jicqiong

[asahicore]

kiwi and layla - sjy

pairing. jake x fem!reader synopsis. in which you mistake jake’s backpack for your own, making you each go home with the other’s bag. both of you are too curious for your own good, so you quickly find out that you excel in the subject the other is failing - a mutual tutoring agreement ensues, and it turns into much more than what you had expected. genre. high school au, f2l, lots of fluff and some angst too, f2l, shy reader x outgoing jake warnings. food & swearing, mention of parent death and divorce, kms jokes, jake being stupid but also really cute (lmk if i've missed any!) word count. 26.3k a/n. this is part of the unexpected collab !!! go check out the other fics and caelin thank u for hosting <333 hope u guys like this one, it took me a while but i had so so much fun writing it !!! i love my jakey in here he's a little bit confused but he's got the spirit. @zreamy thanks for being the world's awesomest beta reader and a decent friend ig... 2 baddies wouldnt be the same without you... lifeguard wet body sunghoon coming soon guys dont miss it! as always pls remember how important reblogs and feedback is for us writers!!! it's what keeps us going <3 enjoy!!

listen to the playlist!

This was not your backpack. 

In your defense, it looked so similar to yours - scratch that, it was the exact same as yours - that you couldn’t possibly have been able to tell the difference between the two bags until you’d opened one of them. Just a basic black Eastpak that probably a hundred other kids in your school owned with nothing to tell them apart, because you hadn’t had the mind to add a little something to it and make it recognizable. You hadn’t really needed to - your backpack was always on your back, next to your seat or in your locker. There was no way you might lose it or mistake it with another.

Until today, obviously. Instead of having a chill last class before spring break like every other teacher, your psycho math teacher Mr Choi had decided to give you a major test on this otherwise beautiful Friday afternoon. While other students watched a movie or played Kahoot, you were stuck in a cold classroom with algebra questions in front of you. Mr Choi had argued that this would be better than having a test after the holidays and ruining your time off with studying, but a test was a test, and math was math, so you hated the idea anyway. 

To eliminate all cheating possibilities, Mr Choi made his students only take a pencil and eraser with them, leave their bag at the back of the classroom and put their phone in a box he kept on his desk. Plus, with his hawk eyes watching intently, there was no way to sneak answers on a small sheet of paper or even on your palm. 

When the test was over, your brain was so fried and you were so eager to get the hell out of there that you didn’t even notice the two identical black backpacks next to each other, you just grabbed the first one you saw, not even questioning that it might not be yours.

And indeed, yours it was not. From your snooping around, you quickly found out it belonged to one Jake Sim. 

You knew Jake. Although you’d been attending the same school for the past three years, you could probably count the number of times you’d talked on one hand - but you knew him. Or at least, you knew of him. You knew that he was good at STEM subjects and that he was on the soccer team; you knew he was a really sweet guy and was easy to talk to, even for someone shy like you. 

Most importantly, you knew he was friends with Park Sunghoon. This was important because you had liked Park Sunghoon since the moment you’d laid eyes on him - or rather, your whole friend group had. It might’ve sounded extremely odd to others, but you and your friends had a few random people at school you liked to keep tabs on or create backstories for, and Sunghoon, because of his dashing looks that had struck all four of you in your first week of freshman year, was one of your victims. Well, you liked to think of them as characters on a TV show rather than victims, but to each his own. Your other characters included that popular sophomore who already considered herself a celebrity because of her ten thousand followers on TikTok anyway, the French and Spanish teachers you were sure had a thing going on, and that one guy in Yena’s biology class that only showed up every two weeks but always looked stoned (hat guy, Chaewon liked to call him, even you’d never once seen him with a hat on). It was all harmless, really - none of you ever actually went up and talked to them, just discussed them among yourselves.

Perhaps Sunghoon was different, because each of you had had a class with him at some point, so you’d all had at least shared a word with him. You probably hadn’t talked to him more times than you’d talked to Jake, so the information you knew about him was pretty surface-level - he was an ice skater, but everyone knew that, and he was shy like you, which was immediately noticeable. He also had one of the most handsome faces you’d ever seen. But again, everyone who saw him knew that.

You, Yena and Chaewon had debated whether one of you should just go ahead and make a move (Hyewon didn’t participate because she already had a boyfriend, but she was all for approaching the boy). You guessed you could describe what you felt towards Sunghoon as a sort of crush, even if it was one you shared with your friends - you found him cute, and you got nervous when he was around. But you were more the watch-from-afar-and-pine type, so you were satisfied with liking him from a distance. You didn’t think you actually had the guts to strike a conversation with him - that was more Chaewon’s thing.

However, this didn’t mean you weren’t curious about the contents of his best friend’s backpack. Your being shy didn’t mean you weren’t interested in other people’s lives - if anything, you were quite nosy. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but you were just a regular teenage girl, so this was fine, right? After just a few minutes of snooping, you found out Jake Sim wasn’t hiding any big state secrets in his Eastpak, anyway. Just some textbooks, notebooks, and a lot of single sheets of paper. It was pretty messy in there. 

Your idea of him being good at STEM subjects was correct - he kept all of his graded tests in the sleeve pocket of his math notebook, and there was not a single one that had received a note under 95. He even seemed to be doing some extracurricular exercises - there were formulae that were completely unfamiliar to you and that you were sure you hadn’t done in class. You found it slightly insane, but that might have just been because you despised math and wouldn’t understand why someone would want to do more of it than was required of them. 

His English homework was another story. His essays had more red from the teacher’s pen than his own black ink, and from the grades on his reading comprehension tests, you highly doubted he’d actually read any of the assigned books. You weren’t in the same English class but apparently had the same teacher, Ms Park, so you were studying the same thing. You couldn’t help but cringe as you read his answers on a Pride and Prejudice reading test - he seemingly kept mixing the sisters up, assigning actions and character traits to Lydia that clearly belonged to Jane. At least he somewhat got Darcy right, writing that “he’s probably not as bad as he looks,” with no further explanation. 

As you aimlessly flipped through his English notebook, curious about the way he took his notes - or if he even took any - you noticed some scribbles in the margins. Looking closer, some of them were in his handwriting while others were in an unfamiliar one. It looked like some sort of conversation, so you assumed the other writing belonged to his deskmate. You also did this with your friends in classes where the teacher was very strict about no chatting in class.

dude coach said if I fail any of my classes I would be out of the team, you read Jake’s handwriting.

Wait seriously????

yeah and I suck at english so Im scared it might actually happen

You just need to study more bro

bro I DO but this shit is hard

Then find someone to help you

neither of you guys is that good in that subject either tho

Ok ouch but also just find someone else then

bro who

IDK man 

Y/N maybe ? she’s good at English and she’s nice so she might say yes 

there you go about y/n again dude MAYBE you ask HER to teach you some sonnets

Shut up you’re the one who needs help dumbass

whatever isn’t it weird just asking her randomly though like i dont want her to feel like she has to say yes

Lol if she sees your grades she might do it out of pity

fuck u man

You were surprised to see your own name written there - it felt weird knowing that Jake and his friend were talking about you, for some reason. And what if that friend was Sunghoon? You had a hard time believing he not only knew you existed, but thought of you as good at English and nice. You liked to think both of these things were true. 

He was also spot-on about saying you would agree to helping out Jake in those subjects, but what he got wrong was thinking you’d do it out of pity. Clearly, you and Jake were in very similar positions. You didn’t have any sort of club you’d be kicked out of if you failed a class, but it sure as hell wouldn’t look good on your college applications, so you needed to get your math grades up. 

Jake and you both desperately needed something the other person could help with, so you had a feeling he wouldn’t turn down the offer that was brewing in your head.

—

This was not Jake’s backpack.

He noticed it right away - it was much heavier than his own and the straps were tighter around his shoulders than they should be. He looked inside for some clues about who it might belong to, and luckily, the first thing he found was a journal that had Y/N’S DIARY written on the cover page in big, pink letters. 

Unluckily, however, he’d also noticed that you had practically sprinted out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang, and indeed, you were already far gone when he tried looking for you around school. He had to get to soccer practice anyway, so he put the issue to the side for the time being.

When he got home, he had to shower then have dinner, so it wasn’t until 8 p.m. that he remembered he had your backpack. He had meant to text you straightaway about it, and he knew it was wrong to look into someone’s belongings, but he couldn’t help himself, especially when his best friend Sunghoon had liked you for ages. Maybe this was an opportunity to find out more about you.

Your mind-blowing grades in English don’t come as much of a surprise to him, and after reading through your most recent essay, he thought you definitely deserved them. Your essay was on a Shakespeare play he had never heard of - you apparently also had Ms Park for English, and he didn’t know she was doing Shakespeare in class, so he wondered for a second if you were actually crazy enough to read another book and study it. As if 300 pages of Jane Austen weren’t enough as it was. 

What shocked him were your math grades. It was like looking into a fucked-up mirror: while you excelled at English, you sucked at math; while he excelled at math, he sucked at English. You were just as close to failing your math class as he was at failing English.

Now that he thought about it, maybe Sunghoon’s idea hadn’t been so dumb - you could help him out, and he had an actual argument as to why you should, rather than just using pity on you.

As he put your stuff back in your bag, he was reminded of something - your diary. For some reason, the pretty floral pattern on the cover made him feel even worse for opening the journal in the first place, but he did it anyway. Either you’d only just picked up the habit of writing in a diary or you had finished your previous one recently, but this one seemed pretty new, as only about ten pages had been filled with your neat handwriting. Judging from the dates at the top of almost every page, you wrote in there everyday, and Jake only felt even worse that you hadn’t been able to write in it that day.

Still, he flicked to the first page and started reading. And he read and read, unable to take his eyes away from your diary. He thought he wouldn’t have cared much and a page would have satisfied his curiosity, but the way you wrote about the people around you and about yourself fascinated him. Basic high school things like friend drama and annoying teachers actually became interesting through your words. You didn’t use particularly complicated sentences or unheard-of words, on the contrary, you used simple language, and that spoke a lot more to Jake than any of the classics he’d attempted to read for class. 

And then, he saw an all too familiar name in an entry dated from just a few days ago. 

I sat next to Sunghoon today. It was during physics and both of our desk partners were absent, so Mrs Kim made me change seats. She always does this, and I used to wonder whether she hated to see an empty seat or to see a student sitting on their own, but whatever the reason, today, I was just happy about it. This isn’t our first time sitting next to each other in class, but I was still nervous, since I wasn’t expecting it. I hope he couldn’t feel the awkwardness practically oozing off of me or the way I very obviously struggled with the exercises (obviously, anything to do with math is not my forte). We shared my textbook because he’d forgotten his, and he showed me his notes when he saw I couldn’t keep up with Mrs Kim as she told us what to write down. We only exchanged a few words but I was satisfied when class was over. It’s odd, because you’d think someone would want to talk to the person they like and get to know them more, but I don’t feel that with Sunghoon. Maybe it’s because we’re both so introverted, and he seems to have just as hard a time as I do starting conversations, so I’ve sort of accepted our silent fate. I’m fine just continuing to steal glances at him from across the cafeteria. 

After that, there were a few more pages of writing up until yesterday's entry, but it was the only mention of Sunghoon. Jake had apparently been wrong to think that a girl’s diary would be full of rantings about her crush and things along the lines of ���omg, he looked at me today”. 

But you had very clearly referred to Sunghoon as the person you liked, and Jake wasn’t going to let that go so easily. This was precious information that he held in his hands now, so he had to figure out how to deal with it properly for your sake as well as his friend’s.

Turns out there was more he could help you with than just algebra.

—

Seeing Jake Sim in a setting other than school was slightly odd, if you were being completely honest. 

You had just been about to text him about the backpack mix-up when you’d received a message from the man himself, asking if you could meet up the next day to exchange them. In response, you’d asked where you should meet, thinking he’d offer either his house or yours, or some halfway point between them, but he surprised you by proposing some café in the center of town. They have good hot chocolate there, he’d said, and that had been enough to convince you. 

And also I have something I want to talk to you about. 

Your stomach had turned at this message - what on Earth could Jake Sim need to discuss with you had been your first thought, and then you realized you also had plans you wanted to share with him. So his idea of going to a café was actually good for you, too.

You’d only been waiting for about five minutes when he appeared at the café, red and panting from seemingly sprinting to his destination. 

“Y/N, I’m sooo sorry,” he immediately said when he saw you waiting. “I was planning to be early, but when I got on the bus I realized I literally forgot your bag, so I had to go back but the next bus wasn’t for another twenty minutes so I just ran the whole way here, and now I’m all sweaty, and I’m late, and I’m really sorry.”

He’d rushed through his sentence and was breathing heavily as he looked at you expectantly, waiting for your answer. He seemed so genuinely sorry for such a small thing that after your surprise faded, you started laughing. It was his turn to be surprised, and he immediately stopped talking at the sound of your soft giggles.

“It’s okay, Jake. I haven’t even been waiting five minutes,” you explained, smiling. “Let’s just go in, yeah?”

Jake’s heart did something weird just then, and the feeling was so unfamiliar and confusing that he decided to promptly ignore it. As if in a daze, he stood still for a couple of seconds until the sound of a bell ringing, the one the café had on its doors to signify the entrance or exit of a customer, snapped him out of it. He followed you into the shop, let you order and pay for you both (“I’m the one who took the wrong bag, it’s the least I can do,” you’d said) and sat across from you at a booth in the back.

You gave each other your respective bags back, then started chatting as you sipped on your hot chocolates (Jake had been right - they really were delicious). He was surprisingly easy to talk to, and whether he sensed you were a reserved person or was just naturally talkative, you liked that he both managed to do most of the talking and ask you loads of questions at once. Usually, you wouldn’t have really cared to listen to someone go on and on about their passion for soccer and the recent game that their team had won, but for some reason, you were hooked on Jake’s every word. The way his eyes widened in excitement as he recounted the winning goal he scored, the way the volume of his voice decreased as he filled you in on the team gossip even though no one was listening to your conversation, the way his grin turned into a proud smirk as he mentioned his coach congratulating him - every single one of his actions had you mesmerized. You’d never seen anyone so expressive in their speech, never seen anyone punctuate every sentence with a movement or a facial expression. It was just fun, listening to him.

Even when he didn’t talk, he stayed expressive. He asked you whether you did anything outside of school, and he listened intently as you told him about the theater group you’re in, humming and nodding and laughing at all the right moments. Usually, you wouldn’t have talked about it for more than thirty seconds, afraid to bore others with unnecessary details, but Jake’s reactions and the questions he asked made you actually feel listened to and like what you were talking about was interesting. So you grew more confident and told him what you loved about acting and about theater, about your own gossip (the arrogant actress who got the lead role and thought she was better than everyone else, that one guy who was clearly flirting with three girls at the same time), and you almost couldn’t believe Jake seemed so entertained by your stories. 

“So, you said your group focused on more classic plays, right? Does that mean you’re good at English Lit?”

With his spoon, Jake scooped some whipped cream into his mouth, hoping he was appearing as nonchalant as he was trying to be. He had to make you think he’d deduced that just now and not because he had been snooping through your backpack just the night prior. 

You, however, could not have cared less how he’d figured it out - you were just grateful he had segued into this topic of school and grades, because you’d been wanting to bring it up yourself but had no idea how.

“Um, yeah, actually, it’s my best subject. Math, on the other hand…”

You chuckled as his eyes widened and he leaned in across the table, pointing his spoon at you as he spoke. “See, that’s interesting, because math is my best subject, but I suck at English Lit.”

“Oh, really?” you asked, trying to sound genuinely surprised even though this piece of information was not at all new to you.

“Yeah,” he said, looking back down at his almost-finished drink with a small smile on his face.

“You know-”

“You know-”

You and Jake had spoken at the same time, and your eyes locked for a second before you started laughing. You gestured at him to go on first.

“I actually need pretty urgent help in English. Coach said he’ll put us out of the team if we fail even just one of our courses, and I’m very close to failing that class.” He took a moment to let out a sigh. “So, if you want, we could help each other out. Me with math, and you with English.” 

His eyebrows were slightly furrowed and he bit his lip as he looked at you expectantly. You thought he looked far too nervous for such a simple request, expression more like a boy who’d just asked his crush to the prom rather than offering mutual help you both desperately needed. You couldn’t help the smile that grew on your lips - you had never known Jake Sim to be so… cute. But he was waiting for an answer, so you pushed the thought out of your head.

“That’s a great idea, actually,” you replied, as if you hadn’t had the exact same idea. You were just relieved you hadn’t even had to bring it up yourself. “I also really can’t afford to fail math. It would look terrible on college applications.”

Jake let out a long, loud exhale. “God, yeah, college, I hadn’t even thought of that. Even more motivation to get better grades now,” he said with a chuckle.

You chuckled along, then cleared your throat and sat up straighter. You watched with amusement as Jake mirrored your actions and even the fake serious frown in your brows. You presented your hand for him to shake, which he did without hesitation.

“So it’s a deal then. We’ll tutor each other until we’ve gotten our grades up.”

“Deal,” he replied. As you both withdrew your hands, he dropped his serious facade and burst into giggles, a sound you hadn’t expected from the boy but somehow fit him well. You watched his face closely for a second, noticing the curl of his lips and the crinkle at the corner of his eyes, before breaking into laughter yourself.

You stayed in the café for another half hour, going over details of where and when you’d meet, of what exactly you needed help with (“Everything,” you’d said, to which Jake had replied “Same”), and just talked some more.

“I’m taking the 53 that way,” Jake said when you exited the café, pointing towards the bus stop.

“Oh, so am I!” you exclaimed.

“Seriously?! What’s your stop?”

And that’s how you and Jake figured out you only lived two bus stops away from each other. 

“That’s so cool! It’ll make it easy to meet up then,” he said, and you hummed in agreement. After a pause, he added: “But if we live so close to each other, how come we didn’t go to the same schools earlier? Aren’t you usually supposed to go to the one in your district?”

“I used to live in another part of town,” you explained. “Then my parents divorced when I was in middle school, and I stayed with my dad because he lived closer to the school I was at, but I moved to my mom’s place for high school.”

“‘Cause she lives closer?”

“Yeah, basically.” There was more to it, but you didn’t think Jake would be particularly interested in your parental issues - although you surprised yourself for even considering telling him. If Jake sensed that you weren’t saying everything, he didn’t push, just swiftly changed the topic as you waited for the bus to come.

When you got home some time later, the first thing you did was open your diary and start writing. It had felt wrong not to write in it even just for a day, so it was a relief to feel the pages between your fingers and the familiar scent of the paper and your perfumed pen. You wrote without thinking too much, simply letting all of your musings out into your diary and freely brushing the tip of your pen across the pages. 

You didn’t ever reread your entries right after writing them, but if you had that day, you might have noticed all you could write about was the boy you’d drank a hot chocolate with.

—

Spring break week passed by far too quickly, and it was on the first Monday back at school that you and Jake met again. He had soccer practice on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, while you had theater rehearsals on Thursdays and Saturdays, so you’d agreed to meet up every Monday and Wednesday after school. Since his mother worked as the school nurse, she drove him to and from school everyday - so on Monday, you met Jake in front of the nurse’s station, waiting for his mom to wrap things up before she drove you both to their home.

You had been surprised to learn that the kind nurse that never asked too many questions and always let students take a nap if they didn’t feel well was Jake’s mom, but upon reflection, it made sense. Once you knew, it was almost obvious that she had raised him - they shared the same friendliness, the same comforting smile and the same ability to make conversation. The whole ride home, she asked you about yourself and thanked you for agreeing to tutor “our little Jakey,” because “God knows he needs the help.” 

You couldn’t help but laugh when a blush crept on Jake’s face and he looked out the passenger seat window with an embarrassed frown, muttering something like “Thanks a lot, Mom.”

She noticed his reaction and laughed along with you. “I’m just saying, Jakey-poo. It’s good to know to ask for help when you need it,” she cooed, reaching a hand out to ruffle his hair. This only made Jake groan loudly and hide his face in his hands. You didn’t know Jake very well, but this flustered, red-faced side of him was definitely one you liked seeing.

The first thing that greeted you when you reached Jake’s house was a happy welcome home bark.

“You have a dog?!” you exclaimed, unable to reel your excitement in.

“Yeah! This is Layla,” Jake said, giving energetic rubs to the Border Collie that made her whole body shake side-to-side but that she seemed to thoroughly enjoy. 

“Hi, Layla,” you cooed, crouching down to her level to let her sniff you. She decided you were a person worthy of petting her. “She’s so cute!”

“I think she likes you,” Jake said, a grin on his face, as he watched Layla presenting her belly to you and asking for scratches there. “Do you have a dog?”

“We have a Corgi at home. And a cat, too.”

“That must be fun,” Jake chuckled. “Do they get along?”

“Depends. They have a bit of a love-hate relationship.” You looked up at Jake, and it was uncharacteristically quiet as you locked eyes for a couple of seconds. You both looked away at the same time, surprised by the sudden eye contact.

You gave Layla one last rub and lifted yourself up. “Um, should we get started?” 

Jake paused for a second as if he’d forgotten what you were here for in the first place, then started nodding his head quickly. “Right, yeah. Let’s go to my room. Downstairs is just one big room and my mom will probably watch TV or make dinner or something, so it might be distracting…” he explained, lightly scratching the back of his neck. It seemed like he was embarrassed to be bringing you to his room, which you couldn’t help but find endearing.

“Okay, sounds good,” you said with a smile, hoping it’ll reassure him.

You followed him up to his room, ignoring his complaints as you lingered on the framed photos on the wall next to the stairs and giggled at his baby pictures. 

“Do not look at those,” he said with a warning tone that didn’t scare you in the slightest. When you didn’t listen, he grabbed your hand that had been pointing at a photo of baby Jake in the bathtub and forced you to keep walking.

“Why?” you asked, a slight whine to your voice.

“‘Cause it’s embarrassing! I was an ugly baby.”

“What?! You were so cute!”

“Whatever. I’d rather study English than talk about this, and that’s saying something.”

When you looked at Jake, you were surprised to find that he actually seemed upset about this. You weren’t sure what was so wrong with looking at his baby pictures, but the last thing you wanted to do was make him mad, so you stayed quiet and continued your way to his room. Once there, although you were infinitely curious about all the posters, pictures, figurines, trophies, and other small tokens of Jake’s life, you didn’t ask him about any of them, just sat next to him at his desk and opened The Picture of Dorian Grey, the book you had both been studying in Ms Park’s class.

You’d agreed on spending forty-five minutes on English, have a small break, then spend forty-five minutes on Math. It wasn’t a lot, but you both had other homework and things outside of school you needed to do, so you’d decided to start out that way and see if it worked out.

You were glad to see how seriously Jake was taking this - he listened intently to what you said and asked questions when he didn’t understand something. You quickly figured out that what he didn’t like about English Literature was that the answers weren’t as straightforward or as logical as they were in math, and even worse, that multiple answers were possible depending on the reader’s interpretation. 

“It just all feels like a guessing game,” he said, resting the side of his head on one of his palms. “How am I supposed to know what this dude meant? And if it can be analyzed in different ways, how can Ms Park tell me the way I understand it is wrong?”

“It’s all about the way you justify it,” you explained. “You can’t just say whatever. Ms Park will look out for how you use the text to support your answers.” You then went on to pick out a specific part of the book, asking Jake to analyze Dorian’s mindset in that scene. 

“He sounds like he’s going insane,” Jake said flatly when he was done reading, getting a chuckle out of you.

“Exactly. How do you know that?”

“I don’t know, just the words he uses,” Jake replies, shrugging.

“Okay, underline those words,” you instructed gently. Jake sighed, but he complied.

“There.” 

“Good. What can you say about those words?” When Jake just looked at you like a lost puppy, you reformulated your question. “What do they have in common? What type of words are they? Are they common nouns, verbs…”

Jake looked back at the words he’d underlined on the page. “They’re… adjectives?” he said, tone unsure.

“Exactly!”

Jake paused. “So?”

“So now you can say that the author uses many adjectives to convey the gradual loss of sanity of the main character.”

“Oh.”

When you looked at Jake, he wore an expression like the words on the page were finally starting to make sense to him. “That’s the content. You can also look at the structure. See how many punctuation marks there are? Commas, semi-colons, question marks… It’s like he keeps cutting himself off. His thoughts are all over the place.”

