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#and there are equally large numbers of groups who will not do anything. and many of them are people in power
umtxqwa · 1 day
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𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗕𝗮𝗱𝗿
Today, on the 17th of Ramadān, is the day this great battle took place. The Battle of Badr was a turning point in the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ mission during the early days of Islām.
5 lessons from the battle of Badr that we can benefit from:
1 - Islāmic army is about quality individuals and not quantity: 313 Muslim warriors crushed an army of 950 enemy fighters armed to the tooth, this proves to us that numbers mean nothing in Islām. It is Allāh alone that gives us victory. A sincere devoted Muslim can be equal to a 100 men.
Allāh says, “How many a small company has overcome a large company by the permission of Allāh." [2: 249]
2 - The Power of Allāh is Endless: He sent down angels to help the Muslims in the battle. This gives us comfort that Allāh will always protect His sincere slaves and those that struggle in His cause.
Allāh says, “When you sought deliverance from your Lord and He answered you: Verily, I will reinforce you with a thousand angels, rank after rank” [8: 9]
3 - The power of supplication: The Messenger of Allāh ﷺ raised his hands on the Day of Badr, saying “Oh Lord, if this group is destroyed, you will not be worshipped on this world at all.” Allāh accepted his supplication and gave him victory.
4 - Never fear the enemy: Always remember for the Muslim it is a win win scenario, if he dies it is martyrdom and if he lives he is victorious.
Allāh says, "Say: “Do you wait for us [anything] except one of the two best things [martyrdom or victory]." [9: 52].
5 - The importance of always being ready to sacrifice for the Sake of Allāh: Like how Sa’d Ibn Mu’ādh said to the Prophet ﷺ:
“We have given you our binding promise, to hear and obey. March on as you desire and we are with you! I swear by Him Who has sent you with the truth, if you ask us to wade through the ocean, we will wade through with you, and not one of us will stay behind!.”
There are so many lessons we can learn, above is only a few.
Compiled by Ibrāhīm Hussain
17 Ramadān 1445
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alexturne · 1 year
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The Car - Track by track: A test-drive of The Car
Article in Focus which goes through the album track by track. Shared and translated by Smilion:
1. There'd Better Be a Mirrorball
Let's get straight to the point: The Car is not a new Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the album with which Arctic Monkeys radically turned its back on the arena rock of predecessor and chef d'oeuvre AM (2013) four years ago. Tranquility Base was Arctic Monkeys in space, a concept album like a Stanley Kubrick soundtrack. The Car is equally cinematic, but a lot wider, lighter and – yes – more accessible. Or as Alex Turner put it in the British street newspaper The Big Issue: 'The sci-fi is off the table, we're back on Earth.'
The proof is immediately provided in opener and forward single There'd Better Be a Mirrorball. No disco, but a break-up song packaged like a Bond number from the sixties. “Do you wanna walk me to the car?” Turner wonders. Walking to the car with your loved one will never be the same.
2. I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am
Turner once again wrote the picket fences of the new Arctic Monkeys record solo, from behind his Steinway & Sons. It was only later that the rest of the group was brought in. More specifically during the European Football Championship of 2021, where they watched with the entire band between the recordings. (Turner gave his comeback interview earlier this year to the French sports newspaper L'Équipe for a reason.)
"In the summer of the European Championships, we spent two or three weeks with the boys as a band in the English countryside," says Turner. “I then stepped away from the piano for a while and enjoyed playing wahwah guitar again.” It's that wahwah guitar you hear in I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am, a song that is just as much of Turner's side project The Last Shadow. Puppets could have been. Of everything you'll find in the trunk of The Car, this is by far the funky and catchy.
3. Sculptures of Anything Goes
Dark, cumbersome but fat: with a little good will you can consider Sculptures of Anything Goes as a distant relative of Humbug (2009), the third of the Monkeys produced by Josh Homme. Although the deep bass and pulsating electronic drums are actually unreleased Arctic Monkeys, and in that respect the song is more reminiscent of that rare time when Nick Cave – in Rings of Saturn from Skeleton Tree – suddenly started flirting with electronica.
More than anywhere else on the record, Alex Turner's on-again, off-again relationship with rock music is highlighted here. "I wanted to turn the rock band bit on and off," he told The Guardian. “On Sculptures, the rock band slide is opened here and there for a measure or two, only to be pushed back in.”
4. Jet Skis on the Moat
Summer 2014. A Canadian journalist speaks with Alex Turner and drummer Matt Helders in front of a concert hall in Toronto, on the shores of Lake Ontario, but sees his interview cut short when suddenly two men on a jet ski pass by and start calling for the Monkeys. (Things like, 'Which band is playing tonight? The Arctic Monkeys? Is that you?' To which Alex Turner: 'You bet!') Turner apparently had so much fun seeing Jet Skis on the Moat – there's the wahwahgi cakes again! — could be based on that particular interview from eight years ago. At least, that's what some Arctic Monkeys fans on the internet claim. Or they just have too much time.
5. Body Paint
The second pre-sent single, and according to many fans "the best thing Arctic Monkeys has played since AM", the British newspaper The Independent polled. Anyway, Body Paint is the most versatile song on the entire album, half a rock opera in which Turner croons like the Bowie of the mid-seventies over keys, guitars and strings. Lots of strings.
Turner wrote a large part of the string arrangements for this album himself and had them edited by Bridget Samuels, the artistic director of the London Orchestrate who previously produced soundtracks for films such as Under the Skin (with Scarlett Johansson), Jackie (with Natalie Portman) and Midsommar (with Florence Pugh) supervised. You immediately know why The Car sounds so cinematic and grand.
6. The Car
From big to small: title song The Car is one of the quietest on the record. Acoustic guitars predominate. The 'sleepy amigos' about whom Turner sings here only reinforce the mariachi feeling.
Incidentally, the album title came after Alex Turner saw a photo of patented hobby photographer Matt Helders with a car on the roof of an abandoned parking garage. "I immediately got the impression that that had to be the next cover," says Turner. "And if you get the chance to call an album The Car, you have to grab it with both hands."
7. Big Ideas
Or as Turner calls it in the text itself: 'The ballad of what could have been'. The Arctic Monkeys frontman imagines himself to be a brilliant composer who, on his mandolin and with the backing of an orchestra, devised the theme song to a film about twins received by mass hysteria. Or something.
Big Ideas had a modest live premiere last week during the Arctic Monkeys showcase at Studio Brussel, but you can expect an even dreamier studio version.
8. Hello You
Besides I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am, The Car's one and only uptempo song. The Arctic Monkeys from the time of R U Mine? will never return, as Matt Helders indicated in an interview this spring, but the guitar riff of Hello You is very reminiscent of Knee Socks, one of those other crowd favorites from AM.
Hello You, by the way, contains one of the funniest lines of text that Alex Turner wrote for The Car: 'I could pass for seventeen if I just get a shave and catch some Zzz.'
9. Mr. Schwartz
Brian from Brianstorm. Arabella from Arabella. Receptionist Mark from Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. Alex Turner has featured many characters in his songs over the years. Mr Schwartz's turn is on The Car. From the first time Arctic Monkeys played the song glued together by fingerpicking guitars live last summer, the identity of Mr. Schwartz has been conjectured. The most plausible guess came from a Reddit user who stumbled upon an Arctic Monkeys-linked Spotify playlist titled "Del Schwartz"—again: Monkeys fans obviously have a lot of time—and googled Delmore Schwartz, the late American poet. and short story writer who taught Lou Reed. Turner spoke to 3FM about 'a huge coincidence' and claimed that he had simply seen the name Del Schwartz 'on the back of a nineties Alfa Romeo'.
10. Perfect Sense
Favorite Worst Nightmare (2007) had 505, AM had I Wanna Be Yours and Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino had The Ultracheese. Well-aimed closing songs are a thing at Arctic Monkeys. Perfect Sense is also such a well-known ending, one where you can see the credits roll across the screen. And one in which Alex Turner repeatedly wishes you good night against the background of a battery – there they are again – strings.
Of all the songs on The Car, this would be the most suitable to perform with a string ensemble. Although it must be said right away: that will not happen. The Monkeys skillfully rejected an offer for a TV special with an orchestra. "Too predictable."
However accessible Arctic Monkeys in 2022 may sound, the spirit of the obstinate rock band is still there.
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afloweroutofstone · 2 years
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Also about the Electoral College overrepresenting the small states; it does, sure, but how effectively does that help them? I know a guy who likes to bring up something he calls the "Superstate Problem" (in the larger variety the Megastate Problem). No idea if he came up with that name or if he heard it somewhere, but anyway;
If, hypothetically of course, one state gathered so many citizens that it got a nigh-impossible 273 house seats, for example, then it'd have 275 Electors. Likely, the citizens of this Megastate would be the most underrepresented in the country in the EC; nevertheless, the president would be decided entirely by them. It would literally not matter at all how many people in any of the other states voted for Candiadate A, as long as a relative majority in the Megastate votes for Candidate B, that guy wins.
So far, so unrealistic, of course, but in this scenario, no candidate would bother with any of the other states during the election. The only important matters are those that move the Megastate's citizens.
Slightly (very slightly!) more realistic; a state that has 269 Electors; now that it's just alarge plurality, it's the Superstate. Technically, you can win without this state! But will you? What sensible politician would ever skip a voting block that carries 99% of what you need to win? None of them, naturally. So the president is likely whoever the Superstate and any one other state want becomes the president, unless all other states are united against the favorite of the Superstate. Which of these is more likely? The first one, of course, so again, mostly the matters of the Superstate are important.
Now the question is, how far do you have to lower the number of Electors a state has before it stops being a Superstate? 200? 150? 120? Are we sure that California isn't already a superstate? If all states suddenly become toss-ups for 2024, would politicians focus on California and Texas or Alaska, Wyoming, DC, Vermont etc? Essentially, a state's population has a set of issues that are important to them; would you rather balance two sets of issues for 94 Electors, or the twenty-two sets of issues of the 22 smallest states to get 95 Electors? One of these is WAY easier than the other. Like yeah swing states are obviously more important to candidates than safe states, but all swingy-ness being equal, the small states aren't even valuable compared to large states.
This is an interesting thought experiment, but not really a problem the US could realistically face. One could imagine a country with a state-based political system where 80% of the population lives in one state, thus making the rest of the states permanently irrelevant regardless of a bias towards the small states. But you'd have to have a population radically more geographically concentrated than the United States for anything like this to be a real issue.
If a presidential candidate somehow won all 10 of the largest US states, it still wouldn't be enough to win a majority in the Electoral College, even though the majority of the US population lives in those 10 states! Thus the over-representation of small states actually matters quite a lot.
This thought experiment also ignores the fact that states don't actually have their own interests, they're just filled with a diverse group of people with individual interests. An agenda which wins in one Super State will not necessarily be unpopular in the smaller states, and vice versa. You say this scenario is holding "swingy-ness" and partisanship constant, but they can't really be removed from an analysis of how our system works without effecting the analysis.
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m-ushroomtale · 9 months
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2023.06.29. Beijing, China
A Filipino reporter said to me: "Now I know why the United States is suppressing you!" (It's still they who understand the United States better.) Today, I interviewed a "not well-known" Beijing Changping start-up together with a dozen or so Filipino journalists. The company showed us some PPTs and showed several "VR/AR teaching" products. Basically, students can see the whole world by wearing headsets. We often see this kind of news. I didn't think much of it at first, but the Filipino reporter was shocked. This Filipino reporter, after seeing the product on the spot, came over to me and said: "Now I know why the U.S. government is so jealous and suppresses you so much!" I asked, "Why?" He said: "If these VR teaching products are somehow sold to the Philippines, we don’t have to spend all our savings to send our children to famous American schools!" Verbatim English: "No wonder why the US government envies you guys. If you managed to sell these to our country, there might be no need for children to attend prestigious schools in the West.” I said, "It's true. So the United States cut off the supply of chips, thinking that this would slow down the development of these companies. But cutting off supply to China, a large unfavorable consequence for countries like the Philippines is to slow down the equalization of educational opportunities among children.” Verbatim English: "That's probably why they cut chip exports to China, trying to slow these firms down. But that’s harmful for our work on leveling the playing field for global education opportunities, to say the least." It seems that Filipino journalists understand the United States better! ——It’s not that the United States cannot produce these VR teaching technologies. Zuckerberg's "Metaverse" and the like, the capital must be more than the enterprise we visited that day. But why is China the one doing it? Because there are so many Ivy League universities in the United States, they are already very mature and profitable educational institutions! Just like in Japan, the development of online shopping is slow because of the good physical stores and no need for online shopping. The United States already has a vested interest in attracting international students from all over the world, and the capital is does not feel that it is urgent to use VR for teaching. But China needs it, the Philippines needs it! Theoretically, no matter how poor and backward the village is, as long as the village has access to the Internet and can afford the headset, children can go to school. Wearing VR headsets, students can "teleport" to anything at any time, anywhere, do any chemical experiments, and see any perspective view of human bones, internal organs, blood vessels, etc. (products displayed on site)... This is for the "common good of developing nations". What iterates on instant noodles is not better instant noodles, but a takeaway app. If instant noodles can suppress the food takeout delivery industry, I think it will. This Philippine journalist group is being led by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to go to the grassroots level in the country. Now we are at the Capital Airport and will fly to Xi'an immediately, then Yan'an, Changsha, Zhangjiajie, and Shanghai. There were also some Filipino government personnel in the regiment. Darrel Winthrop, head of the Information Bureau of the Philippine Department of Information, told me at the company site: "It would be great if this company could put price tags next to the exhibits. We will go back and report to the government how much it will cost to introduce." Without saying a word, an employee of the company next to him immediately handed over his business card and said: "You can contact me to inquire about the price. My mobile phone number is WeChat ID." This company is 讯飞幻境, Jingle Magic. Now I know what Changping's Future Science City means by "revolutionary innovation".
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baelpenrose · 2 years
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Just found this blog and you say you're a historian. Do you think America is doomed at this point?
Simple question, complicated answer. Depends how you mean “doomed.”
So. We’ve already been through a few constitutional crises of this magnitude that did fundamentally alter the nature of the American nation-state, and “is the Republic doomed” was a reasonable question to ask in at least one of them. If we kept track of the times we’ve totally redone our government in response to crisis the way the French do we’d be on number 3 about to be on number 4. (1 was Articles of confederation, 2 was antebellum period)
Right now, we’re at the tail end of a period analogous in time to the period at the mid-late 19th century. A lot of people are enraged, families are being split and not on speaking terms over it, the Supreme Court is filled with partisan hacks making decisions that deny the humanity of large parts of the population, and a huge part of the population is disdainful of the concept of democratic solutions. We’ve been essentially kicking the can down the road about a lot of issues - womens rights, civil rights, queer rights, disability issues, economic justice, environmental issues, via a series of increasingly unsatisfactory compromises that don’t really make anyone happy but do maintain status quo.
But the argument is between people who want those rights to not exist and who in another era would have been pro slavery, and people who see the status quo compromises that keep people in unjust suffering to keep sadists and tyrants comfortable as inadequate.
And eventually something’s gonna give.
Now I would be remiss not to say there are also legitimate comparisons to be made to 1930s Germany, BUT. Important to note that in 1930s Germany the dominant racial group was almost entirely in thrall to the Nazi party, young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, male and female alike, where increasingly here, generational, class, gender and educational divides are all pretty marked politically. The kind of division we have leads more frequently to absolutely horrific partisan civil war than to a “clean” collapse to fascist dictatorship. If. People are willing to break rules and fight for the people they love.
I will say that at this point too many institutions are too compromised for any of them to be viable replacements for robust community networks. And that there are absolutely no possibilities of what happens next where you should not be building those. Food gardens, community defense, mutual aid, that kind of thing.
That said, the nature of that conflict is itself a matter of debate. Contrary to the wanking I’ve seen by internet leftists about revolution when they barely know which end the bullets come out of (and that only from video games) or the equally cringey and far more disturbing Christian fascist conquest fantasies I’ve seen the right circulate without acknowledging that they do not have anything resembling the numbers to do that, there’s no clean winner in that conflict. In fact the majority of projections I’ve seen for a modern American civil war that are grounded in any kind of reality rather than partisan fan fiction are essentially a balkanization - a dissolution of America into several smaller nation states. So debatably, the answer to your question is decisively “yes, definitely.”
