#thinking out loud mostly but hey this onion has layers

[goldieclaws]

I can't remember the dialogue exactly during the birthday party in Mouthwashing bc I'm tired lol but I saw a comment mention how Jimmy is/could have been an ex-convict and, for me at least, it would explain why he started insulting Curly and saying Curly had it better than all of them bc every time i went through that scene I was a little confused why he'd say that when he and Curly are supposed to be 'friends' of some description lol

(and yeah Jimmy is indeed a massive cunt so I shouldn't be surprised he'd react with anger in some way, but I feel like it adds another layer as to why Curly was complicit with Jimmy's behaviour before the crash (maybe he thinks he owes Jimmy bc he vouched for Jimmy when no one else did idk) and why Jimmy also thought crashing the ship was the only answer (didn't want to go back to prison after the truth of Anya's pregnancy came out because he knew he'd have his shit absolutely rocked))

[p-artsypants]

Integrity

Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions.

-

Overwhelmed with her responsibilities, guilt, and drama, Marinette has an emotional breakdown in front of everyone, and even hands over her earrings in a moment of weakness. Only for a few seconds, but the damage was done. Adrien’s pretty quick on the uptake like that.

I got this idea from a sermon a few weeks ago. It was supposed to just be a one shot, and then it got out of hand. This will have maybe two more chapters.

FF.net | Ao3

—

Nino would feel guilty in the days to come after unconsciously making her burst into tears, Marinette knew. It wasn’t actually his fault, but there was so many layers to this onion that she couldn’t explain it if she wanted to.

I had been a simple request. He was going on to create a sequel of Horrificator, with Mylene and Ivan starring again. He had simply asked if she would be able to create a costume that matched the akuma on film, though it didn’t need to be perfect, since they’d be filming it Blair Witch style.

Before she could even respond, Lila had butted her head into the conversation and said something along the lines of ‘oh my father’s college roommate is a famous monster movie costume designer! He could totally whip something up for you!’

Her butting in hadn’t been the problem. Marinette was totally used to it now. She practically expected it.

“Oh that’s awesome, Lila!” Alya had chirped. “That would be so amazing!”

“Yeah dude! We’re going to start filming soon, so if you could reach out to him and give me an answer about it, that would be awesome!”

“Of course! And that way you don’t need to bother Marinette. She always so busy in the bakery…”

“I would have loved to do the costume.” Marinette clarified. “It really isn’t a problem. So if this falls through, let me know, okay?”

“Thanks Marinette!” Nino beamed.

Then Lila smirked. And Marinette sensed that she had sealed her own doom.

How? Easy.

Lila would put off on confessing that her contact was busy, and then Marinette would be forced to work too quickly and do a half-assed job, or reject it completely.

Making her look like a flake, or a bad designer.

She rolled her eyes at the thought, and took out her sketchbook and pulled up the Ladyblog on her phone. Of course Lila had no contact. There was no reason to wait for a response. She’d might as well just get started on it now.

“It’s so cool that you know so many people, Lila!” Alya said from her side.

“Oh, I try not to think about it too much. I don’t want to be a braggart.”

Marinette bit her tongue, trying not to respond.

From in front of her, Adrien had leaned his head on his arm, on her desk, watching her work. “That’s smart.” He said softly. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“Thanks Adrien.” She smiled at him, a little solemnly. Her stuttering was mostly gone now. She was trying to be a good friend and let him go for Kagami’s sake. But it was so hard! Especially since they weren’t official yet.

Alya sat next to her, ignoring her ‘jealousy’ to her classmate. “Girl, before you came around, Marinette was doing everything around here! Now we’ve got you so we can pull from all different talent pools!”

Except they weren’t. It was still Marinette.

Doing everything. As class representative, as craftsman, as liaison, as a tutor, and even a therapist. She was constantly bending over backwards to help.

And still no one appreciated her. Now she was working with shorter deadlines, and less respect. More skepticism and less mercy.

Everyone was taking advantage of her, and she was too nice to put a stop to it.

Or too naïve to notice it was even happening in the first place.

Of course, this was all on top of her guardian and Ladybug duties, which was already a full time job. And also a full time student, with remarkable grades!

And she was expected to do her chores and help out part time in the bakery.

She couldn’t remember the last time she designed something for herself.

“Of course,” clarified Nino, who had been sitting on his desk, “when you’re working with famous people, things don’t always work out. That’s why it’s nice to have Marinette around! She’s so clever! She always finds a solution!”

It was supposed to be a compliment. He was trying to let her know they still liked her and needed her.

But it came to a screeching halt with Nino’s words.

“Marinette?” Adrien asked, noticing the tears first.

She covered her mouth, lest she sob out loud and get too much attention.

But the concern in Adrien’s voice had already grabbed the attention of those around her.

“Girl...” Alya said with far too much pity. “There’s no reason to get upset.”

“Yeah Marinette.” Said Lila, with fake sympathy. “I know you want to be helpful, but you’re only one person. There’s no reason to be jealous. You can’t master everything!”

“Lila, maybe you should stop talking.” Adrien said patiently. “You know she doesn’t like you.”

“And I can’t imagine why! I’ve only ever been nice to her!”

Alya winced. “It’s...complicated.”

Lila gasped. “You’re not still jealous because of Adrien are you? After all, he’s dating Kagami, and she’s your friend! That’s not fair to me, Marinette!”

Any minute now, Marinette was going to burst into gut wrenching, uncontrollable sobbing. And she would rather do it as Ladybug so she could snatch up the Akuma before they landed. Classes were over for the day anyway. She had just stayed behind to attempt to socialize with her friends for just a few minutes.

Looked like that was in vain.

She stood, “I have to go.”

Alya grabbed her wrist. “No you don’t. Let’s just sit and talk this out.”

Lila continued to twist the knife. “Yeah Marinette. Let’s air our grievances like adults. We can be friends.”

But Marinette frantically scooped her belongings into her bag, holding onto every shred of dignity that she could, while Lila continued to rip it away from her.

“Can’t you see how your stubbornness is hurting your friends? You’re causing a lot of unnecessary drama.”

“Lila’s right, you know. Acting like this is really hurtful to me.” Said Alya, still full of sympathy.

She should have stayed silent, but her anguish spoke for her. “I’ve told you again and again that I don’t like Lila because she’s a liar. No one believes me, so there’s no point in talking about it!” Her voice cracked at the end.

“Marinette, we know Lila has a condition that causes her to misremember information. That doesn’t mean she’s maliciously lying!”

Marinette shook with untapped rage. She was a ticking time bomb. “She is though. She threatened me. I warned her that her lies were going to catch up to her, and she said that she was going to war with me. To take my friends away from me!”

“How dare you!” Lila shouted, with a pathetic snivel.

She was overacting, to be honest.

“You did that to me! How dare you try to make me the villain?! I was willing to let it go, but apparently, you’re worse than I believed!”

“Are you sure you aren’t misremembering that too, Lila?” Marinette bit.

“I could never forget the attempt someone made on my life! You gave me nightmares! You threatened to kill me! All because I was talking to the boy you were in love with—no! Obsessed with!”

“Marinette!”

“That’s awful!”

“Why would you do such a thing?!”

But Marinette didn’t respond, knowing that it was futile, just shouldered her backpack, half empty coffee cup in hand.

Adrien, bless his heart, packed up with her. “I’ll walk with you,” he offered.

Eloquence was not on her side, nor was grace or kindness. All that was holding her together was the utter desire to get away. “Leave me alone!” She shouted, before leaving.

Or, attempting to leave. She was short on the step and slipped, thrusting her coffee cup forward and right onto Lila.

“Ow!!” Lila cried, as the day-old lukewarm coffee hit her. “It burns!!”

Marinette, who wasn’t buying the pain, did feel guilt for spilling coffee. Because even if it wasn’t hot, it still stained. “Oh my gosh, I’m so so sorry Lila! That was an accident! Let me run home, I’ll get you a change of clothes!”

“You did that on purpose!” Lila sobbed, holding her arm. “I think it might be third degree!! Ow!”

“Marinette, seriously? What’s wrong with you? You’re out of control girl!” Alya scolded. “We need to tell the principal about this!”

“What? No! That was a complete accident! But the coffee is from this morning, it shouldn’t even be warm—“

“Come on Lila, let’s go see the nurse!” Rose, ever vigilant and noble, grabbed the lying girl and escorted her out of the room.

Marinette stood there quaking. Stupid. Unfair. Cruel. Why had fate turned everything against her? Why was everything unraveling?

Why did she mess up with every step?

“Marinette—“ Alya started.

Furious, and not quite herself, Marinette poured the rest of the coffee on the desk, on Alya’s hand.

“Hey!”

“She’s a liar! She’s always been a liar, and that’s all she’ll ever be!” Then she finally stalked out of the room.

Alya scoffed with a shake of her head. “God, bitterness is so ugly.”

“I’m going after her.” Adrien stated, making sure he had everything.

“Dude, leave it. Marinette’s always upset these days. Don’t worry about it. If what Lila says is true, we should just let her go. We should be more concerned about Lila.”

Though Alya didn’t quite share the sentiment as she touched the puddle of cold coffee on the desk. “Well...Lila might be being a little dramatic, or it could be shock. Either way, it’s just another day of drama. Marinette just needs to calm down. Even if she did have a lapse of judgement, that doesn’t mean we can’t just let bygones be bygones.”

Always upset these days? Was she really? How much of a friend to her was he if he had never noticed before?

Ignoring his other friends, Adrien left the classroom, hoping to catch up to her.

She was in the locker room, packing up her bag while she trembled and hiccuped.

“Marinette?” He asked.

“Please leave me alone.” She whispered.

He frowned, coming closer. “I don’t think I want to.”

“I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Like how?”

She shrugged her shoulders miserably. “Weak? Ugly? Pathetic? Take your pick!”

“What? Because you’re crying? That’s not weak at all. And you want to see an ugly crier? I’m an ugly crier.”

“I highly doubt that.” She whispered.

“No really! I get all snotty and hiccupy. When you cry...your eyes get all sparkly.”

Adrien had seconds to brace himself as her lips trembled, before she started to sob.

“Hey...” he reached out for her, wrapping his arms around her slowly so she could pull away. But instead, she just returned the hug, burying her face in his shoulder.

He could feel her tears leaking through. Still, he just held her, rubbing her back gently.

Suddenly, a switch flipped and she shoved him away. “No! No I can’t!”

“Marinette?” He asked, startled.

“It’s not fair! I can’t take comfort from you!”

“Sure you can!” He laughed incredulously. “I’m here for you, Marinette.”

“It’s not fair to Kagami!”

“Kagami? She’d want me to comfort my friend.”

Marinette trembled. “No! It’s more than that! You’re with her and I can’t cry on you because I don’t want to hurt her because I’m in love with you and it’s not fair to take advantage of you! It’s not fair that you don’t know that!”

His eyes blew wide. “You...what? Lila was telling the truth?”

Marinette made a horrible choking sound as she realized what she blurted. “No no no...no this can’t be happening. I didn’t, no I—I’m just a fan! I love you, like a friend! Like—like—!” She sobbed. “Ugh! I’m ruining everything! Everything is falling apart! Why am I so stupid?!”

Adrien grabbed her arm tightly, almost painfully. “Marinette, we need to go.”

She looked up sharply, seeing that he wasn’t looking at her.

He was looking at the black butterfly crawling through the edge of the window.

“No, you—you’ve got things to do. I’ll go—“

He squeezed her tighter, “you’re crazy if you think I’m leaving you alone.”

“But—“

“Come on!” He yanked her, pulling her out from the locker room and into the courtyard, where students were milling about. Including their classmates.

“Oh Marinette—“ began Alya.

“Shut up!” Adrien retaliated.

“No!” Marinette dug her heels in as a purple light formed a mask over her face.

Adrien didn’t let go. Couldn’t let go. He didn’t see where the Akuma had landed. Her bag? Her hair ties?

Marinette trembled. “I—I can’t. I won’t!”

Adrien turned to her, cupping her cheeks in his hands. “Marinette? Marinette listen to me. Look at me. You don’t need him, okay? You’re smart, and wonderful, and kind. He’s not going to help you. He’s lying to you. You hate liars, right?”

Marinette nodded mutely.

“Then tell him to piss off!”

“I can’t—“ she choked. “I can’t be akumatized. I can’t!”

“And you won’t!” Adrien argued. “There’s always a solution, no matter how bleak or overwhelming. And I will help you fix this!”

Marinette clenched her eyes shut, every muscle in her body coiled tight.

Then she whispered out, in a very even tone, “Hawkmoth, leave me alone.”

The light disappeared, and the black butterfly flew away.

For a few moments, everyone was tense, still, and silent, the only sounds coming from Marinette as she stifled her cries. Adrien moved his hands from her face down to hold her hands.

Then she collapsed, and started wailing.

Powerful, horrible, heartbreaking wails. The wails of hopelessness, fear, and loneliness, bubbling and bursting out of her like a waterfall. On and on, she just screamed, not caring who heard or saw.

The crowd was at a cross between embarrassed and concerned. Some wanted to give her privacy, some wanted to just leave. Either way, everyone eventually trickled away. Her classmates leaving last.

Adrien crouched, sitting beside her. Close enough she could lean on him if need be, but far enough away for her to pretend she had privacy. But he kept his hand on the back of her neck, moving across her shoulders occasionally for support.

