#bro the amount of writer's block that i went through before completing this
Text
CONNECTION
– the mafia series
PAIRING: sim jaeyun x fem!reader
SUMMARY: jake's job was simple, manage and monitor over the boys. he was a smart boy after all, he even created an app for the whole squad to use! it was extremely impressive. now, if only he could that intelligence to figure out your feelings for him.
WARNING: mentions of dead parents. the dark side of huge companies. reader seduces men as a job to help the boys. slight suggestive. had to add a COD reference bc i have been watching tons of 'call of duty: warzone' videos. lack of sunoo content in here (HOW THE HECK DID I NOT PUT HIM IN MUCH? I AM SO SORRY). the ending wasn't how i intended but you still end up with jake so yeah.
WORD COUNT: 6.1K words (i said i would make it 6K and i did!)
NOTE: if you didn't know, each member's story is connected! hence you can see the characters meet. however, it will be confusing for you if i go 'oh (name) met (name).' so i gave a name to the previous girl. for example, in here heeseung's girl is named Eun!
anyone and their parents who heard of the sim jaeyun would instantly start mentioning his awards and honours. jaeyun was the epitome of a perfect child, he was every parent’s dream child. good grades, a gentleman and a free pass to join any company he’d like. many weren’t shocked when jaeyun had announced he would be creating his own company. someone as rich and high class as him wouldn’t just join any company.
although jaeyun was famous for his prim and proper behaviour, no one knew the boy was part of the mafia. everyone except you.
“here.” you threw jake the thumbdrive. your lipstick was ruined from your day job.
“thanks (name).” jake smiles. he places the thumbdrive down on the table and goes over to help wipe the lipstick that was messed up with his thumb. “messy kisser i presume?” he cocks his brow. you pout.
“yeah, i think that was the dude’s first kiss in over 30 years.” you say. jake gags.
“I really don’t understand how you don’t gag while kissing older men.”
“simple, it’s part of my job and i will do it. i can’t back out of it, i commit to my work.”
“that’s disgusting. you do you though.”
“well, it’s not like i’m dating the guy. It’s part of my job.”
“i know but-”
“jakey, i know you worry for me but i’m fine.” you caressed his cheek before placing a peck there. “i’ll be on my way now, see you and the boys tomorrow.”
jake sighs as he watches you leaving the penthouse. Now, since there isn’t much info on both yours and jake’s relationship, let us travel back to elementary school.
it was the last year of elementary school and you were wondering if you would be able to make friends in middle school or even high school. no one ever really approached you in the past years of elementary school. you thought there was something off about you. that however, did not matter. you grew up independent since your parents were never there for you since you were 2. they were well…killed in a car crash and you have been living with your grandparents since then.
It was the 2nd year in middle school, you brought your books to the library and went to study there. it was silent for a little while until a group of boys walked in laughing and talking really loudly. it disturbed you and you tried to ignore it.
“don’t mind them.” a boy says. you looked up from your book to notice a cute boy with shaggy hair. he tilts his glasses up to place them back properly on his face. “they are always this noisy, the librarian will kick them out soon though.”
you nod, feeling a little awkward to even say anything to him. who was he and when did he sit in front of you?
“i’m sim jaeyun but my friends call me jake.” he holds out his hand for you to shake. you cautiously accepted it.
“i’m (name).”
“oh, i know. we are in the same class for all these years.” you tilt your head.
since when was he your classmate? do you just never pay attention to your surroundings?
“I sit behind you usually, i guess you don’t really notice.” the boy smiles.
oh he had the most beautiful and cutest smile ever. it was charming.
“i’m sorry i didn’t notice before.”
“it’s okay. maybe, you could repay by being my friend?” jake says.
you looked at the boy straight in the eyes and smiled, “sure.”
fast forward to high school, you never thought in your whole life would sim jaeyun turn out to be a total heartthrob. everyone’s eyes always trailed him, the constant surge of girls coming over to talk to him and flirt with him.
now you wouldn’t call yourself the jealous type but surprisingly with jake you were. no one ever really noticed how you were acting differently when some girls tried to flirt with him. well anyone who isn’t dumb. even the boys knew you liked him but it seems as though sim jaeyun was simply oblivious.
college came and ended surprisingly quick. well, you didn’t go to college, only the boys. you couldn’t afford it since your grandparents worked a minimum paying job. they were only able to afford food, water and the home you stayed in. you never wanted to pressure them so you simply told them that you didn’t want to continue studying. of course, they protested further and told you it was fine and that this would be for your future but you told them..
“I don’t want to be a burden, you’ve done so much for me already ever since mom and dad died. i’m really thankful to still have you two so please let me earn my own money and we will see if i’d like to continue studies, alright?”
of course, you never continued studies. one of those random days as you were hanging out with jake in his room. He asked if you’d like to work with him, you’d be paid for your work. what you didn’t expect was for jake at 20 to build an empire along with the boys. the work was dirty work of course, where else could the boys get their wads of cash from. you knew jay’s family always worked with shady people so you weren’t surprise when the boys started to dabble into some very devious work.
“I’ll train you. well get people to train you.” jake says. you looked at jake, he tilts his head. “what?”
“nothing, just confused as to how you are the same sim jaeyun that i knew back then.”
“i never changed (name).”
“you never changed? then what’s with your new freshly dyed blonde hair, mister.i have not changed.” you teased jake. he scoffs.
“It’s just hair dye (name). jay had blond hair too.”
“the sim jaeyun i knew back then wore glasses and had braces. most importantly, took school really seriously. you never liked fuckboys and here you are looking like a fuckboy.”
“well i still wear glasses, these are just contact lenses. I don’t wear braces anymore but i still use retainers to keep my teeth straight and about school…(name) i graduated college with a degree 2 years earlier than everyone else.” jake deadpans. “how have i changed?”
“you’re right, you’re still the same. always finding ways to prove my statement wrong.” you folded your arms and huffed.
you still accepted the offer to work with jake and now you…well to put it simply, seduce men and then end them. which was simple to say but it requires a ton of patience since some men were stubborn.
enough with talking about the past, the present was where we’d focus on.
you were walking home when you felt a presence behind you, following your every move back home.
“sunghoon, i am not going to hand you back your little toy.” sunghoon walks out of the shadows. he groans.
“give it back.” he huffs. you smirked.
“not if you tell me who jake likes.”
“it’s bro code. I can’t just tell you.”
“then you can’t have mr.duck, simple as it is.” sunghoon whines as he follows you back home.
to be completely honest, sunghoon was never like this. he usually was the quiet one but very great at his job. he was the silent killer. with you, sunghoon felt really comfortable. the two of you act like siblings despite not being real ones. that’s how close you were with sunghoon.
“thank you for walking me home, hoonie.” you gave him a flying kiss. sunghoon rolls his eyes.
“yeah yeah, it’s my job after all. i have to or else the boys will go ham on me for not taking care of you. especially your dear jAkEy.” he mocks your voice for the last part. you hit his shoulder.
“enough will you.”
“whatever, see you tomorrow.” sunghoon says.
“hmm. see you tomorrow.” you waved at him before he left.
“you can come out too, ni-ki.” you say with your back turned. ni-ki sighs. he gracefully lands onto the ground.
“you’re no fun, noona. i wanted to scare you.” ni-ki huffs.
“too bad.” you shrug your shoulders.
“anyways, you should get inside noona.” ni-ki says.
“was already planning to.” you say. you waved ni-ki off and entered your home. it was silent, too silent to the point your ears started ringing. you sighed.
“if only grandma and grandpa were still alive…” your grandparents had passed on unexpectedly, it scarred you. sure, they peacefully left earth but you had no other family. you felt…lonely.
you strolled towards the bathroom to take a shower and clean up. everything felt extremely dirty, it’s not like you really enjoyed doing the job but you knew you had no choice considering you only have a mere high school diploma and that wouldn’t get you far.
you could go college but truth is what did you even want to be? you never discovered and developed your talents or hobbies since you were always busy with missions. you wished you spent more time with your grandparents so they could give you life advice, tell you stories of their childhood and many more. however, it was too late.
the water grazes your skin, tears falling down along with it. you felt tired, too tired. if only there was someone out there to give you the love you needed and craved.
“jaeyun.” sunghoon slaps jake’s back. the blond boy winces.
“what the fuck do you want? i’m trying to code something.” jake grumbles. sunghoon takes a single glance at the computer.
“ew numbers.” sunghoon gags. jake rolls his eyes.
“just came back from making sure (name) gets home safe?”
“actually, hyung. both of us did.” ni-ki walks in.
“good. how is she?”
“she’s home safe. I was the last person to see her off since sunghoon hyung was already walking off.” ni-ki smirks.
“oh so taking care of jake’s girlfriend is suddenly a competition? if it is, i am so ready to beat your gremlin ass.” sunghoon hissed.
“as if you could beat me, i’m trained specially as a spy. i quite literally have the high ground.” ni-ki says.
“why you little shit-” jake stops sunghoon.
“alright, how about you two go play a round of fifa. if that isn’t enough to settle this little childish play fight, go settle this on the rooftop training centre. it's the perfect place for you two to wrestle.” jake says.
sunghoon grumbles, “come on.” the silver haired boy drags ni-ki out.
“those two never learn to not bicker.” jungwon says suddenly. jake jumps back in surprise.
“how long have you been sitting there?”
“since those idiots came in. did you fix the virus?” jake tilts his head. “fine, did you fix the virus, hyung?”
“yeah, it was a little hard to fix it but the app is online and our little army should be well informed.”
“good, is noona okay?”
“why do you never use formalities when talking to us but you use it with-”
“Because she’s better than you guys and she’s simply not you guys.” jungwon says. he stands up from the chair.
“yah, where are you going leader-”
“watering my plants and then walking maeumi. let me know if heeseung hyung calls us and we will be there.”
“wait before you go!!”
“already leaving.” jungwon waves jake off.
“THERE IS A BID TO ATTEND TO!! DON’T FORGET!!” jake yells. jungwon does an okay sign. jake falls into his seat and huffs.
he checks his phone. not a single message from you. jake knows you two were simply friends and that you had no feelings for him but he can’t help being worried about you. especially knowing you don’t have any more family. though, jake does hope you think of him and the boys as your little family and yes, he would love to be your husband.
“oh sim jaeyun, you are so down bad.” jake ruffles his hair.
it was about 11pm, jake looked at himself in the mirror and made sure his tie was perfect. he sighs. he turns his head to look at the mask on his bed. a masquerade mask to hide his identity at the bid. he breathes in, he could do this. it wasn’t like this was his first time going over to this bidding event.
“jake! let’s go!” jay yells. jake grabs the mask and puts it on.
there were tons of people at the event, it was kinda getting a little too much for jake. he sucks in a breath. sunoo turns to him.
“hyung, let’s get upstairs. jake hyung is getting you know.” sunoo says.
heeseung spots jake nervously playing with the ends of his suit jacket. he nods.
