn't even compute the feeling flowing through your body. All you could do was lay there weak as they filled every part of you, drooling and moaning uncontrollably. Jeno turned your head to him, kissing you lazily as he began to thrust in and out of you slowly along with Jaemin.
Your breathing quickened, hands moving from his chest to his shoulders. "Oh my God," you whimpered tearfully. Your body was completely overstimulated, overwhelmed with lust.
"Poor baby, she's crying," Jeno said, chuckling darkly.
"Wanted both of us at the same time, but can barely handle it." Jeamin spread your cheeks further watching both his and Jeno's dick move in and out of you. "So fucking pretty and tight for me. You've been waiting for this haven't you."
Absent-mindedly, you nod, the only thing in your brain is pleasing them.
"Good girl," Jaemin said in a slight whisper. "Every time you cum from now on, I want it to be from my cock in your ass. Understand?"
"Y-yes," you said in a small groan.
"Good girl." A hard smack landed on your ass check, the pain quickly turning into pleasure. Jeno was beginning to get impatient, the feeling of Jaemin practically rubbing right against him, the tight and snug fit of the both of you quickly about to make him cum.
"Faster," you whine. "B-both of you, please." Both men obliged your pleading, watching you throw your head back, eyes rolling back while you moaned in controllably. Your hips pushed against the both of them, desperate for them to be seeing inside you.
"Such a fucking cock slut," Jeno said through gritted teeth, his hands trailing down your arched back. "You like having two dicks in you don't you?"
"Y-yes," you said, gasping, feeling a pair of fingers on your neglected clit. Looking at your bodies, you see Jeno's fingers rubbing it fast. You were nowhere near cumming, but now you felt it. You felt the pit in your stomach grow. "I'm gonna cum," you moaned, tears threatening to escape again.
"Cum on my cock." Jeno's voice sent a shockwave through you, your orgasm coming to you almost violently, body shaking, nails digging into his shoulders as you held onto him. Your pussy clenched tight around him, making you clench just as tight around Jaemin, who was pressing his fingers into your sides. For the first time in a long time, you came so hard you saw starts and it felt real fucking good.
"Fuck, you take me so well," Jeno groaned. He lost all self control after feeling you cum around him, thrust started to get fast. Jaemin matched his speed, making your already weak body slump over on the man below you. Your face was buried in his neck once again, whimpers and whines escaping.
Jaemin pounded into you as Jeno went deeper, every single movement making you see stars, your brain going fuzzy with pleasure.
Jaemin watched you sit up as best as you could, looking back watching both of them stuffing you like a doll. He took one glance at your wet face, hands gripping hips hard when the sight made his mind reel. That's when he felt himself coming closer and closer to his orgasm. Everything stimulated him quickly, the way you felt to the way you looked on top of Jeno, he was going to cum quickly.
"Fuck I'm so close," he groaned. "You want me to cum in your ass?"
"Yes, yes cum in me," you moaned weakly.
With a few more thrust, you felt Jaemin cum, his loud breathy moans filling your ears. Jaemin kept thrusting, riding out the high until he couldn't take it anymore. Slowly he pulled out of you, breathing heavily as he stared at your gaping asshole, cum slowly leaking out.
In an instant, you wanted him back inside you, missing the feeling of being full, but Jeno didn't let you miss it for too long. The man took your hips in his rough hands, holding your body up as he fucked up into you.
"J-jeno, fuck, right there," you sobbed, throwing your head back. You mustered up enough energy to bounce along with his thrust, your orgasm finally approaching for the third time that night. You squeezed around him tight, making the man moan loudly."Cum in me," you whined, holding onto his shoulders. "Fill me up."
His hands slid from your hips to your ass, squeezing so hard it was going to leave a bruise. "You like this? You like being fucked like a whore?"
"Mhm," you nodded. Desperate to reach your climax you start bouncing on him as he pounds into you. Soon enough you begin to feel your stomach tighten, on the brink of cumming. "Fuck, I-im cumming."
You came hard, body shivering on top of the male underneath you. Soon Jeno came with a loud moan, the warm liquid making your brows furrow. The three of you were exhausted, bodies completely spent– especially yours. Jeno was still inside you when you plopped down on his body, heart beating and trying to catch your breath even though you had minimal movement.
"Hey you alright," Jaemin said, poking at your back.
You didn't respond, your brain still fried from the high you just got. You laid on Jeno silently, tuning everything out.
"I think we broke her," Jeno jokes. His hands caress your waist, taking in the breaths fanning his neck. Jeno thrusted into you, earning a breathy moan.
"Too sensitive," you managed to say.
Jeno chuckled softly, kissing your cheek tenderly. "You did a good job Y/N. God you're so pretty when you cum."
"She looks like she's about to pass out," Jaemin commented, gazing at your expression.
He was right you were exhausted, horny, and one hundred percent not ready for the pain you were going to have in the morning. You gave Jeno a small whine when he pulled out of you, laying you next to him on the bed. You felt him run his hand on your side, looking at him with begging eyes as he rubbed your waist.
"You can't look at me like that and not say what you want," he mumbled, licking his lips.
"Kiss me," you said quietly, slightly pouting.
Jeno gave you a small smile, kissing you softly like you asked. "Let's get you cleaned up okay?"
Jeno stood up followed by Jaemin. Jaemin tugged your limp body to the corner of the bed, putting his arms under you to lift you up. You wrapped your arms around his neck, hugging him close to your body.
"So fucking cute," he mumbled. "Wanna watch a movie later?"
You shook your head, eyes getting heavy as he carried you to the bathroom. "I just wanna take a bath and sleep."
"Okay we can work with that," Jeno agreed.
You laughed to yourself in your drowsy state, biting your lip softly. "This has officially been the best Halloween ever."
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authorhjk1 · 4 months ago
Text
SNSD Village
Season 1 Episode 1 :
Pilot
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(Tiffany Hwang X Male Reader)
You drop your bag in the green chair, before sitting down on the white couch.
“Sorry I’m late, Jisoo. Ms. Park wouldn’t let us go.”
Jisoo looks up from her laptop.
“Hey, I’m just glad you’re helping me out.”
She gives you a thankful smile.
“Don’t mention it. How much have you written so far?”
You slowly settle in as you take your keys out of the back pocket of your jeans and place them on the table.
Your phone joins them. It’s a hot summer day and the screen has some of your sweat on it. But the cool air of the small cafe turns the outside heat into a distant memory.
“Not very far, to be honest.”
Jisoo sighs, before sliding the laptop over the wooden surface.
“Since they're looking for someone who has experience in their field, I mentioned that I’m currently working here.”
You nod your head in agreement as you start reading her job application.
“You could also mention you’re looking after my little sister.”
As you start writing, Jisoo interrupts.
“But that doesn’t have much to do with this receptionist job.”
You look to your left.
“Why not? It’s a way of saying, you can handle difficult people.”
“Oh, please.”
She playfully hits your shoulder.
“Seri isn’t difficult.”
“Oh, trust me. She is.”
“She is four. Plus, Mrs. Seo would kill us both, if she heard how I let you speak about her daughter.”
“You’re right. Mom would kill us.”
You both share a laugh in agreement.
At that moment, your phone lights up. You check who texted you before the screen turns dark again. Your friend, Seogun. Something about a video.
“Aren’t you going to answer?”
You put your phone back into your pocket.
“Let’s finish this first.”
Jisoo smiles at you as she pulls the laptop back in front of herself.
“I really appreciate this.”
Just as you are about to touch up Jisoo’s resume, you hear a familiar voice.
“Hi there, young man. How was school today?”
“Hello, Mrs. Kwon:”
Your lips return the genuine smile the owner of the cafe shoots your way.
“It was alright. Ms. Park’s class sucked. As always. Especially when she found out that a lot of people didn’t do their homework. Eunha should start writing stuff down. She always forgets we have homework.”
“Oh, yes. Ms. Park was never my daughter’s favorite teacher either. Poor Eunha though. Her mother is always putting so much pressure on her. But she will grow up eventually.” 
Mrs. Kwon is right. Your classmate Eunha is a good student. It’s just that she is also quite clumsy and forgetful.
She sends another smile your way. Only now do you notice that she is holding two bowls of ice cream.
“Enjoy yourselves. It’s on the house.”
She places them in front of the two of you.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kwon.”
You and Jisoo say in union, which makes the older woman’s smile grow bigger.
“I’m sad to see you leave, Jisoo. I really enjoyed having you here.”
"I liked working here a lot.”
“You know, Eunbi is currently doing her gap year. Maybe she can help you find something new?”
“I appreciate your help, Mrs. Kwon. It means a lot to me.”
The older woman waves it off.
“Don’t mention it.”
You see someone at the table outside raising her arm, signaling her that she is ready to order.
“Eat up.”
Ms. Kwon motions towards the sundaes, before walking outside. Jisoo is eating hers as you feel the vibration of your phone inside your pocket. Now you do check what Seogun sent you. You quickly put the phone back into your pocket.
“I-I’m gonna be back in a minute.”
“Sure.”
The message fills you with excitement. You knew it. You knew she had one.
You lock the door behind you, after entering the small restroom. You sit down on the lid of the closed toilet. The turquoise fabric of the cushion on the lid matches the interior of the cafe. Pulling out your phone, you quickly open your chat with Seogun again.
Dude I found her!!!
Check this out
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she is so fucking hot, cant belive it
her links
onlyfans.com/tiffany
insta: your_tiffany
After making sure the volume of your phone is on the lowest setting, you press play on the video he sent you. As the buffering cycle appears, you check out the title. “Trying out my new toy. Enjoy!”
When the video starts playing, you can’t believe your eyes. It’s actually Ms. Hwang. You recognize her surroundings instantly. The beach. That spot is barely five minutes away from the cafe. 
“Hi there, cutie.”
You focus on Ms. Hwang, who is kneeling on a large blanket. Her short pants and her top look so sexy on her. You saw her wear this outfit once or twice before. Just looking at her like this makes you unbutton your jeans. As Ms Hwang waves into the camera, your pants are already sliding down your legs.
“This is a thank you to the person who sent me this.”
You watch her reach behind herself. Her hand reappears, holding a big dildo. You can’t tell how long it is exactly. The bottom is flat, so your classmate’s mother is able to place it on the towel.
“Let’s see what this bad boy does to me.”
With a flirtatious smile, she starts to strip. Your eyes are glued to your screen as Ms. Hwang's top lands on the towel. She was wearing nothing underneath. You can’t believe you’re seeing Yeji’s mother topless; she would die of embarrassment if she knew.
You start to rub your cock over your boxers as you watch her playing with her breasts. They are slightly smaller than you thought they would be. Trying to take in every detail, you watch how one of her hands slowly glides over her tummy. You start to take your boxers off as Ms.Hwang rubs herself over her shorts. The erotic hum she produces gives you goosebumps. You’ve watched porn before. You even had a girlfriend. But this is different. She is someone you know. You even saw her yesterday. You said hello. And there she is. On her knees. Slowly taking off her denim shorts.
By now, your boxers have joined your jeans around ýour ankles. You slowly stroke yourself to your classmate’s mother stripping. You’ve fantasized about her more than just once. It happened more frequently, after you picked up a small part of Ms. Im’s conversation with her. It made you and your friend look for exactly this.