“Marinette,” he moaned, once they were alone. “I know you must need to cry…but I can’t bare to watch this…do you want to talk about it? What happened? This isn’t just about what just happened in the classroom. Although that didn’t help...”

“It’s Lila!” She screamed. “And-And Alya! And you! And Master Fu! And Luka—And And—!” She wailed, her words turning into moans.

“Whoa whoa whoa what?”

She just wailed harder.

He exhaled slowly. “Okay, that’s a lot to unpack…” He glanced around, taking note of the lack of people. Fencing started soon, but he was obviously skipping.

“Marinette? Don’t you want to go to your house?” He asked softly.

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to do!”

“Hey, hey, let’s breathe together. Okay?” At least she wasn’t screaming anymore.

She hiccuped a few times, but finally took a deep breath along with Adrien.

“Okay.” He said, smiling at her. “You’re doing great. Now let’s slowly talk things out. Once we know what we need to do, we can take care of your problems in little chunks.”

“I can’t tell you my problems!” She yelled, clenching her fists. “That’s the whole problem! I can’t tell anyone! Not my parents! Not my friends, not—“ she cupped her hands over her mouth, holding back a sob.

“Oh Marinette...”

“No! No I can’t do this anymore! I’m 15! I can’t handle this kind of pressure! I’ve ruined all of it! Paris needs someone better, and I can’t even handle my own problems let alone everything else demanded of me.” She fumbled with her earrings, before slapping them down in his hand. “You take them! They’re your responsibility now! I quit!”

A flash of pink took over the earrings as they went from the plain black stones she wore, to the flat gray stubs he saw as his stint as Mister Bug.

He choked.

His reaction snapped her out of her hysteria. “I shouldn’t have done that! I should not have—!” She swiped the earrings back and put them back on with fumbling hands. “I need to go before anything else happens! I’m a walking disaster!”

“Hey, whoa whoa whoa, Marinette—“

“No, stop talking!” She snapped. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to yell. I’m just—panicking.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” He sighed, and then took her hand in his. “Look, let’s get out of here. We’ll go to your house.”

“But—But don’t you—aren’t you—will someone be looking for you?”

“I have fencing.”

“I don’t want you to be late!”

“Marinette! I’m skipping!”

“Really?”

“Yes! You’re way more important to me then some stupid sport!”

“But—“

He helped her to her feet. “I’ll text Kagami so she can cover for me. Don’t worry about it, Marinette.”

“...I just don’t want to burden you.”

“You’re not. I’m promise, you’re not.”

She gripped his sleeve. “You can’t tell Kagami, or—or anyone. Please Adrien, I didn’t mean to say it. It’s not...not that I don’t trust you. I’m just...” she sighed in frustration. She was so overwhelmed, words weren’t coming the way she wanted them to.

“Marinette, I get it.” He assured, taking hold of the hand gripping him. “You trusted me with the snake, even though I failed back then, I never breathed a word of it to anyone. I’m not going to say anything. See, I’ve already forgotten what you said.”

She managed a watery giggle. “Thanks Adrien.”

“Now come on. Let’s go talk somewhere private.”

Resigned, Marinette allowed Adrien to tug her along. On the front steps, students were milling around, having evacuated the courtyard. Adrien didn’t say a word to anyone, while Marinette kept her eyes firmly on the ground.

Once they were away from the school, Tikki peered out of the bag, taking note of the fat tears rolling down Marinette’s cheeks. She was spiraling again, assuming the worst.

But Chat Noir was here, and they’d work everything out.

In the bakery, however, things reached a fever pitch as Lila, still wet with coffee, stood at the counter, talking to Sabine.

The conversation halted as the little bell above the door chimed.

Lila just looked at them and smirked, her face turned away from Sabine.

“Thank you for telling me, young lady. I’ll handle everything.” The woman said, edge in her voice.

Lila nodded pitifully and walked passed them to the door.

As she passed Adrien, she whispered, “I’m going to your father next.” And then left without a rebuttal.

Marinette looked at him, wide-eyed and horrified. “Did she just—?”

“Adrien,” Sabine said sternly. “Thank you for escorting Marinette home. But I have to ask you to leave. I need a word with my daughter.”

Adrien panicked for a moment, not sure how to navigate this situation. He never talked back to authority figures.

Well, not as Adrien. But his Lady was in danger, so Adrien was going to sit this one out, and let his Chat Noir persona deal with it. He held up a hand. “Mrs. Cheng. I don’t know what Lila just told you, and frankly, I don’t want to know.” His tone was stern and demanding, one he adopted from his father in the most cutthroat situations. It was scary, to Sabine and Marinette. “Lila Rossi is a liar and has been harassing Marinette for a while now. She’s the one responsible for her expulsion, and lying to get it reversed as well. I’ve spent the last—“ he took out his phone to look at the time. God. “I’ve spent the last hour holding Marinette while she cried. That gave Lila plenty of time to come here and do damage.”

Sabine just stared between him and Marinette. “Marinette, is this true?”

She could only sniff and nod.

“Madam Cheng?” He said, a little softer. “My father doesn’t trust me. I never did anything to warrant that treatment, but he doesn’t. It hurts that I don’t have an adult I can turn to when I need help. Don’t be like that to Marinette.”

Sabine gasped a little. It was harsh, of course, but seein0g Marinette—his lady—so broken was stirring up some ugly emotions in him.

“I’m not leaving.” He told her. “Marinette needs me.”

“Of course dear. Thank you so much. I found it hard to believe that Marinette would become violent with anyone, but after that ridiculous expulsion, I didn’t know what to believe. I’m not at school, I know Marinette, but—“ she shook her head.

“I tripped.” Marinette whispered. “The coffee was cold. It was an accident.”

“Now that, I believe,” Sabine hummed fondly. “Madam Rossi probably deserves a phone call. Why don’t you two go up to her room? I’ll bring up some tea in a bit.”

Adrien massively sighed. “Thank you Madam Cheng. And...sorry for being rude.”

“You were stern. It was important.” She walked over and hugged her daughter, petting her hair. “Marinette, I’m so sorry for making you feel like you couldn’t talk to me about this. I trust you, both of us do.” She kissed her head. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help every once in a while, okay?”

Marinette could only nod against her.

“I’ll let you two go. When you’re calmer, you can tell me what happened, if you want. Either way, I’ll disregard what that girl said.”

“Thank you, Maman.” Marinette whispered.

“Of course baby.” She kissed her forehead tenderly.

Then Adrien took Marinette’s hand again and pulled her away upstairs.

Once in her room, Marinette sat on her chaise, pulling her legs up to her chest. She was silent.

Adrien grabbed a blanket from her bed, and wrapped it around her shoulders, then sat by her side and pulled her to lean against him.

“Whenever you’re ready to talk, I’m here to listen.”

She whimpered. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“...of saying something I’m not supposed to. I wasn’t supposed to tell you about...any of that. It just all came out.”

“Sounds like you’ve been bottling yourself up. That’s not healthy, Marinette.”

She pushed away from him, standing, her back to him. “I’m sorry, Adrien. I really appreciate you being here with me, but...it’s just too dangerous. And, like I said, it’s not fair to Kagami.”

Adrien huffed, his bangs fluttering over his forehead. “Marinette...I’m just trying to help.”

“And I appreciate that, but I can handle it.” Then quietly, more to herself. “I have to handle it.”

Swallowing a growl, he looked at his stubborn lady. “What about Chat Noir?”

She hunched her shoulders. “What about him?”

“Have you talked this out with him? Does he know you’re struggling?” He knew the answer, but he was curious to what she would say. Would she lie?

Her hiccups and sniffles weren’t exactly what he was expecting, but it wasn’t surprising. “He’s already so disappointed with me!”

“What?” He stood too, whirling to face her. “What are you talking about?”

“It was written all over his face during the last fight! He knows I gave away my mentor’s identity! I’m the reason Chloé got upset! And I keep stringing him along!” She sobbed. “He had to do everything in that last fight! I couldn’t plan, or think or—or do anything! And he hasn’t talked to me since!”

Adrien’s warm hands landed on her shoulders. “Marinette, Ladybug, you know that’s not true right? Chat’s your partner. He’d never be disappointed in you!”

“How do you know?”

He shrugged. It wasn’t the right time to reveal himself. She was already dealing with so much. Surely revealing himself would cause another spiral. “I just do.”

She shook her head in disbelief.

He pulled her back down to the chaise to sit, and rested a warm hand on her back. Then he eased her over to lean against his shoulder again.

“I won’t say a thing. I’m not Adrien, I’m not anyone. Just a pillow with ears. Why don’t you talk it all out. And once you’re done, I’ll stuff this day far into the back reaches of my mind where no one will find it. All your secrets are safe with me.”

Marinette started to relax against him, despite the absolute panic of being close to her crush. He was warm, and his arms held her securely. She felt safe.

Tikki made her appearance, coming out of Marinette’s bag that had been set on her desk. “Marinette?”

Marinette only looked back at her, ashamed and embarrassed.

“It’s alright. You can trust Adrien,” is what she said. Not, “you‘ve failed and I hate you. How dare you!” There was no judgement, no reprimanding. Just comfort.

She wanted to cry again, but Adrien petted her head, a soothing rhythm.

With a shuddering breath, she began, “Lila’s been threatening me. I knew she was lying because I’m Ladybug. I didn’t like that she was using my name to get close to you. I saw her getting away with all these other lies too because no one bothered to fact check her. It was frustrating that every time I urged Alya to listen, she wrote me off as jealous. I’m not jealous of her. I have no reason to be. But because I have a...crippling crush on you—“ she bit her lip.

Adrien gave no reaction.

She continued, “—I was automatically deemed jealous because she was talking to you. Lila confronted me in the bathroom, fake concerned about my well being when I was moved to the back of the classroom. But when I told her I knew she was lying, and that everyone would figure her out, she threatened me. She said she was going to make me her enemy, that my friends would leave me behind and you’d—you’d be with her. I tried to ignore it, and take the high road like you suggested, but...”

“Did you tell anyone she threatened you?”

“...no.”

“Why?”

“I was so scared Alya would treat it like every other thing I said to her about Lila. She’d pass it off as jealousy. She’s supposed to be my best friend but she doesn’t believe me!!”

“Forget about Alya then. If she doesn’t believe you, then that’s her fault. You’ve got nothing to prove. What about anyone else?”

Marinette shuttered. “I thought...no one would believe me.”

“Even me?”

She pushed away from him, hugging herself, the guilt starting to creep back in. “I can barely talk to you...how was I supposed to tell you I was being threatened?”

“That’s fair, I guess. I just...I could have helped you.”

She was quiet, hugging her arms to her chest. “I...didn’t think about it. It was my problem to deal with. And I’m not great at asking for help. I’m sorry.”

“Aw, you don’t need to apologize for that Marinette. You didn’t do anything wrong. Lila’s the one with the stick up her ass.”

Marinette giggled. She had never heard Adrien swear before.

Suddenly, Adrien’s phone rang, interrupting the conversation. He sighed heavily. “Gee, I wonder who that could be.” He took it out, and saw Nathalie’s name. “I’m sorry, I have to take this. Then you can have my full attention.”

She highly doubted that, but nodded him on.

He answered, “hi Nathalie.”

“Adrien, your father wants you home immediately. Considering that you answered, I’m assuming that you’re not in practice anymore...or maybe you never went.”

Adrien swallowed, but realized there was no point in arguing. Not with her at least. “Put my father on, please.”

“You can talk to him when you come home.”

“This is urgent, Nathalie, give the phone to my father.” He couldn’t keep the bite out of his tone, but allowed his protectiveness to take the reins, filling him with adrenaline.

“One moment.”

The phone went quiet before Gabriel’s voice cut in, “Adrien, I want you home. Now. You are in danger with that girl—“

“Do you trust me?”

Gabriel sighed, “I’d trust you more if you did as I asked.”

“No, father, I need to know if you will listen to me and believe me when I have something important to tell you.”

“Yes yes,” he said, and Adrien could imagine him flipping his hand. “What is it, Adrien? What is so important?”

“Lila Rossi has been sexually harassing me.” He blurted. Not the argument he was planning on making, but one that might make his father listen to him.  

Gabriel paused before asking, “what?” All anger in his voice had evaporated, which was new.

“She touches me without my permission. And she threatens any other girls that get close to me. I don’t know what she told you about Marinette, but she’s been threatening her for a while. Marinette had a break down at school. I’m trying to comfort her.”

A pair of slender arms wrapped around his waist from behind in a gentle hug. She rested her cheek against his spine. Adrien rested a hand over hers, appreciating the comfort.

For once, Gabriel didn’t respond. Adrien took that as a cue to keep going.

“I don’t feel safe around Lila. She lies to people to get her way. She got Marinette expelled almost effortlessly. I’m scared that she’ll do something like that to me. To us. What’s stopping her from accusing me of sexual harassment or worse?” He swallowed. “Please don’t make me model with her anymore.”

Gabriel continued to be silent, and Adrien took it as quiet contemplation.

Finally, Gabriel responded. “You’re concerns are valid. You make very good points. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”

Adrien exhaled in a whoosh.

“I will be working through dinner, so you may stay with the Dupain-Chengs if they’ll have you. Just be home by 8. I’d like to talk with you more about this then.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Thank you for being honest with me, son.” And he hung up.