“let’s go.”
the moment the 7 boys arrived at the top, they spotted you in your amazing long red bodycon dress and masquerade mask. you smiled and entertained the guests that were up in the VIP side.
“(name), you made it!” jay hugs you.
“as per usual, i do have a job to attend to here.”
“job?”
just then, a notification pops up on their phones. it was a warning that something bad was brewing and they had to save this poor innocent victim. you smirked.
“see, my work is never done. anyways, shall we watch?”
jake watches the way you walk over to the balcony, the way your body moves and looked in that dress. god, he wishes to rip your clothes off your body-
“jake, you good?” sunghoon waves his hand in front of him. jake nods before fixing up his mask.
everything was normal, nothing much going on. until, they unveiled what was under the huge cube. it was a cage, a girl was tied up. your breath hitches. it reminded you a lot of the past. the past when you were kidnapped but thankfully, you were found and jake was also the one who found you.
“we have to save her.” you say before turning to heeseung.
“of course. besides, you know we don’t allow selling people. we aren’t the black market.” heeseung says. ni-ki snorts.
“but we do control the black market.”
sunghoon smacks ni-ki’s head, “shut up. we have to gather a plan. any ideas in that giant head of yours, nishimura?”
“First off, it isn’t giant. secondly, heeseung hyung. you don’t happen to have the luggage full money do you?”
“what are you hinting at ni-ki?” heeseung asks.
“bid for her. leave the rest to me and the others. we’ll get the money back safely.”
“yeah yeah.” heeseung waves ni-ki off. “(name), could you seduce-”
“the guy i’m supposed to seduce is that creepy ass man about to bid for the girl. act fast, i need to get down there.” you say. just as you were about to walk off, jake holds your wrist.
“stay safe.”
you smirked, “when have i never stayed safe?” you quickly left the area.
jake’s heart races. he wanted you to stay safe but he knew he couldn’t control you. jay pats jake’s back.
“she’s yours at the end of the day, bud. she won’t go overboard and besides we have the best people to save her. they’re just one call away, have faith in her.”
“I do have faith in her but at the end of the day, she doesn’t like me like that. she thinks i’m only doing this as a friendly gesture.” jake groans.
“dude, ever heard of growing balls and asking her out? it won’t hurt to try.” sunghoon says. jake sends him a terrifying glare. one that could make sunghoon surrender on the spot.
heeseung pats jake’s back, “come on, we should be cautious now.”
the plan starts as heeseung bets on the girl right on the stage. It was a fierce battle between him and their target but of course, heeseung wins. each one of the boys went to their spots to guard behind the scenes while heeseung went straight into the tiger’s den. jake watches as you flirt with the guy, he can’t help but have his stomach churn. it wasn’t a pleasant sight to witness.
“jake, let’s go. ni-ki already left with jungwon.” sunghoon says.
jake’s eyes followed the way you trailed the man. it was flirty, definitely proves you were great at what you did but it didn’t sit right with him.
“jake!” sunghoon yells. sunghoon sighs, he can’t stop his lovesick friend. hence, he was left with no choice but to drag jake away. your eyes catches jake’s for a split second and you swore you saw a glint of hurt. however, you had to focus on your mission.
“so, you won’t be going anywhere after this?” the guy says. his fingers playing with the string on your waist. it was skimpy dress that barely covered much. you even had to wear a thong for it. you decided it was best to dress up since you heard this guy loved extremely pretty and sexy girls. hearing that intel from some girls in clubs was disgusting but definitely useful.
you gave him a smile, “well...i was going home after this. it’s so cold in my bed though.” you gave him a good show by pressing your elbows together. it showed your cleavage way more as you pretend to think. he was shamelessly staring.
“i could swing by.” he licks his lips. you smiled.
“oh, you don’t have to.” you pout. a few men came up behind him and whispered to him. he nods before turning to look at you.
“i’m sorry sweetcheeks but i have some important business to attend to. how about another time?” he says as he hands you a business card. you smiled and took it.
“of course. you must be a busy man.”
“yes, a busy rich man.” he smirks. you ‘giggled’ a little.
“it was nice meeting you, miss..?”
“(name).”
“miss (name).” you bowed a little. once he was gone out of your sight, your face falls. you grabbed your phone and dialled for jay. he picks up within seconds.
“target has gone to your side. it’s your job now.”
“alright. also, before you end the call. could you check up on jake?”
“what’s wrong?”
“he disappeared. he was with sunghoon but then when sunghoon turned back, he was gone.”
“i’ll search for him.”
“okay. stay safe.” jay says. you snort.
“I have pepper spray, a knife and a pistol.”
“of which your boyfriend gave you.”
“jake isn’t my boyfriend, you fuck.”
“sure, (name) but he acts like one.”
“that’s just how jake is.”
“only with you though.”
“whatever.”
“you can’t deny (name).”
“shut up jay.” you end the call, sighing.
you won’t lie, jake has been too friendly with you and only with you. sure, he has flirted with other girls before but he usually doesn’t act upon things. he doesn’t want a relationship. he has mentioned this to you before in high school. which was why you never confessed to him.
a message pops up.
jakeyy: bring me some hot chocolate :(
you: i’m not your personal maid, jaeyun
jakeyy: please princess :(
you: fine
jakeyy: thank you <3
you rolled your eyes. he didn’t even tell you where he was. you did have a clue on where he was though.
you: jake, you fuck. you didn’t tell me where you are (read)
he read the message but didn’t reply, great. guess you really had to go hunt for him. maybe he was at the penthouse. pretty simple and obvious. you swiped your card to get to the penthouse. once the elevator reaches the floor, you went straight to the computer room. jake did spend most of his time here.
you entered the room. thankfully, jake was here.
“hey, why did you run off? you were in the middle of the mission.” you say as you placed down the cup of hot chocolate onto his desk.
“Because i’m not first in line. I don’t have to fight unless there is an emergency.” jake reasons. you sighed.
“jungwon is down there fighting with them.” jake types away on his keyboard.
“jungwon was trained in taekwondo, he can take an enemy down easily with a kick. i need a weapon to strike them down. besides, my speciality is IT. i can help them with info through calls.”
“alright, you win.”
jake snorts, “thanks for the hot chocolate though.”
*buzz buzz* - in-earpiece-
“hey, have you found jake yet?” jay says.
“yeah, he went back up to the penthouse. you guys done yet?”
“yeah. oh, since jake is up there. could he come down and get the girl?”
“i’ll tell him. are you guys coming up?”
“yeah, we need to regroup for a little. heeseung hyung says.”
“alright.”
you smacked jake’s arm and he winces.
“can you do your job? jay wants you to go collect the girl and bring her up here.”
“what? why can’t they do it?” jake huffs.
“they are still fending off a little. they’ll come back up here soon to regroup.”
“i have some things i’m working on-”
“I can help, i was in the same class as you during high school. I would take it as i am in fact smart.” you say.
“are you sure? i’m tweaking a code to strengthen the security of the app while also looking through the database.”
“what do you take me for? i can handle this, just get down there. it’s just a quick fetching and you can come back here.”
“Fine.” jake goes to find the girl. you cracked your knuckles and sat down on his chair.
“damn, this is really advanced.” you say.
“let me handle the coding, noona.” jungwon says. you flinched.
“where the fuck did you come from?”
“i just walked in. now, i’ll code in the strengthening system while you can monitor the database. i believe sunghoon hyung and ni-ki are chasing after the people who stole the money. you can update them while on call, it will be easier for a live time update.” jungwon says.
“okay.”
*buzz*
“sunghoon? do you hear me?”
“yeah, loud and clear. what’s wrong?”
“the guy just ran under.”
“oh thanks. you watching the tracking?”
“yeah, jake went to grab the girl.”
“was he drinking hot chocolate in the computer room again?”
“he asked me to grab some and yeah he was in the computer room.”
“ain’t surprised.”
“HYUNG? WE ARE BEING SHOT AT.” ni-ki yells.
“don’t worry, they’ve never played a game of COD. they can’t shoot for shit.” sunghoon says.
“HYUNG THIS ISN’T A GAME! THIS IS REAL LIFE!”
you winced at ni-ki’s yelling, “sunghoon, ni-ki. be careful.”
“aww thanks, noona.”
“NISHIMURA TO YOUR LEFT!”
“I CAN SEE HYUNG.”
*buzz*
“idiots.” jungwon huffs. you snort.
“yo. where is the girl?” jay says.
“still not here- damn jake hyung really made this system code complicated as fuck.” jungwon groans.
“we need to regroup and sunghoon and ni-ki aren’t here still.” jay says.
“just wait. maybe wash the blood off your shirt and hands first?” jungwon nonchalantly says.
“where is heeseung?” you asked.
“dealing with the dude. hyung, locked him in the chamber.”
“for?”
“you know his crimes.”
“actually, i went in this seducing mission raw. i have zero clue what the guy did.”
“The usual actually like every rich man does.” jay says.
“extortion of money. fraud. tax evasion. he also solicited a minor.” jungwon lists them out. your jaw drops.
“that’s…bad.”
“well, heeseung hyung is doing the right thing. he deserves to be tortured.” jay shrugs. you nod. jungwon types something in and the screen pulls up the security cam of inside the said ‘torture room’.
‘i know nothing you’re talking about.’ the guy’s voice was raspy, almost gone.
heeseung leans down. he throws papers at him.
‘are you sure?’
the guy chuckles before he roars in laughter. he looks up at heeseung directly with crazy eyes.
‘ah, about your so-called dead parents?’
‘you must really not know they are alive. just being tortured to death.’
heeseung grabs the guy’s collar.
‘bullshit, they are dead.’
‘it is all lies. they are being held captive-.’
heeseung shoves the guy back on the chair before leaving the room.
“that was pretty harsh. i don’t think we should mess with heeseung hyung right now. it’s a touchy subject for him.” jungwon says. the door slams open and heeseung is grabbing a canned beer and drinking it.
“i hope that guy enjoys the torture because it is just starting.” heeseung says. sunghoon and ni-ki walked in soon after.
“at least clean your face, you have blood all over. you’re going to ruin the floor, i just cleaned the place.” jungwon groans.
“alright, we will. here.” sunghoon throws the suitcase at jay. jay quickly inspects it to see if all the money was inside and it was.
“great job. now, wash up. we have girl guest coming up and i don’t think she’d want to see the both of you covered in blood.” sunoo says.
“when did you get here?” jay says.
“i was in the bathroom washing up the blood since you aren’t doing it.” sunoo sasses.
“it could be red paint.” ni-ki says.
“along with the smell of iron? totally red paint.” jungwon adds before rolling his eyes. ni-ki huffs.
“do we have any more missions? i have school in the morning and it’s not going to be a good rest if i do not have at least 3 hours of sleep.” ni-ki says. everyone turns to heeseung (despite jungwon being the leader of the operation).