Jake nodded slowly. “So, I just need to look out for things like that?”

“Basically, yeah. And the more you practice, the more these things will stand out to you. It actually becomes somewhat repetitive sometimes.”

Jake let out a shaky breath. “That’s actually relieving to hear,” he said with a chuckle.

Thirty minutes passed by like this as you showed Jake ways to make sense of a literary text. When the timer rang, he leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms out wide with a sigh. He put his hands behind his head and let it hang back, and the way your stomach flipped at the sight of his exposed neck and Adam’s apple made you look away immediately. You could barely meet his eyes as he turned his head to look at you, still in that same position, and, with a smirk, asked if you were ready for some snacks. 

You gulped, trying to look as normal as possible. “Uh, yeah, sure!”

Downstairs, Jake presented you with all sorts of snacks - there were so many, you felt like you were in a convenience store. This was worlds away from your ingredient-only household. You opted for some biscuits and a banana while Jake made himself a bowl of cereal. A very distracting ten-minute long argument then ensued about the order of milk and cereal - horrifyingly, Jake poured his milk before his cereal. You thought it was a myth that some people actually did it that way, but Jake very proudly defended his choice. 

“I bet you eat pizza with pineapple on it, too,” you said half-jokingly, only for your joke to punch you right back in the face.

“Duh,” Jake answered.

You could only shake your head in defeat. “Let’s just get back to studying before I murder you.”

“Damn, Y/N,” Jake said, laughing. “That’s harsh.”

“And you’re a freak,” you retorted, a grin blooming on your lips.

“You know, you remind me of my friend Jay,” Jake mused as you walked back up the stairs. “He has so many of these small battles that he just won’t let go of. He got super worked up over an argument about mint chocolate chip ice cream once.”

“Let me guess, you like that ice cream?”

Jake shrugged. “It’s not my favorite, but I’ll have it once in a while.”

“God, Sim, you just get worse and worse.”

You sat back down at his desk and started eating. “I bet you think I’m weird for liking math too, right?”

“That’s the worst offense of them all.” 

Jake’s sudden quietness caught you off guard. When you turned your head to look at him, he was already gazing at you with a smile and a sort of thoughtful glint to his eyes, resting his chin on his palm. It sounded like he was thinking out loud when he spoke next. “Guess we’re perfect opposites of each other. Like two peas in a pod!”

The realization of what he’d said dawned upon him as soon as the words left his mouth. He slowly lifted his head as his eyes widened. “I don’t mean- just, you know, since you’re good at English and I’m good at math, and- you know… I didn’t mean it in a weird way, or anything…”

His eyes kept glancing back and forth between you and his bowl of cereal, as if he was scared of looking directly at you but wanted to check your reaction. 

As a smile grew on your face, you kept your eyes trained on your biscuits so he wouldn’t see your flustered expression. But when you looked at him again, he held your gaze, mouth slightly agape. You didn’t have it in you that he had gotten the idiom completely wrong. “I know, don’t worry.” You chuckled. “We are opposites of each other. You just better be as good at teaching math as I am at teaching English,” you teased.

You watched as a smirk tugged one corner of Jake’s lips up and he raised an eyebrow. “Who said you were good at teaching English?”

You gasped. “You said you understood better now!”

Jake’s smile softened as he giggled. “I’m just teasing. You are a good teacher.”

You sat up straighter at the compliment, a proud smile on your face. “Your turn, Mr Sim. I’m all ears.”

“Right,” he said, mirroring your posture. “Shall we start by going over Mr Choi’s test from last week?” 

Your smile dropped instantly at this. Reluctantly, you fished your graded paper out of your bag. You already knew Mr Choi was a psychopath, but you still didn’t understand where he found the will to grade thirty papers over the weekend. You avoided Jake’s gaze as you handed him your test with a big, red, circled D- at the top.

You cringed as Jake sighed. “At least it’s not an F, right?” he said in what you could tell was an attempt at reassurance but somehow only made you feel worse. He looked over your answers quickly, trying to find what in particular you struggled with. “All right. Let’s start from the beginning, yeah?”

For the next forty-five minutes, Jake went over each test question with you, breaking them down and explaining how to solve them in a way you understood. The words he used were so much clearer than the half-assed explanations you were used to from Mr Choi, and for once, math actually made some sort of sense. Your brain still felt broken after almost an hour of numbers and greek letters, but at least, you felt smarter rather than dumber at the end of it. You had never been more grateful for the sound of a phone alarm than the one signaling tutoring was over. 

“That wasn’t half-bad, right?” Jake asked with a wide grin.

You felt so tired, you could probably pass out right then and there, but Jake looked so proud of himself after you had been able to complete an exercise correctly on your own that you didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. “Right,” you replied, mirroring his grin. “You’re an okay teacher, I guess.”

He jokingly glared and tutted at you, but you both laughed right after. “I need to walk Layla, so I can walk you home, if you want?” he offered as you started packing your things. His words had an uncertain tone to them, as if he wasn’t sure you’d still want to spend time with him after this - but it only took you a second of thinking to realize you’d rather continue hanging out with him than going home on your own.

“Sure! I need to walk Kiwi too, actually.”

“Your dog’s name is Kiwi?!”

“Yes,” you said, chuckling at his fascinated tone.

“That’s an adorable name.”

“Thanks, I chose it.”

“Oh, then I take it back. Worst name I’ve ever heard for a dog.”

“Hey!” you exclaimed, lightly hitting him on the head with your math notebook, making him raise a hand in self-defense as he laughed.

“Sorry, sorry. Does your cat also have a fruit name?” 

A pause. “Mango,” you mumbled, and he immediately burst into laughter again. You side-eyed him as you zipped up your bag.

“Wow, you have amazing taste in pet names, Y/N.”

“Shut up,” you said, laughing along. Then you realized something, and you suddenly stopped laughing, looking up at Jake with wide eyes that made him slightly start to panic. “Oh my God, Jake, are our dogs going to meet?”

“Our dogs are going to meet,” he echoed in a sort of fascinated whisper. You both understood the other - dogs becoming friends was the cutest thing ever.

“Let’s go,” you whispered back excitedly.

When you reached the living room downstairs, you bid Mrs Sim goodbye, then went to the entrance to put your shoes back on. “You two sure get along well,” you heard her say to her son with a suggestive tone. Even though she had dropped the volume of her voice, the door was wide open and there were only a few meters between you, so you’d heard her loud and clear. 

“Geez, Mom,” Jake groaned, seemingly irked by his mom’s insinuation.

“It’s just you’ve never brought a girl home, Jakey-”

“Okay, we’re leaving now! Layla, come!”

You hadn’t even realized how wide you were grinning until Jake saw you tying your shoelaces and grumbled “What are you smiling so hard for.”

“Nothing,” you giggled, and your smile grew as you watched a grin break through his pretend-upset expression.

You sighed contentedly as you stepped outside, letting the crisp early April air hit your face. You tightened your scarf around your neck and buried your hands in your pocket and you and Jake started walking side by side, Layla happily leading the way. The streets were fairly quiet at this time of day, save for the yells of children still playing in their backyards before dinner and a few cars of people coming home late from work.

Only the first five seconds of the walk were silent, until you couldn’t contain yourself anymore. “So, never brought a girl home, huh?” you asked with a teasing smirk.

Jake let out an offended scoff and looked up to the sky as if God could help him out of this one. Sadly, He didn’t, so Jake had to find an answer himself. “I’m not talking about this with you.”

“Why not?”

Pouting, Jake spared you a sideway glance. “Because you’re a girl,” he replied, voice lowered to a mumble.

You chuckled at this. “Very astute observation, Jake.”

“No, I- Ugh,” he groaned before laughing along with you. “I don’t need a girl to know how bad I am with- well, with girls.”

“I can help with that,” you said before you really thought about it. “I mean, I’m not a love expert by any means, but I can maybe give, I don’t know, pointers or something if there’s someone you like-”

“There’s no one I like,” Jake quickly cut in. “Um, not right now, at least.”

“O-okay,” you replied, nodding. “That’s fine.” 

“What about you? Do you like anyone?”

As Jake asked the question, he realized he already knew the answer - you liked Sunghoon. How could he forget?! Half of his plan had been to make you get closer to his friend, but he hadn’t even started thinking about that yet. In his defense, he’d come up with that plan three days ago.

Your answer surprised him. “Um, no, me neither. Not right now, at least,” you said, repeating his words with a smile on your face. You locked eyes for a second before looking away at the same time, chuckling.

“Right,” he said. He knew what he had read in your diary, so maybe you were just too shy to admit you had a crush on his friend of all people.

An unexpected awkwardness settled between the two of you, and you more than anything wanted it to go away. Even though it’d only been a few days since you and Jake had started getting to know each other, you already felt comfortable enough to be yourself around him, and it usually took you weeks before reaching that level with anyone. This hadn’t happened since you met Yena and Hyewon at the beginning of high school - they had been friends since middle school, and so had you and Chaewon, and when the four of you met, you had instant chemistry. But maybe it was slightly too early to start talking about crushes with Jake.

For once, you were the one to break the silence - you asked him whether he knew what he wanted to do after school. Basic question, but you were genuinely curious. 

Looking a little bashful, he confessed his dream had always been to be a math teacher and soccer coach at a middle or high school. You told him he already had the talent for it, and when he blushed at your words, you made sure to tease him for it.  

“I’m not sure yet,” you said when he returned the question. “I know I wanna go to college and continue doing English Lit and theater there, but that’s about it.”

“That’s already good enough,” Jake said with a smile. “Still got time to figure out what comes after, right?”

You naturally mirrored his smile - there was something contagious about Jake’s puppyish grin that made it hard not to smile yourself. “Right.”

The three of you reached your house quickly after that. Your mom still hadn’t come home from work, so Kiwi was even more excited than usual for your arrival home. You and Jake watched fondly as your dogs sniffed each other for a few seconds before starting to run around together. The fact that they got along made you really happy, perhaps unreasonably so, and you started bouncing up and down on the balls of your feet as you watched them play. “Our dogs are friends!” you exclaimed excitedly. 

When you turned to look at Jake, he wasn’t watching the dogs like you had been - he was gazing straight at you, eyes soft with something that made your heart skip a beat. You couldn’t look away, and it was only after a few seconds that he seemed to snap out of the sort of daze he was in. He cleared his throat and you finally tore your eyes away from him.

“Let me just- Kiwi! I need to put his leash around him,” you said, speaking quickly to dissipate the weird atmosphere as best as you could. You led Jake down the path you usually took with Kiwi that led to a park in your neighborhood, and you were relieved when normal conversation started again.

Jake insisted on walking you back to your house even though he had left his earlier. He made a whole show of not going until you’d walked inside and closed the door, so you’d rushed to your window to shout his name and wave goodbye at him, which made him laugh.

You turned back to Kiwi when Jake and Layla had turned a corner and you couldn’t watch them anymore. “Are you happy you made a new friend, Kiwi?”

The Corgi barked happily at you in response - probably more at hearing his name than because he understood your question, but still, you liked to think you could communicate with your dog on such a level. You chuckled and took him in your arms. “Me too.”

—

Apparently, you couldn’t even wave to someone in the hallway without being interrogated about it anymore.

“Y/N, did you just say hi to Jake Sim?” Chaewon asked like you’d just insulted her whole family.

It was 10 a.m. on a simple Tuesday morning, the day after Jake and you had studied together for the first time, and you’d just walked past the boy - so of course, you said hi to him. Maybe, your heart started beating slightly faster when you’d noticed him approaching. Maybe, it was nice to be on the receiving end of his friendly grin.

“Yes?” you replied, sentence coming out more like a question.

“Since when do you say hi to Jake Sim?!” 

“Since today, I guess.”

“But why?!” She’d raised her voice so much, you’d gotten strange looks from other students in the hallway. 

“I told you!”

She shook her head slowly at you as if to say, No you didn’t!

You rolled your eyes and sighed. Chaewon and her early onset short-term memory loss. “The backpack thing? And agreeing to tutoring each other? I wrote to the group chat about this!”

“Oh, that! Of course I remember that,” she said, even though you knew she had forgotten about it and remembered it just now. “So, has that started already?”

You reached the classroom for your next class and sat down in your usual seats next to each other, waiting for the teacher to arrive. Busy hallways like these were the perfect place for gossip, because they were loud and nobody paid attention to others’ conversations. “Yeah, yesterday afternoon.”

Chaewon gasped. “And you didn’t tell us?!”

“Will you quiet down? I was going to see and tell you guys today anyway.”

“Okay, so, tell me about it.”

“But-”

“Tell. Me.”

You wouldn’t see Yena and Hyewon until lunch in two hours, and you knew Chaewon didn’t have the patience to wait until then. So you sighed again and obliged, telling her about your afternoon with Jake in every detail you could remember, because she would ask about insignificant things anyway. 

To your surprise, the first thing she said when you were done talking was this: “Y/N, do you like Jake?”

Your mouth opened slightly in shock at the question, but before you could even retort, you started giggling. “No, I don’t,” you said in a way that sounded like you very much did.

“Oh my God! You so do!” Chaewon said, giggling along with you. “You whore, you’ve only talked to him, like, twice,” she joked.

You gasped fake-dramatically and slapped her arm. “Oh please, look at Hyewon and Jaemin, they started dating after a week of talking.”

“Yes, and they’ve been going one year strong, so clearly, you need to ask Jake out and get this over with. You’ll get a boyfriend and a math tutor all-in-one, it’s a perfect deal!”

“Don’t get too carried away, okay? Jake and I are friends. Like you said, we barely know each other right now.”

You meant this - sure, you had had a really good time with Jake both times you saw him, and you were looking forward to your next tutoring session, but you chalked it up to the excitement of making a new friend. Plus, barely last week you felt some sort of way towards his best friend - wouldn’t it be weird to practically transfer your feelings from Sunghoon to Jake?

“Whatever. Yena and Hyewon are gonna freak when I tell them,” Chaewon said excitedly.

You shook your head at your friend but couldn’t keep down the amused grin on your face. “You guys are insane.”

“Oh please, like you’re not the president of our Park Sunghoon fanclub. I can’t believe you’re leaving us for his best friend!”

“Hey, if anything, less competition for you, right?”

Chaewon opened her mouth to say something, but the teacher arrived, starting the lesson before having even put her bag down - Mrs Lee always arrived late but never wasted a second of class when she was in the room. Your friend resorted to sticking her tongue out at you instead, and you chuckled at her childishness as you opened your History notebook. 

—

Jake was a complete, total, utter idiot. His plan had consisted of two things only, and he’d somehow managed to forget one of them, even after talking about it with you, albeit vaguely. It had taken him two weeks and one Park Sunghoon to even remember it.

Between Jake’s soccer practice, Sunghoon’s ice skating practice and Jay’s being away at boarding school, the three friends only had one night every week on which they were all free - Friday night. So, every Friday, they planned some sort of hang out at one of their houses and gamed or watched movies all night.

Kinda like date night, but for bros.

This was one of those bro nights; namely, the one in the second week of you and Jake tutoring each other. The boys had decided to go to the burger joint they like that night and were in the middle of a french fry fight when Sunghoon mentioned your and Jake’s new friendship.

“So, Jake… what’s up with you and Y/N?”

Jake halted in his motions, redirecting to his mouth the fry he was about to throw at Jay. “Nothing’s up with me and Y/N. What makes you say that?”

“Just, you know, you seem like you’ve become actual friends. Talking in the hallways and walking your dogs together and whatnot.”

“Y/N as in Y/N? Sunghoon’s Y/N?” Jay said, halfway through a bite of his cheeseburger.

“She’s not my Y/N-”

“Yes, Y/N as in Y/N, you idiot,” Jake cut in. “And like you said, we’re friends.”

“Is she the girl you posted some BeReals with?” Jay asked, and Jake nodded. “She’s pretty! No wonder Sunghoon likes her so much.”

Sunghoon sighed as he let his head hang low. “God forbid I find a girl cute, because I’ll mention it once, two years ago and you guys make me out to be in love with her.”

“Sunghoon, you act like girls don’t exist, so of course when you not only mention a girl, but describe her as cute, that means you’re in love with her!”

“But I’m not! We were literally having a whole conversation about girls, I happened to see Y/N and her friends from far away, I said she was cute, and now you guys won’t let me live it down. Jay, you weren’t even there!”

“Yeah, but the way Jake told me about the whole thing, it really sounded like you liked her.”

“Why would you trust Jake to relay something like this correctly?!”

Jay paused and tilted his head. “You have a point there.”

“Hey!”

“So you don’t, like… like her, or something?” Sunghoon asked, looking at his friend as he sipped on his Pepsi.

This made Jake stop. Did he like you? Wasn’t the fact that he was considering it sign enough? Surely, if there was nothing there, he would have answered no right away.

But there was no use thinking about it. You liked Sunghoon. And as much as he liked to deny it, Jake knew Sunghoon liked you, too. After two years, there was finally an opportunity for the two of you to get closer - Jake wasn’t about to get in the middle of that. If anything, he should help his friends out. Then, when you and Sunghoon eventually got married, Jake would have the honor of saying it was all thanks to him in his best man’s speech. 

“No, I don’t. Don’t worry, Hoon, I’m not gonna steal your girl away from you.”

“Again, she’s not my girl-”

“Whatever you say. I’ll introduce you guys.”

Even if Sunghoon didn’t think he liked you yet, Jake knew it was just a matter of time - his friend just needed to spend a few hours with you to realize he did. You were pretty, smart, funny, nice, had the sweetest laugh he’d ever heard, got along with dogs, and even though you sometimes had weird opinions, it was always fun, talking to you. It was easy and comfortable. Anyone with taste would fall for you.

Anyone, except for Jake, of course.

—

For the past three weeks, you and Jake had gotten along perfectly, but today, on this bright Tuesday afternoon, you really wanted to strangle him. 

When he’d invited you to come and watch him at soccer practice, you’d been surprised, but happy - usually, you invited people to watch an actual game, not just practice. But you were just glad for the opportunity to spend more time with him. 

Without realizing it, you were giddy with excitement the whole day, counting down the minutes until classes were over and Jake’s practice started. Jake had told you to just head to the bleachers while the players got ready in the locker room, but when you reached said bleachers, someone was already sitting there, looking at something on their phone. You recognized him immediately as Sunghoon. He didn’t notice you right away, so you had time to wipe the surprise off of your face - you hadn’t thought anyone came to watch practice, but Sunghoon was probably here for Jake, just like you. 

“Hey,” you said quietly as you sat down next to him. Even though you were technically still on school property, this was the first time you saw Sunghoon outside of somewhere like a classroom, a hallway or the cafeteria. You weren’t as nervous as you thought you’d be, seeing him unexpectedly like this. 

You chuckled when Sunghoon started at your sudden arrival. “Oh, hey, Y/N,” he said, chuckling too, albeit somewhat awkwardly. “Sorry, didn’t hear you coming.”

“It’s fine,” you said with a smile as you sat down next to him on the bleachers. You didn’t know what sort of distance was appropriate between you two, if you should sit close or far, but you stopped yourself before you could overthink something as trivial as that. Neither of you said anything for a few seconds and you wished practice had started before you got here, so that you’d have something to look at other than an empty field.

You broke the silence before it became too uncomfortable. “So, do you come watch Jake often?”

You’d been fiddling with your hands as you spoke, only turning your head to look at Sunghoon as you awaited his answer. Your eyes didn’t even meet for a fraction of a second before he whipped his head to look at the field, as if unable to look at you and talk at the same time. At least he had a nice side profile for you to look at.

“Um, just on Tuesdays. I have ice skating practice after this, so I come here first, then he comes with me to the rink,” he replied. He glanced at you, lips pressed into a thin line that somewhat resembled a smile and that pushed dimples into his cheeks. You simply hummed in response. 

“What about you, how come you’re here?”

“Jake asked me,” you replied. Sunghoon let out a long “oh” as he nodded, turning his head back towards the field again. You didn’t think you’d ever had such a slow conversation. It was like you and Sunghoon both repeated your words ten times over in your heads before saying them out loud.

“Are you coming to my practice, too?” he asked after another pause.

The question took you aback slightly as you hadn’t even considered it, but it could be fun, seeing Sunghoon practice ice skating. It’d also be fun to hang out with Jake. “If it’s fine with you, then yeah, why not,” you replied, smiling at Sunghoon. He glanced at you again before looking away with a smile, an actual one this time that showed his teeth and made his eyes crinkle.

“Yeah, sure. People usually only come to actual shows, so I like it when someone’s there to watch practice.” Before you could find something to say, the players arrived jogging onto the field, immediately starting their warm-up laps. Some were serious about it and stayed focused as they ran, while others goofed around, running backwards and slapping other players on their butts before sprinting away. Jake, of course, was part of the latter group.

Now that something was actually happening on the field, you and Sunghoon had an excuse not to make conversation anymore. You tried to ignore it, but it was so awkward you wanted to die. You realized now why you were so attracted to people like Jake and Chaewon - without even being aware of it, they brought you out of your shell and made you feel at ease. You wished you could do that on your own, but you were always too scared, so you needed that person who was confident enough showing themselves to you first to make you feel comfortable doing the same. You and Sunghoon, unfortunately, were too similar in that sense to do that for each other. So you just sat there in silence, observing Jake and waving back at him when he caught your gazes.

The ninety minutes of practice didn’t go by in total silence - you asked Sunghoon about some soccer rules you didn’t get, and he shared some anecdotes from his and Jake’s earlier teenage years, including a very entertaining story about a tantrum 9-year-old Jake had thrown when he hadn’t agreed with the red card the referee had given him. You weren’t sure how the topic came up, but at some point, you even shared pictures of your pets. Sunghoon had one of those small crusty white dogs, but you kept your laughter in and cooed over how cute she was. 

But still, most of the time, you were watching Jake. You had never been interested in soccer or any sort of sport that involved balls until now. Somehow, he managed to make flushed cheeks, a heaving chest and hairline beaded with sweat look glorious. In total honesty, you were paying more attention to the player himself than to the sport, to the point that you barely noticed when he scored a goal during their practice match. It was only when Jake started cheering and high-fiving his teammates that you realized what had happened, and you gave him two thumbs up and a wide grin when he looked your and Sunghoon’s way, proudly shouting “Did you see that?!”

The realization hit you like a ton of bricks right there and then. The way your heart swelled as you watched his excited, puppyish grin take over his features was undeniable - you liked Jake. You like liked him. Your gaze continued to follow him as he finished his celebratory lap. If you could’ve seen yourself right then, you’d probably have been embarrassed by your awestruck expression and slightly agape mouth, but you couldn’t help yourself.

Much to your dismay, you realized that Chaewon had seen right through you. You hadn’t wanted to read too much into your feelings, but they had become too obvious to ignore. You hadn’t experienced them yourself since middle school (Choi Soobin had really been a heartbreaker back then), but you’d heard about the telltale signs of a crush too many times not to know about them. It was now clear that the way you felt about Jake and the way you had felt about Sunghoon were worlds apart. Feeling nervous around him and your heart skipping a beat when you made eye contact; wanting to see him smile; laughing at all his jokes, even the bad ones; missing him even though it’d been seconds since you said goodbye, and counting down the days until you saw him again. And, yes, looking at his pictures on social media over and over again. You did all those things, so you knew there was no point in lying to yourself anymore - you liked Jake Sim. 

It didn’t help that he was always kind to you, never making you feel stupid for not understanding something in your tutoring sessions and being patient enough to explain the same thing over and over again. He always paid attention to small things, which never failed to make your heart race, like asking after your aging cat’s condition after you’d told him he had a health check-up over the weekend or stocking up on your favorite snack the week after you’d told him about it. He’d also immediately picked up on your habit of teasing the people you felt comfortable with and you loved how he returned it tenfold. It was as much fun debating with him over nothing and making him shut up with your senseless arguments as it was being rendered speechless when he came up with the perfect retort. 

And of course, there was no denying that Jake was ridiculously attractive. There were times you got so caught up in the way his lips moved as he spoke or the way his fingers looked as he pointed at numbers on the page that your mind completely blanked out and you stopped listening to his words for a few seconds. You didn’t know what to make of his small chuckle and smirk when he noticed your gaze fixated on him, but you knew it wasn’t good for your heart. And let’s not even get started on the fact that sitting so close to him meant you could smell the lingering scent of his cologne every single time.