I mean, maybe people will refuse to fight and we’ll fall into fascism, vis-a-vis Weimar Republic/Third Riech and then collapse into the failed state that becomes and reconstruct into something that’s still “American” after that but I really don’t think that’s worth tolerating.
I think that America as the worlds premiere superpower is done. The damage to its institutions is doing to much internal damage and whatever happens internally next will garauntee that.
I think that we are very much living through times that future generations of historians will find fascinating to study, though whether they admire us or curse us when they write about us depends on how we behave in the next few years and whether we decide we’re done putting up with half measures that leave over half our country being treated as less than fully human.
That isn’t really a decisive answer but it’s kinda the only one I’ve got.
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uglyshirtsinc · 1 year
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Idea 3: Pizzaplex is an engineering disaster waiting to happen.
An idea that I don't see brought up at all, is the idea that the Pizzaplex is not constructed well.
Remember in FNAF 6 when the tutorial unit said this?
"There may be times when you purchase something of questionable quality, and we don't blame you. Cutting corners is just good business."
Keep this statement in mind while I bring up my next point. As someone who's taken an engineering class, when you are constructing a building, there are a VERY large number of codes (rules) that you need to follow for every conceivable part of it.
Fazbear Entertainment would probably find it a lot cheaper just to pay off the people inspecting the plex than to actually put money into making sure everything is up to code.
They would also try to construct the building as cheaply as possible, trying to "cut corners" wherever they could. They use substandard materials and contractors that don't double-check their work. They built the mall itself over the subterranean remains of their old restaurant, despite this making the ground very unstable.
This all works in my mind because Fazbear Entertainment has been proven to follow the "be as cheap as possible" and "maximize profits by any means necessary" approaches many times in the past.
Here is just one example of a code being violated, according to Section 1006.2.1.1 of Utah Building Codes, "Three exits or exit access doorways shall be provided from any space with an occupant load of 501 to 1,000. Four exits or exit access doorways shall be provided from any space with an occupant load greater than 1,000." We only see 2 public exits in the game, and the Pizzaplex likely holds well over a thousand people at any one time. What's worse is that one of the exits, the only one designated for emergencies, requires a VIP pass in order to be used.
If Fazbear Entertainment is willing to do this to cut costs, who knows what else they have done?
It's why, in my mind, I don't have Gregory live at the pizzaplex after the 3-star ending. Freddy would calculate that it is statistically safer for Gregory to live in his box than at the plex. He instead lives with Vanessa, creating opportunities for them to grow closer.
BTW This has happened in real life, even down to the shoddy construction and profit maximization. It was the Sampoong Department store collapse. Link
first off, idea 2 might have gotten eaten by the tumblr gods so uh- you might wanna resend me that one-
rather than respond all in one go ill just respond as i read so you see my real time thoughts but all of that is under the read more cut because not everyone wants to see my late night rants
literally anything said by tutorial unit in fnaf 6 gave me trust issues that lil shit taught me that it wasnt just ha ha silly, no some businesses DO actually do that. i also relearned that during my food handlers permit test and honestly it makes the fnaf games food storing conditions a thousand times scarier imo. forget the literal child murder or possessed robots, it's unsanitary kitchen environments that rattle my bones!
so what im hearing is fazbear entertainment is committing OSCHA violations? them and every after school theater group lmao
THE PARAGRAPH ABOVE IS A JOKE I DIDNT EXPECT TO SCROLL AND SEE THE ACTUAL VIOLATION BE LISTED I SPIT MY SODA LAUGHING- YOU PULLED UP THE UTAH BUILDING CODES TOO THIS HAS GOT TO BE ONE OF MY NEW FAVORITE ASKS TO EVER RECIEVE THAT IS PURE DEDICATION
the sentence "safer in a box" both disturbs me and makes complete sense. it's definitely the lesser of two evils, but i can hate both evils equally!
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USD to CAD and Why it Matters to You
USD to CAD.  What is it?  You hear the term everywhere in Canada.  You hear it mentioned on TV, on the radio.  You see it online and in the newspapers.  There are even Facebook groups dedicated to it.  Why do people care so much about it?  People write reports about it and debate it passionately and care a lot about where it is and where it is going in the future.  It seems to change all the time.  What in the world is it and why should you care?
The term USD to CAD is generally denotes the “US dollar to Canadian dollar exchange rate”.  It is the price of 1 US dollar in Canadian dollars.  For example, a USD to CAD rate of 1.27 means that each US dollar is worth 1.27 Canadian dollars.  It also means that 1 Canadian dollar is worth 0.79 in US dollars.  This last number is sometimes known as the inverse rate because it is equal to the inverse of USD to CAD (ie: 1/1.27 = 0.79). 
The USD to CAD exchange rate (like all other exchange rates) changes from second to second as buyers sellers and speculators transact with one another.  The Bank of Canada provides a daily exchange rate lookup as well as historical USD to CAD rates but does not provide “live” rates that reflect minute to minute changes during the day.  You can see the live USD to CAD rates quotes on sites like Interchange Financial.  While the rate changes all the time, on a daily basis the changes tend to be within a penny.  While larger changes can and do happen, it would be rare to see a day with a larger than one penny change more than once a week.
While the daily changes in USD to CAD are often small, they can add up in many ways to make an impact to people doing USD to CAD exchanges.  For example, even a one penny change means that if you are exchanging 10,000, you will receive a hundred dollars more (or less).  Also, the changes can accumulate over several days or months to add up to larger amounts.  For example, during one three month period recently the Canadian dollar moved by 20 pennies.  That same 10,000 exchange would now get 2000 more (or less depending on what you are exchanging).
So, that’s it.  That’s what all the hoopla is about when it comes to USD to CAD.  It is a simple concept but it is also very important to Canadian society and economy.  Why is it important?  It is important because Canada has a very open economy and interaction with people and businesses outside of Canada is very normal.  USD to CAD can impact everything from the smallest transaction involving someone ordering shampoo on Amazon to someone buying property in Arizona to an immigrant moving money from the USA to Canada to a Canadian company paying bills in California to a Michigan company buying steel in Canada to an investor selling his stocks in US companies.
Let us consider just one of those examples.  Take a sophisticated Canadian investor who holds stock in Apple.  The investor has done well and the stock is up 20% over his holding period.  He is ready to sell it and cash out his investment to purchase a new house in Canada.  After he sells his Apple stock, he will hold a bunch of US dollars in his brokerage account.  He needs to convert that amount to Canadian dollars.  What if the USD to CAD rate moved down 30% during his holding period?  Now, in Canadian dollars, his return is actually negative 10%.  In Canadian dollar terms, he has lost money.  That house he thought he could buy with his investment?  It is no longer available to him. 
At this point, you might be thinking that USD to CAD matters only to large transactions.  Not true.  Let’s say you are buying a new bike online.  The seller is located in the US.  When you first see the bike you want the USD to CAD rate is 1.27.  When you go back in a month, the USD to CAD rate has moved to 1.34.  Well, that bike just got 6% more expensive for you.
What if you never buy anything from outside of Canada?  USD to CAD still impacts you.  Why?  Because just about everything you buy in Canada has some sort of input that is priced in US dollars.  Oranges at the supermarket?  They are from California.  Car made in Windsor?  Most of the parts are from the US.  T-shirt made in China at Walmart?  The importer paid in US dollars to buy it.  Wine made in BC?  The gasoline used to transport it is priced in US dollars.  In general, when USD to CAD goes up, everything gets more expensive.
Given its importance to nearly everything in Canada, it is perhaps not surprising that The Bank of Canada and the Government of Canada watch the USD to CAD rate very closely.  They like to say that the rate is set by markets, which is true, but it really impacts everything so they follow it closely and even sometimes try to influence it.  If USD to CAD gets too low then Canadian companies have trouble competing in international markets because their exports become too expensive.  On the other hand, if it gets too high then things get very expensive for Canadians living at home. So, USD to CAD is a simple term and a simple concept but it is hugely important to everyone in Canada.  It is no wonder then that you hear it everywhere and so many people get worked up about it.  It really matters to everything that we do in Canada.
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island-mljet · 7 months
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Advice to Know Before Making a Group Tour Reservation
Are you planning to sign up for a tour with a Small group tour mljet? Then you're not by yourself! Going on a group trip is a growing trend and a great opportunity to explore the world with like-minded individuals. But there are a few crucial pointers you should be aware of before you actually book your journey. For anyone wishing to schedule a small group tour, this blog post will offer some crucial guidance on anything from budgeting to activity planning. Read on for all the information you need to make your trip an amazing experience, regardless of your level of travel expertise!
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A small group tour: why book one?
Comparing small group excursions to regular large group tours reveals several advantages. You can anticipate a more personal, smaller group tour when you reserve one. This enhances the overall enjoyment of your trip by enabling you to get to know your tour leader and fellow passengers better.
Furthermore, itineraries on small group tours are frequently more adaptable. Your tour guide can be more accommodating to your interests because there are fewer individuals to arrange for. This implies that during your trip, you're probably going to see and do just what you desire.
Lastly, compared to large-group trips, small-group tours are typically less expensive. This is due to the fact that tour companies can save expenses by not needing to rent as much transportation or pay as many guides. There is no doubt that a small group tour is the best choice if you're on a tight budget.
Advice for arranging a Mljet small-group tour
If you are going to book with a firm, be sure they have a good reputation. You can use a range of resources to accomplish this, including online reviews and referrals from others you know who have worked with the company.
The number of individuals in your traveling party is something you should carefully consider. To ensure that everyone can comfortably fit in the car and hear the guide, it is best to travel in small groups. There should be just the perfect amount of people in the group to prevent feeling like a nameless sheep.
Select from a number of itineraries that last anything from a few days to many weeks. Make an informed decision by ranking what matters most to you in terms of cost, enjoyment, and interest.
Expectations for a tour with a small group
When booking a small group tour, it's important to know what to anticipate. First and foremost, due to the limited number of available spots, it is highly advised that you reserve your small group tour in advance. Second, your small group will probably be led by a qualified guide who has extensive knowledge of the area you will be visiting. Finally, the cost of the majority of small-group excursions usually includes transportation between locations and entry to the sites. In conclusion, remember that you will be engaging with people during your tour, so be prepared to start discussions and possibly even form lifelong friendships.
Tips for selecting the best private excursions in Mljet
Choose the kind of tour you want: There are various Mljet private tours options, each with pros and cons of its own. Choose the kind of tour that best fits your needs and interests by doing some research.
Select a trustworthy provider: Not all travel agencies are made equal. Be sure the business you select is respectable and has a good track record with previous customers.
Think about the cost: Although private excursions can be more costly than group tours, they provide a more customized experience. When weighing the costs, make sure to compare like with like; before choosing a trip, find out what is included in the price.
Inquire about alternatives for customization: You can tailor some private excursions to better fit your requirements and preferences. When interacting with possible tour operators, make sure to inquire about customisation choices.
Obtain recommendations: Consult with people you know who have previously had a private tour to learn about their thoughts. They might have some excellent ideas that you would not have considered on your own.
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What advantages do excursions for small groups offer?
Smaller groups provide you the opportunity to receive more individualized attention from your tour guide, have more opportunities for deep conversations with other visitors, and have a more intimate experience of the place overall.
1. Greater Customized Attention
Small-group excursions offer greater opportunities for you to form stronger bonds with your tour leader and fellow travelers. This is beneficial in general, but if you are a first-time foreign visitor looking for advice and information, it can be really helpful. A tour guide you hire will be able to provide you more individualized attention and recommend things that will make your trip even more enjoyable.
2. More Intriguing Conversations
Additionally, small group trips provide an avenue for deeper conversations with other tour participants. When there are fewer people in your group, you'll have more time to get to know each other and create lasting relationships that will extend beyond the trip. It's simple to get lost in the crowd on a big group tour and never truly connect with someone.
3. A closer-knit encounter
A richer, more intimate immersion in the region is usually provided by small-group trips because of the greater chance for one-on-one interaction and stronger bonds with other tourists. Due to their smaller size, smaller groups provide greater opportunity for bonding and exploring their surroundings.
Think about the kind of tour you aspire to.
While on this tour, is there anything in particular you would like to do? If seeing the sites is important to you, choose a trip that allows you plenty of free time to do so. If you'd rather to undertake outdoor activities like bicycling and hiking, look for a trip that focuses on such.
What is the desired duration of your tour? Small group tours can range widely in duration, from one-day outings to multi-week adventures. Choose a tour based on the amount of time you have available.
Tell me the maximum amount you are prepared to spend on this vacation. A small-group vacation's price might vary greatly as well, depending on factors like the number of days involved, the standard of the accommodations, and the range of activities available. Select a trip that is affordable.
Look for a guided tour company in Mljet.
Choose a tour that suits your interests and budget by doing some research on the different possibilities that are available. Once you've identified a few possible tour operators, make sure to check customer reviews to learn what other people thought of their experience.
The next step is to begin organizing your travel once you've whittled down your options. Asking questions about the party size and the availability of a private guide are important when making a reservation for a small group tour. A lot of tours also include extracurricular activities or excursions that may be purchased; these are frequently worthwhile, but make sure you thoroughly read the descriptions so you know what you're getting into.
It is important to account for travel expenses when planning your small group tour budget. If flight is not included in the package price, make sure to budget appropriately. This is usually the case with most providers. You may have a fantastic time on your small group tour with a little preparation and research; just don't forget to have fun!
In summary
For tourists who would prefer a more personal experience of the locations they visit rather than being crammed into a big tour bus with strangers, small group tours are ideal. With our advice, you'll be fully aware of what to consider when making reservations for your next small group tour. Check the size of the group, read reviews, ask lots of questions, and make sure each day has ample free time for independent exploration if preferred. Once you've completed these steps, you should be able to schedule a fantastic small-group tour!
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angelolandi · 11 months
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How Many Slices Are in a Large Pizza?
The number of slices in a large pizza depends on several factors. The size of the pie, the crust thickness, and the type of toppings will all impact how many pieces you’ll get.
A standard large pizza will usually yield 8 slices. However, if you are hosting a large group or want to save money, some restaurants offer smaller pies that split into two pieces.
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How Many Slices Are in a Large Pizza?
Pizza Size
A large pizza is a great way to feed a group of people. It can be a delicious dinner or just a treat to enjoy with friends and family. To ensure that you'll have enough to go around, it's important to know how many slices are in a large pizza.
To figure out how many slices a large pizza has, you need to take into account its size and any toppings that it may contain. In general, a large pizza is about 14 inches in diameter and will usually be cut into ten pieces. However, not all pizza places cut their pies the same way, so it's possible that you'll get less or more than 10 pieces.
The number of slices in a large pizza depends on the thickness of the crust and the toppings that it contains. Typically, a slice of pizza measures about 2.5 to 4 inches wide and can vary in length depending on how thick or thin the crust is.
There are two ways to estimate the number of slices in a large pizza: one method involves using a tape measure to find the edge of the crust and then measuring the distance between the edge and the inside. The other method requires you to multiply the diameter of the pizza by 2 and then round up the answer to the nearest whole number.
This is a pretty easy calculation to do, and it will give you an estimation of how many slices are in a large pizza. If you want a more accurate estimate, you can also use a calculator.
When you're figuring out how many slices a large pizza has, consider the age and appetite of the people who will be eating it. Young children, for example, don't often eat more than a single slice of pizza because their stomachs aren't big enough to handle it. On the other hand, adults often eat three to four slices before they feel full.
It's also important to remember that you'll need to order more than one large pizza if there are several people who will be eating it. This is especially true if you're planning to serve a lot of other foods, as people tend to get hungry quickly.
Crust Thickness
If you love pizza and are looking for a large one, there are some things to keep in mind. The first thing to consider is the crust thickness. A thin crust is generally considered to be healthier and has fewer calories than a thick-crusted pie.
Another important factor is the number of toppings. While pepperoni and sausage are classic choices, there are many other options available that can give your pizza a unique flavor and texture. Some of the most popular toppings include mushrooms, green peppers, onions, black olives, and pineapple.
A large pizza can contain up to 20 different toppings. These can be anything from traditional favorites to more innovative options like pulled pork and goat cheese.
It’s also a good idea to consider the amount of sauce that you plan to use on your pizza. Toppings that require more sauce will have more of a tendency to slide off the crust. If you’re not sure how much you’ll need, make a small batch of the sauce and experiment with it until it has the consistency that you’re happy with.