Adrien took a shaky breath as Marinette pulled away from him. “Sorry for the hug, I know you were just talking about being sexually harassed—I just know that was a hard conversation to have and—“

“Marinette.” He stopped her, holding her hand. “It’s more than okay. You can hug me whenever you like. I don’t mind.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” He smiled. “Your hugs, whether intentional or not, are nice.”

She blushed.

“I-I mean...Lila and Chloe hang on me, or clamp down like...like a pair of handcuffs. You hold me. Sure, but gentle enough I can pull away. It’s nice.”

Still blushing, and unable to look him in the eye, she hugged him again, hiding her face in his chest.

He gathered her close, savoring her touch. He had found her. Finally. Of course, it was in a horrible way, and she didn’t know who he was. But he found her, and he still loved her without the mask. That’s more than he ever could have asked for.

“Your hugs are really nice too.” She mumbled into his shirt.

He snickered, imagining her reaction if he was Chat. He couldn’t help but think it would be a little different. “Alright,” he pulled away slightly. “My problems are on hold. Let’s get back to you. Let’s get back to what caused you to cry in class. What got you so suddenly upset? Because you started crying before Lila blurted out all that stuff. Was it Lila making another bogus offer?”

She shook her head. “No...it’s stupid.”

“It’s obviously not stupid if it made you cry.”

She sighed, but didn’t pull away this time. Her walls began to crumble, since he was Adrien and he was so kind.

“It wasn’t Lila. It was actually Nino.”

“Nino? Really? What did he do? Do you need me to kick his butt?”

She smiled softly. “No, he didn’t do it on purpose. I think it was supposed to be a compliment...”

“And that was...?”

“He said that it was nice to have me around when things fail because I always have the solution.” Her eyes watered as she spoke.

“Oh. Hmm. I guess I don’t really see why that would have bothered you? I mean, you are really smart and clever, and quick too! You always know what to do.”

“But I don’t!” She threw her arms in the air and began to pace. “That’s just it! I can come up with problem solvers when facing an Akuma! And occasionally I have good ideas for dealing with school problems! But right now? I don’t know what the heck I’m doing!” She shouted, a few tears leaking out. “My mentor is gone, and it’s my fault! I gave away his identity to Hawkmoth and he in turn gave up his memories to protect me and Chat! Now I’m the guardian of the Miraculous and I’m only 15! So not only do I have to deal with that big mess, but I have to deal with balancing being a full time student and superhero without letting anyone catch onto what’s happening, which requires a lot of lying, which I hate doing!! And now with Lila making these bogus claims and no one listening to me, I’m left scrambling to pick up the mess she makes because I’m the class representative and I’m terrified of disappointing my friends more! I’m already on thin ice with the class and being a social outcast might just break me! So I have to put aside my own problems to deal with Paris and my fickle classmates. I just keep watching you grow farther away, and Chat become more and more disappointed and heartbroken, and Luka become more impatient and I don’t even have the emotional energy to decide which one hurts me more!” She outright sobbed.

“Marinette...” Adrien breathed, not able to say much else.

“Just for once, I want my problems to just—solve themselves. Because I’m so tired and I’m so scared! I messed up so badly today—what about tomorrow? What if my next break down is in front of Hawkmoth?”

Adrien stood slowly, approaching her like a wild animal. “Hey...if it’s any consolation, you are completely justified in having this break down. This is an unbelievable amount of stress you have. I’m surprised you didn’t crack earlier.”

“I did. Right before Miracle Queen. Luka found me then. I felt awful for crying on him, because I know he cares about me...but I just don’t feel the same. I like him, I really do, but I can’t—“ she shook her head. “I’m just leading him on at this point. I’m so terrible.”

“I know exactly how you feel.”

She looked up at him, seeing the sympathy in his eyes. He looked miserable.

“That’s exactly how I feel about Kagami.”

Marinette wiped the tears from her cheek. “What?”

“She said that my indecision hurt her, which I get but...I can’t just stop loving—“ he turned red, and turned his face away, “sorry, we’re focusing on your problems. Not mine.”

“No, don’t. Adrien, who are you in love with, if not Kagami?”

The desperation in her voice forced him to look at her. He felt extremely embarrassed and guilty. All this time, he declared he’d know her anywhere, and yet how was he supposed to explain that he looked right passed her?

“Um...” he said smartly.

“Please?”

“It’s...you. I’m in love with you.”

She choked, her face turning red. “You...are? But I thought...”

“Ladybug, you. To be more precise. But now that I know who you are, the feelings are the same. Or possibly even stronger. Just so you know. It’s not just some silly celebrity thing.”

She opened her mouth, preparing to speak, but the words were stuck, her throat dry.

“Marinette...” he took her hands gently. “You are amazing, brave, smart, and kind. You’re my hero, and while you are going through some really hard stuff right now, you have something that Lila and Hawkmoth don’t.”

“A life?”

He chuckled, “well, yes. But I was going to say integrity.”

“Integrity?”

“Yeah. Willingness to help others even when you have bad days. Doing your best to keep promises. Being someone dependable, honest, and selfless. It might be exhausting, but in the end, you’ll be still standing when everyone else’s messes fall down around you.”

Her shoulders sagged as she let out a whoosh of air. “That’s really sweet, Adrien. But...” she hugged herself. “You told me it didn’t matter as long as you and I knew the truth. That I should take the high road and her lies would catch up to her. Well, I almost got expelled, so it obviously isn’t working.”

“Right, yes. And I’m sorry,” he clarified. “When I gave you that advice the first time, I didn’t know she threatened you. I thought it just bothered you that she was lying in general. I’m not saying you have to lay down like a dog anymore, I’m just saying that you have an advantage on her. And your character is your foundation. If you were a terrible person, and she was lying about you, there would be no reason for anyone to doubt her. But because you are so amazing, someone’s going to notice. And if they don’t, that’s not your fault. I will help you come up with a way to solve this problem, I promise.”

She sighed again, this time in relief. “Thank you Adrien. That means a lot.”

“Now,” he began, starting to pace himself. “I’m not sure what I can do to help you with the Miraculous. Given that I was a terrible temporary holder, and I’m not even supposed to know about this—“

“You don’t need to help me there.” She sighed, but in a gentle way, that sounded relaxed and okay. “If we can get the Lila situation under control, I think I’ll be able to handle guardianship a lot more.”

“What about Chat? Can he take some responsibilities?”

She groaned. “That’s another one of my problems. He’s so...”

Adrien held his breath, ready to take whatever terrible trait she had honed in on.

“...so wonderful.”

Huh. Not expected, but not unwelcomed!

“He’s goofy, and impatient, and goes overboard sometimes, but he has such a good heart and encourages me. So during that last fight...it broke me to see him step up and take control while I just spiraled.”

“You’re a team though. He should be able to take control when you’re unable to.”

“I know, but it shouldn’t be when I’m having an existential crisis! Just when I’m hurt or sick—“

“I’m sure Chat didn’t mind stepping up.”

“How do you know?”

“I mean, I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

Marinette groaned again. “And there again! If I keep rejecting him, he’s just going to get more and more heartbroken, and then he’s going to resent me! And I hate that! I don’t want to be the cause of that!”

Adrien paled. Honestly, he was trying to move on with Kagami. He wasn’t going to let heartbreak turn to resentment. Especially not towards her, who he still adored. That was yesterday’s problem though, things were looking pretty optimistic in the love department now. Though they hadn’t gotten that far yet.

“Marinette, I think if that does happen, it wouldn’t be your fault. I think...Chat should be mature enough to respect your wishes.”

“He has his moments.” She breathed. “Did you know I almost gave up being Ladybug right at the beginning?”

“What?! No way!”

“Yes! But Chat encouraged me. Alya was in danger and that prompted me to put the earrings back on, but Chat actually talked me into being a hero. In my darkest moments, I wonder ‘what would Chat say?’ Sometimes the answer is stupid, but it makes me laugh. And then I hear his encouragement.”

“You care a lot about Chat, don’t you?”

“I love him. He’s my best friend and the best partner I could ask for.”

Adrien’s lovesick grin was probably not the best reaction to her praise of someone else. He shook himself into a more relaxed and normal expression. “Have you guys talked at all since then?”

“No. I have no idea what to say to him.” She plopped down in one of her computer chairs and leaned her head back. “I wish I knew Chinese!”

“What?” Adrien asked at the sudden change in conversation.

“Don’t get me wrong, I know some. But not enough to get me by. My mom offered to teach me some when I was younger, but I was being stubborn and now I regret it! I’ve been trying to learn more since I started training, but I can’t ask my mom for specific phrases, and free apps only get me so far!”

“Why do you need to know Chinese?”

Marinette took a deep breath, and looked at Tikki.

“I mean, he already knows this much, might as well keep going.”

She exhaled. “Alright. The miraculous come with...a manual, of sorts. But it’s all in code. Some of that code is in Chinese, either Mandarin or something else...maybe even ancient Chinese. I don’t know. But I figure being able to read it would help me figure it out.”

“Uh...wasn’t there a temple or something in Tibet that came back? Could you use the Teleportation miraculous to get there?”

Marinette stared at him, wide-eyed. “You...you’re on to something there! Oh but that doesn’t fix my Chinese problem! I know how to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘good morning’ and stuff but not ‘hello, I’m the new Miraculous Guardian in Paris and I don’t know how to read the book. Can you teach me?’”

“Hello, I’m the new Miracle Stone Guardian in Paris and I don’t know how to read the book. Can you teach me?” Adrien said in Mandarin. “At least I think that’s what it is. I said ‘Miracle Stone’ instead of Miraculous, because I think that’s a better translation—“

“Adrien!” Marinette grabbed his face with both hands, squishing his cheeks together. “You speak Mandarin!”

“Yes? Isn’t that what you were getting to? Asking me to be your translator?”

“I didn’t—we couldn’t—“

“Because I’m not supposed to know?” He asked delicately.

Marinette didn’t answer.

“Or because you believe you have to do this on your own?”

She groaned again. “Are you like a mind reader or something?”

He rested a hand on her shoulders and rubbed back and forth. “One of my many talents.”

“But, yes. That is what I’m worried about. I don’t want to get you too involved. I should at least talk to Chat about it.”

“Yeah, I think you should just be honest with him. Just tell him everything.”

“I can’t tell him everything, it would compromise my identity!”

“Um, just out of curiosity…why don’t you two know who the other is?”

“It was a safety measure, in case either one of us got akumatized, or under the control of an akuma. Our master was very strict about it.”

“But, you’re the guardian now. Isn’t it better to know each other? What if something happens to the other? There’s no one that would know who the other is.”

Marinette exhaled. “I’ve been thinking about that too. I just…I don’t know.”

“Okay. Well, I think you should let him in at least a little more. Just talk to him. He should at least know where your head is at.”

“Okay. I’ll start there.”

Adrien’s phone buzzed with a text. “Oh, who is it this time?”

Kagami: Where are you?

“Oh whoops! I needed Kagami to cover for me.”

Adrien: I’m with Marinette. There’s some class drama going on right now. Can you cover for me?

Kagami: Sure! Tell her she’s got me on her side. (Even though I’m not sure what’s going on.)

Kagami: Are you doing anything this weekend? I’d love to get Ice Cream with you! <3

Adrien winced, as he read the newest text.

“Is something wrong?”

“Um, just trying to figure out how to interpret this text. I think Kagami is asking me out.”

Her heart sunk. “Well, um…are you going to go?”

“Not if it’s a date.”

Adrien: As friends?

The little dots popped up, indicating that she was typing.

Kagami: I already told you that your indecision hurts me. Are we a couple or not? Please don’t waste my time.

“Woof. It’s like everyone is falling apart today.”

“What’s wrong? Can I help?”

Adrien smiled at her. “Not to be a complete hypocrite, but I have to handle this on my own. Should I just be blunt and honest?”

“Quite honestly, that seems like Kagami’s language.”

Adrien: I really care about you Kagami, and your friendship is very important to me. I don’t want to lose you. But I can’t be in a relationship with you. I’m very much in love with Marinette, and I just found out she feels the same. But I can’t be with her right now because of…extenuating circumstances. I wouldn’t be fair to you to be with you while I wait until things clear up for her. You deserve to be happy, and I don’t think I can be that person for you. I’m sorry.

“Adrien? Is everything okay?”

“I…I think I’m doing the right thing.”

Kagami: Thank you for your honesty. I wish you had told me sooner. We will remain friends, but I need some time. Tell Marinette I said hi and that I hope she feels better.

Adrien didn’t know how to respond to this very professional reply, so he just didn’t. He had heard you weren’t supposed to break up over text, but they weren’t exactly dating in the first place. More than likely, this conversation would be continued in person. Or she’d never talk to him again.

Instead, he noticed he had another unread text.

Nino: Did you take Marinette home? Is she okay?

Adrien gnawed at his lip. “Are you okay if I tell Nino kind of what the truth is? Besides your identity?”

Marinette shrugged. “If you can convince him, be my guest.” And she took a seat at her desk, pulling out some homework.

Adrien sat in the chair nearby, tapping out an honest reply.

Adrien: I took her home, still with her. She’s not great.

Nino: Alya said that Lila went to tell her mom about what happened. Please tell me she didn’t.

Adrien: She so did.

Nino: Ugghghhhgghhh We told her not to, especially since Alya confirmed that the coffee was cold. Ngl that whole thing at the end was super dramatic

Adrien: Of course. She’s an attention hog, and she demands it however she can get it. That includes lying out of her nose.