Even now, with flushed cheeks and hair slicked back with sweat, you want to run onto the field and give him a big smooch on his cheek, telling him you were proud of him for scoring that goal.

But even though you were getting closer and he had offered for you to come watch his practice, you squashed down as best as you could any hope that he might feel the same way about you. Even if he insisted he was bad with girls, Jake was popular at school, and you were sure there were many other girls who had a crush on him - so why would he like you of all people?

Sunghoon’s voice snapped you out of your thoughts. “Every time he scores, he acts like it’s the first time he’s ever done it,” he said, chuckling and shaking his head at his friend’s over-dramatic antics. The coach was trying to get Jake to calm down so that the game could resume.

“He’s so cute,” you said, voice quiet, before you could stop yourself. But as soon as the words were out, you realized what you’d done, and your eyes doubled in size as you turned to look at Sunghoon. He had whipped his head to look at you, too, and his eyes were just as big as yours. Then, he burst into laughter, and you hoped the Earth would suddenly open beneath your feet and swallow you whole. 

When his surprise had subsided, Sunghoon turned to you again, an incredulous but amused glint in his eyes. “Did you just call Jake cute?”

You crossed your arms over your chest, slightly frowning as you avoided Sunghoon’s gaze. “I just meant, you know, it’s cute how excited he got. I didn’t say he was cute,” you mumbled, knowing you were doing a poor job of defending yourself.

“That’s exactly what you said, though. You said, and I quote, He’s so cute.” You glared at Sunghoon. Who knew he would only become talkative once it came to teasing you about Jake? 

His expression softened slightly when he realized you might actually be upset about this, and he turned his attention back towards the field, smile growing when he found his friend. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”

“There’s nothing to be said anyway.”

“Oh? So you don’t mind if I tell Jake that you have the biggest, fattest crush on- hmph!”

You’d cut Sunghoon off by pressing your palm to his mouth, mustering the most menacing look you could to scare him off. “I do not,” you said firmly as you moved your hand away from him.

“Sure, you don’t,” he replied, chuckling. Clearly, your most menacing look wasn’t so menacing.

“I get why Jake’s so annoying now, it’s because he’s friends with you.”

Sunghoon raised an amused eyebrow at this. “He might be annoying, but he’s also cute, right?”

“Shut up!” you shrieked immediately, but you couldn’t stop the grin forcing its way onto your lips.

“Just saying,” Sunghoon said, and you laughed together. Maybe you should’ve been more worried about Jake’s literal best friend finding out you had a crush on him, but you somehow trusted Sunghoon not to blabber about it. Whether because he was nice or because he wanted to watch you struggle with your feelings, you weren’t sure, but at least you felt your secret was safe with him.

You looked back at the field, and just as your eyes found Jake, you saw him turn his head away. Had you seen him just seconds prior, you might have noticed the crease in his eyebrows as he watched you and Sunghoon laugh together. Sunghoon isn’t that funny, he thought, what could you be laughing so hard about?

He didn’t understand the sudden weight in his heart at the sight of you and his friend getting along so well. This was his whole plan after all - force some proximity between you and Sunghoon so that you could talk and hopefully make your feelings clear to each other after some time. Clearly, it was working. So why was it bothering him so much? 

He had to turn his attention back to the game, so he could only ruminate over it for five seconds, but for the remaining thirty minutes, he could barely focus on anything. Whenever he glanced back at you and Sunghoon, you were both looking at him and not talking to each other, and that somehow bothered him even more. 

He used his time in the lockers to get out of the weird mood he was in - whatever was going on between you and Sunghoon, he didn’t want to ruin it by being grumpy. So when he came back out and found the two of you waiting for him at the bus stop, he put on his best smile. 

Having you around made his usual Tuesday afternoon with Sunghoon more fun - after years of friendship, Sunghoon ignored most of his jokes and could tune the sound of his voice out, but you still laughed at everything he said, and his heart swelled with pride every time he made you laugh.

It was only a ten-minute bus ride from the school to the ice rink so you still had twenty minutes to spare before Sunghoon’s lesson started. As always after soccer practice, Jake was famished, so you stopped by a convenience store and got more snacks than you really needed.

You sat next to Sunghoon and across from Jake at a picnic table in front of the ice rink, watching the boy in front of you with fascination as he gorged himself on banana milk and chocolate snacks.

“God, how long has it been since you last ate?” you asked with genuine concern in your voice. Sunghoon followed your gaze towards Jake, only then noticing his friend’s feral behavior as if this was a normal occurrence for them.

“Like three hours,” Jake answered. “I’m starving. So hungry I could eat Sunghoon.”

When he looked up, you were both peering at him with furrowed eyebrows and bewildered expressions on your faces. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Do you mean that Sunghoon is a horse?” you asked.

Jake mirrored your confused expressions. “What? No, why would I say that?”

“The saying goes, so hungry I could eat a horse, dumbass,” Sunghoon chimed in.

“Why would I eat a horse?” Jake replied, shaking his head and chuckling at you and Sunghoon like you were the ones who had gotten a basic idiom wrong.

“Why would you eat me?” Sunghoon bit back, sounding almost offended.

“It’s just a saying, dude.”

Half-an-hour and two whole packets of biscuits later, you and Jake sat side-by-side on the benches, watching Sunghoon as he did his warm-ups on the ice. This was your first time seeing a professional ice skater and you were transfixed, to say the least. He was just skating across the rink and rolling his arms and neck to get the muscles moving, but it all seemed so effortless and elegant that you couldn’t help but watch with your mouth slightly open, eyes eager to keep up with Sunghoon’s figure.

You were so mesmerized that you had no idea Jake was practically burning holes into the side of your face. Eyes narrowed and nose scrunched in disgust, he couldn’t believe you were enjoying the show in front of you that much. “He’s not even doing anything special right now, you know,” he said, but it only made him realize that when Sunghoon did start doing cool stuff, you’d like it even more.

Your head barely budged in Jake’s direction as you answered him, and your eyes certainly didn’t leave Sunghoon. “Really? It already looks so cool, though.” Jake scoffed, but that still didn’t get your attention, which made him scoff again. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned like a child whose parent wasn’t paying attention to their drawing. 

“Cooler than me?”

Finally, you look at me, Jake thought, and his frown immediately dissipated into a grin when your eyes met. But judging by the teasing way your lips curled up, he already knew he wasn’t going to like your answer.

“Cooler than you,” you replied before turning your attention back to the rink.

Jake leans back with a pout, opting to glare at his friend instead of you. He tried to put himself in your shoes and figure out what it was about Sunghoon you liked so much that Jake didn’t also have. Devastatingly good looks? Check. Charming smile? Check. Cute dog? Check - Jake more so than Sunghoon. Brains? Okay, both of them lacked this. Good personality? Check - however, you needed months before Sunghoon revealed himself to you, whereas Jake was outgoing and was comfortable even with people he’d just met. 

So why was the bearer of your affection Sunghoon and not Jake?

And why did Jake even care that you liked his friend over him in the first place?

It wasn’t like Jake liked you - he couldn’t like a girl that his best friend liked - so why did this at all matter to him? If anything, the fact that you liked Sunghoon back should’ve been something to rejoice over. It had been, up until now, and Jake couldn’t figure out why. He couldn’t figure out this weird sensation that had plagued him in the soccer field and followed him to the ice rink as he watched you watch Sunghoon with amazement.

Jake was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t even notice when you detached your eyes from Sunghoon, who was talking to his coach, and tilted your head at him. “Jake?” 

The boy only let out a low hum, still too upset to look at you.

An amused grin made your lips quirk up. “Are you pouting because I said Sunghoon was cooler than you?”

Jake scoffed, turning his head away from you. “No.”

A pause. “So you don’t mind if I go on and on about how elegant and beautiful ice skating is, while running after a ball and kicking it is the basis of the stupidest sport in the world?”

Jake glared at you, but it only made you smile more. “It’s not stupid.”

Despite himself, his pretend angry facade broke apart at the sound of your airy giggles. Jake didn’t think his ears had ever been graced with such a pretty sound before - he slapped himself mentally as soon as that thought crossed his mind. 

His heart did jumps and spins more impressive than Sunghoon’s when you reached a hand out to ruffle his hair, shaking your head at his behavior. For once, he was glad that you turned back to Sunghoon so that you wouldn’t see the bright blush spreading all over his face.

For the next hour, Jake put his weird feelings to the side and watched his friend practice his routine for his upcoming competition. Even he had to admit that Sunghoon looked pretty cool doing what he loved.

You told him you found it all the more impressive because you’d never skated before, so it looked unachievable to you, and an idea immediately formed in Jake’s mind. As soon as Sunghoon’s practice was over, he rushed over to his friend and asked if the two of you could join him on the ice. Sunghoon turned to his coach, who simply shrugged.

“I trust you to look after them,” she said. “Just make sure to be out when the hockey team gets here.”

Before you knew it, Jake was helping you tie up your ice skates (the sight of which made you faint-hearted) and both boys helped you onto the ice rink, each holding onto one of your hands as you tried not to freak out at the feeling of your knees being so wobbly. Sunghoon demonstrated how to move around the ice, and soon enough, you’d gotten the hang of it - but you still made sure to keep Jake at an arm’s length so you could grab onto him every time you lost your balance. Jake stayed by your side, smiling fondly at how excited you looked and cheering you on every time you took a step of your own. Sunghoon, on the other hand, seemed to find it funny to watch from afar and point and laugh every time you stumbled.

After some time, Sunghoon announced he was feeling hungry and decided to go eat some snacks, leaving you and Jake alone in the rink. The wink Sunghoon threw your way when Jake wasn’t looking let you know what his true intentions were, and you couldn’t believe Jake’s best friend had just become your wingman.

“Feeling ready to skate around the rink?” Jake asked. His boyish grin was contagious, and you found yourself matching it even though you were still nervous about moving around too much.

“If you help me,” you answered tentatively, looking at him worriedly as you held out your hand for him to take. The softness of his gaze as he smiled down at you made you want to melt into a puddle on the floor.

“Of course,” he said, taking your hand in his warm one. Your fingers intertwined as if out of second nature and you thought you finally understood why people said their hands were meant to hold someone else’s.

Being friends with an ice skater for such a long time meant Jake had acquired some skill, too, which is why he could so easily show you how to turn or pick up speed. Whenever you lost your balance, he was always quick enough to make sure you didn’t actually fall, picking you up before your backside could touch the ice. He found your frightened expression every time you thought you would fall absolutely adorable, but your pout and slight frown whenever he teased you were somehow even cuter.

He only let go of your hand after some ten minutes (neither of you had even begun to question Sunghoon’s whereabouts by then) when he came to stand in front of you, a serious expression on his face.

“I think you’re ready, Y/N,” he declared solemnly.

“Ready for…?” you asked, scared of whatever he had in mind.

He leaned in slightly and the sudden proximity took you aback, but he didn’t seem to realize. A mischievous smirk broke through his handsome features. “A race,” he whispered, then skated to one edge of the rink and motioned for you to follow him. Reluctantly, you did.

“First to the other edge has to…” he thought for a second, gazing at the ceiling. You wanted to be mad at him for proposing a race when you’d literally just learned how to skate, but how could you when he looked so cute and giddy, searching for the loser’s penalty? “Buy the other ice cream!”

Your eyes were probably the image of tenderness as you looked at him. “Deal,” you said, wanting to sound as playful as him but voice coming out soft. Since when had you fallen so hard for him?

You held each other’s gazes for a couple more seconds before both turning in front of you, getting ready for your race. Jake counted down from three, and your skating wasn’t so bad at first - until you got too cocky for your own good, trying to go at a pace you clearly couldn’t handle. Before you knew it, your knees betrayed you and you found yourself tripping over, your butt making a loud thump sound as it came into contact with the ice.

On your way down, you’d shrieked Jake’s name, and he was at your side in the blink of an eye, holding your shoulder and looking at you worriedly. The pain was immediate, and for a few seconds, you couldn’t answer him and reassure him that you were fine.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have asked to race, God Y/N I’m so stupid I’m so sorry are you okay I didn’t want you to get hurt-”

“Jake,” you squeaked.

“Yeah?”

“I’m okay, calm down,” you said when the pain subsided, managing a smile. “I’ll just have a sore butt tomorrow.” He chuckled at the word ‘butt,’ but you didn’t have it in you to roll his eyes at his childishness.

“Are you sure you’re okay? There’s an infirmary here-”

“I’m sure, Jakey-poo,” you teased, making him lose the concerned expression as he bore an unimpressed one instead.

“I guess you are fine if you can think to call me that. Come on, up!” he said as he stood up, reaching his hands out for you to take. Just as he helped you up, Sunghoon came sprinting and stood at the entrance to the rink.

“Is everything okay? I heard a yell,” he said, slightly out-of-breath with half a biscuit in his mouth. Guess he really was eating this whole time.

You and Jake laughed and shook your head at him, and you reassured him that everything was fine. 

“Good, ‘cause the hockey team’s here and we have to go anyway.”

There was a bus that took Sunghoon directly from the ice rink to his house, but you and Jake had to go back to the school to catch the one you usually took, which meant you had a forty-minute journey in front of you. And yet, Jake’s company made those forty minutes feel like five, and you found yourself disappointed when the bus neared your stop.

“If you want, we can still go walk Kiwi and Layla,” he offered shyly a few minutes before your stop, as if he’d read your mind. 

“I’d love to.” You watched as his small smile bloomed into a wider one.

“I’m glad,” he chuckled, relieved. “I was scared you’d be tired of me after spending the whole afternoon together,” he admitted, looking down at his lap with a bashful expression on his face. It wasn’t often that Jake looked timid like this, but whenever he did, your heart tripled in size.

“I don’t think I could get tired of you.” You were too shy to look him in the eye while you said this, but in your peripheral, you saw his grin get impossibly wider and his eyebrows raise. He bumped your shoulder with his, making the both of you burst into giggles.

You were still smiling long after you’d come home from your walk.

—

Unfortunately for Jake, forcing you and Sunghoon to sit together for ninety minutes hadn’t resulted in the two of you confessing your undying love for the other and getting together - clearly, his plan hadn’t worked very well. But Jake, instead of coming up with another strategy, decided he should just basically do the same thing again and hope it went better this time. 

Bro night had been a tradition for the past three years that the boys only very rarely broke, in cases of illness, filial obligations or important competitions the following day. This wasn’t any one of those cases, but Jake decided bro night must be slightly sacrificed that night - for your and Sunghoon’s sake. Years down the line, he knew you’d thank him.

This was why he tricked you into thinking you had been invited to bro night (you’d heard a lot about it and considered it an honor to be included) when really, he made Jay promise not to show at the cinema so that you and Sunghoon could be alone. The two of them would make up an excuse about not being able to make it on time and show up later at the diner (“If you want to set them up, shouldn’t we also leave them alone after the movie?” Jay had asked Jake over the phone, and Jake had been unable to explain why he didn’t want you to spend the whole night alone with Sunghoon).

“They ditched us,” Sunghoon had said in lieu of a greeting when you found him at the entrance of the cinema. He turned his phone screen towards you, showing you their group chat - Jay had had some sort of meeting at his school that had run late and Jake had to go to the vet suddenly because Layla kept making weird noises.

“Oh no, I hope she’ll be okay,” you said, voice laced with genuine worry.

Sunghoon just sighed. “I’m sure she will.” He knew what his friends were up to - it almost never happened that one of them was unable to make it to bro night, so two at once? They were clearly lying. He would make sure to tell Jake how worried sick you were about his dog’s fake illness later on just so his friend would feel extra guilty.

You had been looking forward to hanging out with Jake and his friends all day, so you were disappointed to know he wouldn’t make it until later. It wasn’t much comfort that the movie they had picked, some recent Marvel release, was one you were not at all interested in, and you couldn’t even obsess over Jake’s presence next to you instead of the movie because he wasn’t there. You’d have to sit with awkward, quiet Sunghoon for God knows how long - at least the cinema wasn’t much of a talking place. 

You declined his kind offer of sharing a big popcorn tub - you didn’t want to risk a cliché reaching-for-popcorn-at-the-same-time moment with Sunghoon, although you’d daydreamed and giggled about it happening with Jake earlier that day. Instead, you sipped grumpily on your Cherry Coke, watching the trailers for upcoming movies and discussing them with Sunghoon. (“I’m so excited for the Barbie movie,” he’d surprised you by saying. Maybe he wasn’t so bad.)

As the lights dimmed, announcing the imminent start of the movie, Sunghoon whispered something that completely changed your mind about Marvel. “It’s so stupid that Jake isn’t here, seriously. He’s been going on and on about going to see this movie since the trailer came out.” Suddenly, you’d never felt the need to pay attention to something more than this. 

Well, in your humble opinion, the film wasn’t anything to write home about. It was a lot of loud action scenes with some funny one-liners that, okay, you chuckled at. And the actors were hot. You could sort of see why Jake would enjoy Marvel movies, although you yourself liked films with more social commentary, such as Mean Girls or Bee Movie. You’d need to make Jake watch Twilight one of these days - you were sure he’d like the soundtrack, if nothing else.

At least, you and Sunghoon have something to talk about during your short walk to the diner. As you enter the restaurant, a familiar voice calling out your name catches you off-guard.

“Chaewon? I thought you didn’t work on Friday nights!” you exclaimed, letting your friend bring you into a hug. You gave her a once-over - she always looked so pretty in her work uniform, white t-shirt dress draping her body perfectly, apron cinching at her waist, and short pigtails under her 50’s style diner hat. If the blush spreading on Sunghoon’s cheeks at her sudden appearance was anything to go by, his thoughts might not have been too far from yours.

She pouted, taking your hands in hers and swaying them between the two of you. “I usually don’t, but Yunjin asked me to trade shifts and she always says yes when I ask her, so I felt bad saying no.” You nodded and she turned to Sunghoon.

“Hi, Sunghoon!”

“H-hi, Chaewon.”

“Where’s Jay and Jake?” she asked, looking behind the two of you. You’d told the group chat about your evening plans and a lot of freaking out had taken place. 

“Should be here any minute,” you sighed, and when she looked at you questioningly, you told her you’d explain later.

She sat you at a four-person booth by the window and brought you drinks (“On the house,” she’d said with a wink, but you weren’t sure this had been allowed by any of her superiors) for you to sip on while you waited for the others. Every time she was free, she came over to your table and gossiped about the customers. You did not miss the way Sunghoon’s face lit up whenever she approached you.

Jake and Jay see you before you see them. Jay, the only one with a driver’s license out of the three, had picked Jake up, and he was parking his car when Jake gasped loudly, making Jay jump. “I’m trying to park, man, can you be calm?”

“What’s she doing here?” Jake exclaimed, completely ignoring his friend.

Jay followed Jake’s gaze, but he wasn’t sure what his friend was going on about. All he saw was you, whom he recognized from pictures only, Sunghoon, and a waitress that seemed overly-friendly. “Who?” he asked.

“Chaewon,” Jake hissed, like her name was a curse. “She’s ruining our plan!”

Jay sighed. “First of all, this is your plan. Second of all, it was ruined from the beginning. And by that, I mean that your plan sucks, Jake.”

Jake clicked his teeth. “Whatever. Let’s just go,” he said, getting out of the car and heading straight for you. He made sure to give Chaewon a pointed look as he sat next to you in the booth, but she just seemed happy that more people had arrived. 

You bumped your knee into his to get his attention. “Hi,” you said with a smile.

He looked at you dumbly for a few seconds before Jay cleared his throat awkwardly. “Hi. This is Jay,” he said, tilting his head towards the boy but not taking his eyes off of you. You and Jay exchanged hey’s before Chaewon took your order, quickly giving it to the kitchen and scanning the room to make sure every table had what they needed, then headed back to your table. 

“Is Layla okay?” you asked Jake, worry making your brows furrow.

“Huh?” The sudden mention of his dog took him aback. Why wouldn’t she be okay?

“Layla?” you repeated, tilting your head. “Is she okay? You said you had to go to the vet.”

His eyes widened as he remembered his lie from earlier, and he started nodding frantically. “Oh yeah, yeah, she’s fine, we panicked over nothing,” he said with a nervous giggle. Jake was the worst liar Jay and Sunghoon had ever seen, but you were none the wiser.

“What about you, Jay? How was your school thing?” Sunghoon asked, turning to his friend with a glare and making him choke on his Coke.

“Oh, that was fine too, I guess,” Jay mumbled.

As expected, Jake and Chaewon were experts at leading the conversation, and Jay himself was pretty talkative. They all bounced off of each other naturally, and even Sunghoon knew how to throw in witty remarks now and there. You also participated, but you were more than happy just listening to them and laughing along. You tried not to think too much about how your knee would bump into Jake’s once in a while, or how he seemed to look at you every time he made a joke.

At some point, Chaewon had rushed over to your table, looking right at you with wide eyes and beaming. “Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God, Y/N, hat guy is here!” 

You instantly mirrored her expression. “Where where where?” you asked, lifting your body up to scan around the restaurant.

“Over there in the corner, but be discreet!”

You were not at all discreet as your eyes found said hat guy, noting with satisfaction that he was characteristically hatless, and you burst into laughter. “I can’t believe he’s here!”

“Right? Probably has the munchies or something,” Chaewon said, laughing along.

You only noticed then the perplexed looks all three boys were sending your way. “Who the heck is hat guy?” Jake asked, which only made you and Chaewon laugh harder.

“You wouldn’t get it,” she replied airily, waving Jake off as she made her way to a customer who had called for her. 

The boys turned to you and you shrunk in your seat at their attention. “Just a guy the girls and I find funny,” you explained, shrugging and glancing quickly at Sunghoon. If only he knew about all the times you and the girls had gossiped about him, even though he’d done nothing of importance.

When her shift was over, the first thing Chaewon did was take off her apron, then dragged you to the bathroom, where she drilled you for details about your cinema “date” with Sunghoon. 

“It was not a date, it just ended up being the two of us because the others couldn’t make it,” you insisted, but she wasn’t having it. “There’s nothing to say anyway. We got there, talked a bit, watched the movie, walked here, and that’s it.”

Chaewon sighed, shaking her head as she reapplied her lip gloss. A small smile made its way onto your lips. “I think he’s into someone else anyway.” 

You noticed how her hand faltered for a split second. “Oh yeah? Who?” she asked, trying to appear nonchalant, but you knew your friend too well. 

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” 

Unbeknownst to either of you, the discussion between the boys back at the table was not too different from yours.

“Bro, I’m literally going to kill you,” Sunghoon whisper-yelled even though you were way out of earshot already. “Do you know how awkward that was?”

“Just so you know, I had nothing to do with this,” Jay said. “I told him that putting two socially constipated idiots like you wouldn’t end well, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Y/N’s not an idiot!” Jake immediately reacted.

“And I am?!” Sunghoon retorted.

Jay just rolled his eyes.

“You are, because this is the second time you’re alone together with the girl you like and you can barely make conversation with her.”

“For the last time, I don’t like her, I just called her cute once in freshman year-”

“Same thing!”

“Jake, I don’t know how many times I can tell you the same thing before you get it. I’ve been around Y/N enough to know I don’t like her like that, okay? We’ve had two classes where we sat together for a whole semester, and we’ve worked with other people in group projects. Not to mention, you’ve made me sit through one of your practices with her. She’s nice. She sends me the homework when I miss class. She even laughs at my jokes sometimes. And her dog is super cute. I’m sure we’d be better friends if we both didn’t have crippling shyness, but I don’t like her like that. I just don’t.”

“But how?!”

“What do you mean how? This sorta thing doesn’t have any sort of reasonable answer, you just do or you don’t. I don’t. Clearly, you do.”

Jake heard the last part of Sunghoon’s words, and promptly decided to ignore them. He had to understand this first - he’d figure out his feelings later. “This whole time, I thought you were just downplaying your feelings, ‘cause you’re an awkward asshole who doesn’t do emotions,” he said, eyes tightly shut and holding his head, the confusion making his brain hurt.

“Okay, ouch. But no, I wasn’t. I really don’t know what got into your head.”