Once Ms. Hwang's Shorts are off, your eyes wander up her full thighs. Her smooth skin almost seems to glow in the light of the rising sun. Your eyes finally reach her core. You take in her beautiful pussy, which is slightly glistening with arousal. You remember how your ex girlfriend looked when she was naked. This is something different. Ms. Hwang looks sexier, more mature.
“I’m so wet already.”
She gives the camera a mischievous smile as she lets her fingers run along her folds. Your classmate’s mother reaches for the plastic dildo next to her.
“Thank you so much for this.”
She gives you a wink. You watch how two of her fingers, which were running along her folds, are now slipping inside of her. Ms. Hwang closes her eyes. As she slowly fingers herself, she starts to stroke the dildo. Unconsciously you match her pace and rhythm. It almost seems like she is actually working your cock. It feels better than usual. More real. 
When Yeji’s mother lifts the dildo off the towel, you can only stare. Her lips close around the pink tip. You stroke yourself faster as her cheeks hollow. Ms. Hwang starts to actually suck the pink dildo, which barely fits into her mouth. She keeps fingering herself at the same time, her hips slightly bucking towards her hand. 
“I’ve been so horny since I got this.”
She just pulled the plastic out of her mouth. A smile on her face.
“You guys know how much I like a nice cock.”
Ms. Hwang places the dildo right in front of herself, her fingers slipping out of her pussy. You see them glistening with her juices.
You watch her raise her hips as she sends another seductive look in the direction of the camera. The tip of the dildo parts her pussy lips as she moves forward a little. Yeji’s mother bites her lip. You feel a familiar feeling rising in your stomach. You imagine that you are there on the beach. With Ms. Hwang. You stroke yourself faster, envisioning that you’re lying underneath her. That it’s your tip that penetrates her pussy. That it’s your cock she slowly impales herself on.
Your breathing becomes faster as you’re just about to climax. You watch Ms.Hwang slowly moving up and down. Her pussy lips glide along the shaft. Her moans make you groan. Your toes curl. Another moan from her. Another groan from you. 
“When are you gonna be back?”
You ask, trying to sound as innocent as possible.
“I don’t know. An hour?"
 “Alright. Drive safe.”
Jisoo smiles back at you, before getting into her car. Well, not her car. More like your mother’s company’s car. If Jisoo had enough money to buy herself a car, she wouldn’t need to take care of your sister.
You watch her drive off. As soon as she is out of sight, you start running. 60 minutes. That should be more than enough. An evil smile appears on your face as you jump over the small white fence of your mother’s garden. It barely reaches your knee. You are going to make Yeji pay. The two of you have been at each other's throats since you both can remember. But today, you will finally come out on top.
You quickly unlock the terrace door. Run through the big living room. Speed up the stairs. Barge into your room. Let your bag fall on the ground next to the door and quickly sit down on your chair.
You open your phone again. You open your and Seogun’s chat. After a glance at the thumbnail of the video you watched earlier, you click on the first link. Ms.Hwang’s Onlyfans page appears. You quickly scroll through her profile.
Hi, sweetie! Subscribe now and get 10% off! I will send you a sexy welcome pic!
That video alone would make you win your fight over Yeji. And with that promised picture, Yeji would probably never dare to speak up against you ever again. Your thumb hovers over the blue subscribe button. Just when you’re about to hit it, you remember that your mom sometimes checks your bank account. She caught you buying alcohol before, despite not being 21 yet. She almost killed you. If she finds out you are paying someone for porn… Especially someone you and her both personally know…A shiver runs down your spine. No. You can’t risk it. This isn’t worth it. Your mother can be scary as hell.
You get off Ms. Hwang's Onlyfans page and click on her Instagram link. Her Instagram Bio is the same as the one on her Onlyfans. You quickly skim through her reels and select a random one. It starts with Ms. Hwang gasping, her mouth wide open as she pretends to look down.
“Oh my gosh! You're huge!”
You start rubbing your cock through your jeans. You can’t help it. Yeji’s mom is just so fucking hot.
“You didn’t tell me you are this big.”
Ms. Hwang bites her lip, while smiling into the camera.
“I’m not sure it’s gonna fit.”
“Fuck it.”
You curse, stripping yourself off your pants and underwear. As you keep scrolling through all her recent reels, you stroke your cock. Every reel makes Ms. Hwang look like a slut. In one, she pretends to pick something up while bending over. You can clearly see under her skirt. In another one, she has tight yoga pants on. You don’t even pay attention to what she is saying, your eyes are glued to her cameltoe.
A couple of minutes later, you are fully dressed again. You can’t believe you just came twice within two hours to videos of Yeji’s mother. Having just watched most of her recent reels, you now check out some of her pictures. You do recognize some of those outfits, but others are new to you.
Scrolling back to the top of her page, your eyes get caught up on one of her most recent pics. Ms. Hwang is kneeling on the floor, only wearing a set of blue lingerie. Your heart beats faster when you read the caption.
Looking for someone near my place to shoot some content with. Send me a DM if you’re down for some fun.
You hesitate after reading it a couple of times. It sounds too good to be true. It could very well be a scam, so she can tempt more people to subscribe to her Onlyfans. Would it be worth a shot? Why not? You don’t have anything to lose. You click on the message button. What to write her though? You can’t tell her it’s you. She would probably say no immediately. That thought makes you realize that you’re using your personal account.
You quickly make a new one and search for Ms. Hwang again. Now that you’re all set, the opener continues to be a major problem. You can’t just say hi, can you? You have to be smart about this. Do you want to be funny? Do you just text her that you saw her invite to shoot some content? What do you call her even? 
After a couple of minutes, you finally decide on a simple text.
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You stare at the screen for a while. You are nervous. Excited. But when Ms. Hwang doesn’t text back immediately, you lean back in your chair. What did you expect? The chance of her actually responding is very slim. She wouldn’t text you back within a couple of minutes.
You dry yourself off with a towel. It’s 11 pm now. Throughout the entirety of your workout, you kept thinking about Ms. Hwang. The chance to actually sleep with her. To record it. Show it to Yeji. It was wishful thinking, but still...
Taking your gym bag out of your locker, you start to get dressed. You usually jog home from the gym, since it only takes thirty minutes and it’s a great way to build up your stamina. But it’s already late and your mom offered to pick you up on her way home. She seems to always be at the company, since your dad died. Is it just because of the huge amount of work, or is it her way to cope with the loss of your father?
After stepping out of the gym, you lean against the outer wall, waiting for her to arrive. You haven’t been working out for a long time yet. You always liked gym class, but you never bothered with actually trying to improve your physique. But you haven’t gotten over your ex-girlfriend yet. As much as you hate to admit it, she might have been the one. Trying to get your mind off her, you started working out about three weeks ago.
After taking your phone out of your black sweatpants, you see a message from your mother.
Grabbed something to eat for the two of us. I will be there in 10.
You quickly skim through your class’s Discord. Someone mentioned something about a party this weekend. As you scroll through the messages, you see that it’s Eunha, who invited everyone. Seems like her mom is out of town over the weekend. As you take your earbuds out of your pocket, your phone vibrates.
You almost let it fall. She actually replied! With shaky fingers, you quickly open Instagram and there your messages.
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“Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Your shout bounces off the wall of the gym you were leaning on.
This is unbelievable. It’s your chance. Your chance to-
You pause, already halfway done with your response. No. You can’t message her back immediately. Maybe wait a couple of minutes. But then, your eyes catch the green circle next to her profile. Fuck. She knows you’re online too. Now you have to respond. Something cool. As if you weren’t waiting for her reply for hours.
Seems to be your lucky day. I live close by.
You read it a couple of times, before sending it. You know it sounds a little overconfident, but maybe it works. Ms. Hwang probably got hundreds of messages, so why not try and leave an impression?
Fantastic
Two questions
Are you fine with your body being filmed?
How big are you? You know what I mean
The wink emoji at the end makes a shiver run down your spine. You’re almost there. So close to finally having sex with a woman, who has been your “inspiration” more often than you can count.
I’m cool with that
Why don’t we make that a surprise?
You take a deep breath before you send it. She might take it the wrong way. But hopefully, this gets you through the door.
I do like surprises…
But I do need to know a general direction
Send a pic?
You rub your teeth over your lower lip as you think. You’ve never taken a picture like this one before. Because no one ever asked you to send you one. But Ms. Hwang just did! You’re just about to go back inside, when you see a pair of lights illuminate the parking lot. Your mom is here.
I’m in public right now
I’ll get you one once I’m home
I might need some inspiration to show you what I’ve got
Your wink emoji makes you shake your head. For someone else, this conversation might look borderline weird. But the tingle inside your stomach doesn’t subside, even when your mom’s car stops right in front of you.
“Hi, sweetie.”
"Hey, mom.”
You smile at her, before getting inside and fastening your seatbelt. 
“How was your day?”
“Oh, you know. A lot of work, as always. How was school?”
“School is school.”
Your reply makes her chuckle as she gets back on the road.
“Did Ms. Park torture your class again?”
“You know how she is, mom.”
You sigh, getting comfortable in the warm car. You feel your phone vibrate in your pocket. But you’re too scared to check. What if Ms. Hwang actually sent you something?
“What did you get by the way?”
“Chicken.”
She points behind herself, eyes still focused on the dark road ahead. You look at the backseat behind her, a grin on your face.
“You're great, mom.”
You take two stairs at once, after you enter the house.
“Be quick, I’m hungry.”
“Just five minutes!”
You close your door.
Your gym bag joins your bag for school on the ground. Opening your phone, you immediately see that Ms. Hwang sent you a picture.
“This actually worked?”
You sit down in your chair again as you open your chat with her.
“Oh fuck.”
You can’t hide your pleasant surprise. 
Ms. Hwang, sent you a hot selfie. Her white top is bunched up above her breasts, no bra in sight. She smiles at the camera, at you, as she winks.
You might not even need five minutes. Your sweatpants and boxers are gone within seconds. As you start to stroke yourself, you take in Ms. Hwang’s surroundings. You recognize her open kitchen in the background. You’ve been to her house before, together with one of your closer friends. Your eyes narrow as you spot someone standing in the kitchen. Her face is turned away from the camera, but you recognize her immediately. You see her in class everyday.
The thought of Ms. Hwang sending you a selfie of herself almost half naked, really makes you hard. You are so focused on her tits, you almost forget why she sent you the picture in the first place. 
You have to force yourself to stop. Getting off the chair, you sit down on the edge of your bed, facing the mirror. You take a couple of pictures of yourself, while making sure your head isn’t in the frame.
After taking a sip of your cold water, you glance at the TV. You’re sitting on a barstool at the kitchen counter, while your mom is watching a drama. Her long elegant dress got replaced by a pair of shorts and a white tank top, while you were busy upstairs. 
“You don’t want to watch this with me?”
“No thanks, mom. Not into romance stuff.”
You take a bite of your chicken, while you hear her laugh.
“Trust me. One day you’ll like it. You’re not old enough to appreciate this yet.”
“Sure mom.”
Your phone vibrates again. You were afraid that the picture was bad. Or worse, that Ms. Hwang didn’t like what she saw. You quickly check what she sent you.
Look how wet you made me
The picture she sent along with the text almost makes you drop your phone. It's a close up shot of her pussy. Two of her fingers spread her lips apart, revealing the lower part of her clit, while showing off how wet she is. Her glistening folds instantly make you hard. You can see the inner part of her walls. The pink flesh drenched in her arousal.