Nino: Lowkey bro, I haven’t been believing Lila’s stories for a while. I’ve been going along with it because she’s nice and Alya’s really good friends with her, but today was too much. It was not her place to out Marinette’s crush, especially in front of you. That was dirty

Adrien: Wait really? What made you start doubting her?

Nino: When she could never come through with any of her promises. A few times, sure, celebrities are busy, but every single time she said she’d pull a string, it would fall through. Chloe is more reliable than her. Why do you think I asked Marinette for help first?

Adrien: Boy I’m glad to hear you say that! Marinette’s feeling really overwhelmed because she has to pick up all the plans that Lila ruins.

Nino: Why? It’s not her fault. I love Marinette, but she’s got to stop catering to people.

Adrien: Dude…don’t get mad, but that’s kind of what tipped her over this afternoon. You said something like ‘she always has a solution’. She feels like everyone is depending on her to make things right.

Nino: Aw dude you’re so right! I noticed she started crying when I said that! I just didn’t get why! Aww man!

Adrien: I don’t think she minded helping people, but being asked to help and being expected to help are two totally different things

Nino: For sure dude.

Adrien: You trust me right?

Nino: Yeah dude! You’re my dog bro!

Adrien: Then know what I’m about to tell you is the absolute truth. Lila isn’t just lying for attention. She’s lying maliciously to hurt Marinette on purpose. And not only is she not friends with Ladybug, she HATES her. Chat Noir himself told me that she faked an injury to get him out of a fight and leave Ladybug alone with an akuma. When I told her she didn’t need to lie to make friends, she turned straight up evil. Marinette got on her bad side because she told her to knock it off. She lied about Marinette pushing her down the stairs, and all the other stuff that got her expelled. The only reason Marinette was allowed back at school was because I sorta blackmailed Lila. That’s when she made up that ridiculous lie about having a lying disorder.

Adrien’s phone laid on the desk for a moment, Nino’s contact completely silent.

Nino: Dude.

Nino: I gotta find Alya.

Nino: Stay with Mari.

“Okay. So, I think I won Nino over.” Adrien said with a relieved smirk.

Just then, Marinette’s phone buzzed. She had ignored it since coming home, knowing that there would be a plethora of foul messages from classmates. But she spared the screen a glance. “He just texted me. ‘Dude, I’m so so so so so so so so sorry that what I said hurt you. I only meant that you are extremely smart and clever and reliable. I never wanted to take advantage of you, but it’s nice to have someone in your corner, who you can trust and knows will be honest with you. You’re real, and I’m stopping communication with Lila now. What she did was not cool. Sorry this went on for so long. I’m talking to Alya now. Might take a while to wear her down. You know how she is. But she loves you, so she’ll see the light’.”

“Aw. Nino’s so cool.”

Her phone buzzed again. She blushed at the message, and turned it face down.

“What was that?”

“He said ‘behave’ and then a winky face.”

“Ha! I love Nino. It makes sense why you chose him to be Carapace.”

“You know about that?”

“Yeah, I know who all of the others are now. Except Chat Noir, but I have my suspicions.”

“Oh yeah, who do you suspect?”

“You know the performer XY?”

Marinette gagged. “No. Way. My Chat is way more handsome, kind, and talented than that pompous asshat!”

Adrien guffawed, and when he collected himself, he giggled out, “Handsome, huh?”

“Of course he’s handsome! But don’t you dare tell him I said that!”

“Your secret is safe with me.” He took on a more serious tone. “All of them are, you know? I promised I’d stuff this day in the back of my mind so no one will know.”

“Actually,” she gave a contented sigh. “It’s nice that someone knows. It’s nice that you know.”

“But we didn’t actually solve any of your problems.”

“Well, no. But we have a solid foundation to work on. I feel a lot more optimistic about being the guardian and dealing with Lila. I think the rest will fall into place when I have less on my plate.”

“And I’ll help you with Lila. Again, I’m sorry for my useless advice earlier.”

She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Adrien, it was helpful advice for what you assumed was going on.”

“I really tried, you know. She weaseled her way into my photo shoots, and I told her I wouldn’t boot her as long as she left you alone. And she hasn’t. So the deal is off.”

“You did that for me?”

“Of course!”

“Even without knowing that I’m...?”

“Yes! Marinette! You were always a very precious friend to me. The first that I really felt like I earned on my own. It really sucked to see you hurting, and I wanted to do whatever I could to protect you.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, but in a hopeful way this time. She threw her arms around him and squeezed. “You’re the best.”

He hugged her back, squeezing her tightly. “I try.” He glanced at his phone. “Looks like we got some time before I have to leave. Did you want me to look at that book? Or do you want to just play video games?”

“Honestly, video games sound awesome. Let me just go tell my mom you’re staying for dinner.”

“Okay.”

After she left, Plagg appeared. “You doing okay kid? Your heart is just a hum for how hard it’s beating.”

“I’m fine, just...I guess still processing everything? No wonder she feels so overwhelmed.”

“I’d like to think that by confiding in you, she’s feeling a little better.”

“I hope. I know how particular she is about her identity. She might still be uncomfortable.”

“Are you going to tell her who you are?”

“Not just yet. On one hand, she might feel better knowing it’s not some random person who knows who she is, but on the other hand, that’s a whole other can of worms and just one more thing to worry about.”

“Yeah. But you’re also not a stranger to her. You’re a good friend and the boy she’s in love with.”

“Yeah…Marinette’s…Ladybug. And she’s in love with me…”

“Kid?”

That was all the warning Plagg got before Adrien straight up passed out on the floor.

Marinette rushed back upstairs when she heard the thump. And thankfully Plagg heard her steps so that he could hide.

“Adrien?!”

The dizzy spell only lasted a few seconds, as he groggily blinked back to awareness.

“Are you alright? Do you need water? Food?”

“Yes to all the above.” He stated with a lopsided smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just...I think my brain finally processed who you were and I just got really light headed.”

“You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks Mari.”

She blushed.

“Is that okay? Can I call you that?”

“You can call me anything.”

“Okay boo boo bear.” He grinned.

She started giggling. “Oh no! Not disgusting pet names!”

“Snookie wookums?”

“No!”

“Sweetie Mari pie?”

“Adrien!”

“My most ardent desire, love of my life?”

She calmed down her giggles. “That one’s pretty good, only if you say the whole thing every time.”

He smiled warmly at her. “Actually, I think I have the perfect name for you. But I’ll drop it on you when you least expect it.”

“Whatever you say...Blondie.”

“That’s the best you got?”

“I’ll think on it. I’ll get one that just melts your heart.”

There was a knock on the trap door. “Marinette?” Asked Sabine.

Marinette opened the door, and helped her mom with the tray of snacks and tea.

“Here you go. Plenty of feel good snacks to help a wounded heart.”

“Thanks Maman.” Marinette said earnestly.

“Now, I want you to know, I got in contact with Lila’s mother.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry honey, but she’s right up in Lila’s lies. She didn’t even believe me when I said Adrien had come over to clarify everything. Apparently, he’s dating Lila. There’s no way he would defend her bully.” Sabine gave them a flat look.

“Me? Date Lila? I’d sooner date a rancid garbage bag. And kiss it too!”

“Well, and least the garbage bag would never lie to you.” Marinette smiled.

“So, want do you want me to do?” Asked Sabine. “Stay out of this? Call the principle? Call a lawyer?”

“No mom,” Marinette said with an accepting sigh. “I think we’ll handle her.”

“Don’t do anything dangerous.” She warned. “I know you’re not a bad kid. But don’t stoop to her level.”

“Don’t worry. I intend to handle it with grace and dignity.”

“Dignity I can see. Grace? Just do your best.”

“Gee thanks.”

“Just let me know if you need anything. Talking to her mother didn’t work, but if we can a parent teacher conference...”

“That’s not a bad idea,” said Marinette. “But let me try a little longer. Adrien knows a little more about the situation, and so does Nino.”

“Okay baby.” Sabine smiled. “I’m proud of you. And I love you. You too, Adrien. I’m proud of you for coming here and making things right.”

He blushed. “Thank you Madam Cheng.”

“Alright, I’ll leave you kids alone. I’ll call for dinner.”

“Thanks mom!”

The video games were a great distraction from all the stress and revelations the day had brought. Smack talk, praise, puns, and even overt flirting.

“What’s wrong, Ladybug? Having trouble in a digital battle?”

“Oh you wish! I’ve fought in one of these for real!”

“Oh you lie! You think you can just tell me you did anything as Ladybug and I’ll believe it!”

“I mean, I can. You can’t prove I didn’t.”

“Yes I can, you’re sucking at this!”

“Oh but that’s just a part of my plan!” In a super mega ultra combo, Adrien’s health bar went from three quarters full, to only one hp left.

“Nonononono!!” He cried, mashing the block button.

It didn’t matter.

“Victory, thy name is sweet.”

“Guhhhh,” Adrien moaned as he flexed his sore hand. “And not a single victory for me.”

“You’ll get there some day.”

“When you go easy on me...”

“No promises there, handsome boy.”

He grinned at her.

From downstairs, Sabine called, “Adrien! Your bodyguard is here!”

“Wow, is it 8 o’clock already?”

The clock read 7:45.

“You know what they say, time flies when you’re having fun.”

He smiled softly at her. “And with you, every minute is an absolute blast.”

She blushed.

“Look, Marinette...” he trailed off, scratching the back of his head. “I...I want to be more than just a friend. I really...I love you. Truly.”

“But...?”

He winced. “A temporary but. I have a few loose ends I need to tie up before I ask you out, properly. I need to talk to my father, and I’d like to make sure Kagami’s okay. And I should probably mention it to Chloé.”

“Okay. That makes sense.”

“I just don’t want anything to ruin us before we even start, you know?”

“Of course. I understand completely.”

He sighed in relief. “Thank you. And um...I’ll leave you with this, so you know I’m serious.”

“Leave me with what?”

He swooped in, pressing the sweetest, warmest, lovely kiss of them all on her lips. It only lasted a few seconds, just to leave them both pining for more.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” He asked as they parted.

She didn’t have the words, as she only dumbly nodded back.

With his award winning smile, he pressed a tiny peck to her nose and then danced away before she could compose herself.

After he left, she sank to the floor.

“Wow! Looks like talking out your problems with someone really did help!” Said Tikki.

“Uh huh...”

“You okay?”

“Adrien...kissed me.”

“He sure did! That was really cute!”

“I love him...I’m going to marry him.”

“Okay, maybe slow down...”

“Don’t crush my dreams Tikki!”

—

At home, Adrien arrived 5 minutes before 8. But his father was still waiting outside his office.

“Welcome home, Adrien. Did you enjoy dinner with Marinette and her family?”

It was certainly nice to receive a warm welcome! “Yeah! Her mom made this soup that was really good, and we had fresh bakery bread!”

“Sounds lovely.” Gabriel stayed with a pleasant tone. “If you aren’t busy, I should like to finish our earlier conversation.”

“No. I mean, no I’m not busy! We can talk!”

Gabriel nodded and beckoned him into his office. They sat across from each other in chairs.

“I want to thank you for being so frank about the situation with Miss Rossi. I’ll admit, I was impressed with her quick wit and ability to fabricate stories—“

“Wait.” Adrien held up a hand. “You know she was lying?”

“Of course. I’m not an idiot. Her lies were obvious, but to the unpracticed ear, they’d go unnoticed. She seemed earnest enough when she told me she cared about you, and so I...had her keep an eye on you.”

Adrien felt his skin crawl. “She...spied on me?”

“Hmm. Spied is a little strong of a word. Just reported back to me the goings on of your classmates.”

“I mean,” Adrien began, sheepishly. “If you wanted to know, you could have just asked. I would have told you.”

“I should have. I see that now. Lila was obviously abusing my trust and taking advantage of you. She probably assumed she could get away with anything as long as she reported everything else.”

Adrien wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. He desperately needed a shower after this conversation.

“I feel kind of violated.”

“I understand. Lila had no business to touch you without your consent.”

“No, I mean, yes, that was very violating, but I meant, your spying on me. I thought you trusted me?”

“I do. Adrien, I do. Lila told me you were being manipulated by unsavory types. I now know that she was talking about herself. What you said about her lying to get Miss Dupain Cheng in trouble really hit me. We will be dropping her as a model, and I’ll be speaking with my lawyer in case she decides to turn her silver tongue on us.”

Adrien sighed in relief. “Thank you father.”

“You know if someone ever touches you in a way you don’t like, you’re allowed to say no. Right?”

“I...yes. I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well, I just...it happens all the time. Models and stuff. Lila was just doing it off set too.”

Gabriel frowned in thought. “Does modeling make you uncomfortable?”

“No. Not really. Just...some of the times in like, couple shoots?”

“I see. I’ll look into getting you more solo sessions.”

This conversation was going a lot better than he expected. His father had certainly lowered Adrien’s expectations, but at least he was admitting allowing a teenager to spy on him was a bad idea.

Progress.

“Now, about Miss Dupain Cheng.”

Adrien winced.

“What’s your...relationship, currently?”

“Right this minute, we’re still just friends. But very soon, I hope to be dating her.”

“Mmmm. You’re still very young, Adrien.”

“I know. But too young to love?”