“I know what got into his head,” Jay said. Both of his friends looked at him questioningly, so he went on. “When Sunghoon mentioned Y/N, you probably thought she was super cute too, Jake. But because of bro code and whatnot, you didn’t wanna show any interest. And then as you saw her around more, you probably liked her more, but you thought Sunghoon liked her, so you sort of gave him your crush on her instead of dealing with it. You lived vicariously through him, basically. Except you’re an idiot because he doesn’t even like her like that, so you could’ve shot your shot a long time ago already. I don’t know why you didn’t just listen to him, to be honest,” Jay finished, shrugging.

“You also thought he liked her!” Jake retorted.

“That’s besides the point. The point is that you’re stupid.”

“But- but, what about all those times you talked about her? I didn’t make those up!” 

Sunghoon rolled his eyes. “The most I ever said about her was something like, Y/N and I both forgot our textbook today, or Y/N brought cookies for the class because it’s her birthday. You were always the one to notice her everywhere and go, There’s your crush, or something.”

Jake sighed, defeated. He could admit Sunghoon was right about something, and he was wrong - but he hated that Jay was also right. Had he really managed to bury his feelings for you all these years just for what he thought was Sunghoon’s sake? Sure, he was a loyal friend, but that felt a little much.

“Whatever,” he mumbled, recoiling from his friends’ expectant gazes and taking a sad bite of his cheeseburger. “It’s not like she likes me back, or anything.” 

He watched in confusion as Sunghoon let out a loud groan, screwing his eyes shut and taking his head in his hands as if it hurt. “This is so frustrating, I’m going to kill myself.”

Jake turned to Jay for some sort of explanation to their friend’s sudden suicidal thoughts, but Jay just looked back at Jake with disgust. “When did you become so dumb? I swear you didn’t use to be like this,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment.

Jake’s eyes flickered between his two friends in utter dismay. “What?”

“Jake,” Jay started. “Do you really, honestly, genuinely think Y/N doesn’t like you?”

The boy leaned back in his seat with a pout. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

Sunghoon’s head whipped up at this. Jake gulped at the intense glare his friend fixed him with - he’d never looked so angry with him, and it made Jake wonder what on Earth he could have said or done that made Sunghoon so upset. “Why?” he asked simply, but the frustration was evident in his voice.

Your diary popped up in Jake’s head. What he had read was clear. Of course, the entry dated from over a month ago now, but why would your feelings have changed since then? Jake sighs deeply, getting ready to reveal to his friends what he’d seen, but then he sees you and Chaewon emerging from the bathroom. “They’re coming back,” he mumbled.

It was Sunghoon and Jay’s turn to sigh. “Just pay attention to her, Jake, okay?” Jay instructed, giving his friend an intent look.

“I already do,” Jake replied, frowning.

“No, really pay attention to her. Then use your pea-sized brain for once in your life, and maybe you’ll realize something.”

A strongly-worded reply was on the tip of Jake’s tongue, but all thoughts of violence and murdering his friend were replaced by images of rainbows and pretty flowers when you smiled at him. He felt like the biggest of idiots for liking you so much and only realizing it now.

“Hi,” he said dumbly as you found your seat next to him again, then stole a french fry from you even though he had many left himself. When you gasped at his audacity, he just giggled.

“Hey!” you exclaimed in protest before stealing a fry back. 

If you hadn’t been so caught up in your little world, you’d have noticed the knowing look your three friends exchanged and their simultaneous eye roll. 

—

The following Monday, you decided to have your tutoring session at your house instead of Jake’s. His mom was away at a convention for the week, so you’d have to take the bus anyway - since your house was two stops earlier, you offered to switch it up for once. Jake had never actually been inside your house and was curious to see what it was like, so he eagerly agreed. 

Kiwi was happy to see him and followed the two of you around the house as you gave Jake a quick tour before going up to your room. When you reached the top landing, you realized that Kiwi was still at the bottom of the stairs and was looking up at you expectantly. “Is she not allowed upstairs?” Jake asked.

“Usually not, but I let her come up when my mom’s not here. Come on Kiwi! It’s okay!”

Kiwi didn’t need to be told twice - she trudged her little body up the stairs, and you couldn’t help but giggle at her adorableness. “She’s so cute,” you cooed, looking at your dog with a huge smile on your face.

“She really is,” Jake agreed, but when you turned your head to face him, he wasn’t looking at Kiwi - he was looking straight at you, a softness in his eyes that made your stomach turn. He snapped out of it when he noticed your round, surprised eyes, and cleared his throat. “So, where’s your room?” he asked, looking around the hallway and avoiding your gaze.

“Over there,” you replied, fighting the smile that tried to make its way to your lips as you headed towards your room, Jake and Kiwi following right behind. 

You told Jake to wait for a second as you went to get a second chair. When you came back, he was standing in front of your shelves, upper body slightly bent forwards to observe all the decorations and framed pictures closer. You placed the chair next to your desk then joined him, answering all the questions he had about the items on your shelves. Who’s this? When was this? Where did you get this? In his defense, you really did have a lot of things - you were trying to get rid of your hoarding habits, but you got attached to every small thing that held some sort of significance. You went to sit at the edge of your bed and just watched him, his eyes glinting with curiosity.

It reminded you of the first time you’d been to his house, how upset he’d seemed when you talked about his baby pictures and how you hadn’t wanted to risk looking at all the stuff in his room. You were also curious about things like that, and you wondered once again what had bothered him so much. The question was burning your tongue - although you were nervous to ask it, not wanting to upset Jake once more, you now knew him well enough to know he wasn’t the type to stay mad for long. 

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Jake replied, fingers toying with your favorite Littlest Pet Shop figurine you had kept from when you were eight.

“Why didn’t you want me to look at your baby photos that one time?”

Jake paused at your words. He stood up straight and set the figurine back on the shelf. He glanced at you before walking over to your bed and taking a seat next to you, leaning back on his palms while you rested your hands underneath your thighs. 

“You probably noticed I don’t mention my dad, right? Or the fact that he’s never home?” 

You nodded in response. You had noticed it, but you’d never brought the topic up in case it might be sensitive. Jake sighed. “He passed away when I was six.”

You turned your head towards him. To your surprise, his face remained expressionless - you couldn’t detect any sort of sadness or anger in his features, as if he was just reciting a fact. His uncharacteristic numbness upset you even more than any tears could have. 

He met your gaze and gave you a small smile. “I was so young that I only have very vague memories of him, like playing soccer together in the backyard or a trip to the beach with my parents and my brother. I only remember his face and his voice from the photos and videos my mom has shown me.” He sighed again, shifting forwards and resting his hands in his lap, fiddling with his fingers. “So when I see these pictures, they sort of just remind me of what I’ve lost? I really don’t like lingering on them. I sort of just ignore them every time I walk up or down the stairs.”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have mentioned them if I’d known-”

Jake is quick to shake his head. “No, no, don’t be sorry. You couldn’t have guessed.” You want to comfort Jake in some way, thank him for telling you something so personal, but you’re not sure what words to use - so, instead, you take one of his hands in yours and bring it to your lap, then cover it with your other one. Your eyes meet for a second - he looks slightly taken aback at first, but then, his eyes drift down to your joined hands, and a small blush spreads on his cheeks.

“I’m- I’m okay, really. Like I said, it happened so long ago that I’m used to not having a dad now. It almost feels like it’s always been that way, which makes it even weirder to think it wasn’t. It’s just… It feels weird to miss someone I barely remember so much, you know?”

You nodded and let out a low hum. “I do know.” Jake tilted his head at you, silently asking you to go on. “It’s different, but I get that feeling of missing something you barely remember. I have these blurry memories of my parents being happy together and the three of us being a happy family, and then all of a sudden it’s hearing arguments from my room and my dad moving out, and they’re asking me, Do you wanna live with mom or dad?”

You watched as Jake moved his hand slightly, intertwining your fingers together and squeezing your hand. “I was older than you were when they divorced, so I guess I have more memories to hold onto, but they hurt more than anything.” You let out a deep sigh. “My dad cheated, so it’s not like I wished my mom had stayed with him, but I was too young to understand what was happening. I just wanted my parents together again.” 

When you lifted your head to look at him, he met your gaze, and his eyes were so soft yet so intense, like he was seeing right into you. Then he chuckled. “Do you ever get jealous of other people’s parents?” he asks, a shy smile playing on his lips.

“All the time,” you admitted with a chuckle, relieved to find out you weren’t the only one. “Yena has been blessed with these like, practically perfect parents that are still in love after twenty years, never argue and have a healthy relationship with all of their kids. I’m so in awe every time I see them.”

“Sunghoon’s parents are like that. I feel terrible, but every time they come to cheer him on at his competitions, I just get so jealous, wishing I also had three people coming to see my games and not just two. And I always feel so silly for feeling that way.”

“You’re not silly for that, Jake,” you said, and the honesty in your voice seemed to take him aback slightly. A grin spread on your lips. “You may be silly for other things, but not for that,” you teased, making him chuckle. “I can be your third person, if you want,” you said softly, lightly bumping your shoulder against his.

His eyes seemed to light up at your words, and your smile couldn’t help but get wider at his reaction - that was, until he raised an eyebrow, almost defiantly. “Yeah? I thought you found soccer boring,” he said with a playful smirk.

“It’s not boring if you’re the one playing,” you replied. A small noise of surprise escaped his throat before he could help it, not expecting you to be so forward, and you both burst into giggles. 

He cleared his throat when you both calmed down and stood up straighter, trying to put on a cool front. “Of course it isn’t.” He turned his head to look out the window, and the sight of the sunlight perfectly hitting his features and turning his dark brown eyes a hazel color almost took your breath away. “It’s really nice out,” he suddenly said. He turned back to you, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “How about we ditch the tutoring for today and go out?”

His eyes drifted down to your lips, watching as a smile tugged at the corners of your own. “I’m in.”

That was how you found yourselves sitting at a bench in the park close to your house, eating ice cream and watching Kiwi and Layla play together. You tried each other’s ice cream, and you regretted your choice of simple vanilla and strawberry as soon as Jake’s mango ice cream touched your tongue. Your eyes widened at the amazing taste - it felt like you had bit into an actual mango. 

“Good, right?” Jake asked, chuckling at your reaction.

“What the heck, yours is so much better than mine,” you mumbled, pouting at the ice cream in your cup like it had personally hurt you.

Jake thought for a second, looking back and forth between your upset expression and his own cup. “Wanna switch?”

Your heart was screaming yes, but your brain was screaming no. You tried your best to appear genuine when you smiled at him. “No, don’t worry about it. I still like mine.” You looked at him as you scooped another spoonful into your mouth as if to prove to him you were happy with your choice, even going so far as to hum in delight.

Jake just chuckled and shook his head at you, taking your cup and giving you his anyway. You were about to protest until he started eating your ice cream, imitating your previous hum. You quietly accepted the exchange, smiling as you tasted the mango ice cream again and trying to ignore the fact that Jake hadn’t switched the spoons with the cups, so you were using his and he was using yours. 

As you ate in silence, occasionally chuckling at your dogs’ antics, Jake stole some glances at you. He wasn’t sure why you looked so much prettier today than all the times he’d seen you before. Or maybe you were just as pretty as you’d always been, and he was just finally letting himself admit it. 

He may have had many friends, but there weren’t many people Jake was truly himself around. He always felt the need to be this friendly, outgoing guy that made it seem like everything was going well in his life, but with you, he felt like it was okay to stop pretending. He felt like it was okay to ask for help, like it was okay to reveal the darker parts of his life.

Now that Jay and Sunghoon had practically forced him to see the truth, Jake didn’t know what to do about his feelings for you. He finally understood why he always looked forward to your tutoring sessions, why he was so excited whenever he walked past you in the hallways, and why he was so bothered about you and Sunghoon getting along.

Sunghoon. Because even if Jake now knew that he liked you, he also knew that you liked someone else. And what was the point of letting himself fall for you even more when there was no happy ending in sight for him? He’d only get hurt in the end.

Just as the thought hit him, you turned to look at him and meet his gaze, a soft smile on your lips. Every time you smiled at him like that, Jake felt like he was watching a movie. Everything happened in slow-motion, with flowers falling around you and violins playing in the background. Jake almost felt sick, knowing he was only the second lead in your romance movie. He was the stupid werewolf and Sunghoon was the vampire that glistened in the sun and got the girl. (You had convinced him to watch Twilight, saying it was a mandatory watch to understand who you were as a person. Of course, Jake had streamed it that same night. The soundtrack was surprisingly good.)

Your voice snapped him out of his downward-spiraling thoughts. “You know, I almost got scared that Sunghoon would appear out of thin air and start hanging out with us.”

Jake tried not to sneer at the mention of his best-friend-turned-number-one-nemesis. “Why? Wouldn’t you like that?” he mumbled, clearly doing a poor job of seeming unaffected.

You frowned, then lowered your head, focusing your gaze on your almost-finished ice cream. “No, I’d rather if it was just the two of us.” Jake’s eyes widened, unsure if he’d heard that correctly or not. But before he could say anything in response, you spoke again. “It’s just, he was there when I came to watch your practice and when I thought we were all going to see a movie together, it was just him and me. You would’ve liked that movie, by the way,” you said, looking up at Jake with a smile.

Jake’s heart swelled. He wasn’t sure what what you were saying all meant, but unconsciously, his lips mirrored yours and he smiled back at you. Until he remembered you didn’t like him, and his smile fell immediately. Obviously, you had no idea what he was thinking, so his sudden stony expression sent alarms ringing through your head.

“It’s not that I don’t like him, or anything,” you said, panicked, and Jake had to keep himself from scoffing, “it’s just that- you know. It’s nice to hang out with you outside of tutoring sessions,” you finished, mumbling. 

Jake had no idea what you were saying, so he stayed quiet, watching as Kiwi and Layla ran around in circles. You liked Sunghoon, so why would you rather hang out with Jake and not him? You weren’t making any sense. 

You, on the other hand, were not liking Jake’s uncharacteristic silence. In hopes of getting his attention, you crossed one leg over the other, shifting on the bench to face him. “Plus, don’t you think he and Chaewon really hit it off the other night? I think that was the most I’ve ever heard him talk,” you said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. To your dismay, it didn’t work. You didn’t know whether he was sulking or genuinely upset - all you knew was you desperately wanted to see a smile on his pretty face again.

“Jakey?” you called out, and your voice sounded so small it hurt his heart. He hummed in response, only glancing at you for a fraction of a second. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” he replied, scooping the last of the ice cream in his mouth. As he tasted the strawberry and vanilla flavors, he couldn’t believe he had given his precious mango ice cream up all for a girl who didn’t even like him back. What a fool.

“I don’t know, you’re all- weird, all of a sudden, for lack of a better word.” You searched for some sort of an answer in his eyes, but he supplied you with none. 

Jake sighed deeply. He could feel the ugly mix of emotions in his belly turning into anger - anger at what exactly, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to lay it on you. “It’s just the heat, it’s making me tired,” he said. Sure, it was warm for a May afternoon, but it wasn’t that hot. But you didn’t want to push it.

“Should we go home?“ you offered, and the worry in your voice made him feel even worse. He just couldn’t understand why you were being so nice to him. He knew you probably just thought you were looking after a friend, but he'd rather you not care about his well-being and leave him be. He didn’t need one more reason to like you - he already had plenty of those. 

He nodded, mustering as convincing a smile as he could. “Sure.” 

The walk home was much quieter than usual. You could feel that Jake was keeping something to himself, and it was killing you; but whatever it was, you wanted him to tell you when he felt ready and not feel forced to. Your hand was aching, desperate to reach out and grab his as you had done before, but you were afraid that would only push him away even further. So you stayed silent most of the time, only commenting on the things around you or speaking a thought out loud when you thought it might make Jake smile. Every time his lips curled up, even ever so slightly, your heart swelled with relief.

Unbeknownst to you, Jake was making up his mind. He knew he needed time away from you to gather his feelings before he could see you as a friend again. 

When you reached your house, Jake waited outside with the dogs as you grabbed his bag he’d left upstairs. You hugged goodbye as always, but this one was different - it lasted a few seconds longer than usual, and you could swear Jake held you tighter than he normally would. It felt like he was saying goodbye for more than just a couple days.

You didn’t understand why it made your heart ache so much.

—

The next day, when you walked past Jake and Sunghoon in the hallway, Jake barely glanced at you and only tilted his head in your general direction instead of his usual wide grin and wave. You were so shocked by his sudden snubbing that you halted in your steps right away, looking behind you at his retreating figure. You locked eyes with Sunghoon, who seemed just as confused as you felt. He shrugged at you before returning to his friend and nudging his arm.

On Wednesday morning, you got a text from Jake that he couldn’t make it to your tutoring session that afternoon because of an extra soccer practice to prepare for their game that weekend, something he had never mentioned before.

Thursday and Friday weren’t very different, and your heart became heavier with every time you walked past each other and he acted like you weren’t even there. You desperately wanted to know what you’d done wrong, why he’d started to reply in one-word sentences instead of his usual voice messages and tons of emojis, but no matter how much you cogitated, you couldn’t figure it out. Even when you asked him how his game had gone, a dry Good stared back at you from your phone screen.

That Saturday, your girlfriends came over. Yena had brought beads and strings to make accessories out of, and the mere sight of them had brought fond memories back to all four of you - during your first sleepover in freshman year, this was the exact activity that had kept you occupied for hours. 

You got started on them immediately, each finding a comfortable spot in your room as soft music played in the background. You lay on your bed while Chaewon and Yena took over the floor and Hyewon sat at your desk.

“I’m gonna make one of those phone accessories,” Yena said excitedly, reaching for the biggest, most colorful beads.

“I’m gonna make couple bracelets for Jaemin and I,” Hyewon said somewhat shyly but beaming. Yena and Chaewon groaned at her words, but they gave you an idea.

“You guys are vomit-inducing,” Yena replied, and if you didn’t know your friend any better, just going off the tone of her voice, you’d have thought she was being serious. Hyewon just rolled her eyes, used to this daily slander she received simply for being in a relationship.

“I’ll make something for my little sister,” Chaewon butted in, and you and Yena simultaneously ‘aww’ed. 

“So it’s aww when Chaewon does it for her sister, and it’s vomit-inducing when I do it for my boyfriend?” Hyewon exclaimed, appalled.

“Little sisters are cute. Boyfriends are gross,” Yena replied matter-of-factly, making you giggle.

“Whatever. You guys are just jealous that you’re dying alone and I’m not. What are you making, Y/N?” she asked before Yena could retort again. The two exchanged a glare as you thought over your answer.

“I’m not saying,” you replied with a giggle. 

“She’s making one for Jake, that evil wench,” Chaewon immediately said, making your eyes widen. Yena gasped dramatically while Hyewon smiled at you.

“How did you know?” you asked Chaewon.

“Just your face. You’re so obvious,” she snickered. 

“You’re a traitor, Y/N!” Yena exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger at you, and you hid your face in your hands, muttering an apology. “Wasting time and energy on a boy.”

“Don’t listen to her, Y/N. Whatever it is you make, he’ll be super happy you thought of him. Then he’ll finally ask you out and you’ll live happily ever after, just like me and Jaemin,” Hyewon said with a serene smile on her face. Chaewon and Yena exchanged a look, then faked a gagging sound. “So bitter,” Hyewon muttered, shaking her head at your friends.

“I’m not sure about that,” you sighed. “I just want to be friends again. He’s been ignoring me all week.”

All three snapped their heads up at you. “He’s been ignoring you?” Yena echoed, and you meekly nodded. “Give me his phone number. No, give me his address. I’m going there right now,” she said, already sitting up.

“Gosh, Yena, it’s fine,” you said, gesturing at her to sit back down, laughing at your friend’s seriousness. “I’ll see him on Monday anyway, I can just see how he behaves then.”

Yena didn’t look convinced, but she yielded anyway. “If he hurts you, I swear I’ll give him a stern talking to. And a broken nose.” You laughed as you thanked your friend. 

Hyewon asked for more details about this Jake situation, so you filled your friends in about his mysterious behavior that week. Chaewon had been the only one to see it firsthand, when you’d walked to a class together and Jake had walked past you without saying anything. You told them about his sparse answers to your texts, his lack of response to the TikToks you sent him. He wasn’t even reacting to your BeReals anymore. It was just such a complete switch-up in attitude that you had no idea what to make of it. They tried to come up with reasons for it, but it really didn’t make much sense. It just felt like he suddenly decided to hate you - or maybe you had been interpreting everything wrong, and the two of you had never been friends in the first place. 

“This is so confusing,” Chaewon suddenly said, seeming lost in thought. “I thought for sure that he liked you.”

“Liked… me?” you echoed.

“Yeah. Just the way he was when we were at the diner. He kept looking at you and was always smiling and blushing whenever you talked to him. Also the way Jay and Sunghoon were behaving. Boys are so obvious when their friend likes someone, it’s like they’re trying to fumble it for him. And I mean, anyone with functioning eyes can see that you like him too, so I don’t know why he’s doing this all of a sudden.”

Yena sighed. “Boys are stupid.”

“That, they are,” you agreed, sighing as well and returning your attention to your craft. Maybe a simple gift like this wouldn’t fix what was going on between you and Jake, but you had to at least try. You couldn’t let go of your friendship so easily.

Even though it seemed as though he could.

Nothing changed the next week. On Monday, you woke up to a text that pulled your heart down into your stomach.

jakey-poo i think we should stop tutoring each other for now

For an hour as you ate breakfast and got ready for school, you ruminated over your answer, only to ask him a simple why? in the end.

jakey-poo i’m to busy w soccer practice and other stuff we can start again when exams are near

you oh okay

You felt pathetic, but you had no idea what to say. You couldn’t force him into this, and you definitely couldn’t show up at his house and demand a better explanation. If you were Yena or Chaewon, maybe you could - but you weren’t. You couldn’t even bring yourself to ask him if the two of you could still hang out outside of that, so scared you were for his inevitable rejection.

During the week, you tried to find a time when you could give him your small handmade gift, but Jake wasn’t even looking you in the eyes anymore. The only time you made eye contact with him over those five days was on Wednesday at lunch - as you walked into the cafeteria, you scanned the whole room, unconsciously searching for him. When you did, he was already looking at you - he was close enough for you to see the slight frown in his eyebrows, the lack of the usual glint in his eyes. But as soon as he’d seen you’d found him, he turned away. You only looked away when Chaewon called out your name.

In the few classes you had together, he always slipped away before you could get to him. Him walking past you like he couldn’t even see you broke your heart a little bit more every time, and by Friday, you had completely given up. Your friendship with Jake was over, and you had no idea why, no idea who or what to blame.

Monday and Wednesday afternoons felt empty now that you had gotten used to spending them with him, and you couldn’t even walk Kiwi without missing him. He seemed to miss Jake and Layla too - he’d sometimes tilt his head at you as if asking where your new friends were, and when you got to the park, he’d gloomily stick to you instead of running around like he usually would, especially when Layla was there.

The worst part was at night, when your thoughts kept you up. You’d reread your and Jake’s text conversations, wondering what went so wrong so quickly, warm tears spilling from your eyes out of sadness and tiredness. On those nights, you’d sneak Kiwi up to your room and let him cuddle up to you in your bed. You’d comfort each other that way.

You had no idea that a couple kilometers away, Jake lay in bed sleepless as well, Layla at the edge of his bed and whining in her sleep. You had no idea that missing you had carved a deep hole in his chest.

—

Enough was enough.

It had been days since Layla had last seen Kiwi, and to a young pup like her, that felt like eternity. Lately, Jake hadn’t seemed happy to go on walks with her like he used to, and he barely had any energy to play with her. She also hadn’t seen you in days, and she wondered if that had anything to do with Jake’s recent despondency. 

But thankfully, Layla was a smart girl, so she knew exactly what to do to fix this dire situation. On Friday, she waited for Jake to come back from soccer practice and take her on a walk. As soon as they reached the sidewalk outside of their house, she pulled on her leash in the opposite direction of their usual route. Jake tried pulling her the other way, but she wouldn’t budge.

“We’re going that way, Layla,” Jake said, amused by his dog’s sudden stubbornness. Layla barked back. “Come on!” 

She was really not moving. “We never go that way,” Jake said, sighing. “That way’s the-”

That’s when he realized. Layla wanted to go to the park you went to with Kiwi. “But what if we ran into them?” Jake asked. 

Layla barked again. She wanted to say, That’s exactly why I want to go there, but of course Jake didn’t understand. He sighed again and obliged, letting Layla lead the way. She had a good feeling that she’d finally see her friends again today. 