“jake is coming up here any second now so we’ll debrief and then you can run back to your home and sleep.” heeseung explains.
“do we debrief with (name)?” sunghoon asks.
“i’m just here as your assassin, there is no need for me to even be here. jake just told me to watch you two.”
“so?”
“it means, i will be going now. goodnight!” you say.
“wait, what about jake?” sunghoon yells.
“i’ll drop him a text!” you say.
“he’s gonna kill us if we just let you off!” sunghoon says.
“i’m gonna have a night walk before getting home. i need some me time.”
“it’s 1am!”
“and?” the elevator door shuts. just as your elevator door shuts, the other elevator door opens and reveals jake and the girl.
you: went for a walk, i’ll get home as soon as possible.
jakeyy: what? why?
you: i just wanna walk around our childhood park. is it that bad?
jakeyy: why didn’t you invite me :(
you: i wasn’t asking for you to join me. it’s going to be just me.
jakeyy: alright, stay safe.
“he is going to come.” you sighed.
you were strolling around the park. It was pretty dark out but the night sky and the stars made it look magical. it was why you loved coming here. your grandparents used to bring you here to watch the stars. they laid a picnic mat onto the ground and pointed out the various shapes and animals that they could spot.
there was once a smiley face and your grandparents pointed out that it was your parents and that they were proud of you. proud of who you grew up to be. you weren’t exactly sure if they’d be happy with what you did now.
you looked up at the sky. the stars were twinkling, you wished you could reach up there and capture a star. it was truly something beautiful. you had stayed in the park for at least an hour, you decided it was time to get home. it was already 2am, you should at least get some rest. well, you hoped you did at least.
you felt a nudge at your fingers and saw layla sitting in front of you.
“layla, how did you get here?” you say. obviously, you knew jake was here too because there was no possible way for layla to escape from jake’s vision. he cared about layla more than anybody could.
“what’s with you coming here suddenly?” jake says. you turned to the boy.
“my grandparents' death anniversary is coming up so i just want to visit the place they always brought me to.”
“god, i forgot. i’m so sorry.”
“it’s alright. you don’t have to worry. i’m sure they will be upset though.” you say pointing to the stars. jake looks up.
“i am so sorry grandpa and grandma.” jake says. you snort.
“why did you bring layla out?”
“why not? she likes late night walks.”
out of nowhere it starts pouring. you gasp. jake grabs your arms and runs with you to the gazebo. you, jake and layla were soaking wet. the puppy shakes off the water and it only splashes onto you and jake. the both of you giggled.
“well so much for it having a clear sky to see the stars. it started pouring fast.” you say. jake chuckles.
“I think your grandparents are really mad at me.” he huffs. you laughed.
“that’s impossible, jake! you know they love you!”
“well, if they did then why is it pouring all of sudden.”
“no one can predict the weather.”
“okay, fine. that is very true. this is my favourite hoodie though.” he pouts.
“we can dry it off at my home. for now, we have to wait until the rain stops or at least calms down.”
“i don’t think it’s stopping any time now.” jake says as he looks out. it’s true, it was practically raining cats and dogs. there was no way it would stop any second now. it would probably end in about an hour or two. however, layla was not a calm dog. she’d probably get angsty and want to run around.
“do you think we should just book it to your car?” you suggest.
“car? i walked here.”
“are you serious?” jake nods. you facepalmed.
“okay, maybe we could stay here for a little bit and hope the rain calms down.”
it had been 10 mins and the rain had not calmed down. jake had settled onto the ground by now, caressing layla to calm her down from the thunder.
“should we run? my house is just a block away.”
“(name), i don’t want layla to get sick.”
“what about us?”
“layla is more important.”
“you’re right.” you groaned, “it’s going to take an hour more probably. i’m cold and hungry.” you whined.
“come here then.” you tilt your head. jake tugs on your hand to bring you down to sit on the ground. after doing so, he takes out his jacket and drapes it over you.
“it’s better than freezing to death.”
“oh great, your jacket is wet, you know.” you deadpanned.
“the inside is dry, just the outside is wet. you’re still in the dress you wore for the ball.”
“well, of course i am. i did say i was going straight to do a night walk before going home.”
“it’s dangerous for you to be out wearing like this.” jake says. his words tugged at your heart strings.
“you gave me plenty of things to defend myself with. moreover, i learnt taekwondo from jungwon. i think i’m well prepared for a surprise attack.”
“i’m just worried about you.” he says.
silence.
“you mean it in a friendly way, don’t you?” you say.
“i meant it in a more than friends kinda way.”
you swore your heart drops into the pit of your stomach. there was no way jake liked you as more than friends. he is just joking. he always does.
“is this a joke?”
“no.”
layla whimpers, you pet her.
“she knows i’m sincere.” jake points out. you snort.
“so you like me?” you tease.
“are you teasing me, now?”
“well, it’s hard to believe it when you’ve spent countless times denying our possible feelings for each other.”
“well- fine, i’ll say it out loud. I like you, (name). i like you so much, i wanna kiss you right now.”
your breath hitches, “who’s stopping you from doing it?”
and so, jake leans in and captures your lips. you went home with jake, the both of you were giggling like teens. layla followed in, she settles down on the floor. both you and jake fell onto the couch, kissing nonstop.
“i really like you.” he pecks your lips.
“do you like me or my lips?” he pecks it again.
“both.”
“choose one.”
“then you. I really really really like you.” he pecks all over your face and you fell back onto the couch. jake continues to lay kisses on your face even after you fell back on the couch.
jake’s phone rings. he pauses and places it on speaker mode before throwing himself onto you.
“yo?”
“you sound happy, it’s 4am in the morning.” jay says.
“HE GOT LAID I BET!” sunghoon yells from the back. you heard a smack from the other line.
“YAH! MY ASS.” sunghoon yells.
“anyways, where are you?”
“it rained so i’m at (name)’s house.”
“ah so she’s the cause of your happiness? not surprised. i thought you got laid or something.”
“unless…did (name) and you finally hook up?” sunghoon says.
jake looks up at you and pecks your lips. it was loud enough for both sunghoon and jay to hear.
“we didn’t hook up but she is my girl now.” jay gasps.
“FUCKING FINALLY!” sunghoon yells. jay smacks sunghoon again.
“can you not shout? it’s 4am in the morning and jungwon gets fucking cranky if we wake him up. he is terrifying if he doesn’t get sleep.”
“okay okay. holy shit, congrats though. can we throw a party then?”
“throwing a party equals to a possible attack.” jay explains.
“you know, that’s not a bad idea guys. mayhaps, we can eliminate possible targets on our list.” you say. both jay and sunghoon gasp.
“jake, you have found the smartest girl. thank you (name)!” sunghoon says.
“so we'll tell the others tomorrow in a meeting?”
“yeah, that’s a perfect plan. (name), join us tomorrow!”
“we’ll leave you two to get it on, now!” sunghoon ends the call.
“they are idiots, aren’t they?” you say.
“that’s sunghoon and jay for you.” jake says. you giggled.
the next morning, both you and jake entered the penthouse. everyone was already gathered. heeseung was looking at his clock. the other elevator door opened and perfectly on time, another girl walks in.
“is that the girl we saved?” you say. she bows at you.
“hello, i am eun. i umm housekeep.”
“you are pretty. heeseung, you sure you don’t wanna actually wife her up?” you say. heeseung rolls his eyes.
“he’s already planning to do it!” sunoo smirks.
“oh damn, can i be the best man?” jake says.
“it’s not a real marriage.”
“yeah but you two will be legally married by the law.” jay says. eun blushes.
“well, after someone mentioned that i have a wife to a guy. now, everyone thinks i’m married so we’ll have to roll with it.” heeseung glares at jake. the said boy hides behind you.
“okay so what’s the plan because i have to explain to ni-ki later on.” jungwon says.
you told them the plan.
about a month later, the boys were appalled. the guy they tortured was right. heeseung’s parents were really alive.
“eun, here. bring this to heeseung hyung. i think you are the only one who can go in his room. he’ll throw a fit if any one of us goes in.” jay hands eun a tray.
“thanks, i’ll make sure he is okay.” eun says. she enters heeseung’s room.
“dude, if heeseung’s parents are alive…what more is kept under the rug?” sunghoon says.
“you don’t think my pet goldfish from when i was five is still alive?” ni-ki says.
“not funny.” sunoo says. ni-ki huffs.
jungwon feels a notification pop in. he scans his phone. his eyes widened.
“jake hyung, you need to see the app.”
“what? is there a virus?” jake says.
“no, it’s not. someone coded a message into the app externally and it’s for you.” jungwon says.
everyone looks at their phone. true enough, it was a pop up message.
‘your brother is still alive. clock is ticking though, better be quick and solve this mystery. i’ll be waiting for you and your little mafia friends~’
jake felt his stomach drop. there is no way his brother is alive. his brother died in an accident when he was 10.
“jake…”
“(name), i-”
you hugged jake. he could feel his whole body shake but he didn’t know if it was fear or anger. whoever was behind this was someone cruel. someone who knew every single thing about the boys.
“we have to find the mastermind. he deserves to be erased from this planet.” jake says.
-
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#after putting thisoff for so long#I AM FINALLY DONE!!!#bro the amount of writer's block that i went through before completing this#OML#enhypen#enhypen imagines#enhypen imagine#enhypen angst#enhypen fluff#the mafia#enhypen mafia#enhypen x reader#enhypen x reader imagines#CONNECTION#jake#jake imagines#jake imagine#jake angst#jake fluff#jaeyun#jaeyun imagines#jaeyun imagine#jaeyun angst#jaeyun fluff#sim jaeyun#sim jaeyun imagines#sim jaeyun imagine#sim jaeyun angst#sim jaeyun fluff
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《What your fav Haikyuu!! Character says about you│Nekoma Edition》
Yo-hoo! Here’s another part to this potential(?) series! I hope you enjoy the possible call-outs in some of these lmao. Writers block been kicking my ass recently but I had a lot of fun writing these. Enjoy <3
You can find the Karasuno ver. here
✧✧✧✧✧ ✧✧✧✧✧ ✧✧✧✧✧ ✧✧✧✧✧
Kuroo:
Have a hand fetish and will not say no to choking.
Daddy kink™
Will not accept anything below 6 inches.
More of a dog person but would love to own a black cat.
You drool over tattoos.
Your grades are mostly B’s but you know in your heart you deserve that A, and tbh you probably do. Chase ur goals bby.
Halloween is likely your favourite holiday.
You have to resist not to carve a dick into the pumpkin EvEry GodDAmN YeAr.
You either study for 6 hours consecutively or cannot study at all and you get very frustrated at this.
Have the potential to be a good leader and command the room but probably don’t put it to use as much as you should.
Your playlist parkours from sad 3am crying into your pillow songs to aggressive punk music you could rob a store to.
You like bad boys who hang around bars and look like they would put out a cigarette on your forearm and call you a slut. Just stating facts sweaty xoxo.