His father gave a little chuckle. “You are so much like your mother. I suppose it would be hypocritical of me to prevent you from dating, since I dated at your age as well. Marinette has certainly proved to be an upstanding girl. Her family name is well known and respected, even in elite circles. If you wish to date her, you have my blessing.”

Yes!!

“But I would like to have dinner with her and her family, once you do ask.”

“Yes father, of course. Thank you!”

Today wasn’t so bad after all. Of course, it hurt to see his lady in so much pain, but he had been able to bring her so much happiness! And now this!

“There’s one more thing I wanted to talk about.” Gabriel took a very serious tone.

“Okay?”

“Do you trust me?”

“I—yes! Yes of course father.”

“Good. Because I need to show you something. Something I should have shown you a long time ago.” He stood, and walked to the painting of Emilie behind his desk.

[cursewoodrecap]

Session 22: Five-Dimensional Man-Go

This is a session I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. I get to introduce three of my favorite characters in the entire campaign. 

In the real world it’s been a while, but this was the session we officially welcomed a new chaos goblin player to the table. And damn, am I glad we did.

Valeria goes to Hoeska’s armor smiths for some upgrades, and accidentally kicks off a goth fashion montage. Her new armor has gorgeous black detailing with purple rose accents, accessorized with a brand-new Shusva-skin bag with matching claw clasp. Gral picks up a fancy Shusva-leather cloak and belt. Shoshana, realizing that a vampire’s castle is basically a Hot Topic, gets some fishnet arm warmers to accompany her fang necklace. We also get some healing potions and hope they aren’t made from lost souls or anything.

Valeria resummons Aethis, who pops back into existence in a burst of glitter that’s entirely incongruous with the local grim aesthetic. Apparently celestial gators are only mildly inconvenienced by fatalities.

As we hitch up the horses to get back on the road, we find out Ser Boris is also preparing to head out. “Woods full of many nasty creatures. Must keep hunting! Maybe I find way down to Barroch, I have heard monsters are attacking workers there.”

Gral perks up at the name of his people’s capitol. “I’m sure the orcs will treat you well. What kind of monsters are they dealing with?”

“Wolves, bears, maybe werewolf? I will find out when I get there! Cursebreakers do not have much of working relationship with orcs, so info is scattered. That is why I must investigate!”

While he heads south into orc territory, we’re gonna go north toward Sturmhearst to look into all the Key nonsense Professor Bjork told us is goin’ down. It’ll be a long trip; it’s on the coast, and we’re well into the heartland of the wood. As we get closer, we’re gonna have to look for new maps, too – the patchwork of safe zones and Curse disasters changes rapidly, and the roads that were passable a month ago might be deathtraps today.

We trek for several blessedly uneventful days. One night, in a region where a sizable number of halflings have settled, we have the fortune of seeing an inn on the horizon as night starts to fall. A sign proclaims the Fusilier’s Rest, a combination winery and inn located on a lush vineyard. Valeria’s kind of suspicious of anything too plant-based right now, but the rest of us totally want a winery tour.

We hitch up our wagon next to a post labeled Valet Parking. Aethis parks themself in the stables. Looking at the place, with its rather low doorframe and quaintly painted décor, we suspect Demish wine snootery instead of weird plant cults.

We duck through the door and take in the scene. It’s on the upscale end of totally normal, with locals sitting around eating and a huge pot of Demish onion soup bubbling on the hearth. The old halfling bartender is wearing pieces of a worn but well-cared-for blue-and-gold uniform. Two polished old pistols hang within reach on the wall, along with a pristine old Fusille musket in a place of honor behind the bar. Shiny medals in a handmade case are proudly displayed atop the bar.

As is D&D protocol, we look around for any notably wacky characters. We find them in the corner: an old man with unkempt white hair and multi-lensed, colorful glasses, engrossed in a game of Man-go against a young human doctor. We know he’s a doctor, because he’s got a stubby-beaked Sturmhearst mask pushed up to expose a tired but friendly face. His coat might once have been a lab coat, but it’s since been patched and sutured together so many times that it’s probably done a full ship-of-Theseus. His right arm is in a makeshift sling, and he’s nursing a small glass of Kevan vodka; probably the closest thing they have to rotgut moonshine in a wine-snob place like this.

We’re like, neat. Let’s eat soup.

Valeria orders a local vineyard wine and chats with the bartender about it. “The man who runs it is a madman; he thinks he can grow good wine grapes in Valdia. But he pays my sister well, she does her best.”

“Oh, don’t listen to René, his sister does marvelous work! No halfling will admit that wine grown outside Demionde will be more than spoiled grape juice,” teases one of the local barflies.

Gral asks Valeria who’s winning the Man-go game. The old man is rambling pleasantly, barely paying attention, and he is absolutely crushing the young doctor. The doctor looks like he’s totally aware he’s being taken to the cleaners, but he’s gonna let the old guy have his fun. As the game draws to a close, the younger man smiles ruefully and hands over a few coins. Meanwhile, the old fella, his eyes magnified to mismatched sizes by his funky glasses, spots our most conspicuous party member.

“Kyr! How’s the wine?” he calls, beckoning her over.

“Quite good actually!” Valeria chirps. “Was that the Kiloni maneuver?”

“Yes, or a variant I picked up somewhere! The Killam maneuver…kilometer…kilowatt? Something of the sort.”

Valeria very much wants to play him, and the old guy’s defeated opponent is happy to trade her his spot. The young man’s propped up leg hits the ground with a suspiciously loud clunk as he vacates his chair for her.

The old man peers up at her, bright-eyed even behind multiple layers of glass. “So what brings a Knight of the Rose here?”

“We’re headed to Sturmhearst, actually!”

“I see! I’ve heard the roads between here and there are pretty tricky to travel, you know.”

“No kidding. Do you have an updated map?”

He snaps his fingers. “No, but I just came from there! I’ve got an old map and I can easily update it for you kids. René is on night watch, I’ll leave it with him so you don’t have to stay up waiting for me to finish it. I know a route that’ll get you there lickety-split and safe as trousers! Now let me guess, you played at the clubs in Aurentium? You have the look about you.”

“Not the clubs, precisely…”

“Ah! Street rules, then!”

Valeria, who played Man-go against literally everyone who would have her, shrugs. “Maybe?”

“René, we’ll need some cups and a dumb hat!” the old man calls.

The young doctor wanders over to the bar and gets a refill, settling down next to Shoshana. “Hey, wanna bet on their game? The old guy’s pretty sharp.”

Shoshana laughs. “Oh, my friend is definitely gonna lose. I’ll put a silver on her, though, out of loyalty.”

It’s an odd game to spectate. Valeria falls behind early on; an insight check shows he’s not cheating, he’s just VERY good. Oh, and also Valeria’s assuming an entirely different set of house rules than this guy, and it’s tripping her up. Wait, are we doing street style, or dock style? Anyway, Valeria’s wearing the dumb hat now. At one point they both spit on the board.

“Y’know, I’ve never seen anyone from Sturmhearst take the mask off,” Shoshana says to her new drinking buddy, watching the game with confusion.

“On the clock, it’d be a safety hazard! But off the clock, eh, it’s fine. Some people get more elitist than me about it, I’m a hometown Valdian through and through.”

(You’re from Joisey, I’m from Joisey! What exit?)

“I haven’t actually been to the university since the Curse started, but I’m heading back to research some stuff I found out up in the Grammelsmarsh swamps. Some real disconcerting stuff regarding undead, and the like. The locals refer to it as the Wailing Wight.”

Shoshana gives him a once-over, rolling a decent Perception. He’s scruffy, though that could mostly be from hard travel, and definitely looks like he’s had a rough time of it. His arm’s in a sling and the little exposed skin Shoshana can see has more than its share of nicks and scars. His gait when he walked over was slightly uneven, one leg making a suspiciously heavy thunk against the wooden floor. Over his shoulder, he’s carrying a long, heavy case sealed with tar for waterproofing.

Hold up. She points to the case. “Do you have an alive guy in there?”

“…Uh.”

“You hesitated, and that’s not great.”

“Uh…no. No, I do not have an alive guy in here,” he says awkwardly.

“Okay, because the last time there was a weird bag, there was a whole-ass dude in there, and it turned into a whole thing.”

“N-no, no no no, there’s no person in the case,” he protests, not quite meeting Shoshana’s judgy cat eyes. He definitely doesn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, even though the case has started gently twitching.

Meanwhile, old Man-Go man has proved himself quite fluent in Draco-Aquilian, though with an unmistakable mammalian accent. Gral butts into the lively conversation when it winds back to Valdian. “It seems like you’re rather well traveled. What is your profession?”

“Oh, y’know, I go here and there. I’ve been around. There’s so much to see out there!”

Valeria smiles. “I can’t fault you there. Anything in particular you’re looking for?

“I go wherever the winds take me, mostly,” he says, as if Cursewood travel isn’t the most dangerous hobby since they invented pyromancer cookoffs.

Valeria, impressively, only loses the game by a little. The old man jovially shakes her hand and promises to go get started on that map to Sturmhearst for us, springing to his feet with surprising deftness for his age and bustling up toward his room.

Gral and Shoshana, meanwhile, are busy makin’ friends with the doctor guy. “What swamp were you fighting undead in?”

“The Grammelsmarsh? It’s downriver of Mornheim.”

“Ohhh! We heard some, uh, adventurers did a purifying ritual on the river. It might help your situation?”

“That’s great, but…I dunno. Once you mix in swamp gas, things get a lot more interesting.”

“The explosions kind of interesting?”

“…Sometimes.”

The players have noticed that our doctor friend here is, like…not an NPC, there’s another guy at the table (the same player as Isadora! :D), so we start sizing each other up as travel companions.

“You seem like a pretty decent guy,” Gral says, immediately insight checking.

“I mean, you guys seem on the up-and-up too?”

Shoshana winks at him. “Well, I’m not that up-and-up but these two are very diplomatic and important.”

“If you’re also headed up to Sturmhearst, it might make sense for us to travel together? I’m not very quiet,” he admits, knocking on his knee with a clang, “but if you-“

“Hello!” Valeria, hearing clanking, has clanked over loudly to join. “Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service!”

“Uh, hi! I’m Vigdor. I’m a doctor! I mean, you knew that, with the, uh-“ He points to his bird mask. “If you need any balms or salves – I mean, I’m mostly a surgeon, but I know some herbology.”

Is that so! We chat about Dr. Ulmus and Dr. Kjeller. Everyone loves Dr Kjeller!

“I’ve heard of Dr. Kjeller! I haven’t met the guy, but he’s the leading expert on troll physiology. Getting him to come lecture hasn’t worked out so far.”

We ask René the innkeeper about any local threats. Apparently this town’s gotten lucky; the biggest threats recently have just been bandits and one overaggressive badger.

“Oh yeah, one of my cats fought one of those, it went badly,” Shoshana remembers. “For the badger, I mean. I have weird cats.”

(The inn also has cat. His name is Jean Clawed.)

Eventually we all head upstairs. As the night bears on, the girls fall asleep, presumably after painting each other’s toe claws and gossiping. Gral’s still awake, practicing his lute in the rare luxury of a single room, when he pauses. Something doesn’t sound right.

Putting his lute aside, he listens cautiously at the window and feels a deep dread grow in his stomach. The faint scent of ozone drifts in the air. The crickets and night birds have gone dead silent, and in the unsettling quiet he can hear the terrible growling, piping sound he’s heard twice before: once in a house in a hole, and once as Bullbreaker’s expedition faced its destruction.

With great urgency and no volume control, Gral sends a Message to a sleeping Shoshana: “RED ALERT, KEY SHIT’S HERE.” Shoshana wakes up and kicks Valeria.

Gral then sends a Message to our new friend Vigdor, more calmly. “If you have weapons, get them now. Something is happening, it’s going to be dangerous.”

The early warning lets Vigdor and Valeria armor up, Shoshana helping Valeria buckle on the heavy pieces in a hurry. Meanwhile, Gral sprints downstairs, casting Mirror Image as he goes.

René the innkeeper is cleaning his fusille with practiced precision, humming an old marching song. Gral can hear something moving in the kitchen behind the old halfling, so he pops another stealthy Message cantrip. “This is the orc from earlier. I think something bad is in the kitchen – I’ve heard that noise before. Hold on tight to that musket, I’m going in.”

“The back door is locked, I would have heard someone come in,” the old soldier whispers back.

“These things don’t use doors,” Gral hisses.

A 17 Persuasion convinces René, who loads a bullet into his musket. “Where are those friends of yours?”

A heavy clank from upstairs answers that question, as Vigdor and Valeria thud toward the stairs. Gral scopes out the room and sees, on the bar, a big leather map case. The map from the Man-Go guy! Then he peers into the kitchen and, yup, that’s a fleshhound, all right.

Everyone else upstairs bursts into the hall just as a second fleshhound emerges into existence next to them. Shoshana, without hesitation, hits it with a gout of flame. Its strange ethereal flesh solidifies for a moment, but then it shakes itself and charges forward, its displacement energy restored.

Meanwhile, the one downstairs doesn’t aim for Gral or René, trying to run past them. Gral plays a discordant note on his lute, using his Minor Key at the opposite frequency to its vibration and preventing it from displacing, before he strikes. A spectral, scarred orc swings a warhammer down on the creature, Thrice-Burned’s ghost getting some payback as Gral’s blade strikes true.