Jake’s heart started beating faster with every step he took, knowing that you might be out right now, too. When he’d seen you at school, you’d seemed as sad as he was, and he felt terrible for perhaps being the reason behind it - but he didn’t know what else to do. He could either spare your feelings or his. If this was hurting you, he knew you’d move on quickly enough anyway - and when he came to terms with being just friends with you, he’d come back, and everything would be perfect like it used to be. Foolproof plan.

If there was one thing Jake had learned from the tutoring sessions with you, it was that the weather always reflected the protagonist’s inner thoughts. If they were upset, it would be gray and rainy - if they were happy, it would be warm and sunny. Jake glared at the sun, just another reminder that he wasn’t the main character in this story. If he was, it would be thundering and lightning would be striking.

As if his life was a joke, two minutes after Jake and Layla had walked into the park, he saw you. At least you were facing the other direction, so you couldn’t see him, and he could redirect his route to avoid you. But he let himself indulge in the moment for a few seconds. You had laid out a picnic blanket for you and Kiwi and rested on your stomach with your elbows propping you up, reading a book. Kiwi slept peacefully next to you - this dog was the furthest thing from a guard dog Jake had ever seen. You kicked your feet up in the air, flip flops discarded to the side of the blanket. Jake was happy to see you like this, enjoying the warmth of this sunny May afternoon. 

He was about to walk away, but a sudden movement caught his eye. Two school kids started running to you, and before you could even register their presence, one of them snatched your flip flops and they both sprinted away, shrieking with laughter like two little devils. Where the hell were their parents?!

Without thinking, Jake started running after them, and so did Kiwi and Layla. 

“Hey! Come back here!” Jake yelled, hoping in vain that these kids would listen to someone older than them. Kiwi did his best, but his tiny legs didn’t allow for such a chase - Layla, barking loudly at the thieves, was the first to reach them, and she managed to scare them so much, they tripped over their feet. But unlike them, she was well-behaved, so she sat once her job was done and waited for Jake to arrive. 

“What are you two doing? You can’t just steal other people’s things!” he admonished, holding onto his knees as he tried to catch his breath.

Both kids were already teary-eyed. “We just wanted to play a prank, we’re sorry!” one of them quickly said, voice shaky.

“It’s not to me you should apologize, but to her,” Jake said, turning around to point in your direction. That’s when he noticed you sitting on your knees, hands covering your face as your shoulders trembled. “You made her cry!” Jake exclaimed, tone much angrier than seconds prior. “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing the kids by their shoulders and forcing them to keep up with his quick steps.

You didn’t notice their presence in front of you until Jake prompted them. At the sound of the all too familiar voice, you whipped your head up. Jake swore he heard his heart breaking when he saw your red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. You barely heard the kids’ apology, so amazed you were at suddenly seeing Jake.

“We’re sorry for stealing your flip-flops and making you cry,” the first one said.

“Sorry,” repeated the other one, handing you your shoes.

“Oh, right. Thanks, just don’t do it again,” you replied, sniffing as you took back your shoes.

“We won’t!” they replied in unison before running away once more.

Jake stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, unsure what to say. He watched you stare at your flip flops like you’d never seen them before in your life. “You’re not going to thank me for catching those delinquents?” he asked after a small while, chuckling slightly.

This made you look up at him. He gulped as your eyes met. Then, you burst into sobs again, and Jake started panicking. He crouched down to your level, first holding you by the shoulders then forcing your head out of your hands so he could wipe away your tears with the pads of his thumbs.

“No no no, why are you crying, Y/N?” he asked softly, pulling you into a hug.

You continued crying into his shoulder, ignoring Kiwi and Layla’s confused stares. “You- you- I haven’t seen you in ages!” you exclaimed.

Jake sighed. He didn’t understand why you were crying like this for him, all he knew was that he’d never felt so awful. “I’m sorry, Y/N,” he whispered into your hair, pulling your shaking body closer to him. “I’m sorry.”

You leaned back to glare at Jake, your bottom lip jutting out in discontent. “Do you even know how much I missed you?”

Jake held your head in his hands like it was the most precious thing in the world. Mouth agape in surprise, he looked at you with sad eyes. “You… you did?”

Your eyebrows creased. “Of course I did!” Another sob rippled through your body, and Jake took you back in his arms, wrapping them around your shoulders and resting his cheek against your hair. 

“I missed you too.”

“Then why did you do this?” you asked, voice breaking.

“Because I didn’t want to get hurt,” Jake whispered back. “But I didn’t think I’d hurt you. I’m so sorry, Y/N.”

You leaned back again, but this time, you looked confused rather than angry. His eyes were soft as they scanned your face and as he brushed strands of your hair back behind your ears. “Why would you get hurt?” you asked again, bringing your voice to the same volume as his.

Jake sighed and squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if in pain, before opening them again and boring them into yours. “I like you so, so much Y/N. So much so that I don’t know what to do with myself. But I know that you don’t feel the same way, and I was scared that by staying by your side, I’d just fall in love with you even more and get hurt in the end. So I pushed you away because I didn’t know what else to do, but I’m so sorry I- You’re crying again?”

Your fists grabbed at the front of Jake’s t-shirt as sobs raked through your body once more. It was official - Jake was the stupidest person you’d ever met. And you were in love with him.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I like you too, you idiot!” you yelled back. Your tears were probably staining his t-shirt, but you couldn’t care less. He liked you. Jake liked you.

You were too busy crying to see Jake’s eyes slowly widening in disbelief. “You what?!”

Gently, Jake pushed your shoulders back so he could look at you. Even with puffy eyes and a runny nose, you were the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Pretty like an angel that had graced the Earth with her presence. “You what?” he repeated, just to hear you say it again.

“I like you, Jake. I’m so in love with you it's actually pathetic,” you said with a chuckle, looking down out of shyness. But when you looked back up, Jake’s eyes were going back and forth between yours, the expression on his face like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard but desperately hoped it was true.

As you locked eyes, both of your faces lit up with grins. You burst into laughter together, finding each other’s hands and intertwining your fingers together. Then Jake brought you back into his arms, holding tightly, as if he was scared you might disappear any second. Kiwi and Layla had long walked away to give the two of you some needed privacy.

In each other’s arms, you rocked side to side gently and laughed for no reason other than the incredible fact your feelings were reciprocated. “You stink, you know,” you suddenly said in-between giggles. “You sweat while you ran after those kids.”

“I sweat? You mean I swote, right?” Jake asked a pause.

You leaned back to look at Jake. “Swote?” you echoed, and he nodded. Your umpteenth smile made your cheeks lift. “You have to be kidding-”

“I am,” Jake cut off, mirroring your smile. “I just wanted to make you laugh.”

You gasped and lightly punched his chest before letting your body fall against his again. “You’re so silly,” you said, sighing in bliss at the sound of his giggles.

Then all of a sudden, Jake pulled away and looked at you, almost frightened. “What about Sunghoon?” 

“What about him?” you asked back, confused by Jake’s question.

“I thought you- Didn’t you- you know…”

You tilted your head at Jake, a small grin spreading on your lips again. “I don’t know.”

“I thought you liked him…” Jake mumbled, looking away with a pout.

Before you could stop it, a noise of confusion left your throat. You looked at Jake like he was insane. “I can barely have a conversation with Sunghoon, what made you think I liked him?”

Jake pursed his lips and let a resigned puff of air out of his nose. “I, um- Remember when we mixed our backpacks up?” he asked and you nodded, smiling at the fun memory. “I may have, um, I may have read… your… diary,” he admitted, voice getting quieter with each word. He dared a glance at you - you looked horrified, eyes wide and mouth agape. “And you wrote that you liked Sunghoon,” he finished with a whisper.

It was silent for a few seconds, and Jake was bracing himself for a slap to the face or your screams, until you did the last thing Jake expected you to do - you laughed. You laughed so hard and for so long that he got scared you had gone insane and this was the first part of your mental breakdown before you murdered him in cold blood for having invaded your privacy. He would’ve deserved it, he thought.

“I don’t- oh my God, Jake, I don’t- I don’t like Sunghoon. I never really have, or not in the way you think, I can’t- oh my God,” you explained in between giggles, trying to catch your breath but starting to laugh again every time you managed to compose yourself. Jake tried to laugh along, but he was too confused to do so properly.

“You’re not mad?” Jake asked, eyebrows furrowed with worry.

“No,” you replied, shaking your head and the last giggles out of your throat. “You read it ages ago, and we didn’t even know each other back then, there’s no point in being mad now. It’s just funny - I know exactly why you think I liked Sunghoon, but I didn’t. Not really. And even if I did, those feelings are nothing compared to the ones I have for you now,” you said, beaming. A blush spread on Jake’s cheeks, and you could tell he was trying (and failing) to contain a proud grin.

You explained to Jake the ‘character’ thing you and your friends had going on and that Sunghoon (and hat guy) just happened to be one of them - you watched as Jake narrowed his eyes and slowly nodded, trying to understand this concept that was so foreign to him. 

“You know, it all makes a lot more sense now,” Jake said when you were explaining. “It would’ve been weird for you to like Sunghoon when I was right there.” He smirked down at you as you playfully rolled your eyes. 

“Oh my God!” you suddenly exclaimed, startling Jake in the process. Dramatic as always, he put a hand over his heart and exhaled loudly. “I have something for you. For us, actually.” You reached into your bag and got out the two accessories you’d made for you and Jake. “These are for us to put on our backpacks, so that we don’t confuse them again. They also match.”

Jake’s eyes were fixated on the string of beads as you placed into his palm. “I tried to give it to you over the week, but…” 

A teardrop fell into Jake’s palms, and when you looked at him, you realized he’d started crying. “Jake?” you cooed softly, and he sniffled, wiping away the tears from his eyes.

As a response, he wrapped his arms around your shoulders and buried his face in your hair. “Thank you. And I’m sorry. I promise you’ll never go a second without my undivided attention from now on,” he said, voice shaking with emotion, and you hummed happily.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

He leaned back, and you were relieved to find the familiar puppyish grin on his lips. You gazed into each other’s eyes for a few seconds, and before he could stop himself, he grabbed your head in his hands and pressed a delicate kiss to your forehead. You raised your eyebrows in surprise, but when his face was back in front of yours, your eyes immediately drifted to his lips. They looked soft and plump and pink, and were utterly inviting. Every time you’d started daydreaming about kissing Jake, you’d stopped yourself, not wanting to over-indulge in your fantasies. But was this finally, really happening?

“Y/N?” Jake said quietly. You could swear his face was getting closer.

“Hm?”

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

Your face broke out into a grin. Without warning, you pressed your lips against Jake’s - initially just for a peck, but as soon as you started pulling away, Jake chased after your lips and trapped them into a kiss, a proper one this time. You’d never done this before, so it was naturally somewhat clumsy, but you and Jake were so giddy with excitement that you couldn’t care less. So what if you were smiling so hard, your teeth clashed against his, or you kept bumping noses? You were kissing Jake Sim. 

The second time around, he let you pull away to catch your breath, and you wished you could photograph the sight in front of you - Jake with flushed cheeks, closed eyes and a serene smile on his face. He was so pretty, and now, he was all yours.

When he opens his eyes and finds you looking at him, his smile widens. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

“Yes,” you echoed, laughing. You pressed your lips to his cheek before burying your face in the crook of his neck.

He hugged you to him and the sweet sound of his giggles filled your ears and your heart. “My girl,” he whispered, before leaning his head back, face to the sky, and screaming it loud enough for the whole park to hear. You tried to shush him, but you couldn’t stop laughing yourself out of sheer excitement. Layla and Kiwi came running back to you, barking happily and trying to lick your faces. 

“I cried so much today, my eyes are gonna be puffy tomorrow morning,” you said between giggles. 

Jake pressed his lips to yours in a chaste kiss. “I’ll make sure you never cry again, Y/N,” he said, and he sounded so genuine, you almost wanted to cry again right then and there.

The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur - while you and Jake kissed, laughed, talked, and hugged, hours that felt like minutes passed you by. Jake kept on looking at the accessory you made him, poking fun at you for knowing his favorite color even though he’d never mentioned it.

“It was a lucky guess,” you grumbled. “Your room’s walls are that color,” you said, pointing to a particular dark blue bead.

“I love it,” he replied with a kiss to your forehead.

As always, he walks you home - and this time, you can take his hand without any hesitation. Your mom had come home from work while you and Jake were out, and you found her in the kitchen, prepping some veggies for dinner. 

As soon as Jake introduced himself, a flash of revelation struck her and she shot you a knowing smirk. “So you’re Jake,” she said, and the boy glanced at you with amused confusion. “That one over there has been badgering me about you these past few weeks.”

Apparently, you agreeing to be his girlfriend had already gone to his head, because instead of looking surprised at your mom’s words, he slowly turned to you with an arrogant smirk gracing his lips. “Has she?”

Your mom nodded slowly. “Oh, yes.” Then her expression slowly morphed into something else as she remembered your red, puffy eyes from the other evening when you’d told her about what was going on with Jake. She raised her kitchen knife and pointed it straight to him, eyes narrowed. “If you ever hurt my daughter again, I’m putting you in the lasagna, young man.”

Jake gulped, smirk completely wiped off of his face. You just watched in amusement. “I- I won’t,” he stuttered, eyes fixed on the blade of the knife.

A wide grin reappeared on your mom’s face as she went back to cutting the vegetables. “Good!” 

Jake looked at you for some sort of explanation, but you simply shrugged. He’d just have to get used to your mom’s crazy. 

“You know, you’re just as handsome as she described,” your mom told Jake with a wink.

“Mom, please!” you exclaimed, cheeks burning with heat. You liked it better when she was threatening your boyfriend with a knife, but he was relieved by the new turn this conversation had taken.

“What else has she said?”

“Oh, you know, just your typical he’s so smart, he’s so cute, he’s so funny-”

“Okay, that’s it!” you cut in before your mom could spill more on you. You ignored Jake’s noises of complaint as you grabbed him by the shoulders and led him towards the door. “I think it’s time for you to go home, no?” 

“Y/N, come on!” Jake whined, giggling. 

“Why don’t you stay for dinner, Jake?” your mom offered, making you stop in your tracks. You stared wide-eyed at her but she just looked at Jake, wearing an inviting smile.

“Sure!” Jake beamed. “I just need to call my mom.”

“Oh, invite her along! I always make enough to feed an army, anyway.”

“Really?” Jake asked, incredulous. Since his brother had left for university, it had always been just he and his mom at the dinner table. The thought of sharing a meal with you and your mom filled his heart with warmth. 

“Yeah!”

Jake smiled giddily as he got his phone out. “Thanks, she’ll be stoked.”

Although you both wanted to help your mom, she urged you to stay outside with the dogs and enjoy the last rays of sunshine of the day, insisting she didn’t need any help. So you and Jake spent some time throwing sticks for Kiwi and Layla and giggling at their cuteness. Kiwi quickly got exhausted and came to lie down at your feet, but Layla was tireless. “Your dog, your responsibility,” you said as you sat down next to Kiwi, rubbing his tummy and watching Jake throw the stick over and over again for Layla.

Jake was as relentless as Layla, and every time she ran after the stick, he ran to you and pressed a kiss to another part of your face, making you giggle every time. Once on your forehead, once on your nose, once on your cheek, then the other, and once on your lips.

Then his mom rang the bell, and as your mom opened the door for her, the oddest thing happened - they called out each other’s name and hugged as if they were old friends. You and Jake exchanged a confused look before turning your attention back to them.

“What a coincidence!”

“Right! Such a small world, I can’t believe you’re my daughter’s boyfriend’s mom.”

“Boyfriend? Gosh, has he finally asked her out? I was going crazy seeing him moping around in his room!”

“Mom!” Jake yelled, face already reddening as you burst into laughter.

You joined them inside the house and set the table while your mom finished up dinner. Jake’s mom had brought a bottle of red wine as a gift, so she poured two glasses for her and your mom, but you and Jake stuck to Sprite. 

Apparently, they knew each other from some yoga class they both went to every Sunday - you found out this was the woman your mom often went out for lunch or drinks with. They were so excited to meet each other like this that they talked most of the time, leaving you and Jake to eat your food quietly and giggling every time you made eye contact or your feet touched under the table. 

Just as you were about to take your last bite of lasagna, your phone pinged with a message. Curiously, so did Jake’s. Chaewon had sent a message into the group chat, asking to meet her at work when her shift was done because she was craving an Oreo milkshake.

chae bae y/n u better come ik ur not doing anything better tonight anyway

You scoffed. You were doing something better.

“Shit, today’s Friday! The boys are waiting for me at the diner, I completely forgot,” Jake exclaimed as he read the messages on his phone.

“Language, Jake,” his mom scolded.

“At the diner?” you repeated.

“Yeah, that one we went to last time. Why?” Jake asked when he noticed your surprised expression.

“That’s where Chaewon wants to meet.”

You both turned to your respective moms, silently asking for permission to leave the dinner table.

“Just go,” your mother said with a smile.

“I’ll take Layla home later,” Jake’s mom added.

You thanked them before rushing to get a bag and heading to the bus stop, hoping a bus would come by soon. Twenty minutes later, you were opening the doors of the diner and looking around for your friends, who were nowhere to be found. You were fishing your phone out of your pocket to call Chaewon when a familiar voice caught your and Jake’s attention.

“What are they doing together?” you heard Jay say, followed by loud shushes. You turned your head to find all five of your friends (plus Jaemin) crammed in a booth in the corner that was somewhat hidden from the rest of the restaurant. But they were trying so hard to be discreet that it made their presence even more obvious - they hid their faces with their hands as if that would make them disappear from your view. You and Jake shared a look before chuckling, shaking your head at your friends.

“Whatever, they’ve clearly found us,” Jay sighed and exited the booth, walking towards the two of you.

“Were you guys trying to get us to make up or something?” Jake asked with an amused smile.

“Yeah, we grouped up and planned this whole thing. It was a real team effort.”

“It might’ve worked better if you hadn’t all stayed here, you guys were so obvious,” you chided.

“Tell that to your friends over there! They insisted on watching it unfold,” Jay grumbled, and you looked behind him to see your friends frantically waving at you.

You switched to a bigger booth that could accommodate all seven of you, and as soon as you’d placed your orders, Yena practically pounced on you, demanding an explanation as to how the two of you were already made up.

You turned to look at Jake and smiled at him before answering. “It’s all thanks to Kiwi, really,” you told Yena.

“Kiwi? As in your dog Kiwi?” Chaewon asked with furrowed eyebrows.

“Mh-hm.” In your peripheral, you noticed Jake tilting his head at you.

“You mean Layla, right?”

You imitated his head movement. “No, I mean Kiwi.”

“But Layla made me go to the park today. I wouldn’t have gone there if it wasn’t for her,” Jake insisted, giving you an are you being serious look that you mirrored.

“I wasn’t going to go outside at all but Kiwi kept bugging me to take him on a walk, that’s why I was in the park in the first place. It’s thanks to Kiwi,” you repeated.

“It’s thanks to Layla,” Jake retorted, playfully narrowing his eyes at you.

“Trouble in paradise,” Jaemin whispered, and Hyewon slapped his arm.

The whole table was silent as you and Jake stared each other down, waiting to see who would cave first. It was like everyone could breathe again when Jake’s face broke out into a grin and he rested his arm behind your shoulders. “Okay, it’s thanks to Kiwi,” he conceded, making you hum in satisfaction. You rested your head on his shoulder and ignored Yena’s groan of disgust at the PDA.

But Jake, as always, wasn’t letting you off the hook so easily. “And Layla.”

—

02.06.202X - 12:18

rodrigo hater y/n i can see you being gross from across the courtyard can u guys not feed each other ur still on school grounds and ur ruining my day have some decency

sweet hyewon you guys are super cute <3  jaemin and i only have the same lunch period once a week i miss him

rodrigo hater ugh wheres chaewon she’d have my back

you hyewon love u yena frigg off you’re not going to like this… i think she’s with sunghoon rodrigo hater WHAT

sweet hyewon omg hahahaha saw it coming cuuuuute

rodrigo hater i hate you all so much you’re all kicked out of my celibacy club

chae bae we weren’t part of it in the first place

rodrigo hater GO AWAY YOU TRAITOR

03.06.202X - 09:15

you jake wake up  wake up wake up please

jake ??? R U okay?

you kiwi keeps whining i think he wants to see layla come over?

jake . did u just wake me up before 10 am on a sunday morning for this

you i made pancakes?

jake i’m going back to sleep

you but i miss you :(

jake running

07.06.202X - 16:39

stink #1 hey

jake no

stink #1 wtf man

jake im busy

stink #1 smooching ur girl?

jake yeah stay mad bro

stink #1 where’s hoon

stink #2 he’s at ice skating practice with me <3 this is chaewon btw

jake AYO????

stink #1 HE GAVE YOU ACCESS TO HIS PHONE???

stink #2 hehehe bye losers

stink #1 oh my god jake this is huge

jake right… our little boy he’s grown so much

stink #1 i’m getting teary eyed anyway i wanted to say i think we should invite the girls to bro night more often it’s always fun with them

jake oh? if u wanna see yena just say so bro

stink #1 fuck u man

jake ur literally so obvious you get 100% more obnoxious when she’s around

stink #1 idc she laughs at my jokes

jake which is proof that there’s something wrong w her anyway i’ll ask my girl about it

stink #1 ew and thx ^^

09.06.202X - 17:03

jakey-poo y/nnnnnn y/n hellloooooo y/n y/n y/n baby :(((( where are u what r u doing i miss you hello y/n my baby darling angel pls answer me layla misses you

you jake sim

jakey-poo HIIIIII

you jay is a genius i’m anime pomodoroing the hell out of this essay it’s working so well i’m almost done with it already

jakey-poo don’t compliment another man ever again i’m going to cry

you but jay’s your friend

jakey-poo i’ll kill him if i have to

you gosh okay jay’s an idiot

jakey-poo hahaha he is ice cream after dinner ???

you duh

31.07.202X - 21:03

jakey-poo i’m waiting for you outside the theater baby we have a lot of talking to do. i can’t believe you kissed someone else in front of me

you jake baby it was just acting <3 you know you’re the only one i really kiss

jakey-poo i know i am so come here and kiss me quick you did so well and you were so pretty on stage and i love you so much  COME QUICK I WANNA KISS YOU

you i’m hurrying i promise but a lot of people are trying to talk to me :(

jakey-poo ofc they are you killed it my baby’s already famous <3

you hehe love you my jakey-poo

jakey-poo STOP IT WITH THAT

permanent taglist: @zreamy @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts @moonlighthoon @4imhry @rikisly @loves0ft @iamliacamila @theboingsuckerasseater9000 @chaechae-23 (ask to be removed/added!)

© asahicore on Tumblr, 2023. please do not repost, translate, or plagiarize my works. feedback and reblogs always appreciated!

[cr4yolaas]

mezzo forte — birthday boy

track 2: homesick for a person | masterlist | track 4: the horse

hajime feels heavy on her couch. his head has been pumped full with compressed air and is bound to burst if he gets up. he hates the vulnerability that comes with being drunk.