You may want to add some cornstarch to your sauce to help thicken it, if you’re using a lot of it. However, you should be careful not to overdo it because it can lead to a watery pizza sauce that is hard to spread evenly.
Once your pizza is done cooking, it’s time to cut it into equal slices. A pizza wheel is a great tool to use for this task because it can slice through thick pizza crusts without breaking them.
Then, you can reheat your pizza. Reheating it in the oven or toaster oven will help to crisp up the crust and make it easier to eat. You can also reheat it on a pizza stone.
When it comes to the number of slices in a large pizza, it can range from eight to twelve. This number is usually determined by the size and shape of the pizza as well as any additional toppings. This is why it’s a good idea to order extra pizza when you’re hosting a party or gathering with friends and family!
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Toppings
The toppings that you choose to put on your pizza are what make it unique. There are a wide variety of options available, including pepperoni, sausage, cheese, and vegetables. Depending on your personal tastes, you can even add breakfast foods like bacon and eggs.
The most popular types of pizza toppings are meats, herbs, and cheeses. However, there are also plenty of nontraditional options that are becoming more and more popular.
When choosing the right toppings, you should make sure that they are healthy and fit into your lifestyle. For example, if you are trying to cut down on your calorie intake, you should avoid toppings that are high in fat and sodium.
For instance, meats like pepperoni and sausage are commonly high in saturated fat and sodium. This can contribute to weight gain and obesity.
On the other hand, cheese and vegetables are usually low in calories and can help you feel full. They are also nutritious and can be a great way to increase your fiber intake.
Regardless of your preferences, you should choose pizza toppings that will work well with the crust and sauce you choose. This will ensure that your pizza is tasty and stays fresh for as long as possible.
While most people enjoy a good pizza, it is important to keep your health in mind. Most pizza doughs are made with white flour, which can be high in calories and carbohydrates. In addition, most pizza toppings are high in fat and sodium.
The most popular pizza toppings include cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers, and onions. These are all delicious and filling, but they are not the best choice for a balanced diet.
If you are looking for a healthier option, try ordering a veggie-based pizza. Vegetables are a good source of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, and they do not contain many calories.
You can also order a cheese-based pizza, which is a healthier alternative to traditional pepperoni and sausage pizzas. Moreover, cheese-based pizzas are usually less expensive than their meat-based counterparts.
When it comes to toppings, you should think about the preferences of your guests and the type of pizza they want. This will help you avoid over-ordering and wasting food. In general, one large pizza should be enough to feed 3-4 adults.
Number of Slices
If you're planning on ordering pizza for a large group, you may be wondering how many slices are in a large pizza. This question can be a bit tricky to answer, but with a little research and understanding, you'll have the information you need to make the right decision.
The number of slices in a large pizza depends on the size and type of toppings. In general, a small pizza will have six slices, while a medium pizza will have eight slices, and a large pizza will have ten or more slices.
There are a few different ways to find out the number of slices in a large pizza, including math, geometry and estimation. For instance, to find out how many slices are in a 16-inch pizza, you need to calculate the area of the pizza. This area is the distance from the edge of the pizza to the center, and it can be found by multiplying the diameter (the distance across the pizza) by 3.14, which is pi.
Another way to determine the number of slices in a large pizza is by using a calculator. This method is a great option if you're looking to find out the exact number of slices in a large pizza, but it can be a bit time-consuming.
Lastly, you can also use the thickness of the crust to determine the number of slices in a pizza. A thick crust may have fewer slices than a thin crust, so be sure to take this into account when deciding which pizza is best for your needs.
If you're planning on ordering pizza for your next party, it's a good idea to know how many slices are in a large pizza. Keeping this in mind will help you choose the perfect size for your group, and it will also ensure that everyone gets their fair share of cheese and pepperoni!
Whether you're a fan of pizza or not, it's important to know how many slices are in a pizza. This will allow you to figure out the number of people you can feed with one pie, and will also help you make an informed decision when it comes to your menu.
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grahamstoney · 13 years
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Path of Love
New Post has been published on https://grahamstoney.com/emotions/path-of-love
Path of Love
I went to Path of Love hoping that it would help me deal with a constant feeling of mild anxiety that I was experiencing. Whenever I wasn’t engrossed in some activity, I felt anxious and I just couldn’t seem to shake it.
David Guetta’s “When Love Takes Over” (Featuring Kelly Rowland) always reminds me of my Path of Love Experience. Play it as you read along:
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There were some obvious contributing factors: I had been ill with Chronic Fatigue for over two years, and although I was gradually recovering, my limited energy and feeling constantly unwell for such a long time was a constant source of frustration. I was also lacking direction generally: it had been about six years since I’d had a full-time job, and I was unsure how to find a new vocation earning money doing something that I loved again, especially with the added burden of illness. I’d been working on several writing projects for years, and was having difficulty committing my limited energy to any one thing sufficiently to bring it to fruition. I was afraid of failure and the feelings of shame and embarrassment it creates for me.
My 42nd Birthday was also coming up, and I had been single for several years with no relationship on the horizon. That alone was depressing enough. I had been studying acting since the beginning of the year to help unlock my suppressed emotions, but didn’t particularly want to be an actor. I couldn’t see how I could take an acting job anyway given that I never know whether I’ll be well enough to turn up to anything on any given day. I missed so many classes due to illness it’s ridiculous. Plus the feedback I was getting from the teachers in class suggested I was much too emotionally constrained; which was the reason I was there in the first place.
I heard about Path of Love from a couple of different healing and counselling centres that I visited while doing other courses aimed at unbottling the various emotions that I’ve learned to push down so well. Anger in particular is one emotion that I pushed down so effectively that I rarely even felt it. I also had a growing awareness that without the personal defense afforded by a functional ability to express anger, I was likely to be left feeling anxious whenever I was under threat.
I also wanted more love in my life. Love is another effective antidote against anxiety, and I wanted to be better able to both express and receive more love. When I asked a friend who had done Path of Love what they got out of it, she said “It was great. I got to this really blissful state.” I thought, “Wow… I could use some of that!”.
For me, the best thing about Path of Love was the emotional healing that occurred. The 7-day process was conducted largely in silence, with a group of about 25 other participants and an equal number of support staff. We only spoke during sharing exercises to release emotions; the rest of the process was conducted in silence to allow us to work internally by ourselves. And release emotions we did! Over the course of the process I felt, expressed and released anger, sadness, rage, fear, shame, excitement, love, joy, and peace. I dealt with lots of shame and anger that I suspected had been lurking in my psyche for a long time. I was really able to let go and trust the process, feeling loved and supported the whole time. To be able to expose the deepest darkest blackest emotional areas of my life, and to only feel loving acceptance in return from the support staff and other participants was tremendously cathartic. The process was similar in some respects to what I had experienced at Passionately Alive, but longer, deeper, and more intense; and hence more healing and impactful.
I was concerned about how well I would cope with such an intense process given my relatively limited energy, and was tremendously relieved to find that I could participate fully in all the activities with only the exception of one evening when I went to bed early with a headache. Resting in bed every lunch time for about an hour helped get me through, and I didn’t suffer much from my usual insomnia so I could get a decent night’s sleep most of the time.
My Path of Love was held at a beautiful and comfortable retreat centre in the Hunter Valley, not far from Sydney. Knowing I was likely to be exhausted afterwards, I booked a couple of nights at the Youth Hostel there before driving home. I’d stayed at the hostel before, and knew it was nice and quiet during the day when all the backpackers go out on winery tours. I took my guitar and thought I’d spend some time playing and reflecting on whatever I got from the retreat process. The first evening immediately after Path of Love I turned up to the kitchen in the youth hostel to cook my evening meal, to find it full of women.
In fact I was the only male guest in the hostel that night, with twenty or more women. “We’re here for a hen’s weekend”, they said. “I suppose you want to use the kitchen. Well sorry, but we’ve taken over. But don’t worry, we’ll feed you!”. And so they did… I was getting more love coming my way already.
The next day I was completely wiped out with exhaustion and barely got out of bed. Just outside my room was a little green bird who kept tapping on the window. Give that I just wanted to sleep, this became very annoying and my attempts to scare the bird away were ineffective. After several hours of tap-tap-tap at the window, I lept out of bed in rage and thumped the window so hard that it smashed. As the broken glass tinkled down onto the floor to my surprise I thought “Wow, I’ve really got in touch with some anger. I’ve never smashed anything in anger before!”. Rather than feeling foolish and ashamed, I felt proud. Well, I did feel a little foolish telling the hostel staff about the bird and the broken window, but I fessed up, took responsibility for it and said I’d pay for the damage. Path of Love wasn’t exactly cheap, and I figured I could just factor the cost of the broken window into the total cost.
All the heavy duty emotional healing and emotional expression work that I’d been doing over the past few years helped me to be in a great position to get the most out of Path of Love. There is no doubt in my mind that learning to unlock the negative emotions that we bottle up is the key to experiencing more love, joy, peace, happiness, fulfillment and aliveness; and less anxiety, stress and depression.
Finding and hanging out with a group of like-minded people through Path of Love has been absolutely priceless and allowed me to feel much more accepting of myself and other people. We are all fundamentally driven by emotions and neglect them at our peril. Path of Love was the next logical step in my own journey of emotional healing and reversing years of emotional repression that go back several generations.
Prior to Path of Love I had been afraid of really committing my limited energy to completing any of the projects I had been working on for fear of failure. Since returning, things have been very different. I immediately threw myself into rebuilding my blog with better software that would allow me to publish my writing more easily, and committed to writing articles containing the ideas that I want to publish. I decided to revamp one of the books I had been working on, and finish a major structural edit on another that I had been putting off for two years. I also decided that if my insomnia continued, I would use the time I previously spent in bed feeling frustrated and unable to sleep writing content for my website or working on one of my books instead. Since then, the insomnia has settled down somewhat.
It’s a couple of months now since I returned from Path of Love, and while I’ve had many ups and downs since then, I recognize that this is part of what it means to feel truly alive. I feel so much less anxious about whether I will succeed or fail, and a greater sense of determination to get my stories and ideas out to other people who will benefit. Since returning I’ve done several public speaking and storytelling workshops to improve my communication skills, and am now learning everything I can about marketing so I can get my message out to help other people.
Although my physical symptoms of fatigue continue to improve only very gradually, I feel much less anxious and bothered by them. I made a decision about two months before Path of Love that I was physically well enough now to get on with my dream of being a writer and telling my story to help inspire and heal other people. But at the time I felt overwhelmed by everything I needed to do to make that dream a reality, and was paralyzed by fear. Now I feel like I have a new lease on life and feel excited that I’m taking the next step towards my dream on a daily basis.
Path of Love is gradually spreading across the globe. It’s an amazing group of people working on spreading unconditional love and acceptance, even of the darkest part of ourselves. That in itself is a healing process. If you’re feeling lost, anxious, depressed, uncertain, have lost your way or just want more love in your life, I highly recommend doing the Path of Love.
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kneepruner06 · 2 years
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Three Undeniable Facts About Framed Dragonfly
The general public and professionals can use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered adulticides. The public and professionals can use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered larvicides. Controlling larvae and pupae earlier than they become adults can reduce the need for widespread use of insecticides that kill grownup mosquitoes. If mosquitoes are spreading viruses, professionals spray adulticides through the use of backpack sprayers, trucks, or airplanes. When surveillance actions present that adult mosquito populations are increasing or that they are spreading viruses, professionals could determine to apply adulticides to kill adult mosquitoes. Adulticides assist reduce the number of grownup mosquitoes in an area. To guantee that mosquito management actions are working, professionals monitor the effectiveness of their efforts to control both larvae and adult mosquitoes. Although we belief toy companies to make toys which are safe, errors may be made. Think there aren't methods you can make your subsequent water balloon battle even more epic? Epic merchandising fails have included every little thing from a decidedly phallic Jar Jar Binks lollipop to a Transformers shave equipment - for boys who don't even shave. Who's the World's Strongest Man?
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With its inherent complexity, this drawback can present new insights into much tougher reinforcement learning issues, while additionally presenting new applications and interpretations of machine studying in summary topics like group idea and fundamental maths. I’ve privately recently been doing the work for fairly a while at present. An "Attention Aware" safety function makes positive your iPad Pro only unlocks whenever you have a look at it along with your eyes open, so it knows not to work when there isn't a reside person in front of it. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro features a brand new mini-LED display that Apple calls a "Liquid Retina XDR show" with a decision of 2732 x 2048 at 264 pixels per inch. The stopwatch collects and analizes coaching statistics, calculates averages for five and 12 occasions and reveals the evolution of performance on a graphical display. But straightline performance was a puzzle. Rotates your complete puzzle by bringing the top face to the entrance. On entrance of cap using assorted colours of paint; overlap some shapes. Always follow label instructionsexternal icon. Always comply with product label instructionsexternal icon. Rubik’s cube has grow to be fairly a popular activity amongst many people today.
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maplerocket2 · 2 years
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The very best Chinese A movie You Should Watch
the oath of love chinese drama of Chinese web series, then you have to have searched for the ideal web series or the a large number of viewed Oriental web series on the internet. There are fundamentally two broad genres in Chinese internet series to buy if you seek out the same. These kind of genres happen to be wuxia and xianxia. Wuxia is that hype that declines under the group of martial arts and various thrilling activities, and xianxia is the fantasies that contain Chinese mythologies, Buddhism, Offshore culture, Taoism, and even the Chinese fighting techinques. Below are the best Chinese series that you should enjoy. The Secret on the Three Kingdoms This Far east series was launched in 2008, and this falls in the genre in Historical fiction. This series offers 54 symptoms. It is depending on the book of the fourteenth century called Romance from the Three Kingdoms. The placing of this series is the overdue Han Dynasty. This Empire had overpowered for more than 300 years. The Chinese crisis depicts a time of twenty years from 2 hundred CE to 220 VOTRE when the payoff time of the Ryan Dynasty ended. But in the first novel, the described is of a century. Given that title of this series has revealed, you will get to discover about three unique kingdoms and their relationships amongst each other. The twists and spins of situations will astonish every fan equally. For anybody who is watching to a storyline that will be grand and the images will be gratifying to your sight, then you should truly watch this course. Lost on 1949 This Chinese series was released in the year 2018. The genre of this series may not be specifically thought as it is a mixture of suspense, allure, thriller, and action alike. The setting up of this series is in Communism China. The tale revolves around two different people. They are eager to do anything for their countries and in many cases give their particular lives. Although fate represents a different role, and they cross punch paths with one another only to sooner or later fall in cherish. Legend of Fuyao This kind of Chinese series was released back in 2018. It includes 66 symptoms. It falls into the category of fantasy and romance. The lead role is based on Venne Yao. Her characterization really was strong in this series. Her character produces from an important somewhat shy girl to a strong and stubborn woman. This series is based on the fresh by Tianxia Guiyuan referred to as Empress Fuyao. The setting of this series is the Soberano City of Wuji, which has five kingdoms. The story plot revolves around the fact that slave lady who pretty much travels on your travels to find the cure of a curse burdening her life. The girl with portrayed to be a woman that is very strong and has now a high internal strength very. The slave girl, Fu Yao, reaches know about the crown royal prince of Wuji during her journey to several places. In addition, she feels an attachment toward him. There are a great number of actions and adventures revealed through the identity of Venne Yao. The romantic plotline is proven by FU Yao and the crown knight in shining armor of Wuji. There are a lot of emotional highs and lows. The themes of this series are widely well-liked.
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How strong is the extreme feminist war effort? British women's white feather movement, so many men to die of shame and anger
Since entering the new era, the slogan of gender equality has been shouted for many years, but in some aspects there are still inequalities between men and women, in these inequalities, not only some men do not put women in a reciprocal position to see, and even some women do not put themselves in the right position, so on the network there are such groups of women as field feminism.
When it comes to field feminism, I believe many people have a certain understanding of this type of women often put gender equality on the lips, but also want men to take full responsibility, they do not do anything to get the maximum benefit, this self-interested feminism let people disagree.
On the Internet, we can often see some idyllic feminist fighters who indiscriminately attack men without even understanding what is going on, and under the banner of feminism, they let men die socially.
However, these feminist fighters can also be on the Internet to show off their power and be a keyboard warrior, but in fact, the killing power of men is not so strong.
But in Britain there is a group of fighting feminists, they launched a white feather campaign, have taken to the streets, with a white feather to let countless men die of shame, what is it?