What are you supposed to say now? You can’t just ask, when she wants you to come over. You need to keep this conversation going. Maybe you haven’t convinced her fully yet.
You chug down the rest of your water, before focusing on what to text her next. 
You’re dripping Tiffany
I want to know what you taste like
It feels unfamiliar to you to address her with her first name. You always call her Ms. Hwang. But it’d be weird to call her that now.
And I can’t wait to feel your tongue
I need you to eat my pussy so bad right now
“What are you up to, oppa?”
“Nothing important.”
You quickly turn off your phone, before you look up.
One of your classmates is looking down on you, while you sit in your seat.
“Did you catch what Ms. Kim just gave us for homework?”
“Eunha…”
You sigh, still very aware that she almost caught you. You’ve been texting with Ms. Hwang - sorry, Tiffany - for two days now. Eunha just interrupted you, while you were about to reply to one of her messages.
“Oh, please. I didn’t pay attention.”
“That’s not news to me.”
Before you can react, Eunha has already straddled your lap.
“What-?”
You instinctively take a hold of her thighs. You feel how full and smooth they are. And you realize your fingers are partially underneath her skirt.
"Please? I’m begging you.”
Eunha does her best to look cute. She always does. That’s her charm. And that’s also why she gets away with pretty much everything.
You hesitate for a moment. Eunha needs to learn it the hard way at some point. But you can’t resist her either. Those cute cheeks, her lips which are pouting at you, her dark eyes pleading you to tell her.
“We’re supposed to write a two page essay about the Roman gods.”
Ms. Kim is your history teacher. And currently she is focusing on ancient societies to show the evolution of human society and democracy.
“Is there any way…?”
“No, Eunha. I’m not gonna write it for you.”
“That’s not what I was gonna ask.”
She pouts at you again. You’re still very aware that she is sitting in your lap. And that you’re holding her thighs. But most of the class is outside during this nice warm weather. Plus, Eunha is known to be almost a little too comfortable with skinship. No matter with whom.
“I was gonna ask, if you could… you know… read through it before Wednesday?”
At least she remembers that Ms. Kim likes to randomly collect some student’s homework.
“Yeah, yeah, sure.”
“Thanks, oppa!”
Eunha suddenly kisses your cheek and jumps off your lap. Only now do you realize how short her skirt actually is. You can almost see a hint of her ass. It’s probably not compliant with the school dress code, but that’s not unusual. All the kids at school have decently rich parents. They couldn’t care less about the school’s rules.
It’s embarrassing to say, but you can’t keep your eyes off Eunha’s thighs. Until you hear someone from behind you.
“Oppa.”
You turn around to see one of your closest friends standing behind your seat.
“Yes, Minju?”
The girl pouts at you and you could’ve sworn you see a glint of anger in her eyes. But they soften, once they focus back on you. Who was she looking at?
“Would you…Would you mind, if we write the essay together? You’re the best at history. Well, except for her.”
Minju nods towards the older girl, who is sitting in the front row.
“It’s also the only subject I’m good at.”
“You are not doing that bad.”
“Then where are my good grades?”
“I can help you. If you help me. Please?”
“Ok, Minju. What about…..Sunday?”
“Sunday sounds great.”
Minju gives you a bright smile.
You check your phone once she has walked away. After finishing your reply, you finally send it.
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Looking up from your phone, you see Yeji enter the classroom. She and Minju seem to be talking about something funny. As always, your anger starts to build up, whenever you see her. If only she’d know. If only Yeji knew what you’re planning on doing on Saturday. How you talked to her mother. Yeji would probably kill you. But that’s exactly what you want. Yeji has been annoying you for far too long. And you will finish this war between the two of you. Once and for all.
At exactly that moment, Yeji turns in your direction. She rolls her eyes and gives you a weird grimace. Like she always does, when your eyes meet. You groan in annoyance. Soon…
You picked this time, because you know that Yeji and Minju are downtown for most of the day. Minju said something about going shopping and trying out a new restaurant. After hesitating for a moment, you press the doorbell. You hear it ring. You step from one foot on the other, while you wait for her. You’re nervous. You know her. You’ve known her for years. You’ve dreamed about-
The door opens. Tiffany stands in front of you.
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You are able to witness the different emotions that wash through her as she looks at you. First, it’s more of a seductive smile, then surprise, confusion, realization and finally shock. Her mouth is opened as if she is about to scream.
“W-What are you doing here?”
“You were looking for someone to shoot content with.”
You try to stay relaxed as if this is completely normal. Tiffany could still send you away. You doubt she would tell your mother, but it'd be awkward between you and Tiffany nonetheless.
“H-How do you even-How do you even know, I have-?”
Her shocked face turns into a worried one as the volume of her voice rises.
“I found your Instagram by accident.”
Tiffany is about to answer, when you hear a car drive past behind you.
“Go inside, before anyone…”
She sighs and you slip past her.
Once Tiffany has closed the door behind you, she gives you an angry glare.
“What do you think you’re doing? You’re way too young to even think about this! And you’re Yeji’s friend! Are you out of your mind?”
It seems like Tiffany has finally overcome her initial shock. You don’t bother to mention that you and Yeji are sworn enemies.
“I’m old enough Tif-”
Her stare makes you change your mind.
“Ms. Hwang. I’ve done this before. I’m not a virgin.”
She gives you a skeptical look.
“And this is also an opportunity for you.”
You add quickly. You thought about how to convince her on your way over, in case she would say no.
“An opportunity? For what? You’re Ms. Seo’s son for god's sake.”
“So what? My mother doesn’t have anything to do with this. And-”
“But I know her! I know you. I can’t sleep around with my neighbor's son!” 
“Why not? I won’t tell anyone. And you said that you’d love to fuck me. You want me to show you-”
You reach for your phone in your pocket. 
Tiffany shakes her head. Her cheeks are red in embarrassment. She can’t believe this is actually happening. How did Seohyun’s son find out about her? There is no way he is actually into her. He is the same age as her daughter.
“Even if you weren’t her son, you are still way too young. You’re barely half my age.”
“That's what I said earlier. This is an opportunity for you.”
“Opportunity? To do what? You're nuts!”
Tiffany storms off, into her living room. You follow after her. You know you're being a little clingy, but this kind of opportunity might never come again. 
“The opportunity to shoot a different kind of content. You know, since I'm younger.”
Yeji's mother turns around and raises her eyebrow. 
“Since you're younger? What do you think is good about that? All young boys think like you.”
Tiffany steps towards you again, her hands on her waist. You can tell she is still fuming. 
“Do you think you have a great…”
Tiffany does a vague gesture towards your crotch. 
“Or do you think you already have experience? Or that you have better stamina than older guys?”
“Yeah, but that’s not my point.”
Tiffany rolls her eyes.
“I don’t even want to hear it. Would you please leave now?”
She gestures towards the front door.
“At least hear me out. You do want more subscribers and eventually earn more money, don’t you?”
Tiffany is already reaching for the door again, when she turns around.
“I’m listening.”
She crosses her arms in front of her chest.
“Well…”
You hesitate for a second. This might come off the wrong way. But by the looks of it, it’s probably your last shot.
“Well, I’m younger than you. That’s true. But you’re also, like you said, twice my age.”
“So? What’s your point? Are you trying to make me feel old now too?”
Tiffany leaves you standing and heads towards her kitchen. You’re walking after her, slightly annoyed that she can’t stand still. While she takes a half opened bottle of wine out of the fridge, you look at her from behind. Her backside makes you lose focus for a moment. Her jeans and her slightly bent over figure makes you hard in excitement. You’re so close. Don’t mess this up.
Tiffany takes out a wine glass and starts pouring herself some whine.
“I’m trying to tell you, you’re a… Well, people my age would call you milf.”
You see her furrowing her brows.
“That doesn’t sound like something nice. And it seems to me like you shouldn’t be saying that to me.”
She looks at you again, while taking a sip from the red wine.
“Well, it means… Mom I like to fuck.”
You hear her choke on the whine she was just about to swallow.
“Excuse you?!”
“What? It’s true. The fact that I’m younger doesn’t mean I don’t find you sexy.”
“You think I’m sexy?”
The disbelief in her voice goes well with her raised eyebrow.
“Yes, I do.”
You can feel that Tiffany isn’t as disgusted at the thought of sleeping with you as before. You can still turn this around.
“Do you know how often I thought about you while….”
You let the sentence linger in the air and Tiffany seems to catch on. 
“Oh, please.”
She scoffs.
“You’re trying to impress me by telling me you jerked off to me once or twice?”
You shake your head.
“More than once or twice. Several times a day, since I’ve found your Instagram.”
“Well…”
You finally seem to have made her speechless.
“And I’m not the only one who thinks you’re hot. I’ve heard more than just a couple of boys talk about you.”
“Oh, really?”
Tiffany raises an eyebrow again, before drinking some wine again. She seems more curious than angry now.
“Yes. That’s why this is such a great opportunity for you. I’m the same age as the boys who want to sleep with you. If we include this theme, of you with a way younger guy, in some of your content, those boys might be more interested in watching your stuff.”
Tiffany has finished her drink by now.
“You mean, appeal to younger people because they can identify with you more?”
“Exactly. There are a couple of great themes or roleplay ideas, which would really draw them in.”
You can almost see how the wheels turn inside her head.
Tiffany sighs as she places the empty glass on the counter.
"Alright. Fine.”
You feel goosebumps form on your skin, when she finally agrees.
“But today is only a test. If you mess up, or this doesn’t work, like you said it would, we are done.”
You quickly nod your head. You can’t believe it. You actually convinced her to have sex with you. On camera.  Yeji’s mother. Tiffany Hwang. 
She pulls a black hairband off her wrist, which you only notice now. After silently tying her hair in a high ponytail, Tiffany sinks to her knees. Right in front of you. You almost forget to breathe.
“Consider this an audition.”
Her eyes wander from your face to your crotch.
You bite your lip as you feel Tiffany’s hands undo your belt and your jeans. They quickly land around your ankles as she slowly lets a finger trace the outlines of your clothed and hard cock.
“Now I’m actually curious, if you were telling the truth about this.”
Tiffany hooks her fingers underneath the waistband of your boxers and pulls them down.
“Not bad at all.”
She smiles as your cock appears right in front of her face.
Tiffany slowly wraps her hand around it and strokes your length once. From the tip to the base.
“I could definitely work with this.”
Tiffany slowly moves her head closer and gives your tip a kiss.
You almost let out a groan already. You can’t believe that she is actually kneeling in front of you. With her hand around your cock and her lips on your tip.
She opens her mouth a little wider and moves down. You feel her lips glide along the length of your cock. Tiffany almost reaches your base, before she retreats again. Her hand around your cock starts stroking the parts of your cock that just left her mouth. Once she finally reaches your tip again, Tiffany gives it another kiss. This one is sloppier. But when she looks up at you, she furrows her brows.
“Why aren’t you recording?”
You’re stunned. The feeling of her lips around your cock has made you unable to move. Tiffany rolls her eyes and motions towards the counter, where she put her phone earlier.
After picking it up, you enter the pin she told you and open the camera. You hit the record button as Tiffany resumes her blowjob. Making sure she is in the frame, you watch her through the phone. But it just doesn’t really compare to the real thing. Now that you got a taste of it, you can’t help yourself.