"...yeah, i'll text sakusa and have him pick haji up tomorrow. just get home safely. bye, tooru."

all he can see is her back, but he can envision the expression she's making right now — brows furrowed, the inside of her cheek caught between her teeth, and a collection of creases on her forehead. he wants to laugh. but the pressure on his body is too much of a burden to bear, so instead, he waits.

she turns around to meet his sleepy, weary face, riddled with exhaustion and ache that she doesn't want to imagine experiencing herself. "'m sorry i couldn't get you a gift," she whispers. her hands adjust the blanket she'd draped over him moments prior, ensuring the fabric reaches up to his shoulders. "i wasn't too sure what you'd like. i feel like i get you the same thing every year."

the couch dips with her weight as she sits beside him. apologies spill from her tongue, but he can't quite hear them over the ringing in his ears. "it's alright. don't need a present when i have you, anyways," is all he can muster under heavy, alcohol-ridden breaths before he falls victim to his own slumber.

there's a pause in the air. she's the only one awake to feel it.

under the influence, people are bound to say words they don't mean. they're bound to form sentences that bear no real representation of their true thoughts, thus leading to misconceptions. she figures this is one of those moments.

beneath the cave of her chest, her heart beats faster than it should — so much so that it's unhealthy. his words, construed from what she assumes to be a place of inebriation, render her immobile, and she fights a long-winded battle with herself about the truth of it all.

frankly, she doesn't want to believe it.

hajime was a straightforward man; that much was an inarguable fact that had maintained its consistency throughout the course of their lives. he expressed what was necessary. and so, if he could not — or rather, would not — voice any means of reciprocation for whatever had been boiling and bubbling in every inch of her being when he was sober, she would take that as the truth. for now.

a headache cracks away at her skull. too many thoughts spiral without any end, and she wants nothing more than to rid herself of them.

the blue light of her laptop burns her retinas, but she figures it's the reasonable solution. the safest solution. garageband slowly opens up, and a small tab of her notes sits in the corner, etched with another love letter yet to be littered throughout another melody. something in her chest aches and burns. she can't escape it.

somewhere in the middle of it all, the man beside her stirs awake. she fails to notice the soft groan he releases nor the shift of his body to a more comfortable position. he's met with the blaring screen propped up on her knees and a soft instrumental pouring from the speakers of her computer, the volume low enough that he has to strain his ears to capture it completely. his eyes fall to the lines that take up the other half of her screen.

it's different. he recalls her other lyrics being vague, hinting at a feeling that he didn't know of himself. but something is more explicit in these words, and the lines form between the dots scattered throughout his brain, albeit blurred.

in his limbo between sobriety and intoxication, hajime finds himself fighting against the belief that it isn't him. that, in the words she so carefully crafts, he isn't the one she thinks of — but he wants to be.

♪ hi i've risen from my deathbed !!

♪ i hope this chapter made sense </3 i'm not cooking very hard with the pacing of this smau

♪ yn freaked out about tooru visiting irl and got all of the excitement out of her body before texting the gc so she didn't seem too hyper LOL

♪ the bday dinner was a mess ... they didnt even make reservations bc they werent initially planning on going out to eat so they kept going around in a big group trying to see which restaurant had available seating ... it did not go well

♪ everyone kept calling iwa the bday boy and he kept drinking to distract himself from it (out of spite) but it did not go as planned clearly

♪ imo haji has a pretty low alcohol tolerance despite having a "tough guy" exterior. it's one of his gap moes iykwim

♪ yn has been using garageband since hs and never changed to any of the apps that her label recommends bc she's scared of using a different interface </3

♪ i don't have much to say i just want to work on the next couple of chapters already

♪ but i think by this point i've decided this smau isn't going to be as long as blue spring, esp bc i don't have much to establish on the main dynamics btwn oiks iwa and yn given that they have such a long history together

♪ but idk !! we'll see where my heart leads me

♪ i already feel kinda uninspired for this smau which hurts my heart bc i really liked the concept and there was sm hype for it but i feel like it was never meant to be a long story yk

♪ sorry there's my impending doom rant

♪ i hope u all enjoyed <3

taglist: @froyaoya @causenessus @guitarstringed-scars @yuminako @chemiru @sunnyskiezzzz @httpsivy @itsdragonius @theycallmenanamisgirl @wyrcan @19calicos @hunnies4bunnies @mawenskiblue @diorzs @loverlunaire @mfcherry @solaqes

[flamedraco]

Day 3 of Writing a Minecraft Diaries AU

I made an attempt to use lore forge to help me keep track of things but my brain recoiled so hard at information overload that I decided I'm going to stick to my tried and true method of just writing shit down in a notebook and hoping for the best. It'll help visualize family trees better if I can actually draw diagrams.

Finally finished the outline for the plot of season one, now it's just a matter of figuring out relevant information and outlining chapters, then starting to write them. Also most of the characters have been decided and their stand ins accounted for. So I'll include the cast list down below tho do be aware this could change later once I actually get around to the chapters. Again, if you don't recognize the names listed it's probably either a really obscure member of the DSMP lore, an OC, or a name I came up with for an obscure member of the lore.

If I'm going to do this I'll probably break up the seasons into their own books unless I manage to reduce season 1 down into fewer chapters. But I don't think that's going to happen since I'm already working on the outline for the seventh chapter and we haven't even gotten to the part where the werewolves are supposed to be involved. And I cut the werewolves out for fucks sake.

I'm still debating on if I even want to continue into season 2 or not. Diaries lore is massive and has a lot of moving parts, things set up in season 1 specifically for season 2 and things that I might need to remove or add. I have the plot summary but depending on what I decide to do regarding season 2 and the potential of another book...I guess that really depends on how the chapters are received and if my brain decides to stay DSMP hyperfocused for another year or so. Because if I'm trying to convert the ENTIRETY of Diaries into an AU that's probably going to be three multichapter books just on it's own and I'd probably rewrite the entirety of Season 3 since it was never finished and only had 37 episodes. This kind of project could take me an entire year, probably longer.

I do know that I want to try and do this first book tho. That's the only reason why I rewrote major plot points, have an overview, am creating chapter outlines, and have the series pulled up on my phone, two tabs of the wiki, and my doc open as I take notes with my notebook close by for if I need a new name for an OC.

There's a lot going into this planning right now. Converting Diaries into an AU is proving difficult. Especially with how certain characters change the plot and characters I'm having to cut out (if you see a certain handful of characters not mentioned I probably cut them out due to story changes). I've already had to rewrite a lot of things regarding the finale due to how I've changed the plot and the characters that are involved. Because keep in mind, just because these characters take on the role of another does not make them the same character. Wilbur is going to act as a completely different protagonist from Aphmau. Quackity is not the same type of person that Garroth is. Also if you don't see your favorite DSMP character mentioned, don't worry. There are places for them to show up if I continue into the next season with another book. And if they aren't here it's probably due to them not fitting into the roles that I needed. My choices aren't meant to offend anyone, they were made for the sake of the story and who I feel fits better where.

Take the cast list with a pinch of salt because this could always change later as I work on the chapters. And the lists themselves are taken directly from the Season 1 Character List from the Minecraft Diaries Wiki. If someone important isn't mentioned here than they'll probably still show up in the fic it's just for some reason they're missing from the Wiki. Unless I cut them. Because I did cut some characters. There's also the chance that the character mentioned in the list was NOT mentioned in the overview on the Wiki so they're a minor enough character for me to not have included them here due to not having a stand in yet. Some characters might also just be listed as unnamed because I feel like I might not mention their name.

Again: List is subject to change in the future.

ALSO: Relationships between characters may be changed due to the characters now standing in their place, for example: Kenmur and Emmalyn are a ship in Diaries, but I am not shipping Phil and Techno together in any form other than PLATONIC.

WARNING: Some characters in the cast list placement below may contain spoilers for both MC Diaries and, as such, the fic I am going to write, specifically in regards to the Shadow Knights section. Proceed at your own risk!

Cast List: MC Diaries Character Name - DSMP/OC Name

Phoenix Drop Aphmau - Wilbur Garroth - Quackity Laurence - Sapnap Nicole - Karl Emmalyn - Techno Lucinda - Hannah Brendan - Foolish Zoey - Nox Cadenza - Ena Kawaii~chan - Tina Donna - Tiffany Brian - Darius Kyle - Tristan Logan - Elderic Dale - Frankie Emma - Rosella Molly - Lydia Levin - Miriam Alexis - Alanna Zenix - Purpled Dante - Puffy

Scaleswind The Lord of Scaleswind - Unnamed Matilda - Lethia

O'khasis Zane - Dream Katelyn - Niki Jeffory - Ciaran Garte - Unamed

Bright Port Lord Burt - Lord Dawn Azura - Aliara Visher - Caradoc Paul - Johnson

Meteli Hayden - BadBoyHalo Kenmur - Phil

Wyverns Ungrth - Sgaeyl Raven - Crow

Shadow Knights Zenix - Purpled Gene - Schlatt Sasha - Samantha Vylad - Tommy Laurence - Sapnap

Other The Stranger/Aaron - Sally

If I missed someone there might be a reason for it, or I just missed them. Either way, this is the general cast you can expect to see in the book at some point or the other. Some of these are minor characters, some of them are major characters, and some are just side characters.

I think I might start work on the first chapter soon but I'll try to get more chapters outlined before I start working on the first. I want to try and get a picture in my mind of how many chapters this beast will have and how many things I can cut.

[haleigh-sloth]

Hi, I hope you're doing well.

Do you have any new series that you're hoping to start after mha ends?

HI! I am doing good thank you for the well wishes.

And YES!

I'm really looking forward to catching up on some I've started and taken a break from. I'm actually currently reading several series right now, just all but one of them (not including BNHA) is on hold.

I need to catch up on Blue Exorcist and Black Butler. I think those will be 2 of my priorities. I would really like to catch up and then watch the new anime seasons that have come out for them that are continuing the original story from the manga. Just so happens that lucky me, they both got new seasons continuing their stories like right at the same time.

I also need to catch up on D.Gray-Man, but honestly I need to re-read it (again) before I play catch up. Given the slow pace it releases at, this isn't a priority atm but I will do it eventually. I've been following the manga since I was 15 years old so I WILL be doing it justice by making sure I fully understand everything going on when I read the chapters.

I'm a volume-only reader of Durarara and still have one volume that is currently out in english to read before I'm as caught up as I possibly can be, but also this comes out at a slower pace so it's not a high priority right now.

I did start Daemons of the Shadow Realm (Arakawa's new series) and made it to chapter 8 some time last year, but then life got in the way and I couldn't focus on it. I've been collecting the volumes so I can read the physical copies as they release as much as I can before reading it online. This one is a priority as I've been super excited about it ever since I heard it was going to exist. So this will come sooner rather than later.

I also started Choujin X WAAAAYYYY back when it first released but for the same reasons as always life was just too busy and BNHA took up too much brain space. I've heard it's really good, and would like to start it over and continue reading it as it releases, so I'm looking forward to that. Not a priority so it might be a while, but I will be reading this one also.

I have had a tab open to Delicious Dungeon open for months. Since it's actually completed, I'd really like to knock that one out soon. So priority-wise, this may come before all of the others on this list.

I'm also currently reading, and fully caught up on Oshi no Ko, which is now probably my favorite ongoing series out of all of the ones I'm invested in right now. The only series that isn't on hold. Despite BNHA taking up so much brain space, this manga managed to keep its spot in my brain. I super love it, and it's in its final arc. So I'm really excited to see that one through to the end.

Non-manga things, I'm in love with Hazbin Hotel. Even though it'll be a bit before we get the next content release, this one still lives rent free in my brain so.

But yeah, I've actually been anticipating BNHA ending for some time now because of all these other things I want to read but just...couldn't. Lol. Now I'll be able to. And it'll help me cope with the ending of BNHA better I think, and help me shift into the mindset of "these people aren't real I can do with them what I want". Because for most series I actually have a way easier time with that, but for BNHA I was just way to invested in canon making me happy. The only other series I have the same intensity for right now is Hazbin, with one particular character also (guess who). So we'll see how that goes, though I trust the creator of that series significantly more....lol. But I'd like to be able to detach and have fun from now on rather than...dwell. Idk.

But yeah anyway I'm super excited for all the things listed above!

[crimson-calligraphyx]

2: What Do You Want From Me?

Sometime later in the night, I had sidled up next to Noah as we continued to drink. I had learned a couple things about him; he grew up here in Richmond and is an aspiring musician having formed a band. I figured out what he had been writing were lyrics, though I respected his privacy and didn't try to read what he had on his page.

I spin the nearly empty pint glass between my fingers, glancing over at Vic who had been fluttering around behind the bar. It's been a steady night for her, and now that it was getting later, most of the crowd was funneling out, allowing her to finally start to clean up a bit. I watched her stuff as many glasses she could in the dish washer, slamming it shut as steam billowed out from it.

I figured it was about time for me to go, noting that the clock above her was nearing midnight. Standing, I pulled a few bills from my wallet to cover my tab and then some. "Headed out?" Victoria calls out, focusing on polishing the liquor bottles she had been slinging around all night. I nod, even though I knew she wasn't looking at me. "Yeah, I figure I'd get out of your hair and head on home." She finally looks my way, a small smile on her lips. "Alrighty. Walk safe, let me know when you get home." "Thanks Vic, I will," I say, slipping into my jacket and hoisting my purse over my shoulder.

I push the front door of the bar open, a suctioned gust of wind slapping me in the face. Stepping out, I wrap my jacket tighter to my body in attempt to block out the brisk air. Thankfully it was only about a fifteen-minute walk back to my apartment.

"Hey, wait," I hear a low, velvety voice call from behind me. Only making it a few feet from the building, I turn around thinking I had left something behind, and a patron was kind enough to run out whatever said thing was. I was met with the same gentle upturn of Noah's lips as his slim body made its way towards me. I scrunched my brows in confusion. "I know we don't really know each other, but—" he shrugged sheepishly, hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. "I figured you'd like some company. It's late and you never know..." he trailed off. I put two and two together, my own minuscule smile forming on my face from the kind gesture. "Right. Thanks, but I'm okay. I live not too far from here," I say as politely as I could, beginning to turn on my heel, back the way I was headed. "It's the least I could do. You kept me company and bought me a drink." "How do I know that you're not gonna drag me down an alleyway?" I cock an eyebrow at him, holding back the snicker I could feel forming in my throat.

I watch his face fall, almost pained that I would nab him as a predator. He nods his head slightly, starting to turn back to the bar, defeated. I let the chuckle out. "I'm kidding, Noah. That would be very kind of you." He lets out a bashful breath, scratching the back of his head, an inkling of a smile forming on his face again. He closes the gap between us as I turn back around, resuming the trek towards my home. We walk in silence for a decent amount of time. Oddly enough, it was a seemingly comfortable silence. He gave enough distance between us where he wasn't brushing up against me, respecting my boundaries. Which was a relief—as nice as he seemed, I still didn't know him. Why he felt compelled to walk me home, I wasn't really sure.

What do you want from me?

"So," I start, clearing my throat. "You said you grew up here?" I turn my attention to him. I watch as he nods, glancing over at me and responds with 'mmm'. "I'm shocked I haven't seen you around here before. I've been visiting Vic at the bar for years," I reply, thumbing over my shoulder in the bar's direction. He chuckles. "Yeah, I only started going there recently on weekdays. Weekends are too loud to focus." I bob my head in understanding. "Plus, we just got back from a small tour not too long ago."

We continued to make small talk as we neared my apartment complex. He asked me if I was still going to school, which rolled into the topic of what I did for work. To keep it simple, I told him my job title was a "Route Supervisor" for the DPW, which basically meant I had to make sure everyone was where they needed to be at any given time. He seemed to understand what I had summed up, asking me why I was up so late if I had to work early in the morning. Smart fella.

Not wanting to dampen the mood with my personal shit, I told him that I had extra vacation time that I needed to take by the end of the year. In reality, I needed a break. A mental break. Between the shit with my ex, my father being sick, and the newbies having a hard time settling in, it was a lot. I wasn't fully lying; I did have vacation time that should be used up, but it rolls over into the next year. Anyway, he didn't need to know that tidbit of unnecessary information.

We eventually reach the front of my apartment complex. Heading up the walkway to the door, I fish my keys out of my purse. "Well, uh... Thanks for joining me on the walk home," I say while looking up at him. It was then I realized just how tall he was, standing nearly a head taller than me. "Yeah, not a problem." He grins, his eyes crinkling slightly at the outer corners. I return the smile, beginning to turn towards the door when he catches my attention again. "Hey, I never caught your name." I bring myself to face him fully once more, a giggle slipping past my lips. "You're right, my bad. Olivia," I say, sticking my hand out. "Or Liv, whichever you prefer." His large hand engulfs mine in a firm grasp, exchanging a shake momentarily. "Nice to meet you, Liv. I'm Noah," he says with humor lacing his voice. "Pleasure to meet you, too," I chuckle, glancing down at our connected hands.

I take note of the ink he had; some sort of calligraphy on his knuckles that I couldn't quite make out at first glance, and an animal—a goat? Lamb? Either way, I couldn't help but to wonder what else he had etched into his arms as my eyes trailed over his skin. I mentally shake my head, stopping myself from involuntarily pulling his sleeve up in curiosity. I take my hand back, smiling up at him, "Have a nice night, Noah." He gives me a small wave. "See you around," he says as he turns to make his exit.

As I settled into bed, the only thing I could find myself thinking about was Noah. The way his hair cascaded over his shoulders and framed his face slightly, the supple tone in his voice, his timid mannerisms. His random act of kindness in walking me home, the warm smile he continuously flashed throughout the night, the lyrics he had scribbled on his notebook...

And most importantly, I wondered if his tattoos had any supposed 'color' to them.

|Chapter 3|

[purplekoop]

Hey! So uh! Update on what's been going on and why I've been relatively inactive for longer than I implied I would.

So around this time last year, I realized my laptop's battery was uh. Very warped and big. A state it'd been in for several months at that point actually. It wasn't until I mentioned it to my partner and they said "hey uh. that's extremely dangerous" that I realized the big swelling in my electronic device was not good. So for a period of about 2 months, I had to not use my laptop while I was waiting for a new battery.

Luck of the holidays, while I was using it during some downtime while staying at my partner's place last week, the fans started to make a jarring new noise during intense operation (as in. Playing Minecraft). It was fine only two days prior, so I don't know what broke the camel's back.

Being cautious after last year's fun times, I don't want to push it much further than bare minimum operations to avoid any potential major damage. I haven't got it checked out by a professional (or any more tech-savvy family friends who I trust more and don't charge extra), so I don't know what the exact issue is, or if it's a serious risk and not just a sign of this laptop being old. Opening just about any game will cause the loud fans to go off, as does using my second monitor while running even just discord and a couple chrome tabs. While typing this post using my laptop, the fans made the jarring noise very briefly before calming back down.

So... am I just gonna be without a computer capable of safely doing anything until I get a replacement part again? No, because I don't think this laptop is worth maintaining when it's liable to just have another problem next december, if not sooner. It's a hell of a machine, don't get me wrong. It's handled a lot more than most laptops have, running every game I've thrown at it pretty damn well, but the tendency for some new problem to happen every now and then makes me wary of trying to keep it going for everything I need out of it for much longer.

Does that mean I need a brand new computer then? Well as a wise rat once said: Yes. and, No.

Good news: my dad had another PC lying around, this one a desktop tower that my mom swears is a beast on par with the laptop, and because my dad isn't uh... up to much these days, I'm free to take this one too.

Bad news: it doesn't work. My mom and I tested it the other day, and we can't get it to power on.

Still, it's certainly gonna be a lot cheaper to get that operational than to get a brand new PC, with aforementioned family friends likely able to help. Unfortunately (for me specifically at least), it's still the holiday break, so my mom will be in and out of town until the second week of the new year, and I imagine those friends have things they'd rather be doing as well in their time off.

What does that mean for me here? Well, if my laptop can behave like it has been since I started writing this, I think I can manage to type out more long stuff like this. I can't do the same on my phone, since while I'm a rather speedy typer on my keyboard, phone typing is pretty cumbersome for me, so I imagine a long post there might be grating. That means I can likely do a few more Role Requeues in the coming days, get back to work on my War Bots notes, and maybe even some other long-form posts I've been wanting to do. Things I Love #3 may be a multi-parter with a... somewhat similar premise to someone else's ongoing series. I'm not sure if I wanna totally rip off this unnamed mutual's format of going episode by episode, or if I wanna make it a spoiler-free overview more like the Brave and the Bold and Doremi posts. With those shows I tried to make the posts a more open-ended general pitch and go over the overall high points, which felt appropriate for those shows. With Batman the show is simple and relatively formulaic, so going over the broad strokes was more efficient than going "And then Batman teams up with this goofy obscure character" 60 times. Doremi meanwhile is the opposite, that show has so much I could talk about but I really really enjoyed going into the show blind and so I tried to convince people to watch it accordingly. If I get a chance I'd love to do a full video series going over the whole show, but considering that's a 200 episode deal, on top of me never doing a video of any scope grander than an on-stream Terraria playthrough... don't expect that soon.

On the note of videos though, that's the main thing that's gonna be on hiatus: streams. If this laptop wheezes once or twice when it's running a chrome tab with discord in the background, then I don't think you'd be able to hear my voice over the chainsaw fans with a full stream setup. A few more personal things might be on hold too, or at least will require alternate setups, but those are private discussions to be had.

In the meantime, don't worry too much about me being bored. It sucks I won't be able to do much on my laptop and thus don't have access to any games on there, but on the bright side this is a great time for me to be doing just about anything else. Got 4 switch games (between me and my sibling anyways, and they don't mind sharing) and over 100 episodes of neetle teetles (2012) from the holidays to keep me busy, plus I can use the time to do art or something if I need another option for variety.

But yeah, that's the update explaining things. I've been restricted to tumblr on my phone and if I had to type a whole real post on that thing I think I'd rather use the phone to bludgeon myself with, so I've just been reblogging stuff. Not sure when I'll be back to full-steam activity again, hoping it's soon but not expecting much for another week minimum.

But that said, I hope y'all have enjoyed the holiday times, and if I don't say it again later, that you have a happy start to the new year!

[jack-daww]

Fanfic writing asks!

2, 4, 7, 10, 29, 35, 49, and 77?

Ooh, thank you for the ask! Let's see...

2: Where do you get your fic ideas?

Hard to say. I get inspired by just about anything. Stuff I read, conversations I have, situations I've either been in or heard about, you get the gist. When something catches my interest, my brain will start screaming ideas at me until it either leaks oit of my ears or I start writing it down and throw it into the ideas folder. I'm almost constantly spewing ideas, but not all of them are good, so sometimes it just gets put in my notes app on my phone and deleted later for lack of detail.

4: How do you choose which fic to write?

Well, I have a folder on my laptop in which every fic idea gets noted down as its own document. When I finish a WIP, I look through that folder and choose whichever I have the clearest picture of. I usually keep every idea in mind and only need a small reminder of what I had planned for it, so it really comes down to where my mind goes. Sometimes I'll also have a plot for one of those ideas in mind, so I don't need to spend time choosing at all.

7: Post a snippet from a WIP

Well, it might take a little while for me to post this WIP, but have something from my latest oneshot:

"There are shelves upon shelves of books and other nick-knack, making the room look bigger and more cramped at the same time. The walls are full of paintings of all kind and there is a single lamp hanging in the middle of the room."

This story is about a tea shop (vaguely based on a shop I have been to irl) and its weird regulars, as seen by an outsider. I haven't managed to work on it since I got sick, but it's about 1/5 done, I think?

10: Do you work on multiple WIPs or stick to one fic at a time?

Uhm, I do work on multiple fics, but I try to keep it to two at most, a longer one and a oneshot. I mostly write oneshots, so yeah. Sometimes I also work on three (when counting my very long-time project) but more than that gets overwhelming and ends up with me not writing anything.

29: What's something about your writing that you're proud of?

Probably how I write emotions. I'm an angst writer, so you can imagine that a lot of situations I write tend to get messy. But I've been told my characterizations are realistic, as well as how I write emotions, so I'm pretty proud of that.

35: What's your favourite fic that you've posted?

This is hard. Uh, let me take a look at what I've posted. (I am opening multiple tabs to look through my fics for this question and the next one)

This one is probably it? I really like how I wrote magic here and while it's not my typical style (normally I'm not quite this poetic) it was fun to write! I like most of my fics, so this was a hard choice, but I feel like this is a s close to a favourite as it gets.

49: What fic of yours would you say introduction to you as a writer?

This is hard too, damn. Hm, I would say my first fic, but I don't think that would be accurate to who I am as a writer today? My writing has improved over the last two years after all.

I have two different main writing styles and different dynamics depending on what fandom I write for, so I can't really tell which one it should be. I hope naming two isn't cheating, lol.

I think these are pretty good examples of my typical writing style and they're rather recent too, so they don't have as many mistakes as my old fics might have.

The first one shows a group dynamic I enjoy and the second one is pretty good too, though from a different fandom and with a different focus. Both fics are mainly about interpersonal relationships, which is what I mostly write about, and the level of angst my fics reach on average. I was tempted to pick one of my mcd fics for this, but that wouldn't be very representative of my writing.

77: Why do you enjoy writing fanfiction?

Well, I enjoy writing because I like creating scenarios and trying to get people to feel stuff. But if the question is why I enjoy writing fanfiction specifically, hm. Probably because I like exploring how characters react or playing around with character dynamics? Sometimes I want to portrait a specific dynamic/scenario/emotion and I can do that easier when the characters already exist. Also, the community is nice.