After the Industrial Revolution, a large number of factories sprang up on British soil, which caused fierce competition, and the capitalists, in order to expand the scale and increase productivity, began to use a large number of women workers and child laborers.
Because the physical strength of women and child laborers than male workers, so the capitalists lowered their wages, increase the number of hours of work, so that the output will come up, so the employment of female workers than male workers more cost-effective, and even use female workers to crowd out male workers, so as to reduce their wages.
At first, these women workers were very energetic to work, but after a long time, the overload and low wages caused dissatisfaction among women workers, so in the first half of the nineteenth century, women workers in England began a variety of strike movements, demanding the capitalists to give them a wage increase and improve their working conditions.
In parallel with the strike movement, women felt that their social status had to be upgraded, so a large number of women formed many organizations to fight for political participation, such as the Feminist League, the Women's Suffrage League, and the Women's Social and Political League.
Under the male-dominated social system, the women's suffrage movement made a lot of noise and did not have any good effect in substance, but with the outbreak of the First World War, British women finally had a chance to turn over a new leaf.
At that time, more than thirty countries around the world participated in the war, including Britain, because a large number of young and strong men went to the front line to fight, which led to a void in domestic productivity, and in order to make production work properly, various factories used a large number of female workers, which increased women's social participation and also reflected the importance of women.
Although women workers became the main force when it came to work, feminists were not satisfied with this. What they wanted most was to improve their political status so that they could later have a voice in society and get more benefits for women.
Just when feminist organizations were worried about this, an opportunity to improve their political status came, and it was actually related to the war.
In order to win the war, Britain has been able to mobilize the front line to fight the mobilization of people, but with the war situation, there is still a need for a large number of soldiers to go to the front, but some young people are not willing to go to war, so the British Royal Army General Charles Fitzgerald came up with a somewhat unethical method to stimulate the youth in the rear to go to war.
This method was called "humiliating provocation", and Admiral Charles encouraged the public to humiliate those healthy youths in public, and to give those youths a white feather, which symbolized the meaning of coward. Organized by women's rights leaders, women took white feathers and walked the streets and alleys to humiliate men, which became the famous White Feather Movement in England.
Since the start of the white feather movement, it did have a certain effect, in order to avoid being humiliated by these women again, many people quit their jobs and signed up to join the army to fight on the front line, and some people were unbearably humiliated, but for various reasons and could not go to join the army, so they finally committed suicide in shame.
In fact, at a later stage, these feminists became so radical that they didn't even know whether the target of the humiliation was physically fit or not, and whether they met the conditions to join the army, so they humiliated people.
Some retired veterans, they also want to humiliate people, so that caused many people to commit suicide in shame, such feminism is really too much, and deviated from the right track, and became a tool for revenge against men.
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pathshalaeducation · 2 years
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Vedic Mathematics Tricks – How to choose the best course for my child in 2022?
Vedic Mathematics is the perfect gift that anyone can offer for their childrens. From improving his/her understanding of mathematics to increasing his/her brain power to enhancing his/her learning capacity – there is barely anything which Vedic Mathematics cannot do.
There are now several sites and apps teaching vedic math to your kids. But the good ones are usually difficult to identify.
How to pick the best application for your children?
Here are five tips you can keep in mind during your selection.
Vision:  The key factor is the course's vision. There are organizations offering courses that complement the Vedic Mathematics courses by Pathshala Education. There are also organizations focused on Vedic algebra. Choose a platform that is dedicated & focVedic Mathematics used on Vedic math for a long term aim to nurture the potential of your kids.
Effective: Vedic Mathematics is based on an ancient system of learning which is knowledge-based and is based on a system of mutually beneficial knowledge that helps a student and today it also helps a student who has already completed their subject. An ideal Vedic mathematics course is not just about teaching a few vedic math tricks, but it is about developing a strong and effective foundation. A good course will offer a perfect interactive platform where the teacher can engage with the learner beyond the scheduled time. The focus would be on designing learning environments that can sustain and nurture lifelong learners.
Efficient: Vedic mathematics offers many different approaches to the problems of Mathematics. Sometimes it becomes very confusing for the child to decide “Which Method to follow” as most school teachers grade an issue based on the steps of carry etc. A good course should combine both School Math method’s, basic concepts and teach Vedic Math as an alternative way to quickly cross-check the answers to avoid confusion in the child.
Development-oriented: One of the key factors in achievement is whether or not you have a good socio-psychological response from a child. Choose a platform that offers you the capacity to be groomed by experts in ancient vedic mathematics, by educationists and educationists, child-psychologists and sociologists. This is a new concept in Vedic mathematics where Vedic mathematics also brings in the computer as one of its supplements.
Innovative: Methodology of teaching is always relevant when it comes to teaching very complex ideas to students. The basic idea behind any teaching methodology is to help students learn by making the learning process interesting. One of the reasons why Vedic mathematics is so popular is that it is important. Alongside if the learning involves traditional techniques, a child learns faster. The joy of learning comes from the design of the content and how this is infused into the teaching methodology. So, go for courses which promise to help your children soak in learning and fun equal measures.
Cost-effective: According to the latest researchers, it is not about if you develop a course or not, but how you develop a certain course for the purpose of solving a specific problem. There are several organizations offering to teach Vedic math for beginners to cost-effectively pay for But do you really want to shell out a whole lot of money right now? Rather, go for the pocket-friendly course that offers a comprehensive and holistic methodology for you to build up your skills further.The gift your child has of learning without the burden of buying a scope seems like a great gift to the child because without this gift, they will have no choice but to learn on their own.
Involved Approach: Many institutes teach large groups of students of 10+ in a single class. One might pose the inquiry "How might we be benefited by this class as opposed to watching an internet based Youtube free educational video on old style vedic number related stunts?”  It is vital to guarantee that the educator - understudy proportion is reasonable.
In order to modify the behavior of each student, we ensure that a class of five students are supervised by a teacher and the behavioral advisor. Absolutely, your child will get the personalized attention, feedback and help that he/she deserves by giving birth to the best.",
'Answers': 'Absolutely, your child will get the personalized attention, feedback, and help that he/she deserves
County Based Curriculum: Unless the institute is focused on the skills mandated by the county, your child will not be able to complete the course of study required by the institute.
Periodic Skill Assessments: A parent should also be concerned with the systems in the institute in order to periodically assess the child..
Teacher Attention: Many institute’s take on more than 6 children and do not have the facility of always seeing the child always at the institute. An unmonitored student very quickly switched attention but Pathshala Education has the Best Teachers.
Mental Math Practice Sessions: The Vedic Mathematics tricks advocate to be the fastest math system in the world. Rather than engaging in book reviewing regularly, children should be engaged in visual and verbal workbooks. A proper system should ensure that the child is able to mentally calculate the method so as to ensure that he/she can actually train his/her brain.
So, if you want to select the best vedic mathematics course for your child, go the V-I-D-C way. Vedic Math offers Vedic math education to your child from an early age to develop a strong foundation in Vedic math. The organization's vision has a clear and dedicated Vision, is grounded in research, has an advisory panel of eminent educationists and child-psychologists for Child Development, follows an innovative approach of learning, and is definitely cost-friendly.
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dogboytits · 3 years
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wincore · 3 years
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atlas | kim dongyoung
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pairing: doyoung x reader
words: 15.4k
summary: kim doyoung has a lot of titles. student body president, music club president, favourite student of every professor who’s blessed enough to have him. in other words, he’s not your type and never will be. at least he’s a good kisser.
or, you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and you do not know how to hold things as delicate as glass.
genre: college au, fwb au, hurt/comfort, angst, some fluff 
warnings: very suggestive content, making out, language, smoking, alcohol, mentions of sex under influence, me being pretentious,,
prompt: anonymous said: slippery + doyoung + "you can rely on me, you know." from the first dialogue link! LOVE YOU ❤️
song rec(s): playlist here !
a/n: yes it’s me experimenting out of my comfort zone again. yes you are required by law to listen to keshi while reading this hahahaha anyway writing this was painful. <3 (aka today i tried writing very complex human emotions and failed again. classic.)
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In the beginning, there was no beginning. Ergo, this isn’t really a thing.
You shouldn’t be thinking of summer in Introduction to Latin. You are a good (perhaps great, if your ego allows) student after all. Here you are, though, listening to the ticking of the clock and wondering if you sigh loud enough, you won’t have to construct another sentence with the word for ‘death’. You pause to tell yourself that you shouldn’t be thinking of summer out of class either. Unremarkable; that's what it was and you don’t like unremarkable things.
When two people end up alone together, there’s not much to make of. 
“You know,” he had said, locking eyes. “We should get out of here.”
“And then what?”
“Fuck.”
So here’s the thing: this isn’t and won’t be a thing.
Doyoung has never been subtle when drunk, you found out, and he’s not as gentle as he looks. You flip the page of your notebook absentmindedly. You don’t like where your thoughts are going; the clinking of ice against glass rings in your ears again. It’s been far too long (one whole month) and you’re craving a bit of fun. You may forget yourself but you’re reaching your fingertips a little too far to call him again. More excuses pop up. See, in your world of perfection, there’s a hierarchy of things; men rank rather low. 
(Fun doesn’t.)
Here’s another thing: you forget yourself quite often. You know very well that you’re the one who continued this not-thing and now you’re daydreaming of Kim Doyoung in class hours. 
And under grey bed sheets with a tired smile, Doyoung is hard to forget. 
It was a party, it always is. That time, however, was the first party of the year Doyoung and you happened to be attending at the same time. You can’t remember who hosted it—the frat probably—but it was at a bar called the ‘The Meeting Place’ which had too many people you didn’t care about. Doyoung was there, in his laid-back glory, and you were drawn in far too easily. Being single did not help your case—and the alcohol certainly didn’t. You’re not sure if it was the gentle touches against your wrist or quick words that left his mouth or the attractive all-black get-up. All you know is that it was your mouth against his by the end of the night in a small booth, hot and impatient. Once, twice, thrice and you didn’t even need parties anymore. 
It’s not like you weren’t aware of what you were doing; it’s just that you were quick to give in—like you didn’t want to resist in the first place. And now, summer smells like Doyoung’s perfume. 
The first night had given Mr. Student Body President a near-stroke. You weren’t the type to sleep with strange (semi-acquainted) men at parties either so the morning had been full of awkward explanations to each other till you’d kissed him to shut him up (much like in a disgusting romantic comedy, minus the feelings) and somehow, it worked. He didn’t refuse and if you recall, he’d eventually pulled you closer by the waist.
You huff, twirling your pen. He’d never admit it.
You didn’t kiss so sloppily after that, unless it was to make out against a wall or while fumbling with the keys to your apartment. The lack of alcohol can bring wonders. You were a little surprised that he’d agreed—he is the Doyoung you’ve known since freshman year after all; blunt, rude, cares more for his grades than he’d ever for you. How laughable. He’s almost the same as you.
Here’s one last thing: Kim Doyoung is not and cannot be your type. 
You had the same part-time job in your second semester at a local fast food joint, and to summarize, your interactions were less than friendly. You can’t possibly count the number of times he yelled at you for trivial mistakes, and the number of times you sent angry, clipped sentences his way. So, yes, neither of you have told anyone—just acting friendly got you enough eyebrow raises.  If there’s anything worse than contradicting yourself almost directly, it’s having to explain that to your friends. So, you kept it a secret and so did he, for his own reasons.
You massage your forehead. If you think any more of this during class hours, you’re going to have to classify this as a terrible, terrible problem; like you don’t have enough already. You tune in to the lecture again, hoping it drowns out the rest of your thoughts. 
You tap your pen against the desk till you’re asked to stop by the professor. There goes your last resort. It isn’t the first time, but you breathe a sigh of relief at the hands of the clock. Casual means casual—you know it better than anyone. Maybe it would be easier if you could be more open about it. But you can’t. Your own problems aside, Doyoung would kill you if his reputation went down, even a nick. Men like that are so difficult, you curse to yourself. 
You run into Ten in the hallways, brightening at his absurdly wide grin. In fact, you haven’t seen him remotely upset since freshman year, when he couldn’t join the dance club, not because he failed the audition but because he mixed up the dates and missed it entirely. (It’s okay; he got in the next year.)
“Guess what!” he yells before you’re even in conversation range.
“What?” you yell back.
“No, guess,” he says, when you’re close enough.
You roll your eyes. “You scored a date?”
Ten deadpans. “No. I don’t even want one.”
“Loser.”
“No, you.”
“How clever.”
Ten flicks your forehead with no provocation whatsoever, making you yelp in pain. After a minute of cursing on your part, he squishes your cheeks to bring you back to reality—like he wasn’t the cause. You bite your lip to keep yourself from scowling. His hair is still light brown from the bleach, and you fix his bangs out of habit; your dumb friends are all you have at the end of the day. You sigh. They all lean on you unwittingly.
“Anyway, the news? I’m not guessing anything else,” you warn, taking a sip of your coffee.
“Well,” he draws out the syllable. “I heard- know you’re into the smart type. You know, student council kinda guys? So…”
You choke, the coffee leaving your mouth just as quick as it entered.
“Who told you that?” The laugh that leaves your mouth is forced and certainly fake but it’s the best you can do.
Ten rolls her eyes, still smiling. “I was thinking if you would be interested in a certain Park Hyungmin.”
Oh. Student body vice-president. He’s most definitely your type, with a gifted body and equally strong academic prowess—not to mention perfectly maintained tan skin and the most radiant smile you’ve ever seen in your life. 
“Oh, yeah, he’s hot,” you nod in agreement. “What do you want me to do with him?”
“He likes you. Like, totally has the hots for you. And I owe him so please help me out here.”
You furrow your brows, heaving a deep sigh.
“You...want me to go on a date with him?” you ask. 
You can oblige. Park Hyungmin is the hottest dude on campus (probably). It’s a win-win situation—in fact, it’s even better. A certain bitter taste finds itself in your mouth. It must be the coffee. You swallow it. 
“Yeah.”
And the deal’s done.
It was casual commitment, like most things you do for fun. You don’t think much of it, and the thought takes its final bow when you run into Doyoung himself.
Well, sort of.
You turn heel when he appears in your line of sight, pretending to fix your hair against a damn wall. You aren’t quite ready to face him yet, considering the coffee hasn’t kicked in—it’s not healthy how much you depend on it. Dependence is different, however, from consciously drowning yourself in it. 
See, Doyoung is anything but tolerable without a few shots of vodka. Or after sex. Or when he’s mumbling in his sleep. And you can’t erase any of those scenes. This is you trying to save yourself (and Doyoung) from embarrassment and a whole lot of explanation.
His coat looks expensive and you’d rather he had it on instead of on his arm. The tucked-in sweater and pants combo accentuates the line of his waist and the colour—you wonder where he found a teal so fitting—looks serene in the crowd. He’s wearing his glasses though, looking a little less put together than usual. Still, no one seems to notice and he continues to explain something to his group of friends.
God forbid you find Doyoung attractive during daytime.
His lips are chapped but pink as ever, the hair messed up by either the wind or his friends—you should stop staring by now. You give in. You’ll text him to book a hotel room tonight.
Sometimes you wonder how he has that large a friend circle, and always, the question answers itself. Eloquence, wit and regrettably, good looks—what does he lack? Maybe if he lost the habit to nag people around fifty-six times a day, he’d be the perfect man.  
An arm slings over your shoulder, punting the soul right out of your body.
“Fuck, Johnny, don’t do that,” you hiss, placing your hand over your chest involuntarily. 
The head of the photography club apparently spends his time terrorizing everyone he remotely knows. You make a foul expression but iIt’s not like he ever minds your scowling. He says he’s had enough practice from teasing Doyoung (and you’ll admit, it’s the only time you feel sorry for him). You were certain Doyoung would have filed him for harassment sometime in sophomore year. 
“What are you even looking at?” Johnny asks, raising an eyebrow at the plain offwhite expanse of the wall in front of you.
You feel hot at the neck. “I was fixing my hair.”
“In front of a wall?”
You click your tongue. “Do you not have class?”
“Oh, don’t be so quick to send me off.” He places a hand over his chest in mock hurt, fingers stretched delicately. 
To your dismay, the rest of his friends gather around giving you happy greetings—greetings only carefree college boys are capable of delivering. To your further dismay, Kim Doyoung arches an eyebrow at you, the same way he does on nights you’re doing things less than appropriate to think of in broad daylight.
“Hey, Doyoung, don’t you have anything to say? Or were you too drunk to remember?”