You have to hold in a deep breath, as you lower her phone a little. Now you can see her better. Tiffany keeps stroking the lower half of your cock, while her mouth works the upper part. The camera can’t catch it, but you feel how her tongue presses against the underside of your shaft. She slowly covers your whole cock in her spit as she starts to make lewd sounds. The vibrations from her mouth are being sent through your cock, into your body and up your spine. Your whole body can feel how Tiffany sucks you off.
When she lifts her head a little further, Tiffany lets your cock fall out of her mouth. Now that the camera can see your whole cock for the first time, you’re a little embarrassed. You are aware that other people will see this. For a moment, you think they could make fun of you, but Tiffany quickly destroys that thought.
“Wow. Your cock tastes so good.”
She smiles up into the camera, before giving your tip another kiss.
“I really like it.”
A wink into the camera and Tiffany resumes her blowjob. You realize too late that she has picked up the pace. You almost drop her phone, when you see her head bob up and down. Her lips glide over your shaft way faster now. Her hand moves quicker too. Tiffany is starting to take more of your cock into her mouth.
Now that her head is moving further forward, everytime she gets deeper onto your cock, you can see a hint of her ass again. The blue jeans she is wearing is hugging her cheeks tightly. You move her phone a little forward and capture more of her ass. 
As Tiffany’s blowjob continues, you start to get more into being her cameraman. While your main focus is still not to cum too fast, you’re now trying out some new camera angles. When Tiffany moves back a little, and only your tip remains inside her mouth, you move the phone on the same height as her face to her left. You’re now filming her side profile. Tiffany seems to know what to do. She looks up at you, her eyes now sparkling with amusement and lust. She slowly moves her lips along your cock once more, making sure the camera captures the exact way her mouth slowly takes in your length. After a couple back and forths, you reposition her phone again. It’s now looking from your perspective down at her, just like at the beginning. 
You focus more on not just suddenly blowing your load inside her mouth. Because you’re now feeling a familiar pull inside your stomach. The way her mouth and hand work your shaft makes you experience something new. Your ex was never this good. You can tell that Tiffany has done this more than just once.
After leaning back again, Tiffany smiles into the camera. She stops stroking you and places a finger two or three inches above your base.
“I just got up to here. Do you think I can manage to go all the way?”
You hesitate for a second, before slowly making the camera nod.
Tiffany laughs.
“Let’s see if I can take it all.”
With another seductive smile on her face, Tiffany takes you into her mouth once more. You brace yourself for what’s to come next. The feeling of her lips gliding down your shaft once more makes you shiver in excitement. You still can’t believe she is actually doing this to you.
When Tiffany reaches her finger, she looks at the camera again. A wink and she removes her finger. You have to stop yourself from cursing as you feel her take more than before. Your tip grazes something deep inside her mouth and Tiffany stops for a second. She still has around one inch to go. You feel how she opens her mouth a little wider. How your tip slowly moves down. You are suddenly aware that you’re now inside her throat. Tiffany pushes her head further onto your cock and you hear her cough. Your whole cock has finally disappeared inside her mouth and throat.
You can feel how the muscles of her throat tighten around you. And you can also feel your incoming orgasm. You try to count in your head, not wanting to cum already. But Tiffany deepthroating your cock, doesn’t help at all. You make it to 12, when you feel yourself throbbing inside of her. She must have felt it too, because she looks up at you, her eyes have naturally become bigger.
You signal her in whatever way that you’re about to finish. But Tiffany only hums in satisfaction, which brings you so much closer to your orgasm. She moans, when you finally do cum. You unload deep inside Tiffany’s throat. Holding onto the phone, you do your best to keep the camera focused on her face.
Tiffany closes her eyes in bliss, feeling how your warm cum paints her throat. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“Follow me.”
Tiffany opens the door to the room next to her bedroom. Yeji’s room is on your left. You glance inside, the door slightly opened. You see her bed, a stuffed toy on it, and a desk. In that moment, Tiffany takes your hand and the two of you walk into the room she just unlocked. The key is still in the keyhole as you walk past. This is probably Tiffany’s way to make sure that Yeji doesn’t know what her mother is doing for a living.
The big window in front of you leads towards the garden. You can see the corner of the pool as you step a little closer. A bed is standing on your right. Next to it a nightstand. One would think it’s just a normal bedroom. But when you turn to your left, you see two tripods with cameras on them. Two cupboards stand against the wall behind those. You guess that’s where Tiffany keeps all her stuff. Costumes, sexy outfits and toys.
“Can you help me set everything up?”
“Sure.”
Reality suddenly seems to crash down on you as you pick up one of the tripods. Tiffany just gave you head. You came in her mouth barely ten minutes ago. And now you’re going to have sex with her on camera. You take a deep breath and set up the tripod near the bed, just like Tiffany told you. It’s not that you’re scared or anything. You’re just really nervous. Tiffany is on a whole different level, compared to your ex. And filming it is different too. You’ve never really done that before.
Once you’re done setting up the cameras, Tiffany walks over to one of the cupboards. She opens it and you can see inside. As you expected, it’s full with all kinds of different outfits. Tiffany takes the one on the far left, but your eyes linger on the one on the right. Is that… a nurse uniform?
“Give me five minutes.”
You nod as Tiffany closes the doors again. You can’t help but look after her as she leaves the room, imagining her in that uniform. You’re now just as hard again as you were when Tiffany took your cock down her throat.
When she closes the door behind herself, you realize that you didn’t even catch a glimpse of the outfit she is about to put on. It was something red. Just like the uniform. You stand where she left you for a moment, before you quickly walk over to the cupboard.
You open the doors again and check out the outfit to your right. A red skirt and a red top, decorated with white lace along the neckline. A matching white apron with a cross on it and a red nurse’s cap. You want to see Tiffany wear this so badly right now. You rub your hand over your clothed crotch as you scan the rest of the cupboard. A black leather outfit, a very low cut green top, which would almost expose her whole cleavage, except for her nipples, a long white dress that almost looks too elegant for this room.
Something else suddenly catches your attention. You squat down and reach for one of the two drawers on the bottom of the cupboard. Biting your lower lip, you feast your eyes on row after row on Tiffany Hwang’s bra collection. There are probably around thirty of them. All differently colored and with different decorations. One has a bow on it at the front. Another one is made out of white lace with butterfly patterns. A third one is a red strapless one. Your hand lingers above a fourth one. It’s blue and it’s not shaped like the other ones. It’s more like a couple of ribbons sewed together, which would only cover Tiffany’s nipples. The rest of her tits would be completely visible. 
You quickly open the other one. It’s full with her panties. All folded and lined up neatly. Some of them seem to have a matching bra in the other drawer, while others seem to be a stand alone item. You catch a glimpse of one that has writing on the front. You slightly push the one on top of it out of the way. 
“Good girl”
Taking a deep breath, you close both drawers again, but not without letting your eyes scan through their contents one last time. You wonder for how long Tiffany must be doing this already. Because these are a lot, even for a woman. You remember when you were young and you rummaged through your moms wardrobe, searching for the TV remote she hid, while she was out of the house, because she didn’t want you to watch TV the whole day. You came across her underwear drawer, but Tiffany’s is on another level. You wonder if she has even more inside her normal bedroom. Or inside the other cupboard?
A second later, you stand in front of it. But just when you’re about to open its doors, you hear footsteps approaching. You quickly look around. You don’t want to be caught going through her underwear. Two giant steps later, you reach the bed and jump onto the mattress. Just in time. Right when you lean your head against the wall behind you, Tiffany opens the door. You almost forget what you just saw. Hell, you almost forget to breathe.
Tiffany as a whole is too much to handle. You feel like your jaw is about to drop, so you quickly look down, not wanting her to think that you’re some naive little boy. Your eyes land on her feet. They’re covered in red stockings, which are barely see through. But you do catch a hint of her white painted nails. Your eyes follow along Tiffany’s legs as you admire how the fabric tightly wraps around her skin. The thicker fabric turns into lace as you reach her thighs. Red roses greet you as you near the end of her stockings. A strap serves as the next path for your eyes to travel on. Its connection with the hem of Tiffany’s stockings is decorated with a small red bow.
Eventually, you reach Tiffany’s waist. It’s covered by her red garter belt, which is, just like her panties and bra, made out of red lace. Her high-waisted panties give you a side view of one of her butt cheeks, before your focus lands on her clothed pussy. You still can’t believe how sexy she is, you can’t get enough of her. Your eyes travel even further. Past her belly button and her garter belt and along her flat stomach. 
Tiffany’s chest is covered by a red lace bra with the same pattern as the top of her stockings. Your gaze lingers right between both her breasts, before you travel along one of her bra straps. You reach her collarbone, which is decorated by a golden necklace, a heart in the middle. Her shoulders are covered in red silk. The night robe she is wearing flows down her back and would’ve hidden her round cheek, if she didn’t rest her hand on her hip. A flirtatious smile plays around her freshly painted red lips. 
“You’ve been staring for ages.”
“S-Sorry.”
Well, you certainly do look like a naive little boy right now.
“I don't mind at all.”
Tiffany laughs, before finally stepping fully inside the room.
“So, have you decided yet?”
“Huh?”
 You zoned out for a second, too distracted by Tiffany turning around and closing the door.
Now she turns back to you.
“Have you thought about a suitable concept for our video? This was your idea after all.”
You clear your throat, trying to buy yourself some time. Since you decided to message Tiffany, dozens of ideas have piled up inside your mind. One more dirty and fucked up then the next. 
“I do have a couple of ideas, actually.”
Tiffany smiles at you as she slowly walks towards the bed.
“Let’s just decide on one for now, shall we?”
She leans down and places her hands on the mattress, right next to your leg. You don’t stand a chance. A second later, you brazenly stare at her voluptuous cleavage.
“We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves yet.”
You tear your eyes off her body once more and focus back on her face. A knowing grin plays around her lips.
“Sure.”
You finally decide on one idea you had in mind.
Tiffany doesn’t look very convinced at first, but as you continue your explanation, her eyes grow a little softer. 
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
You get off the bed, while Tiffany looks around.
“Why don’t you carry the tripod downstairs and I will set up everything else in the kitchen?”
“Sounds good.”
You’re excited. Receiving a blowjob from Yeji’s mom was already an incredible moment. But now, you're about to actually sleep with her. Your finger shakes as you press the record button on the camera, secured on the tripod, which is directed at the open kitchen. You walk into the hallway, as you hear Tiffany starting the coffee machine. You wait for it to finish, before you silently count to ten, just like the two of you planned. You take your phone out of your pocket and hit the record button on it as well.
When you walk into the kitchen, you see Tiffany leaning against the counter behind her. She is facing the door you’re now standing in as she sips on her freshly made coffee. She acts sleepy, covering her mouth, pretending to yawn into her hand.
“Oh, good morning Ms. Hwang. Did you sleep well last night?” 
Your voice makes her look up at you. You make sure your phone captures her face and some of her cleavage. The two of you outlined the general direction of the conversation earlier, but most of it is gonna be improvisation.
“Good morning! I slept pretty well and you?”
Tiffany looks up from her cup and smiles at you.
“I got.. Some sleep. We stayed up pretty late haha. Sorry for all the noise.”
Your words make her shake her head.