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #9:

Eldorado

Neil Young permanently separated himself from every other 60's era white male musician in a single rage-filled, screaming stomp in late 1988. In true Shakey style that moment was initially only available on CD in Japan.

His screaming separation from all things Mick, Bob, Van, Eric and Stephen occurs halfway through Don't Cry, the second song on his Japan-only EP Eldorado. There's plenty of hints that the moment is coming: the first track, Cocaine Eyes, features the most violent and frantic, dying-fish-on-a-line, guitar Young had played up to that point in his outrageous life, and the first half of Don't Cry, including its initial guitar solo, delivers more of the same.

But nothing can prepare any of us, even 35 years later, for what occurs at the opening of the second solo, seconds after the 3 minute mark.

Behold:

Neil Young was not much of a screamer before that moment. When it was time for intensity he tended to turn on his wind machines and do all the freaking out through his guitar, Old Black.

But I'm here to argue that the scream at 3:04 in Don't Cry is vital to the Neil Young story; it's a culminating moment prior to, and necessary for, real catharsis, a moment when the totality of one's anxiety and angst overcomes the sufferer, leaving them with no recourse but naked terror and rage.

Most of us experience such moments privately. I've definitely screamed in a parked car my fair share of times, every muscle in my body contorted and swelling; but the windows have been rolled fully up and I've been away from my coworkers, my family and my cat when it happened. Afterwards, nothing has changed in a practical sense, but I've felt better, already on a path back to reasonableness, and glad no one other than me witnessed the wild strain of it all.

Neil Young had plenty to scream about in 88: he had two children suffering from Cerebral Palsy, one of whom could not speak or walk because of it; he'd spent nearly a decade in creative turmoil; plus he'd recently made a record with Stephen Stills. A lesser human would have just suffered or given up; a normal human would have been private about it all; after all, his suffering is none of our business.

But the greatest of humans turn their suffering into art that selflessly guides the rest of us long term; they provides us a pathway from suffering to heavy love, and that's what we get immediately after Don't Cry: Heavy Love races through its chord progression, head down and chasing after more of that surging power, and we get a full dose of it in the first solo, introduced again by sonic slamming:

And then, at the song's end, before the second solo, Neil loses it altogether as he chants "my heavy love". These are some of the greatest vocals Neil has ever laid down. He's so utterly alive in these songs, so vibrant, barring his brave soul.

The title track, Eldorado, which opens Side 2 on the recently released vinyl version I've got in my own Dollar Din (that's a funny typo I just made; I think I'll leave it in...), allows Young to spin the narrative outward after all the personal risk taking on Side 1. He's got a Latin-tinged tale of drugs, bad guys and bullfighting for our consideration. It's totally awesome; Neil plays a different style of guitar here than anywhere else I can think of: he transforms his previous record's blues posturing into some sweet gringo flamenco, all of it slick and sharp after the bubbling chaos he's laid down beforehand.

But the song contains the EP's raging spirit all the same; listen to the unhinged explosiveness in the middle of the fourth and final verse. His eyes are screaming blue; his hair is red as blood!

It's telling that when it came to his next full record in 89 Young wavered: Eldorado was naked, raw and risky; was it too much? Did he need to hold back? Unsure after a decade of commercial failures, Neil listened to his co-producers; he shaved off the most terrifying an reckless moments in Don't Cry, tabled Cocaine Eyes and Heavy Love altogether, and balanced the rest of the album out with simpler, safer sounds.

The resulting record, Freedom, is a masterpiece. But it's not Eldorado. What is?

Happy Sunday everyone. I hope none of us need to pull the car over at any point today to do any screaming. Neil is ready to do it for us.

[bluberimufim]

21, 5, and 10 for the writer’s ask :))

Hiii thank you for the ask! Sorry for the late reply, I had this tab opened for an eternity and forgot about it.

21. Have you ever thrown any major rules that everybody follows out of the window?

Kinda?? I usually don't look too hard at writing rules and just do whatever. I find that figuring it out myself works better than following advice I don't fully understand, sometimes.

But I guess I could say I've discarded a few? I write mostly fantasy and, when people give advice on writing fantasy, they tend to gear it towards a more stereotypical idea of it. A lot of advice on story climaxes and character writing for fantasy focuses on there being a Big Bad Antagonist to beat and a Great Showdown at the end. And that just isn't how I like to write.

I've said it before, but my stories are all extremely chill. There are still big events happening and there are obviously stakes to the plot, but it's more emotional than anything else. The climax of "Black and White" is a tense conversation at a coffee shop and a farewell between two friends. (You could also say that the climax is Alphonse's death, but. Eh.) People literally just talk to each other all the time with almost no action scenes involved. "Devourer of Souls" features an entire war with an outcome that ultimately doesn't matter because the story is about the relationship between two characters. The climax is Seth trying to revive Theo after she dies and that's literally just. Also a conversation.

This also happened to me a bit in my architectural project classes in my first year of college. All my professors were like "pick an axis and go with it" and I discovered, together with my professor, that I just think differently about space, and tend to focus more on staying in a certain place rather than in walking through it. Everyone is different. Be yourself.

Wow. Sorry for the ramble. It turned into life advice. Dammit.

5. How would you describe your writing style? Does your writing style change for different WIPs? If yes, describe all or maybe just a few.

I've mentioned this once in passing. My style of story structure is very... jumpy, I guess? I switch POVs to get the better picture of a certain scene, and I skip around a lot in time. Both B&W and the dystopia WIP have a "present day" plot happening parallel to a "flashback plot". The dystopia WIP technically has five different flashback plots, but they're all told separately. This is because they have multiple protagonists who are at different points in their lives. Darius's story happens over three years. Diedrich's happens over thirty-five. To be given the same weight, they must mix. Otheriwse the story becomes "Diedrich and Some Dude".

"Devourer of Souls", however, is completely different. It has one protagonist, Seth, and it tells the story of her life. Book 2 has two protagonists, introducing Flick, but there's still no need for flashbacks, because the story of Seth's past has already been told. And I gotta say, it is super weird to write something so linearly. It feels wrong, but it's one hell of an experience!

10. How often do you stick to your original plot?

I only really outline the bare bones and the scenes I daydream about before writing, so it leaves a lot of room. I am technically still within DoS's outline, but I have since added two characters, new magic mechanics, and an entire mini-arc in the middle.

But the basis is usually still there. There's also bits that I just leave as "???" in the outline that stand for "pretty much 2 years of relationship development that I'll figure out in the moment". Anything character-driven I just leave as "whatever, we'll make it up as we go". I plan plot but I 100% pant the hell out of character development.

[finitevariety]

I was tagged by @armandaniels, thank you!!

Rules: Tag 9 people you want to get to know better.

last song: so I have been rewatching Black Sails lately. Since I was too lazy to find the cable for my external hard drive, which has the files less the end credits, I watched it on a streaming site—which is where I found out that Nick Cave had covered Avalanche for s2e9???

It's not the last song I listened to, but it's a fun little piece of information I didn't have before. The last song I listened to was by a friend of mine.

last show: last finished show was a rewatch of The Terror around the time my dad died. I don't know why I thought that would offer some catharsis. Regardless, a fevered 2-day bereavement leave rewatch did at least generate a fun little AU plan.

currently watching: Succession, obviously, plus a Black Sails rewatch. I think I might pick Picard back up because I've heard S3 is good (though, given the bar set by previous seasons, this may not mean much). Film-wise I am continuing apace this year. Now that my local indie cinema has closed down, I pirate almost everything, but found that a BFIPlayer subscription has really helped expose me to some films I didn't know about before. I'd recommend it! I have a letterboxd but my reviews are hardly scintillating so I'm not even going to link it.

exhibit A

currently reading: I am honestly very proud of how my reading is going this year! I'm reading Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend and just finished Symposium by Muriel Spark.

I'm also reading a bunch of short stories thanks to that one tumblr post that's going round. Some of them are just garbage, but the great thing about short stories is when they're bad you invested maybe 20 minutes max, but when they're good you think about them all day, same as you would a novel. Of the ones I've read so far (I currently have them open in about 80 tabs), I enjoyed The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and How Spoilers Bleed, by Clive Barker (who also wrote Candyman and Duel!).

pictured: foolishness

current obsession: yeah, it's Succession. What gave it away? Also bryophytes and fungi but that's a personal problem.

uhhh I am tagging @silverchain @swankpalanquin @watchfuldeer @eastgaysian @squiddoodlebug @peachpulpeuse @parasprite @gothcrafts and @s0ftpining, and of course anyone else who would like to be tagged!

[solitaryandwandering]

Tag 9 people you want to get to know better.

Thank you so much for tagging me again in one of these @waitmyturtles, they're so fun to do!!

Three Ships

Suffering from some recency bias and don't really think in terms of "ships" anymore so I turned to my CHEMISTRY list on MDL to help... agonized over my choices and finally picked:

TinnGun/GunTinn (My School President) - they're just too wonderful. So sweet, and it's great to see a show embrace embarrassing teen crush behavior in a gay kid without making it weird. Tinn's BL-trope filled daydreams had me in stitches. Almost chose PatPran but that's too easy, I have to honor their successors!

Seo Joon x Ji Woo (To My Star) - love them so much. Relate way too much to Ji Woo and them together? So heartwarming. Despite some of the contrivance of their typical Kdrama split in season 2 I still love the way they reconcile and work their shit out.

Hira x Kiyoi (Utsukushii Kare/My Beautiful Man) - talk about recency bias, I'm currently watching season 2 and couldn't resist putting them here. They're just SO well-written. Accurate portrayal of the long-term effects of C-PTSD and the messiness of miscommunication sans lazy writing? Sign me up!!

First Ship

Romione (Harry Potter series) - I know, I know, don't @ me but I still have a soft spot for them despite everything

Last Song

Woof Woof (Live Version) - SHINee

Last Movie

Shake! Otis at Monterey (1987; dir. D.A. Pennebaker)

Currently Reading

Nothing much, honestly. Beginning of the year was HECTIC but hopefully March will give me some time to read. The fanfiction I have open in a tab on my phone is "honey, let me show you where your heart is" by sarahyyy. Cute Guardian one-shot!

Currently Watching

Guardian

Utsukushii Kare (Season 2)

I Promised You the Moon (finally on Viki so I'll be starting this soon!)

Moonlight Chicken - I decided to wait until this was over to watch to preserve my mental health. Despite my love/respect for Aof's work I am very very wary when any show or film either exclusively or in part centers around a story which heavily involves disability. In some ways this apprehension is similar to my aversion to sad endings in LGBTQ+ stories (unless it's earned!). Been burned WAY too much fictionally and IRL. 2023 seemingly is the year Aof decided to make shows about my two most central disabilities, deafness and blindness (Last Twilight even tackles someone LOSING their sight, seriously, Aof? What do you have against me?). Heart's story looks like it's being done responsibly/well (or well enough, considering this is the first of its kind in the genre, maybe Thailand as a whole?) so I am excited to jump into it soon!!

On that note, I plan on writing along with each episode my thoughts on Heart's storyline vis-à-vis Deaf representation. Commentary on his arc has been surprisingly decent especially amongst the people I follow (I knew I chose well) but the tendency to overly pity or infantilize him along with a general misunderstanding of Deafness made me realize I don't think I'll be able to keep my mouth shut when I watch, so. Keep an eye out for that if you're interested. Thai Sign Language was developed in part from ASL (ergo, part of the same language family) so I'm also planning to dive into what I've learned about the language and its similarities! :)

Currently Consuming

Leftover Thai food my best friend foisted on me, I forget what it's called but it's some kind of thick rice noodle dish. Very good!!

Currently Craving

Motivation, sleep, an end to the anxiety which has been plaguing me since the beginning of the year, better glasses. Ice cream sounds good too.

TAGS! No pressure!

I have no idea who to tag, so just flying by the seat of my pants here: @squeakygeeky, @absolutebl, @shesarealphony, @lesbianlovestay, @cinematicnomad, @i-just-wanted-hyphens, @bulkhummus, @anonyma13, @stillqueerstillhere

[flawedamythyst]

Fandom Deep Cuts

Tagged by @drgrlfriend : okay apropos of this post —

tag a writer if you’d like them to share a never-before-seen playlist/moodboard/bit of background lore from one of their fics!

So, I'm going to be talking about Cluster Got Your Back, Bro, which is my Sense8 Avenger's AU. I'll ramble about it for a bit, and then I've got a scene that got cut.

So, when I look back the thing that frustrates me most about this fic is the failure to live up to the diversity of Sense8 itself. Everyone is white, I managed 2 women out of 8, and despite Bruce being in India and Bucky starting out in Afghanistan, everyone is from the USA/Europe/Australia. Given the state of the MCU at the time I wrote it (which was pre-Black Panther or I would definitely have dropped Bruce for T'Challa) I don't know that I could have done much better but it still bugs me. I tried to get a bit more global by making Tony Italian and dumping Thor in Australia rather than Norway, which might have felt more obvious but would have meant I had 3 Americans, 4 Europeans and Bruce, hanging out in India but clearly not Indian. Not that Australia isn't another Western country, but at least it spread out the dots on the map a bit.

And I did really enjoy writing Australian!Thor. He was so much more fun than Norwegian!Thor would have been, imho.

The hardest part of writing it was the timezones. I had a tab open on Time Zone Converter the whole time I was writing it, and kept having to move scenes around so it wasn't weird that various people were awake at the same time. Thank God for Thor's dawn surfing habit and Tony's erratic sleep patterns, but the hardest one was definitely Bruce. He was just never awake when the others are.

He's also the only one who didn't get his own plotline and yes, that is a bit related, but also, I was juggling a lot already and I didn't have anything for him to do. I hinted at him being on the run or whatever, but I never gave him any real backstory. I think it would have all been too much. So, bless him, he's just the guy who sleeps through the plot, occasionally meditates and is only useful when someone gets injured.

Originally, there was going to be an extra epilogue bit set a couple of years later, to show everyone settled into the lives they ended up with, which is what the snippet below the cut is. I accidentally introduced an antagonist though, and it suddenly started feeling like a sequel with a whole new plot arc, so I cut it. I kinda meant to go back at some point, but that never happened (if it had, possibly Bruce would have got some plot of his very own. Possibly not.)

It's a bit long and stops mid-scene, as a warning.

Clint actually really loved being a Stark Industries bodyguard. It meant he got to wear sunglasses and loom behind Tony, looking menacing - which was easy, given their respective heights. He got to carry a weapon everywhere with him which, okay, so it wasn’t his bow, but a gun was okay too, and got him less weird looks, and mostly his job was just watching people, which was easy as shit.

Mostly, though, he liked that it meant he got to work with Bucky.

“All clear here,” said Bucky through the comms that Tony had insisted on buying them, even though they could speak to each other’s minds. Clint glanced over the crowd of assembling reporters to where Bucky was standing by the door, looking hot as hell in his fancy suit as he glared around at the crowd.

“Here too,” said Clint, tearing his eyes away to glance around from his vantage point on the stage. “Tony, are you ready?”

Tony was in the back room, flicking through notecards that Clint knew he’d ignore as soon as he came out in front of the crowd. “Sure, yeah,” he said distractedly. “Hey, is the guy from The New Yorker here?”

Clint had no idea what he looked like, so he just scanned over the crowd as Tony appeared beside him, following his gaze.

“Aha! There he is,” said Tony, pointing at an old guy in the second row. “He wrote an article when I moved to New York about how Stark Industries was overextending itself. I’m going to make him eat his words.”

“Not literally, please,” said Steve. He wasn’t at the press conference, because despite Tony's best wheedling, he’d declined every single job offer from Stark Industries and stayed working for the NYPD. Clint thought he was nuts, because the benefits he and Bucky got were insane. The dental alone was worth turning up every day to hang around with one of his closest friends and his boyfriend, while looking hot in a suit.

And Clint did look hot. Bucky had made sure that he knew that.

“Sure, sure,” said Tony. “All the words eating will be hypothetical.” He straightened his tie, then took a step closer to the door. “Okay, I’m ready. Wish me luck, guys.”

Everyone who was currently awake wished him luck, glancing in on the press conference from wherever they were. Thor was in board shorts, clutching his surfboard as he ran down to meet the first wave of the day, Wanda was curled up on a sofa reading a briefing document and drinking a glass of wine in preparation for the next day’s political mindgames in the Sokovian parliament. Natasha didn’t let them see where she was, which was pretty much standard these days, now she was rising through the ranks of SHIELD.

Bruce was asleep. Tony had tried to persuade him that he needed to stay up for the conference, for moral support, but Bruce had just rolled his eyes and started his usual evening meditation.

Steve was on patrol with Sam, but Clint could see him sitting in an unoccupied chair in the front row, waiting for Tony’s big announcement.

Tony strolled out as if onto a runway, waving both hands at the crowd. “Hey guys!” he said. “Good to see you again. Well, most of you.” He sent the guy from The New Yorker a pointed look. “Now, I know most of you are hoping this is going to be about some awesome new Stark Industries product, because everything we create is incredible, but this is actually going to be even more fun than that.” 

His hand went into the pocket his notecards were in for a moment, but when he took it out, it was empty.

This was going to be fun.

“Okay, so it’s probably pretty clear now that I’ll be living in New York semi-permanently for a bit,” said Tony. “Not that I don’t love Roma, of course not, the weather is so much better, not to mention the coffee, although the tourists are about the same. Just, New York has a couple of things in it that I’m enjoying having easy access to.” He gave Steve a wink that made Steve roll his eyes, and then disappear to go back to his patrol.

Tony just turned his grin on the rest of the crowd, unfazed. “Which means I need to start acting like a good neighbour, right? I don’t want to be one of those asshole-type billionaires who don’t pay taxes and pretend a couple of thousand to charity is a big deal. Not that I’m talking about anyone in particular of course, except, wait, yes I totally am, and of course I’m going to name and shame them. Page four of your briefing pack has a full list of billionaires who aren’t pulling their weight when it comes to helping out the rest of the community.”

Clint wondered who had signed off on the briefing pack, and how long it would take Pepper to fire them.

“So, in addition to paying all my taxes like a good boy -my returns are available on request from the PR department- I figure it’s time to get into the philanthropy business properly. So, I’m announcing that I’m setting up the Maria Stark Charitable Foundation, who will be starting off with a fund of a couple of billion, to be divided between projects in New York, for my neighbours, and throughout the world because let’s face it, this is a global community now, we’re all each other’s neighbours.”

Clint scanned over the crowd again, trying to pretend he couldn’t see Bucky rolling his eyes at that one. There was a movement near the back and he zoned in on it, then froze dead.

Trick was standing there, staring straight at him with a malicious smirk on his face.

The cluster were now so close to each other that he didn’t need to say anything, didn’t even need to think it. Just the sudden change in his emotions was enough to make Bucky, Steve, Thor, Natasha and Wanda appear next to him while Bruce startled awake in Mumbai.

“What is it?” asked Bucky.

“That’s Trick,” said Clint, stepping out of his body so he could point.

Bucky’s eyes narrowed. “Right,” he said, and disappeared.

“What the hell is he doing here?” asked Wanda. Clint didn’t have any answers. As far as he was concerned, Trick had disappeared into the night and was never coming back.

Bucky stalked over to Trick and put a heavy hand on his shoulder, doing the sexy badboy glower that usually made Clint melt, but was just making him feel reassured now. It didn’t matter what Trick wanted, he had a kickass boyfriend and the rest of the cluster on his side.

Trick tried to throw Bucky off, but he just tightened his grip and marched him off. Clint wondered if it was possible to love the guy any more than he did right now.

“So, enough about me,” said Tony, wrapping up the speech that he’d somehow managed to continue with despite the drama. “And I know I don’t usually say that, but I figure there’s only so much of the glory I can take right now. Let me introduce you to the person who’ll actually be running the show.”

He was finishing up a lot quicker than he’d been intending to, which Clint had a feeling was because of him, but he was more than okay with that. Tony handed over the podium, gave one last wave, then glanced at Clint and headed backstage.

Clint followed him, and the minute they were out of sight of the crowd, Tony put an arm on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Clint nodded. “Just really want to know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing here.”

“Let’s find out,” said Tony.

Bucky had Trick in the security room, handcuffed to a chair with another security guard outside while Bucky stood against the wall with his arms crossed and just glared at him. In the time it took Clint and Tony to walk down there, Trick went from trying to play the whole thing off as a mistake to trying to threaten him with a lawsuit. Bucky didn’t so much as twitch.

“How are we going to play this?” asked Steve, walking around Trick. “You know I’m not actually going to let you hurt him, right?”

“No hurting,” said Clint. “I’m just going to ask a couple of questions.”

“If I don’t like his answers, there may be some hurting,” said Bucky. Steve just sighed.

Clint paused outside the room to take a breath, and Tony slapped a hand to his shoulder again. “Hey, any time you want, just say the word and I’ll throw the full weight of an outraged billionaire at him,” said Tony. 

Clint snorted and shook his head. “Nah, let’s do this the old-fashioned, carnie way.”

“Oh god, please don’t kneecap him,” muttered Steve.

Clint ignored him as he opened the door and went inside.

“...can’t treat me like this,” Trick was saying. “I’ve done nothing wr-” He shut up when he saw Clint, then glanced over his shoulder at Tony and raised an eyebrow.

“You really are playing with the big boys now, huh?” said Trick. “Look, I-”

“Shut up,” said Clint. “What are you doing here?”

Trick shrugged as well as he could in the handcuffs. “Hey, a guy can’t drop in to see an old friend?"

“We’ve never been friends,” said Clint.

Trick faked a heartbroken look, and Clint just rolled his eyes, glancing at Bucky, who was still glowering. “Maybe we should just kneecap him,” he said, mostly to hear Steve’s protest.

“Oh, come on,” said Trick. “It’s not that bad. I’m just here to talk to you.” His eyes flicked to Bucky, then across to Tony. “In private,” he added.

“Anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of them,” said Clint.

Trick’s eyes raised. “Seriously? You want all your dirty secrets out in the open?”

“He wants to blackmail you,” said Natasha.

The idea of Bucky and Tony not knowing everything there was to know about Clint was ridiculous. Clint grinned at Trick, feeling the vicious edge to it. “Nothing secret about it,” he said. “Sorry if you were hoping to have any kind of leverage.”

Trick snarled at him. “Fuck you, Barton,” he said. “Maybe I’ll tell all the press out there that Tony Stark is hiring a guy with a murder conviction, then.”

“He’s not,” said Tony, leaning back against the wall. “Tony Stark is hiring the very best guy for the job, and his past, which may involve some criminal charges, none of which are actually murder, isn’t Tony Stark’s business.”

“Tony Stark is talking about himself in the third person,” noted Wanda, and earned herself a glare.

“Fuck,” muttered Trick, and glared at Clint. “Didn’t think you’d be the type to let some rich dude fuck you in exchange for being pampered, Barton.”

Bucky suddenly moved at that, making Trick as he uncrossed his arms and stepped forward. “Say that again,” he said. “Go on. I dare you.”

Trick stared at him, not nearly scared enough. “Okay, so apparently it’s not just Stark you’re getting on your knees for. I wouldn’t have thought a billionaire was big on sharing.”

Tony let out a long sigh, “Okay, two things. First of all, were you not listening to my speech out there at all? Sharing is exactly what I’m about. And secondly, I don’t know why you think Clint would need to sleep with someone for them to think he’s worth employing and being friends with. He’s incredibly talented, you know.”

Clint felt his ears blush red at the compliment, but he did his best to keep glaring at Trick.

“We need to scare him badly enough to never come back,” said Natasha. She crouched down to stare at Trick. “You should leave Bucky alone with him.”

[meg-megbanom-ezt]

The Four Horsemen of my Spotify Wrapped

As a last minute effort, I present my Spotify wrapped as my final post of this year, with a bit of illustration. The background of the image is, of course, not mine but Jason Galea's. Originally I wanted to recreate it myself but a) I couldn't make it half, no, quarter as good b) I can't be bothered by doing anything difficult for 2022. I've had enough.