You bite down on your lip a little too hard. Doyoung, on the other hand, looks like he’s just seen God, stammering out a “what?” nevertheless.
“Weren’t you supposed to buy (name) a drink for driving you home that night?”
“Right,” he says, clearing his throat.
Oh, he’s bought you a drink enough times. Summer has waned but whatever thread you tied around your wrists hasn’t. Right now, your guess is that Doyoung has been ensnared in the common ritual for college boys to walk around campus and declare their friend is single just to embarrass him (or by some miracle, score him a date).
Everything, apart from the way you look at Doyoung, feels like a charade. You shake your head with a quick laugh, smacking Johnny in the arm and pay your condolences to Doyoung—keep it light. You’re good at it, or pretending you’re good at it, at the very least.
Doyoung’s gaze on you lingers for a moment and then you breathe. You’re going to be late for class—you offer the classic excuse and you’re out of there. In a way, it’s exciting. You’ve always wanted to have a secret relationship, even if this isn’t a real one. 
Doyoung is like the summer breeze, and you’d like for him to stay that way.
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The next time you grace each other’s presence is when Doyoung’s tongue is in your mouth and his hands are running up under your shirt. 
He’s quite a pretty sight—messy hair, red lips and rosy cheeks. He moans into the kiss as he has quite a few times now and there’s the lovers’ high running through either of your minds. When he presses his lips to your neck, a soft restrained sound escapes you, not quite prepared for the sting of electricity through your skin. He moves to your collarbone and shoulders and then even lower, hands gripping your waist tight. The walls do not have ears here; these hotels are cheap but they’re built for privacy and maybe you’ll let yourself believe for once that you can belong to someone.
“Why did you text me in the middle of the goddamn night?” he mutters against the base of your neck.
“You want reasons now?” you whisper, hands running through his hair.
Doyoung has pretty fingers, pressing at the right places and prettier eyes that look at you with something akin to, dare you say it, love. He kisses you like he hasn’t had enough; and it makes you feel important.
He’s even better when he’s annoyed.
You wake up at around five in the morning. Propping yourself up on one arm, you take a moment to look at your partner. It’s easy to make out the line of his nose against the pillow, and if you focus, you can see his lashes against his cheek and his dark mop of hair clinging to his forehead. However gentle the moonlight is, it is kindest on a lover. 
Funny.
Too tired to sneak out, you go back to sleep.
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“All I’m saying is that you have too much coffee,” Doyoung complains, slipping on his loose black sweatshirt. “It can’t be good for your health.”
You shake your head, scrolling through your phone as you lay on your belly. You’ve seen this view enough times—his back to you and sitting at the opposite edge of the bed, his incessant complaints and opinions about something that happened recently, running his hand through his hair when he sighs. You press on the calendar app and type in a note labeled ‘x’. Keeping tabs isn’t a bad thing; especially if you like order. Spending too many nights with someone is going to land you in trouble. That said, if you could trap love in a bottle, you would.
“You taste like coffee,” Doyoung adds with reddening ears.
Sometimes, it’s easy to ignore what he says if you listen to the sound of his voice instead. You sit up, scooting closer as Doyoung shoots you an alarmed look. He’s so cute like this; something about all the painted fences he puts up around him makes you want to lean in closer.
“So,” you poke his side. “How many relationships have you been in? Proper ones.”
“Three,” he answers, to your surprise.
Your eyebrows shoot up. “That’s more than I’ve been in!”
Doyoung furrows his. “How many have you been in?”
“One.”
He seems equally surprised but doesn’t probe further. After all, the price sticker that spells ‘youth’ clings to his forehead just as it clings to yours. 
“How many people have you fucked?” you ask suddenly, enjoying the visible flush across his neck.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” he notes, flicking your forehead.
“Ow!” You place your palm against your forehead. “Okay, I get it, you have nothing to brag about.”
He shakes his head, an exasperated sigh leaving him. “I just don’t think you have to know. I like privacy.”
“Wait.” You gasp. “Don’t tell me- That night- don’t tell me you were a virgin—”
Doyoung squishes your cheeks between his thumb and forefinger, a laugh erupting from your mouth. 
“Who’s a virgin?”
Nothing about this, you find yourself realizing, is complicated. It’s easy, gentle, natural, like a breath of fresh air—everything but complicated. Even under dim lights and within the depths of night, Doyoung is warm and uncomplicated. His chest, his hands, his lips—they are warm, as are his words. 
But Doyoung is a fucking fairytale.  
Even after these few months, all you know about him, in the definitive format, is that he plays the keys for more hours than he sleeps. What he does for fun, what his classes are, how he became student body president—you could play guessing games all night.
“Do your friends know where you spend your nights?” you ask, leaning back against the pillows.
“They know what I’m doing, not who I’m with,” he responds, running his fingers through his hair.
You purse your lips. It’s nothing hurtful but you don’t like the hush-hush in his tone.
“Why not?”
“Because this is a secret,” he responds as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Do you want them to know?”
He’s right.
“Ah, whatever,” you mutter, a stream of curses following when your elbow collides hard with the edge of the bedside table. 
“Your mouth is filthy.” He looks away to his phone. “I don’t swear as much.”
“Well, of course it is. I had your—”
Doyoung presses his palm against your lips with a tired sigh. “Please. Don’t speak. For the sake of my sanity.”
You smile under his hand and he returns it; and the November morning warms up.
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“Where were you last night?”
You were expecting the question. Areum is the worst possible candidate for a roommate if you want some privacy. You don’t think she ever sleeps; sometimes, you wonder if she even showers because all she does is stare at her laptop screen and adjust her designs. Her lips are always chapped and her hair is always in a simple low ponytail but somehow still messy. You’ve never met someone so exhausted yet so full of life at the same time.
“Who were you with last night?” Eunji yells from the bathroom, before the two of them laugh.
You knew you shouldn’t have stayed the morning. You have the nosiest roommates anyone could (not) ask for. But they’re still your friends, you tell yourself begrudgingly. You would tell them about Doyoung if it weren’t for Eunji’s big mouth and Areum’s lack of common sense. And if it weren’t for the inherent comfort of privacy.
(Some part of you wants to keep him to yourself. You don’t care about student council president Doyoung or his friend group’s everything-regulator Doyoung or always-has-his-shit-together Doyoung. The one in your bed is the most loving.)
Areum adjusts her glasses, narrowing her eyes at you. “So? Any answer?”
You break out of your daydream at her voice, feeling a flush creep up your neck.
“I don’t have to explain anything,” you retort, snatching the coffee she brewed from the tabletop. “It was a Friday night and the two of you like Netflix more than me.”
“That’s mine,” Areum mumbles out a weak complaint.
“But don’t go out alone,” Eunji whines. “It can’t be safe.”
You laugh. “You know me. I don’t do anything too dangerous. Besides, you guys have that tracker app.”
They shrug, offering you a thin smile. A part of you is happy that they trust you but another part wonders what it would be like to be worried over. Maybe getting nagged isn’t so bad. 
You take a sip of Areum’s coffee and almost spit it out right back. 
“Did you add salt?” you ask, wiping at your mouth and hoping the taste disappears.
“Uh.” A reply so intelligent, you wonder if she ever pays attention to anything she's doing. 
You take a moment (a few), sigh (several times) and make your way to the shelves. Grumbling, you make her a proper cup of coffee before you leave.
Classes don’t wait for you (even if you think they should) and the world doesn’t wait for you (again, you think it should wait for people) so you’ve made it a point to understand the whole deal about rules. If everyone followed the rules, it would be quite a pretty scene; messing up is only valid if it’s done prettily. You laugh at the thought. That’s near impossible. The bus ride to the campus consists of music and thoughts of bleak tomorrows—an average commute for college kids, you think. You sure hope you aren’t alone in this.
Doyoung smiles at you in the hallway today, and despite your best efforts, it makes your day smell a little fresher.
Your day: classes, coffee break, classes, complaining with Ten, assignments, ‘me’ time. For someone who pretends to be laid back, you use your planner as though for survival. There’s no sticky notes or colourful sketches (except on occasion); just good old fashioned to-do lists and a calendar marked with time you’ve spent on productivity. Every day is a list to be completed. If people call routine a man-made cage, instinct is the biological cage. You’d rather be in control of the cage you’re in. You’d rather be in control of yourself. It’s scary otherwise.
So you know how to get the job done—it’s ingrained into you the same way you would place your hands over your ears at loud sounds, or the way you would run to your bed in the dark after switching off the lights.
It never occurs to you that the reason your world is so perfect is a sad one.
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Sometime next month, it’s going to snow. Not yet though, and it’s still too cold.
The inside of the cafe helps the slightest, the heaters situated far back from where you sit. Christmas decorations are up already and the combination of red and green meshes delightfully into the form of an aching headache. The wood paneling on the walls are worn at the corners, the garlands hardly covering them, and the barista behind the counter seems as gloomy as the decorations are bright. You wouldn’t be noticing all of this if you weren’t stuck in one position.
You lean your cheek further into your palm and sigh, only this time Ten asks you to, quote, ‘shut the fuck up’.
He pulls up his sleeve and reaches for another pencil. His cryptic process continues, as it has been for the past half an hour and you feel yourself getting impatient, trying to not bounce your leg and get another bout of quibbling from your half-mad artist friend. You don’t usually run low on patience; but Ten has a special pass to test drive it.
“How much lon—”
“Shh!” He hushes you quickly. You can’t remember why you agreed to being his portrait study subject but you sure as hell regret it.
Around fifteen minutes later, you take a (permitted) breath. You have neither the energy nor the neck strength to glare at Ten but you make sure to show your displeasure by snatching the cookies from the table with a particularly sour look. He gets up and pushes you to the side of the small worn-out couch offered by the equally small booth.
“God, that chair was uncomfortable. My butt is frozen solid,” he lets you know, and you roll your eyes.
“You know, if we weren’t friends in high school, I would never be friends with you,” you state.
Ten tilts his head to the side, a mocking pout over his lips. “I would die without you, (name). Really.”
You smack his arm and he yelps, smacking your arm right back. The sound attracts some attention and giggles, and you make a gagging gesture to let them know you are in way or form in a relationship. The low-volume music changes to something with a more distinguishable beat, the sound of doors opening and closing almost every two minutes accompanying. Arriving on time is an accomplishment, especially arriving before rush hour on Fridays at the only decent cafe on campus, but both of your classes end early and there is no way you aren’t taking advantage of that. Leaving, however, is mostly done when you’re being glared at by the waiters and waitresses.
“Doyoung asked about you,” Ten says, all of a sudden. “Kim Doyoung.”
You try to not show concern, but raise an eyebrow. “What? So? He’s not my type or anything.”
You bite your tongue. That was too quick a response, too obvious. Your cheeks grow hot. Ten doesn't say anything, however, and for a moment, you think you’re in safe waters. 
“Are you guys… into each other or not?”
You cough, trying to show your surprise at something so outrageous. “Why would you think that? Does he look like someone who dates around?”
“Actually, he’s been on quite a few dates.”
“No way.”
You know that. He’s told you about it before, in vague references, but you know about them nonetheless.
“Isn’t one student council guy enough?” you mumble. “Why are we talking about Doyoung?”
He shrugs, a familiar feline smile on his face. “Just asking. He talks about you sometimes. Actually, we forced it out of him but whatever.”
You shake your head. “You’re all terrible.”
“You seem to like him though.”
“Who said that?”
Ten sighs, ignoring your question. “If you guys are dating—”
“We’re not.”
“—or fucking—”
“Ten.”
“—you should learn a thing or two about him. The guy’s not as annoying as he looks. Or stuck-up. He’s really nice but don’t tell him I said that.”
“I know that,” you snap, feeling warm at the neck all of a sudden. “I know him.”
“Oh, you do? Tell me what his hobbies are then. Or his major. Or the clubs he’s in, apart from the student council.”
“He- He likes to sing and he’s- he’s—god, what is this? An interrogation? I’m not going to meet his mom for dinner.”
Ten gives you an ‘I knew it’ look before leaning his elbow onto the table. “You’re sleeping with a guy you don’t know anything about. Serial killers would love you.”
You massage your forehead. “Look, I know he’s a good guy, okay? And he’s sweet- and- and—wait a minute. Oh my god, you tricked me.”
Ten lets out a snort. “Hey. Okay, look, the other guys might be dumb as shit but I have, you know, a working set of eyes. I can tell. It’s not that hard.”
You grumble but the cat’s out of the bag anyway. You should’ve known Ten would figure it out—he’s a nosy little shit, and he’s been that way since high school.
“Whatever. As long as Doyoung doesn’t start panicking about his tarnished reputation or whatever.”
“Oh, I think he’s desperate to let everyone know.”
“To you, Ten, everything seems obvious. It’s annoying.” You mess up his hair.
“No, I mean, I thought you were dating.”
“Well, we’re not.”
Ten shrugs. 
“And I don’t like him,” you add. “I like the- the thing that’s going on because there’s no feelings attached.”
He looks somewhat pained, eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed, but doesn’t respond to your explanation. “Can I ask for a favour?”
“No.”
Ten sighs. “Come on. You didn’t even hear me out.”
“You’re going to say something stupid. Or insulting.”
“It’s neither, promise.”
You run your hand through your hair, breathing shallow. “Fine. I don’t have to agree though.”
Ten purses his lips. “It’d be better if you did.”
You hum in response, biting into the cookie and trying to ignore the glare from the nearby waitress. It’s about time you left anyway.
“Get to know him, dude. Don’t break his heart.”
“What?”
“Just kidding. There’s a party tonight. Hosted by yours truly. Finally moved out of that stinky dorm room. Bring over some friends but not more than three. And lend me some money for a juicebox.”
“That’s a lot,” you mutter. “You ask for a lot of favours.”
“Oh, speaking of which, Hyungmin—”
“He already asked me out on a date. Am I supposed to say no? You never mentioned he has such an attractive voice.”
“Oh, I’m not telling you to not go on that date. You have to, actually. I’m going to be in a lot of trouble otherwise.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Shut up. I’m not done speaking.”
You roll your eyes.
“But if you didn’t, I could draw some conclusions.”
“What am I, your chemistry experiment now?”
“Well, you and Doyoung seem to be—”
“Don’t complete that sentence.”
“I was going to say something funny.” 
Ten flashes you a blinding smile and you sigh. By now, you’re about to get kicked out of here so you stand up discreetly while he packs up his stuff. You hug your jacket close to you as soon as you leave, shivering at the evening breeze. The sky is inky, but with a faint sort of ink—deep blue and light, all at once. From the crowd, you can tell classes just got over for quite a few people, eclectic chatter filling up the street.
“Fine. I’ll bring Eunji,” you tell Ten after some contemplation. “And whoever else responds to my text first. Areum never leaves the room. You know that.”
“Thanks, (name)!” he messes up your hair. “I would give you a kiss but someone will end up punching my pretty face.”
You furrow your brows. “Well, you’re not my type anyway.”
“I’m too good for you,” he responds in a sing-song manner, waving at you before running off and disappearing into the university crowd.
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There’s always a sort of buzz in the air you can’t quite describe at college parties.
Even if this is a relatively small one, you feel an oncoming headache the moment you enter Ten’s new apartment, which you’re sure had a ‘no parties’ rule in the rental contract. You spot Kun, Ten’s roommate from the dorms and he flashes you a quick smile in greeting before he’s swept up by a doting crowd. Apparently, a cute guy in animal sciences is rare and it makes him rather popular.
Eunji disappears from your side the moment she spots Johnny, and the number of eye rolls you’ve given her haven’t warned her off him yet. You suppose it takes heartbreak to change a person. Sighing, you make your way to the kitchen only to be greeted with the strange sight of Yuta trying to balance Jaehyun on his back so they can imitate some anime formation and back out immediately. Living room, it is, despite its populous space. (You don’t really want to think of bedrooms right now.)
The apartment is quite big for what Ten told you the rent was. The hallway to the two bedrooms is narrow but you suppose something has to be sacrificed for space. You furrow your eyebrows at the two bedroom doors. Ten never said he was getting a roommate. You shrug it off, sitting down on the rather stiff couch. The lack of furniture, apart from the couch and a coffee table, makes the place look even larger and people sparse. You like the beige walls; Ten’s always loved warmer colours but something makes you think he’s going to be ruining them in a few days with garish green paint before he comes crying about that to you.
“Hey.”