Either dress very feminine and girly with a ‘smol girl uwu’ aesthetic or a hardass punk who would kick your ass for a can of beer no in between and tbh both are equally hot.
You’re a big softie at heart either way and just want to be held and told everything will be okay.
Ur a hoe for when people stroke your hair or caress your chin it’s your ultimate weakness.
Watched Rick & Morty.
Twice.
Sleeves rolled up veiny forearms and donning a silver watch are your muse and something you fantasise about frequently.
Most of your memes are shitty top text bottom texts that are somehow funny and I don’t understand why lmao.
You call someone ‘bro’ even if it’s someone you’re immensely attracted to.
Did someone say ties? No it’s just ur dirty ass thoughts thinking about that hot business dudes attire from across the street and how you wish they were tied around ur wrists.
Probably had a crush on Jeff the Killer as a tween and are relentlessly haunted by your old Wattpad library.
Tbh any dark-haired dude with bedhead that screams rugged and probably not good for you is something that draws you like a moth to a flame.
You often question why every person you’ve fallen for has been a Scorpio and curse that tendency of yours.
Dw man they’re hot so I feel u.
Kenma:
Went through a ‘I’m not like other __’ phase and it’s something that you think about a lot and wish you didn’t.
Watched dan & phil as a kid.
Any mention of Pokemon has you turning into a rabid beast you get way too excited.
It’s cute though dw bby.
Pretty antisocial but interesting to talk to.
Your family often question how you’re able to sleep in till 3pm and judge you heavily for it.
Nocturnal night owl gang rise up.
Frequently have bags under your eyes but somehow manage to pull it off.
Listen to ASMR on the down-low and will never admit it to a single soul.
Frequently go on BL binges and have many related book marks.
You pray that someone will never find your laptop bc holy fuck the amount of smut on that.
You wear scarves & beanies even when it isn’t that cold outside.
100% went through a scene hair phase/attempted to.
You dye your hair a lot or REALLY want to.
You have a voice kink low-key so anyone with a pleasant/soothing sounding voice just gets u goin’.
Cats are your favourite animal and you either do or want to own several.
Would name them after video game/anime characters u fuckin nerd lol.
Speaking of cats ,you fantasise heavily about cat-boys and have a folder dedicated to them.
Oversized hoodies are your vibe and always ball the sleeve hems in your fist as a comfort mechanism.
Shopping centres are your worst nightmare and trigger your claustrophobia or social anxiety and honestly I feel that spiritually.
Have a cute sticky note collection.
You like a lot of music consisting of guitar and slow/soothing beats.
You also fw EDM/ techno on occasions.
Honestly wouldn’t wanna anger you since you have a seething temper when pushed far enough.
It’s the kinda temper that’s eerily quiet but no less terrifying, like the other person can tell you are graphically plotting their demise.
You love sleeping to the sound of rainfall and often play those nature ambience videos while you sleep.
Never tidy your sheets and it’s just a big scrunched up heap of fabric in the centre of your mattress most of the time.
Make your fucking bed.
Lev:
Your ships are chaotic and shamelessly controversial.
Would do something just for the sake of creating mayhem lmao.
You were the fucker who stuck their chewing gum under the desk, I see you.
Your brain never stops whirring it’s a constant hurricane of crackhead energy and you have no idea how to turn it off.
Would eat a stick of pencil lead for $2
You don’t help your situation with the amount of coffee/energy drinks you consume.
The class clown who cries themselves to sleep.
Such a wholesome dumbass but somehow kinda intimidating???
Even if you’re not confident you can do something you’ll try anyway and honestly I respect that about you.
You !! use!!! a lot??!! of!! random punctuation!!! so you always??!?!? seem!!111!! excited!!!!!11!?
Every time you’ve ever tried to make a sandcastle it has failed.
You tried to eat the sand once but we don’t talk bout that.
You would also pick up slugs and snails and chase your friends around with them.
Can never tell whether people are laughing with you or at you and while you don’t let it show it high-key bothers you when you’re laying alone in your room at night.
Not one to hold grudges, you carry a ‘shit happens’ mentality which is v good but it sometimes leads to people taking advantage of it or walking all over you.
Your meme collection is both questionable and horrifying.
Like how many cursed images and heavily distorted pictures does one person need.
Never organise the files on your PC/laptop so it looks like a complete dumpster fire.
The one at sleepovers who persistently woke everyone else up with their snickering and refusal to sleep till dawn.
For the love of Asahi charge your damn phone.
I see that red bar and ‘12%’
Charge it now.
Bought a plant one time, gave it a name and talked to it frequently.
It died not long after bc u forgot to fucking water it.
No one better ever make you responsible for a pet.
Type of person that when someone asks you to tag along on an endeavour no matter how stupid it is you will agree.
2am skydiving in france? hell yeah.
Midnight shopping spree and spending over half your pay check? count you in.
Exploring an abandoned hospital and performing an Ouija board to summon the demons of hell? you’re damn right you’ll be there.
I hope you have a mum friend by your side bc if not how are you still alive.
You sometimes put the milk in before the cereal and it’s something I’ll never forgive you for.
Yaku:
Very responsible and usually make the right decisions.
You do have moments where you act like a complete dumbass though.
Like u go from 50 year old to 5 year old in the blink of an eye.
A hopeless romantic but it’s a side you don’t often reveal.
Prefer strawberry milk over any other flavour.
You’re the type of person to shower twice a day w/o fail.
Where that stank smell coming from? Not you clearly bc your skin is basically 90% The Body Shop’s rose scented soap at this point.
You get stomach aches a lot and you can’t figure out why.
Probably an allergy to everyone’s bs.
Really good at dirty talk even though you don’t seem the type so people are always taken aback.
You have to be really in the mood though otherwise it falls flatter than Oikawa’s ass, use your skill wisely.
You often call people clowns when you know you’re secretly the biggest one going.
Honk honk, hoe.
You send messages in one paragraph rather than multiple texts unless you are REALLY excited.
People underestimate you at times then are shocked when they realise you are capable of being a fire-breathing dragon from the flaming pits of hell.
You like spicy chicken wings.
Such a petty little shit at times lmao.
Enjoy the view from the top of mountains so you either hike a lot or really want to.
Way more of a cat person since it’s just much more convenient for you.
Usually pretty cheerful or calm and people are drawn to your stable/friendly aura.
Went through a phase of drinking mountain dew and your body still feels the awful effects
Fav element is probably air.
You’re 5��6″ or shorter.
Box dyed your hair brunette several times and can never get the pigment out to this day.
Yamamoto:
Whenever you smell something weird in the room you always internally freak out and think it’s you.
Head-butting walls is your hobby.
You fell off your bike as a kid and still have the scar on your knee.
Probably have tons of ear piercings.
Would tame a pigeon and call it Larry.
You get frequent nosebleeds and can never tell if it’s a medical issue or your extreme simping for fictional men/women.
Hopefully the latter.
You constantly chew your pen/pencil in class so you never lend them to anyone out of embarrassment.
I really hope no one ever lends you stationery bc 30 minutes later it’ll look like it was mauled by a rabid rottweiler.
You really want to own a dog and would call it something intimidating like Banshee or Diablo.
You bleached your hair that one time and it almost fell out so now you’re forced to stay at least 10 metres away from all at-home hair dye products.
You tried your best though bby so A for effort, even if it did look like dehydrated ramen afterwards.
Your grades are mostly C’s and you’re barely passing bc you just don’t care about your classes lol.
Still though you’re actually pretty smart so put it to good use you lazy oaf, channel that crackhead energy into something good.
Your phone screen has several cracks in it from when you dropped it on the bathroom floor while shitting and you’ll always be angry at yourself for that.
You have some really weird quirks but you make it work.
Actually a v chill person but you just kinda attract chaos/trouble wherever you go.
Carry a lighter with you even when you don’t need one.
Shy texter but once people see you irl you are the complete opposite, you just dk how to text without coming across as awkward.
One of those people that’s unintentionally funny and always get confused when you make someone laugh but it makes you feel good regardless.
Have a cool necklace collection and own at least one dog-tag/army style pendant.
Should really consider buying a rabbit you would look so cute w/ one.
You have really nice legs and people should compliment them more.
Either severely dehydrated or overly hydrated to the point you are peeing pure tap water so for the love of god please learn moderation, your kidneys and bladder will thank you for it.
Inuoka:
Your favourite character would be Hinata but you like people taller than you so your love for Inuoka spawned.
You really enjoy using the double spiderman meme.
Cannot correctly verbalise your feelings without creating a minimum of 10 misunderstandings but once people are used to it it’s kinda endearing.
You usually wake up in a good mood and people can never fathom how or why.
You either stay up till 5am or you wake up at that time no in between.
A morning person bc you love the sunrise.
Change your lock-screen very regularly bc you get bored.
Your humour consists solely of poop jokes.
When you don’t understand a joke you laugh anyway and hope they don’t ask you if you actually get it.
Happened once and you’re still traumatised from the cricket silence that fell upon the room.
Really like the taste of lemonade and drink it more often than you should.
Often think about what you would look like with a shaved head.
More of an extrovert but def have occasional introvert tendencies where you wanna be left tf alone.
Never allowed to pick up anything in stores bc the last time you did you sniffed a scented candle and it shattered to the floor.
Constantly have spontaneous ideas of what to change about your appearance.
You use a lot of hand gestures like thumbs up and peace signs.
‘Dude’ and ‘lmao’ is 90% of your vernacular.
Your nails are a disaster, some are down to the nub while others are pretty grown out bc you only bite a select few please sort it out.
Look really good in red.
Your laptop has way too many tabs open from random google searches of words you didn’t know the meaning to.
You read a lot of books but for like 10 minutes at a time bc you have the attention span of a walnut.
You are the type of person to nuke your AO3 tags with things that aren’t even relevant purely bc you found them funny.
Your Tumblr drafts are a nightmare, you have like 100+ in the works yet keep starting new projects why do you do this.
Happy sunshine but you have a LOT of mood swings like that shit comes out of nowhere.
Cry pretty often but no one ever sees and it’s usually because of said mood swings.
You always smile and pick yourself up again though which I commend you for.
TYPES IN CAPITALS IN SITUATIONS THAT DO NOT REQUIRE SAID PUNCTUATION SO YOU SEEM LIKE YOU’RE YELLING ALL THE TIME.
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20 Questions
We had a power outage on Friday that lasted for like 10 hours, but it inspired a story. Hope you like it :) NaLu AU. No smut, just fluff. Some strong language.
It’s about 9 o’clock in the evening as the budding writer clacks away at her computer desk. By the time she entered high school, Lucy knew that what she wanted to be when she grew up was a successful fiction novelist. But the literary world was not a forgiving place, just getting a publishing house to look at your work was difficult enough, and getting it published was even harder; not to mention once you do get that opportunity you now had to prove to the fickle world of readers that you weren’t just a one-hit wonder.
