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shmothman · 6 months

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pacing alone in my room talking to myself (posting my entire story for my mushishi SI on tumblr dot com)

They are… more or less a cryptozoologist, although they’d never call themself that. They’re a biologist, it’s just that not everyone believes the species they study are real. It doesn’t help that most of the literature on them is at least a hundred years old, and now is relegated to the sphere of rural folklore and folk medicine—and the occasional eyewitness accounts of strange phenomena, not unlike cryptid and ghost sightings. The paraphyletic group known as mushi are just undescribed fungi and protists, they insist, and are repeatedly laughed at by every institution they pitch their research to. (They’ll show them, they think.) Angry and running out of options, they take a field trip on their own to a rural mountain in Japan. They’ve always been described to appear in areas less touched by humans. (They can’t see the mushi all around them, but they’ve accidentally stumbled upon a large branch of the light vein.)

They aren’t expecting to more or less trip and fall into it.

As if in a trance, they walk toward it, step into it—until a voice calls out for them to stop, a hand pulls them back. He has white hair and an eye of pure darkness.

And when they wake up, he’s still there, telling them to wake up, coaxing them out of strange dreams.

(Mushi can totally make time travel happen. Shhhh it’s magic.)

Now, missing most of their memory (at least about who they are, they remember things about the world in the 21st century as a whole) they have to adjust to life in Meiji-era Japan, and as interested as Ginko is to figure out how this happened (he’s a nerd. he’s a big fucking nerd be honest with yourselves), he’s a little less stoked that he’s stuck with a brash, confusing, time traveling idiot until the two of them can figure out how to get them back to their own time, or until they can figure out a way and a place to stay as he moves on. (I think you can see where this is going.)

There’s a bit of Gender Stuff that goes on with my SI, and they end up deciding to “pretend” to be a boy bc they don’t want to be seen as a woman, and also it makes it easier to believe that they’re his “apprentice” (which ends up being their go-to excuse), but Ginko’s take on all that is “well, none of my business.” And he doesn’t really care, anyway. Doesn’t stop him from falling in love, at least. You’ll pry my demisexual headcanons out of my cold head hands, as per usual.

Despite pretending to be his apprentice, they can’t… actually see mushi. They didn’t gain that ability by falling into the light vein. They do come to be able to feel them, in a vague sort of way, though they’re always asking Ginko to draw them for them. Luckily, dealing with unseen things is basically what a microbiologist does (though they can’t even see mushi under a microscope, damn) so they can fake it well enough when they need to. And Ginko can’t help but feel quite a bit proud when they start being able to identify mushi by description, and sometimes even by feel.

They travel together for months, become close friends, and against their better judgment, they both get attached. Fall in love. But they can’t… they’ll both have to leave sooner or later… My SI falls first. They know it can’t be, and they know he can’t see them that way, but that doesn’t stop the feelings, the hopes, the imagining. And then he goes through the same thing. He’s much better at repressing his feelings than they are, though 🤣 And he’s much quicker to figure out that they like him. I mean, it’s pretty goddamn obvious. To literally everyone. (Well, anyone who doesn’t think my SI is much younger than him—I HC him as 34ish and I do have. A baby face—and also a boy. Although… even then. If You Know, You Know. There were gay people back then too.)

So cue the Sef-mandated months of mutual pining while they gallivant around japan solving mushi mysteries together and generally getting into Will-They-Won’t-They scenarios until even I, the real life version, am sick of the slow burn.

Until they come to a village where my SI just… fits in. Even in the couple days they’re in town, it’s clear that the villagers would accept them, help them make a life there. My SI is having a great time, though they have no actual intention of staying; it’s just nice to make some friends. Attend a little village party or something.

And they wake up and Ginko’s gone.

No note, no nothing. He just left.

They’re hurt beyond words, but at this point they know him. In his own way, he’s trying to give them the one thing he can’t have or provide: a normal life—or, as normal a life as they could have now. But of course he didn’t ask them what they wanted. (He knew what they’d say—after all, he knows them, too.)

Angry and hurt, they run after him, but they choose the wrong way at a fork in the road, and they lose all hope of finding him again.

And they know they should cut their losses: he left for a reason. But they’re stubborn and mad and quite frankly, he’s the one thing they have in this goddamn world and they’ll be damned if they’re gonna lose him without doing everything in their power to make him see reason.

So they find their way to the town where Adashino lives. Sooner or later, Ginko will show up there.

It’s still many months before he does.

Months for them to rehearse what they’re going to say to him, months to grieve and try and try and try to get over him. (They end up spilling the whole thing to Adashino too, bc the two of them end up being buddies, and even Adashino is like. C’mon Ginko.) And they think they’ve got it all figured out. They’re going to yell at him. They have every right to!!

And then he finally shows up at Adashino’s doorstep, and they look at each other, and my SI just starts to cry.

Let it be known that Ginko is also angsting the entire time they’re apart, some real sad boy hours. This cover is playing in the bg the entire time, basically. But this is how his life has to be. They have a chance to be happy, so he has to make sure they take it. And now he’s staring them in the face again, and he hates that the only thing he can feel is relief. Thank goodness, you’re back. Thank goodness, he doesn’t have to wake up and get disappointed that they aren’t there. Thank goodness, he can pretend it’s a nuisance when they sidle up to him in the cold even though it’s all he wants them to do. But they’re crying. And he knows he hurt them. He just… he assumed they’d chase after him, then lose heart when they couldn’t find him and return to that village to go live their life.

He should’ve known better. He knows them.

They… talk. And then they kiss. And then they fuck.

And they leave together.

There’s trust that needs to be healed, and feelings they both have to work through, but… they can do it together. And continue to get each other out of mushi-related scrapes constantly. And keep each other warm as they hike through the snow in winter.

There’s no way back to their time, but even if there was, they wouldn’t take it.

Anyway this is my ginko selfship playlist PEACE

#I’m sad I’m gonna write out my entire romantic story arc and maybe then I won’t be so sad #sef insert #ginkoposting

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