René takes a shot with his musket and crit-fails, understandably freaked out by the writhing mass of teleporting tentacles, the wild shot careening directly into Gral. Luckily, it only pops a Mirror Image, but everyone upstairs hears a frustrated yell of “NO. FRIEND! ME FRIEND!”

Vigdor dashes past Valeria to the stairs, his previously-motionless arm reaching out of its sling to slap her on the armor with a resounding clash of metal. A silver Jotunn rune glows through the cloth of his sleeve, and she feels Protection from Good and Evil snap into place over her. She takes the cue and stabs the hound, rose vines bursting from her trident and stabbing their long thorns into its oddly flickering flesh.

The pupils on the Eyegis snap to the space behind the beast. Our normal eyes see nothing, but the Key-aligned shield’s eyes see a magical gate, faintly connected to the hound.

As a member of the Order of the Rose, Valeria’s trained to deal with fiendish incursions. This isn’t a portal to the Hells, but she thinks it might get closed similarly. As she charges forward to deal with it, everything seems to move twice as fast as it should: the Key’s spatial distortion has made certain areas the opposite of difficult terrain, where you can move double your speed. Nyoom!

Shoshana zaps it with lightning and heads downstairs to help Gral, who’s being slapped by tentacles. The zapped one flees toward the portal, but Valeria Sentinels and stabs it to death. The downstairs hound gets its tentacles into the real Gral.

Vigdor moves to Gral’s aid, ripping away the last of his sling and clamping a large circular blade to his forearm. With the pull of a ripcord, it loudly whirs into motion. As the Buzzing Butcher slams into the displacer hound with a gory squelch, he asks about sneak attack, like a rogue!

A very, very loud rogue.

Gral breaks away from the hound’s tentacles and looks around. Through the windows, more fleshhounds have appeared outside. The space outside is warped – leaving this inn is going to be very difficult while all this nonsense is going on. The lights of the vineyard seem miles away.

However, Gral realizes, the hound responded to the sound of his lute. And when he used his Minor Key he caught a glimpse of the portal it came through. He begins to play again, using the Minor Key to try to take control of it. The GM allows him to burn a 3rd level spell slot for a colossal roll of 33. He moves the portal inside a wall, to temporarily block anything coming through.

René takes a shot at the remaining hound and misses.

Valeria, upstairs, draws her chained sword and spends a 1st level slot to try to close the portal, the same way paladins close Infernal gateways. The chains of Rack extend from the sword and stitch the portal shut.

(Gral and Valeria each gain inspiration for using Portal Trixx!)

A Thing Occurs at initiative 0, and we hear strange piping coming from the stables. We’re kind of occupied, so we trust Aethis to bite anything that bothers the horses.

Shoshana sprints down the stairs and to the bar. Aw, there’s another flesh hound coming in from the kitchen. Her Chill Touch misses, and the new monster slaps Gral.

Vigdor nyooms through a Zoom, which makes some Really Weird doppler effects happen with his clanky leg and his buzzy arm. He slides across the bar like an action hero and slams his saw down, missing the hound and showering the room in a hail of splinters.

Valeria is still upstairs, and it is LOUD downstairs. She’s gonna dash to get the heck down there and rejoin the festivities.

Gral Phantasmal Forces the new fleshhound, and in its mind, horrible liquid tendrils emerge from the soup pot and constrict around it. The soup rises to the defense of the Fusilier’s Rest!

René gets his wits about him and takes a pistol shot at the nearer fleshhound, tagging it with a bullet and keeping it in place. “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE. OUR POLICY IS NO PETS! I will not make an exception for you, you do NOT seem particularly polite!”

The fleshhound grabs the map case off the bar and starts to run for it. René hits it with the butt of his rifle. The second hound can’t attack Vigdor since it’s too busy convincing itself soup isn’t dangerous, so Vigdor’s free to draw his pistol and unload a Sneak Attack bullet into the fleeing hound’s back.

René reloads his musket. It’s been a long time since he’s done it under fire, but the Royal Fusilier Corps of Demionde does not half-ass their training.

The portal the hound’s heading for bisects a wall now, so it might be hard for the hound to get through.  Before it can worry about that, though, it comes face to face with Valeria, who’s ready to rumble. She kills it, dropping the map to the ground, and skitters through the Zoomy Zone to try to trident the second hound. It displaces out of the way.

Gral seizes control of another portal, and this time decides to use it to see what’s going on. He tries to hop out to the stables, where that weird noise is coming from. He enters a weird nether space full of the flickering bodies of fleshhounds, writhing and blinking, which the DM calls the Threshold. Gral accepts psychic damage to see what’s going on, and the patterns become clearer as the Key takes hold temporarily in his brain. These portals all connect to each other and the Threshold at the same time. Whatever’s out in the stables, making that eerie piping noise, is tied to the portals – it can’t fully exist in our realm. So if you close all the portals, it’ll force that thing to leave; if you drive it away, the portals will close. Either way, the Key’s influence on this place will fade.

Oh, and that thing out in the stables? It’s the Lurke r again.

Gral’s old enemy wrests control of the portal back from Gral, who stumbles back out into the inn, reeling from the sudden whammy of Key taint.

Shosha shoots lightning at the nearest hound, which retaliates by leaping through her, disrupting her matter with its own. It’s a highly unpleasant experience. A new hound jumps out of the portal next to Valeria. As Vigdor, Shoshana, and René all attack, Gral shuts another portal with his lute’s magic. “Guys, there’s something horrible in the stables!” he shouts. “If we bust enough portals it’ll go away!”

The Lurker continues to make mysterious dice rolls, but apparently it’s rolling poorly, so we don’t quite find out what it’s up to. It peers through one of the last few portals, only visible to Gral and the Eyegis. It’s hard to get a good look at, fifth-dimensional as it is, but it’s weirdly humanoid, actually? It’s surrounded by floating lanterns and holding some sort of pipe or flute.

(The DM notes that Jean Clawed is awake and doesn’t see why any of this is his business. He’s capable of using the portals; he’s not Key tainted, that’s just how cats are.)

We exchange blows with the remaining hounds, Chromatic Orbs flying and chainsaws buzzing. René bayonets a hound to death, for the honor of all NPCs.

Gral powerslides on his knees across the Zoomy Zone, playing a complicated riff, woobling himself right through the fireplace into the kitchen. He spends another level 3 spell slot to get the portal to dance itself shut. “And that was Through the Fire and Flames!”

René reloads his gun. Shoshana blasts the hound with fire, so Vigdor’s action goes off and he chainsaws it to death, the body and spine getting caught in the spinning chain. FATALITY.

The searing light of Shoshana’s fire casts sharp shadows on the walls of the inn, which begin to writhe and re-form, swirling together into a lithe, snarling feline shape that springs toward the Lurker. It pounces with an odd, broken yowl that’s incredibly familiar – although Valeria and Gral have only ever heard it once, from underneath an overturned laundry basket.

Vigdor, who’s never met a flesh-hound OR a cursecat before, makes an arcana check to figure out what in the seven hells is going on. It seems some sort of entity is thinning the barriers between realities? Its very essence seems to be intermingled with portal; it cannot fully leave the portal or exist in this realm. Like a malevolent, sentient pair of curtains.

He’s like okay, curtains sound like something I can chainsaw. It’s curtains for you, see? (Fun fact: if he rolls 21 or higher on attack roll with chainsaw, he gets sneak attack regardless of other circumstances. Because it’s a goddamn CHAINSAW.)

The Lurker turns its attention directly on us, or at least to the enormous hissing cat hellbent on ruining its day. Gral, still strumming furiously, realizes the Lurker’s only got a couple of portals left. He’s closed a portal already; he’s gonna try to close all of them for good. The DM imposes disadvantage and a brutal pile of psychic damage, but Gral is unphased, hitting a power chord that shakes the entire inn.

The Lurker screeches and reaches for him, the space around Gral beginning to warp, but it’s too late, the portal slamming shut against it. The Zoomy Zones vanish; the portals close, the strange atmosphere fades. The road looks to be the size it was before instead of an endless stretch of packed earth; the vineyard is once again an easy ten-minute walk away.

His big solo complete, Gral sways and collapses unconscious. Valeria runs over and Lays On Hands so he doesn’t die, while Vigdor starts casting Mending on the destroyed bar furniture. Shoshana, meanwhile, just stares dumbstruck at the place where a huge spectral cat is dissipating into shadowy smoke.

“…Schmendrick?”

René is holding himself together, but he’s an old man and it’s been a while since he fought this much. He took a bit of damage; Valeria pat pats him some HP. “Thank you, Kyr. I…I need to check on my other guests. The old man with the Man-Go game, we must find out if he lives.”

Valeria accompanies him upstairs. Rack’s glowing rose vines are still visible, stitching the portal shut; it’s healing more quickly than Valeria’s used to seeing. The door to the old man’s room swings open under Valeria’s cautious knock. The bed is unmade but empty, and the old man’s luggage is gone. The only things left are a generous tip on the counter and his odd multicolored glasses.

As Vigdor steps outside to clean viscera off his chainsaw, Gral scopes out the stables. There’s evidence of disturbed earth around the grounds, but nothing conclusive. Aethis seems to be unbothered.

We reconvene without much to show for our investigation. But we have one last clue: Why were the hounds so interested in the old man’s map? We spread it out on one of the bar tables and crowd around. It’s a map of Valdia, but the path it shows us to take to Sturmhearst makes No Sense. It’s not even contiguous! It tells us to start here and wander north, and then the line cuts off next to some scribbled equations, the route picking up again elsewhere, where he’s drawn a symbol we don’t recognize – and so on, in strange and nonsensical disconnected paths.

Shoshana, on a hunch, puts on the multicolored glasses the old man left behind. Like 3D glasses, they reveal the hidden image. Through the kaleidoscopic lenses, she can see remnants of the Key’s influence all around the inn; the fading Zoomy Zones and closing portals light up in ultraviolet. The map, meanwhile, has gained an entirely new dimension, like a layer of holographs. NOW the shortcuts make sense – they route through other dimensions along the z-axis, with additional symbols and labels giving helpful hints.

To be honest, it does look like a much faster route. And one of the notes says it leads to the “Drowned City” – hey, isn’t that where Bullbreaker ended up? But we’re all rightfully wary of hopping right back into another flesh-hound portal disaster.

We now have the Extradimensional Map and the Stranger’s Glasses.

Oh! The map has a note for us: “Happy Journeys to a fellow master of the game. Your friend, T.T.”

We immediately rifle through our notes and realize he may have been Professor Trevor Twombly, Headmaster of Sturmhearst. Vigdor, did you know that guy?!

Vigdor didn’t recognize him. Maybe the guy looked like Twombly, if you squint? There were a lot of old men at Sturmhearst, and they wear masks most of the time? Also he had distracting glasses? So, like…maybe?

As we bicker, Vigdor snags the glasses off the table and heads to his room, opening up his case and taking a look. The lenses don’t reveal anything new about the object inside.

Unfortunately, the poor rogue didn’t bother to stealth. “Whatcha doin’ in here?” says Valeria, who followed shortly behind.

“Um, just looking at my leg, seeing if anything is weird-“

Valeria immediately checks Vigdor’s lower limbs for wounds. “I can help! An extra pair of hands can always-”

“No, no! I think I’m okay! Really!” he protests. He glances into the case again, clearly torn, and sighs. “Let me explain.”

He lifts a whole human leg out of the case, kicking and twitching.

“This is my leg, and I’m taking it to Sturmhearst. I’m not sure if it’s wholly mine anymore.”

Through his torn pants, Valeria can see a clunky clockwork leg to match his buzz-saw arm.

One player immediately yells “FULL METAL ALCHEMIST.” Another player says it again, in a slightly different voice.

Dr. Vigdor Gavril has joined the party!

[microshiner]

The problem with owning a van

At 1 PM on Sunday afternoon, I am sitting alone at a four-top table in the middle of a large buffet room. Soccer is on the TV in front of me and soccer is also on the TV behind me. I don’t know who is playing, or what the score is. I don’t have my glasses on, so I can barely see the screen. The room is fairly packed and full of conversation, although not in English, so despite all the activity I sit alone with my thoughts. I have three plates of food. What I would consider to be the main plate, the one I have been digging into the most fervently, is a mixture of lo mein noodles, sweet and sour something or other, wontons, french fries, onion rings, chicken nuggets, garlic bread,  steamed mussels, and ice cold jumbo shrimp. I also have a large plate of salad. The third plate is a pool of sauce, mostly ketchup.

As cliché as this might sound, I am not in Vegas, and unfortunately, not hungover. But I am running on no sleep and walking with a severe limp, having trekked a good sixty or so miles back and forth across a festival site over the previous few days carrying everything from amplifiers to old wooden tables to dollies of Red Bull and Blue Moon.

Such is life in the summer months - full of festivals and constant events, keeping the bills paid while slowly draining the sanity. For many of them, I am fortunate enough to be on the press side of things, where my main responsibilities are observing the action and conducting a couple interviews along the way while keeping a steady stream of booze flowing in, because I heard a rumor once that alcohol helps prevent your ears from being damaged by loud music. It acts as a protective layer between the blasting speakers and your ear drum. I’ve got to look out for my health in these situations.

If I remember correctly, the guy that told me that felt it necessary to scream it at me from right in front of the stage as he was plugging his right ear with an index finger and holding a can of Coors Light in the other hand.