You look up to the familiar voice, heart rising to your throat.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Doyoung remarks before sitting down beside you and offering you a cup of god-knows-what.
“I don’t take drinks from strange men,” you say, biting down your smile and crossing your arms.
“If you didn’t take drinks from strange men, we wouldn’t be fu—”
“Doyoung!” you hiss before looking at him with careful suspicion. “Are you drunk?”
“No. A little bit. Not enough.”
You sigh. “How will you get home now?”
“I live here, idiot.”
“You’re- You’re Ten’s roommate?” you sputter.
“Yeah. New one,” he responds. “He used to live across our room in the dorms, I can’t believe I actually agreed to this.”
“I can’t believe it either. I’ve seen cats and dogs friendlier with each other than the two of you.”
Doyoung laughs. “He’s surprisingly one of the better people to room with. I’d rather eat my own blanket than room with Yuta again.”
You laugh at his irked expression, eyebrows furrowed so cutely. The line of his brow bone to nose to lips, it seems a little too perfect to belong to someone. He relaxes his shoulders a little, leaning back on the couch as he looks somewhat lost in thought. (“You think too much,” you’d told him once. “And you think too little.”) If only that were true, you smile to yourself.
“Are you sure you can hold parties here?” you as when the music suddenly rises in volume.
“Well, it said student-friendly,” Doyoung responds, looking visibly disturbed. “Not sure if I want to test the limits of that so early.”
There’s a pause, filled in with loud pop music. You don’t think Ten, your dear introvert, would have agreed to such a party but there’s a chance Johnny or Jaehyun had something to do with this. You don’t know who to suspect when it comes to their group of friends.
“I still can’t believe you’re rooming with Ten.” You look at Doyoung.
“Well, that makes, what, eleven of us, I guess?”
You laugh, feeling conscious all of sudden. Maybe you should listen to Ten’s advice.
“Doyoung,” you call, looking at the cup in your hands a little too passionately. “What’s your major?”
He looks at you with eyes widened ever so slightly, and a pause over his lips.
“Linguistics,” he answers.
“Oh. You said something about it once,” you mumble, recalling something vague about an assignment of his. “You know mine?”
“Yeah,” he answers, eyes cast on his watch.
“Well, that makes me feel a little guilty,” you mumble as softly as you can.
“You should be,” he says. “You never listen to anything I say.”
You scoff. “You just complain most of the time.”
“Really now?”
“Yes,” you snap, looking away.
You look back again when you hear the sound of Doyoung’s laugh, a distinct brightness in it. Sometimes, you wonder if you really are as awful as you’ve made yourself be.
“You’re cute,” he says. “No wonder everyone is so in love with you.”
For a moment, you think he’s going to kiss you.
“Everyone?” you laugh. You don’t care about everyone. It’s burdensome.
“Everyone. They hate you too, by the way.” He smiles to himself. “Heard you’re going on a date with that dimwit. Hyungmin.”
You feel a sudden discomfort in your being. Taking a sip of the drink, you try to shake it off as best as you can. 
“Yeah, I- I don’t think I’ll go,” you say, waving it off. 
Why are you lying? You left it hanging on a maybe. Part of you wants to tell Doyoung; he is your friend after all and you tell friends stuff like this. The other part tells you this is cheating; lying and pretending everything is okay—it feels like cheating. 
“Oh.” He looks lost before he focuses on you. “Why not?”
“Why do you care?” you ask, trying desperately to calm the uprising in your chest.
He stays quiet for a few seconds and then shrugs, looking away from you. It makes you feel a little guilty to dismiss the situation so quickly, another item to add to your troubles. You sigh.
“Sorry,” you say. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, it’s okay. You’re right.” You can see his Adam's apple bob up and down.
“I’m not,” you say. “I’m wrong. I really didn’t mean it.”
He looks at you all at once, his gaze so gentle that it makes you think he wants to kiss you, or do something equally affectionate. Instead he sighs, downing whatever’s left of his drink before a wash of sudden looseness does away with the tension in his body.
“You have any more questions for me?” he asks, smiling. “What's it like to be student body president—or, or what instruments can I play? My favourite animal? Colour?”
You smile back. “What is your favourite animal?”
“I don’t have one. Don’t like them. Unless it’s a soft toy.”
“No way. You’re lying.”
“Now, I answer your questions and you call me a liar? Makes me a little hesitant to answer the next.”
You roll your eyes. “Okay, next then. Why didn’t you join the frat? All your friends are in it.”
“Hurts my ego.”
You laugh. He’s still probably an honorary member. There is no way he’s apart from friends for too long with all those feelings of fraternity he has, no matter what he says. It’s the same as you. Affection leads nowhere though; just to short-lived moments of comfort.
You realize, through the course of the night, that you never asked. How he got into the student council, what his classes are, what he does for fun—you never asked. It’s almost like you didn’t want to know. 
How sad, you muse to yourself, to be this way. To be so wrapped up in your own problems that you fail to see people around you. Pity, however, isn’t something to feel at a party. You talk with Doyoung for the rest of the night till the sound of his voice makes you feel certain ghosts of butterflies, and till you have to take Eunji home before she does something she regrets. This is what it really means to have the price tag of ‘youth’ strung across you perhaps—when you feel old and immature all at once, and in between, when you feel nothing at all.
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Doyoung is too old to mistake love. Or too young. 
Labels don’t define anything, especially when it comes to relationships—so even if he calls it love, whispers it to himself at midnight when he’s sitting alone on his bed while his friends are passed out drunk on the floor, it is empty. And then there’s you. The heat of your skin, the curse of your smile and that cheeky laugh you do to get on his nerves. He wants all of it and he’s not ashamed—but he’d be a liar to say he can shout it to the whole world. He’s not that kind of man, and what is his can remain his without the rest of the world prying its damn fingers in. The first night, no, the second—third? He can’t remember which night it was but something pent up in him exploded and he didn’t try to control it for once.
“Ow,” he mutters.
His throat burns from the whiskey. He hates drinking alone but you’re either asleep or with friends and he can’t think of anyone else but you. He tugs at the turtleneck collar, getting uncomfortable by the minute, and then proceeds to take off his coat.
For a moment, he considers getting back to the living room. There were more than enough people with lingering touches against his shoulder and longing gazes—they’re not you. He leans back onto his bed. Another hour and everyone will be gone; why did he even let them hold a party in the first place? Parties just remind him of you—he takes a whiff and smells summer and lemon vodka all of a sudden. A deep sigh leaves his lips.
You might not seem to find yourself especially sad, but Doyoung finds something oddly touching about you. Maybe it’s the way you say his name, he muses, like you’re desperately trying to fill the gaps. But it can’t be him in particular, of course—it’s a lover, any lover.
He hates long nights, just as he hates winter but lately, they haven’t been feeling too cold. Isn’t it ridiculous the way he’s running after you? Doyoung was never meant for this. It’s fucking pathetic and it makes him want to tear all his hair out but there he is, still and quiet in the same place. A certain agony makes its way through him. His hands are freezing and yet his insides are burning—nothing makes sense and right now, he doesn’t want it to. He presses his cold hands to the warmth of his cheeks and a laugh erupts from his mouth.
He must be going crazy to laugh like this in an empty room. The car lights from the window travel slowly from wall to ceiling, the only thing moving in the stagnant of his room.
Inevitably, he thinks of the end. It should come quick; in fact, he’s never been one to do this. He’s always been someone to get attached to people. He doesn’t know how the end will come because this shouldn’t have begun in the first place.
Doyoung’s out of breath.
“Crazy bastard,” he mumbles to himself, followed by a groan when he lifts his head up. As if on cue, the door opens and shuts with a bang. Ten walks in looking drowsy, running his hand through his hair with a disgruntled face.
“I hate to say this,” he slurs. “But you’re right. We can’t have extra furniture and parties. Gotta choose one.”
Ten lays down flat on the bed. “I vote out that ugly ass clock you bought. Why do we need it? We have phones and laptops.”
“It was a gift,” Doyoung mutters.
“Oh. Uh. Actually, someone already, uh—”
“Leave it. We’ll talk about that in the morning.” 
Doyoung massages his forehead, groaning at the pain when Ten suddenly decides he’s all up for cuddling. 
“Ew,” he says, scooting away from Ten. “Get away from me.”
“You don’t mean that,” Ten whines, trying very hard to pull Doyoung into a hug. Of course, his attempts are blocked by Doyoung’s palm against his forehead.
After a few more seconds of trying, Ten huffs and turns away, crossing his arms. “I don’t like you anyway.”
“I know,” Doyoung mutters.
Ten erupts into laughter, sounding more like a psychopath than a close friend of his.
“You do that every time you like someone?” he asks in between fits.
Doyoung raises an eyebrow. “I just said—okay, yeah. Whatever.”
There’s a much needed silence and Doyoung wonders if he can just fall asleep without kicking Ten out.
“You should tell (name),” Ten says all of a sudden, Doyoung’s heart stopping at your name.
“What?” he whispers.
Ten looks at him as though he’s talking to a particularly stupid child. It makes Doyoung scowl but there’s too much alcohol in his system to know if he really means it.
“You don’t- you’re- everyone in this goddamn building knows,” Ten explains, exasperated. “Jaehyun knows, and he’s the densest kid I’ve ever met. God, if you like (name), go for it.”
Doyoung blushes so deep, he considers pressing his palms to his cheeks again. He thinks for the next few moments. Ah well, if they had to find out, he’s glad he didn’t have to declare it himself.
“Whatever, just ask (name) out. It can’t be that complicated.”
Except it is. You don’t have to spell it out for him—he knows the way you feel. The two of you only ever wanted one thing out of this. But if there’s something Doyoung isn’t good at, it’s keeping his mouth shut. He wonders how many times he let it slip, wonders if you even care enough to notice. God, it’s starting to sound pitiful for him.
“Ten. How much did you drink?” Doyoung asks, raising his head.
“Nothing. None. I’m not drunk.” Ten shrugs. “Just sleepy.”
A ‘wow’ is all Doyoung can respond with. He still isn’t quite finished figuring out what sort of horrific planet Ten stumbled from. A notification ding distracts him from kicking Ten off his bed and he has half a mind to toss it onto the bedside table but it’s still half. He softens almost immediately.
It’s a text from you: a ‘u’ followed by a smiley face and then a meme he can’t quite read through hazy eyes. He finds himself smiling anyway and sends a barrage of emojis, whatever he finds because he likes the way you get annoyed at them. Sighing, he decides that’s enough. He’s not in the right state of mind for conversation.
Doyoung shuts his phone off, attempts to push Ten off the bed one last time before closing his eyes and dozing off.
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Not every day is meant to be fun—you know that in your twenties—but it’s still somewhat disappointing to have bad days. Like youth is meant to give you some sort of happiness daily. That’s what they make it sound like.
You groan, rubbing at your back. Sitting at your study desk for so long does not have good long term effects. At least, your temporary, meaningless assignments are done. You scowl at the text on your laptop screen; the more you look at it, the more you hate it and so, you shut it off. It’s not like your pissy professor is going to be impressed by anything you do. However, you like the orderly certainty of schoolwork.
Break time consists of guilt and sugary snacks. You’re done with most everything and you suppose leaving the final review of things to a later date can’t hurt. In fact, it sounds rather appeasing. A few more moments pass in making a decision.
You get dressed. The apartment feels eerie all alone, and you’re sure as hell not going to spend the rest of your evening here. You shiver, quickly striding out the front door and locking it before taking out your phone.
People misunderstand winter. Winter is only the end of things; and sometimes, the beginning. It isn’t cruel or crushing, it’s just taking its course. However, you have a tendency to blame seasons for all that happen in it. For instance, you shouldn’t be missing summer when you really miss the first night with Doyoung. 
He picks up after calling thrice. You wonder what he’s even up to, if Saturday evenings are also booked full for such a guy.
“Why do you take so long to pick up?” you complain. “Do you not get days off?”
“I’m busy,” he hisses. 
Something’s wrong.
You pause, unsure what to do. It’s not his voice but the one in the background that catches your attention. 
Inviting him somewhere. 
Rather sensually.
Your ears feel hot and you drop the call. Of course. Of fucking course. You’re the idiot thinking it was a thing. This whole thing is casual—feeling sorry wasn’t in the contract. Fucking around was.
It’s not like you’ll be heartbroken by something like this. Of course not. Of course. Doyoung and you never had a beginning so there isn’t an end, really. It’s fine. It’s fine. You take a deep breath and browse through your phone. With the onset of Christmas holidays, you have around three options left. Ten (yikes), Jaehyun (no way) or the latest addition, Hyungmin.
Well, you’re dressed. You have to go somewhere. And your statement about Hyungmin being the hottest guy on campus still stands.
You send two texts to the boy before deciding that’s apparently enough time waiting. He picks up after a few rings, voice groggy from what you assume to be a late afternoon nap.
“You up for a drink?” You cut to the point.
“Uh? Oh, uh, now? I am, of course- I just need—”
“Twenty minutes. I’ll text you the address.”
Nothing cheers you up like your favourite bar. Or friends. Or people who respond to calls.
Hongdae is as busy as ever. You knew the bar would be packed but not this packed. Still, you managed to grab a seat at the bar table. With the oncoming night, the smell is just going to get worse—so there’s nothing wrong with treating yourself to some lemon vodka (and its refreshing scent).
Hyungmin arrives exactly four minutes early, and the mussed up hair makes you think he must have been in a hurry. For what, you can’t be sure. 
You can still see the inklings of Hongdae nightlights on his hair right before he enters, and in the fallacy of that moment, you think it’s going to be Doyoung. You sigh. This isn’t the time for that.
“Sorry,” you say, gesturing to the bar table. “All the tables were booked.”
“No, no,” he responds quickly. “I actually prefer it here.”
He’s tall, not that it’s the first time you’re noticing, but even when he’s sitting, he’s at least two heads taller than you are. His shoulders are accentuated by the mocha coat, no doubt part of the latest trend this winter. As a fashion student, he hits the mark and more. 
For a moment, you feel bad for knowing his major. Ten let it slip about him and yet still, you feel guilty for remembering it. You’re not supposed to go into unnecessary detail about people that don’t matter. Does he matter? 
“Surprised you could make it,” you joke half-heartedly. “Aren’t you lot always busy with something?”
He laughs. “The student council? Oh, we’re busy alright.”
Busy. Right.
“What about you? Aren’t you part of like three different clubs?”
“So what kind of busy?” you ask, ignoring his question. You’re part of two, now that you left the music club last semester. It’s not like small talk matters though.
“Uh,” he hesitates. “You know- attend meetings and events, coordinate committee work, supervise stuff, etcetera etcetera. So busy, yeah.”
“Busy on Saturdays too?” you ask, before thanking the bartender for the drinks.
“Yeah, I guess. Doyoung has it worse than me honestly. Even now, he has to take care of stuff because of me. Hah…”
You gulp down your drink making Hyungmin raise an eyebrow in concern. “Stuff? Because of you?”
“Yeah.” Hyungmin scratches the back of his head. “He’s with the girls.”
“Girls?” you ask, playing with the glass. You’re starting to feel annoyed, red lining your vision.
“Yeah.” He makes no notion of clarifying his statement.  
“Must be quite the president,” you say, resting your cheek against your palm.
“Oh, he’s a nightmare.” Hyungmin laughs. “He has to control everything.”
You try to mask your scoff. You know what he can be like when you’re working beside him. 
“Oh, and the guy has no sense of humour,” Hyungmin laughs, the sound easy on the ears.
You blink.
“I think he’s funny,” you say quickly. You swear you have no idea why you sound so defensive.
He hums in response and you consider biting your tongue, telling him you’re only here for one thing and forgetting the uncomfortable churning of feelings inside your chest.
“Forget I- I’m a little confused today.” 
Is that an acceptable explanation? You can’t think straight enough to decide. The silence on Hyungmin’s part, however, worries you. The crowd around you fills in for the next few moments as your companion seems to debate something with himself.
“Look, I know you and Doyoung are… I don’t know, something.”
You huff in irked amusement. “God, does everyone seem to know?”
“Not until late actually.” Hyungmin takes a gulp. “He’s been acting weird. Doyoung.” 
You look away, breathing shallow. You don’t like it, the way things seem to be getting out of hand. All this time, the world seemed to be in the palm of your hand and now, it’s spilling everywhere; the sand in the hourglass is already up to your knees and you don’t know what happens when it fills.