“Oh don’t worry, I didn't hear a thing. Would you like a cup? This coffee maker makes a mean cup.”
She gestures towards the machine and of course you accept.
“I would appreciate it. Thank you”
“So why are you up this early? I’d assume you try to get some more sleep after last night.”
“I usually wake up early to get some exercise in. No matter how little sleep I get.”
Tiffany hands you your cup and smiles sympathetically. 
“Oh you poor thing. It's okay to take some days off, you know?”
“Yeah but if I get off my routine I’ll start to get lazy and all my hard work would go to waste.”
She nods in understanding, while you try the coffee.
“And who are you working out so hard for? Who’s my poor baby losing sleep over? A girlfriend perhaps?”
It feels weird to you that Tiffany calls you baby. Especially since she isn’t your girlfriend. But you go along with it.
“No, no girlfriend unfortunately. It’s just for myself to stay in shape. It’s a good way to keep my self disciplined on a routine”
“Well if I could offer my honest opinion..”
A sly, almost hungry smile plays around her lips.
“I think your hard work is paying off quite well.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate that” 
“You know.. because of my daughter’s sleepover. I had to break my own little routine. It’s going to be hard to get back to it without some help.”
Tiffany puts her cup down and steps closer. She keeps eye contact with you.
“Care to lend a hand?”
She places her hand on your shoulder as she says those words. The camera on the tripod catches her movements, while your phone is focused on her face.
“Sorry about that, but if you want.. I could help you out. I have some time.”
A victorious smile plays around the corners of her mouth.
“I’ll take you up on that offer.”
Tiffany bites her lips seductively as she says those words. Her hand slowly moves down your shoulder, past your biceps and along your lower arm, until it reaches your own hand. She takes your coffee and places the mug on the counter next to you.
“Well then handsome…”
She locks her fingers around yours.
“Care to follow me?”
She is face to face with you as she whispers those words. You lift the camera a little, so you can see her properly.
“Lead the way ma’am.” 
You follow after her as Tiffany leads you upstairs.
The two of you walk into the room you were in earlier. Tiffany slings her arms around your neck and turns you around her, so your back is facing the other camera and the bed. Her lips capture yours, which you try to film with your phone. But her lips prove to be too distracting. You close your eyes as you start to lose yourself in the kiss. The last kiss you had was some time ago, with-
Tiffany puts her weight forward, against you, which makes you walk backwards. When your knees hit the edge of the bed, Tiffany finally lets go of your lips. The faint hint of strawberries leaves your lips as you already hope for a second kiss. 
She places a finger on your chest, looking up at you with a seductive smile.
“My routine includes working out too.”
Tiffany doesn’t have to use a lot of force to push you onto the bed. A moment after you hit the soft mattress, she is already straddling you. Your hand finds its way to one of her lace covered thighs, while the other holds your phone, trying to capture as much of her as possible. She kisses your cheek once, before pecking you on the lips. Once more the taste of strawberries lingers on your lips as Tiffany moves her mouth closer to your ear.
"Although I’m usually the one who gets worked out.”
She playfully gives your earlobe a little bite, before she moves down your neck. Kiss after kiss, lick after lick, Tiffany travels towards the hem of your shirt. Your free hand reaches behind her back, trying to undo her bra, but Tiffany slowly moves it away while she shakes her head.
“Not so impatient, baby.”
Her smile sends warmth through your system as she leans down and places that smile directly onto your lips. When she moves back, you feel her breath against your lips.
“Just let me take care of you for now.”
Once more, Tiffany begins her journey along your neck. When she reaches your shirt, you feel her hands sneak underneath it from further down, while she kisses your clothed chest. You feel them exploring your upper body as Tiffany keeps peppering you with kisses. She slowly makes her way towards your crotch, while the rest of her body shuffles backwards, until she is face to face with your clothed cock. 
“Let's see what you have for me.”
Another smile and Tiffany starts to take off your pants. You make sure your phone captures her deep cleavage as she leans over your lower body. 
“Wow.”
Tiffany looks up with an impressed look on her face as she pulls down your pants, revealing your cock.
“I didn’t expect someone my daughter’s age to have such a nice dick.”
“Thank you, Ms. Hwang.”
You make sure that you sound a little embarrassed as she gives your cock a long, slow lick.
“Do you know how much fun we could’ve had last night?”
A second lick follows the first as Tiffany slowly strokes the lower half of your cock.
“I was so horny, thinking about all the young men in my house.”
She lets her tongue swirl around your tip, before she looks back at your face.
“I wouldn’t have minded at all, if you had come in during the night.”
You hold your breath as Tiffany suddenly bobs her head a couple of times on your cock. Her lips glide up and down your length with a speed you weren’t prepared for. But it ended as quickly as it started. Biting back a disappointed groan, you see Tiffany’s eyes sparkle in amusement as if she was silently saying,
“Girls your age don’t play with your cock like this.”
You try to come up with a witty reply, which isn’t as easy as it sounds, when you have someone lying between your legs.
“I will make sure to check up on you during the next sleepover.”
Tiffany smiles as you feel her free hand dive underneath your shirt once more. 
“I’ll be waiting.”
Your head finally sinks back into the sheets, while you keep your phone locked on Tiffany. You’re starting to get the hang of it, while she keeps sucking your cock. Even closing your eyes momentarily, you feel her working your shaft with a level of skill, which you aren’t used to. Like before, her technique is too good for you to handle long term. How Tiffany’s lips wrap around your tip. How they slowly glide along your length. How she sucks on your dick, while keeping an airtight seal around it. How one hand gently cups your balls, while the other keeps drawing circles on your chest. How her tongue swirls around your tip, whenever she lifts her head. How it seems to wiggle around your cock like a snake, when Tiffany almost reaches your base.
A particularly tight grip of her lips around your cock makes you thrust upwards a little. If you didn’t have yourself under control at that moment, that would’ve been it. You would’ve blown your load into her mouth without warning. But you do your best to keep your cool. You still have something to prove. Trying to think of something else, you close your eyes again. Maybe you should surprise her? Should you end this pleasurable torture and leave her heaven like mouth? But what would you do then? How would Tiffany react? 
You hesitate. You’re afraid she might back off. Might call off this whole thing.
“Improvisation and surprise. That’s what draws a viewer in. Excitement.”
Your late father’s words suddenly echo through your head as you reach the verge of your orgasm. You don’t know how your mind got there. But as always, your father is right. 
You reach forward and push Tiffany’s hair a little to the side, cupping her cheek. She leans into your palm a little, humming in acknowledgement. You brace yourself. Gone is your urge to shoot your load down Tiffany’s throat. For some reason, she has triggered your competitive spirit with the way she is sucking you off.
Tiffany lifts her head once more, her lips gliding across your cock. When she reaches your tip, you feel that tongue again. How it swirls around your tip. How she-
You stop yourself. You count to three inside your head. All or nothing.
A frown appears on Tiffany’s forehead as she feels you slowly pulling her off your cock. Her mouth is already empty when she looks towards you. You quickly wrap your legs around her torso. You feel her struggle for a second on instinct. But a second later, you already roll you both over. You land on top of Tiffany, who has a surprised look on her face. She didn’t expect you to be able to do this. 
A grin appears on your lips as you steal a kiss from her.
“Since I saw you downstairs, I wanted to know what your pussy tastes like.”
You lean down and suck on Tiffany’s neck. A moan leaves her lips and you could swear she is smiling now.
“Do you always dress this sexy, when your daughter has friends over?”
Tiffany gasps. Not intentionally. She is very surprised by your change of attitude. She was able to tell that you weren’t as confident and experienced as the other men she's been with. She had been wondering if she made the right call. It was still weird to her to be doing this with a boy. With her neighbor’s son, to be exact. She felt how close you were to already cuming down her throat mere seconds ago.
But now, you’re on top of her. Tiffany feels how your lips slightly suck on her skin. How you give her neck small bites. Your free hand has moved to take a handful of her right breast, now squeezing it through her bra.
For a second, she wonders if this is all an act. An act to make the video as good as possible. But then again…
You couldn’t just do this without some sort of proper confidence.
Tiffany glances at your phone, making sure that you’re still doing that part of your job properly, before she completely lets you take over. She feels your control over her as your weight pins her to the mattress underneath her. 
You quickly reach under her back and undo her bra with one hand. You practiced this long enough, after the first time with your ex. It took you way too long to take her bra off. Even with two hands. But your work pays off now. Tiffany lets out a sigh as she bites her lip, feeling your hand exposing her chest. Your lips move from her neck to her collarbone, while your free hand plays with her tits.
“Yes, baby.”
The woman underneath you moans into your ear. You move on from her neck soon enough, leaving a trail of kisses on your way to her chest. Once you reach her tits, your hand moves further down too. It glides over Tiffany’s tight tummy as you lick her breasts. You occasionally take a slightly brown nipple into your mouth and suck on it. Your actions make Tiffany arch her back into the air, further towards your lips and your tongue.
Meanwhile, your hand has reached her garter belt. You slip past it, feeling her belly button underneath your palm. As your fingertips touch the hem of her panties, you playfully bite into one of her nipples. Not hard. But the unexpected stimulation makes Tiffany moan out loud.
“Holy fuck!”
You are not as inexperienced as she thought you were. Your lips now follow your hand’s path, leaving Tiffany desperate for another bite.
Just as your fingertips graze her pussy lips underneath the red lace, you pull them away. You hear her breath hitch as you place your hand on her thigh. The milky white flesh feels soft, but firm at the same time. The red strap that connects her stockings to her belt is being pressed into your palm as Tiffany flexes her thighs. She feels your mouth coming closer. You record the place where your lips just were as you finally reach her panties. You lift your head, taking a moment to do a close up shot of her lace covered core. Glancing at her face, you see Tiffany’s red cheeks. Her aroused and slightly curious face makes you smile on the inside. You’re proud of yourself for making her crumble underneath your touches.
Moving your phone a little out of the way again, you lean forward. You plant a kiss on her panties, quickly inhaling her scent.
“You’re way too good at this.”
You wonder if that’s Tiffany who said that, or the character she is playing right now. Another kiss makes her hips buck in your direction. 
“Don’t tease me.”
She sighs, giving you a desperate look, which you make sure to capture with your phone.
“Remember, you’re partially responsible for messing up my routine.”
You kiss her thigh instead, which makes her shake her head.
“No, please. You promised to make it up to me.”
Her desperate tone makes you give in. Your ex told you more than once how important foreplay is, so you always took it quite serious. But it seems like Tiffany has already had enough. 
Because you can’t just take off her panties, you pull them to the side. A mouthwatering sight reveals itself to you as her slightly brown lips glisten with arousal. You quickly do another close up shot, but your excitement makes you cut it short. Soon, your lips kiss a circle around her lips as you already have a slight hint of her taste on them. 
“You make me so wet.”
Another sigh from Tiffany as she reaches for a fistful of your hair. You feel her grab the phone, so you hand it over to her. You can’t see it, but you can almost feel how she films you, while you start to swipe your tongue over her folds. You do the same motion over and over again. Swiping your tongue from the bottom to the top. Whenever you come too close to her clit, Tiffany clamps her thighs together, letting a moan escape her lips. The only problem is, that your head is in between them. You use both your hands to take a hold of her thighs, not wanting to get crushed, as Tiffany moans and whines. You can’t believe that Yeji’s mother is making these sounds because of you. You never thought you would see her in only underwear, or naked ,or, specifically, her bare pussy. 