I was far from the media this weekend, though. More like a grunt laborer. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, and I did manage to score a couple vouchers for the food trucks. In the end, it was probably worth a few days of schlepping gear in and out of a Ford Econoline.

That’s the problem with owning a van. People are always wanting you to use it. I could make a monthly payment if I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to come up with an impromptu lie like, ‘Oh, yeah man, I won’t be able to help you move today because my van is actually missing the engine right now. Must have gotten stolen overnight or something. Sorry.’

One can only be so much of a workhorse. Two, however, can be just as good as four or five, as I learned last week from a band called You Knew Me When at Jagged Mountain Brewery in Denver. I was finishing off a long work day with a pint and had the chance to talk to the group before they took the stage (in this case, the corner of the tasting room) for a happy hour set and get the lowdown on how they make a living booking tours based around breweries and distilleries and what their music is all about. This two-piece has the sound and style of a full band, and then some.

The husband and wife duo of Cie (pronounced ‘See’) and Karisa Hoover hail from Nashville, the home of country, but they wanted to do something a little different. Cie comes from a heavy metal background, Karisa is about as close to the definition of an indie girl as you can find, and while their sound is certainly far closer to indie than metal, good metal to me wears its heart on its sleeve the way punk became known for, and with a glance at Cie’s lyric sheets, you will find plenty of heart.

Their live performances are full of that same heart. Heart, and booze. You Knew Me When traverses the region hitting primarily breweries and distilleries, sharing their craft music with hordes of craft guzzlers night after night and doing a fair amount of ‘sampling’ along the way. “We have a limit of two drinks before we play,” Karisa says. “I’m drinking kombucha right now so that I can adhere to that rule.” I think back to the time I’ve spent on the road and wonder why the hell I never of thought of that. So many sloppy performances could have been marginalized.

The two met while attending Belmont University in Nashville, Cie learning up on PR and marketing and Karisa studying music education. Together with their musical prowess, and following a wedding and several years together, they felt they had the necessary skill set to uproot from the shackles of everyday life and become a full-time touring band. The two did not start playing music together right away, but over time began to feel that their artistic juices could create one heck of a punch.

“I think it was really the creative drive,” Cie says. They decided, after putting together the band, to take a one year sabbatical from work and see what they could make happen musically.

“Three years later, here we are,” says Karisa with a laugh.

Traveling with only two people, both Cie and Karisa hold multiple instrumental duties. Cie sings, plays guitar, and handles foot percussion, while Karisa holds down the piano, ukulele, glockenspiel, cymbals and, oh yeah, does some singing herself. “When we started touring, we decided to just do the touring thing with just the two of us, so it was like, how can we create more of a cool sound with just the two people so that’s when we added the kick drum and she added some cymbals. We added stuff to fill out the sound as a duo.”

You Knew Me When is approaching their 100th brewery, quite an accomplishment. I haven’t even drank at that many breweries, let alone gigged. I just met these guys, but I am proud of them. They also have quite a few distilleries under their belt, with WildRye Distilling out of Bozeman, Montana being their favorite (also noted is Willie’s Distillery in Ennis,. Apparently, I need to visit Big Sky Country). They are doing it, and since I have no two drink rule on this particular night, I stop by State-38 Distilling on the way home to celebrate the band’s accomplishments.

To be honest, I have never tried locally made tequila here in Colorado, and I’ve been meaning to check these guys out for a while. Owner and Master Distiller Sean Smiley has built a solid reputation for his products- they are one of the few I’ve actually seen in the small, corner liquor store down the street from my house. Their tasting room boasts a wood-paneled bar and similar flooring, giving it a rustic finish that feels very Colorado appropriate.

“We’re a 100% agave distillery,” says lead distiller JT Tewinkle. They distill tequilas, obviously, but also a Blanco Agave Spirit and an agave-based vodka and a gin, both the world’s only. Add to that list North America’s only one-year aged Anejo and you’ve got yourself one of the most impressive menus in the country, let alone the 38th state which they call home.

It was during the aging process for the Anejo that Sean and JT came up with the concept and plans for their agave-based vodka and gin. “We started off with the Blanco and the Reposado, and then we were literally sitting on our heels for a year for the Anejo, so we had to start looking at other things we could do,” Tewinkle says. “There’s two rules with vodka - it has to be distilled at 190 proof or better, and it has to be filtered. So basically that means you can make vodka out of shoe leather if you (follow the rules).”

This is apparently the case with a lot of the mass-produced vodkas you see on the shelves at liquor stores and bars - when you read ‘distilled seven times,’ it often means that they started with garbage ingredients and had to distill it that many times just to get to 190 proof, meaning their bragging of a high number of distilling cycles is little more than a bad marketing ploy. “It’s a trick of the vodka industry,” Tewinkle informs me.

He and Smiley have known each other for twenty years. Smiley started the distillery and hired JT as his lead distiller almost immediately, confident in his knowledge of tequila and experience in the bar industry. “I’ve been a tequila guy my entire sixteen year career, so it was a very easy segue to learn how to make it. Plus, I have a chemical engineering background from college, so that didn’t hurt.”

I am lead into the distilling area behind the tasting room and poured a sample of the Reposado straight from the barrel. Their agave is 100% organic, right out of Jalisco, Mexico. All products are distilled and bottled in-house from agave to glass by the two themselves.

“I love distilling,” Tewinkle says. Smiley does as well, as I gathered from email correspondence, and it shows in their product line. I have yet to taste anything near what they are doing with their agave liquors. Back in the tasting room, I familiarize myself with a few more of their products. Not a bad cap to what has been a good day - nothing like a little craft agave to restore your sanity.

[positive-stress]

top 10 albums of 2017!!!

10. diet cig - swear I’m good at this

idk how much there is to say about diet cig. they’re just so cute and fun and good. semi-angsty indie pop for semi-angsty millennials. I should save the words anyway because these are definitely just gonna get longer as this goes. thanks, diet cig! tummy ache

9. charan-po-rantan - mirage collage

a duo of sisters, older sister koharu plays accordion while younger sister momo sings and for some reason carries around a stuffed pig. idk. charan-po-rantan’s music is a blend of all kinds of world music, from klezmer to polka to cabaret to balkan brass, and it’s good as hell. they put out two fantastic albums this year, and this is the more... traditional one, I guess. we’ll get to the other one shortly. ikku yo!

8. björk - utopia

I don’t think it’s possible to describe this album without using the word “lush” so there’s, it’s out of the way and I don’t have to say it again. described by björk as the “tinder album” to follow up her breakup album vulnicura, this album is just... fucking beautiful. the flutes, man. the FLUTES!!! it’s a dense album and I have no idea where it’ll fall in my björk rankings once I’ve spent more time with it but I have a feeling this might be top 3 for me. utopia

7. seiko oomori - MUTEKI

I feel weird putting this in my top 10 because it’s not really an album but... god damn it I love it so much. with the exception of the first two tracks, the absolutely gorgeous “ryuusei heaven” and the catchy as hell “mix juice”, everything here is a re-recording, mostly on acoustic guitar, occasionally piano, of one of her older songs, going all the way back to her 2012 EP PINK. this album is basically pure fanservice but... it’s the best fanservice. a blend of greatest hits and deep cuts, that sweet tape hiss, those voice cracks, the one song where gets too into it and has a coughing attack. who else would release this? thank you based seiko. ryuusei heaven

6. charan po rantan - toritomenashi

oh hey! good to see you again. here’s the, uh, less musically consistent one. most of these songs could easily fit in with mirage collage but then you’ve got a couple with... loud synths? what? why? why am I listening to japanese electro polka? what is HAPPENING and why is it so GOOD? unfortunately none of those songs are on youtube so here’s an incredibly good jazzy song with tokyo ska paradise orchestra which showcases momo’s good as hell voice and also that fucking stuffed pig she’s always carrying around. otakebi

5. blanck mass - world eater

benjamin power of fuck buttons solo project blanck mass takes all of the raw, heavy noise of fuck buttons and channels it into a sound that is less drone, more dynamic. it can still be as much of an assault on your ears as ever (and I mean that in the best way) but it’s more, uh. for lack of a better word I’ll say “accessible”. this album rules. rhesus negative

4. you’ll melt more! - youtopia

I first started listening to YMM! about two months ago after being vaguely aware of them for a while from ano’s collaboration with seiko oomori on kitixxxgaia (foreshadowing!) but I never really felt inclined to listen to them since, you know. idol music. gross! I just happened to come across a thing talking about their recent EP, disco psychedelica, and the album cover immediately caught my eye. what the hell, why is this idol group mimicking the cover of screamadelica by primal scream? it was too weird to not listen, and hey, it turns out that’s just YMM! in a nutshell. idol pop influenced by bands like primal scream, too weird to not listen. looking back in their discography I found a whole bunch of stuff with heavy new wave vibes, and sure enough almost immediately after I started listening to them they put out their TALKING HITS EP, this time with an album cover mimicking that of talking heads’ remain in light. (it’s not on youtopia but their song NEW WAVE STAR is very reminiscent of the great curve and I love it.) they also have collaborated with the lead dude from POLYSICS as well as mariko goto formerly of midori which if you know either of them, you should be interested. anyway tl;dr youtopia is their latest album, just out, gotta love it. a handful of tracks from those two EPs and a bunch of great new shit as well. YMM! are the fucking best. music san, yon bu de owacchimau yo ne

3. neil cicierega - mouth moods

this album was a huge hit on the online so it’s very likely you already know about it, and basically impossible that you don’t already know who neil cicierega is, so I’ll just cut to the chase. this is meme music, a mashup album full of IT’S BEENs and someBODYs and [tim allen grunt]s. it’s an album of legitimately great mashups, but it’s also a comedy album that has some moments that genuinely caught me off guard and made me laugh out loud. if you haven’t listened yet, I won’t spoil those moments, I’ll just urge you to check out mouth moods, because it really is the most 2017 album and it’s very near perfect. everything comes together so well, and there’s very often moments where I’d be listening to a song and look at the title and something would click and I’d realize the joke of the song goes even deeper than I’d originally thought. there are layers here. basically what I’m saying is, this album is like an onion. smooth

2. seiko oomori - kitixxxgaia

hey, we’re back to seiko! there’s a reason I say she’s my beyonce. in a lot of ways, this album is the biggest departure yet from her older folkier style of music (thank god she later put out MUTEKI, almost to reassure fans like me that she hasn’t forgotten). every song here is a banger. from the explosive “gutto kuru summer” (oh hey ano) to the slow and beautiful ballad “orion za” to the more straightforward j-poppy “IDOL SONG”, it’s all so fucking good, and it says a lot about seiko that I’d say this is one of my least favorite albums of hers. the star of the show though has to be the incredible “dogma magma” where seiko really shows off her most dramatic, art-poppiest side. leave it to her to put the thematic centerpiece of the album as the first track. thank god it’s all so good anyway. dogma magma

1. terror pigeon! - we will never run out of love!

terror pigeon has never been one to shy away from getting personal in his music, and this album is arguably his most personal yet. in the past his music has been mostly love songs in one way or another. songs about being in love, songs about loving your friends, songs about loving your life, whether you’re happy or sad, songs about feeling so full of love your heart could burst. as the title suggests, this is no exception, but in a lot of ways this is his darkest and saddest album yet. there is a sense of regret and loss throughout this album, but still a definite message to try to keep that feeling of love and positivity in your heart even when things are fucked up. there’s no better example of this than in the heartbreaking “arms”, where neil sings about losing a close friend: “I don't get it / I will never understand / how the good are taken from us / when I'm still only a half a man. / if there's no justice to it / and no bracing ever works / then how do I explode with love / despite all of this hurt?” if his previous releases were about the joy of love, this is a recognition of the realities of love. it doesn’t always last forever, and it can’t always protect you from pain. but even at the darkest moments, the love is still there. the final song on the album, “friends”, is one of the most heartfelt love songs I’ve ever heard, a love song dedicated not to the standard topic of romantic love but to friendship and the simple joy of hanging out with people who you care about and watching TV and eating pizza. a perfect end to a perfect album. chamber of secrets for 1 / more songs with keyboard solos

[i-am-a-bad-influence-writes]

The Fire in Apartment 2.3, The Man who lived there, And the girl who lived next door - Part 2 ~ Move Out

Masterlist

Chatroom: The Second Floor, B Wing

Yoongi: Ya! Hyunwa! Tell your sister’s friend to turn it down! Hyunwa: Can’t. She’s your problem now. Yoongi: Was she always this loud? Hyunwa: I don’t know. My sister wasn’t allowed to take her home because she was a bad influence. Yoongi: And you let her live next to me?! Hyunwa: Go tell them to tune it down then. Yoongi: No. Minjae: I can hear her music from here. Hyunwa: Me too, but you don’t hear Jihun complaining. Yoongi: He’s been sleeping since seven pm. Hyunwa: Look, I’ll ask my sister for her number so you can tell her to tune it down. Yoongi: Fine, what’s her name? Hyunwa: I don’t know. Yoongi: … Yoongi: Are you kidding me?

Chatroom: Seoyoung and Hyunwa

Hyunwa: Hey, do you have your friend’s number for me? Seoyoung: She’s not interested you fool. Hyunwa: It’s for her neighbor. Seoyoung: Why? Hyunwa: You guys are being too loud for him. Seoyoung: Hey, this is Minju here, the neighbor, tell him to tell it in person or suck it up. Seoyoung: It’s me again. Minju went to open the door. Seoyoung: Wait, he actually came? Hyunwa: What? Seoyoung: They are arguing like crazy. Hyunwa: I need to see this!