“Do you actually like him?” he asks, leaning back just a little. You know where this is going. “Are you guys dating?”
“No,” you respond, checking your watch.
“Oh.”
There’s a moment’s hesitation in him but you’ve seen that look before. You know that look.
“Then we can- uh- we can—”
“Fuck?” you ask.
He gulps. “I mean, you can say no any time—”
You pull him by the collar and kiss him, hard enough to melt away your hovering thoughts. He kisses like you expect him to, not how you want him to. You know this sort, and somehow, that makes you feel comfortable. Knowing what you’re getting into is easing but it doesn’t lessen the weight of it.
It’s sickening. The way you’re pretending it’s Doyoung.
Hyungmin pulls apart, panting heavily. “Oh, okay.”
“Tell me you drove here.” 
He holds up his car keys in response.
You’re not the type to sleep with strange (semi-acquainted) men, but it’s better than falling in love with them.
So you follow a lover to a hotel room and try to feel something. Some time, when he’s kissing you against the hotel room walls, he pulls apart and asks, “You’re thinking of someone else, aren’t you?”
You know the answer; it just won’t leave your lips.
“It’s okay,” he says with a weak smile, “Let’s just have fun.”
And every time his mouth was on yours, every time you saw stars, you felt the ghost of Doyoung and his haunting touches. It was strange and unfair and unlike you—or at least, unlike the you that you built over the past few years. You feel as though you’ve misplaced something—like something was supposed to be there when you reached out but instead, it was empty space.
The night ends as it should and you leave right before dawn with an apology text you couldn’t put half your heart into.
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Most winter nights, you wake up with pain so profound, it’s seeping into your bones.
It never made sense. You never tried to make sense of it. So you let the aches push you down by the shoulders, lodge itself into your neck and back; and you tell yourself, it must be what you deserve. It’s cold and you’re walking barefoot on frozen ground.
You gasp. The weight of who you are and who you have to be—it has its knee on the back of your neck, shoving you into the damp earth. There’s no particular reason to it; it makes it seem as though it’s insignificant. Unimportant. Irrelevant. But that’s the problem—the weight of the world on your shoulders makes no sense. Whose world are you even carrying? Whose approval are you trying to win? You scramble to get up, messing up your bedsheets in the process, and pull your blanket around you. Your own warmth surrounds you and it makes no difference. You frown.
You remember your phone call with your mom, and your lips tremble. You shouldn’t have told her about how crappy your finals went but it slipped. You tried to explain that you did work for them, that you gave it your best but sometimes things don’t work out. She didn’t have to say it out loud for you to hear her thoughts. 
You’re disappointing. 
You wipe at your eyes, feeling annoyed at the emotion. If you could let the ground swallow you whole, you would. In a heartbeat. You don’t even know what you’re doing most of the days despite that pretty planner of yours.
You get out of bed, pull on your cardigan beside the bed and grab your lighter and pack. The tiny balcony makes for a great smoking spot and while you would scold any of your friends for committing to this, you do it yourself. Hypocrite.
For all you try to shove into yourself—hobbies, student clubs, actual clubbing, friends—the more you feel less than enough, as if everything just vanishes into thin air inside you. As if you aren’t enough and never will be. You play by the rules and you lose, you break the rules and you lose. 
Maybe it’s because you let yourself be filled by the intricacies of other people that they like you. And thus, you cannot stop for fear of loneliness.
Just as you’re feeling crushed again, you picture Doyoung against your back, placing his nose in the crook of your neck—something he has never done—and you wonder why it helps. 
Sucking in air too fast, you cough. You shouldn’t have let it go on for so long.
It was fun—harmless fun. You shouldn’t even be thinking of taking a step in some other direction. You’re friends, barely, but you like where you are. If Doyoung was that important, you wouldn’t be going about this all backwards. You sigh, though it comes out jagged. The room is quiet and that’s the way it should be at four a.m, of course, but you crave music all of a sudden. Doyoung and you are just a temporary fix; and you let that thought relax you.
When you think of his chin on your shoulder, however, it feels feather light.
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“Why are we doing this?” you ask. 
The atmosphere is warm and toasty, just like you expect it to be in a bakery with light pink doors and a collection of plastic potted plants on display. The decorations aren’t an eyesore here and somehow, it makes you feel better. It’s a little far but you decide it’s worth it.
Doyoung shrugs, sipping his hot chocolate. “It’s Christmas, and we’re both here.”
Your eyes follow the hanging lights over the counter, wrapped in pine tree stickers and eventually to the neat display of a ‘Season’s Greetings’ menu, the contents of which are currently at your table. A Christmas song by some singer who’s been popular lately plays, tunes light and dancing. You hate the end of the year solely because of the extra pressure January brings. Nothing you can’t handle, of course. Nothing you can’t handle.
You sigh. It’s been a little difficult lately.
“Doyoung, really, why are we doing this?” you ask, genuinely curious.
“Are you- uh- are you not enjoying this? I could—”
“No! No, it’s not that. I feel better, actually.” You bite your tongue almost immediately after. It’s not like he’s supposed to know the sort of hell week you’re having. A poorly received term paper, finals that weren’t up to your expectations, crippling loneliness without friends and, oh, the self-doubt—you are at the lowest you can be in college. The only sweetener right now is in the hot chocolate and the way Doyoung’s looking at you. 
You feel something close to guilt.
“Good.” He smiles. “You seemed… You seemed a little down.”
The sliver of warmth between your ribs makes you think this is unreal. It feels uneasy to be so affected by someone but you let it slide, turning back to your hot chocolate.
“Why didn’t you go home this time?” you ask, sipping your drink.
“Oh, I didn't really want to face my parents,” he says before leaning. “Didn’t do too well this semester. And my brother’s going to be there with all his achievements.”
You chuckle in disbelief. “You don’t like your brother?”
“I love him to bits. Just can’t stand my mom’s nagging when he’s around.”
“That’s rich coming from you.” You cross your arms, smiling triumphantly. You feel like children squabbling but it’s so lighthearted, you want to laugh.
Doyoung raises a pointed finger, about to retort but nothing comes out. He puts his hand down.
“I guess you’re right.”
You shake your head. “I’m sure she’s proud of you too.”
“I know that,” he says, laughing. “Of course she is. I don’t keep myself busy for nothing.”
You gulp, a sudden sourness rising at the base of your tongue. 
“Busy, huh? Didn’t know spending saturday evenings with girls also counted as busy,” you mutter against the cup, half-hoping he doesn’t hear you.
“What?” There’s a perplexed look across his face.
You wave your hand in dismissal. “Oh don’t mind me.”
“Are you talking about me giving a tour to the fresher girls?” Doyoung leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “Hyungmin does that usually but Mr Man was sore from soccer practice and Friday fucking.” 
You blink. “Fresher… girls?”
“What, did you think I was at a brothel?” Doyoung laughs in amusement.
You feel your cheeks heat up in embarrassment. “No! No, of course not.”
You wave your hands about for a few more seconds, trying to come up with an explanation. This makes things rather embarrassing.
“Sorry,” you say finally. “I jumped to conclusions.”
Doyoung laughs, rather deep and heartily, and you wonder if your apology really did sound as stupid to him as it did to you. 
“You do that a lot,” he notes.
“Thanks,” you quip, cutting the pastry with your fork a little too forcefully. His laugh follows. (You hate it so much. It sounds like pure adoration.)
The next few moments consist of scrolling through your phones (because Doyoung says his ‘mouth hurts from talking to you’) and you would’ve been in a better state of mind if everyone wasn’t posting pre-Christmas photos with their families. 
“You know they’re opening that park. What’s it called- Winter Wonderland or something. You said you wanted to visit.”
You look up at Doyoung amused.
“Let’s be honest. You want to be in bed, Doyoung,” you say. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I care,” he answers, looking at you with his doe eyes. “About you. You sulk when you’re upset.”
“I don’t sulk,” you reply but your smile is obvious when you exit the cafe. 
It’s like a date. The more you think of it that way, the more it makes you smile.
The evening is perfect—orange and pink and loving and happy. Doyoung trails behind you as you tread over the sidewalk with cheeky remarks about his speed.
“I’m in the track club, you know?” he huffs, finally tired of your jabs.
“As what, the start point?”
A fake, sarcastic laugh leaves him. “I wouldn’t get to see you if I walked ahead.”
You feel warmth creep up your face. You mumble, “that’s cheesy.” It’s too weak though, and it goes unheard. 
For the first time, you notice his eyes are a little like yours in what they reflect. You love them. 
So this is where the crowd went. The amusement park, or whatever you call it, is buzzing with a faint sort of excitement, mostly in the children that didn’t get to go on a vacation elsewhere. It’s quite the wonderland though so you can’t see them complaining.
“Do you think they’ll kick us out if we make out on the Ferris wheel?” you ask, smiling at Doyoung.
“I’m not making out with you on the Ferris wheel,” he replies, making a face.
You do end up making out on the Ferris wheel, and you get butterflies from it. It’s like a teenage dream but Doyoung looks even better. You pass on the cotton candy because frankly, you’ve had enough of sweet things. You sit at the frozen wooden seat, hoping it warms up while Doyoung brings the two of you some fries.
Your phone buzzes with a notification. Your eyes light up at the mail from your professor. You had turned in the term paper three days ago, weeks ahead of schedule and were particularly proud of the way it turned out. 
You look at the email and zero in on the word ‘redo’.
Your shoulders sag immediately. You spent four weeks on that—and it’s not good enough? You search frantically for how it could have gone wrong and come up with none. That’s not supposed to happen. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong. The week’s exhaustion swallows you up again.
When Doyoung returns, he looks at you concerned before quickly setting the fries on the table.
“(name). Is something wrong?”
“Huh?” Your voice sounds so weak and squeaky, you feel embarrassed. It’s embarrassing that after all these years, you still don’t know how to handle failure. 
Because it’s not supposed to happen. You tell yourself that over and over and it makes things worse.
You feel dirty, underneath all that dust and crumbled rock dangling in your hair. Whatever rests on your shoulders is cracking and collapsing, and you’re pushing in the wrong direction to make sure it all stays up. 
He reaches out his hand but you avoid it.
“No,” you mutter, weakly shaking your head.
You rub at your nose and eyes, hoping you can hide behind your forearms. Doyoung shouldn’t be seeing you like this, he doesn’t deserve to see you like this. You turn away from him, your palm gently pushing against the soft material of his shirt. 
Doyoung doesn’t move. Instead, he gently tugs on your wrist so you have no choice but to face him with your red-rimmed eyes. You’re not sure if it’s embarrassment or pity, but the concern in his eyes makes you cry harder. 
“You don’t have to do that,” he whispers. “You don’t have to find a place to cry.”
For the first time in adulthood, you learn what it’s like to lean your forehead against someone’s chest this way. Doyoung wraps his arms around you and the sound of his breathing soothes your near-erratic heart. 
“I worked really hard on it, you know?” you mumble against his chest. “My term paper.”
“I know,” he whispers.
Doyoung strokes your head delicately, fingers running through your hair with airy touches. Eventually, you let go of a final sigh and look up to his lips.
He seems surprised at the kiss but it’s all you can think of now. It’s gentler than usual and Doyoung moves cautiously though he seems to like it all the same. His arms feel comfortable around you. When he pulls apart, he looks at you yet still with careful concern.
“We can- we should stop if you want,” he says, and he means it. 
You shake your head. Night is creeping in overhead, deep and quiet and slow.
“I like you, Doyoung,” you say finally. “I really, really like you.”
Doyoung’s eyes widen, as though a rabbit wary of the traps it might set foot on but he eases into your touch almost immediately.
“I like… I like you too.” His lips waver but he looks away and takes a deep breath. “I like you so much.”
You smile and think that maybe everything is set right now, with his chin against your shoulder and your arms around him. 
Doyoung discards the jacket once you’re in your apartment, kissing you fuller now. Every other thought leaves you; you beg him to make you forget the rest of the world. The walls are comforting now that he’s here, and it’s warmer, hotter.
“Can we- Can we go a little slower?” you mumble, his arms still gentle when they wrap around your waist. He parts his lips from your neck to look at you momentarily before nodding.
You suddenly understand why he always makes you feel so good. There’s a certain fondness to his touch and warmth to his kisses. There’s no one quite like him, really.
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“I love digging graves, especially if it’s my own,” you mutter against the pillow.
Doyoung laughs. “What did you do this time?”
“This time? Excuse me? Do you think I’m some sort of trouble child?”
“Hm. Let’s see. Yes.”
You pause. Why do you hesitate to tell him you slept with Hyungmin? It’s not like you were cheating—you weren’t dating Doyoung. Besides, that night with Hyungmin didn’t mean anything. A horrid feeling snakes around your throat, heavy and piercing. You resort to changing the topic.
“I’m… I took another course beyond my understanding.”
“That’s it?” he asks.
You nod.
No, no, no; it’s all backwards now and you don’t know how to reverse it.
Doyoung takes your hand in his, delicately and yet firm. His chest is against your back, bare and warm. When he presses his lips against your knuckles, the warmth that flushes through you makes you want to believe in something else entirely. You feel weak. 
A part of you argues that you feel honest—in a moment of clarity you don’t think you deserve. Neither vodka nor whiskey can make you this clear in the head; you struggle to breathe straight. How awful it is to feel warmth and not believe in it at the same time.  
“You can rely on me, you know?” he whispers.
The knot in your chest makes you want to cry.
You feel lonely and the opposite of it all at once. Doyoung is too much for you—too kind, too pretty and too true. He makes you realize too many things at once.
There are a few things in the world that can stifle loneliness. Like the notes Doyoung plays on the piano, like the songs he hums in the morning till you place open-mouthed kisses against his neck.
You realize, all of a sudden, that Doyoung really is your dearest friend.
And yet, you don’t think you deserve it. You’ve never loved, you believe, but you have. You don’t remember it well enough. The lovers’ touches you kept searching for led to this. Hypocrite. You wanted a lover’s touch and you rejected the love that came with it. What a complicated bundle of emotions. You weren’t always this way.
You loved your first cat when you were six, all the way till it died a warm death in your bed. You loved your mother even when she yelled at you for skipping your chores. You loved your middle school friends when you talked about comics and movies you saw for the first time. 
It’s hard to love the same way now.
You suppose sympathy needs a little backstory. Nothing is unconditional. 
It had all started when your heart had broken into two clean pieces. You put a bandaid on it and called it a day. No one taught you to ask for help.
Your friends know someone broke your heart; you tell them everything. Friends, friends—you wanted them so bad and yet, you keep them as far from you as you can. You pretend to be paper-thin and so shallow, sometimes you wonder if that’s all there is to you. But for all they know, they know next to nothing. It wasn’t just the aftermath of reckless puppy love. 
The first time your heart broke, it was watching your mother cry in the living room for a reason you didn’t understand. You wondered who committed the crime, who should be charged—and you found no one. A loveless marriage is cruel, yes, but you cannot point fingers. It isn’t just cruel; it’s infuriating.
The second time, the two pieces of your heart broke into a few more. It was a boy with an inviting smile and flags whose colour you couldn’t quite discern. They must have been red, but everything else was too—hearts, cheeks, lips, and the threads around your wrists. And eventually, he guided you to the conclusion that you are undeserving, unworthy, unloved. 
You were strong, however. It was easy to collapse on the bed and feel the weight of the world settling in, but you stood up again on shaking knees and you told yourself to have fun; you can have fun without feelings. You know better than to attach meaning to fun—you might hate insignificant things but it’s only fun if it’s pointless. You’re not letting go of this place you’ve worked so hard to arrive at, with all the shattered pieces in your hands.
It’s better to offer nothing at all than offer broken pieces.
“Can we stay like this?” Doyoung’s arms tighten around your waist, his breath shallow against your shoulder. “Just for a little bit.”
His voice is beautiful as always, but for a moment, it strikes you as sad.
Everything’s twisting up into knots and you are frantically running your fingers over them to straighten it all out. You know what it’s like to let things rot; and you are tired of it. Why can’t everything disappear for one moment? Why can’t you just let it be the two of you?
You sigh in response, nodding. 
“I might not know what’s happening in there,” he starts, drawing circles on your chest with his finger, touch comfortably light. “But…”
I’m here and I get it.
Is that what he wants to say? You don’t think you’ll get to know. You’re not exactly voicing yourself either. 
Stay the night. You want to say it but your lips are frozen.