And that’s where she was.
Two years ago, a small publishing company, Fay House, Inc was intrigued by her fantasy type stories and took a chance on the young woman. While the book had sold a fair amount of copies in the year it has been on shelves, and some critics deemed her a person to watch in the future, she still had a long way to go before she could quit her day job as a proofreader for the Crocus Gazette and focus all her energy on writing.
By day, she went to her regular job but at night and often through most weekends she spent it huddled over the keyboard hard at work on the second book of her Golden Key Series. It was due to her agent in 6 months and she had only completed about half of it so far. If all went to plan tonight, Lucy hoped to finish the chapter she was working on so that maybe, she could take a break and go to a concert this weekend with her best friend. He’d been bugging her to go ever since their favorite band announced they’d be performing in their hometown.
Typing away… ‘…She reached out to the shimmering metal in utter disbelief, could it be that this really was another zodiac key? The young girl already possessed three, but they were so rare and hard to come by, and more than once it had turned out to be a fake, touted as a reward for a mission completed only to end up being worthless….’
Without warning, the light of her laptop screen dims and blinks out as the blonde is left in total darkness. “No!” she bangs on the keyboard. “Ahhh! Damn it, Damn it, Damn it,” she hits it again, “I didn’t save…” Lucy slumps in her chair, two hours of work gone in a flash because she forgot to charge up the battery. Turning on the flashlight app on her phone, she makes her way to her window and that’s when the gravity of the situation reveals itself; the whole city, as far as her eyes can see is completely black. “Just great!” she throws her hands in the air. “It’s gonna take them all night to fix this!”
Two blocks away, Natsu and his roommate Gray are bickering at the TV screen, game controllers in each of their hands when the power goes out.
“Fuck!” The dark-haired man laments, “And I was winning too!” tossing his controller down in front of him.
“Yeah, for once!”
“What they hell bro, I kick your ass most of the time!”
“Tch, only at this game cause you play it more than me!” Natsu looks over at the window, “Whoa, it’s really dark out there.”
“Of course, it’s dark, idiot, it’s night time and new moon.”
But he stands and walks over to it, “No, moron, like the whole towns gone dark.”
“Seriously?” Gray joins him and seeing it for himself exhales, “Well so much for a rematch tonight.” His friend drops his controller on the couch and heads towards the front door. “Hey where are you going?”
“To check on Lucy, I bet she’s screaming at her laptop right now.” Natsu checks his pockets; keys, phone, ready to go. “Don’t wait up on me.”
“Right… you’ll be back by midnight.” Laughing. “You are so pathetic man, how long you gonna stay in the friendzone before you give up and move on.”
“Prick.” Natsu sneers back. “It’s not like that with her, and you know it.”
“Yeah I know.” Jesting. “You two have only been ‘friends’ since Grammar school cause you never had the guts to ask her out.”
“Whatever,” he raises a finger before shutting the door behind him.
Natsu manages to navigate the two blocks between their apartments despite not being able to see where he was going. Hell, he’s travelled it so many times he could probably do it blindfolded, even drunk, which has happened on more than one occasion. A couple of times instead of going home to his apartment from the bar he ended up at her door step. Maybe it was the wishful thinking of a tipsy man… Oh, she would whine and complain, ‘not again,’ but always let him in to crash on her couch and sleep off the effects of that night.
But his friend had been right about one thing, Natsu’s had a crush on the pretty blonde since they were children, but he was never very good at admitting his feelings, especially ones that had the potential of becoming embarrassing. He and Luce, which was his personal nickname for her, had grown so close that at times it was uncanny how one could finish the others sentence or would just know if something was bothering the other. Like tonight, he would bet money that as soon as the power went out, she had been sitting at her desk writing, screamed and cursed when the screen went blank because she probably hadn’t saved whatever she had been working on, and is now sitting on her couch pouting with the plush dragon doll he won her at a fair clutched in her lap.
Lucy hears a knock at her front door, “Hey Luce, it’s me.” She stands up from her couch and walks over to open it.
“What bring you here Natsu?” she moves out of the way to let him in before locking the door.
He kisses her on the cheek and chuckles at what she’s holding in her arms, “Hi to you too. I just wanted to make sure you were alright…” grinning, “and didn’t break your computer ranting at it.”
“Tch.” She crosses her arms around her doll. “No. But I lost everything I wrote tonight.” Sigh, she plops back onto her couch. “I don’t think I’ll have time to go to that concert with you this weekend… and I was looking forward to it too.” Pouting.
He sits beside her and puts his arm around, prompting her to rest her head on his shoulder. “I have faith in you Luce, you wrote it once so I’m sure you’ll be able to whip it out easily the second time.” Looking around her living room, she’s set up a few candles around the room giving it that cozy, perfect to cuddle in, kind of ambience. He lets out a sigh, “Did you eat dinner? I know how you sometimes forget to when you start working on that book.”
She shakes her head, “But I’ve got snacks I can break open if I get hungry.” Cuddling a little closer to him, “Thanks for coming over… it was kinda creepy being alone in the dark.”
Leaning his head against hers, “You’re welcome. So… not much to do without power. Wanna play cards or something?”
“Hmm… not really…”
“Board game?”
“Mmm, no.”
“I could put some music on from my phone.”
“Alright.” He fishes the device from his pocket and turns on Pandora to a mild volume before setting it on her coffee table. She sighs, “That’s better than silence. What were you up to before the power went out? No wait, let me guess, playing video games.”
“You know me well, Luce.”
“And then you decided to come check on me, just because the power went out?”
“I told you, cause I knew you’d probably be upset.”
It was nicer having him there, although she’d never previously admitted that she wasn’t fond of the dark, somehow, he knew and simply came to her rescue. “Mmmm…” she hums, settling into the sanctity of his embrace.
The blonde falls silent, enjoying this little quiet time with her BF. With most people, Natsu is always goofy and gregarious but when it’s just the two of them, a more modest and subdued man shows up. She doesn’t mind it, but sometimes wonders why he’s like that, as if he’s hesitant in how to interact with her. Levy, her best girlfriend, swears it’s because he likes her and is trying to hide it but one would think by now, I mean all these years later, she’d have noticed something that told her if that was a possibility. Or the other explanation is, she chooses not to get her hopes up because it makes her nervous… Well nervous in that happy butterflies in your stomach kind of emotion and she doesn’t want it to turn into the sad, I wasted all these years waiting for nothing feeling. An incident a few days ago made the blonde start thinking about their relationship and what it really meant to him. Was she just his buddy? Being stuck without the benefit of distractions could be the perfect opportunity to ferret out the truth, if she was ready. She shudders at her thoughts.
He feels her tremble, “Luce, are you cold? I could grab you a blanket…”
“I’m not cold… I was just thinking about something.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“No, it’s okay, really.” Faking a yawn. “Maybe I’m just tired.”
“Do you, wanna go lie down? I can just head out.”
She turns to look at him, “Would you stay tonight since the power is still out… I’d feel safer not being alone.”
“Sure, I’ll just crash on the couch.”
Biting her lip, “I meant stay with me in… my room…”
His heart catches in his throat. The fingers he has resting on his thigh, curl and dig into his skin trying to wake him up from the obvious dream he must be having because Lucy has never asked him to sleep in her bed, with her. Sure, it won’t be the first time they’ve shared an intimate space but it’s a little different when it’s a camping trip or group vacation with limited room that they must make due, and he has slept-walked in and woke up in her bed before… He blinks his eyes, but nope she’s still there, waiting for his response. “O-okay.”
She pats his leg, “I’m gonna change for bed. Would you mind snuffing out the candles before you come in?”
“Y-yeah, I can do that.”
“Thanks.” She kisses his cheek and walks to her bedroom.
Natsu bides his time, slowly moving around the apartment. ‘I wonder why she’s acting a little weird tonight. Maybe she was drinking before I got here… Nah that can’t be it.’ Just once, when Lucy had had too much to drink at a college party she came onto him, but he knew that wasn’t the case tonight. He checks the front doors lock, makes sure the windows are closed, empties his pockets onto the kitchen counter, turns off the music, and one by one extinguishes the 6 or so candles, Lucy had placed around the space. Before blowing the last one out, he scans one more time to make sure everything is secure before knocking. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” She calls out from behind the wooden door.
The light from her phone is the only thing illuminating the room as she sits on her bed in a cotton tank top and shorts type of PJ’s. Lucy pulls back the comforter as he silently breathes a sigh of relief that she’s not in lingerie or something more suggestive; the outfit she has on will be bad enough to be close to but that would have been much worse. She pats the bed. “Are you gonna sleep in that?” she points at his jeans. “Wouldn’t it be uncomfortable.”
He runs his hand nervously through his hair, yes it would be, but the alternative is what, his boxers and just the t-shirt? He grapples with the decision for a moment. “I think I’ll take um off. I-If you don’t mind,”
“I’ve seen you in just boxers before, remember, like that time when Gray yanked your shorts down during a wrestling match.”
“Right…” but that doesn’t make him feel better.
She turns off the light from her phone to give him a little bit of privacy, as he strips and get into her queen-sized bed. Pulling the covers up to her chest she lays there on her back staring at the ceiling and he does the same, remaining in that suspended reticence for some time before Lucy sighs loudly, “Are you asleep?”
“No.”
“I wanna… play a game.”
“Now? But I thought you were tired?”
“I lied.”
Natsu turns to his side and props his head up to look at her, but she continues to stare at the ceiling, “Well, what did you wanna play?”
She can hear the irritation in his voice knowing that it’s because of the lie. Sighing again, “I wanna play… 20 questions…”
Now his interest is peeked, but his anxiety also kicks in. What brought this on so suddenly? It’s obvious to him that there must have been something on her mind earlier and this ‘game’ is just a ruse to bring it up. But why go through all the trouble just to ask a few questions unless they are a touchy subject? He can feel his heartrate pick up and his skin flushing at just the notion, things could become uncomfortable, very, shortly… He exhales and lays on his back again, “Fire away Luce.”
“We’ll take turns asking each other questions, no subject off limits, and we have to tell the truth no matter how hard it is.” He cringes, yet at the same time, if he’s gonna be asked some awkward questions then it’s only fair he could finally get answers that have been burning in him too… “I’ll start. What’s my pen name?”
Breathing a sigh of relief, “That’s easy, Lucy Ashley. My turn, um…” ‘I think she’s testing how well I know her…’ “…How old was I when I was adopted.”
“6. When did my father lose his company?”
“You were 16… I think.”
“Close enough, I was 17.”
“What’s my favorite color.”
“Red, specifically reddish-orange cause it reminds you of fire.” His eyes light up, ‘Damn she pays close attention!’ “Who’d I go to the Junior prom with.”
“Tch, Loke.” Hearing the disgust in his voice makes her smile, maybe Levy was right after all… “But at least I got to take you Senior year…”
“If it bothered you that much, you should have asked me to go with you.”