You’re still trying to pinpoint what exactly Tiffany tastes like. Does her pussy taste like strawberries too? Just like her lips? Not really. It tastes a little different. You dive deeper, trying to get to the bottom of this. Your tongue now roams inside her velvet tunnel, making Tiffany’s head fall back. Her hand in your hair starts to make your scalp burn as she keeps tugging at it harder and harder. She keeps pressing your face right into her pussy as you lick and eat her out with all your might. 
The sweet, but slightly salty taste of her juices invade your mouth, while you make Tiffany moan and gasp. Her state of mind switches constantly from surprise, to pure lust, to confusion, to arousal and back to surprise. She didn’t expect this at all from you.
Yes, it’s not the best oral sex she’s ever gotten. And your technique is a little sloppy. But Tiffany didn’t even expect you to have a technique. She thought you were too young. Too inexperienced to properly pleasure a woman like her. But you’re proving her wrong right now. The way your tongue glides along the insides of her pussy. The way it occasionally changes its path and gives her clit a flick. The way you bury your face deep into her core. Tiffany is pleasantly surprised at your visible love for her pussy. More often than not was she with guys, who never even bothered eating her out. And if they did, she felt like they were seeing it as a chore. But you seem to enjoy having your tongue buried deep inside her snatch.
Your effort and your pure intention to just make her feel good makes Tiffany mewl and shake. Her thighs close around your head again and again. Her hand pulls you further into her core. 
She knows that you’re not quite there yet. Your work is enough to make her fall apart though. To moan your name and breathlessly beg for more. Tiffany wonders, with only a little bit of teaching, you could probably make her cum once or twice on a regular basis. The thought alone makes her pussy even wetter. But it also makes her long for you even more. She suddenly feels the great urge to properly feel you inside of her. She needs you to finally fill her with your cock.
“Need your cock, baby.”
Tiffany whines, her hand in your hair, gently pushing you off her cunt.
“Give it to me.”
She hands you your phone and you make sure her whole body is in focus once more. You kneel in front of her as you stroke your shaft, which is still wet from her earlier blowjob. You can’t help but feel excitement rush through your veins. Up until now, everything was perfect. You still can’t believe your luck. Two blowjobs and the opportunity to eat out Tiffany Hwang. Your attempt to make Yeji’s life hell has already proven to be more pleasurable than you could’ve ever imagined.
And now, you place your cock on top of her labia. Her juices glisten on her skin and you start to rub your cock against her lips. 
“Oh, gosh. No teasing!”
Tiffany’s needy voice doesn’t stop you from building your own anticipation as high as possible. This is the moment you’ve dreamed of for years. You still remember the first time you touched yourself to Yeji’s mom. It was summer and you were invited to some neighbor’s garden party. Tiffany showed up in a very tight dress that showed off her ass and a very low cut neckline. Since that day, you imagined her so often while you-
Tiffany interrupts your thoughts by slinging her legs around your waist. The red fabric rubs against your skin as she takes your hand into hers, your cock now freely resting on top of her cleanly shaven cunt.
“Stop playing with me already, baby. I can’t take it anymore.”
Your world starts to spin as Tiffany pulls the same move that you pulled on her earlier. Once more, you’re lying on your back, while Tiffany sits on your lap. Her pussy still rubbing against your cock.
“You’ve got to learn this lesson, baby. “
Tiffany reaches down to stroke your shaft. Her face is marked with pleasure as her dominating stare seems to burn your soul.
“I’m not a patient woman. If I say I need cock, then I do mean I need cock.”
With those words, Tiffany lifts herself off your lap and positions herself right above your tip. Her labia grazes it once more and you feel her fingers hold your cock in place. You make sure your phone catches your cock penetrating her pussy. You almost let it slip out of your hand. It has been a while since you had sex with your ex. But even if you would have cum during the blowjob earlier, you would be just as close to your orgasm as you are now. Her velvet walls squeeze your tip as Tiffany lowers herself onto your cock.
“Oh my gosh!”
You hope the set up camera captures her face, because the only body parts you are able to move are your eyes. They switch between the sight of her pussy engulfing your cock, to watching how a high pitched moan leaves her mouth as she bites her lips, and back to your shaft disappearing inside her cunt.
“You’re so big inside me. I love your cock.”
Tiffany gasps as she slides down your shaft. The more she takes, the more strength the both of you need to keep it together. One of her hands has found itself entangled in her brown hair, messing it up as she tugs and pulls on it, trying to get accustomed to you being inside of her. Her other hand is pressed flat on your chest, giving her enough stability to keep sitting upright. Your own free hand can’t hold itself back anymore. You reach upwards to squeeze one of her breasts, which makes Tiffany’s head roll back.
Under heavy moans, she slowly begins to ride you. It is a fantastic show she is able to pull off. How her hips meet yours. How her waist moves when she rolls her hips a little. How her tits slightly bounce. How her red lips produce moan after moan.
And the feeling. You can’t really describe it. Your time with your ex now seems like a smudged water painting, while Tiffany’s ride makes you feel like looking at an 8k picture. Her slick cunt coats your cock with her juices. Her nails slightly dig into your chest. The stimuli that flood your brain seem to overload your mind. 
“Fuck.”
It’s the first time you have to curse under your breath. Tiffany just lifted her legs a little, placing her instep on your thighs. You feel the red fabric rub against your skin. Most of her weight is now being supported by her knees on the mattress and her hand on your chest. Tiffany leans over, showing off her tight tummy to the camera, while her hair falls into her face. 
You raise your upper body and capture one of her nipples with your mouth.
“Gosh, yes!”
By now, both her hands have found their place on your chest. Tiffany keeps her slightly bent over position as she keeps bouncing on your cock. Her smooth walls make your cock as hard as it has never been before. You eagerly suck on her tits as you aim your phone at her pussy. The sounds of her cheeks clapping against your lap fills the room, accompanied by her moans and an occasional groan from you. Your hand, which was fondling her tits, is now right above her pussy. Your thumb flicks against her clit. The result is louder moaning. An increase of pace in her riding. And visibly more scratch marks than before.
You actually manage to drive Tiffany towards her orgasm. Which quickly proves to be a bad thing for you. Her cunt squeezes you harder with every flick of your thumb against her clit. She now slams herself down all the way to your base, making her pussy take every last inch of you. Now you’re close too.
“Damn, you have such a nice pussy.”
You manage to say through your teeth, trying to hold in the inevitable. Tiffany pulls off a satisfied smile. But her focus is certainly needed elsewhere. She can’t believe you’re actually able to hold out this long. For a second, she thought you were gonna cum after only a minute, when she saw your reaction to your cock disappearing inside of her. Now she is on the verge of her own orgasm. She can feel you twitch inside of her. Your face tells her that the two of you either cum together, or no one cums. Tiffany decides on the latter. The video isn’t finished yet. If you want to make more appearances in the future, she will need to test you a little more. So far, your cock definitely qualifies. But what about your fucking? She has been the only one working hard up until now.
Tiffany slows down drastically. It unintentionally makes you thrust upwards once or twice, before you have yourself under control. Tiffany leans further down, her mouth now next to your ear.
“Time to work me out properly.”
You turn your head slightly, pulling Tiffany into another kiss. Your lips stay locked for a while as her hips slowly move in circles around your dick.
“Get on all fours.”
Tiffany was about to suggest the next position, but you beat her to it. A satisfied smile plays around her lips as she slowly gets off you.
“That’s right, baby. Make me take your cock like a slut.”
Her words trigger something primal in you. Maybe that was her intention anyway.
As soon as Tiffany is in position, you kneel behind her. Your phone captures how you slap both her ass cheeks once, before squeezing them softly.
A moan echoes through the room as Tiffany feels her cheeks burn up after another spank. She directly faces the camera, standing on the tripod, right at the edge of the bed. She could touch it, if she stretched out her arm. She bites her lip as she feels you aligning your cock with her pussy. You rub your tip against her labia again, teasing her a little.
“You’re such a bad boy.”
 Tiffany sighs, feeling how you barely graze her pussy. She secretly loves how you tease her. You turn her into a begging slut in front of the camera.
“Oh yes! Right there!”
Tiffany lets out a loud moan, when you finally do push inside her again. Your hand automatically glides over her slightly arched back. You marvel at how smooth her skin feels, while her walls pull you further into her. You take a hold of her red lace garterbelt, slightly twisting the fabric to use it as a makeshift rein. You pull her onto your cock, while thrusting forward.
“Oh lord!”
Tiffany lets out a surprised yelp, surprised by you suddenly bottoming out inside of her. You quickly settle in a rhythm that works for you and start to fuck Tiffany from behind. Moans spill from her lips, her fists open and close around her sheets, her feet shuffle around as you use her pussy. Her insides feel just as good as when she rode you a moment ago. But now that you had a taste of her warm depth, you start to become greedy. You want to go as deep into her body as you can. You want to feel how her body completely swallows your cock. How her labia stretches around your shaft.
You put some pressure with your hand on her back. It makes Tiffany arch her back further, her upper body getting closer to the mattress. Her body’s center of gravity moves forward, which lifts her feet off the mattress. Once more, Tiffany’s clothed insteps touch your body. They rest on your hips, which makes her ass look even rounder. You can feel yourself now being able to just push that little bit deeper into her. It makes you increase your pace and you keep pushing her further down.
Finally, Tiffany’s head rests on the mattress. She still tries to keep eye contact with the camera. She does her best fuck-me face. Biting her lower lip, frowning, her eyes only half open. But she can’t keep it up for long. Your thrusts into her cunt makes her feet, which are pressed against your hips, hit her ass. With every thrust, her heels dig into her cheeks.
“Gosh, baby! You’re so deep! I-”
Tiffany’s sentence is interrupted by another loud moan, when you reach down to grab one of her arms. You put it on her back and make her close her hand around her garterbelt. You do the same with the second one. Now, Tiffany’s face is buried in the sheets, her muffled moans are only barely audible over your hips smacking against her ass. You know that her viewers would love to see her pleasure wrecked face though. At least you would.
You reach out to grab a fistful of her hair and make it into a makeshift ponytail. You lift her head by pulling at it.
“Oh fuck!”
 Tiffany greets you with a loud cry as she feels you fucking her as deep as you possibly can.
“That’s it, baby!”
You feel her cunt tightening around you, whenever you pull on her hair a little. Her upper body is completely in the air, only supported by your grip on her hair and her own hands on her garterbelt. Her back still shows off a beautiful arch though and you can see a small trail of sweat run down towards her ass.
“Fuck me harder!”
Tiffany whines loudly as you keep using your control over her entire body to pleasure yourself. She has given up trying to look sexy for the camera for a while now. Her mouth is now just hanging open, her tongue slightly visible as she takes your pounding from behind.
“Fucking use my pussy!”
You feel it tighten at her own words. You’re surprised how much she is enjoying it. You really hope you’re proving to her that this was a great idea.
“Make me your bitch! Yes!”
Tiffany cries out as you bottom out in her cunt again and again. A strand of her hair has escaped your fingers and is now swinging to your rhythm on the right side of her face.
“Fill me with this young cock!”