Minju’s POV

The doorbell has been going off the whole time I walked to the door. When I pull it open, there is a guy who looks incredibly unamused standing in front of me. ‘Good evening,’ I say politely. ‘Hi, I’m you neighbor. Could you turn it down?’ he asks. ‘No, but you are invited to come join us,’ I say cheerfully. He gives me a disgusted look. ‘Why would I want to do that if I was just asking you to turn it down?’ he questions. ‘I don’t know. Because you’re young?’ ‘No. Turn it down.’ ‘No,’ I say, stubbornly crossing my arms in front of my chest. ‘Fine, I’ll call the cops,’ he says. ‘You know just as well as I do that the cops never come to this complex,’ I snap at him. ‘YA! JUST TURN IT DOWN?’ ‘NO, WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE?’ ‘WHY ARE YOU BEING SO STUBBORN?’ ‘BECAUSE YOU’RE BEING AN ASSHOLE,’ I say. He lets out a big sigh. ‘I swear to God, turn it down or I will make you turn it down,’ he threatens. ‘No.’ His frustration seems to be overflowing. ‘This is not over,’ he says and walks away. ‘Ya! You are such a party pooper! We are just trying to have a good time!’ I snap at him. ‘Go have a good time somewhere else! I don’t need your bullshit here!’ he snaps back. I huff at him and slam the door closed. ‘Asshole,’ I breathe out as I walk back to the couch, downing a shot of soju I grabbed in the kitchen on the way there. ‘Told you your neighbor would be an ass,’ Seoyoung says as I sit down next to her. ‘Give me your phone, he’s getting my number so I’ll never have to talk to him face to face,’ I tell her. She gives it to me without hesitation. I text her brother and go on with my night.

Chatroom: The Second Floor, B Wing

Hyunwa a video. Yoongi: Ya, why did you film that? You could’ve helped me. Minjae: Hyunwa was just as bad and you never got this angry. Yoongi: Hyunwa doesn’t have an attitude. Jihun: It’s true. The girl does has an attitude. Yoongi: SEE! Hyunwa: I don’t believe that is the real reason for your hatred. Yoongi: I never said I hated her. Hyunwa: But you do act like it. Yoongi: Fine, I just can’t stand people like her. Minjae: Who are people like her? Yoongi: Rich and famous people who think they’re on top of the world and can do anything and everything without consequences. Hyunwa: Famous? Minjae: Rich? Jihun: Of course Minjae thinks about money. Yoongi: She’s a famous painter, sculptor, and photographer. Minjae: Who? Yoongi: YOU ARE A SHAME TO YOUR FAMILY Jihun: I know her. Yoongi: You’re fine. Minjae: The music stopped. Hyunwa: People are leaving. Jihun: Well Yoongi, it looks like you got what you wanted. Yoongi: Good. Hyunwa: Oh, my sister just send me her number. I’ll add her to the group since she’s a part of the B Wing now. Yoongi: Please don’t. Hyunwa added Minju. Minju: What is this group and why am I a part of it? Hyunwa: This is the group chat of the B Wing, second floor. Minju: You don’t live in the B Wing anymore. Minjae: BURN! Minju left the group. Hyunwa: For so far trying to get along with Minju.

Yoongi’s POV

‘Why does she even make you this angry?’ Seokjin asks me. I let out a sigh and lean back on the couch. It has been a few days since Minju moved in. She has been distant most of the time and when we did talk, we argued. Mostly because she turns her music up too loud with the door to her balcony opened, and the fact that she plays loud music too late, and because she leaves trails of paint behind on the hallway. She doesn’t care about anyone else living in this complex by the looks of it. ‘Her attitude. She acts like she doesn’t care one single bit and snaps at everyone who does something she doesn’t like,’ I explain. ‘That’s sounds exactly like someone I know,’ he jokes. ‘Really, who?’ Taehyung asks. I roll my eyes at the both of them and throw a pillow at Seokjin. ‘Ha, ha, I am not like that,’ I snap at him. ‘Oh, but you are. Though it’s all just one layer of you. I’m sure she has more layers as well,’ he says. ‘You make it sound like Yoongi Hyung is an onion,’ Jungkook says mindlessly. Jimin jumps him and starts play fighting with the younger guy who loudly protests against the way he’s treated. ‘I want her to move out,’ I state with a blank expression on my face. Just when I say the words, there are knocks on my door. I walk over to the door and open it to see Minju covered in paint splatters, no shoes on, and a bit embarrassed. Weird to see another side of her. ‘Hyunwa told me you still have the spare key of 2.4… I locked myself out,’ she says shyly. I lean against the doorpost with my arms crossed. ‘So what do you want?’ I ask her. She looks at me in surprise. Within a split second, she goes from shy to incredibly annoyed. ‘The key,’ she says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. ‘And what if I don’t give it to you?’ I ask her, amused at the sight of her. She steps into my apartment, leaving me in awe. She doesn’t pay attention to my friends in the living room, she just storms through to the balcony. ‘YA! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ ‘I am going to climb onto my balcony obviously,’ she says without looking behind. My friends look at me desperately. What I might need to explain is that this flat has a bit of a weird counting system. They don’t call the first floor the first floor but the eighth flour. That’s right, they count down instead of up, meaning that this is the seventh floor. If she falls, she’s dead. ‘I’ll give you the key,’ I say, already walking to the kitchen to grab it, but she doesn’t stop walking. My friends all sprint to the balcony when they see her climb over the railing, I join them on the balcony and see Minju skillfully climb onto her own balcony. ‘You have done this before, haven’t you?’ I ask. ‘I have. Many, many times,’ she says with a big smile and steps into her apartment. Of course she left the door to her balcony unlocked. Why not? Why not risk a breakin? Why not? The door stays opened though and just when I want to go back inside I hear music getting louder. Not just music. Something I composed. She listens to music I compose. The calming music piece glides over the city as Minju comes outside again. It is only now that I noticed my friends went inside. Also, they locked the door. ‘I like your music,’ she says as she stares out over the city, not looking at me. ‘I like your art,’ I reply. Neither of us seem impressed with the other’s statement. ‘Why do you live in this small apartment when you can pay for a mansion?’ ‘What would I need the space for? I’m just on my own,’ she replies. ‘I want to ask you something,’ she leans on the railing of her balcony with her forearms. ‘Compose a song for me.’ I am a bit taken back by her sudden request. ‘I will pay you.’ ‘Fine, what are the requirements?’ I say, trying to sound like I am against doing it, but in all honesty, I am a victim of hard times. My music went well for a while, but now not so much. I am not making much money, I even have a dayjob again, so I’ll take any offer I can take. ‘It has to show strength and passion, like fire,’ she says, ‘you can make it as long as you want. I don’t care if it’s two minutes or ten minutes.’ ‘Is it for your new gallery?’ She shakes her head, but seems to rethink her answer. ‘It’s for inspiration, so it will be played during my next gallery,’ she explains. ‘Inspiration?’ I question. She walks off her balcony and locks the door. Something is off with her. From what I know about her, she never has a season where she doesn’t have a gallery somewhere, but that’s the weird thing. This season, no one has heard from her and now she’s suddenly living in one of the cheapest flats in Seoul while she used to live in a penthouse. Now she doesn’t even have two bedrooms. Something is most definitely off.

[well-hidden-hot-mess]

current thoughts about the move/still being here vs. there

well someone didn’t time her ambien/melatonin very well last night and ended up falling asleep on her laptop right when she got to the important part of what she wanted to say. i wonder who that could be....  *face palm*

i feel overall better this morning but now i’m starting to question how much “better” i really feel. do i actually feel better or am i back into a more numb state where i just feel less so i think i feel better? i truly do want it to be that i feel better and even if i’m not sure try to tell myself that it is because deep down i do want to be happier. i know despite all my self depricating humor and sarcasm i am meant to be a happy person and try so fucking hard every day to “override” these feelings of being so down and blah and flat but 1. it’s exhausting and i’m only human 2. it’s not fun constantly having to fight your brain 24/7 it feels like especially since i’ve had to do this for so many years 3. i can only take so much before i just let it win because i don’t have anything left in me to fight with. i will admit i have been slipping with doing my morning affirmations and actively trying to replace negative thoughts lately but it’s extra hard to do when you feel so low down and don’t have the energy to do anything but just survive.

adding onto that is the fact that i feel just so stuck in so many areas of my life. i’m playing the waiting game with selling my place and moving to my happy place and there’s legitimately nothing i can do to make it go any faster so i just have to sit here and wait for someone to want to take it off my hands. this is one of those “onion” issues aka lots of layers to it.

i feel stuck and have no control over getting unstuck and as someone with control issues, that’s extra frustrating/anxiety inducing

it adds to my whole insecurity i guess about being subpar as a human because i should be able to afford to do this myself at my age and hate more than anything that i have to depend so much on my mom financially because of the job i used to love but not get paid enough at that has turned to a job i truly do hate and is a means to an end that still doesn’t pay me enough/doesn’t appreciate me so it’s like adding insult to injury. my job is a whole other issue that i’m sure we’ll get to soon enough because it has pretty much consumed my whole life (mostly my own fault but like i said we’ll get there soon)

i want to get a new job where i would earn more and feel more fulfilled at instead of being the “queen of remedial jobs” as tom bilyeau of quest nutrition said (that term really hit me hard during one of his youtube videos about his story and it’s been stuck in my brain ever since because of the accuracy) but i know i’m moving in a few months so why start something that i’m just going to have to quit like right as i get all settled in. plus most places aren’t going to hire me if they know i’m leaving in like 2-3 months max. plus do i really want to have to deal with showings/packing up my entire life/getting shit together to move while trying to learn a whole new job at the same time? no probably not. so this is a mindless thing i can do while i focus on the important stuff but at the same time it’s not like i’m doing anything right now to sell it other than just waiting so i’m like wtf do i do? i’m thinking of starting my PT certification again so it’ll give me something to keep my brain awake and feel like i’m being productive but can do while i’m at my current job and not get too overwhelmed. idk.

i feel like as long as i’m where i am now, i’m just in limbo and stuck which is making me feel more blah/flat and it’s like the longer i’m in limbo, the more blah i get and it just keeps snowballing until i’m at the current hot mess state i’m in now where i’m just like just keep your head down and deal with it until it’s time to jump into action but i’ve gotten too good at the “don’t think, don’t feel, just get through” thing that i just don’t feel anything anymore, hence the overwhelming numbness.

so as we can see, this move needs to happen like yesterday. plus since i was there a few weeks ago it just made the yearning to be there so much bigger and stronger and the hate for this place/anxiety to get the fuck out so much stronger that i’m like going insane counting the seconds until i can get out of here but even that’s a countdown with no end time as of right now so that’s SUPER fun *eye roll*. i had my whole trip typed out in this post but it was super long and a very different vibe than this post so it’ll be it’s own because it deserves it and i don’t want it to be tied to the negativity in this post. i know that’s weird but like i don’t want it to be tainted which i know makes zero sense but oh well, i do what i want *insert sassy girl emoji here*

i gotta tell ya, starting this blog was a great idea. as much as i loveeee hand writing out things, i just have so many thoughts going all at once that i want to get out by the time that i actually sit down to write them that my hand can’t move fast enough to get it all down and i end up missing so much and it takes so much longer that i never really feel like i have the time to get it all out but with this, it’s much easier and less time consuming. plus i can add to it from anywhere and don’t have to worry about carrying around a notebook with me that people can find or that i have to worry about having out at work. worst case, i just type it out on a word document and copy it over here later. brilliant. i have a feeling this is going to be a good tool for me to actually start dealing with my emotions rather than just numbing myself to them/the world because i really do want to be a happy, stable, sane person and this is step 1 towards that. i know it won’t be perfect all the time and it’s not a destination kinda journey but i think i’m finally at the place where i’m ready/able to make the changes to get on my way and to a more overall positive place. like i’ve been saying i need to see a therapist for so long and started with someone but stopped (another issue for another post) shortly after but felt so good during those sessions that i had someone’s undivided attention on me and would listen to me and cared about my problems instead of me trying to get other people in my life to do that and feeling like i’m putting my problems on them and all that other bullshit i tell myself. but like i don’t know if this is rock bottom or if that post i talked about in my last post about signs of being numb just like hit me THAT hard that it kinda woke me up to my own problems but idk, i just feel ready to try that again. plus now that i’m on a health insurance plan that actually covers things, i feel like it won’t cost an arm and a leg and won’t make my self imposed issues with being a financial burden that much worse. i even said it out loud last night to myself/my cat that i need to talk to someone and that’s a big step for me to not just think it and then sweep it under the rug but to actually say it out loud. now i know it was to my cat and not an actual person but hey, baby steps, i’ll take it.

just realized how all over this place this post is with my feelings. but hey at least it’s going from blah to positive and not sinking deeper into blahness, proof that so far this is helping. at least that’s what i’m telling myself but hey i ain’t even mad. okay i’m going to end this post because it’s already 8 million pages long and because i wanna keep working on the one about my trip because it’s making me happy to think about it. further proof that it’s where i’m meant to be when just thinking about it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside lol. k i’m done rambling now i swear... peace!