The reason I don't post the original Spotify images like anybody else is... because my poor phone is so old and messed up that I was happy to be able to tap through at. all. I was like, "is there any cheat code for Level 2?", the app crashed OR skipped too much forward OR backward. So this is also a goodbye to Spotify on the phone because after I wrote(!) down(!!!) the stats, I deleted the app. Spoiler: it also crashed all the other times. I've bought an SD card and I'll listen to mp3s from now on. Soooo ~retro~!

To be fair, I used the Spotify browser edition, as well; more than the phone app version, I'd guess. Maybe I keep using that, but I prefer YouTube for listening for music (I know, I know), although it's not really the bee's knees either. Just still the better one IMO.

So if anybody persisted despite my rants or against the odds how much people usually care for other's music taste... HERE IS THE POINT:

Most common genres (in descending order, but fuck bullet points):

new wave - no surprise rock - broad category, but I can see this Australian indie - see later... classic Hungarian rock - hmm... I think this is a broad category as well early US punk - I can see this, too

How much I've listened to Spotify?

3493 minutes, which is ~58 hours - not even 2,5 days. I don't think it's too much. Still, I've listened to more music than 45% of Hungarian users! I'm so curious how would the distribution look like. And what about podcasts? I guess it's also a keyword here. (Podcasts are not my cup of tea, but I'd still love to see statistics. OK, I just like stats, OK?)

Top 5 songs:

Holiday in Cambodia - imagine this... this made it to the top with *drum roll* four repeats on a gray January day! Wow, just wow. I can't complain, tho - it's a great song. It just looks like I don't do that horrible number of loops on Spotify (unlike on YT). Also, now you understand the top left corner (even though, iirc, Jello gnawing the chord is in the California Über Alles video? anyway...). Pop Song 89 - Oh, I can explain this, it's a recent thing. I opened Spotify, I saw this song among top of the favourites, "oh, I like this", I played the song - and closed the app / tab. Hence, the top right corner (but poor Michael Stipe, I should've drawn him better in retrospect). Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer - holy shit, I didn't even remembered this song title. I guess I was like, "wait it's good!" and replayed a few times without recollecting. [these guys drugged me through their music: a story at 8PM] Swamp Thing - same as above, but it's by The Chameleons. But even worse: unlike with King Gizzard, I don't even really know the band! Put me in the *looks in the notes* pillory. Ez a város - the only reason it's this below because I listen to Európa Kiadó more on other platforms. :) I link this, because it's Hungarian and you'd find songs with the same title but shittier music if it wasn't for me. I biased but I don't care. ...OK, I care a bit. As much as I love this band, the lyrics make the difference here, so non-Hungarian speakers are inherently missing out and might just see it as any other new wave / alternative band. Still, recommended (of course!). Also, at bottom left quarter now you can recognize Jenő Menyhárt, the bandleader music director of the band.

Top bands:

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - surprise! Remember the above-mentioned Australian indie as the bronze-winner genre? King Gizzard single-handedly contributed to that. The funny - and maybe touching :3 - thing is that King Gizzard is actually one of my brother's favourite bands. The exception rule of my cynical take is that people might do care about other's taste if they are close friends or relatives. At least I do. So that's why I listened to the ABSOLUTE WHOLE FUCKING DISCOGRAPHY of the King Gizzard!!! And them being a really, I mean REALLY prolific band, it was easy to reach the top here. Their stuff is so diverse and energetic, but eventually... I like some of their albums, some of them I kinda love, even, but I don't think I became a real fan. I wouldn't go to their concert by myself but if someone important invited me OR I magically won a ticket, I'd gladly go. The Beatles - .......really?! - I muttered with a smirk. Honestly, fuck The Beatles. OK, I am just being edgy here. But they only finished on the second place because I clicked on a "basic Beatles for x hours" recommendation playlist and I complied, but wasn't impressed by the end. My point is, it's easy for a band to get a metric fuckton of hours if you binge them for whatever reason and then Spoti draws the wrong conclusion because quantity and preference don't necessarily correlate. (I guess I could've concluded already above but honestly, fuck the Beatles.) Európa Kiadó - I made my point above. One addition: their live stuff is often waaaay better than the studio stuff but those are available elsewhere, so the third place is reasonable. New Order - hmm. A band I kinda like, but don't like enough for the fourth place. Then I remembered that I binged two of their albums so I get it. The Smiths - well I wonder how come someone hasn't noticed that I'm dead these guys have only reached the fifth place? Kinda guilty pleasure, but I cannot not like the Smiths. So this is why we got Morrissey at the bottom right corner, not that he would deserve it, tho. Also I made his glasses with the anime school of obscuring glass because if I'm already embarrassed myself, why not top all of it with weeb shit.

Now peace out, I have to shower and go to the party where possibly better music is played (granted, my brother is also invited there). Happy New Year in advance for all my lovely mutuals and all the others passing by! <3

UPDATE: oh fuck, I forgot one more thing. I played King Gizzard for 728 minutes, which qualified me for the top 3% of listeners! Yeah, that's 12 hours and 8 minutes! If this doesn't impress you, nothing will.

[dat2ndaccount97]

Twitter talk

While it is fun watching twitter crash in burn, for me personally it kinda hurts. I love twitter. It's not perfect, there's a lot of weirdos and assholes on there and can be a cesspool of negativity. But for me it's the place where I met a lot of my current friends, Where I spent many years talking about and keeping up on all the things I love like Comics and movies and fighting games and Pizza and Barbie dolls. The place where I am A MASSIVE Emma Stone Stan. Where I got to kill time whenever I had any down time at home or away on my phone. It felt like an online home away from home. And it's also the place where I post daily about the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman Films over on Daily Batman Anthology, which has been a passion project of mine for over 2 years

And Look. I LOVE Tumblr. On my main it was the place I felt safest online for the longest time, where I could just gush about my undying love for Anna from Frozen, my love of frozen in general, talk about my life a little more openly both the good and bad, and a lot of that carried over here into this sideblog, where I continue to be open about everything and post about my Dolls and whatever shows up on the feed. Not to mention all my awesome freinds i've made along the way on here

But it's not a twitter replacement for me. It's just not the same. It's close enough to where I can talk/post about the things I like in a similar Manner, and where I could totally move Daily Batman Anthology if twitter goes under. But It's such a vastly different ecosystem here. I can't just look at the trending tab to see that "oh nintendo shadow dropped a game announcement" or "Hey that thing I like or that person I adore is trending" or actually important and/or exciting news of things happening in the world. Or Make a Comment on my friend's dumb meme and have another friend comment to my comment. It's just not the same.

Plus there's no group chats (I think, they had it here sometime ago but it stank and no one used it). I just hope Elon doesn't destroy my preferred social media site. It has it's problems but it's my (online) home. and i'd miss it real bad if it's an empty barren wasteland that eventually gets shut down.

[akella810]

How to use lightening deals on prime day ⚡️

The thing about lightening deal's is there is alot of confusion. Who's eligible for them what the fees are associated so I'm gonna make it exactly clear for you right now.

You can find these campaigns in your advertising tab. It's usually about 20% off the last 90 days average price. So if your selling it for £100 you usually would have to take 20% off that price it would be £80. Amazon chooses who is eligible you have to have a certain set of criteria you can't request these campaigns they sort of just appear in your advertising. They are definitely worth checking.

Power sellers including myself use these campaigns at least afew times a year. Some amount of times for slower moving products for things we know are not gonna replenish so good in the future or just tryna get rid of. If we want to boost that momentum we have tons of stock or some on the way or before a holiday you want to be on top of those organic listings. Or holidays related to your specific product.

So your review rating has to be above 3 stars and would last 4-6 hours in the US they can actually last up to 24 hours in the UK. You can expect traffic any where between 2 and 10 times. I've heard rumours some sellers have had 20x even more than that. You can kinda think about it as similar to they type of traffic you increase during q4.

It can be costly be highly effective way to launch products. It has an insane amount of eyes on your product. During holidays it can be a bit more expensive as well.

Scheduling these lightening deals can be difficult. Amazon actually does the scheduling for you so when you submit a lightening deal it gives you an eligibility time slot there is actually a loop hole in amazon's a7 algorithm you can actually open up to three four even five tabs if your quick for the same product same campaign and quickly submit your offer.

You wanna put an offer just a little more than you expect to sell. So claim rate is high which in turn decides position on the deals page. If you want to game the system get people to add to cart in the initial few minutes of the deals. You can hold these deals for up-to 15 minutes. Spurs claim rate and deal page positioning.

⚡️ 10x revenue

⚡️ Kick-start product launches

⚡️ 3 star reviews

⚡️ Increased traffic

⚡️ Prime day

[purplesurveys]

1848

💻 Laptop Computer 💻

Do you own a laptop? I do. It's nearly a decade old now and works for only an hour when charger-free, but it's my baby all the same.

Are you on a laptop right now? Yup.

How many laptop computers have you owned in your lifetime? This has been my first and only one that was gotten for me specifically. The laptop I used in high school had been my dad's.

What color was your first laptop? This laptop is silver.

What color is your current laptop? It's the same laptop.

🖥 Desktop Computer 🖥

Do you own a desktop computer? No. I used one in school, but I never owned one.

Do you prefer Windows computers or Mac computers? Apple.

What were your favorite computer games to play as a kid? What are your favorite computer games now? There was a website called Y8 that had all these flash games and my sister and I were on that damn site every single day for a few hours. Anyway, I don't play any computer games currently.

Which do you use more: a computer or a phone? 📱 Phone.

Are you good at remembering passwords for websites, or do you always forget? I'm not, so I always have the remember password option turned on. I'm not into the idea of noting my passwords down on my phone either, because I'd be fucked the moment I misplace my phone or if it gets stolen.

What is your current computer desktop background? It's BTS smiling. 

Do you have a desk job? I guess you can say that. I work from home, but yes I do work at my desk for all 8 hours of it.

What were some of your favorite websites as a kid? What are some of your favorite websites now? I liked looking at people's profiles on Friendster, mainly because I was not allowed to have an account and that was my way of pretending I was a part of that website hahaha. I was also already on Twitter back in like 2009 and it's always been one of my favorites, although I have more of a love-hate relationship with it now tbh.

These days, my favorites would be YouTube and Reddit.

Were you alive before the Internet was invented?  I sure wasn't.

How many tabs do you have open on your computer right now? 6.

⌨️ Computer Keyboard ⌨️

Are you a fast typer? I am. I've gotten a few reactions before haha.

Do you enjoy typing on a keyboard? Yes. Typing can be fun when you know how to do it fast.

Have you ever used a typewriter? I've seen a typewriter, but have never used one.

Do you own a typewriter? Nope.

What color are the keys on your computer's keyboard? They would be black.

🖨 Printer 🖨

Do you own a printer? We do, but I hardly use it because bluetooth is so fucking tricky lmao.

What was the last thing you printed off? It was like an authorization letter thingy my workplace provided to allow my hospital to administer a physical exam on me.

Have you ever printed anything off in a library? More times than I can count – we didn't have a printer at home when I was in high school and college. In a way it helped me become more disciplined, since no printer meant I had to finish papers and stuff a day before a deadline to have them printed out on time.

Do you prefer to use black ink or colored ink? Black. Having to print anything colored stresses me out because it's like what if it runs out of ink in the middle of printing ahaha??

Do you know how to change the ink in a printer? No, it's something I never learned how to do lol.

🖱Computer Mouse🖱

Can you see the computer mouse emoji? 🖱 Hardly.

Do you wonder why they made this emoji, when it's hard to see because it's white? I mean it'll only be a bitch if your background is white, so I don't see much of a problem.

Do you own a computer mouse? Yeah. I won one at a company Christmas raffle 2 or 3 years ago but have just never gotten around to using it.

Do you use a computer mouse? Nope. I prefer a trackpad sooooooooo much more.

If you own one, what color is your computer mouse?

Do you prefer to use a mouse or a trackpad? Trackpad. Having everything inches from each other helps me a lot.

Have you ever used the computer mouse emoji? I don't think so.

💾 Floppy Disk 💾

Have you ever saved anything onto a floppy disk? I've never used a floppy disk.

Do you own any floppy disks? Nope. The only thing going for me with floppy disks is that I'm old enough to remember them, but not to have used them.

When was the last time you used a floppy disk? I never used one.

What are three things you like (besides floppy disks) that are floppy? Idk...slime? Oh my beagle's ears! Hahaha. I can't think of a third one.

Have you ever cried because you lost something that you had saved onto a floppy disk? Nope.

💿 Compact Disc 💿

Have you ever burned a CD? I didn't, because again I wasn't old enough to have been doing it regularly; but I remember Andi making me a mixtape when we were in Grade 5. That'd be my one and only experience with a burned CD.

Have you ever made a mix CD? I didn't, but a friend had done it for me.

Have you ever done a craft project using old CDs? I don't remember ever doing so.

Do you own any CDs still? Yes. I've kept all my Beyoncé albums around, although it's only up until self-titled since I was never able to find physicals for Lemonade and Renaissance.

Then of course there's BTS, so since I collect merch I have since grown a good number of their physical albums. I'm just missing the stuff for 2016-2019.

What was the last CD you listened to? Do albums on Spotify count since I never listen to CDs anymore? Hahaha...it would be Hope on the Street.

What was the first CD that you purchased? Camp Rock OST lol

💽 CD in Plastic Case 💽

Did you burn CDs and then put them in a plastic case? I never burned CDs.

Do you own any plastic CD cases? Just the ones my older albums go in.

Have you ever written on a CD with a permanent marker? Nope.

Have you ever used this emoji? The one in this section? No.

Do you still own any of the mix tapes or mix CDs you made when you were younger? I don't think I have the mixtape Andi gave me anymore.

📼 VHS Tape 📼

Do you own any VHS tapes? I don't think we've kept them.

Did you used to watch movies on VHS tapes when you were younger? I didn't reach those anymore, but I'm sure my parents did. They ran a short-lived business selling VHS tapes.

Do you remember the orange Nickelodeon tapes? No.

Do you have any home videos that are on tapes? Yes :) They are my absolute favorite to look back on and I'm so glad my dad had that kind of foresight to...vlog his kids growing up haha.

Do you own a VCR? No.

Do you remember having to rewind VHS tapes? Nope.

📞 Telephone ☎️

Do you remember a time before cellphones? Tbh no. By the time I was 5 my parents both had phones and before that my memory's pretty much hazy.

How old were you when you got your first cellphone? I was 7. It was 2005 and I got a Sony Ericsson flip phone.

Do you work in an office with a telephone? Each desk has a telephone, yes; but there isn't a lot of opportunity to use them since I work from home.

Do you have a home phone or just a cellphone? I have a cellphone, but at home we also have a landline still. My grandma prefers calling us that way as she's always refused to own a phone, so we keep it around.

Do you still remember your home phone number from when you were growing up? Yes.

Have you ever made a prank call? No.

📠 Fax Machine 📠

Do you own a fax machine? Never. I only ever saw faxes in hotels lol but I think even they got rid of those now.

Have you ever worked in an office with a fax machine? Nope.

Have you ever owned a fax machine? We never had one at home.

Have you ever used this emoji? Nopes.

What are three things you like that rhyme with "fax"? The sound of the sax, time to relax...and that's all I can think of really.

🗄 Filiing Cabinet 🗃

Do you own a filing cabinet? My family does in general. We have this tiny drawer that houses all of our important documents like passports and birth certs.

Do you enjoy organizing things? It's fun when I do it, but as a whole no because I'm terrible at maintaining.

Are you a very organized person? At work, to a fault. In real life, eh it depends on my mood.

Is there an office in your home? Nope. My room is my work station.

When was the last time you shopped at Office Max? We don't have that but I also can't remember the last time I was at an office supplies store. Safe to assume years ago.

What was the last thing you bought at Office Max? That's lost on me now.

🗂 Manila Folders 🗂

Do you own any manila folders? We should have a few here at home.

Do you organize your computer files into folders? Absolutely.

Did you ever use Lisa Frank folders for school when you were a kid? No, we couldn't afford those. I wasn't a fan of the style anyway so it didn't feel like I was missing out.

Do you still own any of the colorful folders you used to use for school when you were a kid? Nope.

What are three things you have stored in folders (in real life, not on a computer)? Documents, activity sheets for school, and if we are counting binders – photocards haha.

📌 Thumbtack 📌

How many bulletin boards are there in your home? I just have one – mine.

Have you ever spray-painted a bulletin board, and if yes, what color? No.

Do you own a set of colorful thumbtacks? I know I do, someone had given me a pack for Christmas back when I was still in my corkboard phase haha. I just wouldn't be able to tell you where it is right now.

If you own a bulletin board, what are three things you have pinned on it? I don't use mine anymore.

Have you ever stepped on a thumbtack? No, thank god.  

✂️ Scissors ✂️

How many pairs of scissors do you own? We have around 3-4 pairs at home.

Have you ever ran with scissors? Probably, but I always do it cautiously and holding it from the blades.

What color are your favorite pair of craft scissors, if applicable? Whatever man, as long as it gets the job done.

What color are your hair-cutting scissors, if applicable? I don't cut my hair.

Do you cut your own hair? 💇♀️ ^ There you go.

Do you have a special pair of scissors that you use to open boxes? 📦✂️ No, but I just use a cutter lol

Do you have different pairs of scissors that you use for different things? Just scissors and cutters.

What color was the last pair of scissors you used? What was the last thing you used a pair of scissors for? I can't recall the color anymore, but it was to open a box of products to sort out for work.

Do you know how to do a scissor kick? I can try but I would like 98% fail.

When was the last time you did a scissor kick? I've never done one hahaha.

🧷 Safety Pin 🧷

When was the last time you used a safety pin? Sometime last year when I needed to pin my top from the back because it was too loose.

Have you ever used this emoji? I doubt I have.

What was the last thing you used a safety pin for? Oh, I touched on it already haha.

Have you ever ran a race and had a number pinned to your shirt? No. But for work I've needed to be the person who was linking the pins to the bibs so everyone can put it on their shirts lol.

Do you own a box of safety pins? I don't think we do, actually.

📎 Paper Clips 🖇

When was the last time you used a paperclip? January when I was fixing some contracts for work.

What was the last thing you used a paperclip for? Damn I really need to stop overexplaining LOL

Do you remember Clippit, the Microsoft Word paperclip? 📎👀💬 I do but only because of memes and stuff. I never encountered it from our family computer.

Have you ever received a piece of advice from Clippit? Nope.

Do you own a box of paperclips? Nope.

📏 Rulers 📐

Do you own a ruler? We probably have one somewhere.

How many rulers do you own? None that I can call my own.

What was the last thing you used a ruler? When was the last time you used one? I honestly can't remember.

Do you know how to draw a straight line without using a ruler? Depends, but probably not. If I'm drawing on paper, I'd fold it so it makes a dent, but even then I doubt it would be perfectly straight.

What does your favorite ruler that you own look like? I don't have a 'favorite ruler' lol, but when I was a kid I like those rulers that came with shape outlines that you can trace so you could draw like a perfect square or heart or whatever.

🖊 Pen 🖊

Do you prefer to write with pens or pencils? Pens. Easier to handle.

What color ink pen do you write with the most? Black.

Where do you normally buy pens? I'd go to the local bookstore chain.

What was the last thing you wrote down? I was logging in as a guest at Bea's condo.

Do you enjoy writing? Do you enjoy how it feels as your hand glides across the page? ✍️ I like writing. My wrist just gets tired too quickly so I don't do it a lot, but when I'm in my element I definitely enjoy how passionate I can get.

🗑 Trash Can 🗑

What do you call a trash can? Do you call it a trash can, wastebasket, rubbish bin, garbage can, or something else? I call it a trash can, the trash, or the Filipino word for it. 

Do you need to take the trash out soon? Nah, not so much a need for it yet.

What day is trash pick-up day in your city? Monday, if I'm not mistaken.

Are there things you are holding onto that you probably should just throw away? There are some I can think of, yes.

When was the last time you took the trash out? A few days ago. My sister and I alternate.

📋 Clipboard 📋

Do you own a clipboard? I used to.

When was the last time you had to sign a paper that was attached to a clipboard? Long long long ago. I want to say college.

Have you ever held a clipboard just to make yourself look more official? No, but I am reminded by someone who'd do this haha.

Do you have neat handwriting? Yeah. I get complimented on it fairly regularly so I guess it must be nice to some extent.

Would you rather write in cursive or print? Print.

📆 Calendar 📅

What is today's date? April 20th.

How many months are there until your birthday? 🥳 24 hours.

How old will you turn on your next birthday? This

Do you have a calendar on your wall? If so, what is this month's calendar picture? I have a 2023 BTS calendar on disply, but I never updated it after June lol.

Are you counting down the days to anything? I'm counting down the hours til my birthday!

What is your favorite season? We don't have the four easons.

🗒 Spiral Notepad 🗒

When was the last time you used a spiral notepad? Can I answer for notebook instead? I can't even remember the last time I used a spiral notepad lol. Anyway, for notebook – a few months ago when I felt like writing a poem.

Do you own a spiral notepad? Still for notebook. I do – it's my (former) college notebook. Back in college I had this notebook that had 5983738573948 pages in them because I thought I was gonna be scribbling down notes in every single class. Well some classes I took ended up not being note-heavy, so I was left with a notebook that was only half-filled haha.

A few years after graduating I ripped out all the pages that had lessons in them so it could feel like a new notebook again. I use it every now and then in case I feel like writing.

Would you rather write or draw? ✍️ Write.

Do you make to-do lists? I have a spreadsheet I use absolutely religiously for my work to-do list.

What are/were three items on your to-do list for today? I needed to finish a press release that I'd been holding off all week; finish a post-event report deck; and review a couple of videos produced by someone we outsourced so we could send it to a client for their sign-off.

What is something you did yesterday (or today) that you really enjoyed? Played looooooots and lots and lots of Rhythm Hive.

What is something that you've been putting off, if there's anything? Dyeing my hair purple again.

Are you thankful that your life story is still being written? Yes. I'm turning 26, so I'm only in like season 2 of Friends haha. I've got time.

⏰ Alarm Clock ⏰

What time do you usually wake up in the morning? Anywhere between 7:30 - 8:30 AM. 

Is your bed made right now? Not perfectly. I didn't prop up the pillows properly since I was in a hurry to get to work.

Do you wake up to an alarm, or do you wake up naturally? I wake up naturally. Alarms don't wake me 80% of the time :/

Do you normally follow a schedule, or are you more spontaneous? I like some level of stability, and it's only when things are more or less in order that I'd feel comfortable with going spontaneous.

Do you prefer to follow a schedule or be spontaneous? Follow a sched as much as possible, but again I'm not closed off from spontaneity.

Do you have a clock on your wall? Nope.

What do you normally use to tell time? Do you use your phone, computer, wristwatch, the sun ☀️, a wall clock, a bedside alarm clock, or something else? Phone. We also have a clock in the dining room.

💡 Lightbulb 💡

How many lamps can you see from where you're sitting right now? One.

When was the last time you changed a lightbulb? Never have.

Have you ever used your phone as a flashlight? 📱 Hundreds of times. 

Do you own a flashlight? 🔦 We have one at home in case of brownouts. On my own, I have my phone and my BTS lightstick HAHAHA

How many lightbulbs can you see from where you're sitting right now? Two.

💿🗄💻📆🗂 Final Questions! 🗃📋🖇📠💾

Do you work in an office? We have an office but we're on a permanent WFH setup. We have a mandatory office day once a month, but anyone's free to book the place for use if they feel like working onsite for the day.

Have you ever had an office job? If so, did/do you like it? If you haven't had an office job, do you think you would like one? I'm currently technically in an office job. It's okay. I like the stability. There's always going to be a bit of a love-hate relationship with it, so I try to address it by striking the balance between passion and burnout and finally learning how to set boundaries.

What is your favorite thing to do on a computer? 💻 Take these surveys, heh.

Would you rather own a desktop computer or laptop computer? 💻🖥 Laptop.

What is your dream job? Doing PR for WWE.

Do you prefer writing something down or typing something up on a computer? There are things to each I like, so I don't have a preference. I like that typing is easier and is a lot lot quicker; but I like how much more personal handwriting something is.

Do you own a desk? If so, what does it look like? What do you have on top of it? Yup. I just have my lamp and work laptop on it, as well as a pen holder wih some pens + notepads from my Layover albums haha. During the day it will also have a cup of coffee.

What do you think is your favorite emoji among the ones on this survey? The CD one is quite pretty.