Her moans get louder and louder. But unfortunately, you are starting to reach your breaking point once more. There isn’t much left in you. You have to admit that your muscles are starting to grow tired. Your ability to hold back your orgasm becomes weaker. Letting a shaky breath escape your lips, you let go of Tiffany’s hair. She falls face first into the mattress, accompanied by a surprised yelp.
“You’re way too tight, Ms Hwang. I’m gonna cum soon.”
Before she can react properly, you turn her over. Tiffany manages to take her hands off the garterbelt, before she lies on her back. Her messed up hair hides parts of her face as she looks up at you with anticipation. Before you started recording, the two of you decided on how to end your sex scene. As much as you would’ve liked to cum in her mouth again, or maybe even inside her pussy, her suggestion wasn’t that bad either.
Now that she is lying in a missionary position in front of you, you grab the red lace around her waist once more. Your phone is focused on her whole body yet again, as you begin your final sprint towards the end. Her stocking covered legs wrap around your hips, keeping you in place. She doesn’t even have to do that. Nothing in this world could stop you from fucking her right now. You watch how your entire cock penetrates her pretty lips again and again. Her smooth skin around her cunt glistens with sweat and her own juices. Pulling Tiffany towards you, using the garterbelt, has you penetrate her as deep as possible yet again.
You feel your cock starting to throb. And judging by the increasing volume of her moans, so does she.
“Yeah! Cum on me, baby!”
“Fuck.”
You grunt in response, unable to hold yourself back as you fuck her as hard and deep as possible. 
“Paint me! Make me your bitch!”
You know you won’t last a moment longer. You feel a familiar pull and you quickly try to pull out of Tiffany’s warm cunt. Almost too late. A second later, you cum on her pussy.
“Oh yes, baby. Claim my pussy.”
A groan leaves your mouth. Stars dance around in front of your eyes. Your knees buckle. You do your best, to keep your eyes open. You want to see what you did to Tiffany.
Her pussy is covered in your cum, her slightly brown lips sticky with semen. A small trail runs down her skin, heading towards her ass and the sheets.
The both of you are trying to catch your breath, once you finally finish. You keep recording her, showing how Tiffany’s tits and her stomach move up and down, before you do a close up shot of her cum covered cunt.
“Oh my gosh.”
You hear her sigh, a satisfied smile on her face. You watch and record how Tiffany reaches down and starts to play with your cum on her pussy. She slowly rubs her clit and occasionally lets a finger disappear inside her cunt.
“You can turn it off now.”
You look at her and stop the recording. Staying silent, you wait for her verdict, although it seemed like she was satisfied with your performance.
“Not bad for a boy. I could see us doing this again.”
You can’t hide your wide smile, excitement washing through your body. 
“But if you lied to me and this kind of theme doesn’t help me at all…”
“It will.”
You sound surprisingly confident. But then again, who wouldn’t be, after experiencing possibly the best sex in your life.
Tiffany nods and starts to get off the bed. You do the same, but you can’t help but glance at her, while the two of you get dressed.
“Let's do the ending scene.”
Tiffany has slipped her panties back to their original place, put on her bra and thrown her silk robe over her shoulders.
The two of you now stand in front of the door, just like you planned earlier. You make sure that Tiffany is in focus, before hitting the record button once more. She opens the door a little, but then looks at the camera.
“I hope my daughter has another sleepover soon. I would hate it, if I would have to wait too long for you to come back.”
“Don’t worry, Ms Hwang. I’m sure she will do one again on her birthday.”
“Oh! You’re right.”
An excited smile plays around Tiffany’s lips.
Then, she steps closer, her face almost touching yours. Her eyes become seductive once more.
“I won’t be able to wait till morning though, if I know you’re sleeping in the next room.”
She takes your free hand and guides it towards her core. Your fingers dive underneath her panties. You make sure that the camera captures that.
“I’m gonna try to sneak out as soon as I can. But we stayed up very late yesterday. I doubt we will go to bed earlier next time.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
Her hand reaches down, cupping your balls.
“The possibility is very slim. But if I do fall asleep early…”
Tiffany whispers, before kissing your cheekbone, her hand now stroking your cock over your pants.
“Don’t bother waking me up.”
Her voice becomes barely audible as she looks directly into your eyes, her other hand pushing your finger deep inside of her.
“Just put it in.”
“Fuck, yes!”
You whisper, when you see that Tiffany has sent you a video. It's almost midnight and you’re lying in your bed, about to go to sleep. You have actual footage of you, fucking Yeji’s mom. After years and years of fights and humiliation, you finally hold the ultimate weapon in your hand. You know that Yeji will be at Eunha’s party tomorrow. Now, you only need a plan for getting the video to her.
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Hello everyone!
I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of my new series "SNSD Village". There will be many more epsidoes to come, so please stay tuned. I will post the polls, which can infleunce the next chapter, later.
Stay healthy, everyone!
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akanemnon · 1 year ago
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TWIN RUNES MASTERPOST
Because of the limited amount of links you can put into a post, you can find the links to each page in these sub-posts:
To be continued...
FAQ under the cut!
TWIN RUNES MINI COMICS
Glasses - Frisk Dance - But nobody came - An acquired taste -Smalltalk - All You Can Eat - Page 75 EXTRA -
AFTER RUNES:
Not-To-Do-List - Beach Episode - Salute the Frick - Morning Routine - The Universe is a Hologram - Trick as a Treat - Taste the Painbow - Dungeon Doofus
PRE-RUNES:
Fallen down - First steps - Press [C] - Eye opening - Whatstheirface - Acid reflux - Connection issues - Normal Human Behavior
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TWIN RUNES - FAQ
What exactly is this AU about? Twin Runes is essentially a comedic crossover AU between the universes of Deltarune and Undertale. No fancy nicnacs. Just the characters being their chaotic selves. But there might be some darkness lurking up ahead... ____________________
When is the next comic? The comic updates most Sundays at 6:30 PM Central European Time. ____________________
Why is this AU called Twin Runes? The name is more or less a play on the typical naming format of most AU's by featuring the "Runes" part. There are no literal Twin Runes. The whole name is more of a stand in for Undertale and Deltarune as parallel worlds. Hence the "Twin" part. ____________________
When does Twin Runes take place? This AU takes place between a hypothetical Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 of Deltarune. On the Undertale side of things, it takes place post neutral route just as Frisk was about to deliver Undyne's letter to Alphys.
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How many pages are there going to be? The script for this comic estimates that the comic is going to be 137 pages long (if I don't make any major changes). ____________________
Is the Player a thing in this AU? The Player(s) lost control over both human children as soon as Frisk entered the world of Deltarune. Essentially, the reader takes on the role of the Player. You have no influence on the outcome of the story anymore. All you can do is watch. Both Kris and Frisk refer to the Player as "It" and "the THING". ____________________
Is there going to be a Weird Route? Due to the lack of Player, all choices made by Kris are now their own. How to engage in battle all depends on Kris, and not the Player. Because of that, there are NO DIFFERENT ROUTES. There is only one route and that one is based on Kris' choices. Because of the lack of save points, there is no "what-if" scenario. ____________________
When Chapter 3 and 4 are released, will it affect the story? Any chapters after Chapter 3 won't affect the story in the grand scheme of things. Twin Runes created a new timeline so to speak. ____________________
How old are the characters in this story? Frisk appears to be around 9 years old. Kris thinks they're 14. (Both Frisk and Kris don't know their actual age.) Chara died when they were around 10-11. Susie is around 15-16 (she was held back once) Ralsei appears to be the same age as Kris. ____________________
What's up with Kris' and Frisk's hair? The red bits of their hair is more or less a representation of their souls. That in turn is also why Chara doesn't have that feature. They are soulless. It's a stylistic choice. ____________________
What's that thing on Kris' chest? It's a scar they got from tearing out their soul.
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And why do they have weird lines all over their body? Both Kris and Frisk's anatomy resemble that of ball-jointed dolls. They appear just as markings across their bodies. Think of them as elaborate birthmarks. Kris and Frisk are still made of flesh and blood, but are in fact hypermobile. The reason as to why they do is still a little secret :) People here like to refer to these markings as "puppet limbs". You can get a better look at them and the scar in this artwork
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Why does Kris have braces? This is why:
Why is Dark World Frisk green? Frisk changes their main sweater colors with Kris when they enter the Dark World.
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Can other ghosts see Chara? (pre Darkner transformation) No, only Frisk and Kris are able to see Chara. ____________________
IS KRIS NOW FRISK'S COUNTERPART OR CHARA'S???? :) ____________________
So, was Chara in the locket all along? No, Chara possessed the locket to become a Darkner. ____________________
Where are Jevil and Spamton? Are they in Castle Town? The Fun Gang have already fought these two in the previous chapters and added them into their inventory. Outside of that little dream sequence, neither will be making an appearance. ____________________
Is anyone from Undertale Yellow gonna make an apperance? Outside of a tiny cameo from Clover (that has no greater bearing on the story) no one from Undertale Yellow is going to make an appearance. ____________________
Is (insert character here) gonna go to the Dark World/underground? With the way the story is going to play out, only the main group will be heading to this new Dark World. The rest of the story will be taking place there. ____________________
How did you come up with the idea of Twin Runes? Twin Runes is an offshoot of a separate script I wrote. It's a similar concept but turned on its head. The funny moments in that script made me just continue what now is the start of Twin Runes. I pretty much just wanted to see if I am actually capable of drawing a comic to begin with. So... in a way Twin Runes is my first attempt at a comic ever. If I ever finish Twin Runes, then I know I can tackle turning that mammoth project of a script into a comic too. In the grand scheme of things these two projects are sister series. They have A LOT in common and even share similar plot elements. When Twin Runes is over you will automatically also know certain mysteries of The Other Script. ____________________
What is The Other Script? As of this moment I call The Other Script: "Lost in the In-Between". At its core it's an inverse of Twin Runes. I.e. Kris falling into the underground and being aided by Frisk on their quest to return home. The story and jokes are a considerably more grounded than in Twin Runes and so are the characters. Though they do have their moments from time to time. The overall mood of that script is a lot darker in nature and it's a 200+ page passion project of mine. ____________________
Am I allowed to make fanart? ABSOLUTELY! You are very welcome to make fanart if you feel like it. Please let me know if you do by tagging me, so I can share it with everyone to see so that you get the appreciation you deserve :) ____________________ Can I use the funny faces you draw for memes or for stuff like memes or for profile pictures? That's what they're here for :) ____________________
Is there x ship in this comic? The focus of the story is not on shipping. If it's in the game it will very likely be mentioned or brought up, but that's about it. ____________________
What pronouns do you go with for the human children? I try to stick as close as possible to the games so I use THEY/THEM FOR ALL OF THEM WITHOUT ANY EXCEPTIONS.
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ABOUT ASKS
Asks will open for 24 hours after a new comic has been released. Your questions will then be answered over the course of the week.
Try not to submit multiple asks. If necessary, just keep everything in one post.
Keep in mind that I receive AL LOT of asks, so not every question can be answered...
Questions containing spoilers will not be answered on principle. Wouldn't be as fun if the surprise was ruined, right?
Before leaving an ask (mostly for everyone who's new), please make sure to read the FAQ section above. A lot of times your question might have been answered already :>
I love memes and dumb jokes as much as the next guy, but try not to spam
It probably goes without saying, but please stay civil. I want to give everyone the respect they deserve, and naturally like to be treated the same way.