“Never mind, can’t change the past.” exhale “It’s my turn again, what’s my… favorite food?”
‘Is he too afraid to ask something harder?’ Lucy starts chuckling, “Is that a trick question? You’ll eat anything but I guess I’ll say, spicy stuff are your favorites.”
He chuckles too, “Very true, I’m not a picky eater.”
“Alright, my turn,” she takes a deep breath. “W-why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
‘Ouch! She went right for the jugular.’ His face paling, “B-because I didn’t… I-I…” exhale “…was too afraid to ask you out.” He feels her turn on her side, senses the stare even in the darkness but he gives her no chance to respond yet. “Same question Luce.”
Sigh, “Because I was waiting for you to ask me out. How long have you had a crush on me?”
“5th grade.” Now her eyes widen, she thought maybe he might say high school but grade school! “Same question Luce.”
“8th grade, PE class.”
Shocked, “You remember it down to the specific time?!”
“It’s not your turn to ask a question, but the answer is yes.” He feels the bed shift as she turns to face away from him. Even though she’s the one who started this, it’s still uncomfortable to say the least… “I always thought you were cute, and you were already a close friend but… that was the first time I saw you without a shirt on…” she’s biting her lip at the memory and he can hear that slight mumble in the way she’s talking even though he can’t see it and his heart is beating as a fast as a hummingbird’s wings to finally know the truth. “… and I remember thinking wow, you had really started to develop over the summer.” Exhaling “My turn. If I asked you to hold me, right now, would you, do it?”
Thrilled by her question, his answer requires no verbal response as he spoons up behind her and puts his arm around her waist breathing out his next question, “What’s your favorite thing about me?” expecting her to say maybe his personality or even his body which he keeps maintained just for her…
“Your hair and your eyes.”
“Seriously? ‘Didn’t see that coming…’ My hair?”
“I like the color. Do you… want a girlfriend Natsu?”
“Maybe… If I asked you to be my girlfriend, would you say yes?” His breathing stops in anticipation.
“Yes.” Lucy can’t help but giggle when he lets the air back into his lungs. “Were you that worried I’d say no?”
“Hell yeah, that’s why I’ve never asked you before.”
Taking a deep breath of her own, “Natsu, wanna know why I wanted to play 20 questions?”
“Yeah, kinda.”
“Because this way I could test your reactions… cause, I was afraid you didn’t like me either…”
“What brought this on anyways?”
“I saw you checking out a girl at the café the other day and…” she bites her lip, “I was worried you were moving on…”
He squeezes her waist and buries his face in her hair. “That girl just had a cool tattoo on her arm, so you needn’t worry Luce… no one could ever take your place.”
She yawns and relaxes against him, “Could you give Gray a message?”
“What’s that?”
“Find a new roommate cause you’re moving in with me.”
Natsu feigns shock, “Hold up, who said I’d agree to that?”
“Oh please, you can’t lie to me. I know you’re thrilled about that idea.”
“Damn you know me too well…” she giggles. “Well if we’re moving so quickly why don’t we just get married too while we’re at it?”
She stops giggling and turns around in his arms. “Are we still playing 20 questions?”
“Does it matter? A question is a question.”
But she punches his chest, “Ugh, you know a girl would prefer something more romantic if their being asked for their hand.”
“Yeah and what about me made you think that was gonna happen? I thought you knew me better?”
Lucy does her best to pout but can’t stifle the giggle, “Can’t fault a girl for trying.”
“So, are you gonna answer the question?”
Turning back over quickly, “Nope.”
“What!” But she starts giggling. “Ooh you!” he pulls her onto her back and starts tickling making her laugh harder. “You’re so mean to me!”
Doing the only thing she can think of to stop his torture she grabs his face and pulls his lips against hers. It works as he stops to return the kiss. Smiling, “of course the answer is yes Natsu, though it wouldn’t have killed you to try and be more romantic.”
“Fine.” He climbs off the bed and starts to put his pants back on.
“Wait!” Lucy scrambles to a sitting position fearing she pushed him too far. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back,” kissing her cheek. “I’m taking your key so I can let myself back in.”
“But where are you going?”
“Don’t worry about it Luce, I just need to grab something from my apartment.”
Natsu leaves his nervous girlfriend hanging as he makes his way out. ‘How the hell am I supposed to come up with something romantic at 1 in the morning, no one’s open, and hell even if they were there’s no power!’ Flying up the stairs at his building two at a time, he finds Gray talking on his phone to his girlfriend.
“Knew you’d be back!” he calls out as Natsu just bypasses him for his room like a man on a mission.
“I’m not, just came to grab some things.”
“Wait what?” “Juvy I gotta call you back.” Hanging up, he walks over to his friend’s room and sees a flustered man searching around in the closet. “You’re goin back to Lucy’s?”
“Yeah. Why is it so hard to believe?” Gray can’t see what Natsu shoved into his pocket but can see him throwing some clothes into an overnight bag.
“Whoa, you really are spending the night there!” following Natsu to the bathroom where the man is adding other personal necessities to his bag. Snickering, “I take it things are going well between you?”
“As a matter of fact, it is.” Zipping up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “You know, maybe you should move in with Juvia.”
“Why, sick of seeing my face?”
“No, I’ll be moving in with Lucy…” Grays mouth hangs open. “…as soon as you find a new roommate or maybe move in with your girlfriend, like I am.” And now his jaw drops. “Oh, and by the way yes she’s now my girlfriend and we’re engaged.”
Following Natsu to the front door, his friend grabs his arm, “Are you fucking with me? That’s kinda rushing things, I mean you weren’t even a couple and now you’re moving in and getting married!”
“Well not this second, but shit. Even though we weren’t an official couple all these years you gotta admit it’s what we practically were.”
“Yeah but still…”
“Look, I gotta get back to her so can we talk later.” He leaves his stunned friend behind.
When Natsu returns to her apartment, he finds Lucy in the kitchen making sandwiches. He chuckles, “got hungry while I was gone?”
“MmHmm.” She mumbles through a bite. “Want, I made for you too?”
He puts his bag on the couch and joins her. “Awe, so romantic, deli meats by candle light…” he grins. She rolls her eyes as she takes another bite. “But I’ll eat in a minute.”
“Suit yourself.”
Walking up behind her he wraps his arms around her waist, “The candles are as romantic as this is gonna get,” and holds something shiny in front of her face, “Lucy Heartfillia, will you marry me?” Lucy’s hand trembles as it puts down the rest of her sandwich and he lifts her left hand. “Well?”
So, in shock she manages a fervent nod while he slips the ring onto her finger. “H-how… you couldn’t have bought this tonight?”
“I mugged a lady I found on the street.” She slaps his arm. Chuckling, “No I saw it, a couple of years ago at a store and thought it would look stunning on you.”
“T-two years ago?”
He turns her to face him. “Well maybe more like several years ago… just in case this ever happened.”
“You had hoped for a power outage?”
“What?” laughing he tilts her head up, “So smart until those blonde roots get the best of you. No, if I ever had the chance to be your boyfriend… and eventually your husband.”
“That story… it’s so romantic… you had been thinking about me like that for so long…”
He squeezes her waist again. “I guess it’s a good thing you caught me checking out another girl…”
“Excuse me!” she tries to push him away, but he holds her firm.
“Well it’s what prompted the 20 questions game, right?” she stops pushing. “and led to this. By the way, Gray thinks it’s crazy that we just hooked up and are gonna get married already.”
“Everyone chalked us up as a couple for years… so it’s not like we just met and rushed into things.”
Laughing, “I said the same thing!”
She tiptoes and kisses his grinning lips, “It’s scary how well we know each other…”
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4, 13, 14 & 26
(asks for fanfic writers)
Gonna do this out of order because one of them needs a readmore tag.
4. name three authors that were influential to your work and tell why
Ohhhhh boy. Ohhhhh my god. What a tough question. Okay.
1. Guy Gavriel Kay - I read The Fionavar Tapestry when I was maybe 14 and it shook the foundations of my world, devoured everything else he has available, and even though as an adult I see a lot of his limitations he shaped me so much–huge amounts of my entire praxis of moving through the world as someone with chronic, persistent, unremitting depression came from him. There was a time when I thought I wanted to write exactly like him. My sense of scope, of story, of what to hold onto and what to let go, of what language can do.
2. @dsudis - Slash fandom generally has done a lot to help with my internalized shame about sexuality, about taking what we do seriously, but I think Dira’s the person who’s inspired me most in the past few years. Because sometimes the things we feel drawn to are weird and problematic and there’s no way to make them less weird or less problematic without taking away our reasons for wanting them–so she’s an inspiration and a role model for me when it comes to navigating that fearlessly and ethically.
3. Monica Hughes - whom basically nobody knows, but I do, because she was Edmontonian and I went to elementary school in Edmonton, so her books were pushed on us a lot. She was my introduction to science fiction–while other women I know came to the genre through the misogynistic greats, my hand was held by a comforting friend who knew the land I came from and spread women through the stars for me to follow. (Sadly, she died before I ever got to meet her.)
14. easiest character to write
Andy Scarlatti, queen of my heart. It’s not that she’s me–it’s that she gets to be angry, and that feels so fucking good to write.
26. story you’re most proud of
Still possibly “Les hivers de mon enfance”? It’s the most like I think my writing should be (it’s the Guy Gavriel Kay-est OMGCP thing I’ve written). If not that, then “leave your lovers like campsites”, because it’s complicated and long and has a plot and is complete, and it those things are so hard for me to write.
13. hardest character to write
Justin Oluransi. Cut for discussion of suicide, emesis, gore/injury, trauma, feces.
(*looks at trigger list* It’s not actually that heavy of a response, I swear)
Okay so for a year during my Masters I worked in a university counselling department. (It was great–I def recommend anyone with mental illnesses to see what their counselling departments and disability offices can offer them–although ask how they handle student suicidality before you disclose if that’s something you deal with–sorry, I’m getting sidetracked)
So a lot of people would come in looking really stressed and overclocked and fragile and say, “I’m having trouble with coping. I’m in six classes and I’m on the track team and I’m president of the student business association and I’m doing great but, you know, I’m puking from stress all the time, my hair is falling out, and I haven’t slept in three days. So what I need are some tools on how to better manage my workload.”
So the thing about therapists is you’re having a real human experience–we can’t just be replaced by clever robots because the experience of being seen and subjectively experienced by another human being is really valuable. But the downside is, everyone has areas of relative strength and weakness. Some therapists are better with some issues than others.
And the thing about me is that I’ve been mentally ill, disabled, and traumatized since I was a child. There are days when walking six blocks causes me a level of pain other humans don’t get unless they have broken bones or third-degree burns. The first time my mother told me she wanted to divorce my dad I decided to repress my emotions about it for 12 hours, and my fully adult body responded by making me literally explosively shit my pants the moment the child I was caretaking left the car in the loading zone at their school. My clinical area of speciality is complex trauma, also known as “being so fucked up for so long you don’t know what normal looks like and your issues literally won’t let you function”
My area of specialization is not “basically healthy people who want coaching to achieve top performance.” I have classmates who wanted to do that and had no affinity for complex trauma. They’re different specializations.