Instead, you rub your thumb over the back of his hand, fitting into each other as perfect as a lie. You would tell him, you try to convince yourself, if you could say it with enough conviction. There’s no point to saying things that are half-meant, that are true but only just enough. You’re a coward.
And now, this has gotten complicated.
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An end.
Tapping his pen against the desk, Doyoung grows increasingly annoyed. The council's next  meeting agenda isn’t going to finish writing itself but he can’t bring himself to either. Besides, Ten’s pacing outside his room is starting to get on his nerves.
“Ten!” he yells. “Can you quit it? You’re making too much noise.”
His disapproval is met with silence. For a moment, he spaces out and reflexively thinks of you, only to feel a confusing sort of emotion. It’s normal, he tells himself, and that it’ll sort itself out.
Doyoung feels like a glass box more often than not. If he breaks, who picks up the pieces? Who gets cuts all over their fingers?
‘Whoever breaks him’ should be the answer. But that’s wishful thinking. It’s not that simple. 
He’s so see-through that it’s painful. He used to tell Taeyong he’s wrong but he’s never been able to prove it. He is easy. It’s embarrassing.
But then again, part of him likes it when it comes to you. He likes it when you kiss him after a particularly heated disagreement, he likes when you get on his nerves just so he’d fuck you and most of all, he loves the push and pull. Fun is just that. He doesn’t know what he’d do if that heart of his he placed so gingerly into your palms falls and shatters.
The line between hate and love is thin; and he’s enjoying walking it too much.
He has nothing to offer but himself. He laughs at the thought and shakes his head. It’s somewhat dirty, and not just in the sexual sense.
“Ten!” he yells again. “Stop pacing!”
Getting up from his seat, he strides over to his door, swings it open and finds Ten scratching his head and glancing at his phone in repeated action. 
“Ten?”
He’s so in a trance that he hasn’t noticed Doyoung. He is the lovable sort of idiot if he ever chooses to be so. Most of the time though, he’s just a smartass.
“Oh, oh no, I’m a bad friend,” Ten mutters to himself, his pacing growing more restless. He scratches the back of his head, eyebrows furrowed and too inside his head to notice Doyoung. He wants to ask but something tells him he shouldn’t. 
Turns out, his apprehension isn’t strong enough these days. 
“Whose date did you crash?” Doyoung asks, more than annoyed already.
When Ten looks at him, Doyoung feels rather shriveled and freezes on the spot. Call it instinct but Doyoung respects fear and pain. Ten has a mixture of the two, amplified when he looks at Doyoung.
“Doyoung. Hey,” he says, trying to tone down the distress in his voice.
Doyoung still hasn’t recovered from the initial surprise of Ten looking that way.
“Did you fuck up? Did someone fuck up? Why do you look like that?”
Ten sits down on the small couch. “Long story… I guess. Too many details, you- you know? Just—”
“What the fuck happened?”
Ten still can’t look him in the eye. “The group chat’s a little…”
“Ten,” Doyoung snaps. “Cut the crap.”
“No, that’s- that’s what I’m- You’re going to be upset.”
Doyoung straightens, furrowing his brows. “I think I can fucking handle it.”
“You know that date I set up for (name) and Hyungmin?”
“You set that up?”
“(name) slept with Hyungmin.” 
Doyoung quietens. The silence seems to make Ten uncomfortable as he shifts in his seat, getting up when Doyoung speaks.
“So?”
Ten blinks. “You’re not upset?”
“Just what kind of loser do you think I am?” Doyoung mutters.
Glass shatters just that easily. Maybe he wanted you to shatter him. Maybe he was already cracking at the edges.
“Doyoung, you don’t have to—”
“Stop,” he exclaims a little louder than he intended. “Stop looking at me like that. I’m a grown man, I can handle shit like this.”
It still hurts though. You lied to him and he let you in. You lied to him. Doyoung sighs, returning to his room with a realization he should have had long ago. His night ends with more deleted drafts than he’s supposed to have and eventually, with increased discomfort, he delegates the job to Park Hyungmin himself with the excuse of sickness.
Doyoung does feel sick. He felt this way once, in highschool, but it had turned to red, hot anger ready to lash at anyone and everyone, spilling from his lips as easy as it was to breathe. And Doyoung can never feel that way towards you. He was different back then too, of course, but you—you’re unlike anyone he’s ever met. He loves the comfort of you, and something like that is hard to come by. 
He feels like laughing again but instead he finds tears on his cheeks. Silly boy, he can hear his mother tell him. You don’t give your heart to heartbreakers. 
So Doyoung falls asleep to the sound of upbeat music in his earphones, music he hates even just to pass the night. Morning will come and he will have to become stronger. Comfort is fleeting, after all.
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With everything said and done, you know very well that if you were to tell someone you love them—genuinely, truly, from the heart—it would be Doyoung. It’s not a sudden realization, like the sky falling apart or a tidal wave crashing against the shore and sweeping away the city. It is like the gentle lapping of water, though, or the way the clouds change shape—natural and anything but alarming. You want to stare at it forever, and you want to believe that’s how it will be forever. 
“You told everyone we had sex?” Your voice is boiled to a shout. 
Hyungmin looks torn, lips moving but no explanation making its way out. “I- I told my friends, not everyone.”
“And you forgot that your friends talk? Everybody talks, Hyungmin, what were you thinking?”
He sighs before taking a step towards you. “Why are you so angry about it? As far as I remember, you had no trouble talking about whose pants you got into.”
You scoff. “With friends, not the whole campus.”
“That’s exactly what I did!” 
You cross your arms, feeling so upset you might cry and unsure as to why. You’re usually good at dealing with stuff like this, keeping things in the right place.
“It’s because of Doyoung, isn’t it?” 
You snap your head to Hyungmin. There’s a serene sort of look to him despite his unkempt appearance, and a look of understanding.
“I’m sorry. Really. But if you were so into him, you shouldn’t have called me that evening. It might not matter to me but…”
You broke his heart. All that devotion he had towards you led to this. 
“You’re right.” You choke on your words, leaning against the wall. “Fuck… Fucking…”
You turn around, making your way out of the hallway and hope the tears on your cheeks dry faster if you run.
You can’t remember the last time you ran. Your world didn’t need running from, it was right in the palm of your hands. Now that you look back, the world was always on your shoulders and heavy as it can be. Maybe you liked it—the weight. You could’ve shrugged it off any time; you didn’t need all those caging schedules or careful, elegant steps.
No. Atlas couldn’t shrug because his punishment was his existence. To have weight is to have meaning; and that is how you intended to live out your life.
Doyoung makes you see it differently. To love so fully even if it seems cautious—you, who has never loved at all, couldn’t comprehend it. And because he makes you see it differently, the box is now open and all hell is loose. 
For once, you don’t want to live in the world you crafted. You want more love, more hurt and you want to open the doors. You don’t mind hell if it’s for him.
You ring the bell to Doyoung and Ten’s apartment and pray the news hasn’t reached him yet. He said he was busy this weekend; maybe he was detached enough from his phone for once. You just want to be the person to tell him. It’s not a perfect apology otherwise.
Doyoung opens the door with pursed lips and cold eyes. There’s a sense of ease over his shoulders and arms but he won’t look at you and panic rises to your throat.
“We’re not fucking tonight, (name),” he says.
“That’s not- That’s not why I’m here.” Your voice is so meek, you wonder what happened.
Doyoung steps back, crossing his arms. He’s still looking at his feet and you feel the urge to reach for his face.
“I wanted to tell you- I… I just—”
“That you’re fucking other people?”
“God, Doyoung, stop with the fucking. I don’t care about that right now.”
“Really?” His voice is so sharp, it digs into your skin. “You were just in it for that. That’s the fun part in your stupid life, isn’t it?”
You feel a sharp pain in your nose and forehead. “You’re- Now that’s- Doyoung. I’m sorry. That’s what I wanted to say.”
“After—” His voice chokes up. “After everything is done? Stop with the excuses and face it for fuck’s sake. You aren’t made to fall in love. That’s why you dance around it all the time.”
Although he says that, he doesn’t sound angry. He sounds defeated.
“It’s not like you aren’t cautious,” you retort, throat feeling heavy. “You said it yourself- you don’t want to care too much.”
“I was wrong,” he says, voice hoarse. “I care about everything more than I’d like to admit. I care about you more than I’d like to admit.”
“The Hyungmin thing didn’t mean anything, okay? You were busy and—”
“So why did you lie?” He strains to not raise his voice. “Of course I knew our little thing didn’t mean shit to you. Why did you pretend it did? Last week, you said- you said—”
“Doyoung, last week- last week I- I wasn’t pretending, I swear.”
“You could’ve just saved yourself the trouble and the dignity.” A short, humorless laugh leaves him.
You feel your lips tremble, the explanation not quite made its way out yet. He looks so innocent like this, rabbit-like eyes watery and full of pain, pure the way they have always been. This is your mistake, isn’t it?
“Doyoung, please,” you manage to say. “That was wrong. I couldn’t clear up my head. Please don’t—”
“No. I was an idiot. Or you see me as one.” He frowns deeper, lips trembling. “I shouldn’t- I shouldn’t have. We shouldn’t have been at the same fucking party and I shouldn’t have drank so much. You’re- I’m not that kind of person.”
You bite down your lip. “What kind?”
Doyoung laughs, the sound raspy and empty. “The kind to not fall in love with you.”
It damn near breaks your heart to look at him. You have to say something, it shouldn’t end like this. You’re desperate and all you think is that you don’t want it to end at all.
“Please, I thought of you as a friend, that’s why—”
“And this is what you call being a friend?” he cuts you off.
You feel the sting in your eyes and nose, making you turn sharply to the side. You wish he’d just make you cry. It makes you feel the rancid guilt all the more.
“Make Hyungmin your friend for all I care. Let’s stop this.”
You stare at your feet, unable to respond. 
“You can have every boy in the world, (name). Don’t come to me.”
“Can you just stop talking about everyone else?” you yell, desperate. “Do I talk about your exes? Seungjae or- or what’s-her-name—” 
“That’s different!” He looks distraught, breathing heavily and with a painful red flush over his nose and cheeks. He runs his hand through his hair, tousling it further. “You lied to me, (name). You lied.”
Your cheeks are wet and the look that flashes over Doyoung makes you think he wants to step right out to you. He stays frozen in place, however, looking away to the side.
“Did you notice?” he asks softly. “Even once? How much I cared?”
You can’t answer, letting the tears drip down your face. It’s getting colder and colder. 
Doyoung bites down his lip before parting them. “All we did was have sex anyway. So please just- just leave.”
You take a long few moments but nod, hugging your coat closer and stepping out of his apartment. You think you hear Ten’s footsteps but it’s followed by the bang of a door—this is how it ends then.
The line between hate and love is thin; and you are deserving of neither.
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You perfect your next semester’s academics, and the next. It still feels empty. You go out to drink with friends and return to a messy bed you sleep in alone. You smile as always and you laugh as always. No one asks you how you are as always. You never needed anyone to ask you how you are.
Ten tries but you push him away. You don’t need to drag in other people into a mess you made. He feels sorry for the whole thing but you tell him it was you that spilled the paint, Ten just handed a dash of it to you.
You were right. You don’t deserve Doyoung. At least, you made it so that you don’t deserve him. 
‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all’—it still hurts.
Every day is part of a list again. You doodled in some of the pages, when you thought you were starting to fall in love. There’s only a skeleton of it left now. Soon, you’ll let it crumble to dust too. 
You tear apart the planner sometime after graduation and cry and curse at yourself for doing that. No one’s good at parting with things they care about. You’re no exception.
It’s December again. 
This place is a little strange to visit right after graduating, especially with the memories flashing you by. Johnny said he booked one of the private booths (“A senior’s treat!”) but you feel your steps growing hesitant when you reach the neon signs by the stairs. It spells ‘The Meeting Place’ and smells of cigarettes just like it did the first time.
You stop midway up the stairs. For a moment, you think of Doyoung sitting there and wonder if you’ll ever be able to talk to him again. If you had the chance now, would you take it?
Of course, you wouldn’t. There’s too much to be set right and you can’t do it.
There’s supposed to be the six of you. Johnny mentioned Ten and you know Eunji’s invited too. You saw Jaehyun on the way here, still a student. You sigh. It must be him, the one they failed to mention to you. Kim Doyoung. There’s no one quite like him.
You spot him first. Looking a little forlorn as he gazes absentmindedly to the side, he faces away from you and you get the inevitable urge to run away. It’s a funny feeling. 
Your stomach is churning. You don’t want him to see you. Ten babbles on about something to Johnny, smiling like he found candy while clearing his drawers. Eunji looks tired, leaning against Johnny’s shoulder and you wonder if she already drank more than enough shots.
“(name).”
You jump at Jaehyun’s voice from behind you. 
“Hey,” you respond, giving him a wide smile.
He hesitates. “Are you okay? Not that you don’t look okay- you look really good actually. I mean, are you and… you know okay?”
“I don’t think so, Jaehyun,” you say and make your way to the booth.
It’s a little cramped for the six of you and Doyoung gets up before you can even greet him. It’s not like you deserve it anyway but it tugs at the wound.
“I’m going to go take a drag,” he mutters.
“You don’t smoke,” you say, looking up.
He stares at you momentarily and you look away. You think Ten and Johnny glance at you with pity but you don’t really care. 
 “Can I come with you?” you ask, barely a whisper.
“Sure,” he says, to your surprise.
The smoking area is so small, you’re surprised it’s even there. A glass structure overlooking the neighbourhood, there’s barely any light within. The only thing nice is how warm it’s in there. 
Doyoung lights his cigarette and then offers to light yours. It’s quiet, the music from inside numbed to the cold doors. You really can’t take it. You stub the barely consumed cigarette and throw it into the bin.
You’d rather just stay quietly in his presence.
“You’re not smoking,” he notes.
“It’s a bad habit.” You look out through the glass.
Doyoung chuckles. “You were a collection of bad habits.”
“And good ones too,” you quip. “I was a perfect student. I was perfect in most everything actually.”
Doyoung’s smile widens. “You were. You certainly were.”
A few more moments pass in silence, your eyes traveling over the outside scenery which seems to be growing duller by the second. City lights have never felt fainter.
“It was an accident, right?” You say suddenly. “The whole thing? Us?”
Doyoung hums. “Yeah. I fell in love by accident.”
You smile weakly. “Right. I never got to apologize.”
“I loved you on purpose.”
You look up at him. There’s not a lot of people who say what they mean. He looks the same as he used to under your grey blankets, with a warm blush over his cheeks and kind, wide eyes. 
“You’re so damn pretty,” he murmurs, “even now.”
You scan his face for signs of lying.
“You’re drunk, aren’t you?” you ask finally. 
Doyoung blinks before easing into laughter. “You- You’re- You’re the same as ever.”
You let yourself crack a smile.
“Doyoung I- I really am sorry,” you say quietly. “And I did- do care for you.”
Doyoung stubs out his cigarette and discards it before looking you in the eye. You notice he’s wearing his favourite black turtleneck in the proximity, the grey plaid coat covering most of it. You really liked that look on him.
“I’m sorry,” you say once again. “I want you to know that. I didn’t want to hurt you and I promise I won’t ever do it again.”
You mean it. You’re never going to hold glass again. He doesn’t deserve it.
“That’s a problem,” he responds, breath mingling with yours. “I want you… I want you to hurt me. If you really do love me, I’ll take it.”
“Doyoung,” you whisper, turning away despite your whole body screaming at you to give in. “I meant it. I can’t hurt you.”
Doyoung cups your cheek with one hand, glancing at your lips for a moment.
“You’re warm,” he says.
He’s warmer.
“I want to kiss you,” he says.
You want to kiss him too.
“We went about this all wrong, didn’t we?” he asks.
“We did,” you answer, voice barely above a whisper. “I did.”
Doyoung pulls back. “Then let’s start again. I’m Kim Doyoung, I majored in linguistics. I was student council president and I made a mistake.”
You smile. “We don’t have to do that.”
Doyoung raises an eyebrow. “After all the trouble I went through to make a good introduction?”
The two of you laugh, and it gets warmer. 
“I’m (name),” you say. “I was a top student and I made a bigger mistake, Kim Doyoung.”
“Oh? I wonder what it was.”
“Kind of a long story.”
“I’ve got all the time for you.”
You smile and start. He responds with gentle kisses. You’re piecing your world back together again; but this time it’s feather-light and fits right in the palm of your hand. 
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