Please be mindful about drawing requests. It is understandable if you're eager to see a certain character drawn in my style, but I do not like to be bombarded by requests. The more it happens, the less likely I am to do it. Be kind and ask nicely.
I don't take unsolicited comic ideas.
Don't use other people's posts that I reblogged to ask me questions! It has happened before and I do not wish to see this!
This isn't an ask blog. The comic has a script that will not deviate. Reader interaction with the characters won't be possible due to the overall "no Player" subplot.
Please do not ask me to put your characters into the story. Like I said, the script is already finished and I'm quite happy with it. Your characters are in better hands with yourself and your own stories. Please have respect for mine.
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ABOUT SUBMISSIONS
The submission box is for FANART ONLY!
It is meant for those who do not want to submit their fanart to their own blogs, in case they feel scared or intimidated to do so.
ASKS AND REQUESTS THAT ARE SUBMITTED THIS WAY WILL NOT BE ANSWERED.
Please wait until the ask box opens. You can read more on how asks work in the section above.
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REFERENCE SHEETS
The following are ref sheets of characters that don't have established Dark World forms yet (as of writing this comic). The list will be updated as soon as a new character enters the Dark World. Here you will also find references of characters that might appear as surprise cameos, or maybe even completely new faces...
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FULL ART
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llamagoddessofficial · 2 months ago
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Beach episode with the bad Sanses
Why does "take my idiot henchmen to a secluded beach to blow off some steam" 100% sound like something Nightmare would do? He'll bring you along too. The boys can't relax when their beloved favourite human isn't there. You're like a therapy kitten a bunch of giant terrifying fighting hounds refuse to go anywhere without.
Horror doesn't like deep water, too many bad memories of a certain fish monster, so he's staying away from the sea. But he does like the sound it makes... the waves are wonderful, they're something other than his own thoughts to concentrate on. He'll sit on the sand, with a hat over his face, listening to the ocean and enjoying the sun soaking into his old bones. Might even fall asleep. For the love of God, keep Killer away from him, his 'prank' attempts on the sleeping giant will not end well for anyone. Don't let him catch you when he's looking tired - he'll drag you up against him and snore into your hair until the sun goes down.
It's weird to see Dust without his hood. You half expected him to even wear it to the beach, but it makes sense he wouldn't. There's enough dust on that thing already, he probably doesn't want to get sand on it as well. He'll spend most of his time resting in the shade (why is he wearing sunglasses when he doesn't have eyes?), but if you ask him to, he'll venture into the sun. You're the only one who can convince him to do anything fun. Out of all of them, he's the one who'll go get you something to eat. He'll randomly disappear, then quietly return with ice cream, or crepes, or smoothies. Just three, though - one for him, one for you, and one for Horror because it'd just be rude to not get him food. He won't tell Killer where he got it.
Killer is having a great time. He will be ogling your beach outfit, it doesn't matter what it is, he'll stare and flirt as often as he possibly can. He wants to play volleyball or football, have you bury him in the sand, take stupid posed pictures, stay until sunset and start a barbecue, he's having an amazing time. This is his dream. If you can keep him company, please do, because it'll keep him on good behaviour - if you leave him alone for five minutes he's going to start annoying the other skeletons. By the end of the day someone is dunking him in the ocean, at least once. Probably Dust.
Nightmare will sit on a chair, under the darkest umbrella you've ever seen, without a speck of sunlight reaching him. He won't engage with the other skeletons at all and it seems like they know to give him his space. He'll be delighted to chat to you, if you come up to him, but other than that he just... vibes there, alone. Makes you wonder why he even came to the beach, since he clearly will do whatever it takes to avoid light.
He bought you along because the other skeletons want you around, sure. But he also bought you because he could tell you needed the stress relief. He likes just sitting back and listening to you enjoying yourself, watching the happy feelings roll off you - they're nice to see, even if he can't eat them.
Not that he'll ever say it aloud, but he planned this day out almost entirely for you.
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wickworks · 2 months ago
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Lancer Tactics dialogue layout crisis of faith
(from this month's backer update)
Every so often, I'll run into something in development that eats away at me until it pushes me to a crisis of faith and I have a breakdown, burn down a bunch of work, and build something better from the ashes. These are moments of transformation and we're almost always able to come out the other side with something much better than what we started with.
This all sounds very dramatic until you take a step back and see the issue in question is just, like, the layout of a menu. But if medieval priests were able to have schisms over angels on pins I can have strong feelings about graphic design, dammit!
This month's episode revolved around how we're doing character dialogue. For reference the plan was to do a standard 4-slot visual-novel talking heads layout. I call it a 4-slot because there's usually four positions that characters can stand; two on the left, two on the right:
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I had it ingame, and it was working. But... something felt off. Do you see the difference between every one of the above examples and this?
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It's all about perspective, baby.
Answer: all the character art in those examples are drawn at a slight angle so they can be flipped back and forth to be made like they're looking at each other.
Trying to do this with the perspective we chose early — straight on — makes for a chorus line of weirdos who are looking directly into your soul as they ostensibly chat with each other. Credulity is strained; the illusion of these puppets interacting in the same space is paper-thin.
(I was skeptical of choosing this perspective for this reason, but we ultimately went with it to make the customizable assets in the portrait maker easier to fit together)
We tried a bunch of different layouts, but they all at least one of these problems:
they'd stare into your soul while ostensibly directing comments elsewhere.
they felt like text messages; this would be fine if that's what we were going for, but we wanted something that could represent face-to-face conversations. (Tactical Breach Wizards was able to pull this style off because they had little 3D dioramas to go along with it)
or, most damning of all, they felt like zoom calls.
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So, my heart aflutter and spirit in want, I spent a day doing a research dive into various dialogue layouts (bless the Game UI Database!) to see if any other games had managed to pull this character art perspective off. I ended up with this massive non-chronological taxonomic tree:
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(fullsize here)
The type of layout that particularly caught my eye was this style where each character had their own little box. These layouts borrow a concept from comic books called "closure" where the space and time between characters are left blank. Freed from the constraints of trying to simulate a single space, these layouts allow the reader to fill in the blanks with something that feels more true-to-life than anything we'd be able to render ourselves.
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I was especially impressed with the dynamism of Tales of Symphonia and The World Ends With You; rather than sticking to single slots they would animate the entire panels moving around to indicate motion an relative position of characters.
So we threw out the old code and copied them. Here's what we've come up with:
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We'll be able to have portraits interact, like smacking each other (I felt like a kid hitting two action figures together, lol)
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We can also apply effects like princess-leia-holograms and full-screen "lighting" effects like warning banners:
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Carpenter and I came up with a number of arrangements that the portraits can smoothly transition between:
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I've also implemented support for choices during a dialogue, potentially leading to branching paths.
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Overall, I feel SO much better about this system than our initial designs. It might feel a little more cartoony, but I think we're making a cartoony game so that's not a problem.
Whew. We bit a lot off to chew with this project. I feel like I just made a second visual novel game engine inside of the first. Fingers crossed that it all ends up worth it.
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lesbianrobin · 5 months ago
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ok so here is my pitch for my dream buddie catalyst:
eddie and maddie are trapped in some sort of likely-fatal time sensitive situation together (drowning related probably because it's Them) (have they overused it yes is it still thematically appropriate YES) where one person could potentially sacrifice themselves for the other to survive. i want eddie and maddie using their combined experience and ingenuity to survive together and discussing who should be prioritized which means they talk about parenthood and how they both feel they've failed their children by "running," how their lives have been so defined by trauma and they don't want to scar their children any further by leaving them again. of course they're doing everything they can to get out together, but as the situation deteriorates throughout the episode(s) (c'mon something like this could be at LEAST a two-parter) they can't help returning periodically to the world's most morbid debate.
i want buck and chim on the outside both going out of their goddamn minds. they know that eddie and maddie are stuck (wherever), know that they're probably alive, but aren't sure in what condition and if they'll stay that way. rescue operations begin as everybody walks on eggshells around buck and tries to comfort chim, who wants absolutely none of it. time is running out.
eddie says that he couldn't possibly let maddie sacrifice herself for him and look buck and chim in the eye afterwards. maddie says that she couldn't do that either. she says that at least jee-yun would still have her father, and eddie says that christopher would still have buck. maddie says that of course none of them would just abandon christopher if something were to happen to him but—
and eddie cuts her off and says it's in my will. if i die, christopher will have buck. buck will have christopher.
they just look at each other for a weighted moment. maddie makes a decision. she says ...i meant it, you know. that i couldn't let you die down here (wherever here is i don't KNOW okay i'm not here to think up convoluted emergencies i'm here for drama) and look my baby brother in the eye knowing that i could have changed it. eddie says i know, okay, but it's different, you're his sister, and maddie says, yeah, but you're his... and she pauses. and eddie says what? best friend? partner? that doesn't—
and maddie says you're his. eddie, you're his.
and eddie... i want to see something slot into place. i want to watch him understand as maddie spills everything she's been suspecting since the day that buck came out to her and maybe since before she and eddie even met. maddie says you know, when i first came to california, you were all he talked about? you're still all he talks about. you and christopher. you're his. i couldn't... eddie, you're out of your mind if you really don't think that losing you would break him just as much as losing me. he would forgive us both, because he's buck, but i couldn't... i'm no saint, eddie, i want to survive. i don't want my daughter to grow up without me. but i can't do that to him. i don't know if he'd survive it. even if he did, the guilt would eat me alive.
meanwhile. buck is barely holding on to his sanity as rescue efforts are underway and time is running out. chimney is keeping it together as best he can but there isn't much that he and buck can do. he can't let himself fall apart because buck is already a stiff breeze away from clawing his own skin off and somebody has to keep their cool. something goes wrong—suddenly, their short amount of time has gotten shorter, and they may only have enough of a window to get one out before it's too late for the other. buck, who has been ranting and arguing and screaming this whole time... is silent. he is silent, and he stares straight ahead at nothing in particular, and we know that no matter which way the scales tip, his soul will be destroyed all the same.
eddie regards maddie for a moment. grief, heartbreak, anger, all flicker over him, but what settles is determination. he says that neither of them are going to leave again. that they'll survive together, or not at all, or leave it to the universe to decide.
of course they make it out. by the skin of their teeth, they make it out, working together, clawing their way back to life and love and possibility. maddie makes it out first, and eddie sees buck as she falls into chim's waiting arms. he watches as buck sees his sister, and reaches out to take her hand with trembling fingers and white knuckles, but there is no relief, no happiness in his red-rimmed eyes. just a deep, unspeakable grief, until his eyes slide past maddie and meet eddie's.
finally: relief. and then he is in buck's arms, a perfect parallel to chim and maddie, and we see eddie's face over buck's shoulder, and we know. he is in love, and buck is in love, and eddie knows, and he sinks into his partner's embrace with joy and acceptance.
after that, who knows? maybe a grand confession. a moment of quiet understanding. a passionate post-rescue kiss. a chaste, tender kiss in some kitchen or other. maybe eddie panics later, or maybe he's found peace for once. maybe buck has realized something and he makes the first move. maybe it happens immediately. maybe it takes a while, takes discussions about how it'll affect work and christopher and whether it's worth risking all that they have for all that they want.
and maybe they'll ask whether it's even a risk at all.
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