So I would smile politely at those people and say, “Have you considered dropping part of your workload to decrease the pressure on you?” and they would say “No!” in a horrified voice and we would stare at each other in mutual incomprehension, and I would try to talk to them about sleep hygiene and grounding meditation and cognitive distortions, but in the back of my mind I was like why would you do that to yourself just for social status and achievement and to please your parents? because whatever shreds of ambition or competitiveness or achievement orientation I possess have been ground very thoroughly under humiliating years of having to accept my very strict and unforgiving limitations.
I wasn’t a good therapist for them; I don’t think I’m suited for academic environments; students like that rarely came back to me for a second session.
And I see Justin Oluransi in them a lot. Frat bro, hockey star, 4.0 GPA, coral reef, about to break, so fucking strong and ablebodied and so fucking fragile. So when I write him my instinctive response is to swaddle him–wrap him up in cotton wool, let him relax and feel less pressured, remove the burdens on him. Let him get Bs or stop playing hockey or party less often.
Where I trip up is that he probably wouldn’t want that–he’s one of those people who probably does physical exercise because it feels good, achieves academically because it pleases and interests him, socializes because he wants to be around his fellow humans. If you gave him my ideal retreat of a quiet, cozy, solitary vacation, he’d probably go stir-crazy.
So like… a lot of me is tempted to read this “consulting” storyline from the tweets as Ransom seeing the light, realizing that he has to gracefully bow to his limitations and not put himself through the pain and horror of med school or further academia, but… when I write him, I also want to remind myself that he wants very fundamentally different things from me; we have chosen what are essentially polar opposites in some major life values. And instead of just smugly converting him to mine, I have to temporarily slip myself into his mindset.
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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
You may have heard – Shovel knight has finally made his way across the ocean to Japan! We’re very excited about the leap. We’ve invested a lot of time making sure our localization is fun and smartly done. Wait, what is localization? It’s the process of translating text and adapting a game for a local market, of course! We partnered with the super cool experts at 8-4 to make our localization the highest quality possible. Today, we wanted to talk about some of the neater changes we’ve made to the game to really go the extra mile for Japanese gamers.
History
But before we jump in…it’s time for a history lesson! Way back in the day, game localization was the wild west. There was no standard or ruleset for what was appropriate in localizing a game. Sometimes developers would make translation changes that were absurd and riddled with typos, and other times, developers would put so much effort in that they’d completely change the name and create a whole new series.
(On the left is Bubble Bobble’s poorly worded text. On the right is Wonder Boy, a Japanese game that was changed to Adventure Island when ported to the NES/Famicom. The game actually split off into two distinct series.)
(Update 8/1/16: It’s come to our attention that Adventure Island was converted from Wonder Boy during its port from arcades. We were confused because often porting and localization are intermixed due to Famicom->NES transition. We apologize for the error!)
This inconsistency created a lot of interesting localization changes in games as developers learned with each title what were the appropriate changes to make. Also, due to the restrictions of the NES, lots of changes were required when bringing them from Japan. Some issues including complexity in fonts, technical limitations, or game design observations and learning that happened post-release. We’re going to discuss just a small sampling of the changes they made to games back in the day, so you can see where the reasoning came from for the changes we’ve made to Shovel Knight for Japan.
Before you read any history from us, it’s best to learn from the expert himself, Clyde Mandelyn: http://ift.tt/1bVVtHS. He’s put together really awesome pieces (and books!) on some famous game localizations and the changes they made post Japan release.
Common Japan to North America Localization changes
Obviously, lots of small or large text changes happen when localizing a game as a result of the complexities of translation. But we’re going to instead show some of the visual, sounds, and gameplay changes that you might have seen during the NES/Famicom era.
Graphic Changes
Of course, usually one of the big changes to a game was the title screen. Sometimes this could be a complete replacement, or sometimes it was just the removal of some Japanese text.
Sprite changes were very common in the NES days. Often, the logic was that players might not understand Japanese specific sprites like food:
Or alternatively, North American localization teams might think the Japanese characters or sprites wouldn’t be appealing. Below Power Blade, known as Power Blazer in Japan, changed its main character to look cooler instead of cute.
Common 80s Knowledge: Arnold Schwarzenegger makes every game sell.
Sometimes these changes were made to make the gameplay more clear and understandable:
Oh hey! I didn't know there was an enemy there before!
Super Mario Bros. 2 (known as Doki Doki Panic) in Japan is a case where Nintendo of America went to great lengths localizing the game. It’s a great example of what was typically changed at the time…they turned a game that wasn’t Mario into Mario!
In some cases, they decided to change sprites so they were now animated! Below is an example of one change where it made the gameplay objects really stand out:
Maybe I should pull those plants up!
Sprites could also be changed to be less or more complex. Or maybe they’d be changed to improve over the Japanese version. Here’s an animation change of that kind from Mario 2:
Sometimes these animation changes were due to restrictions in hardware between the Famicom, NES, or Famicom disk system. Here’s an animated sprite (actually a background tile that appears animated) in Zelda 2 that was removed in the NES version as the NES wasn’t able to manipulate VRAM in quite the same way as the FDS:
Wow...I actually believe it's water now!
Font changes
Fonts were often a big area where changes were made. Creating a game in Japanese was difficult due to the common character set, Kanji, being nearly impossible to contain on the small amount of memory that the NES could afford. Kanji can contain thousands of characters (a common newspaper might include 2500+)! To get around this issue, sometimes games chose to use the smaller Kana character set (up to around 100 characters), or they decided to use the much smaller English character set! English is somewhat common in Japan, so it didn’t make the games completely unplayable as you might expect (especially given the typically small amount of text in NES games). Here are some examples of Kana text on the NES/Famicom:
Here’s an example of Zelda using English in the Famicom version:
Notice the difference in font here. The NES had a standard 8×8 thick font, so the North American text was re-appropriated to use what players were accustomed to seeing. You might also be realizing that all the letters are in uppercase! This is to cut the number of characters needed in half. Shovel Knight already does the same thing!
In cases where text readability was very important, the developers dedicated more resources to represent more complicated text. Below, you can see how Final Fantasy on the NES broke the lower case barrier:
Ah! Much easier on the eyes.
You may notice the odd looking ‘g’ in the letter king. This is due to NES/Famicom games only having space for 8×8 characters. A lowercase g, to be properly spaced would break this boundary, so they’ve instead positioned the character higher. This is another reason why Kanji was so hard to represent on the NES/Famicom. Each character’s complexity is nearly impossible to represent clearly with only 8×8 pixels. But there were limited cases where developers were still able to pull off Kanji on the NES/Famicom. Take a look at Faxandu:
As you can see the font is much larger than the typical 8×8 size. This is due to how Kanji’s complexity is almost impossible to clearly represent with an 8×8 pixel block. Faxanadu doubles the size using 16×16 blocks (where the characters fit in 14×14). On the Super Famicom/SNES, developers had a little more freedom, so Kanji fonts often were 12×12:
Audio
It wasn’t just visuals that were changed, sometimes game localization teams changed the sounds associated with a gameplay object.
[embedded content]
And they even went as far to change music compositions. This was sometimes due to differences between the hardware for a Famicom, NES, and Famicom disk system. Or as we’ve stated previously, this could be due to the difference of the actual cart technology. Check how different Castlevania 3’s soundtrack is between versions:
[embedded content]
Gameplay
Finally, sometimes the NES transition from Famicom would go as far to changing gameplay. This could be anywhere from making the game easier or harder, removing glitches, accounting for hardware differences, or simply trying to make the game more fun. Here are a couple of rooms from Zelda where they decided to add bats!
And infamously in Zelda, Pols were weak to sound in the Famicom version, but the NES controller didn’t have a microphone, so they were instead weak to arrows:
[embedded content]
Shovel Knight Localization Differences
So when we went about localizing Shovel Knight, we wanted to recreate some of the fun differences you might find between regions. We even went through the process of trying to “reverse” localize it. That meant to us, asking what features Shovel Knight would have had if it started out as a Japanese game. We had a few rules in all our changes though: 1) We wanted the gameplay to remain consistent 2) We didn’t want any significant change that made you feel like you missed out by not playing the original version 3) We didn’t want to do something that was traditionally considered bad localization. To us that meant, no typos or bad English, and nothing that would diminish the quality of the game. We also didn’t want to change too much! In the end, we wanted create a great localization by today’s standards. But we had to add a little fun! So we made a few subtle changes here and there that we think really made a big difference!
Graphic Changes
The title Screen is an obvious one. We wanted to match what you’d expect out of a Japanese game in the era, which meant having Japanese text alongside the English logo:
After that, we made some more changes to the static sprites. Below you can see that when upgrading your health, Gastronomer sometimes will randomly serve up a Rice Ball dish.
Additionally, the Midas Coin now has a hole more representative of some Japanese coins:
Also, the Hall of Champions statues have an alternate design.
We also made some slight color changes. Certain Wizzem and Iron Knight palette types have changed as you can see below:
The final static sprite change we made was reworking the character portraits for Reize, Baz, Polar Knight, and The Enchantress. We tried to make them have a slightly more anime-esque art style.
After that, we decided it was time to make some static art be more animated – really show off the power of the Famicom! First up, in Plains, we decided to animate the grass:
For Dragon Whelps (green and blue), we originally created sprites with a lot of frames in their flying animation, but decided to cut it back as it didn’t look like something that could appear on the NES. But we left it in for the Japanese version!
For the Village Fountain, we created a different design and animated it to flow with water!
And the last graphic change we made: sleeping Shovel Knight at the Campfire now has a snooze bubble!
Font Changes!
Font was a really tricky decision for us. We wanted to use Kana characters because that was most representative of the NES era and its limitations. That said, most Japanese players would rather play the game in Kanji. Kanji can be considered nostalgic and retro as well as it was widely used on the Super Famicom. Additionally, Kanji would require us to redo every text box in the game, as we created our menus, dialogue boxes, etc to fit 8×8 font characters. So obviously the easy way out would be to do Kana…so after much deliberation, we caved and decided to do both!
The game has officially been translated into both alphabets, and supports the player switching between both on the fly:
You might see that we opted for 12×12 pixel sizes on the Kanji font. This allowed us to get a look most closely aligned with the Super Famicom.
Notice also, that we haven’t changed the HUD text from English. We felt it was very common at the time to use English words for the HUD, and we decided to stick with what we had:
Sounds Changes
Not much to go on about here. We already took the Famicom route with themusic and included a VR6 chip. So we instead decided to change a few sounds:
Gryphon death SFX and Bubble Dragon death have been swapped
Wizard Fire (and Shovel Knight’s fire rod) uses the burner SFX instead of magic SFX
Fairy enemy plays different SFX when attacking with a bite.
Extra Cheats!
We couldn’t just stop there! We decided to add a few more extra bits. Remember the X&BUTT cheat code? Well, butt is sadly not exactly the funniest word in Japan, so we’ve come up with a different replacement scheme. Along with text replacement, the cheat also enables two new graphic replacements that we thought were a little too far for the graphic changes in the main game.
Carrots are replaced with Daikon Radishes:
And Gold coins are vertical, more closely resembling koban style coin.
We’ve also made it so this Japanese specific cheat turns on localization changes in all languages. Pretty cool, huh! But if you don’t want to use a cheat, you can switch to Japanese at any time to see all the changes!
Thank you
Hope you enjoyed a little look at the extra efforts we put into the Japanese localization. Translating a game is a ton of work, and we hope more people will now see how much love goes into each and every release of a game. You should give it a shot once our update with the Japanese changes are out in the wild!
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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
You may have heard – Shovel knight has finally made his way across the ocean to Japan! We’re very excited about the leap. We’ve invested a lot of time making sure our localization is fun and smartly done. Wait, what is localization? It’s the process of translating text and adapting a game for a local market, of course! We partnered with the super cool experts at 8-4 to make our localization the highest quality possible. Today, we wanted to talk about some of the neater changes we’ve made to the game to really go the extra mile for Japanese gamers.
History
But before we jump in…it’s time for a history lesson! Way back in the day, game localization was the wild west. There was no standard or ruleset for what was appropriate in localizing a game. Sometimes developers would make translation changes that were absurd and riddled with typos, and other times, developers would put so much effort in that they’d completely change the name and create a whole new series.
(On the left is Bubble Bobble’s poorly worded text. On the right is Wonder Boy, a Japanese game that was changed to Adventure Island when ported to the NES/Famicom. The game actually split off into two distinct series.)
(Update 8/1/16: It’s come to our attention that Adventure Island was converted from Wonder Boy during its port from arcades. We were confused because often porting and localization are intermixed due to Famicom->NES transition. We apologize for the error!)
This inconsistency created a lot of interesting localization changes in games as developers learned with each title what were the appropriate changes to make. Also, due to the restrictions of the NES, lots of changes were required when bringing them from Japan. Some issues including complexity in fonts, technical limitations, or game design observations and learning that happened post-release. We’re going to discuss just a small sampling of the changes they made to games back in the day, so you can see where the reasoning came from for the changes we’ve made to Shovel Knight for Japan.
Before you read any history from us, it’s best to learn from the expert himself, Clyde Mandelyn: http://ift.tt/1bVVtHS. He’s put together really awesome pieces (and books!) on some famous game localizations and the changes they made post Japan release.
Common Japan to North America Localization changes
Obviously, lots of small or large text changes happen when localizing a game as a result of the complexities of translation. But we’re going to instead show some of the visual, sounds, and gameplay changes that you might have seen during the NES/Famicom era.
Graphic Changes
Of course, usually one of the big changes to a game was the title screen. Sometimes this could be a complete replacement, or sometimes it was just the removal of some Japanese text.
Sprite changes were very common in the NES days. Often, the logic was that players might not understand Japanese specific sprites like food:
Or alternatively, North American localization teams might think the Japanese characters or sprites wouldn’t be appealing. Below Power Blade, known as Power Blazer in Japan, changed its main character to look cooler instead of cute.
Common 80s Knowledge: Arnold Schwarzenegger makes every game sell.
Sometimes these changes were made to make the gameplay more clear and understandable:
Oh hey! I didn't know there was an enemy there before!
Super Mario Bros. 2 (known as Doki Doki Panic) in Japan is a case where Nintendo of America went to great lengths localizing the game. It’s a great example of what was typically changed at the time…they turned a game that wasn’t Mario into Mario!
In some cases, they decided to change sprites so they were now animated! Below is an example of one change where it made the gameplay objects really stand out:
Maybe I should pull those plants up!
Sprites could also be changed to be less or more complex. Or maybe they’d be changed to improve over the Japanese version. Here’s an animation change of that kind from Mario 2:
Sometimes these animation changes were due to restrictions in hardware between the Famicom, NES, or Famicom disk system. Here’s an animated sprite (actually a background tile that appears animated) in Zelda 2 that was removed in the NES version as the NES wasn’t able to manipulate VRAM in quite the same way as the FDS:
Wow...I actually believe it's water now!
Font changes
Fonts were often a big area where changes were made. Creating a game in Japanese was difficult due to the common character set, Kanji, being nearly impossible to contain on the small amount of memory that the NES could afford. Kanji can contain thousands of characters (a common newspaper might include 2500+)! To get around this issue, sometimes games chose to use the smaller Kana character set (up to around 100 characters), or they decided to use the much smaller English character set! English is somewhat common in Japan, so it didn’t make the games completely unplayable as you might expect (especially given the typically small amount of text in NES games). Here are some examples of Kana text on the NES/Famicom:
Here’s an example of Zelda using English in the Famicom version:
Notice the difference in font here. The NES had a standard 8×8 thick font, so the North American text was re-appropriated to use what players were accustomed to seeing. You might also be realizing that all the letters are in uppercase! This is to cut the number of characters needed in half. Shovel Knight already does the same thing!
In cases where text readability was very important, the developers dedicated more resources to represent more complicated text. Below, you can see how Final Fantasy on the NES broke the lower case barrier:
Ah! Much easier on the eyes.
You may notice the odd looking ‘g’ in the letter king. This is due to NES/Famicom games only having space for 8×8 characters. A lowercase g, to be properly spaced would break this boundary, so they’ve instead positioned the character higher. This is another reason why Kanji was so hard to represent on the NES/Famicom. Each character’s complexity is nearly impossible to represent clearly with only 8×8 pixels. But there were limited cases where developers were still able to pull off Kanji on the NES/Famicom. Take a look at Faxandu:
As you can see the font is much larger than the typical 8×8 size. This is due to how Kanji’s complexity is almost impossible to clearly represent with an 8×8 pixel block. Faxanadu doubles the size using 16×16 blocks (where the characters fit in 14×14). On the Super Famicom/SNES, developers had a little more freedom, so Kanji fonts often were 12×12:
Audio
It wasn’t just visuals that were changed, sometimes game localization teams changed the sounds associated with a gameplay object.
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And they even went as far to change music compositions. This was sometimes due to differences between the hardware for a Famicom, NES, and Famicom disk system. Or as we’ve stated previously, this could be due to the difference of the actual cart technology. Check how different Castlevania 3’s soundtrack is between versions:
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Gameplay
Finally, sometimes the NES transition from Famicom would go as far to changing gameplay. This could be anywhere from making the game easier or harder, removing glitches, accounting for hardware differences, or simply trying to make the game more fun. Here are a couple of rooms from Zelda where they decided to add bats!
And infamously in Zelda, Pols were weak to sound in the Famicom version, but the NES controller didn’t have a microphone, so they were instead weak to arrows:
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Shovel Knight Localization Differences
So when we went about localizing Shovel Knight, we wanted to recreate some of the fun differences you might find between regions. We even went through the process of trying to “reverse” localize it. That meant to us, asking what features Shovel Knight would have had if it started out as a Japanese game. We had a few rules in all our changes though: 1) We wanted the gameplay to remain consistent 2) We didn’t want any significant change that made you feel like you missed out by not playing the original version 3) We didn’t want to do something that was traditionally considered bad localization. To us that meant, no typos or bad English, and nothing that would diminish the quality of the game. We also didn’t want to change too much! In the end, we wanted create a great localization by today’s standards. But we had to add a little fun! So we made a few subtle changes here and there that we think really made a big difference!
Graphic Changes
The title Screen is an obvious one. We wanted to match what you’d expect out of a Japanese game in the era, which meant having Japanese text alongside the English logo:
After that, we made some more changes to the static sprites. Below you can see that when upgrading your health, Gastronomer sometimes will randomly serve up a Rice Ball dish.
Additionally, the Midas Coin now has a hole more representative of some Japanese coins:
Also, the Hall of Champions statues have an alternate design.
We also made some slight color changes. Certain Wizzem and Iron Knight palette types have changed as you can see below:
The final static sprite change we made was reworking the character portraits for Reize, Baz, Polar Knight, and The Enchantress. We tried to make them have a slightly more anime-esque art style.
After that, we decided it was time to make some static art be more animated – really show off the power of the Famicom! First up, in Plains, we decided to animate the grass:
For Dragon Whelps (green and blue), we originally created sprites with a lot of frames in their flying animation, but decided to cut it back as it didn’t look like something that could appear on the NES. But we left it in for the Japanese version!
For the Village Fountain, we created a different design and animated it to flow with water!
And the last graphic change we made: sleeping Shovel Knight at the Campfire now has a snooze bubble!
Font Changes!
Font was a really tricky decision for us. We wanted to use Kana characters because that was most representative of the NES era and its limitations. That said, most Japanese players would rather play the game in Kanji. Kanji can be considered nostalgic and retro as well as it was widely used on the Super Famicom. Additionally, Kanji would require us to redo every text box in the game, as we created our menus, dialogue boxes, etc to fit 8×8 font characters. So obviously the easy way out would be to do Kana…so after much deliberation, we caved and decided to do both!
The game has officially been translated into both alphabets, and supports the player switching between both on the fly:
You might see that we opted for 12×12 pixel sizes on the Kanji font. This allowed us to get a look most closely aligned with the Super Famicom.
Notice also, that we haven’t changed the HUD text from English. We felt it was very common at the time to use English words for the HUD, and we decided to stick with what we had:
Sounds Changes
Not much to go on about here. We already took the Famicom route with themusic and included a VR6 chip. So we instead decided to change a few sounds:
Gryphon death SFX and Bubble Dragon death have been swapped
Wizard Fire (and Shovel Knight’s fire rod) uses the burner SFX instead of magic SFX
Fairy enemy plays different SFX when attacking with a bite.
Extra Cheats!
We couldn’t just stop there! We decided to add a few more extra bits. Remember the X&BUTT cheat code? Well, butt is sadly not exactly the funniest word in Japan, so we’ve come up with a different replacement scheme. Along with text replacement, the cheat also enables two new graphic replacements that we thought were a little too far for the graphic changes in the main game.
Carrots are replaced with Daikon Radishes:
And Gold coins are vertical, more closely resembling koban style coin.
We’ve also made it so this Japanese specific cheat turns on localization changes in all languages. Pretty cool, huh! But if you don’t want to use a cheat, you can switch to Japanese at any time to see all the changes!
Thank you
Hope you enjoyed a little look at the extra efforts we put into the Japanese localization. Translating a game is a ton of work, and we hope more people will now see how much love goes into each and every release of a game. You should give it a shot once our update with the Japanese changes are out in the wild!
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